Category Archives: Editorials

April 2014 + 5 Favourite Films From 1986

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Hypnotherapy, killer boxes, giant worms, criminal coppers, insecure superheroes, pretty pictures, Elizabethan fantasy, and sexual deviancy. It’s just another month here at 100 Films.

First up…


What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

So, more personal detail than I normally bother to share here, but: I was born in 1986 and today is my birthday, so what better WDYMYHS film to squeeze into “the dying moments of April (technically May but I want to count it as April so I will)” than the one that happens to have been released in the year of my birth?

(Yes, I am both having my cake and eating it (apt) by watching this film because it’s May 1st and nonetheless counting it as April.)

Anyway, that film was… David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.


April’s films in full

Trance#25 Trance (2013)
#26 The Box (2009)
#27 The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
#28 John Dies at the End (2012)
Solomon Kane#29 The Sweeney (2012)
#30 Alter Egos (2012)
#31 The Falcon’s Adventure (1946)
#32 The Punisher (2004)
#33 Visions of Light (1992)
#34 Solomon Kane (2009)
#35 Blue Velvet (1986)

Solomon Kane is on Film4 tonight at 9pm, and my review will appear here this afternoon.


Analysis

This is my best April of all time! Well, since records began. It’s the first to break double figures, the previous best being 2011’s nine. I attribute this to a weaker-than-normal first few months: in most years I’ve sailed past the quarterway number of films by the quarterway month, meaning I relax as I move into the year’s second, er, quarter. This year, while I did ultimately make it to the requisite total in March, it was a bit of a scramble, so I’ve still been feeling behind. At the minute, I sit two ahead of pace… though #35 is the lowest I’ve been at this point since 2009 (the year of my lowest final total so far), which is less heartening.

Year-to-date, April is the second strongest month behind March, with a total over double February’s. May is normally an equally solid month, so perhaps I’ll continue to build an advantage — another 11 films next month would put me level with that point in 2012 (the one year that May wasn’t so solid).


Five Favourite Films From 1986

As I’ve spent seven years of this blog not mentioning that this is my birthday, I may as well go all-out with it now that I have. So, what films happened to have been released in the year I happened to have been born and of those which do I happen to have seen and decided I like the most? Appropriately enough, there’s fair bit of childhood nostalgia involved in my choices…

  1. Highlander
    HighlanderOne of my all-time favourite movies. It should be laughably awful, really — not least the accents — and I’m sure to some people it is; but I think it’s immensely fun, and you can tell the setup is a good’un thanks to its legs: four sequels, a six-season TV series, a spin-off series, an animated series, an anime movie, and various books, comics, audio dramas, computer games… — and that’s just to date. Still, there can be only one, and this is it.

  2. Top GunTop Gun
    I don’t think I’ve seen Top Gun since my age was in single digits, so if you pressed me for specifics then I wouldn’t have a clue… but any film where you have to get to the 16th person on the cast list before you find a male character with a real name has to be good, right?


  3. Little Shop of HorrorsLittle Shop of Horrors
    This one, on the other hand, I didn’t see until I was a Grown Up. Catchy tunes, many laughs, and animatronics! I miss animatronics. (I watched the original made-in-two-days B-movie once. I hated it.)


  4. Aliens
    AliensFor some people, whether Alien or Aliens is the better film is a huge debate. For others, there’s no question which is superior — and those people can be divided into those who think it’s Alien and those who think it’s Aliens. I lean more towards Ridley Scott’s original, but James Cameron’s sequel has its own merits — not least the fact that, instead of dully repeating the original, it shifts the franchise into a wholly different genre.

  5. Crocodile DundeeCrocodile Dundee
    “That’s not a knife. That’s a knife.”
    This is virtually all I remember about Crocodile Dundee, but what more do you need?



And the one I’ve not seen but apparently really should have…

    Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
    Ferris Bueller's Day OffThere’s a good handful of well-regarded films from 1986 that I’ve never seen (also, Howard the Duck), but this is the highest I’ve not seen on IMDb’s Most Popular Feature Films Released in 1986, where it comes third overall. It’s not necessarily the best choice — there are a couple of 1986 films I own and haven’t seen, and this isn’t one of them — but hey-ho, that’s what popular perception has decreed.

