2011 Films

I ended up watching 110 films in 2011, a deliberate decrease from 2010. A little less than half of these were 2011 releases.

Of the 2011 releases I watched in 2011, here are my top 5 picks, in no particular order

• The Tree of Life 
• Drive
• Melancholia
• A Dangerous Method
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

And here are 15 runners-up, again in no particular order:

• Jane Eyre
• Hanna
• Win Win
• Super 8
• The Sunset Limited
• The Debt
• Sarah's Key
• Contagion
• Moneyball
• Martha Marcy May Marlene
• My Week With Marilyn
• Arthur Christmas
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• The Mill and the Cross

Top Non-2010 Films of 2010

And here are some of my favorites from the ones originally released in years other than 2010, including one cheat (a documentary):

• Black Narcissus (1947)
• The 400 Blows (1959)
• Still Walking (2008)
• Das Weiße Band (2009)
• Che: Part Two (2008)
• La Grande Illusion (1937)
• Wings of Desire (1987)
• Madame Bovary (1991)
• The Lady Vanishes (1938)
• La Belle et la Bête (1946)
• Straw Dogs (1971)
• Deliverance (1972)
• Death and the Maiden (1994)
• Walkabout (1971)
• Mesrine: L'ennemi public n° 1 (2008)
• Lost Highway (1997)
• The Last Station (2009)
• Where The Wild Things Are (2009)
• Eden Lake (2008)
• Get Low (2009)
• Mesrine: L'instinct de mort (2008)
• Dillinger è Morto (1969)
• Che: Part One (2008)
• Cairo Time (2009)
• Exam (2009)
• The House Of The Devil (2009)
• The Ghost and Ms. Muir (1947)
• Madame Bovary (1949)
• Breaking the Waves (1996)
• Julia (2008)
• 500 Days Of Summer (2009)
• A Single Man (2009)
• The Hurt Locker (2009)
• The Name of the Rose (1986)
• Taxi to the Dark Side (2008)
• Chloe (2009)
• 12 Angry Men (1957)
• Los Cronocrimenes (2007)
• K-Pax (2001)
• Valhalla Rising (2009)
• The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)
• White Dog (1982)
• Murders In The Rue Morgue (1932)
• Abrazos Rotos (2009)
• Bronson (2009)
• Hierro (2009)
• The Reader (2008)
• Agora (2009)

Top 2010 Films of 2010

I watched 153 movies in 2010, many of them in theaters.

Here were some of my favorites, from the ones (widely) released in 2010, not in order of preference:

• Black Swan
• Shutter Island
• The Ghost Writer
• Winter's Bone
• Monsters
• The King's Speech
• Never Let Me Go
• Let Me In
• The Social Network
• 127 Hours
• Another Year
• Rabbit Hole
• The Kids Are All Right
• Anton Chekhov's The Duel

2009 Film Round-up

I watched 63 movies in 2009, so about 1.2 a week. Most were excellent, a few were mediocre, and a few abysmal.

At the end of 2008 I decided I wanted to watch more classic films, which I did in 2009.

The 63 I saw included the following classics, all of them brilliant except the fluffy adaptation of Pride and Prejudice:

• Judgement At Nuremberg (1961)
• Amarcord (1973)
• Brief Encounter (1945)
• Repulsion (1965)
• Pride and Prejudice (1940)
• The Conformist (1970)
• Vertigo (1958)

The best original 2009 (or 2008 and 2007 in a few cases) films I saw in 2009 were, in no particular order:

• Revolutionary Road
• Up
• Baader-Meinhof Complex
• 4 Months 3 Weeks And 2 Days
• Hunger
• Waltz with Bashir
• The Messenger
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans
• The Road
• Antichrist
• Disgrace

All of the above were excellent, and in completely different ways.

I watched 46 documentaries in 2009, and listened to or watched 55 lectures from various The Teaching Company courses, mostly on writers and classical composers.

One of my cinephile goals for 2010 is to intersperse more Criterion titles with recent releases. To that end, I'll be working off this list.

Anamorph This

Today I watched the movie Anamorph, mostly for Dafoe and Stormare. Good production value (including musical score) were wasted on this highly derivative thriller with a preposterous ending and characters we don't care about.

Also watched Starship Troopers 3: Marauder; I actually liked the original, and this promised to carry on the story with some continuity (I never got through part 2) so I gave it a shot. It isn't an artery-clogger, but it does produce mild heartburn, even as action/sf/satire go, and the final sequences seemed particularly rushed. The action pacing felt kinda clumsy, and the satire was too ambitious and mixed-up about itself.

