2012 - Films
Last year I said "I doubt I'll ever top 2010's total of 130 (and given that it took a broken arm to do that, I rather hope I never do)". Well I beat it this year without any major injuries, but I suspect a few months of sabbatical from work helped me along to my total of 138 films. 126 of those films were new to me. There's a full list at the bottom of the page, or read all the reviews here
I saw 14 films in the cinema, which is higher than the last couple of years and helped along by a couple of 'multi-film' days. Although to be honest it's still not really a very high number if I consider myself a film fan. I'm still put off by the price, the often disappointing experience and the difficulty in finding what I want to see, when I want to see it. There were many smaller films that I wanted to go and see which never made it to cinemas in easy reach, despite the fact there's well over 30 screens within a bus journey of my house . Far more successful were LoveFilm from whom I got 103 films (75%), including a couple via the digital on demand thing, which has a limited selection but usually something worth watching. At just over a quid a film, there's no way I could possibly watch as many films without the service and I highly recommend it (so long as you can watch films fast and post them back without sitting on them for months!). That leaves just over 20 films that I watched either on the TV or from a dvd I bought or borrowed.
Ages
I seem to have seen an unprecedented 25 films from 2012 (bolded in the list below), that's not even including a lot that were only released in the UK in 2012 but counted as 2011 on imdb. My watching this year was skewed a lot more modern as I wasn't trying to repeat any challenge like my Oscar watching last year. However I do try to make an effort to see some older films by looking up things like the BFI of AFI top film lists. So although 82% of my watching was from this millennium, I also had a spattering of films in each decade all the way back to the 1931 Charlie Chaplin film City Lights (which was pretty good actually).
Genres
I've got 6 films labelled as 'world', i.e. they probably had subtitles. That's just 4% which is a bit poor to be honest. I watched 24 comedies, of which only just over half could be considered funny and many of the ones I was supposed to find hilarious (e.g. 21 Jump Street, Bridesmaids) were painful beyond belief. Easily the funniest things I saw were kids films The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! and The Muppets. 24 sci-fi films, of which success seemed inversely proportional to budget and a slightly ridiculous tally of 12 superhero/comic book films helped along by watching/re-watching the Batman trilogy and all Avengers Assemble building blocks. I only watched one documentary, The Cove which was superb, but I should really watch more.
Quality
Looking at the distribution of my rankings for this year, vs. all 847 films in my review database, the shape is pretty much the same, slightly flatter and with a slightly higher percentage of high ranking than on average. 50% of the films I watched this year I rated 7/10 or higher, which is pretty good going. The mean rating this year was 6.53 (vs 6.35 overall). There were 6 films that I rated 4/10 or lower, leaving 63 films (43%) in the 5 or 6/10 group of middling.
It's been a less award worthy watching list this year compared to last year's Oscar challenge. There were 12 from imdb's top 250 (as of Jan 2013), 1 Oscar winner (The Artist, 2012's winner) and an additional 11 nominees, including Argo, A Royal Affair, Brave, Pirates! which feature on this year's nomination list. I'm a bit disappointed to have not seen more of the Oscar nominees, even the ones that were out in the UK and I really wanted to see, I just didn't manage to catch.
Good or enjoyable
I gave 9 out of 10 to four films from 2012 - The Cabin in the Woods, Avengers Assemble, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! and Argo. It's massively satisfying (and relieving) to see Joss Whedon's two big releases up there, both not just entertaining films, but clearly having Whedon's beautiful writing so popularly on display. Pirates was a fantastic achievement by Aardman, stunningly animated and absolutely hilarious. Argo almost seems the odd one out of the group being a 'proper' serious film, but it told an almost unbelievable story with such incredible tension and deftness that it sits alongside it's more fun companions. Honourable mention however has to go to The Muppets, which technically is a 2011 film, but wasn't released in UK cinemas until Feb.
Other 2012 films sitting just behind, with 8/10 are an eclectic group including a couple that might not have reached your attention - Chronicle (a realistic look at teens with super powers),En kongelig affaere/A Royal Affair, (fascinating Danish period drama), and Fast Girls (a feel good sports film that didn't get much attention despite the Olympics).
