Category Archives: “100 Films”

The Falcon in Mexico (1944)

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2013 #77
William Berke | 67 mins | download | 4:3 | USA / English | PG*

The Falcon in Mexico“In our peaceful country, life is very seldom in danger,” states one character halfway through The Falcon in Mexico, just one of many instances that might make you think the film was co-funded by the Mexican tourist board. Oh sure, there’s the usual array of thefts and murders that you’d expect from a Falcon adventure, but they’re mostly committed by Americans. No, the film on the whole is very keen on the place, and the quality of its police, and even ends with a shot of a poster proclaiming “Visit Mexico!”

That’s something the production team didn’t do, incidentally, recreating it via some surprisingly good rear-projection (a few times I actually wondered if they had gone for a jolly after all) and intercut documentary footage (rumoured to have been shot for Orson Welles’ unfinished documentary about Brazil, which sort of became It’s All True).

As for the story, it’s one of the more convoluted plots the series has come up with, all to do with apparently-new paintings by a supposedly-dead artist. I confess I actually found it a little hard to keep track of, especially once it all starts getting explained in hefty scenes of speedy exposition towards the end. The Falcon is observedWhat I did make out was grandly far-fetched — more so than normal, I mean. Considering the tone and style of the series, it’s kind of OK that most of the plot’s explanations are not even close to plausible in the real world. On the bright side, it does make for another genuine mystery (I should stop praising the series for this now, all the films do it).

It all adds up to another entertaining outing for the Falcon, with a pleasantly different international flavour.

3 out of 5

* As with the vast majority of the Falcon series, The Falcon in Mexico hasn’t been passed by the BBFC since its original release. Nonetheless, it’s available on DVD, rated PG. ^

The Falcon Out West (1944)

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2013 #71
William Clemens | 61 mins | download | 4:3 | USA / English | PG*

The Falcon Out WestWith each passing entry, the Falcon films become less reminiscent of their Saint forebears and more akin to the Poirots and Marples of this world: a gently comical murder mystery, with a finite location and a finite number of suspects, where the ‘game’ of solving the plot is the point.

This instalment sees the Falcon more removed from his original New York environs than ever before, as he heads out to The West to solve a murder committed in NY. While that might sound illogical, the plot just about swings it, and provides all the Western action it can muster: runaway coaches, shootin’, horseback riding, gentle racism about Native Americans… This is the West of the 1940s, theoretically 50 years or whatever on from The Wild West, but conceptually almost unchanged. Whether that was true in reality I’ve no idea, but it makes for a more entertaining film.

That said, this isn’t quite up to the high bar set by the exemplary preceding film, but it had its moments. Most importantly, it’s another good mystery for the series — hence my Christie comparison. I genuinely didn’t guess who the murderer was; in fact, my suspect was someone else entirely, and there were numerous other red herrings along the way too. A definite success in that department.

Out West isn’t my favourite Falcon film, then, but it is still among the series’ best efforts.

3 out of 5

* As with the vast majority of the Falcon series, The Falcon Out West hasn’t been passed by the BBFC since its original release, when it was cut. Nonetheless, it’s available on DVD, rated PG. Naturally I have no idea if it’s uncut, or if that even really matters. ^

The Falcon and the Co-eds (1943)

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2013 #65
William Clemens | 65 mins | download | 4:3 | USA / English | PG

The Falcon and the Co-eds

In American colloquial language, “coed” or “co-ed” is used to refer to a mixed school… As a noun, the word “coed” is used to refer to a female student in a mixed gender school.

I Wikipedia’d that just to check, because in his fourth outing as the Falcon, Tom Conway investigates a mystery at an all-girls school.

Minor oddnesses aside, The Falcon and the Co-eds is one of the series’ better entries. I suppose these days the plot would only sustain a TV murder mystery rather than a theatrical release, but it’s a solid whodunnit — not something these Saint and Falcon films can always claim. Here, the students of a remote girls’ school are suspicious that the death of a teacher wasn’t sudden heart failure as the faculty claim, and one who previously had a dalliance with our titular hero calls on him to investigate. Mystery and intrigue ensue, with a plot that thickens and an array of potential suspects.

Alongside this is the series’ trademark humour. Here it’s served by both the college girls’ infatuation with our suave English hero, and a trio of younger lasses who are part Greek chorus and part sidekick team. The series’ regular comic relief, Inspector Donovan and Detective Bates, are on hand too, thankfully without their grating catchphrase. It’s not all light, though: the film was cut on its original UK release, presumably for the things noted in its 2012 classification: “references to suicide and a drugs overdose”.

The Falcon and the girlsIn fact, the worst thing about the film is purely a result of its age, and that’s the occasional bout of misogyny. Let’s face it, the girls going all giggly over the Falcon is pretty defensible (look at modern-day reactions to the likes of One Direction, Justin Bieber, or even Benedict Cumberbatch), but the bit where he picks a twenty-something girl up to smack her bottom is a bit much. Still, it opens with a great bit: the Falcon parks his car, a girl immediately runs up to it: “Mr Lawrence?” “Yes?” She jumps in, instantly kisses him full on the lips, and when she pulls away all he can say, with a slightly surprised look, is, “Nice!” You could put that in something today and it’d still work.

The Falcon’s high point to date was surely the previous film, The Falcon in Danger, which was also directed by Clemens and featured two of the same leading ladies — I guess RKO didn’t think anyone would notice, even when the films were released just a few months apart. Co-eds perhaps doesn’t reach quite that level, though it makes a good fist of it. The twisty plot is engrossing and the humour entertaining, though I felt more could have been made of the potentially atmospheric remote cliff-top setting. It’s the kind of film where I began imagining how it might be remade to even greater effect. That may sound like a criticism but, when it comes to B-movies of this vintage, Nice lightingsuch thoughts always endear them to me.

I often find star ratings a bit useless on these long-running series. They all fall into roughly the same bracket in the grand scheme of movie-watching, but within the series there are distinct highs and lows. In Danger is the only one so far I’ve seen fit to give a whole 4 stars too, but Co-eds sits right behind it.

