A LATE START TO A GREAT RACE FOR NUMBER ONE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR

Hello again, friends!
I am back again to compile and poll each cinematic awards and top-10 list I can find. You can check out how I do it here and here. One change in awarding points this year: films that win Best Picture awards like, say, the IFP Gotham Awards, are awarded 5 points for that win. That's the only change. So let's get to it!

Sorry for being late, but I wasn't ready for the onslaught that the first two weeks in December brought us! So many critics' associations, awards ceremonies, and publications had their favorites lined up early and ready to show the world. Jeez, I remember when I could sit in on advance critics' screenings...so great. Anyhoo, since there are so many, I can't go through and post each one individually. Just hooking up links for trailers for each movie mentioned would take about 5 million minutes! However, here are links for each of the lists and awards that figured into this week's poll:

American Film Institute
IFP Gotham Awards
LA Film Critics' Assn.
NY Film Critics' Circle
National Board of Review
Slate
Variety (Glieberman, DeBruge)
New York Times (Dargis, Scott, Holden)
The New Yorker
US Weekly

Let's see how things are shaking out so far...

1. Moonlight (69)
2. La La Land (34)
3. Manchester by the Sea (32)
4. OJ: Made in America (30)
5. Hell or High Water
Toni Erdmann (26)
7. Sully (17)
8. Arrival (16)
9. American Honey (13)
10. Little Sister (10)

As anyone who pays attention to this sort of thing expected, Moonlight is this year's frontrunner to be the Number One Best Movie of the Year. It's an amazing film and the critics all want to marry it. It's doing good business, as well. One thing, though, it's still a long shot for winning the Oscar for Best Picture. This week's runner-up, La La Land, is being held up as a lock for Best Picture. It hasn't opened here yet so I cannot personally vouch for it. All signs point to me loving it. Probably the biggest surprise entry into the race is OJ: Made in America. The documentary has made it into a top five spot on four lists this week. Will it have the legs that the Juice had in his youth? In the last spot is Little Sister, but don't expect it to hang in there long as it was only mentioned once: a #1 vote by that nerd at the New Yorker. And, lastly today, I would encourage you to go out and see some of these movies while you can! By the end of the week, I will have seen seven on this week's list!