For my wider viewing, there are another 4 with 9/10 rankings - Tyrannosaur and The Guard from 2011 couldn't be more different, but are both absolutely superb. Easy A was hilarious, charming and original and the documentary The Cove was one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. A few honourable mentions for some 8/10 - Tangled was a great return to form for Disney, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Africa United, Micmacs à tire-larigot and We Bought a Zoo were all absolutely lovely. Trolljegeren (Troll Hunter), Cube, Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel and Attack the Block were brilliant relatively low budget SF. I have to say that I actually thought two of the big flops of the year - Battleship and John Carter, were pretty solid popcorn entertainment and failed to understand why everyone took against them so much when there were far worse crimes against audiences. Which takes us to...
Bad or disappointing
Bedtime Stories has the privilege of being the lowest rated film in my database, and one of only a handful that I stopped watching before the end. For reasons that escape me, I did finish Cosmopolis, Shame, Drive and Melancholia but they were all insufferably pretentious, terminally dull and utterly lacking in any redeeming features. Mad Max at least had the excuse of a zero budget and inexperience on all parts for being rubbish.
Amongst movies I rated just 5/10 are some that many people seem to really like. The Artist may have won the Oscar, but I found it predictable and dull; Super 8 reminded me of how much I loved ET et al by just not having even close to the same soul. Despite many people I like highly recommending them, I didn't laugh a single time at either Bridesmaids or 21 Jump Street, and Prometheus was a just a disaster from start to finish.
There were a few films that weren't exactly bad, but were disappointing. I wrote long pieces about how frustrating I found that The Hobbit was let down by an indulgent lack of editing and how Skyfall was a superb action film, but had very troubling attitudes towards women. I've never really raved about the Nolan Batman films like much of the world seems to, The Dark Knight Rises had the ongoing problem that I found Batman a very boring character (Bruce Wayne is great, Batman with his silly growly voice, not so much) and had a new problem in the week, and incomprehensible villain of Bane. None of these films are really bad, each gets 7 or 8 out of 10, but they were still disappointing.
Looking ahead
What am I looking forward to in 2013? Off the top of my head - I guess The Hobbit part 2, although that almost feels more of an obligation than an excitement. Likewise I'm pretty nervous about World War Z because I thought the book was absolutely brilliant, and the first trailer seemed to be missing the point rather. Star Trek Into Darkness is a daft name, but looks good, Iron Man 3 is likely to be solidly entertaining and having done a good job with the first one the second Hunger Games film should be interesting. The only other thing that really springs to mind is Joss Whedon's ultra low budget Much Ado About Nothing, starring some of my favourite actors from the Whedon-verse.
With the help of some webpages (here, here and here, I discover more things that I'd forgotten about. Enders Game is finally being released in November (loved the book, very dubious about anything with Harrison Ford in it these days) and Pacific Rim looks incredible. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have an apocalyptic pub crawl in The World's End which will hopefully be a lot more Shaun of the Dead and a lot less Paul. Neil Blomkamp's been rewarded for District 9 with a huge budget and great cast for Elysium, fingers crossed he doesn't lose the District 9 magic. And we're still waiting for Alfonso Cuaron's highly anticipated Gravity. Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby could be phenomenal, or a colossal mess, or both. There are sequels for Kick Ass, Monsters Inc and How to Train Your Dragon, which will hopefully each maintain the fun the first ones found. There are new takes on Jack and the Beanstalk and Hansel and Gretel which look silly fun from the trailers.
Things I'm less excited about include Oblivion (which sounded ok until I got to "starring Tom Cruise", who I'm just a bit bored of), Oz: The Great and Powerful (colourful but the trailer didn't really excite me for some reason) and Cloud Atlas (hated the book, not hearing great things about the film). M Night Shyamalan's got a new one, After Earth, starring Will Smith and son Jaden which could go either way. There are new films for Wolverine, Riddick, Die Hard, Thor and Arnold Schwarzengger which I couldn't care less about, and yet another reboot of Superman which is just plain depressing.
Oh and apparently they're releasing Jurassic Park and Top Gun in 3D!