3 out of 5

Man of Steel (2013)

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2013 #103
Zack Snyder | 143 mins | Blu-ray | 2.40:1 | USA, Canada & UK / English | 12 / PG-13

Man of SteelWhen Doctor Who returned in 2005, eager to find a new mainstream audience, can you imagine how well it would have gone down if it spent the first six or seven minutes on an alien world where old men with silly names wearing strange costumes argued about politics? Fastforward the best part of a decade and, buoyed no doubt by the various scales of success enjoyed by the likes of Avatar (strange alien world, silly names) and Game of Thrones (arguing about politics, silly names), that’s exactly how Superman reboot Man of Steel chooses to spend its opening 20 minutes. (In percentage terms, “6 or 7” is to Doctor Who’s brisk 45 minutes as “20” is to Man of Steel’s indulgent 143.)

Produced by Christopher Nolan and other creatives behind the uber-successful Batman reboot The Dark Knight Trilogy, this is intended to do a similar thing for Superman: a present-day, real-world relaunch. Which begins with a huge sequence on a crazy alien world. Well done, chaps. And that’s before we get into the merits of grounding clean-cut Boy’s Own all-American hero Superman in our ideologically complex modern world. Is that what Superman is? Based on critical and fan reaction to Man of Steel, your mileage may vary — some seem to find it fresh and invigorating, others a betrayal of what this archetypal superhero is meant to be.

Super, manPersonally, I find it a valid thing to attempt. Rather than take the Superman mythology as read, here Nolan and co — including screenwriter David Goyer and director Zack Snyder — have tried to imagine what would really happen if an alien baby with incredible powers arrived in our world. So Clark Kent hides his abilities, goes on a trek around the world to ‘find himself’, and when he’s uncovered there’s mass media and military interest. Which is pretty accurate, I think. If some guy started stopping oil rigs collapsing single-handed, or flying around the place, the military’s hardly going to sit back and go, “oh OK then”.

Snyder emphasises this “it’s real!” tone with grainy handheld cinematography, which I’m sure is consciously designed to look like a ’70s independent drama. It’s also designed to mask a simple fact: such presentation details and a languorous first half aside, this is a pretty standard blockbuster. Shoot it with clean digital visuals and cut the “finding himself” segments back to a brisk first act and you’d have a completely standard array of big punch-ups and faintly ludicrous plotting. It’s interesting how much a ‘gritty’ sheen (as it were) can persuade people that what they’re watching is revolutionary across the board, but really it’s just a different way of presenting your common-or-garden blockbuster content.

Commando SupermanThe filmmakers have certainly bought into their own conceit, to a frankly laughable extent. The Blu-ray contains a featurette called All-Out Action, which the menu describes as follows: “The action in Man of Steel soars to new heights with a level of realism never before seen in a super hero film.” Hahahaha! Realism my arse. Once the action kicks in it’s positively comic book. Men are hurled around like rag dolls; Metropolis is destroyed in a huge flying punch-up, which just feels like a less effective re-hash of The Matrix Revolutions. There’s nothing wrong with comic book action in a comic book movie, in my opinion, but shooting it on desaturated grain-addled film stock with handshake and ragged zooms does not make your OTT computer-generated fight “soar to new heights with a level of realism never before seen”.

This is before we even get on to the morally divisive aspects of said fighting. Much talk focused on two elements (spoilers follow for the next three paragraphs): the large-scale destruction of Metropolis, and Superman killing Zod. Defenders say that destruction happens, that Metropolis was evacuated, and that Superman had no choice but to kill Zod to save innocent lives. Opposers say we don’t need to see so much disaster on screen (especially in the wake of other films, like The Avengers, showing similar city-level destruction), and that it’s out of character for Superman to murder someone in cold blood and it simply shouldn’t have happened. My view is split between the two.

Nine-ElevenAs to the destruction of the city, I think the criticism is right. The city clearly isn’t evacuated before buildings start falling — it’s being evacuated, but no one even knew to start running before the Massive Machine Of Destruction (I forget what it was actually for) turns up and starts destroying things. People run into the streets as buildings fall on them. As a viewer, how can you miss that hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocents are dying? The cinematography makes it look like 9/11 — incredibly like 9/11, in fact. That was 12 years ago by the time of the film’s release, but is it OK to trade on such iconography in a blockbuster entertainment? Should we just ignore the notion that so many ‘extras’ are dying because, hey, it’s just a superhero movie? But aren’t we meant to be taking this as Real World, chaps?

The fate of Zod, on the other hand, is a different matter. I think it’s interesting to push heroes — heck, characters fullstop — in new and challenging directions. It’s all too easy to just avoid putting a character in a certain situation so you don’t have to see what they’d do; to give Superman an easy way to lock the villain up so he doesn’t have to make any other decision. But what if that isn’t an option? What if someone just as powerful is running around killing people at random; what if it’s within your power to stop him from imminently murdering a family with kids, but the only way to achieve that is to kill him? That’s the position Snyder, Goyer and Nolan put Superman in at the climax, and that’s the decision he has to make. Does he do the right thing? In fairness, I think that’s the debate the film is asking for. It’s not like Superman walks away fine with what he did, and I expect the idea is that his actions will have an impact on his values going forward.

Ah, Amy Adams...There’s a lot else that Man of Steel plays with in the Superman legend besides the violence and cinematography. Some people will surely miss the bumbling Clark Kent, the burgeoning relationship with Lois Lane, and so on. These elements are eventually brought in, sometimes in a modified way, which makes it feel like they’ve been put in place — Superman Begins style — to be used in a sequel. Except we know the sequel is headed off in the Batman vs Superman direction, so how much ‘clumsy Clark’ we’ll get to see is questionable. I have to say, I don’t blame the makers going a new way — how do you compete with the Christopher Reeve classics? And if you try to emulate them, you end up with Superman Returns, which was a box office and critical success but for some reason is remembered as a failure in both regards.

A 21st Century reinvention of the oldest superhero is an interesting notion, and in some regards Man of Steel works; but those successes are regularly marred by superficial ‘innovations’ that don’t click. The final result is a standard blockbuster masquerading as something revolutionary; an adequate film that indulges itself, leading to a belief it’s something more, which is ultimately to the detriment of its audience.

3 out of 5

Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009)

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2013 #108
Don Hahn | 82 mins | streaming (HD) | 16:9 | USA / English | NR / PG

From 1984 to 1994, a perfect storm of people and circumstances changed the face of animation forever.

