Film 2006
I managed to nuke the file containing my books and films of 2005 so I can't do much in the way of comparison. I have no idea whether I've seen more films this year or not, though at a rough guess I would say that I have since by May 2005 I had only seen 22 films compared with 55 this year.
Looking back over my 52filmchallenge posts, I can see that I have used the words, "hysterical", "hilarious", and "batshit" far too often.
1) Koushounin Mashita Masayoshi - spin-off from Odoru Daisousasen; good acting, bad story.
2) The Hidden Blade - funnier and more romantic than The Twilight Samurai but a less tense finale.
3) King Kong - yes, it was a little bit long and the Skull Island segment could and should have been trimmed, but I had this idea that things would get boring and they didn't at all.
4) Kikujiro - hilarious at times, yet beautiful and moving.
5) A Bittersweet Life - noirish thriller with a great set-up that unfortunately does the usual Asian thing of throwing in unnecessary (black) humour.
6) Kirikou And The Sorceress - brilliant children's animation about a small African village cursed by a sorceress, and the talking baby who saves them all.
7) Memoirs Of A Geisha - decent enough, but Zhang Ziyi embarasses herself every time she opens her mouth (which thankfully isn't often) and gets acted off the screen by just about every other person in the film, in particular by Gong Li.
8) Lady Vengeance - hilarious in places, striking imagery, but a tad too long.
9) Odorou Daisousasen - just like an extended episode of the TV series with a bigger budget.
10) Jarhead - a war movie showing the bits you don't usually see, soldiers sitting around doing nothing all day.
11) Odoru Daisousasen 2 - better than the first film, worse than the series, and finally someone other than Aoshima gets injured.
12) Stripes - military version of Police Academy with brilliance from Bill Murray, but too much of that old 80s silliness and gung-ho patriotism.
13) Returner - Japanese SF that steals borrows from pays homage to The Terminator and The Matrix with mixed success.
14) Brokeback Mountain - a whole lot of sheep, beautiful scenery, and an excellent performance from Ledger.
15) Good Night, And Good Luck - excellent film taking a look at the conflict between journalist Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
16) Visitor Q - incest, domestic violence, murder, necrophilia, and lactation in a film that makes makes Ichi The Killer look tame.
17) The Astronaut's Wife - good idea ruined by shoddy execution. Depp is creepy, Theron is a bit overwrought, and the obligatory twist you can see coming a mile away.
18) Fancy Dance - life in a remote Japanese Buddhist temple, with a bit of comedy and romance thrown in.
19) Sympathy For Mister Vengeance - slower and more considered than the rest of the trilogy with shockingly brutal violence.
20) The World's Fastest Indian - an uplifting and inspiring film about following your dreams regardless of age ( reviewed here).
21) The Devil's Backbone - ghosts, greed and the Spanish Civil War
22) The Showdown - low-budget Korean martial arts film that is far better than The Purifiers, yet still lacks the feeling of actual combat.
23) Equilibrium - the best of the post-Matrix films.
24) Irreversible - 20 minutes of spastic camerawork, a brutal murder and a 10 minute anal rape scene do not make a good film.
25) Near Dark - cult vampire film that could been improved with more action or more drama.
26) Mirrormask - visually stunning fantasy from the dynamic duo of McKean and Gaiman. The story isn't all that, but good stuff from Stephanie Leonidas and Gina McKee with impressive CGI eye-candy courtesy of McKean and his Bournemouth University graduate sweat-shop.
27) Inner Senses - HK version of The Sixth Sense which starts well before going into a badly done romantic sub-plot with some truly dreadful Ring/The Grudge inspired nonsense to finish.
28) Munich - thematically confused but very entertaining.
29) Lucky Number Slevin - Hollywood does Guy Ritchie, except with less humour and with less stylistic excess.
30) Seven Swords - turgid piece of steaming dog turd that even the mighty Donnie Yen cannot rescue.
31) The Great Yokai War - a kids film from Takashi Miike that is subversive, hilarious, grotesque and completely barmy, often in the same scene.
32) Aeon Flux - impressive visuals but a naff plot.
33) Domino - good if not particularly thrilling and over-directed to the point of migraine inducement.
34) The Weather Man - well acted throughout and the lack of a resolutely happy ending is good, but damn is it depressing at times.
35) Nanny McPhee - brilliant and very British film about a single father, seven out of control children and a nanny with magical powers and five lessons to teach.