9
10 Things I Hate About You
21 Jump Street
A Dangerous Method
Africa United
Another Year
Argo
Arrietty
Attack the Block
Avengers Assemble
Batman Begins
Battleship
Bedtime Stories
Black Sheep
Brave
Brideshead Revisited (2008)
Bridesmaids
Brighton Rock
Cannonball Run
Captain America: The First Avenger
Carnage
Cars 2
Chronicle
City Lights
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Cosmopolis
Cube
Dirty Pretty Things
Don't Look Now
Drive
Eagle Eye
Easy A
En kongelig affaere (A Royal Affair)
Fast Girls
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel
Gangs of New York
Ghost World
Green Zone
Hannah and Her Sisters
Haywire
Heavenly Creatures
In Time
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
John Carter
Just Like Heaven
Kick-Ass
La habitación de Fermat (Fermat's Room)
Limitless
Looper
Mad Max
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
Man of the Year
Man on a Ledge
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Me and Orson Welles
Meet the Robinsons
Melancholia
Men in Black 3
Micmacs à tire-larigot
Midnight in Paris
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Moneyball
Muppet Treasure Island
My Week with Marilyn
Nanny McPhee
Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang
Nativity!
Never Let Me Go
Once Upon a Time in the West
Poltergeist
Ponyo (Gake no ue no Ponyo)
Prometheus
Rachel Getting Married
Rango
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Robin Hood (Disney's 1973)
Roman Holiday
Safe
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Say Anything
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Shame
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Silent Running
Skyfall
Sunshine Cleaning
Super 8
Take This Waltz
Tamara Drewe
Tangled
The Amazing Spider-Man
The Angels' Share
The Artist
The Awakening
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
The Boys Are Back
The Cabin in the Woods
The Cove
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
The Descendants
The Fast and the Furious
The Guard
The Guardian
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The Hunger Games
The Iron Lady
The Jane Austen Book Club
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Man in the White Suit
The Muppets
The Muppets Take Manhattan
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
The Prestige
The Princess and the Frog
The Soloist
The Tale of Despereaux
The Thing (1982)
The Three Muskateers (2011)
The Weather Man
The Woman in Black
This Means War
Thor
Tinker Tailor Sodier Spy
Trolljegeren (Troll Hunter)
Tron
True Grit (2010)
Tyrannosaur
Unknown
Waitress
We Bought a Zoo
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Whisky Galore!
Wilde
X-Men: First Class
Your Sister's Sister
I saw 14 films in the cinema, which is higher than the last couple of years and helped along by a couple of 'multi-film' days. Although to be honest it's still not really a very high number if I consider myself a film fan. I'm still put off by the price, the often disappointing experience and the difficulty in finding what I want to see, when I want to see it. There were many smaller films that I wanted to go and see which never made it to cinemas in easy reach, despite the fact there's well over 30 screens within a bus journey of my house . Far more successful were LoveFilm from whom I got 103 films (75%), including a couple via the digital on demand thing, which has a limited selection but usually something worth watching. At just over a quid a film, there's no way I could possibly watch as many films without the service and I highly recommend it (so long as you can watch films fast and post them back without sitting on them for months!). That leaves just over 20 films that I watched either on the TV or from a dvd I bought or borrowed.
Ages
I seem to have seen an unprecedented 25 films from 2012 (bolded in the list below), that's not even including a lot that were only released in the UK in 2012 but counted as 2011 on imdb. My watching this year was skewed a lot more modern as I wasn't trying to repeat any challenge like my Oscar watching last year. However I do try to make an effort to see some older films by looking up things like the BFI of AFI top film lists. So although 82% of my watching was from this millennium, I also had a spattering of films in each decade all the way back to the 1931 Charlie Chaplin film City Lights (which was pretty good actually).
Genres
I've got 6 films labelled as 'world', i.e. they probably had subtitles. That's just 4% which is a bit poor to be honest. I watched 24 comedies, of which only just over half could be considered funny and many of the ones I was supposed to find hilarious (e.g. 21 Jump Street, Bridesmaids) were painful beyond belief. Easily the funniest things I saw were kids films The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! and The Muppets. 24 sci-fi films, of which success seemed inversely proportional to budget and a slightly ridiculous tally of 12 superhero/comic book films helped along by watching/re-watching the Batman trilogy and all Avengers Assemble building blocks. I only watched one documentary, The Cove which was superb, but I should really watch more.