So declares the title card at the start of this documentary, which covers how in just a few years Disney went from nearly shutting down its animation division to a period of immense critical acclaim and box office success, including the first animated movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

On the surface, it’s not a secret story. A significant part of the film is made up of contemporary news and documentary footage that clearly shows this was being covered at the time, and you can see more of the same just by looking into box office numbers and critical assessment. It’s also, to an extent, ‘race memory’ — we ‘all’ know of the Disney classics from earlier years, how this tailed off through the likes of The Black Cauldron, and then the renewed burst of creativity that began with The Little Mermaid and flowed through the likes of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, until (more or less) the end of the ’90s (before it all went wrong again, but that’s another story).

Waking Sleeping BeautyHowever, Waking Sleeping Beauty is told from the inside: director Don Hahn started out as an assistant director at Disney animation in the ’80s, graduating to producer by the time of Beauty and the Beast. With him he brings behind-the-scenes home movies and access to a stunning array of interviewees. Almost everyone who was anyone at Disney during that time is interviewed, either through archive footage or new audio commentary. It was a tough time, and while Hahn’s portrait is probably not quite warts-and-all, it comes damn close; for example, we get to see some of the caricatures the animators drew in disgust at their new boss, Jeffrey Katzenberg.

As best I can tell, Waking Sleeping Beauty is only available in the UK through certain streaming services (I watched it on Now TV, which it has now departed; I believe it may have been on Netflix, but again isn’t right now), which is a shame. The US DVD is reportedly packed with nearly an hour-and-a-half of additional interviews and the like, which makes it an enticing prospect.

As Disney’s ‘animated classics’ continue to be successful (with Wreck-It Ralph and Christmas-just-passed’s Frozen the most recent entries) and the focus of their business, from merchandise sales to attractions at their ever-popular theme parks, it’s easy to forget that the animation legacy nearly died — several times. Waking Sleeping Beauty does an excellent job of showing us how close they sailed to disaster, and how the dedication and creativity of individuals who believed in that legacy stopped the ship from sinking.

5 out of 5

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2014

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My challenge-within-a-challenge is back, with 12 fresh films to squeeze in to my 2014 viewing.

The odd up-and-down aside, I feel WDYMYHS worked well last year; but for its second outing I wanted to make some changes. Though the top 12 that last year’s simple formula resulted in were all films I definitely needed to see — and several were ones I’d been looking forward to for so long I was actively put off by the level of expectation — I wanted to try something different. Last year’s 12 were, for want of a better word, a little “worthy”: 75% were black & white, 50% were from the 1950s, the most recent was 30 years old… I have nothing against any of those factors individually, but it began to feel rather dominant.

The question was, how to change it while also making the list a ‘random’ selection dictated by Best Of lists, others’ ratings, and the like? Well, it got complicated… but just in case anyone’s interested, I’ll explain it all anyway. Though for the sake of those who don’t care but are nonetheless curious what 12 films the system chucked out, I’ll do my explaining after the list itself. (That said, it’s only in the long explanation that you’ll learn what the string of letters and numbers under each title actually mean.)

So, in the order they were generated (from ‘best’ to ‘not-as-best’), this year’s 12 are:


The Shining
Score: 933
IMDb #51 | TSPDT #112 | Empire #52 | iCM Most ✓ed #52

Rear Window
Score: 753
IMDb #30 | TSPDT #42 | Empire #103

Up
Score: 698
IMDb #118 | iCM Most ✓ed #20 | Box Office #56

The Big Lebowski
Score: 676
IMDb #133 | TSPDT #231 | Empire #43 | iCM Most ✓ed #89

Modern Times
Score: 540
IMDb #41 | TSPDT #43

Amélie
Score: 533
IMDb #65 | TSPDT #800 | Empire #196 | iCM Most ✓ed #104

12 Angry Men
Score: 525
IMDb #7 | TSPDT #531 | Empire #72

Requiem for a Dream
Score: 472
IMDb #75 | TSPDT #672 | Empire #238 | iCM Most ✓ed #108

Oldboy
Score: 456
IMDb #76 | TSPDT #845 | Empire #64

Braveheart
Score: 443
IMDb #79 | Empire #320 | iCM Most ✓ed #74

The Searchers
Score: 426
TSPDT #9 | Empire #164

Blue Velvet
Score: 406
TSPDT #78 | Empire #85


(All rankings were correct at the time of compiling and may have changed since.)

So, good list? Bad list? Feel free to share any and all opinions. And as per last year, my progress will be covered as part of the monthly updates.

Now, the long bit:


Stats

As you can see, the new selection process has created a fundamentally different set of films. Last year, 50% came from the 1950s and there was nothing from the last 30 years; this year, 50% come from the last 20 years. Last year, 75% of the films were in black & white; this year, 83% are in colour. Last year, three of the films were over three hours long; this year, only two of them even cross the two-hour mark. Even the completely incidental matter of how many I have on Blu-ray and how many on DVD has been turned on its head, with last year’s 7:5 ratio becoming 5:7 this year. About the only thing that remains the same (not identical, but near enough) is the proportion of non-English language films: last year there were three, this year there are two.

Other similarities come in the presence of certain directors: there’s another film each from Chaplin, Hitchcock and Kubrick, all of whom (as you may remember) I had to reject multiple films by last year to meet my “no repetition” rule. In Hitch’s case, it’s the film I would’ve watched in 2013 were it not for my old “Blu-ray trumps DVD” rule; in Chaplin’s case, it was the film of his that ranked second last year; and for Kubrick, it was his third film last year but is now #1 under the new rules. No repeat appearance for Bergman, however, who had multiple entries at the top of last year’s long list, but this time only reached #18.

I’m not short of notable directors among the other nine, however, with a film each from: the Coen brothers, John Ford, David Lynch, Sidney Lumet, and what will be my first encounter with Darren Aronofsky. Depending on your point of view, the remainder don’t stint either: Mel Gibson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Park Chan-wook, and Pete Docter Of Pixar.


Process

So, how exactly did I concoct this duodectet of acclaimed classics?

First, a quick reminder of the comparatively simple way I did it last year: I went through IMDb’s Top 250 and the top 250 entries in They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s 1,000 Greatest Films and noted down every film I owned, then eliminated any that weren’t on both lists, then split the difference between their placement on each list to produce some kind of average. Then, allowing only one film per director and allowing films I owned on Blu-ray to earn a place above those I owned on DVD, the top 12 (ultimately culled from the top 18) became my final selections.

