Friday, January 10, 2014

Five years of Movies

I have seen 140 movies and documentaries in the last five years.  I know this fact because of the lists I've been keeping on this blog - a thing I wish I'd always done.  I'd love to be able to look back at my movie list from ten or twenty years ago.  I'm sure I've forgotten so many.  

I have rated each film with one to five asterisks, (based only on my personal enjoyment of the film.) And after five years, only eleven were deemed worthy of a five asterisk rating: Doubt, The Visitor, Frozen River, UP, Julie & Julia, Iris, An Education, A Single Man, Midnight in Paris, The Flat, and Five Broken Cameras.

The films I hated and gave only one asterisk are:  Gran Torino, District 9, Inception, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I'm Still Here, I am Love, and Blue is the Warmest Color.

So:  I only hated 7 out of 140 films.  But I only loved 11, which seems pretty low to me.  I am so often disappointed at the movies these days.  So many films are ho-hum.  

1 comment:

Diane said...

Good list. There are some movies I find defining. When I was a little girl I loved Gypsy with Natalie Wood. The scene where she looks into the mirror and realizes she is pretty stained my brain.

Just off the cuff, I love Moonstruck, What About Bob, Ground Hog Day (especially because I can watch it over and over and still enjoy it.) Conversely, I loved Pulp Fiction, a movie you can only really appreciate upon first viewing. Memento was very good. Punch Drunk Love, Adam Sandler's serious turn. Most Woody Allen Movies, okay all Woody Allen movies, even the bad ones. Get Shorty. Any movie where the underdog kicks the crap out of the other guy. I love Tampopo. Julie and Julia, yes. Babette's Feast. Very much enjoyed Defending Your Life. Especially because he could have as much pie as he wanted.

A movie I hated was Open Water. Hated it. Lord of the Rings made me want to hang myself with the movie theater rope. And like Elaine on Seinfeld, not a fan of the English Patient.

My two cents. And I just realized I didn't do the five year thing. I'd have to think about that one. But you get the idea.