How is it February already?!

OK, how about we stave off the inevitable just a little longer and take a look back at January…

#1 Green Room (2015)
#2 Anomalisa (2015)
#3 Ninja Scroll (1993), Jūbē Ninpūchō
#4 Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
#5 Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
#6 Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie (2016)
#7 Into the Wild (2007)
#8 Eye in the Sky (2015)
#9 Charlie Bartlett (2007)
#10 The Conversation (1974)
#11 iBoy (2017)
#12 Under the Shadow (2016)
#13 Sing Street (2016)
#14 London Has Fallen (2016)
#15 Another Earth (2011)

.

• 2017 gets underway with 15 new films. (I’ll talk about my Rewatchathon in a bit.)
• That’s the 32nd consecutive month with ten or more films.
• It’s just shy of the 2016 average (16.25), and makes the average for the last 12 months 15.83.
• It does beat the January average of 11, though. However, it’s the lowest January since 2014; but it’s also the third largest January ever. Swings and roundabouts, eh?
• This month’s Blindspot viewing: Francis Ford Coppola’s great ’70s paranoid surveillance thriller, The Conversation.
• This month’s WDYMYHS viewing: getting the film I had least interest in out of the way, Sean Penn’s Into the Wild. And I was right, it was a mess.

The 20th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Multiple films snagged full marks this month, and several I’d say are already hot favourites for my best-of-year list in 11 months’ time, which makes this a particularly tricky choice. On balance, however, I’m going to say charming Kiwi comedy is trumped (on this occasion) by the fantastical world conjured through the incredible artistry of Kubo and the Two Strings.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
For all its faults, London Has Fallen was pretty much what I expected it to be. Into the Wild, on the other hand, is misguided and overrated.

Best Original Song of the Month
I’m sure La La Land is great ‘n’ all, but the lack of Oscar recognition for Sing Street’s music is disappointing. My personal pick would be The Riddle of the Model, but there’s a lot to be said for Drive It Like You Stole It too — especially considering…

Best Dance Routine of the Month
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Littlefinger do a steering wheel-inspired dance move to Drive It Like You Stole It.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
As we know, statistics are The Best Thing Ever, which surely explains why my 2016: The Full List post was by far the most-read in January. Lists are almost as good, which surely explains why my Best & Worst of 2016 came second.

Bridesmaids	Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal
Howl’s Moving Castle	Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Into the Wild	iBoy
Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future	Kubo and the Two Strings
London Has Fallen	Ninja Scroll
The Pianist	Raising Arizona
Wuthering Heights

The Past Month on TV #13

My goal to rewatch 52 movies this year got off to a weak start, as you don’t have to scroll very far to see.

#1 Enemy of the State (1998)

Yeah, that’s it. I watched it after The Conversation, because of the theory about Gene Hackman’s characters being the same guy. I can see where the idea came from, but it does not hold up.

Anyway, only rewatching one thing is OK — although my goal of 52 films was inspired by the principle of watching one per week, I never intended to stick to that slavishly; especially as I had Netflix this month, which led me to focus on newer stuff available there while I had it. I’ll make it up later.

It’s about time for an update to my director’s page header image, which features the 20 directors who have the most films covered on this blog. My 100 Favourites series created a bit of a shake-up in this area, with the main beneficiary being Steven Spielberg. I also watched a fair few of his films that I hadn’t got round to in 2016, so all told he was catapulted from six films at the end of 2015, to 17 at the end of 2016. But he’d already made it onto the header last year, so his newfound abundance doesn’t actually affect that.

As for what has changed, then, six directors drop out: Danny Boyle, Marc Forster, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Vincente Minnelli, and George A. Romero. In their place we have (in descending order of number of movies): Peter Jackson, Bryan Singer, John Carpenter, Tony Scott, Robert Zemeckis, and Michael Bay.

Wait… Michael Bay? Yeah, I can’t stand for that. No Bay; Hitchcock stays.

It’s the official 10th birthday of 100 Films at the end of February, for which I’m working on a whole host o’ posts.