Category Archives: Editorials

December 2011

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2011 is over. 2012 has just begun. But did I make it to 100 in time?


If you follow me on Twitter you know

I did! Just. Three films in the final 24 hours of the year, the last of them finishing just an hour before midnight, see me reach 100 exactly this year. Phew!

In addition to that, six of the finishing eight features listed below were watched in the final three days of the year. Not quite as close to the wire as I had it back in 2008 (11 films in six days, seven of them in the last three), but I didn’t think I was going to get there.


So, my closing salvo included…

#93 Diner (1982)
#94 Nativity! (2009)
#94a The Gruffalo’s Child (2011)
#95 Hotel for Dogs (2009)
#96 The Spider Woman (1944)
#97 Faintheart (2008)
#98 The Man from Earth (2007)
#99 Winnie the Pooh (2011)
#100 The A-Team: Explosive Extended Edition (2010)


Where does that leave us in the grand scheme of thi— well, this blog?

Thus, 2011 ties with 2008 as my third-best year. Hurrah! Though to put it another way, 2011 ties with 2008 as my second-worst year, so, y’know…

It does represent the greatest drop off in potential, though. At the halfway point of the year I was further ahead than I’d ever been — in my best-ever-year, 2007, I’d made it to #60; in my second-best-ever-year, 2010, I’d made it to #64; but this year I’d reached #68. In tied-with-this-year 2008 I’d only limped to #46. Clearly, I need to keep momentum up into the year’s back half.

But hey, 2012’s another year — who knows what’ll happen next time round!


But before all that…

Screw 2012, I’m not done with 2011 yet! There’s my great big long list of everything I’ve watched still to come, along with all those lovely statistics, and the list of films I didn’t see, and — best of all — the statistics.

Oh, I mentioned those? I love the statistics. But almost as good, my bottom five and top ten for the year.

And having to push hard to cross the finish line means I haven’t even made a start on any of that. This’ll be interesting… for me, anyway — you just have to sit tight ’til it all turns up. Probably not that much later than I usually get round to it.

Until then… Happy New Year!

2011’s summary posts are already available here and here.

A pair of comedies — one with snow!

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It’s Christmas Eve! Hurrah! All the best of the season to you, and that kind of palaver.

As I have no Christmassy films stacked up in my big pile of things I need to get round to reviewing, I’ve decided the nearest I can offer to the Christmas spirit is a pair of British comedies (comedies being kinda jolly, see), one of which has snow, which is always Christmassy. Except when it’s just at the North Pole. Like in this film. Oh shh, it’s the best I could do.

Without further witter, then, here are some reviews. Snow first, quality second — it is Christmas after all…

Unfortunately it’s only mildly amusing rather than laugh-out-loud hilarious… On the bright side, it doesn’t go on about the green agenda too much… While I’m all for informing people and reminding them Something Must Be Done, battering viewers round the head when they’re expecting to enjoy a nice comedy is perhaps not the best way.
Read more…


Though the film pokes fun (fairly good-naturedly) at sci-fi obsessives, the underlying story here is about a man overshadowed by his past. In this Rob Brydon gives a strong performance — I think he’s a better actor than he’s normally given credit for… The biggest twist, however, is that Steve Coogan plays a nice character. There’s no surprise sting in the tail there, he’s just nice throughout. It’s weird.
Read more…


Merry Christmas!

November 2011

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It’s the final countdown! Do-do-doodoo, dododododoo, do-do—

sorry.


The final countd— oh, did that already…

This year’s 100 Films is turning into a race for the finish line — always kinda fun, if not record-breaking. Back in June I reached a high for this year of 20 ahead of target (‘target’ being my running total for Where I Should Have Reached To Make Exactly 100 By December 31st… I probably don’t need to explain that every time I mention it at this point, do I?), after which it’s gradually slipped back, so that now — as I enter the final stretch — I find myself just one ahead.

