Slowly Going Baldtag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://22012-05-10T17:28:48Z2012-05-10T17:29:34Z2012-05-08T19:34:10Z2012-04-23T20:45:18Z2012-04-25T19:20:28Z2012-04-20T17:39:53Z2012-04-20T17:42:40Z2012-03-26T17:41:25Z2012-03-20T17:40:38Z2012-03-16T18:04:37Z2012-03-15T17:33:05Z2012-03-08T21:15:14Z2012-03-26T17:42:40Z2012-02-13T17:04:16Z2012-02-13T17:07:11Z2012-02-09T03:52:09Z2012-01-30T17:04:37Z2012-01-27T14:31:18Z2012-01-27T14:25:46Z2012-01-20T13:53:24Z2012-01-21T23:17:02Z2012-01-16T02:41:59Z2012-01-04T21:03:26Z2012-01-02T17:12:32Z2011-12-27T04:17:25Z2011-12-21T13:32:00Z2011-12-16T16:05:12Z2012-02-01T17:01:04Z2011-12-21T13:33:16Z2011-12-09T17:23:10ZMovable Type 3.33Review: Safety Not Guaranteedtag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17352012-05-10T14:07:33Z2012-05-10T17:28:48Z I really liked this one. Good story, and one that really earns its ending. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
I really liked this one. Good story, and one that really earns its ending.
Click here for the review.]]>
May 2012tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17372012-05-10T07:29:00Z2012-05-10T17:29:34ZSafety Not Guaranteed...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/Safety Not Guaranteed]]>
Sights And Soundstag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17362012-05-08T16:59:19Z2012-05-08T19:34:10Z Cole Abaius over at Film School Rejects invited me and a number of other writers, critics, and filmmakers to contribute our picks for the greatest films of all time. He did this as a response to the latest iteration...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/Cole Abaius over at Film School Rejects invited me and a number of other writers, critics, and filmmakers to contribute our picks for the greatest films of all time. He did this as a response to the latest iteration of Sight & Sound's list of the 10 greatest films ever made, a list that's already prompted responses in the critical sphere.
It's worth noting that, for me, "greatest films" and "personal favorites" do not necessarily line up. This has nothing to do with bias, fear of going against the current, or anything as nebulous and poorly defined as "guilty pleasures." Rather, I think it's entirely possible to love and respect a film as one of the best ever made without holding it dear to your heart the way you do those films that have a more personal meaning. Writing on the subject of good bad books, George Orwell said: "The existence of good bad literature — the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously — is a reminder that art is not the same thing as celebration." In other words, I can believe Rashomon to be one of the greatest films ever made without ranking it as a personal favorite, and I can love Rushmore like nothing else without considering it to be the best film of all time. This is an area of critical and personal study I find endlessly fascinating: what we love, what we value, and how those two diverge.
Anyway, all that to say that, for the purposes of this list, I ranked what I consider to be 10 worthy candidates for the title of "best films ever made." It was tough but fun to do, and I think the individual lists make for great reading. I also think the final list is a smart representation of moviemaking at its best, and I was happy to contribute. Read on:
The 10 Greatest Movies of All Time (According to The Internet)
Also, here's the Top 10 list I submitted, along with accompanying blurbs. (Through crossed wires on my end, I'd thought blurbs were required for every film, not just our No. 1 pick. Lucky you.)
1. The Godfather: Film’s great power is to reflect the difference between who we want to be and who we actually are. No film better captures that emotional schism than The Godfather, a gorgeous, sweeping story of ruin and damnation that charts a family’s very American rise and fall. The crime story, thrilling though it is, takes second place to the heartbreaking tale of power, greed, and self-destruction. You always want Michael to make it out, but you know he never will.
2. Singin’ in the Rain: The best musical ever made, hands down, it’s also one of Hollywood’s favorite things: a story about itself. What could’ve been just another jukebox musical is instead a sweet, spellbinding love story set against the moment when pictures started to grow up (just a little). It’s a love letter to movies, and it’s impossible not to have a good time watching it.
3. Sullivan’s Travels: There’s an intriguing bit of darkness shot through Preston Sturges’ satire of screenwriters that makes it more relevant and gripping than just another workplace comedy. The laughing faces that make up the film’s final moment seem like they’re howling at the moon. A witty, fantastic road comedy.
4. Sunset Boulevard: For my own Top 10 list, I was tempted to simply submit the name “Billy Wilder” and be done with it. He’s one of the best directors of all time, and Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece in every way. Dark, sad, funny, weird, and possessed of the kind of bittersweet nostalgia for days that never happened that always seems to show up in movies in/about Hollywood’s golden age.
5. Citizen Kane: The film’s place as an American classic makes it feel like a textbook answer instead of a movie, which is a shame, because it’s still a wonderful drama about excess, power, and the other ways we drive ourselves to destruction. It also deserves every ounce of praise it’s been given for the technical breakthroughs with which it ushered in a new type of moviemaking.
6. Casablanca: The unbeatable heartbreaker. Doomed romance doesn’t automatically make for good storytelling, either. It takes great characters, situations, writing, drama, pathos; Casablanca has it all in spades.
7. Do the Right Thing: Spike Lee is another great American filmmaker, and his 1989 exploration of racial tension in a Brooklyn neighborhood remains his crowning achievement. It’s staggeringly raw, an exposed nerve that Lee refuses to cover or let heal. Required viewing for all humans.
8. Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa’s output was prodigious, and he made a number of classics, but Rashomon deserves special attention for telling a story so well that we’re still remaking it decades later. The “narrative with shifting perspectives” feels like an old trick now, and it’s rarely done well, but Rashomon showed the power of playing with audience perception and how the truth is never what we think it’s going to be.
9. The Apartment: The Apartment might not get as many mentions today as Some Like It Hot, the film Billy Wilder made before it, but it holds up just as well. The story is simple — nebbish underling loans his apartment to corporate execs who need a place to have affairs — but it quickly evolves into something much more complex, mature, and dark. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine are fantastic.
10. Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back: Borrowing basic structure and sensibility from Westerns, The Empire Strikes Back is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made thanks to its attention to character above all else. It’s a chase movie that doubles as a meditation on sacrifice and growing up, and the small number of locations means we get to spend time feeling out the fantasy world before us. It’s also damn nice to look at, employing the kind of color temperatures and painterly compositions sadly foreign to the genre. There have been six movies and host of spin-off stories set in George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, but this outshines them all.
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Game's The Same, Just Got More Fiercetag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17342012-04-23T18:42:05Z2012-04-23T20:45:18Z In which Joanna and I talk about thematic and structural similarities between some of today's best dramas and what many (myself included) to be the greatest ever made. Way Down in the Hole: 6 Great Dramas That Owe a...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
In which Joanna and I talk about thematic and structural similarities between some of today's best dramas and what many (myself included) to be the greatest ever made.
Way Down in the Hole: 6 Great Dramas That Owe a Debt to "The Wire"]]>
Tweet Less, Watch Moretag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17332012-04-23T07:08:51Z2012-04-25T19:20:28Z In which I talk about the growing habit of tweeting plot spoilers, and how you'd be better off just watching a TV instead of trying to constantly form a processed reaction to it. How Live-Tweeting TV Shows Ruins Everything...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
In which I talk about the growing habit of tweeting plot spoilers, and how you'd be better off just watching a TV instead of trying to constantly form a processed reaction to it.
How Live-Tweeting TV Shows Ruins EverythingUPDATE: Plugged by The Daily Beast, no less. ]]>
Review: Get the Gringotag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17312012-04-20T14:50:46Z2012-04-20T17:39:53Z Kind of weird and small-time. Makes sense as a VOD release. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
Kind of weird and small-time. Makes sense as a VOD release.
Click here for the review.]]>
April 2012tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17322012-04-20T07:40:51Z2012-04-20T17:42:40ZGet the Gringo...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/Get the Gringo]]>
Review: John Dies at the Endtag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17282012-03-26T14:34:51Z2012-03-26T17:41:25Z I sat before the screen in a stupor. The film kind of beat the life out of me. Here are the notes I took while watching. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
I sat before the screen in a stupor. The film kind of beat the life out of me. Here are the notes I took while watching.
Click here for the review.]]>
Review: Somebody Up There Likes Metag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17272012-03-20T14:37:12Z2012-03-20T17:40:38Z A pretty awful experience. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
A pretty awful experience.
Click here for the review.]]>
The Psychology of Letting Gotag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17262012-03-16T14:38:12Z2012-03-16T18:04:37Z I am not at all certain this came out the way I wanted it to, but I tried to get the ball rolling on some things that have been gnawing at me. I started this piece in slightly altered...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
I am not at all certain this came out the way I wanted it to, but I tried to get the ball rolling on some things that have been gnawing at me. I started this piece in slightly altered form last November. It's only a couple thousand words, but they were harder fought than others.
The Psychology of Letting Go: What It Means to Love and Lose]]>
Review: Fat Kid Rules the Worldtag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17252012-03-15T13:54:22Z2012-03-15T17:33:05Z Probably my favorite narrative entry of SXSW 2012. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
Probably my favorite narrative entry of SXSW 2012.
Click here for the review.]]>
Review: John Cartertag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17232012-03-08T14:24:11Z2012-03-08T21:15:14Z I liked it. Not perfect, but enjoyable. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
I liked it. Not perfect, but enjoyable.
Click here for the review.]]>
March 2012tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17242012-03-08T11:15:22Z2012-03-26T17:42:40ZJohn Carter Fat Kid Rules the World Somebody Up There Likes Me John Dies at the End...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/John CarterFat Kid Rules the WorldSomebody Up There Likes MeJohn Dies at the End]]>
Review: Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace 3Dtag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17202012-02-13T13:01:27Z2012-02-13T17:04:16Z Very, very boring. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
Very, very boring.
Click here for the review.]]>
February 2012tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17212012-02-13T07:05:11Z2012-02-13T17:07:11ZStar Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace 3D...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace 3D]]>
Sleep, Sleep Tonighttag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17192012-02-08T23:53:28Z2012-02-09T03:52:09ZWe found the cats on a Thursday. Someone had abandoned five kittens — four small, one very small — outside the church where my wife works. They'd left them in a cardboard box with a bowl of water; miraculously, none of the...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
We found the cats on a Thursday. Someone had abandoned five kittens — four small, one very small — outside the church where my wife works. They'd left them in a cardboard box with a bowl of water; miraculously, none of the kittens had drowned in the bowl. They looked to be no more than ten days old, far too young to be without their mother. The most likely explanation is that someone didn't spay their cat, and rather than find a way to deal with the kittens, they left them at the church and hoped fate and charity would take over. The kittens got more than that in my wife, though. They got a home.
