I have done my annual book review for a number years now, but this year I thought I would do films too. Around this time last year I was introduced to a movie social network/tracking site that I really like: Letterboxd. Check out their cool 2012 Year in Review. If you want an invite, just ping me! I used it to track all 47 films I saw this year. That is not a lot of films by my standards, but with two kids I have little time for movies. When I do watch I tend to have to split a film up over a couple of viewings. However, it does mean I get to see a lot more animation, incuding my beloved Ghibli films.
This year, only 3 films garnered 5 stars:
Avengers is obviously not a masterpiece example of l’art du cinéma, but it was so fun that I wanted to watch it immediately again (which I did) and listened to about 6 hours worth of podcasts about it. I am not a pro movie critic so there is no requirement for objectivity. I agree with one reviewer that this film just might be the Star Wars to today’s young generation. To give a little more balance, here are some of my favourite films that scored 4 and 4.5 stars:
- The Hobbit (detailed)
- Inglourious Basterds (beautiful!)
- The Right Stuff (amazing!)
- Son of Rambow (touching)
- Brave (beautiful!)
- Incendies (don’t read anything about it, just watch it)
- Primer (the same!)
Moonrise Kingdom scored high too, but only ranked fourth on my list of Favourite Wes Anderson Films.
As for film duds, I really only saw one (The Lorax) but I would have to say that Prometheus and Dark Knight Rises were probably the most disappointing of the year. Unlike the prevailing hipster opinion, I enjoyed The Hobbit quite a bit. There are still a number of films released this year that I have yet to see (Skyfall, Argo, Django Unchained just to name a few). They will have to wait.