To put it more plainly: there’s eight films to go to my goal. If I made that exactly, I’d equal my second-worst year… or, if you look at it another way, third best. Getting to 101 or higher (“higher” meaning “below 122”, which, c’mon, I’m not gonna get close to) will leave this year as both the third worst and third best. Right in the middle — somehow apt for a fifth year celebration. Not that apt, but shush, I want it to be.


Anyway, here’s the exiguous (thank you thesaurus) list of films that have got me to this point…

#89 Gambit (1966)
#90 Cars (2006)
#91 Beyond the Pole (2009)
#92 Cruise of the Gods (2002)


Stepping up

It’s not just film watching I need to push up a bit, but review posting too. You may have noticed this happen in the last three weeks or so… not as much as I’d’ve liked, mind, so maybe not. I’m currently thinking I’ll aim to post a review every other day, in an attempt to clear some of my large 2011 backlog before 2012 kicks in. Even at that rate I won’t get all the way through, but hopefully there shouldn’t be too many left as we go into the new year.


Next time on the all-new 100 Films in a Year monthly update…

Next time I post one of these it’ll be the very eve of 2012! Will I have made it to 100?

Try not to ruin your nails biting them…

October 2011

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Boo!

Cos it’s Halloween, see. Well, it was when I posted this. Just.


Quintuple X

Still not watched any of those films I’ve been aiming to watch.

Still not at 100.

I think I would have made it to 90 though, or possibly even a bit further, but I re-watched X-Men: First Class on Blu-ray last Friday night and got a burning desire to re-watch the rest of the X-Men films in chronological order (having started with the chronological first, that only seemed to make sense). So using my film viewing time for that these past few days left no room for anything after #88. Ah well.

Nearly done, though (it’s X2 in a bit, hopefully), so maybe next month… maybe…


Meanwhile, this month… er, last month…

#82 Centurion (2010)
#83 Magicians (2007)
#84 The Brothers Bloom (2007)
#85 Batman: Year One (2011)
#85a DC Showcase: Catwoman (2011)
#86 Battle Los Angeles (2011)
#87 That Touch of Mink (1962)
#88 RED (2010)


Next time on the all-new 100 Films in a Year monthly update…

Maybe 100… maybe…

September 2011

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By the end of September 2010 I’d made it to my goal of 100 films.

This year?


Not a chance.

Of course I haven’t. I ended last month on 77 — even at my best, 23 films in a month is madness. (Actually, I did manage it once: August 2007, when I watched between 24 and 29 films. (I wish I’d kept more thorough records of exactly when I watched things back then.) But my next highest is 18, and next 17, so…)

In January’s summary I noted that, if I could keep my viewing rate the same, I’d reach 100 in early September (and 144 by the end of the year). In May things were clearly going to that plan, as I passed #50 and noted that I should reach #100 on September 9th (and 145 by the end of the year). As you can see, that rate didn’t continue.

But hey-ho, the first part of the year always seems to go better than the back bit, and I’m not behind my schedule to reach exactly 100 by the end of the year — indeed, even if I hadn’t watched a single new film this month I’d still be three ahead. But I watched four, so that’s… well, it’s better than nothing, eh…


#78 Bringing Up Baby (1938)
#79 Holiday (1938)
#80 How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
#81 Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)


Revamp

Attentive readers may note that I’ve made some changes to the ‘info line’ that starts each of my reviews. I’ve been pondering this for a while now and have finally just taken the plunge. Any suggestions for additions (or removals) from the new set of info are welcome. Changes thus far are as follows:

  • I’ve lost the year. It’s in the post title; there was never any need for it to be repeated. Never.
  • Added the aspect ratio. This one probably won’t always be available or precise, but I’ll have a go. For DVDs and Blu-rays it’s copied from the packaging (unless that’s obviously wrong), for formats where I don’t have such ‘precise’ information it’ll be my best guess from the standard sizes.
  • Added the country-of-production and primary language of the film. I don’t want these to be epic lists of funders and every language spoken on screen, so I intend to limit this to the main country/ies and one language, as far as I possibly can. So, for example, the language for Inglourious Basterds would be “English”, even though a tonne of (subtitled) French and German is spoken throughout. Probably. I may end up changing my mind on this one…

Other than that it’s all stuff that was there before. I’m not going to change all the old reviews to match the new format, though — there’s well over 500 reviews now, I’m not mad.