36) Nana - decent adaptation of the manga (which I need to read).
37) V For Vendetta - too long, too slow, too dull and not saved by the last hour.
38) Shinobi - pretty CGI-fest that looks to be a Japanese version Hero but falls rather short of the mark.
39) Malice - compelling thriller that is entertaining throughout, except for that entirely superfluous sub-plot.
40) Lie Lie Lie - Japanese variation on The Producers that meanders a little too much at the start, but is hilarious when it gets going.
41) Swing Girls - the plot won't give anyone a headache but it is funny, simple and heart-warming.
42) Whiteout - Cliffhanger + Japan + terrorists + dam = Whiteout.
43) Fireworks, Ferris Wheels And Love - a gentle romance film that contains few surprises, but is raised up by the understated performances of its two stars.
44) The Art Of Fighting - painful to watch at times, but a good film - like a less saccharine and more brutal Karate Kid.
45) Sha Po Lam - too much drama, not enough action.
46) Tiger On The Beat - Chow-Yun Fat in the usual (at that time) mish-mash of slap-stick, comedy, drama, kung fu, shoot-outs and a full-on chainsaw duel.
47) Inside Man - nicely done, but I just think it took a little too long to get going.
48) The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension - a SF film that has moments of sheer genius, and a fairly impressive list of stars back in the day, but it's just a little too surreal to be coherent.
49) Club Paradise - fun, but so very 80s.
50) Slither - very good, but Tremors is still the KING.
51) Mission Impossible 3 - decent, but would it kill Hollywood to write an intelligent action film?
52) Hinokio - a nice premise but let down by a highly confusing sub-plot
53) The Da Vinci Code - well, I didn't have high hopes for this so it was mildly entertaining.
54) Election - interesting enough, but not the saviour of HK cinema that people have made it out to be.
55) Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - too long, not funny enough, worse than the first film and ends with a bloody cliffhanger.
56) Branded To Kill - mental Japanese films started here I think.
57) My Super Ex-Girlfriend - Fatal Attraction + Superman + Swingers = My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
58) Superman Returns - Verdict: Donner is still the king.
59) Battlefield Baseball - baseball with weapons and zombie-esque bad guys but done badly.
60) One Missed Call - formulaic Japanese horror that steals badly from both Ring and The Grudge.
61) Black Angel 2 - slow moving assassin film with less action and more drama than one might expect.
62) Miami Vice - a bit shit, but redeemed in part by the superb action sequences and Gong Li.
63) Always: Sunset On Third Street - good but the nostalgia was completely wasted on me and it seemed a little too rose-tinted for my liking.
64) Mind Game - completely batshit insane anime.
65) Snakes On A Plane - good clean fun.
66) Sharkskin Man And Peach Hip Girl - stylish Japanese crime film that forgets the key element of having a story that engages and makes sense.
67) DOA: Dead Or Alive - exploitative, mindless, excessive wire-fu, and yet oh so very entertaining.
68) Casablanca - well deserving of its accolades.
69) Yugo The Negotiator - good but not a patch on 3-Iron and Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...And Spring.
71) Pan's Labyrinth - apparently I'm a big softy for thinking it was all real. :P
72) Guns And Talks - it's silly, slapstick in places, but not overly stylised and doesn't outstay its welcome, ludicrously implausible finale aside.
73) The Host - a big budget Hollywood-style film done in the Far East.
74) Election 2 - gritty, realistic and much better than its predecessor.
75) Crank - adrenaline fuelled revenge flick that is hyper-edited to the point of nausea, but not a patch on any similar film made in the 80s.
76) Clerks II - hysterically funny from start to finish, even with a slightly more serious slant.
77) The Calamari Wrestler - mental and hysterically funny.
78) The Departed - excellent acting but the plot is dire.
79) Gantz - ultra-violent anime series; most of the characters are completely brainless, the protagonist is insufferable for all but the last two episodes, the fan-service is ludricrously OTT (even the original manga wasn't this bad), and the writer needs to taken out behind the chemical sheds and shot for the dog, but for all that it has its moments.
80) Big Bang Love, Juvenile A - sparse dialogue, long static shots and full of symbolism, this is the kind of art-house film that sends me straight to sleep. And it did.
81) Midori No Hibi - it's a bit saccharine at times but it is amusing without resorting to too many cliches.
