The B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low-budget Beauties...

Successor to the "A and X Lists" - this time the National Society of Film Critics picks its favourite genre movies, low-budget beauties, and cult classics.

Once the B movie was the Hollywood stepchild, the underbelly of the double feature, the scrambling lab rat of cinematic innovation; today it is a more inclusive category, embracing films that fall outside the mainstream by dint of their budgets, their visions, their grit, and occasionally - sometimes essentially - their lack of what the culture cops call 'good taste'.

This is precisely where "The B List" takes a stand. Taste, at least in the sense of decency, decorum, and propriety, is subjective, transitory, and evolving. With that in mind, this book throws caution to the proverbial wind, zooming in on movies that demand attention despite their lowly births, squalid upbringings, and dubious character traits. What admirable qualities the pictures have - and they have such qualities galore - are cheerfully irrelevant to the properties that define Oscar movies, although some of our selections are, in fact, Oscar movies.

The essence and importance of the films in "The B List" lie precisely in their being offbeat, unpredictable, and decidedly idiosyncratic. And that's why we love them.