That’s far simpler than where we’re going this year.

So, as expressed, I wanted to make the list a little more (shall we say) populist. The best way to do this, I reasoned, was to include more lists. In the end I used five, and they were:

  • IMDb’s Top 250, which guarantees a wide viewership and high ranking; it’s often seen as an incredibly mainstream list, but in places (especially a little lower down) it’s less so than you might expect;
  • They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s The 1,000 Greatest Films, which is compiled from an extraordinary number of ballots from critics, filmmakers, and more, weighted and analysed to produce a very academic list. To say it strives to be anti-mainstream is unfair, but it’s certainly not concerned with being populist;
  • Empire’s 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, which is Empire magazine’s huge poll of readers, journalists and filmmakers from 2008. Much like the IMDb list, it skews mainstream, but even if it’s from “a mainstream film magazine” that’s still “a film magazine”, so the mid- to lower-levels produce interesting films;
  • iCheckMovies’ Most Checked, which should see the inclusion of the kind of movies ‘everyone’ has seen but I haven’t;
  • All-Time Worldwide Box Office, for essentially the same reason as above. (The version I used is linked to, though it seems to have numerous little differences to the one at my normal go-to site for box office numbers.)

For parity with the IMDb list, all were limited to the top 250 entries. For the record, all positions were collated from the iCheckMovies versions of the lists on 5th January.

As you can see, that’s a list of lists that errs much more toward the mainest of mainstreams than last year’s. However, I’ll repeat my caveats from above: the IMDb and Empire lists aren’t as unrelentingly populist as certain cinephiles would have you believe; and even where they are, I’ve already seen most of those films anyway. Additionally, with so many lists I removed the requirement for films to appear on all of them, which led to the following in my final 12:

  • Two films don’t appear on the IMDb Top 250;
  • Six films don’t appear in the TSPDT 1000’s top 250;
  • Three films don’t appear in the Empire 500’s top 250;
  • Six films don’t appear on iCheckMovies’ Most Checked;
  • Eleven films don’t appear in the All-Time Worldwide Box Office top 250.

In all, 117 films I own appeared in the top 250 of at least one list, but only 48 of those appeared in the top 250 of two or more lists.

So how do all these lists come together to form my list? I can’t simply split the difference this time! Short answer is, I used a points system. For each list, a film received 251 points minus its position on the list; so the #1 film would get 250 points, the #2 film 249, and so on. If a film was outside the top 250, it scored 0 points for that list.

This produced a chart that was interesting in a number of ways, but one was that it didn’t take account of how many lists a film was on. For instance, The Exorcist appears on four of the five lists, but is quite low on all of them, so its score was 188; The Passion of Joan of Arc, however, only appears on one list, but at #14, so its score was 237. That didn’t seem quite fair. To balance this, I awarded 50 points for every additional list a film was on beyond its first. So, to use the same two films, Joan of Arc got no bonus points, while The Exorcist got 150. These are two of the more extreme examples, but it certainly made huge changes — The Exorcist jumped up literally dozens of places.

I felt some more tweaking was in order. It was all well and good rewarding appearances on multiple lists, but some films were in the upper echelons of one list but just scraping in to another. I decided to weight the results further in the favour of films that were at the top of particular lists. Essentially, this gives a slight edge to the importance of certain lists — which is fine, because I didn’t necessarily want all five lists to be of equal weight. So, 25 bonus points were award for being in: the IMDb top 100, the TSPDT top 50, and the iCM Most Checked top 50. (By this point I was just looking at numbers, so I’ve no idea what actual difference this made to rankings.)

I briefly considered awarding bonus points for an appearance on any list outside of its top 250 — IMDb and iCM Most Checked stop at that number, but the others go on much higher (the size is mostly in their names, but the box office chart goes to 500-and-something too). I was thinking of something like 25 or 50 points, until I realised this would mean a film could get more for being 251st on a list than it could for being 250th, or even 200th potentially. I could’ve raised all the films’ totals by the bonus amount (i.e. instead of scoring 250, #1 would score 300, and so on down), but, to be frank, I couldn’t be bothered.

One final points booster I did add, however, was again from iCheckMovies. That site has many, many official lists for films to appear on, and obviously the more lists it’s on the more acclaimed a film is. So, each film got the number of lists it was on as bonus points — e.g. The Shining appears on 21 lists, so it got 21 points; A Clockwork Orange appears on 29 lists, so it got 29 points — still not enough to reclaim last year’s spot above its Kubrick stablemate, though. In fact, I don’t think this had any impact on the final 12. Although the number of lists they’re on ranges from 14 to 29, at this point those kind of points were’t enough to see any of them booted out, or even rejigged within the 12 itself.

With the final points awarded, all that remained was to institute my other rules. Firstly, no repeat directors — bye bye A Clockwork Orange, which actually finished second overall. I also decided to eliminate Raging Bull — it didn’t feel right it being on the list two years in a row. That had finished third. The next repetition isn’t until #16, a second Chaplin-directed film, but this year that fell beyond the reach of the final 12. I did make one more change, however: I eliminated #14, The Wild Bunch, which would otherwise have been the final film of the 12. Why? Well, this is one that could be contentious…

I say that as if I anyone cares or my rules weren’t arbitrarily cooked up! But what I mean is, there isn’t any rule that counts it out. Yes, with this year’s selection I was aiming for a wide variety of tones, styles, eras, content and so on, and The Wild Bunch is a Western just like the film immediately before it (The Searchers) — but there are plenty of thrillers and a couple of comedies on the list, so why not repeat the Western too? Especially as I get the impression these two aren’t that similar. The real reason, though, is that I wanted to include #15, Blue Velvet. Were I to give the films a personal rating — of “have been waiting to see”-ness, say — the Lynch would come out on top of those two. As they were quite close in points anyway (414 vs 406), I decided to just make the swap, rather than continue to fiddle in the blatant hope of making Blue Velvet’s score rise.

And so, with my underhandedness factored in, I finally had my final 12.

That was fun, wasn’t it?

