Best Films of the Decade: It’s All Relative

One of the most enjoyable, but also most fruitless, aspects of opinion-making is the “best of” list. And now that we’ve crossed that decade borderline the “Best Films of the Decade” headline has become a staple for any movie-related site out there. Attempting to be part tastemaker and part definitive answer these lists forget one thing: it’s all relative.

Your tastes might, and most probably, not match mine so why would I care about what you declare to be “Best of the Decade” and all the weight that a title like that carries with it? Thus comes the beauty of the internet and namely The Auteurs (whom I’m consulting for) in regards to defining the films that will define the aughts.

Instead of you telling us what’s the greatest, how about us crowdsourcing everyone’s favorite films to create a list more representative of the multi-cultural, varietal interests and infinite tastes of the audience at large? Not only that, but let’s also see that list on granular levels where your list of 10 can stand on it’s own as well as be tossed into the bigger pool for consumption. Well, at The Auteurs that’s exactly what we did in putting together “The Auteurs Best of the Decade User Poll,” which is part of the bigger “Best of the Decade.” page.

“The Best of the Decade.” page also takes into account the automated creation of a list. Users ratings of films (on a scale of 1 – 5) were averaged to create the “Best of the Decade” list that sits right next to the user poll list as a way to further compare the differences between a mathematical formula and a more opinion-driven, user-centric approach. For the webheads out there: that’s the difference between Google and Mahalo.

Then we took it a step further by taking mass popularity and dicing it into types of film: documentary, European, American, etc.

And that’s one of the coolest things about this and why I’m so happy we pulled it off: it’s the idea of placing relation and context on these so-called “Best Films of the Decade” lists. By just adding a layer of technology to people’s love of film we can create an infinite amount of interesting viewpoints. James Cameron would be so proud.

Obviously, no viewpoints are definitive and anyone thinking so would be silly, but that’s the beauty of this landscape of new and social media. Nothing is definitive, no one opinion is right, it’s all relative, so let’s hear them all.

Well, enough hearing me blab, go check out “The Auteurs Best of the Decade.” page now.