Top Ten of Film

Cinema buffs will flock to this work, which provides a delicious assortment of hundreds of top 10 lists culled from the world of movies. Trivia abounds within these pages. India, we learn, is the top film-producing country, but China is the nation with the most movie screens. The book could have used some colorful narratives to stitch together all the blocks of numbers; many of the background tales are sadly compressed into tiny footnotes. For sheer information, though, this is quite an achievement; it presents its facts as effectively as an Excel spreadsheet. Compiler Ash is well acquainted with the genre, having put together the annual The Top 10 of Everything. He also satisfies readers' taste for schadenfreude, by mentioning Hollywood's biggest bombs (The Adventures of Pluto Nash, step right up). Whether or not American culture is enriched by having a list of the top 10 Ben Affleck films is highly questionable, but as a reference for water cooler conversations, this book is irresistible.