(The tall picture on the right is the final version of my long list. If you want, you can click here for a legible version, on which you can play “spot the French title spellcheck ‘corrected'”.)


And finally…

The level of my wit is on full display with the inclusion of “Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear” in the top image. Teeheehee.

2013 In Retrospect

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With 2013 completed, listed, and analysed, all that remains is a final bit of reflection: of the 110 films I watched, which were the best? Which were the worst? And what new releases did I miss?

Plus, this year you can vote for your favourite of my top ten.

Before we begin, one last thing to mull: in just the last few days it’s come to my attention that every previous 100 Films year-end #1 has been a film either released that year, or from the previous year that had only just come to DVD/Blu-ray. For all the classics I’ve watched down the years, not one has ever managed to best a new release in my annual affections. That certainly wasn’t deliberate — as I said, I’ve literally just noticed the pattern this week. But with the introduction of What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?, and a summer cinema season that seems to have had a largely mediocre reception, will 2013 be the year to break the mould? Read on…



The Five Worst Films I Saw For the First Time in 2013

In alphabetical order…

Anonymous
The theory that Shakespeare didn’t write the works of Shakespeare is largely nonsense, but good films have been made of worse. So a period drama — perhaps, at a stretch, some kind of thriller — based around that isn’t doomed… except Anonymous has the misfortune to be helmed by blockbuster maestro Roland Emmerich. The result is a scrappy mess which primarily leaves you irritated that someone might consider it to be historically accurate.

Battleship
Who’d’ve thunk a movie based on a board game would be a poor idea, eh? I think the success of Pirates of the Caribbean has led certain elements in Hollywood to think you can make a film out of almost any recognisable property, ignoring the fact that there were multiple other attempts by Disney to turn theme park attractions into film franchises that flopped. Battleship begins — and, hopefully, ends — a similar list for board games.

The Bourne Legacy
How the mighty have fallen. It might not seem like the Bourne franchise was dependent on its star (nothing against Matt Damon, but he didn’t ‘make’ the films in the way Depp does Pirates or Downey Jr does Iron Man, for example), but without him it flounders. It’s not Jeremy Renner’s fault — he’s lumbered with a weak continuation/reboot that’s frustratingly naval-gazing when it comes to continuity and lacking in the series’ trademark thrills.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Some people love The Rise of Cobra. This baffles me. I don’t mind a dumbed-down spectacle-focused action/adventure movie, but there are ways in which those can exemplify quality, and G.I. Joe has none. Overcooked action scenes offer no respite from first-draft dialogue, cut-and-paste backstory, and poorer acting than you’d get from a 2×4. I enjoyed The Mummy when I was younger, but Sommers’ post-millennial work makes me fear my memory has deceived.

Sharknado
“So bad it’s good” by numbers — which is not how that rarified experience should work: you don’t create “so bad it’s good”, you happen to be it. From the title down this is a cynical exercise in geekdom-baiting, and sadly it seems to have worked. It’s Snakes on a Plane all over again — the final product doesn’t matter, it’s the concept of it that gets a certain kind of person salivating. It doesn’t deserve such success, because Sharknado is uninspired and unfun.



The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2013

A quirky French take on the period adventure movie, this is like Indiana Jones crossed with a children’s farce. The resultant mix is not going to be for everybody — the po-faced certainly need not apply — but as a daft runaround, as much concerned with having copious amounts of fun as providing adventuresome antics, it’s all-out entertainment.

For me, this is the watermark that Zack Snyder’s Batman vs Superman will have to live up to. Good luck, mate. Picking up threads from Part I, Batman must engage in an all-or-nothing battle with a revived Joker, before the American government send the Man of Steel himself after the Caped Crusader. Cue the superhero smackdown to end ’em all. This faces stiff competition to be counted among the best Batman films but, much like Bats vs Supes, its viscerally exciting fight sequences and underlying intelligence (inherited from the original graphic novel) mean it’s up to the challenge.

A low-budget ’60s shocker sounds like exactly the kind of thing that should have faded with time — but quality endures, and George A. Romero’s sub-genre-creating film has that in spades. While some sequences are indeed out-and-out horror, in many respects it’s the strongly-drawn characters who make the film so compelling. The scale of its influence is hard to fathom, both in creating our modern concept of zombies and its demonstrably-replicable claustrophobic stylings; but more than that, it remains remarkably watchable in itself.

Darker than a long night of the soul, Charles Laughton’s sole directorial effort nonetheless appears on lists of films children should definitely see. That’s because this is a Depression-era fairy tale, with all the scariness and cruelty that is inherent to true examples of the form. The story of a ‘preacher’ who duplicitously stalks a dead man’s wife and children in search of hidden wealth, it comes with captivating performances and grim imagery that sears itself into your mind, this is a classic for all ages.

After the Sly Stallone vehicle bungled it back in the ’90s, I doubt anyone thought we’d see a decent screen iteration of 2000 AD’s long-running lawman, Judge Dredd. But here it is. While it may lack the visual faithfulness that the Stallone film actually got right, it more than makes up for it by nailing the tone. This is a sharp, efficient sci-fi action movie, laying the groundwork for a world begging to be explored in sequels, but also an entertaining burst of adrenaline in its own right.

Inviting comparisons with Luc Besson’s classic Leon, the titular Hanna is a teenage girl trained by her father to be a Bourne-level assassin, who he then pits against his former employers. Although the setup may suggest mainstream spy thrills, director Joe Wright instead delivers a left-field coming-of-age movie… just one with hard-hitting action sequences, surreal imagery, long single takes, beautiful cinematography, and a pulsating Chemical Brothers soundtrack. Considered as a thriller it’s relentlessly idiosyncratic, but that’s what makes it so refreshing and wonderful.

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most acclaimed films, featuring arguably the most iconic image from his oeuvre that doesn’t involve a shower, North by Northwest is 136 minutes packed full of almost everything you could want from a movie. A story of mistaken identity, murder and spying, it contains sequences of pure tension, of action, of humour; it’s a mystery, a thriller; there’s a dash of romance, even. The whole is unadulterated entertainment. If you wanted one film to demonstrate almost the entire gamut of Hitch’s considerable genius, this is it.