Feel free to share your own thoughts on the terribly specific field of just one year below — I know there are some acclaimed, beloved, and/or notable films that I’ve missed out.


Next month on 100 Films in a Year…

Compared to previous Mays, I’m already ahead of my worst-ever, two off my second-worst, six off target pace, and a doable 11 films behind the next worst…

I should stop trying to explain this and just go watch some films, shouldn’t I?

March 2014 + 5 Cancelled TV Series That Continued on the Big Screen

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I watched Gravity on the 1st of March. I didn’t watch another film ’til the 18th. Let’s see how this pans out…


March’s films

Gravity#13 Gravity (2013)
#14 World War Z (Extended Action Cut) (2013)
#15 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
#16 Chicken Little (2005)
#16a The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition) (2012/2013)
#17 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
Catching Fire#18 Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
#19 Union Station (1950)
#20 Mad Max (1979)
#21 Monsters vs Aliens (2009)
#22 Veronica Mars (2014)
#23 Legends of the Knight (2013)
#24 The Searchers (1956)


Analysis

Surprise!

March was set to be a bit of a challenge: I accumulated a deficit of four films across January and February, meaning I needed to be viewing at 150% normal necessity to get back on target; and I wasn’t going to sacrifice my annual Game of Thrones catch-up week just to accommodate some paltry movies, no sir.

So I feel a little pleased with myself that I managed to not only watch this month’s allocation of movies (for the first time since last October, in fact), but also that extra 50%. And all of Game of Thrones season three, of course.

Now, you may note that it’s the end of March — a quarter of the way through the year — and I’m not yet at 25 films. How can I be on target? Well, technically — technically — I don’t need to reach #25 until the start of April (thanks to February’s shortness, a day-by-day breakdown puts the quarter-way film on April 1st), so by making #24 at the end of March I am back on target. Technically.

That said, I’m more than 10 films behind where I’ve been for the past few years (2010, 2011 and 2013 all found me at #38 now, coincidentally), so that’s a shame. This year is shaping up to be a funny one though, so goodness knows what April will bring.


What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

Squeezed in at the end there is The Searchers, this month’s WDYMYHS film, meaning I’m still on track with that too. Maybe it’ll all work out this year? That’ll be the day…


5 Cancelled TV Series That Continued on the Big Screen

Many TV shows have been remade for the big screen, often old favourites revived with all-new casts and a bigger scope. In fact, a surprising number have made the leap to the cinema with the original cast intact — all those infamous “the regular show, but in Spain” sitcom movies from the ’70s, but also successful shows where someone saw moneymaking potential just by doing the same thing but bigger.

Rarer, though, are TV series that were dropped but then, due to the dogged determination of fans and/or creators, found themselves with a large-scale reprieve. The following aren’t just any movies based on TV shows (like I said, there are loads of those), but specifically ones that were continued on the big screen — not rebooted, restarted, recast, or in any other way remade, but continued.

  1. Veronica Mars
    Veronica MarsThe recently-released inspiration for this list. An underrated series from the late ’00s, its creator and stars have tried to get a movie made ever since it was ditched. With traditional options failing, they famously turned to Kickstarter — and fans coughed up almost $6 million. Relatively strong limited-release box office and VOD chart positions suggest their wish for a sequel may be granted. Unlike:

  2. Firefly
    FireflyThe modern marker of true TV success — DVD sales (they also led to a return for series like Family Guy) — saw Joss Whedon’s short-lived, beloved space Western revived for a lap of honour. Sadly it struggled to find a big enough audience there either, dashing hopes of a sequel. But at least we got one movie. One big damn movie. One day, I’ll tell you all about how I think it’s better than Star Wars…

  3. Star Trek
    Star TrekSci-fi fandoms lend themselves to this kind of list. Now that it’s a massive multimedia franchise, spanning half a dozen long-running TV series and twice as many movies, it’s easy to forget the original Star Trek was cancelled after just three years. The post-Star Wars movie world saw it rescued for the big screen. A bit like what J.J. Abrams is doing now, one might argue.