Quality
Looking at the distribution of my rankings for this year, vs. all 847 films in my review database, the shape is pretty much the same, slightly flatter and with a slightly higher percentage of high ranking than on average. 50% of the films I watched this year I rated 7/10 or higher, which is pretty good going. The mean rating this year was 6.53 (vs 6.35 overall). There were 6 films that I rated 4/10 or lower, leaving 63 films (43%) in the 5 or 6/10 group of middling.
It's been a less award worthy watching list this year compared to last year's Oscar challenge. There were 12 from imdb's top 250 (as of Jan 2013), 1 Oscar winner (The Artist, 2012's winner) and an additional 11 nominees, including Argo, A Royal Affair, Brave, Pirates! which feature on this year's nomination list. I'm a bit disappointed to have not seen more of the Oscar nominees, even the ones that were out in the UK and I really wanted to see, I just didn't manage to catch.
Good or enjoyable
I gave 9 out of 10 to four films from 2012 - The Cabin in the Woods, Avengers Assemble, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! and Argo. It's massively satisfying (and relieving) to see Joss Whedon's two big releases up there, both not just entertaining films, but clearly having Whedon's beautiful writing so popularly on display. Pirates was a fantastic achievement by Aardman, stunningly animated and absolutely hilarious. Argo almost seems the odd one out of the group being a 'proper' serious film, but it told an almost unbelievable story with such incredible tension and deftness that it sits alongside it's more fun companions. Honourable mention however has to go to The Muppets, which technically is a 2011 film, but wasn't released in UK cinemas until Feb.
Other 2012 films sitting just behind, with 8/10 are an eclectic group including a couple that might not have reached your attention - Chronicle (a realistic look at teens with super powers),En kongelig affaere/A Royal Affair, (fascinating Danish period drama), and Fast Girls (a feel good sports film that didn't get much attention despite the Olympics).
For my wider viewing, there are another 4 with 9/10 rankings - Tyrannosaur and The Guard from 2011 couldn't be more different, but are both absolutely superb. Easy A was hilarious, charming and original and the documentary The Cove was one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. A few honourable mentions for some 8/10 - Tangled was a great return to form for Disney, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Africa United, Micmacs à tire-larigot and We Bought a Zoo were all absolutely lovely. Trolljegeren (Troll Hunter), Cube, Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel and Attack the Block were brilliant relatively low budget SF. I have to say that I actually thought two of the big flops of the year - Battleship and John Carter, were pretty solid popcorn entertainment and failed to understand why everyone took against them so much when there were far worse crimes against audiences. Which takes us to...
Bad or disappointing
Bedtime Stories has the privilege of being the lowest rated film in my database, and one of only a handful that I stopped watching before the end. For reasons that escape me, I did finish Cosmopolis, Shame, Drive and Melancholia but they were all insufferably pretentious, terminally dull and utterly lacking in any redeeming features. Mad Max at least had the excuse of a zero budget and inexperience on all parts for being rubbish.
Amongst movies I rated just 5/10 are some that many people seem to really like. The Artist may have won the Oscar, but I found it predictable and dull; Super 8 reminded me of how much I loved ET et al by just not having even close to the same soul. Despite many people I like highly recommending them, I didn't laugh a single time at either Bridesmaids or 21 Jump Street, and Prometheus was a just a disaster from start to finish.
There were a few films that weren't exactly bad, but were disappointing. I wrote long pieces about how frustrating I found that The Hobbit was let down by an indulgent lack of editing and how Skyfall was a superb action film, but had very troubling attitudes towards women. I've never really raved about the Nolan Batman films like much of the world seems to, The Dark Knight Rises had the ongoing problem that I found Batman a very boring character (Bruce Wayne is great, Batman with his silly growly voice, not so much) and had a new problem in the week, and incomprehensible villain of Bane. None of these films are really bad, each gets 7 or 8 out of 10, but they were still disappointing.
