The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu, an unremittingly bleak comedy about a dying man's adventures through the Romanian health-care system, was the surprise winner of this year's Indiewire Critics Poll, triumphing by a margin as decisive as last year's runaway victor A History Of Violence. After the shake-up at the Village Voice following their buyout by New Times Media—which many esteemed critics their jobs and cast a dark shadow over the alt-weekly community—former VV editor Dennis Lim basically shifted the erstwhile Village Voice Film Poll over to Indiewire this year, keeping the same cast of characters (including many A.V. Club members) and adding several new voices from online sources. As the Lazarescu victory attests, the results were gratifyingly idiosyncratic: While over half of the 107 participants voted for that film, the presumptive Oscar-winner Dreamgirls didn't collect a single vote for Best Film.
Here's the Top Ten:
1. The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu
2. L'Enfant
3. The Departed
4. Inland Empire
5. Army Of Shadows
6. Three Times
7. Old Joy
8. United 93
9. Children Of Men
10. Half Nelson
Full results, including comments on the best, the worst, the orphaned, and the undistributed can be found on Indiewire.com. And ballots for all the participating critics can be found here, in hypertext paradise.