  4. Police Squad!
    Police Squad!The what now, you might ask? Police Squad lasted just six episodes in the early ’80s, but then they spun it off onto the big screen as The Naked Gun (hence that first film’s ludicrous subtitle) — which was obviously a success, because it spawned two sequels and people still go on about it. Apparently “many gags from the show were recycled for all three films,” which I guess is fair enough if no one watched your show.

  5. Twin Peaks
    Twin PeaksTwin Peaks was a cultural phenomenon, and is widely attributed with revolutionising US network television thanks to its filmic style and long-running storylines. Too long-running, as it turned out, when audiences abandoned it after things got weird (the fact it was masterminded by David Lynch should’ve been a clue) and the driving mystery was kinda-solved. A prequel movie did little to clarify things. (Apparently. I’ve still only seen season one.)

But then there’s…

    The X Files
    The X FilesSure, the first X Files movie came mid-series, but the second was a considerable time after the show left our screens. And after the TV series ended on a cliffhanger, what better than to return to the big screen so you can tell… a completely standalone and unrelated story with a TV-friendly small scale. Oops. Hopes for a third movie that would deal with the hanging plot threads were basically killed right there.

Was it worth these TV shows being continued, or should they have left well enough alone? What other demised shows deserve the same treatment?


Next month on 100 Films in a Year…

#25.

February 2014 + something to do with the Oscars

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As one-sixth of the year passes, things are not going as planned…


What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

Well, some things are — those things being WDYMYHS. Though only just, in the dying minutes of the month — just like the good ol’ days of 2013, then.

February’s choice is a film I’ve been meaning to watch for years, and the desire to get it included in this year’s 12 films was one of the guiding principles behind the selection criteria. It is, simply, Up. Which was also an Oscar winner and Best Picture nominee, making it highly appropriate right now.

Elsewhere, however, things were less rosy…

Zero Dark Thirty
February’s films in full

#8 Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
#9 The Next Three Days (2010)
#10 Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
#11 The House of Fear (1945)
#12 Up (2009)


Analysis

With only five films watched, this is the worst February since before Up was released. It’s less than half what I managed last year, and that was down slightly on the three years preceding it too. Not only that, but it’s a full three films off the amount I should watch in any given month; add that to the single film shortfall of January and I’m a full four films behind — which, at this stage, amounts to a quarter of my intended viewing. Oh dear.

On the bright side… um…

Yeah. Must try harder.


With this year’s Oscars tomorrow, I thought I’d see how my WDYMYHS films for 2014 fared at that esteemed event. Turns out, only seven of them were even nominated — so this week’s top 5 is a top… well, 6. You’ll see why.

5 7 6 (kinda) WDYMYHS Films With Oscar Nominations

  1. BraveheartBraveheart
    With five wins from ten nominations, Mel Gibson’s Braveheart is the most successful film here both in terms of “number of wins” and “percentage of nominations to wins”. Perhaps that’s apt, with the forthcoming Scottish referendum frequently dominating the news at the moment; perhaps it just says something about the level of film appreciation the Academy work at.

  2. UpUp
    Pixar were once known for releasing a critically-acclaimed non-sequel every year. Up will be five years old soon, but it’s their last non-sequel to score over 80% on Rotten Tomatoes (and the same but with “over 70%” on Metacritic). It also bagged five Oscar nominations, including a Best Picture consideration, taking home gongs for Animated Feature and Original Song.

  3. AmélieAmélie
    Although it scored a total of five nominations across the board, with particularly notable categories like Original Screenplay and Cinematography among them, this French film didn’t even manage to win the Best Foreign Feature award. That honour instead went to Bosnian war drama No Man’s Land. No, I don’t remember it either.