It’s not just one of the most striking and memorable titles of recent years (perhaps of all time) — Andrew Dominik’s Western is striking and memorable in just about every regard. Greatest of all is Roger Deakins’ cinematography, some of the best work from a master of his field; but there’s also the considered and immersive pace, the enthralling and complex performances, and a narrative that’s not only historically accurate but also epic and intimate. Completely overshadowed by There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men back in 2007, I judge it to be easily superior to either. An under-recognised masterpiece.

It’s almost a second-place tie between two Westerns this year, with Quentin Tarantino’s “Southern” taking this spot by a nose because of pure entertainment value. This is a film where a not-inconsiderable running time flies by thanks to a wealth of sharp dialogue, emotionally satisfying violence, hilarious asides, and the skill of a filmmaker who by rights should be getting stale and predictable but somehow remains refreshed and invigorated. Jesse James is a sophisticated and classy Western; Django Unchained is its intelligently impudent counterpoint.

Three-and-a-half-hour black-and-white Japanese movies are not the kind of thing the unpretentious are meant to fall for, and yet Seven Samurai has a fanbase beyond the art house crowd. A case in point for not judging a book by its cover, then, because Kurosawa’s much-imitated classic (everything from individual shots to the entire story has been recycled by others) is an enthralling, gorgeous, vital movie. It takes its time (the feature-length first half is spent merely assembling the titular team), but amply rewards the investment — the final battles are extraordinary examples of old-fashioned action filmmaking.



Poll

This year, I invite your opinion on my top ten — well, I always invite your opinion on my top ten (that’s what the comments section is for) — but this year, I invite your opinion through the simple voting mechanism of a poll. I think how that works is pretty self-explanatory…

If you feel I’ve made an unforgivable oversight, feel free to berate me in the comments below.



Honourable Mentions

Thanks to specifically watching 11 highly-acclaimed classics this year, films that might otherwise have made the top ten found themselves squeezed out. So spare a thought for Iron Man 3, easily the best film I’ve yet seen from Summer 2013; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a surprisingly entertaining bit of nonsense; and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which isn’t quite The Lord of the Rings but is the next best thing. Plus, from said 11 classics, Lawrence of Arabia and Touch of Evil were both films I admired but wasn’t sure how much I loved, and so found themselves slipping out of consideration.

Honourable mentions too for Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece, whose cult-favourite-ish charms almost saw it become the first three-star film in one of my top tens; and Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, which I’ve counted as a film but is a TV programme really (shh, don’t tell anyone!) Part of me wanted to stick to my convictions (the ones that got it listed in the first place) and include it, but when I had 16 films to fit into 10 spaces, it was easier to just let it go.

Finally, I must mention the films that earned themselves full marks, especially this year: with a record high of 23 five-star films across all lists, it was literally impossible for every one to make the top ten (even before my predilection for including four-star films). However, an almost-unbeatable nine did make it in — normally I list them again here, but to put it bluntly: everything except Adèle Blanc-Sec. There were, however, another 11 five-star films on the main list, those being The Artist, Dawn of the Dead, Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, It Happened One Night, Lawrence of Arabia, My Week with Marilyn, On the Waterfront, Side by Side, Touch of Evil, and Waking Sleeping Beauty. Finally, there was one five-star film apiece for each of my other ‘categories’: from the shorts, A Trip to the Moon; from the alternate cuts, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Deluxe Edition); and from repeat viewing, You Only Live Twice.



The Films I Didn’t See

As is inevitably the case, there were a large number of noteworthy releases this year that I didn’t get to see. So as is my tradition, here’s an alphabetical list of 50 films I missed in 2013. They’re selected for a variety of reasons, be that box office success, critical acclaim, or simple notoriety — though I do err more towards ones I might actually see at some point rather than, say, the 10th highest-grossing film of the year.

12 Years a Slave
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
American Hustle
Before Midnight
Behind the Candelabra
Blackfish
Blue Is the Warmest Colour
Blue Jasmine
The Butler
Captain Phillips
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
Despicable Me 2
Elysium
Ender’s Game
Fast & Furious 6
The Fifth Estate
Frozen
Fruitvale Station
A Good Day to Die Hard
Gravity
The Great Gatsby
Her
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Jack the Giant Slayer
The Lone Ranger
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Monsters University
Much Ado About Nothing
Now You See Me
Oblivion
Oldboy
Olympus Has Fallen
Only God Forgives
Oz the Great and Powerful
Pacific Rim
Pain and Gain
Philomena
Prisoners
RED 2
Riddick
Rush
Saving Mr. Banks
Thor: The Dark World
Trance
Upstream Color
White House Down
The Wolf of Wall Street
World War Z
The World’s End



A Final Thought

And so another year is over (except for the twenty reviews I still have to post, that is). It’s always sad to say goodbye, but 2013 has been a strong year for 100 Films and, quite frankly, that makes me happy.

Fingers crossed for another good one in 2014 — and for all of your film viewing endeavours too, dear reader.

2013: The Full List

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Here we are for the seventh time, dear readers: a new year begun, meaning it’s time to look at the one just passed.

2013 was an above-average year for 100 Films in purely numerical terms: I watched 110 films that were new to me, a number higher than I managed in four of the blog’s six previous years. There are a whole host of ways I’ll be (over-)analysing that viewing, both throughout this post and another in a few days’ time — perversely, this is one of my favourite bits of the year.

Anyway, because there’s a lot of long lists stretching out this post, let’s begin with a list of handy links, enabling you to jump down to whichever bit interests you:

So without further ado:


2013 As It Happened

Below is a graphical representation of my viewing, month by month. More importantly, each of the twelve images links to their relevant monthly update, meaning this is where you can find a numbered list of every qualifying film I watched in 2013.













The List

Alternate Cuts
Other Reviews
Shorts

The Statistics

As I expect you know by this point, I watched 110 new (to me) feature films in 2013. (All are included in the stats that follow, even if I’ve not posted a review yet.) This makes 2013 my third best year ever, behind 2007’s 129 and 2010’s 122.

I also watched three features I’d seen before but were now extended or altered in some way. I also chose to review ten others for the fun of it. Between those two groups there’s all eight Harry Potters, watched and reviews as part of my thorough retrospective. All 123 films are included in the statistics that follow (except where indicated).

I also watched four shorts this year (which shan’t be counted in any statistics… except for the one that says they are). That’s one fewer than last year and one more than the year before, but as I own literally hundreds on DVD, I really should be doing a lot better.