She brought them home that evening — no shelter would have taken them and let them live, and they can't even be adopted out until they're six weeks old — and we bathed them with lemon-scented dish soap to kill the fleas that had already taken root in their thin fur. We fashioned a clean bed for them from a new plastic litter pan lined with towels and a shirt, under which we placed a heating pad. That first night was so long: cleaning, feeding, caring, figuring out what to do. The kittens needed to be nursed every two hours, and we used cotton swabs in warm water to simulate their absent mother's tongue and get them to relieve themselves. They scrabbled and howled, and they walked with a tremor, and we loved them. My wife took them to the vet before bringing them home, and the vet had made it clear that there was no way to know if the kittens would survive, or for long. We could only feed them, and help them, and hope.
The little one's eyes hadn't opened yet, but that didn't stop him from yowling at every opportunity. He ate less than the others, but he was also half their size. We did for him what we did for them all. We held him and fed him, we told him he was safe. We knew he had a fight ahead of him, but we saw the way he scrambled around and refused to quit. We hoped.
Tuesday night — five days after the kittens came to us — we bathed the litter and changed their bedding. The kittens had grown stronger since their first bath, but also more understanding on some level of what was happening around them, and they put up far less of a fight for their second bath. The little guy was a little too resigned, though. While drying him off, I noticed a dark smear on my hand. He'd begun having diarrhea. I massaged him a while until he was finished, then cleaned him off. The kittens had started defecating a couple days earlier, but not like this. This was different. This was bad.
As my wife and I took turns feeding them throughout the night, we noticed that the littlest one wasn't eating as much as he used to, nor as much as we reasoned he might need to eat to start replenishing what he'd lost when he was sick in my hand. It's dangerous to overfeed kittens, and my wife and I had both been worried about how little the tiny one was, but we'd hoped that his sporadic bursts of appetite had been a positive sign. We never forced food on him.
Wednesday morning, he was the same. Not his old self, but not great. He didn't eat much, if anything. He was still half the size or less of his brothers and sisters, just two or three ounces. Around midday, my wife noticed he wasn't responding to her attempts to feed him or offer physical affection. Worried and tearful, she took him to the vet immediately, though we already had a follow-up appointment that afternoon for the litter. When she arrived, the doctor examined the little guy and determined that he was suffering from what's known as Fading Kitten Syndrome. Essentially, living was becoming too much of a fight for the little boy, and there was precious little to be done. He was already unresponsive and uninterested in food, and his heart rate was drastically lower than what it should have been. Seizures would be next. The last thing my wife or I would ever do would be to cause harm to an animal, especially one as vulnerable, confused, and innocent as this one. My wife agreed with the vet's recommended course of action, and we allowed our little man to be put to sleep.
He was just shy of three weeks old. We knew when we took the litter in that their odds of survival were small and wavering, and that the little one would have the toughest road to walk. We prepared ourselves in the abstract for the possibility that at least one of these five helpless creatures might not survive. People asked us for pictures of the litter, but my wife and I didn't take any. We didn't even discuss it with each other: we simply knew that we wouldn't be able to bear looking at the photos if things took a turn for the worse. Our little guy left us just five days after we met him, but we gave him the best home we could in that time. We gave him a warm bed, and food, and we tried to give him every chance at life we could. Mostly we just loved him. His time here was short, and it's likely that he wouldn't have made it even if he'd had his mother around. But we loved him anyway. We gave him a place to sleep and be happy, to eat and rest with his brothers and sisters, to try and find a way to fight. That he couldn't isn't a failure on his part, or ours. It's just what had to be.
I think about how he came to us, and about how someone threw him away. Some days I want to find his former owner and howl at them about their recklessness and ignorance, about their total disregard for the safety of their own pet and the children it had, about what kind of empty freak they must be to have such little respect for life. Other days I remind myself I don't know where he came from, and that maybe whoever used to have him regrets not being more responsible, and that I should be grateful they were at least thoughtful enough to leave him and his siblings outside a church where people would likely find them. I don't know. I don't know how to feel about that person, and I try not to think about them. Instead, I think about our little guy, our brave boy, our little warrior, our tender man who tried so hard to live and who wanted so badly to make it, and who, in the end, slipped away. We loved him, and I hope so much we made him feel better for just a few days. How we loved him.
He never even opened his eyes.
The Joys Of Penny Cantag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17182012-01-30T14:01:14Z2012-01-30T17:04:37Z Had a blast over the weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse's "Cougar Town" screening and shindig. Check it: "Cougar Town" Season Three Preview Event: I Won't Back Down...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
Had a blast over the weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse's "Cougar Town" screening and shindig. Check it:
"Cougar Town" Season Three Preview Event: I Won't Back Down]]>
Review: The Greytag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17172012-01-27T07:02:22Z2012-01-27T14:31:18Z Pretty solid. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
Pretty solid.
Click here for the review.]]>
January 2012tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17162012-01-20T07:53:45Z2012-01-27T14:25:46ZHaywire The Grey...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/HaywireThe Grey]]>
Review: Haywiretag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17152012-01-20T05:18:07Z2012-01-20T13:53:24Z Not bad, not great. Somehow calmly in the middle. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
Not bad, not great. Somehow calmly in the middle.
