Film critics share favorite guilty pleasures in ‘B List’

“The B List”

(Da Capo Press. $15.95. 288 pages), edited by David Sterritt and John Anderson

The literary version of having a movie-critic friend intent on convincing you that there’s a movie of which you’ve never heard but must see, “The B List” offers up mostly irresistible essays by the National Society of Film Critics about their favorite guilty pleasures.

Subtitled “The low-budget beauties, genre-bending mavericks, and cult classics we love,” “The B List” is arranged (very) loosely by theme – film noir, road movies, horror movies, “transgressive chic.”

These movies may never make “best-of” lists, but they’re all memorable, and most essays – from well-known names including the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman, Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen, Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek, Roger Ebert and many others – convey the giddy pleasure involved in watching a movie that is engrossing even though it doesn’t ostensibly matter.

Da Capo Press has previously published “The A List” (the “best” films) and “The X List” (the “sexiest” films) but “The B List” allows critics the writerly equivalent of letting their hair down, describing which movies touched them despite their flaws.

Although the title connotes obscurity, readers will have doubtless seen, or at least heard of, many of the movies mentioned – Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs,” David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation,” even Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” – are included along with more obscure titles. But the book’s broad scope adds to its charm: obvious picks such as John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos” and David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” are featured alongside such lesser-known films as “The Space Children,” a sci-fi flick from 1958.

For the most part, the essays are reprinted from previously published reviews, and there are some misses: “May,” a tossed-off horror film from 2002, certainly doesn’t need memorializing (although that doesn’t make Roger Ebert’s review any less entertaining), and, really, “The Rage: Carrie 2”?

But the strength of the book lies in the fact that even if readers never see the movies discussed, it is still fun to read about them. And many essays showcased here will either pique readers’ interest or reacquaint them with forgotten favorites.

Ultimately, even if one disagrees with some of the picks in the book, I challenge anyone to finish it without a Netflix queue full of previously unheard of movies they’re excited to check out.