The total running time of new features this year was 209 hours and 10 minutes, a huge increase on last year; indeed, it’s the highest ever (by 58 minutes), over a year that had about a dozen more films. Lots of long ‘uns this year. The total running time of all films (and this is the one that does include shorts) was 239 hours and 29 minutes — which, as you can see in the graph below, makes this year the longest by some way; in fact, new features alone definitively tops the entirety of viewing from all but one previous year!

This year’s most prolific viewing format was, for the first time, Blu-ray. HD discs accounted for 59 of films watched, which is also the format’s highest tally to date. Second was television, bumped off the top spot for the first time since 2008 (when it finished fourth). I watched 42 films on the gogglebox (just four of them in HD), which is also its lowest total since 2008 (when it accounted for just 10!) Also-rans include DVD with eight (considering my vast collection, I ought to invest a bit more time in them) and downloads, also with eight (mostly Falcon films nabbed from iPlayer, but also two others in HD).

Finally, after ‘storming’ from nowhere to a massive four films last year, streaming continued its (minor) resurgence with six. Last year it was thanks to Netflix and LOVEFiLM, this year it’s Now TV (which also means they were all in HD, something the other two services didn’t offer through my Wii). To be honest, I’m surprised that number’s so low — I really ought to have made better use of the service. Maybe in the early months of 2014.

For the first time since this blog began — indeed, for perhaps the first time in almost 20 years — I didn’t make a single trip to the cinema this year. Put that down to personal laziness as much as apathy with the current state of the cinematic experience. Sad in a way, but so often I find it such a palaver, and an expensive one at that: when you can get a new release Blu-ray for little more than the total cost of a solo cinema trip (and these days, if I cared enough to go to the cinema for it, I’m almost certain to want the Blu-ray too), it makes financial sense.

This year’s closest temptations were The Wolverine (now the first X-Men film I’ve skipped theatrically), Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special (I was going to catch an encore but, of all things, a broken boiler got in the way), and Gravity (“see it in 3D on the biggest screen you can find,” they wailed. I forgot.) Maybe next year I’ll be tempted to make the arduous shift from my sofa to a cinema seat by the likes of X-Men: Days of Future Past and… um… well, I’m sure there’s something else to look forward to…

The most popular decade in 2013 was the 2010s, with 54 films. Unsurprisingly, 2013 itself accounted for a goodly chunk of that. At 43.9% of my total, the ’10s are also up a fraction on last year. Continuing that pattern, the ’00s finish second again, with 22 films (17.9%) — numbers close to 2012’s.

In all, my viewing spanned eight decades — as with last year, every decade since the 1930s is covered (I really must make an effort with my silent film DVD/BD collection). With post-millennial years taking the top two places, it falls to the last millennium to round out the list: the ’40s and ’50s come joint third with 10 (8.1%) apiece, while the ’60s are just behind on nine (7.3%). In descending order, the ’80s claim seven (5.7%), the ’90s account for five (4.1%), the ’70s manage three (2.4%), and the ’30s have just two (1.6%). Finally, if I included shorts in these things the 1900s would also feature, thanks to 1902’s A Trip to the Moon.

Last year, 106 of the 108 films I watched were wholly or significantly in English. Poor. This year, it was 115 out of 123 — still not great if you’re looking to take in the vastness of world cinema, but 93.5% vs. last year’s 98% is clearly an improvement. A distant second was Japanese with four (3.3%), and there were two apiece containing significant amounts (or being wholly in) French, Italian and Mandarin. Still, as last year’s complete list of languages was “English, German, Cantonese and Mandarin”, the total of 11 this year (plus “silent”, if you count that) is a step in the right direction. Others of note include Sioux (thanks to Shanghai Knights) and Klingon (guess). OK, maybe I shouldn’t count the last one. Call it 10 languages, then.

Moving on to countries of production, the USA is similarly dominant, producing or co-producing 102 films. At 82.9% of my viewing, that’s actually marginally up on last year. Second place again belongs to Britain with 36 films (29.3%), also upping its share from 2012. A mixture of co-productions obscure the true numbers for country-of-origin, but other numerical highlights include France (8), Germany (6, all co-productions if I remember rightly), Canada (5), Italy (4), Japan (3, none of them co-prods), and South Africa (3, an increasingly popular co-production destination I believe). A further 12 countries have one or two productions to their name, although I think only Sweden’s sole entry was entirely their ‘own work’.

This year I also totted up the BBFC and MPAA certificates of films I watched. From the BBFC, the PG, 12 and 15 certificates were all pretty well balanced, with 31, 34 and 33 films respectively. Of the outliers, 12 were rated U and nine were 18s, leaving four that somehow weren’t BBFC certified at all.

The MPAA are a funnier lot: the top certificate from them is “Not Rated”, with a total of 39. That’s because they don’t insist on reclassifying old titles, plus a few “unrated cut”s. The highest genuine rating was just behind: the ubiquitous PG-13, with 37. Elsewhere, R-rated films totalled 27, there were 18 at PG (compare to the BBFC’s 31), the surprisingly-rare G put in one appearance, and there was even an NC-17! Feel free to go hunt that one out.

(I was going to include a graph here, but it didn’t really show anything the numbers don’t. That is to say, the BBFC are more reasonable.)

After just three of 2012’s films appeared on the IMDb Top 250 — the lowest number ever — this year has seen a resurgence. As of New Year’s Day 2014, 13 films from 2013’s main list appear upon that hallowed chart; one of my higher totals, though not a patch on 2007’s 21. This year’s lot is made up of the 11 I saw from What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? (which had to be on the IMDb Top 250 to qualify), plus Django Unchained (53rd) and It Happened One Night (135th). The positions range from 18th (Seven Samurai) to 197th (The Night of the Hunter). For all that, I still have some 114 Top 250 films to see.

At the end of all six previous years’ final summaries, I’ve included a list of 50 notable films I’d missed from that year’s releases. Taking into account 2013’s viewing, I’ve managed to see (deep breath) two more from 2007’s list (bringing the total for that 50 to 29), no more from 2008’s (leaving it at 14), two more from 2009’s (bringing it to 17), one more from 2010’s (bringing it to 23), and four more from 2011’s (bringing it to 20). It’s now a year since I published 2012’s 50 (obviously), and in that time I’ve managed to see 14 of them. A solid start, but as I own or have access to over 20 more, I could do a lot better.

