Movies & Books of 2011
Every year, I attempt to watch 100 movies and read 50 books. Every year, I am unable to reach my goal. In short, I am a massive failure with unattainable goals.
Anyhow, here are the movies I've watched and my personal ratings for them:
Movies
January
1.Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World 3.5/5
February
2.The Butterfly Effect 2.5/5
3.Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind 4.5/5
4.New York, I Love You 2.5/5
March
5.Rango 3.5/5
6.Vanilla Sky 3.5/5
7.Crazy Heart 3/5
8.Sucker Punch 1.5/5
April
9.Dead Alive 2/5
May
10.Salt 3/5
11.Seven Samurai 4.5/5
12.Beyond the Mat 1/5 (goddamn you Ethan...)
13.Zombieland 4/5
14.Babies 2.5/5
15.Inglourious Basterds 5/5
16.Last Action Hero 3/5
17.Mongol 3/5
18.Cars 4/5
19.Troll 2 1/5 (one star given because the movie is so horribly bad, it's actually entertaining)
20.Age of Innocence 3/5
21.Best Worst Movie 3.5/5 (documentary based on the aforementioned Troll 2. Pretty entertaining)
June
22.Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 3.5/5 (this was the Swedish version. It's not a bad movie or a bad book, but did American movie studios REALLY need to remake this movie when it only came out 4 or so years ago? Oy vey)
23.Event Horizon 3/5
24.Princess and the Frog 3/5
25.Super 8 4.5/5
26.I Love You Phillip Morris 4/5
July
27.The English Patient 4/5
28.The Tourist 1.5/5
29.The Apartment 3.5/5
30.Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 4.5/5
August
31.Valkyrie 3/5
32.Alice 2/5
33.The Fighter 3.5/5
34.China Gate 4/5 (my first Bollywood movie watched in its entirety! So cheesy and epic)
35.Vertigo 5/5
September
36.The Spirit 2/5
37.Hot Coffee 3.5/5
October
38.Philadelphia 3.5/5
39.Precious 4/5
40.Science of Sleep 2.5/5
41.Little Children 3.5/5
42.Lorenzo's Oil 3/5
November
43.What Dreams May Come 3/5
44.Michael Clayton 3/5
45.Lust, Caution 4/5
46.A State of Mind 4.5/5
December
47.Dorian Gray 3/5
48.The Triplets of Belleville 3/5
49.The King's Speech 4.5/5
50.The Adventures of Tintin 3.5/5
51.Persepolis 5/5
And here are the books that I've read this year:
Books
January
1.Wait for Dusk (Dark Days Book 5)by Jocelynn Drake - got this book for free from NYCC a year ago. Urban fantasy is really not my genre :|, 2/5
2.Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux - 3/5
3.And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - 4.5/5 I really really enjoyed this!
March (I didn't finish any books in February
4.Emma by Jane Austen - 4/5 pretty good
5.Jewel by Bret Lott - 3/5 depressing
April
6.The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - 4.5/5 definitely the most epic book I've read in quite some time and it was amazing! 0.5 stars taken off since I thought it was really really really long...
7.Hannibal by Thomas Harris - 3/5 not as good as the other books in the series :T
May
8.Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - 4/5 really depressing...
9.Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen - 3/5 I just thought this was meh
10.Age of Innocence by Edith Warton - 3.5/5
June
11.Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - 3.5/5
12.The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck - 3/5
July
13.Moby Dick by Herman Melville - 2.5/5 I was not a fan of this...Melville's writing was incredibly detailed and I did appreciate some parts (mostly the beginning, when all of the crew was being introduced and the strange facts about whales) but that ending was something and I don't think I liked it all that much
14.Push by Sapphire - 4.5/5 I really enjoyed reading this, as depressing as this was
15.Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides - 5/5 I REALLY liked this story a lot. I don't care if his writing was a bit convoluted at times, this was really fascinating and convincing to me (well, at times)
August
16.Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - 3/5 it was interesting for what it was worth. Funny (or really not that funny) how it can be seen as being incredibly racist by scholars today when its purpose was to combat racism. Ah well.
September
17.Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - 2/5 this was really not my cup of tea. She wrote well, but I prefer more structured books with actual plots? I dunno...
October
18.The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai - 3/5 not bad but not great
19.V for Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd - 4/5 I'm not sure how to rate this since it was the only graphic novel that I've read. At times, the characters looked identical, so it was kind of hard to follow the story and it was also very very different from the movie. I did like it, though.
November
20.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 4/5 I was surprised at how fun some of the vignettes were to read. I already downloaded more sagas in the Sherlock Holmes canon to read on my Kindle :)
21.Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - 4/5 I don't normally like to read stories about wayward male youth (i.e. Catcher in the Rye) but the way this was written (or at least translated) was intriguing and it compelled me to keep on reading it.
22.Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson - 2/5 man this book was not good :T