I did it!
After last year’s slight shortfall, that’s the big news this year. And unlike 2008, where I scraped to 100 in the year’s dying days, I instead made it in the dying days of September — leaving a whole three months to spare! Sadly I didn’t use those to beat my previous best, 2007’s 129, but there’s always next year.
So, here’s the list of all I saw. Slight change this year: the list is in numerical order, aka order viewed. Because I don’t post reviews in order any more, and because there’s an alphabetical list of all reviews, this seems the most unique — and therefore vaguely worthwhile — way of doing it. I go back and forth on whether numerical or alphabetical is ‘right’ every year, so don’t be surprised if it changes back in 2011.
After the lists comes the usual array of fascinating statistics. If you’d like to skip straight down to those — scrolling can be an awfully tiring business after all — then please click here. Otherwise, on with the 131 things I have to mention…
#1 Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
#2 His Girl Friday (1940)
#3 The Man Who Sued God (2001)
#4 Ich möchte kein Mann sein, aka I Wouldn’t Want to Be a Man (1918)
#5 Die Puppe, aka The Doll (1919)
#6 Die Austernprinzessin, aka The Oyster Princess (1919)
#7 Sumurun (1920)
#8 Anna Boleyn (1920)
#9 Die Bergkatze, aka The Mountain-Lion (1921)
#10 Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin: From Schönhauser Allee to Hollywood (2006)
#11 Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
#12 Wallander: The Secret, aka Mankell’s Wallander: Hemligheten (2006)
#13 Air Force One (1997)
#14 Million Dollar Baby (2004)
#15 What About Bob? (1991)
#16 Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
#17 Saturday Night Fever (1977)
#18 Kung Fu Panda (2008)
#19 Elektra (2005)
#20 M (1931)
#21 Speed Racer (2008)
#22 Frankenstein (2004)
#23 Doctor Faustus (1967)
#24 Deja Vu (2006)
#25 Juno (2007)
#26 The September Issue (2009)
#27 Choke (2008)
#28 Clue (1985)
#29 Death Wish (1974)
#30 Seraphim Falls (2006)
#31 Waitress (2007)
#32 The Illusionist (2006)
#33 Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)
#34 Saw V (2008)
#35 Titanic (1997)
#36 The Condemned (2007)
#37 Ghost Town (2008)
#38 Alice in Wonderland (3D) (2010)
#39 Kick-Ass (2010)
#40 Wallander: The Revenge, aka Mankell’s Wallander: Hämnden (2009)
#41 Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone, aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Jo (2007/2009)
#42 Burn After Reading (2008)
#43 Inkheart (2008)
#44 First Blood (1982)
#45 Sherlock Holmes (2010)
#46 Righteous Kill (2008)
#47 The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
#48 Taken (2008)
#49 Sherlock Holmes (2009)
#50 Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)
#51 Tu£sday (2008)
#52 Insomnia (1997)
#53 Coraline (2009)
#54 Knowing (2009)
#55 Ivanhoe (1952)
#56 National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
#57 Max Payne (Harder Cut) (2008)
#58 Public Enemies (2009)
#59 Final Destination (2000)
#60 2012 (2009)
#61 The International (2009)
#62 True Lies (1994)
#63 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
#64 Mulan (1998)
#65 Get Smart (2008)
#66 Guess Who (2005)
#67 Pale Rider (1985)
#68 Is Anybody There? (2008)
#69 Inception (2010)
#70 Ministry of Fear (1944)
#71 Panic in the Streets (1950)
#72 Terminator Salvation: Director’s Cut (2009)
#73 Dragonslayer (1981)
#74 Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
#75 Nanny McPhee (2005)
#76 Final Destination 2 (2003)
#77 Total Recall (1990)
#78 Late Spring, aka Banshun (1949)
#79 Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)
#80 Ocean’s Eleven (1960)
#81 Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
#82 Bride & Prejudice (2004)
#83 Final Destination 3 (2006)
#84 Matchstick Men (2003)
#85 The Damned United (2009)
#86 Snake Eyes (1998)
#87 Daylight (1996)
#88 Night at the Museum (2006)
#89 The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (2007)
#90 Bhaji on the Beach (1993)
#91 The Band Wagon (1953)
#92 Force of Evil (1948)
#93 Brigadoon (1954)
#94 The History Boys (2006)
#95 Gigi (1958)
#96 Robin Hood: Director’s Cut (2010)
#97 Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996)
#98 It Happened Here (1965)
#99 Hercules (1997)
#100 The Hurt Locker (2008)
#101 Road to Rio (1947)
#102 The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
#103 The Good German (2006)
#104 Witchfinder General (1968)
#105 Grindhouse (2007)
#106 Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
#107 Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
#108 The Night Listener (2006)
#109 Born Free (1966)
#110 Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
#111 Living Free (1972)
#112 The Spiral Staircase (1945)
#113 Solaris (1972)
#114 Toy Story 3 (2010)
#115 Odd Man Out (1947)
#116 The Outrage (1964)
#117 The Wolfman: Unrated Version (2010)
#118 Surrogates (2009)
#119 Rambo III (1988)
#120 Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
#121 A Good Woman (2004)
#122 Iron Eagle (1986)
Alternate Cuts
#100b Angels & Demons: Extended Version (2009)
#115a The Special Edition of Beauty and the Beast (1991/2002)
Shorts
#20a Zum Beispiel: Fritz Lang (1968)
#40a Pixels (2010)
#66a 1945-1998 (2003)
#88a The Met Ball (2010)
#100a Tales of the Black Freighter (2009)
#103a How Long is a Minute? (2001)
#118a Verity (2010)
In the end, as you can see, I watched 122 new feature films in 2010 — my second-best year. (All films are included in the stats that follow, even if there’s no review yet.)