  4. Rear WindowRear Window
    Hitchcock infamously never won an Oscar. I don’t know how his films fared generally speaking, but Rear Window certainly didn’t nab any. It did get four nominations though, including a Best Director nod for Hitch. He lost to Elia Kazan, whose On the Waterfront dominated that year (though three different pictures bested Rear Window in its other three categories).

  5. 12 Angry Men12 Angry Men
    There were three nominations for this jury room thriller from director Sidney Lumet — a Best Director consideration among them. He lost that to David Lean for The Bridge on the River Kwai, which similarly triumphed over the Angry Men in the contests for both the Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay trophies.

  6. Blue VelvetBlue Velvet and Requiem for a Dream
    Just one nom apiece for these two. David Lynch secured his second Best Director nomination for the former, but lost to Oliver Stone for Platoon. Meanwhile, Requiem for a Dream appeared in the Best Leading Actress group with a nod for Ellen Burstyn, but she was defeated by Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich.

None of the others even merited a nomination, apparently… though one did even worse…

    The Shining
    The ShiningNot only was Kubrick’s acclaimed horror movie not nominated for any Oscars, it found itself in contention for two Razzies. Shelley Duvall was one of the ten Worst Actresses (Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon was deemed worst of all), while the sainted Stanley Kubrick was declared one of the year’s Worst Directors (he ‘lost’ to Robert Greenwald for Xanadu). And there you were thinking everyone always loved it.

And remember that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences consider all of those films to be infinitely better than The Big Lebowski, Modern Times, Oldboy, and The Searchers. I’ve only seen two so I couldn’t possibly comment… but you can, here. (Ooh, that was smoothly mentioned, wasn’t it?)


TV plug

It’s the UK network TV premiere of The Lincoln Lawyer on Channel 4 tonight at 10pm. My four-star review is here, and you can also read about the film when it placed eighth on my list of the 10 best films I saw in 2012.

As you can see, it comes recommended.


Next month on 100 Films in a Year…

By the end of March I should be at the quarter-way point, aka 25 films. Only 13 to go, then — a higher number than I’ve managed so far this year, true… but also the same amount (or less) that I managed in three of the last four Marches and three of the last four Februarys.

There is hope for me yet.

HBO Binge Madness and the Art of the Spoiler-Free

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I could virtually have written this myself, so close is it to my thoughts. (Apart from the bit about Game of Thrones season 3, because I’ve not watched it yet. If anyone spoils what the Red Wedding entails, I shall reenact it on you. Once I know what it actually is.)

ghostof82's avatarthe ghost of 82

GOT3 If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I mean- there’s a point near the end of the ninth episode (its always the ninth episode with this show) of this third season when my jaw near dropped to the floor. “What?!” I cried out loud, stunned  at what I was seeing;  “What!?”  And then the end-credits followed in sudden silence, as if sharing the numbness of every viewer who hadn’t seen the events coming.

Just how good is HBO’s  Game Of Thrones?

I won’t discuss what it was that happened for fear of spoiling it; no-one , save someone who has read the books, should ever see this series having been spoiled of its secret delights, its twists and turns. Its something special. Readers of the books may say otherwise, but to me, this show is darn near perfect.

I love stuff like this. When something happens that takes…

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January 2014 + 5 Tom Cruise SF/F Films

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Pinch, punch, first of the month, and no returns.

Except to January — let’s return to January…


OblivionJanuary’s films

#1 G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
#2 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)
#3 Fast Five (2011), aka Fast & Furious 5
#4 The Big Lebowski (1998)
#5 Premium Rush (2012)
#6 Tower Block (2012)
#7 Oblivion (2013)


Analysis

Oh dear.

Simple maths tells us that to watch 100 films in a year you need to watch about eight per month. Seven is less than eight. It’s also my lowest January total in five years, which makes it disappointing in multiple ways.

On the bright side, as we have seen many a time, no individual month provides an accurate approximation of where my year will end up, and certainly not January. If I apply myself in February and March I can catch up easily; and as I usually do apply myself in February and March, I shall expect to.


What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

One thing did go right in January, however, and that was the start of WDYMYHS 2014. Those of you with a surprisingly good memory may have spotted that The Big Lebowski is this month’s viewing from that list.