As I said, feel free to berate me for either including something needless/inaccurate or for leaving out something essential. I’ve tried to keep the list focused on facts that are accepted to be important (e.g. the director) or stuff that can vary depending on the viewing source (length, aspect ratio, language), which obviously might impact my experience and therefore opinion.


Next time on the all-new 100 Films in a Year monthly update…

With just three months to go it’s getting close to the final countdown.

Will I make it to 100 next month? Doubt it. 90? You never know…

August 2011

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Dear fans of Firefly and Serenity,

[The following was all irrelevant soon after I posted it, never mind now in 2015. But hey-ho, the repostathon rolls on…]

In case you’ve not heard of it, I just want to quickly draw your attention to Browncoats: Redemption, a fan film about a bunch of original characters in the ‘verse that takes place in the wake of the events of Serenity. What makes this one notable is that it’s been officially sanctioned by creator Joss Whedon and the appropriate Firefly/Serenity rightsholders to be sold on DVD and Blu-ray in aid of charity. But only until September 1st, which (as the handy countdown on the website tells us) means it will only ever be available for order for another 29 hours*.

I’d meant to review the film sooner to give it a proper push, but me being me I only just watched it. I’ll still aim to get a review up sometime, obviously, but for what it’s worth I’ll be giving it 2 out of 5. Hardly a glowing promotion I know, but I’m scoring this next to all the other films I’ve watched and, honestly, it’s a fan film and it plays like one. That said, as examples go it’s a pretty well-made one. Though the acting, screenplay and direction would be kindly described as “well-meaning”, some of the production values are surprisingly good: there’s a decent spaceship set, well-realised location work, solid costumes, decent fight choreography, professional music, some good-quality CGI, and so on. It’s no Serenity 2, and considering the “proper movie” quality of some zero-budget films (like, say, Primer or El Mariachi (both of which cost less)) it’s obviously a labour of love rather than of emerging talent. But for die-hard, sympathetic fans of Whedon’s series, it’s a passable little trip back to the ‘verse. Full marks for effort, at least.

Plus, if you’re interested in this kind of thing, the DVD & Blu-ray versions come with a host of extras: an audio commentary by the writer/director/producer, the best part of an hour on the making of Redemption, over an hour and a half of interviews with cast and crew from Firefly and Serenity, and a full soundtrack CD.

More importantly than all of that, and why I’m mentioning it despite my rating, is that all profits go to five charities supported by Firefly/Serenity cast & crew: Equality Now, Kids Need to Read, the Dyslexia Foundation, the Al Wooten Jr. Heritage Center, and the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. With just 29 hours left to be able to own the film (unless you’re attending Dragon*Con, anyway), I thought that was worth a mention.


* at the time of posting, hence why this round-up is about 24 hours earlier than normal.


Now back to your regularly scheduled monthly round-up…

After that, I’ll just get on with it. Should I watch anything else in the next 24 hours I’ll sneak it on the end later.

#72 Sucker Punch: Extended Cut (2011)
#73 Source Code (2011)
#74 Glorious 39 (2009)
#75 Nirvana (1997)
#76 The House on 92nd Street (1945)
#77 Browncoats: Redemption (2010)


Next time on the all-new 100 Films in a Year monthly update…

September marks the final third of the year. With under a quarter of films to go, that’s not too shabby… even if I’m still not getting very far with posting reviews.

But hey, tomorrow is another day…

25 Films I Own That I Really Should Have Seen

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This was originally published almost exactly a year ago (as the date above will show). Below, I’ve added an update.