Plus, I watched two features I’d seen before that were extended or altered in some way — three if you count Evangelion: 1.11. (All 124 films are included in the statistics that follow, unless otherwise indicated.)
I also watched seven shorts this year (none of which shall be counted in any statistics).
The total running time of new features was 208 hours and 12 minutes. The total running time of all films (including shorts) was 213 hours and 50 minutes.
This year I’ve re-watched just one film from the list already, which was Clue. Toy Story 3 and Inception very, very nearly managed it though…
Last year, for the first time, DVD slipped from the top spot of my viewing format of choice, bested by TV. The story’s even worse this year. TV is more definitively the leader with 68 films, including 24 in HD. Both those numbers beat DVD. Second is Blu-ray with 29, a massive increase from last year’s six. And so DVD comes third (or fourth, if you split TV in two) with just 22. How the mighty have fallen, and all that.
Of the rest, there’s 2 downloads (one in HD) and, more depressingly, my cinema tally: I saw just 3 films on the big screen this year (just one in otherwise-abundant 3D). That’s down on previous years’ totals of (in chronological order) nine, ten, and last year’s six. Quite by bad coincidence, I started this blog at a time when I began going to the cinema an awful lot less — just one year earlier and it would’ve been bursting with theatrically-viewed films. My record on this front is now a bit meagre, really. Finally, VHS stays dead — having dropped from five in my first year to zero last year, I don’t even have a machine set up any more. Poor VHS. (What I failed to notice last year was how that’s almost an exact inversion of Blu-ray, which progressed over the first three years from zero to two to six. Neat.)
The most popular decade was, as ever, the ’00s, with a round 60 films. The competition is for second place, then, and this year it goes to the ’90s with 15. Despite few trips to the cinema, new-boy decade the 2010s managed a fairly respectable 7, leaving it joint 5th. In an improvement on the last two years, every decade since 1910 is represented this year. In chronological order, 3 films were made in both the 1910s and the 1920s, 1 was from the ’30s, 10 from the ’40s, 6 from the ’50s, 8 from the ’60s, 4 from the ’70s and 7 from the ’80s. Diverse.
The average score this year was 3.6. That includes 16 five-star films (joint lowest with the first year) and just 1 one-star film (an improvement on last year’s four). As usual, the majority of films — 62 — scored four stars. There were also 31 three-star films and 14 two-star films. All numbers fall more or less in line with my previous tallies, which is a nice mark of consistency — indeed, the average is the same as 2008, which is only 0.1 less than 2007 and 2009. I’m alternating; how lovely.
7 films appear on the IMDb Top 250 Films at the time of posting. Their positions ranges from 6th (Inception) to 241st (Kick-Ass). As ever, there are too many other lists around to consider them all.
At the end of all previous years I’ve included lists of 50 notable films I’d missed from that year’s releases (and, as usual, 2010’s lot will be in my next post). This year I’ve managed to see 4 more from 2007 (bringing the total number seen from that 50 to halfway, 25) and 9 more from 2008’s list (bringing that total to 13). From the freshest batch — i.e. 2009’s selection — I’ve seen 8. Hopefully further films from all the lists will crop up as I go through 2011 — heck, maybe one day I’ll have even seen them all! Probably not though.
A total of 99 solo directors and a record 10 directing partnerships appear on the list this year. The most-represented is Ernst Lubitsch with six films, followed by Vincente Minnelli with four. Those with two films to their name are James Cameron, Gurinder Chadha, Clint Eastwood, Jonathan Frakes, Fritz Lang, Ridley Scott and James Wong. Also, R.J. Cutler manages one feature and one short. The remaining 89 directors and all 10 partnerships have, naturally, one each.
36 of the films are currently in my DVD/Blu-ray collection (plus three of the shorts). I’ve also got one digitally downloaded (it was free).
Last year I still had a huge pile of reviews to post well into January; this year, only a handful. And quite aside from them, there’s my ever-so-exciting Top 10 and Bottom 5!
Stay tuned.
Or, y’know, go away and come back later.
If you’ve ever seen the miniseries 
Bigelow & co construct each ‘action’ sequence with care and attention. They’re not action sequences in the truest sense — suggestions from some that she’d be a great director for, say, Bond 23 on the strength of this film are unwarranted (not that she wouldn’t be good, but this film’s action does nothing in particular to demonstrate appropriate skills). Instead of the fast-paced bullets-flying adrenaline-pumping sequences you get from An Action Movie, The Hurt Locker offers up more realistic (at least, realistic-feeling) sequences of tension as characters approach bombs, watch increasingly suspicious crowds, try to defuse the situation before the timer runs out… It could be clichéd — we’ve all seen plenty of bomb defusing scenes in movies before now — but, again, there’s a sense of “this is how it is”, rather than “this is how movies portray it for dramatic effect”. Is it how it is? I don’t know. But it certainly still packs dramatic effect.
The opening quote and closing scenes make explicit the main theme — war is a drug, one James (Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner) is addicted to — but I’m not sure how present this is in the body of the story. Rather, the majority feels like an attempt to convey the experience of living as an explosives expert in a warzone, with James’ ‘addiction’ just a side effect of that. Perhaps, then, it’s making its point more subtly than by battering you round the head with cinematic cries of, “He’s addicted to war! It’s just a drug!”
100Films.co.uk 