Interestingly, Ebert ranked There Will Be Blood as one of the top 10 movies of 2007, yet he only gave the movie 3.5 out of 4 stars. So you might be thinking, "Well, maybe he gave so few 4 stars this year because he was sick," but I doubt that that is it. There were several 4 star films that didn't make his top 10 list, so what's up? This is actually one of things about Ebert that I really appreciate. Individual rankings usually are given grades relative to the demands of the ambition of the filmmaker, and the ideal effects of the story genre itself. So, it's possible for a fairly mindless film to get 4 stars, even if the net effect of the story to be relatively small compared to a 3.5 star film which, while not perfect compared to the potential of the story itself, still swamps the 4 star film in terms of nt effect. That is at least how I rationalize what appears to be violations of basic transitivity that should probably dominate any kind of ordinal ranking of films.
Secondly, Millions (A Lottery Story) looks and sounds interesting. It's a documentary about the first people to win the New York Lotto powerball. They split the winnings a dozen ways, giving each of them $5 million. Several of the winners, now in their 70s, spent every penny of it. Others saved every penny of it. I look forward to catching it when it comes out on DVD (if I can remember).
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