Also new, I feel like I’ve been Quite Clever with the featured image above. It would’ve been even cleverer to get all the DVDs/BDs out and line them up and take a photo, but that’s an amount of effort too far.

Anyway. The original post:

As I reach the three-quarter mark of this year’s 100 films, I’ve decided to take a little look at what’s become a sort of recurring theme this year: films I own but have never got round to watching. And, because I have 25 films left to go this year, there’ll be 25 of them (if I was doing all of the eligible titles we’d be here forever).

And these aren’t necessarily the 25 most significant films or anything — I’m sure if everyone was able to peruse my list of owned-but-never-seen films we’d all come out with different shortlists — but they’re 25 that, for one reason or another (often recommendations by other filmjournal-ists*), I should have seen by now.

Note, mind, that this is no guarantee that these will now be my next 25 films. Indeed, I think I can guarantee they won’t be — my viewing is too beholden to the vagaries of TV scheduling and what LOVEFiLM choose to send me, as well as random fluctuations of whim and fancy. But I really should put a great deal more effort into getting round to these ones.

So, in strictly alphabetical order, we have…

1) The 39 Steps and dozens of other Hitchcocks.
2) Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
3) Brazil
4) City of God
5) Comrades
6) Day Watch
7) Die Hard with a Vengeance
8) Fantômas parts 3-5
9) Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
10) Heroes of the East
11) Lawrence of Arabia
12) A Matter of Life and Death or any other Powell & Pressburger film.
13) Moon, and District 9, and other recent acclaimed SF/F films.
14) Night of the Living Dead and the five other Romero zombie films.
15) Oldboy
16) Once Upon a Time in America
17) Princess Mononoke and several other anime films.
18) Rififi
19) Seven Samurai
20) Solomon Kane
21) The Spider Woman and the seven other Rathbone Holmeses I haven’t yet covered.
22) Touch of Evil, not to mention dozens of other film noirs.
23) Up, and also A Bug’s Life and Cars.
24) Waterloo
25) Zatoichi

OK, yes, you might argue some of those “and also”s are cheating, but it’s my list, so ner.

I was going to write little blurbs for each too, as there are all sorts of reasons for each inclusion… but there’s 25 for chrissake, does anyone care that much? I mean, if you’re curious, I’ll happily fill in any or all gaps, but this post is beginning to feel a bit self indulgent and faintly masochistic as it is. Some of the links offer an explanation or a hint at one; others are just IMDb, sorry.


UPDATE (29/8/2012)

In the past year I’ve seen four of the 42 films specifically mentioned in that list: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Spider Woman, The Scarlet Claw and Cars.

I am a terrible person.


* Highlighting all of these makes me feel terribly rude, actually. And I didn’t even include all of them. It’s nothing personal chaps. ^

July 2011

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Another month over, and what have you done…

Wait, isn’t that how I begin Christmas posts?*


Failings

Every year of 100 Films seems to see at least one shockingly weak month for my film viewing. Last year it was April (three films); the year before February (two) and July (none); and so on. This year I’d done pretty well — my monthly totals so far run at 12, 13, 13, 9, 11 and 9 — but I have finally crumbled: July 2011 scores a lowly four.

Hey, at least I held the bad month off much longer than usual!

My reviews have also dropped to a trickle, as you may (or may not) have noticed — they stand at a pathetic total of two for the entire month. This isn’t a personal blog (well, it kinda is, but not in that way) so I won’t go on about it too much, but it’s not been a great year and film viewing & reviewing is just one thing to be struggling.

That said, it’s only recently my viewing’s suffered — I’m only slightly behind this point last year, which leaves me ahead of every other previous year. Maybe it’s silly, and it’s certainly counterproductive, but I find my review backlog gets in the way: having 20+ films stacked up waiting to be written about lessens my enthusiasm to watch new stuff. And it’s not as if there aren’t other distractions — there seems to be a tonne of TV worth watching these days… not that I’ve been getting on with as much of that as I’d like…


Anyway — here’s this month’s measly foursome… none of which I’ve posted reviews of yet. [Except I have now, by 2015, of course.]