I nearly watched one or two more, but I’m trying to pace myself. Considering January’s total, maybe I shouldn’t be.


Milestone

Also this month, I reached the 800th film to be covered on 100 Films in a Year. That’s not #800, mind: thanks to alternate cuts and random reviewing of films I’ve seen before, I’ve covered 800 films but not counted 800 films. And because I’m behind on reviews, I haven’t even posted that 800th review yet… but I’ll be sure to mention it when I do.

(Incidentally, the official #800 will be this year’s #48.)


5 Tom Cruise SF/F Films

Tom Cruise is the kinda guy who does sci-fi movies, right? I mean, we can all name at least a few he’s been in, including one that was out last summer and one that will be out this summer — that’s one per year! Right?

Wrong. So wrong, in fact, I couldn’t even fill a top five with Tom Cruise sci-fi films. So here are five — the five — sci-fi and fantasy films that (have already been released and) star Mr Mapother IV.

  1. OblivionOblivion
    This one was pretty obvious — it inspired the list, after all. Set in 2077, it sees Cruise working on a desolated Earth to repair drones that guard the planet from aliens. I won’t say too much more lest I spoil it, but you could also count… no, I’ll leave it here. Just watch it, it’s pretty good.

  2. War of the Worlds
    War of the Worlds“Cruise. Spielberg.” So read the poster and/or trailer for this ’00s-set reimagining of H.G. Wells’ classic novel of alien invasion and domination. Despite the updating, and the sickeningly twee ending, it’s actually a damn good film. Post-9/11, US films were more positive than ever about how all Americans would band together in a crisis. Not so here.

  3. Minority ReportMinority Report
    Cruise is a copper who arrests people before they commit crimes, but what happens when it’s predicted he’ll commit one next? In the 12 years since Minority Report’s release I think it may’ve turned into a classic. Well, some people think so. I expect I’d be one of them if I’d watched it this decade. Which I haven’t. But I really should.

  4. Interview with the VampireInterview with the Vampire
    Ooh, another good one I’ve not watched for ages (maybe I should’ve picked something where I’d watched the films more recently…) Here, Cruise is a centuries-spanning vampire; so some would say that’s Horror, but it’s not really about the scares, it’s about the psychology. And Cruise and Brad Pitt looking Pretty.

  5. LegendLegend
    Unlike the other films on this list (which I’ve seen, just not recently), I have never seen Legend. But it’s definitely a fantasy movie.


And then there’s…

    Vanilla SkyVanilla Sky
    I’ve seen Vanilla Sky — again, ages ago. I remember quite liking it. I remember it being all kinda weird and mysterious and stuff. But I can’t for the life of me remember what the explanation was. Was it science-fictional? Fantastical? Religiousical? Maybe no one knows. That wouldn’t surprise me.

Have I managed to miss any Cruise films that are actually SF or F? Should we be including the Mission: Impossibles thanks to some of their more OTT leanings? Lemme know below.


Next month on 100 Films in a Year…

I should watch nine films to make up for January’s shortfall. It’s good to have goals, right?

Tom Conway as the Falcon, Part II

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Back in September 2012 (my word, was it really so long ago?!), I started posting reviews of RKO’s series of films starring the Falcon, a sort of gentlemen detective character that the studio had licensed as a cheaper replacement for The Saint.

The first three instalments were headlined by the then star of the Saint films, “Russian-born English film and television actor, singer-songwriter, music composer, and author” (and, later, voice of Shere Khan in Disney’s Jungle Book), George Sanders. You can read my thoughts on his Falcon films here.

When Sanders decided he wanted to step down from the series, RKO decided to replace the Falcon character with his brother, who fortunately adopted the same avian moniker. Who better to play Sanders’ screen brother than his real-life sibling, Tom Conway? After the brothers shared the screen for Conway’s debut appearance, the latter went on to lead nine further Falcon films. My opinion of his first few can be read here.

This is the first of two review compendiums that will complete my coverage of the series.




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!