Looking ahead
What am I looking forward to in 2013? Off the top of my head - I guess The Hobbit part 2, although that almost feels more of an obligation than an excitement. Likewise I'm pretty nervous about World War Z because I thought the book was absolutely brilliant, and the first trailer seemed to be missing the point rather. Star Trek Into Darkness is a daft name, but looks good, Iron Man 3 is likely to be solidly entertaining and having done a good job with the first one the second Hunger Games film should be interesting. The only other thing that really springs to mind is Joss Whedon's ultra low budget Much Ado About Nothing, starring some of my favourite actors from the Whedon-verse.
With the help of some webpages (here, here and here, I discover more things that I'd forgotten about. Enders Game is finally being released in November (loved the book, very dubious about anything with Harrison Ford in it these days) and Pacific Rim looks incredible. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have an apocalyptic pub crawl in The World's End which will hopefully be a lot more Shaun of the Dead and a lot less Paul. Neil Blomkamp's been rewarded for District 9 with a huge budget and great cast for Elysium, fingers crossed he doesn't lose the District 9 magic. And we're still waiting for Alfonso Cuaron's highly anticipated Gravity. Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby could be phenomenal, or a colossal mess, or both. There are sequels for Kick Ass, Monsters Inc and How to Train Your Dragon, which will hopefully each maintain the fun the first ones found. There are new takes on Jack and the Beanstalk and Hansel and Gretel which look silly fun from the trailers.
Things I'm less excited about include Oblivion (which sounded ok until I got to "starring Tom Cruise", who I'm just a bit bored of), Oz: The Great and Powerful (colourful but the trailer didn't really excite me for some reason) and Cloud Atlas (hated the book, not hearing great things about the film). M Night Shyamalan's got a new one, After Earth, starring Will Smith and son Jaden which could go either way. There are new films for Wolverine, Riddick, Die Hard, Thor and Arnold Schwarzengger which I couldn't care less about, and yet another reboot of Superman which is just plain depressing.
Oh and apparently they're releasing Jurassic Park and Top Gun in 3D!
9
10 Things I Hate About You
21 Jump Street
A Dangerous Method
Africa United
Another Year
Argo
Arrietty
Attack the Block
Avengers Assemble
Batman Begins
Battleship
Bedtime Stories
Black Sheep
Brave
Brideshead Revisited (2008)
Bridesmaids
Brighton Rock
Cannonball Run
Captain America: The First Avenger
Carnage
Cars 2
Chronicle
City Lights
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Cosmopolis
Cube
Dirty Pretty Things
Don't Look Now
Drive
Eagle Eye
Easy A
En kongelig affaere (A Royal Affair)
Fast Girls
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel
Gangs of New York
Ghost World
Green Zone
Hannah and Her Sisters
Haywire
Heavenly Creatures
In Time
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
John Carter
Just Like Heaven
Kick-Ass
La habitación de Fermat (Fermat's Room)
Limitless
Looper
Mad Max
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
Man of the Year
Man on a Ledge
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Me and Orson Welles
Meet the Robinsons
Melancholia
Men in Black 3
Micmacs à tire-larigot
Midnight in Paris
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Moneyball
Muppet Treasure Island
My Week with Marilyn
Nanny McPhee
Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang
Nativity!
Never Let Me Go
Once Upon a Time in the West
Poltergeist
Ponyo (Gake no ue no Ponyo)
Prometheus
Rachel Getting Married
Rango
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Robin Hood (Disney's 1973)
Roman Holiday
Safe
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Say Anything
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Shame
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Silent Running
Skyfall
Sunshine Cleaning
Super 8
Take This Waltz
Tamara Drewe
Tangled
The Amazing Spider-Man
The Angels' Share
The Artist
The Awakening
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
The Boys Are Back
The Cabin in the Woods
The Cove
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
The Descendants
The Fast and the Furious
The Guard
The Guardian
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The Hunger Games
The Iron Lady
The Jane Austen Book Club
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Man in the White Suit
The Muppets
The Muppets Take Manhattan
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
The Prestige
The Princess and the Frog
The Soloist
The Tale of Despereaux
The Thing (1982)
The Three Muskateers (2011)
The Weather Man
The Woman in Black
This Means War
Thor
Tinker Tailor Sodier Spy
Trolljegeren (Troll Hunter)
Tron
True Grit (2010)
Tyrannosaur
Unknown
Waitress
We Bought a Zoo
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Whisky Galore!
Wilde
X-Men: First Class
Your Sister's Sister