The L.A. Film Critics Association has named David Lynch‘s Mulholland Drive as the best film of the first decade of the 21st Century. This illustrates in a nutshell why Joe Popcorn doesn’t trust critics — i.e., because their tastes are too dweeby, too arcane, too referenced, and not populist enough.

I loved Mulholland Drive when I first saw it. I knew it was Lynch’s best since Blue Velvet. But I don’t own it and there are reasons for that. Parts are a bit downish and laborious and a tad overbearing with the dark spooky stuff, and it’s a bit too taken with its middle-class-hating, “are you hip enough to get this?” art-noir aura. I could have put Mulholland Drive on my 42 best films of the decade list, but I forgot to for some reason. I probably should have. But a voice is telling me it’s more of a great L.A. film than it is a plain great film.

I sure as shit don’t think Mulholland Drive is a finer, fuller or more layered thing than any of my Top Ten of the Decade — Zodiac, Memento, Traffic, Amores perros, United 93, Children of Men, Adaptation, City of God, The Pianist and The Lives of Others.

LAFCA’s Top Ten of the Decade are as follows, in this order: Mulholland Drive, There Will Be Blood, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Brokeback Mountain, No Country for Old Men, Zodiac, Yi Yi , 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Lord of the Rings (WHAT?), Spirited Away, United 93 , Y Tu Mama Tambien and Sideways.