Cigar Aficionado

At the end of 1984, I confronted an annual task that most film critics face: my year-end list of the 10 best (and worst) films of the year. In a year that included The Killing Fields , A Passage to India , Amadeus and Places in the Heart , not to mention Splash , Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop , I chose Rob Reiner’s mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap . For my trouble, I received some notoriety of my own: a place on the local list of “Year’s Most Boring People.” It’s dicey enough to anoint a winner from a single season, but for professional critics and film buffs alike, naming a greatest film of all time is terrifying. The criteria are so hazy. Does it mean …