Talk about not having your pulse on the heartbeat of America.

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times has put out his top ten movie of the year list.

The top five are, and I’m not making this up, Roma by Alfonso Cuaron, Burning by Lee Chang-dong, Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda, Zama by Lucrecia Martel and Happy as Lazzaro by Alice Rohrwacher.

Most of these moves have never and will never hit a screen in most cities between the two coasts. He recommends Amazon and Netflix on a couple.

Look, I’m betting I would or will enjoy some if not all of these movies. But why not put together a list of movies that a lot of people have seen?

At least, number six, BlacKlansman by Spike Lee, got wide play. I wouldn’t put it on my

upcoming top ten list but it was good.

Number 7 is First Reformed by Paul Schrader. I rented it and found it interesting but not likeable at all.

Shock of shocks, number 8, The Death of Stalin by Armando Iannuci was one of my top ten movies. Wickedly funny.

Number 9 is Monrovia Indiana by Frederick Wiseman (a great documenatary film maker and a movie I will eventually see but one not generally seen by the public) and the top ten is rounded out by Colophnon (for the Arboretum Cycle) (I’m not making this up) by Nathaniel Dorsky.

Can you imagine hanging out with Manohla. It would be fun to compare favorite Liam Neeson movies.

By the way, the other major Times critic A.O. Scott’s had a list that was a little less obscure but still mostly movies you never heard of.

It did include Let the Sunshine In, a movie I saw at a film fest that was really, really bad.

A.O. was so puzzled when he watched it the first time, he went back again and found “an artful movie that seems so artless.”

I rest my case.