82) Children Of Men - the story holds together well, despite lacking an explanation for the fertility problem, and both acting and direction are excellent. Probably film of the year thinking about it.
83) The Go Master - good stuff, but Kim Ki Duk does this kind of minimalism better.
84) Hana - up there with Yoji Yamada's work as an example of an excellent contemporary samurai film.
85) The King And Clown - well acted and beautifully shot, it's not quite the Korean answer to Farewell My Concubine but very good in its own right.
86) Sword Of Doom - grim, violent black and white samurai film that is well shot and acted but a little confusing
87) The Professor's Beloved Equation - evokes a true sense of wonder in the power and beauty of numbers.
88) Steamboy - the eye-candy is great but other than that this was a massive disappointment.
89) Trick 2 - after three series, two films and one feature length special, Trick has run its course.
90) Monster House - the best CG animation in years.
91) Casino Royale - Bond as Fleming originally intended - a cold, violent bastard.
92) American Ninja - a dreadful 80s action film yet strangely watchable.
93) Timeline - ditches some of the set-pieces (A Knight's Tale had already covered the jousting angle) but by and large it retains the tension of the book.
94) Layer Cake - British crime drama that works because it goes for a bit more realism and less of the comedy.
95) Princess Aurora - aside from the lead's excellent performance, the film is hollow.
96) On Her Majesty's Secret Service - massively overrated.
97) Scoop - Woody Allen does London and not very well at that.
98) Happy Feet - second best CG animation of the year after Monster House.
99) Fantastic Four - not as shit as I was expecting.
100) Dukes Of Hazzard - a remake that is true to the memory of the original and updates it at the same time.
101) The Descent - a horror film that keeps you on your toes and winds up with a unexpectedly bleak ending.
102) The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe - possibly the second best fantasy film after LoTR.
103) Drugstore Girl - sort of like Waterboys or Swing Girls but more strange and less good.
104) City Slickers - early 90s cheese all the way.
The top 10:
10) DOA: Dead Or Alive
9) Slither
8) Good Night, And Good Luck
7) Clerks II
6) Monster House
5) Mind Game
4) Hana
3) Election 2
2) Pan's Labyrinth
1) Children Of Men
Some random stats:
Japanese: 28%
Korean: 8%
Chinese/HK: 6%
Looking back over my 52filmchallenge posts, I can see that I have used the words, "hysterical", "hilarious", and "batshit" far too often.
1) Koushounin Mashita Masayoshi - spin-off from Odoru Daisousasen; good acting, bad story.
2) The Hidden Blade - funnier and more romantic than The Twilight Samurai but a less tense finale.
3) King Kong - yes, it was a little bit long and the Skull Island segment could and should have been trimmed, but I had this idea that things would get boring and they didn't at all.
4) Kikujiro - hilarious at times, yet beautiful and moving.
5) A Bittersweet Life - noirish thriller with a great set-up that unfortunately does the usual Asian thing of throwing in unnecessary (black) humour.
6) Kirikou And The Sorceress - brilliant children's animation about a small African village cursed by a sorceress, and the talking baby who saves them all.
7) Memoirs Of A Geisha - decent enough, but Zhang Ziyi embarasses herself every time she opens her mouth (which thankfully isn't often) and gets acted off the screen by just about every other person in the film, in particular by Gong Li.
8) Lady Vengeance - hilarious in places, striking imagery, but a tad too long.
9) Odorou Daisousasen - just like an extended episode of the TV series with a bigger budget.
10) Jarhead - a war movie showing the bits you don't usually see, soldiers sitting around doing nothing all day.
11) Odoru Daisousasen 2 - better than the first film, worse than the series, and finally someone other than Aoshima gets injured.
12) Stripes - military version of Police Academy with brilliance from Bill Murray, but too much of that old 80s silliness and gung-ho patriotism.
13) Returner - Japanese SF that steals borrows from pays homage to The Terminator and The Matrix with mixed success.
14) Brokeback Mountain - a whole lot of sheep, beautiful scenery, and an excellent performance from Ledger.
15) Good Night, And Good Luck - excellent film taking a look at the conflict between journalist Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
16) Visitor Q - incest, domestic violence, murder, necrophilia, and lactation in a film that makes makes Ichi The Killer look tame.