Click here for the review.]]>
The All-Time Listtag:slowlygoingbald.com,2007://2.7622012-01-11T07:03:00Z2012-01-21T23:17:02ZThis list is as complete as I can make it. It's possible that I've seen a film and forgotten all about it, especially if I saw it as a child. Occasionally I’ll think of a film and realize I’ve forgotten...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
This list is as complete as I can make it. It's possible that I've seen a film and forgotten all about it, especially if I saw it as a child. Occasionally I’ll think of a film and realize I’ve forgotten to add it. But for the most part, this is a comprehensive list of every film I've seen in my life.
1. About a Boy (2002)
2. About Schmidt (2002)
3. Abre los ojos (1997) (Open Your Eyes)
4. Absence of Malice (1981)
5. Absent Minded Professor, The (1961)
6. Absolute Power (1997)
7. Abyss, The (1989)
8. Accepted (2006)
9. Ace in the Hole (1951)
10. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)
11. Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995)
12. Across the Universe (2007)
13. Adam (2009)
14. Adaptation. (2002)
15. Addams Family Values (1993)
16. Addams Family, The (1991)
17. Adjustment Bureau, The (2011)
18. Adventureland (2009)
19. Adventures in Babysitting (1987)
20. Adventures of Huck Finn, The (1993)
21. Adventures of Milo and Otis, The (1986)
22. Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938)
23. African Queen, The (1951)
24. After Dark, My Sweet (1990)
25. Ain’t in it for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm (2010)
26. Air Force One (1997)
27. Airborne (1993)
28. Airheads (1994)
29. Aladdin (1992)
30. Alice (1988) (dir. Jan Svankmajer)
31. Alice in Wonderland (1951)
32. Alien (1979)
33. Alien: Resurrection (1997)
34. Aliens (1986)
35. Alien3 (1992)
36. All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)
37. All I Want for Christmas (1991)
38. All That Heaven Allows (1955)
39. All That Jazz (1979)
40. All the King’s Men (2006)
41. All the President's Men (1976)
42. All the Real Girls (2003)
43. Almost Famous (2000)
44. Along Came Polly (2004)
45. Always (1989)
46. Amadeus (1984)
47. Amelia (2009)
48. Amelie (2002)
49. American, The (2010)
50. American Beauty (1999)
51. American Gangster (2007)
52. American Graffiti (1973)
53. American History X (1998)
54. American Pie (1999)
55. American Pie 2 (2001)
56. American President, The (1995)
57. American Psycho (2000)
58. American Splendor (2003)
59. American Tail, An (1986)
60. American Tail: Fievel Goes West, An (1991)
61. American Teen (2008)
62. Amores perros (2000) (Love’s a Bitch)
63. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
64. Analyze This (1999)
65. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
66. Andromeda Strain, The (1971)
67. Angels in the Outfield (1994)
68. Angus (1995)
69. Animal House (1978)
70. Animal Kingdom (2010)
71. Annapolis (2006)
72. Annie (1982)
73. Annie Hall (1977)
74. Anonymous (2011)
75. Apocalypse Now (1979)
76. Apollo 13 (1995)
77. Apostle, The (1997)
78. Appaloosa (2008)
79. Arachnophobia (1990)
80. Aristocats, The (1970)
81. Aristocrats, The (2005)
82. Arlington Road (1999)
83. Armageddon (1998)
84. Army of Darkness (1993)
85. Art of War, The (2000)
86. Artist, The (2011)
87. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
88. As Good As It Gets (1997)
89. Ask the Dust (2006)
90. Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The (2007)
91. Assassins (1995)
92. A-Team, The (2010)
93. Atonement (2007)
94. Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
95. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
96. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
97. Australia (2008)
98. Auto Focus (2002)
99. Aviator, The (2004)
100. Awakenings (1990)
101. Away We Go (2009)
102. Babe (1995)
103. Babel (2006)
104. Babes in Toyland (1961)
105. Baby Mama (2008)
106. Back to the Future (1985)
107. Back to the Future Part II (1989)
108. Back to the Future Part III (1990)
109. Backdraft (1991)
110. Bad Santa (2003)
111. Badlands (1973)
112. Bag of Hammers, A (2011)
113. Baghead (2008)
114. Bambi (1942)
115. Bandits (2001)
116. Barry Munday (2010)
117. BASEketball (1998)
118. Basic Instinct (1992)
119. Batman & Robin (1997)
120. Batman (1966)
121. Batman (1989)
122. Batman Begins (2005)
123. Batman Forever (1995)
124. Batman Returns (1992)
125. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
126. Be Kind Rewind (2008)
127. Beautiful Mind, A (2001)
128. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
129. Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
130. Bee Movie (2007)
131. Beerfest (2006)
132. Beetlejuice (1988)
133. Before Sunrise (1995)
134. Before Sunset (2004)
135. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
136. Beginners (2011)
137. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011)
138. Being John Malkovich (1999)
139. Being There (1979)
140. Best in Show (2000)
141. Best Worst Movie (2009)
142. Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)
143. Beverly Hillbillies, The (1993)
144. Big (1988)
145. Big Bounce, The (2004)
146. Big Chill, The (1983)
147. Big Daddy (1999)
148. Big Empty, The (2003)
149. Big Fan (2009)
150. Big Fish (2003)
151. Big Lebowski, The (1998)
152. Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)
153. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
