So, here we are again, reviewing the movies I saw in the past year and seeing what stuck out and what faded away. My list of movies was quite a bit shorter this year (I finally went and got myself a life; didn’t see that one coming). But while the quantity was small, the quality was remarkable.
Or maybe I’ve just gotten more forgiving. Anyway, here’s my list, in alphabetical order.
It’s that time of year again at Film Cannon where I pick out my top films of the year and try my damnedest to get you see them.
When I was looking over my movie list of the year, I was surprised to discover that I don’t have a top ten this year.
At first, I thought it was because I just watched a lot of crap movies this past year, but that’s not really the case. Yes, I saw some bad ones (looking at you, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”), but mostly, I didn’t see a lot of movies that moved me.
Part of that is that while I didn’t watch a lot of *great* movies, I did watch a lot of really, really good TV.
Over the year, I watched the entire run of “Stargate: SG1,” new “Doctor Who,” “Torchwood,” “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” “Dollhouse,” “Cosmos,” “Sanctuary” and probably some other shows I’m forgetting too (plus new episodes of “Lost” and “Battlestar Galactica”), and while this is primarily a movie blog, I must admit that television delivered for me while the movies just kind of let me down.
Granted, television has a clear advantage in that fight, but usually they come out even. Oh well, enough of that talk; the list is short this year with just eight entries, but all the films are worth seeking out.
I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again; I really, really dislike Westerns.
For starters, I hate the West (never mind that I live there; that’s a different post); it’s the most ugly and unphotogenic region captured on film. I see no reason to revel in a landscape that’s mostly barren and dead.
But more importantly, the movies themselves are generally repugnant; they mostly celebrate the ugly side of American history while ignoring the complexity of Manifest Destiny. Indians are always pure evil, and Americans are always the victims of violence, and the historical whitewashing only serves to piss me off.
This isn’t going to be a typical end of the year list, mainly because I’m not a typical critic. I saw five movies in the theater (as opposed to 119 total…I counted) this year, and a few that came out this year that I rented, but for the most part, I was skipping around in time and watching movies from all over the spectrum (like normal).
And in that spirit, I’m not necessarily picking the movies I thought were “the best.” Here are the films that, in one way or another, stuck with me after watching them. Bad and good is a bit easy to determine, especially in the cold light of January, but it’s a bit harder to pin down why a film haunts you, which I will attempt to do now.
So here’s my list, in alphabetical order. Happy reading.