17) The Astronaut's Wife - good idea ruined by shoddy execution. Depp is creepy, Theron is a bit overwrought, and the obligatory twist you can see coming a mile away.
18) Fancy Dance - life in a remote Japanese Buddhist temple, with a bit of comedy and romance thrown in.
19) Sympathy For Mister Vengeance - slower and more considered than the rest of the trilogy with shockingly brutal violence.
20) The World's Fastest Indian - an uplifting and inspiring film about following your dreams regardless of age ( reviewed here).
21) The Devil's Backbone - ghosts, greed and the Spanish Civil War
22) The Showdown - low-budget Korean martial arts film that is far better than The Purifiers, yet still lacks the feeling of actual combat.
23) Equilibrium - the best of the post-Matrix films.
24) Irreversible - 20 minutes of spastic camerawork, a brutal murder and a 10 minute anal rape scene do not make a good film.
25) Near Dark - cult vampire film that could been improved with more action or more drama.
26) Mirrormask - visually stunning fantasy from the dynamic duo of McKean and Gaiman. The story isn't all that, but good stuff from Stephanie Leonidas and Gina McKee with impressive CGI eye-candy courtesy of McKean and his Bournemouth University graduate sweat-shop.
27) Inner Senses - HK version of The Sixth Sense which starts well before going into a badly done romantic sub-plot with some truly dreadful Ring/The Grudge inspired nonsense to finish.
28) Munich - thematically confused but very entertaining.
29) Lucky Number Slevin - Hollywood does Guy Ritchie, except with less humour and with less stylistic excess.
30) Seven Swords - turgid piece of steaming dog turd that even the mighty Donnie Yen cannot rescue.
31) The Great Yokai War - a kids film from Takashi Miike that is subversive, hilarious, grotesque and completely barmy, often in the same scene.
32) Aeon Flux - impressive visuals but a naff plot.
33) Domino - good if not particularly thrilling and over-directed to the point of migraine inducement.
34) The Weather Man - well acted throughout and the lack of a resolutely happy ending is good, but damn is it depressing at times.
35) Nanny McPhee - brilliant and very British film about a single father, seven out of control children and a nanny with magical powers and five lessons to teach.
36) Nana - decent adaptation of the manga (which I need to read).
37) V For Vendetta - too long, too slow, too dull and not saved by the last hour.
38) Shinobi - pretty CGI-fest that looks to be a Japanese version Hero but falls rather short of the mark.
39) Malice - compelling thriller that is entertaining throughout, except for that entirely superfluous sub-plot.
40) Lie Lie Lie - Japanese variation on The Producers that meanders a little too much at the start, but is hilarious when it gets going.
41) Swing Girls - the plot won't give anyone a headache but it is funny, simple and heart-warming.
42) Whiteout - Cliffhanger + Japan + terrorists + dam = Whiteout.
43) Fireworks, Ferris Wheels And Love - a gentle romance film that contains few surprises, but is raised up by the understated performances of its two stars.
44) The Art Of Fighting - painful to watch at times, but a good film - like a less saccharine and more brutal Karate Kid.
45) Sha Po Lam - too much drama, not enough action.
46) Tiger On The Beat - Chow-Yun Fat in the usual (at that time) mish-mash of slap-stick, comedy, drama, kung fu, shoot-outs and a full-on chainsaw duel.
47) Inside Man - nicely done, but I just think it took a little too long to get going.
48) The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension - a SF film that has moments of sheer genius, and a fairly impressive list of stars back in the day, but it's just a little too surreal to be coherent.
49) Club Paradise - fun, but so very 80s.
50) Slither - very good, but Tremors is still the KING.
51) Mission Impossible 3 - decent, but would it kill Hollywood to write an intelligent action film?
52) Hinokio - a nice premise but let down by a highly confusing sub-plot
53) The Da Vinci Code - well, I didn't have high hopes for this so it was mildly entertaining.
54) Election - interesting enough, but not the saviour of HK cinema that people have made it out to be.
55) Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - too long, not funny enough, worse than the first film and ends with a bloody cliffhanger.
56) Branded To Kill - mental Japanese films started here I think.
57) My Super Ex-Girlfriend - Fatal Attraction + Superman + Swingers = My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
58) Superman Returns - Verdict: Donner is still the king.
59) Battlefield Baseball - baseball with weapons and zombie-esque bad guys but done badly.
60) One Missed Call - formulaic Japanese horror that steals badly from both Ring and The Grudge.