154. Billy Elliot (2000)
155. Billy Madison (1995)
156. Bio-Dome (1996)
157. Birdcage, The (1996)
158. Black Dahlia, The (2006)
159. Black Hawk Down (2001)
160. Black Hole, The (1979)
161. Black Room, The (1935)
162. Black Sheep (1996)
163. Black Swan (2010)
164. Blade Runner (1982)
165. Blades of Glory (2007)
166. Blair Witch Project, The (1999)
167. Blank Check (1994)
168. Blazing Saddles (1974)
169. Blindness (2008)
170. Blood Simple (1984)
171. Blown Away (1994)
172. Blowup (1966)
173. Blue Velvet (1986)
174. Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)
175. Blues Brothers, The (1980)
176. Body Heat (1981)
177. Body of Lies (2008)
178. Bone Collector, The (1999)
179. Boogie Nights (1997)
180. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
181. Bordello of Blood (1996)
182. Bottle Rocket (1996)
183. Bound (1996)
184. Bourne Identity, The (2002)
185. Bourne Supremacy, The (2004)
186. Bourne Ultimatum, The (2007)
187. Bowfinger (1999)
188. Bowling for Columbine (2002)
189. Box, The (2009)
190. Boys Are Back, The (2009)
191. Brady Bunch Movie, The (1995)
192. Brave Little Toaster, The (1987)
193. Brave One, The (2007)
194. Braveheart (1995)
195. Breach (2007)
196. Break-Up, The (2006)
197. Breakfast Club, The (1985)
198. Breaking the Waves (1996)
199. Brick (2006)
200. Bride of Chucky (1998)
201. Bridesmaids (2011)
202. Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
203. Bring It On (2000)
204. Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
205. Broadcast News (1987)
206. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
207. Brokedown Palace (1999)
208. Broken Arrow (1996)
209. Broken Flowers (2005)
210. Brotherhood of the Wolf, The (Le Pacte des loups) (2001)
211. Brothers (2009)
212. Brothers McMullen, The (1995)
213. Bruce Almighty (2003)
214. Buck (2011)
215. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
216. Bug's Life, A (1998)
217. Bull Durham (1988)
218. Burn After Reading (2008)
219. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
220. Butterfly Effect, The (2004)
221. Cabin Fever (2002)
222. Cable Guy, The (1996)
223. Cadillac Records (2008)
224. Can't Buy Me Love (1987)
225. Can't Hardly Wait (1998)
226. Candidate, The (1972)
227. Capote (2005)
228. Captain America (1991)
229. Captain America (2011)
230. Carrie (1976)
231. Cars (2006)
232. Casablanca (1942)
233. Casino (1995)
234. Casino Jack (2010)
235. Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010)
236. Casino Royale (2006)
237. Casper (1995)
238. Cast Away (2000)
239. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
240. Catfish (2010)
241. Catch and Release (2006)
242. Catch Me If You Can (2002)
243. Cedar Rapids (2011)
244. Celebrity (1998)
245. Cell, The (2000)
246. Chamber, The (1996)
247. Change-Up, The (2011)
248. Changeling, The (1980)
249. Changeling (2008)
250. Charade (1963)
251. Chariots of Fire (1981)
252. Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)
253. Charlie's Angels (2000)
254. Charlotte's Web (1973)
255. Chase, The (1994)
256. Chicago (2002)
257. Chicken Little (2005)
258. Chicken Run (2000)
259. Child's Play (1988)
260. Child's Play 2 (1990)
261. Child's Play 3 (1991)
262. Children of Men (2006)
263. Chinatown (1974)
264. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
265. Chocolat (2000)
266. Chorus, The (Les Choristes) (2004)
267. Christmas Story, A (1983)
268. Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The (2005)
269. Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The (2010)
270. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The (2008)
271. Cider House Rules, The (1999)
272. Cinderella (1950)
273. Cinderella Man (2005)
274. Cinemania (2002)
275. Citizen Kane (1941)
276. City of Angels (1998)
277. City Slickers (1991)
278. City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold (1994)
279. Civil Action, A (1998)
280. Class, The (2008) (Entre les murs)
281. Clay Pigeons (1998)
282. Clear and Present Danger (1994)
283. Clearing, The (2004)
284. Clerks. (1994)
285. Client, The (1994)
286. Cliffhanger (1993)
287. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
288. Closer (2004)
289. Cloverfield (2008)
290. Clue (1985)
291. Clueless (1994)
292. Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)
293. Cold Mountain (2003)
294. Cold Souls (2009)
295. Collateral (2004)
296. Comedian (2002)
297. Comedians of Comedy, The (2005)
298. Coming Home (1978)
299. Coming to America (1988)
300. Con Air (1997)
301. Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (2011)
302. Condorman (1981)
303. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
304. Confidence (2003)
305. Congo (1995)
306. Consenting Adults (1992)
307. Conspiracy Theory (1997)
308. Constant Gardener, The (2005)
309. Constantine (2005)
310. Contact (1997)
311. Contagion (2011)
312. Contender, The (2000)
313. Conversation, The (1974)
314. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
315. Cool Runnings (1993)
316. Cool World (1992)
317. Cooler, The (2003)
318. Cop Land (1997)
319. Copycat (1995)
320. Count of Monte Cristo, The (2002)
321. Courage Under Fire (1996)
322. Court Jester, The (1956)
323. Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
324. Coyote Ugly (2000)
325. Craft, The (1996)
326. Crash (2004)
327. Crazy Heart (2009)
328. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
329. Criminal (2004)
330. Crimson Tide (1995)