A total of 96 solo directors and three directing partnerships appear on the main list this year. Foremost among these numerically is George A. Romero with six films, while there are two each for William Clemens, Justin Lin, John Madden, Orson Welles and David Zucker. Elsewhere, Jay Oliva appears once on the main list and once in the additional films. The latter also gives us four films for David Yates, two each for Chris Columbus and Gordon Flemyng, and two shorts for Louis D’Esposito. Most of those multiples are thanks to franchises: “the Dead” (Romero), the Falcon (Clemens), Fast & Furious (Lin), Naked Gun (Zucker), Batman (Oliva), Harry Potter (Yates, Columbus), Doctor Who (Flemyng), and Marvel (D’Esposito).

I noted previously that there seemed to be an uncommonly high number of noteworthy directors who I was encountering for the first time this year. They include Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal), Frank Capra (It Happened One Night), John Cassavetes (The Killing of a Chinese Bookie), Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves), Georges Méliès (A Trip to the Moon), Nicholas Ray (On Dangerous Ground), and George A. Romero (Dawn of the Dead, and the rest). There could be said to be more (Andrew Dominik, Richard Fleischer, Charles Laughton, Ben Wheatley…), but your mileage may vary.

Lastly, the scores. 2013 ushered in 22 five-star films (the most ever!) and just one one-star film. 2012 saw three-star films top the tally for the first time; 2013 saw the highest number of three-star films ever, at 44… but they were nonetheless bested (just), by the 46 four-star films. Hurrah for quality! Last but not least (literally), there were 10 two-star films.

To be frank, I expected the number of films I awarded three stars to have again exceeded the number given four. Last year I wondered if I was being harsher or just watching poorer films; this year, I’d felt certain I was doing the former, with multiple movies that would previously have benefitted from my benevolence being cruelly stripped back to that middle rank. And I only felt a little bit bad about it. In fact, the only thing that ever gives me pause is that there are archive four-star reviews which, for parity’s sake, ought now to be three-stars. I guess I’ll just have to live with that.

Finally, then: after last year’s record-low average score, this year saw it rise back into regular territory, finishing up at 3.6. Hurrah again!


Coming next…

It’s time to definitively wave goodbye to 2013 with my final summary post. My bottom five are already chosen, my top ten currently has fifteen entries, and the long list for my “50 unseen from 2013” stands at 113… but fear not, dear reader: choices will be made, and all will be revealed this weekend.

December 2013

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Merry New Year to you, dearest reader. Before I get really stuck in to reviewing the year as a whole, there’s one final month to look at individually.

That said, we begin proceedings with how things went for my new-this-year challenge-within-a-challenge…


WDYMYHS 2013What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

Having set out with the goal of watching one super-acclaimed film per month, I somehow ended up with three to get through come December. That didn’t quite go to plan then. Undeterred, I shall be attempting this again in 2014… even though I wound up only seeing 11 of the 12 films I was supposed to.

So what were the final two? Well, both were from the 1950s — somewhat unsurprisingly, considering that decade made up half the starting list. More precisely, they were Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, and a film I’ve been meaning to see for so long I can’t even remember how long that is — and, indeed, one that inspired this very project — Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

What got missed? Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Hey, I don’t like boxing movies. It won’t roll on to 2014’s WDYMYHS (unless it qualifies again under whatever new rules I cook up — yes, there will be a modified selection process), but I still intend to try to squeeze it in during January.


Seven SamuraiDecember’s films in full

#104 On the Waterfront (1954)
#105 Arthur Christmas (2011)
#106 Hanna (2011)
#107 Kick-Ass 2 (2013)
#108 Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009)
#109 Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
#110 Seven Samurai, aka Shichinin no samurai (1954)


Analysis

110! A nice strong number, I’d say. Also, the first time I’ve ever finished in the 110s (after two 90s, two 100s, and two 120s).

The total for December 2013 (seven films) is pretty much in line with the same month from the last few years: in 2012 it was six, in 2011 it was eight, and in 2010 it was seven. Quite a different tale to the early years: it was double that in 2009 at 14, and 2008 was the infamous “race to the finish” year that saw me churn through 19 films (still the highest ever single month in the blog’s history).

I won’t share too much more analysis on how December fits into the year as a whole, because that’s what the big stats thing in the next year-end summary is for. If I were to rank the months of 2013, though, it would come 8th, which is the lower end of the middle.


The Advent Calendar

Last year’s inaugural 100 Films Advent Calendar wound up only managing 23 of the intended 25 reviews… though it was still a great success, both in reducing my backlog and producing views: December 2012’s hits were up 41% on November 2012’s.

This year, it’s a similar story: I managed to get in all 25 reviews, reducing the backlog once again, and the views for December 2013 were up 18% from November 2013 — and up 74% from December 2012! Rest assured, unless I manage the unlikely feat of keeping on top of my reviews, it’ll be back in 2014.


Next on 100 Films in a Year…

No “list of five” this month because, quite frankly, I’ll be chucking enough other lists your way soon enough: there’s the full list of 2013 viewing, my bottom five, my top ten, and the 50 I missed, not to mention all the lovely stats.

And then it all begins again, for the eighth year. Octastic!

2013 in Review, Part 1

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It’s the end, dear readers, but the moment has been prepared for…

…by WordPress, that is, who have produced my annual report. It’s just the beginning of my regular array of posts that look back at the year just passed, so keep your eyes peeled (also, open) for three further review-of-the-year posts in the next few days. Those ones I actually wrote myself!

Here’s an excerpt from WordPress’ report:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Once you’ve read that, the following will make sense:

  • It wasn’t just new posts that grew the archive of the blog: 141 reposts from 2007-2011 helped increase the tally from last year’s 249.
  • Those Harry Potter reviews…! They remain my most-viewed posts most days.
  • The Batman one got a lot of visits from people wanting to know when it was out in the UK; I pushed Adèle Blanc-Sec like mad on Twitter when it premiered on Film4, so that paid off; the last one I can’t really explain.
  • Particular thanks to ghostof82, filmhipster, Colin and Mike.

Next up in my review of the year: a look back at December 2013.