61) Black Angel 2 - slow moving assassin film with less action and more drama than one might expect.
62) Miami Vice - a bit shit, but redeemed in part by the superb action sequences and Gong Li.
63) Always: Sunset On Third Street - good but the nostalgia was completely wasted on me and it seemed a little too rose-tinted for my liking.
64) Mind Game - completely batshit insane anime.
65) Snakes On A Plane - good clean fun.
66) Sharkskin Man And Peach Hip Girl - stylish Japanese crime film that forgets the key element of having a story that engages and makes sense.
67) DOA: Dead Or Alive - exploitative, mindless, excessive wire-fu, and yet oh so very entertaining.
68) Casablanca - well deserving of its accolades.
69) Yugo The Negotiator - good but not a patch on 3-Iron and Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...And Spring.
71) Pan's Labyrinth - apparently I'm a big softy for thinking it was all real. :P
72) Guns And Talks - it's silly, slapstick in places, but not overly stylised and doesn't outstay its welcome, ludicrously implausible finale aside.
73) The Host - a big budget Hollywood-style film done in the Far East.
74) Election 2 - gritty, realistic and much better than its predecessor.
75) Crank - adrenaline fuelled revenge flick that is hyper-edited to the point of nausea, but not a patch on any similar film made in the 80s.
76) Clerks II - hysterically funny from start to finish, even with a slightly more serious slant.
77) The Calamari Wrestler - mental and hysterically funny.
78) The Departed - excellent acting but the plot is dire.
79) Gantz - ultra-violent anime series; most of the characters are completely brainless, the protagonist is insufferable for all but the last two episodes, the fan-service is ludricrously OTT (even the original manga wasn't this bad), and the writer needs to taken out behind the chemical sheds and shot for the dog, but for all that it has its moments.
80) Big Bang Love, Juvenile A - sparse dialogue, long static shots and full of symbolism, this is the kind of art-house film that sends me straight to sleep. And it did.
81) Midori No Hibi - it's a bit saccharine at times but it is amusing without resorting to too many cliches.
82) Children Of Men - the story holds together well, despite lacking an explanation for the fertility problem, and both acting and direction are excellent. Probably film of the year thinking about it.
83) The Go Master - good stuff, but Kim Ki Duk does this kind of minimalism better.
84) Hana - up there with Yoji Yamada's work as an example of an excellent contemporary samurai film.
85) The King And Clown - well acted and beautifully shot, it's not quite the Korean answer to Farewell My Concubine but very good in its own right.
86) Sword Of Doom - grim, violent black and white samurai film that is well shot and acted but a little confusing
87) The Professor's Beloved Equation - evokes a true sense of wonder in the power and beauty of numbers.
88) Steamboy - the eye-candy is great but other than that this was a massive disappointment.
89) Trick 2 - after three series, two films and one feature length special, Trick has run its course.
90) Monster House - the best CG animation in years.
91) Casino Royale - Bond as Fleming originally intended - a cold, violent bastard.
92) American Ninja - a dreadful 80s action film yet strangely watchable.
93) Timeline - ditches some of the set-pieces (A Knight's Tale had already covered the jousting angle) but by and large it retains the tension of the book.
94) Layer Cake - British crime drama that works because it goes for a bit more realism and less of the comedy.
95) Princess Aurora - aside from the lead's excellent performance, the film is hollow.
96) On Her Majesty's Secret Service - massively overrated.
97) Scoop - Woody Allen does London and not very well at that.
98) Happy Feet - second best CG animation of the year after Monster House.
99) Fantastic Four - not as shit as I was expecting.
100) Dukes Of Hazzard - a remake that is true to the memory of the original and updates it at the same time.
101) The Descent - a horror film that keeps you on your toes and winds up with a unexpectedly bleak ending.
102) The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe - possibly the second best fantasy film after LoTR.
103) Drugstore Girl - sort of like Waterboys or Swing Girls but more strange and less good.
104) City Slickers - early 90s cheese all the way.
The top 10:
10) DOA: Dead Or Alive
9) Slither
8) Good Night, And Good Luck
7) Clerks II
6) Monster House
5) Mind Game
4) Hana
3) Election 2
2) Pan's Labyrinth
1) Children Of Men
Some random stats:
Japanese: 28%
Korean: 8%
Chinese/HK: 6%