331. Crocodile Dundee (1986)
332. Cromwell (1970)
333. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
334. Croupier (1998)
335. Crow, The (1994)
336. Cruel Intentions (1999)
337. Cry Freedom (1987)
338. Cube (1997)
339. Cure, The (1995)
340. Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The (2008)
341. Cyrus (2010)
342. D.O.A. (1988)
343. D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994)
344. D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996)
345. Dancer, Texas: Pop. 81 (1998)
346. Dances with Wolves (1990)
347. Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, The (2002)
348. Dangerous Method, A (2011)
349. Dante's Peak (1997)
350. Darjeeling Limited, The (2007)
351. Dark City (1998)
352. Dark Crystal, The (1982)
353. Dark Knight, The (2008)
354. Das Boot (1981) (The Boat)
355. Dave (1993)
356. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (2006)
357. Day After Tomorrow, The (2004)
358. Day of the Jackal, The (1973)
359. Day the Earth Stood Still, The (1951)
360. Day Watch (2007) (Dnevnoy Dozor)
361. Daylight (1996)
362. Days of Heaven (1978)
363. Days of Thunder (1990)
364. Dazed and Confused (1993)
365. Dead Again (1991)
366. Dead Girl, The (2006)
367. Dead Man on Campus (1998)
368. Dead Poets’ Society (1989)
369. Deceiver (1997)
370. Deep End, The (2001)
371. Deep Impact (1998)
372. Demolition Man (1993)
373. Dennis the Menace (1993)
374. Departed, The (2006)
375. Descendants, The (2011)
376. Desperate Measures (1998)
377. Despicable Me (2010)
378. Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
379. Devil's Advocate, The (1997)
380. Devil's Own, The (1997)
381. Dick Tracy (1990)
382. Die Hard (1988)
383. Die Hard 2 (1990)
384. Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
385. Dig (2004)
386. Diggers (2007)
387. Diner (1982)
388. Dirty (2006)
389. Dirty Dancing (1987)
390. Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
391. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
392. Disappearance of Alice Creed, The (2010)
393. Disclosure (1994)
394. District B13 (2006)
395. Disturbia (2007)
396. Do the Right Thing (1989)
397. Doctor Dolittle (1967)
398. Doctor Dolittle (1998)
399. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
400. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
401. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
402. Dogma (1999)
403. Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996)
404. Donnie Brasco (1997)
405. Donnie Darko (2001)
406. Doppelganger (1993)
407. Double Indemnity (1944)
408. Double Jeopardy (1999)
409. Double Take (2001)
410. Doubt (2008)
411. Down in the Valley (2006)
412. Dr. No (1962)
413. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
414. Dracula (1931)
415. Dracula (1992)
416. Drag Me to Hell (2009)
417. Dragonheart (1996)
418. Dream House (2011)
419. Drillbit Taylor (2008)
420. Drive (2011)
421. Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
422. DuckTales: The Movie—Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990)
423. Dumb & Dumber (1994)
424. Dumbo (1941)
425. Duplicity (2009)
426. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
427. Easy A (2010)
428. Easy Rider (1969)
429. Edtv (1999)
430. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
431. Election (1999)
432. Elf (2003)
433. Emperor's New Groove, The (2000)
434. Empire Records (1995)
435. Enchanted (2007)
436. End of the Spear (2006)
437. Enemy at the Gates (2001)
438. Enemy Mine (1985)
439. Enemy of the State (1998)
440. English Patient, The (1996)
441. Enigma (2001)
442. Entrapment (1999)
443. Envy (2004)
444. Eraser (1996)
445. Erin Brockovich (2000)
446. Ernest Goes to Camp (1987)
447. Ernest Goes to Jail (1990)
448. Ernest Scared Stupid (1991)
449. Escape from New York (1981)
450. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
451. Evan Almighty (2007)
452. Event Horizon (1997)
453. Everybody’s All-American (1988)
454. Everything Is Illuminated (2005)
455. Everything Must Go (2011)
456. Executive Decision (1996)
457. eXistenZ (1999)
458. Extra Man, The (2010)
459. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
460. Face/Off (1997)
461. Faculty, The (1998)
462. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
463. Fair Game (1995)
464. Fair Game (2010)
465. Fallen (1998)
466. Falling Down (1993)
467. Family Man, The (2000)
468. Family Business (1989)
469. Fanboys (2009)
470. Fantasia (1940)
471. Fantasia 2000 (1999)
472. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
473. Far and Away (1992)
474. Far from Heaven (2002)
475. Far Off Place, A (1993)
476. Fargo (1996)
477. Fast and the Furious, The (2001)
478. Fast Five (2011)
479. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
480. Father of the Bride (1991)
481. Father of the Bride Part II (1995)
482. Feast (2006)
483. FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
484. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
485. Few Good Men, A (1992)
486. Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
487. Fido (2007)
488. Field of Dreams (1989)
489. Fifth Element, The (1997)
490. Fight Club (1999)
491. Final Analysis (1992)
492. Finding Forrester (2000)
493. Finding Nemo (2003)
494. Finding Neverland (2004)
495. Fire Birds (1990)
496. Firewall (2006)
497. Firm, The (1993)
498. First Kid (1996)
499. First Knight (1995)
500. Fish Called Wanda, A (1988)