Watched the pilot episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Well-executed, I thought. Nutter's direction was solid, the acting was better than in ST3 (well, maybe that's not saying much) and McCreary's score was above average. Might be springing for the recently-released Season 1 DVD set.

Finished another short (short) story, story 090108, and sent it out, as well as two other submissions.

And wrote 1,000 words on the critical piece.

Jewels of the Knight Sky

Good/great movies seen recently:

• Wall-E - 96% - "Too much garbage in your place? There is plenty of space out in space! BnL StarLiners leaving each day. We'll clean up the mess while you're away."
  
• Hellboy 2: The Golden Army - 88% - "You can suck my ectoplasmic Schwanzstücke!"
• The Dark Knight - 94% - "Some men aren't looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."
  

And some horror flicks:

• The Ruins - 47% - "So what do you guys think: Ancient Mayan temple off the beaten path?"
  
• Shutter - 7%
  
• P2 - 35%
  

Documentaries:

• National Geographic - Prehistoric Americans
• Discovery - Paleoworld - Mammoths
• BBC - 3 part series, The Genius of Mozart
• PBS - Jewel of the Earth (The Amber Time Machine)
  

Outside The World

My review of the June 2008 issue of Ideomancer, which contains three stories and three poems, is now up at The Fix.

My Worldcon 2008 participation has been confirmed. I'll be taking part in a panel titled "Living as a fan outside the English speaking world," scheduled for Thursday 7th of August at 4 pm.

Movie updates: Finally saw 1408. Found it disappointing, overall. There's good technical execution, but for the most part I just didn't find it scary or emotionally involving--more like a crazy hallucination. The "creepiness" didn't work for me.

Also watched The Golden Compass, which had an enjoyable two first acts, and then seemed to just fizzle out of dirigible-power in the third. It was visually sumptuous, and the acting was excellent, but too much of the story seemed to be handled in a kind of aloof manner, with certain storylines picking up and others dropping in a way that didn't seem integrated or particularly coherent. The expository recap at the end was also insipid.

One Blink At A Time

The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton etc. was incredibly loud, action-oriented and for the most part it worked. Tim Roth put in a nice performance as the over-the-top villain. There were a few slips in the logic: Banner, who by now has made it clear he's on the move and in hiding, joins another major character on a stroll, in full daylight, through the Culver University campus! The effects were slick and top-notch, and it was fun to see the Captain America backstory worked in, as well as the Iron Man crossover.

For a real movie which in ten minutes contains more emotion and depth than the above, watch The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It's the visually-stunning story, based on the real-life events described in the book by the same name, of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered from an extremely rare form of paralysis (Locked-In Syndrome) after a massive stroke. The paralysis left his mind active and free to roam but made him unable to move any part of his body--except one eye and an eyelid. Using a system of blinks to spell out letters, he "blink-dictated" the book to his nurse/speech therapist. That he could have achieved such a remarkable task, and that the film-makers have so aesthetically re-interpreted the experience, is another testament to the durability of the human mind and the resilience of human imagination.

Away From Her

Tonight I watched Away From Her.

It's a remarkable film that goes about the breaking of your heart with the same truth and beauty of a bee pollinating a flower.

Corneal Rejection

I'm in pretty good shape with the essay; 5,000 words + references done, with a few hundred words left to conclude. Tomorrow, the edits.

Watched the 2008 horror remake The Eye, which is slick trash, a feeble ghost story peppered with visions of death past and future, facilitated through some kind of "cellular memory" in an eye transplant. Vacuous, limpid entertaining, though I enjoyed the over-the-top sound textures and horror score by Marco Beltrami.

Super-OK

Essay is now at 3,000 words. I'll be finishing the first draft tomorrow (looks like it will shape up to be about 4,000-4,500 words long) and give myself Sunday for corrections.

Finally watched Superbad, which was wildly uneven and super-OK. What the hell was up with the cop stuff? As far as the cops were concerned: The ironic juxtaposition with the teens was obvious, the writing alternated between over-the-top and painfully wooden (the scene of "revelations" on the bed was flat) and they didn't fit into the dramatic arc except in the most superficial way. The non-cop stuff did deliver some hilarity...

And the weekend is upon is!

Book #16, The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow

Finished this anthology last night. Some superb stories. Just wished there would have been a few more. Review to follow shortly.

Went to the theater and caught Indy IV. Despite the jaded snickering teenagers, the film delivered all the classic ingredients and managed to sustain the charm and derring-do of the originals without ever becoming overtly self-aware or condescending. Some of the physical violence seemed a little over-the-top (who's quaint now, huh?) and the climax was a kinda weird choice, but I thought it worked overall as the pulpy, escapist entertainment it set out to be.