#68 The Locket (1946)
#69 Tangled (2010)
#70 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
#71 Super (2010)


Next time on the all-new 100 Films in a Year monthly update…

It’s August! Summer! Hot, sunny weather! The perfect time for staying inside trying to stay cool!

That’s what I always aim to do, anyway. And what better way to fill that time than watch movies?

Or TV.

Or read books.

But I’ll try for those movies.


* No, it’s (sort of) how I begin new year posts, apparently. ^

June 2011

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What’s that? We’re halfway through the year, you say?

No, you’re having me on.


We’re halfway through the year

Dammit.

Anyway — It’s no news that being halfway through the calendar year sees me more than halfway through my annual goal (because that happened last month), but it’s always a good time to stop and take stock.

As you’ll see shortly, this point finds me at 67 films. A bit of easy maths suggests this route would lead me to 134 films by years’ end, which would be a new record. Experience tells me it looks this way every year — last year, for instance, numbers suggested I’d make 128 by December 31st, but I actually reached 122. I’m sure the other years tell the same story: for whatever reason, the back six months don’t see as much film-watching activity on my part as the first six. Partly because once I pass 100 I’m not quite as motivated (it becomes a good time to catch up on TV, or films I’ve already seen and would like to re-watch).

Still, whether I do make it to 134 or not, I’m well on track to make it past 100. And that’s the aim after all.


This month’s 9

#59 Jonah Hex (2010)
#60 X-Men: First Class (2011)
#61 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (3D) (2011)
#62 Ip Man (2008)
#63 Law Abiding Citizen: Director’s Cut (2009)
#64 Valley of Fear (1983)
#65 Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance., aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Ha (2009/2010)
#66 A Study in Terror (1965)
#67 Saw 3D (2D) (2010)


No Scott Pilgrim

In my look ahead to ‘vengeance week’, I mentioned having a review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World posted for tonight. Obviously, that hasn’t happened and isn’t happening. Maybe soon; maybe in a few years — who knows! (I didn’t get round to watching it either, y’see.)

And I’m not even going to mention Once Upon a Time in America.

…oops


Next time on the all-new 100 Films in a Year monthly update…

Making promises is getting me nowhere. So, next month, I will probably watch some films, and I may review some of them, and in 31 days I’ll tell you how I got on. That last point I can guarantee.

Unless I have an unfortunate accident or something. Dammit.

A week of vengeance

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You may have noticed that I’ve been thoroughly backed-up with reviews to post this year. This week I’ve decided to tackle that situation with a vengeance.

Or you could say “with vengeance”, because I noticed that a few of the films on my stack of unreviewed titles have vengeance as a central theme. Better than just posting a review a day is to post a review a day with a linking theme, I thought, so each day this week I’ll be posting a new review of a film about vengeance. That doesn’t mean I’ve particularly drawn out this link in the reviews, but there you go.

The films I’ve picked out (from this list, of course) are British thriller Harry Brown, flop comic book Western Jonah Hex, classic ’70s Western High Plains Drifter, and violent action-thriller Law Abiding Citizen. And on Friday, hopefully, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which I don’t think is about revenge (not watched it yet, hence “hopefully”) but is on telly from Friday night. [2015 edit: Scott Pilgrim didn’t happen. Still not watched it, actually.]

That’s not the extent of the vengeance-themed films on my “to do” list, even — there’s also True Grit, but I’m saving that for when I get round to the Coens’ remake. [2015 edit: also didn’t happen.] Is this number of revenge films a coincidence, or do I like a dose of revenge, or is it just a common film theme generally? Such questions beg more thought than I’m going to give them this week. Sorry.

Anyway, I just wanted to draw attention to this thread as it gets underway. Sometimes my madness does have a plan y’know.