501. Five Easy Pieces (1970)
502. Flatliners (1990)
503. Flight of the Navigator (1986)
504. Flightplan (2005)
505. Flintstones, The (1994)
506. Fly, The (1986)
507. Fog, The (2005)
508. Fog of War, The (2003)
509. Following (1998)
510. Follow Me, Boys! (1966)
511. Footloose (1984)
512. For All Mankind (1989)
513. For Love or Money (1993)
514. Forbidden Planet (1956)
515. Forever Young (1992)
516. Forget Paris (1995)
517. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
518. Forrest Gump (1994)
519. Fountain, The (2006)
520. Fox and the Hound, The (1981)
521. Frailty (2001)
522. Free Willy (1993)
523. French Connection, The (1971)
524. Frequency (2000)
525. Friday the 13th (2009)
526. Friday the 13th (1980)
527. Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981)
528. Friday the 13th, Part 3 (1982)
529. Friday the 13th, The Final Chapter (1984)
530. Friends of Eddie Coyle, The (1973)
531. Friends With Money (2006)
532. Fright Night (1985)
533. Fright Night (2011)
534. Frighteners, The (1996)
535. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
536. From Hell (2001)
537. Frost/Nixon (2008)
538. Fugitive, The (1993)
539. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
540. Funny Games (U.S.) (2008)
541. Funny People (2009)
542. F/X (1986)
543. G.I. Jane (1997)
544. Game, The (1997)
545. Gandhi (1982)
546. Gangs of New York (2002)
547. Garden State (2004)
548. Gattaca (1997)
549. General's Daughter, The (1999)
550. Georgia Rule (2007)
551. Get Him to the Greek (2010)
552. Get Shorty (1995)
553. Ghost (1990)
554. Ghostbusters (1984)
555. Ghostbusters II (1989)
556. Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
557. Ghost Rider (2007)
558. Ghost Town (2008)
559. Ghost World (2000)
560. Ghost Writer, The (2010)
561. Gift, The (2000)
562. Gingerbread Man, The (1998)
563. Girl Next Door, The (2004)
564. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The (Man som hatar kvinnor) (2009)
565. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The (U.S.) (2011)
566. Gladiator (2000)
567. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
568. Glory (1989)
569. Go (1999)
570. Godfather, The (1972)
571. Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
572. Gods Must Be Crazy, The (1980)
573. Godzilla (1998)
574. Going My Way (1944)
575. GoldenEye (1995)
576. Gone Baby Gone (2007)
577. Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)
578. Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
579. Good German, The (2006)
580. Good Girl, The (2003)
581. Good News (1947)
582. Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
583. Good Shepherd, The (2006)
584. Good Will Hunting (1997)
585. Good Woman, A (2006)
586. Goodbye Girl, The (1977)
587. Goodfellas (1990)
588. Goofy Movie, A (1995)
589. Goonies, The (1985)
590. Gorky Park (1983)
591. Gosford Park (2001)
592. Grace Is Gone (2007)
593. Graduate, The (1967)
594. Grease (1978)
595. Great Escape, The (1963)
596. Great Gatsby, The (1974)
597. Great Mouse Detective, The (1986)
598. Great Raid, The (2005)
599. Green Hornet, The (2011)
600. Green Mile, The (1999)
601. Gremlins (1984)
602. Grifters, The (1990)
603. Grindhouse (2007)
604. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
605. Groundhog Day (1993)
606. Grudge, The (2004)
607. Grumpier Old Men (1995)
608. Grumpy Old Men (1993)
609. Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, A (2006)
610. Guyver, The (1991)
611. Half Baked (1998)
612. Half Nelson (2006)
613. Halloween (1978)
614. Halloween 2 (1981)
615. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
616. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
617. Hamlet (1996)
618. Hangover, The (2009)
619. Hannibal (2001)
620. Hannibal Rising (2007)
621. Hans Christian Andersen (1952)
622. Happening, The (2008)
623. Happy Gilmore (1996)
624. Hard Candy (2006)
625. Hard Eight (1996)
626. Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2004)
627. Harry Brown (2009)
628. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
629. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
630. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
631. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
632. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
633. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
634. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
635. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
636. Harsh Times (2006)
637. Harvey (1950)
638. Hatari! (1962)
639. Haywire (2012)
640. Heart and Souls (1993)
641. Heaven's Prisoners (1996)
642. Heavyweights (1995)
643. Hellboy (2004)
644. Hello, Dolly! (1969)
645. Hellfighters (1968)
646. Hellraiser (1987)
647. Helvetica (2007)
648. Henry Poole Is Here (2008)
649. Henry V (1989)
650. High Fidelity (2000)
651. High Noon (1952)
652. Highlander (1986)
653. Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
654. Highlander: The Final Dimension (1994)
655. History of Violence, A (2005)
656. Hitcher, The (1986)
657. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The (2005)
658. Hoax, The (2007)
659. Hobbit, The (1977)
660. Hocus Pocus (1993)
661. Holiday Inn (1942)
662. Hollow Man (2000)
663. Hollywoodland (2006)
664. Home Alone (1990)
665. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
666. Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993)
667. Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992)
668. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)
669. Hook (1991)
670. Hoosiers (1986)
671. Hope Floats (1998)
672. Horrible Bosses (2011)
673. Hot Fuzz (2007)
674. Hot Rod (2007)
675. Hot Shots! (1991)
676. Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)
677. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
678. Hours, The (2002)
679. House of Games (1987)
680. How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
681. Hunt for Red October, The (1990)
682. Hurlyburly (1998)
683. Hurricane, The (1999)
684. Hurt Locker, The (2009)
685. Hustle & Flow (2005)
686. I ♥ Huckabees (2004)
687. I Am Comic (2010)
688. I Am Legend (2007)
689. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
690. I Love Trouble (1994)
691. I Love You, Man (2009)
692. I, Robot (2004)
693. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
694. I Think I Love My Wife (2007)
695. I.Q. (1994)
696. Ice Age (2002)
697. Ice Storm, The (1997)
698. Identity (2003)
699. Ides of March, The (2011)
700. Idiocracy (2006)
701. Igby Goes Down (2002)
702. I’ll Do Anything (1994)
703. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003)
704. Illusionist, The (2006)
705. In & Out (1997)
706. In America (2003)
707. In Bruges (2008)
708. In Cold Blood (1967)
709. In Dreams (1999)
710. In Good Company (2004)
711. In the Bedroom (2001)
712. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
713. In the Line of Fire (1993)
714. Inception (2010)
715. Incredible Hulk, The (2008)
716. Incredibles, The (2004)
717. Indecent Proposal (1993)
718. Independence Day (1996)
719. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
720. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
721. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
722. Infernal Affairs (2002)
723. Informant!, The (2009)
724. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
725. Inside Man (2006)
726. Insider, The (1999)
727. Insomnia (2002)
728. Interview with the Vampire (1994)
729. Into the Wild (2007)
730. Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
731. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
732. Invention of Lying, The (2009)
733. Iron Giant, The (1999)
734. Iron Man (2008)
735. Iron Will (1994)
736. Island, The (2005)
737. It Could Happen to You (1994)
738. It Should Happen to You (1954)
739. It Happened One Night (1934)
740. It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
741. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
742. It’s Complicated (2009)
743. Italian Job, The (2003)
744. J. Edgar (2011)
745. Jack (1996)
746. Jackal, The (1997)
747. Jackass: The Movie (2002)
748. Jacket, The (2005)
749. Jackie Brown (1997)
750. Jarhead (2005)
751. Jaws (1975)
752. Jesus Camp (2006)
753. JFK (1991)
754. Joe Dirt (2001)
755. John Q. (2002)
756. Joneses, The (2010)
757. Joy Ride (2001)
758. Judge Dredd (1995)
759. Jumanji (1995)
760. Jumper (2008)
761. Junebug (2005)
762. Jungle 2 Jungle (1997)
763. Jungle Book, The (1967)
764. Jungle Book, The (1994)
765. Junior (1994)
766. Juno (2007)
767. Jurassic Park (1993)
768. Just Cause (1995)
769. Karate Kid, The (1984)
770. Kick-Ass (2010)
771. Kicking and Screaming (1995)
772. Kids Are All Right, The (2010)
773. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
774. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
775. Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
776. Kindergarten Cop (1990)
777. King Kong (2005)
778. Kingdom, The (2007)
779. King’s Speech, The (2010)
780. Kinky Boots (2006)
781. Kinsey (2004)
782. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
783. Kiss Me Kate (1953)
784. Kiss the Girls (1997)
785. Knight's Tale, A (2001)
786. Knocked Up (2007)
787. Krippendorf's Tribe (1998)
788. Krull (1983)
789. L.A. Confidential (1997)
790. Labyrinth (1986)
791. Ladies Man, The (2000)
792. Lady and the Tramp (1955)
793. Lady in the Water (2006)
794. Ladyhawke (1985)
795. Lake House, The (2006)
796. Land Before Time, The (1988)
797. Lantana (2001)
798. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
799. Laramie Project, The (2002)
800. Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
801. Last Action Hero (1993)
802. Last Chance Harvey (2008)
803. Last of the Mohicans, The (1992)
804. Last Picture Show, The (1971)
805. Last Samurai, The (2003)
806. Last Starfighter, The (1984)
807. Layer Cake (2004)
808. League of Their Own, A (1992)
809. Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
810. Lebanon, Pa. (2010)
811. Legally Blonde (2001)
812. Legend of Bagger Vance, The (2000)
813. Legend of Zorro, The (2005)
814. Legends of the Fall (1994)
815. Let Me In (2010)
816. Let the Right One In (2008)
817. Lethal Weapon (1987)
818. Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
819. Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)
820. Liar Liar (1997)
821. Libertine, The (2006)
822. Liberty Heights (1999)
823. Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The (2004)
824. Life is Beautiful (1998)
825. Life of David Gale, The (2003)
826. Lilo & Stitch (2002)
827. Limbo (1999)
828. Limey, The (1999)
829. Lion King, The (1994)
830. Little Big League (1994)
831. Little Children (2006)
832. Little Mermaid, The (1989)
833. Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
834. Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
835. Lives of Others, The (Das Leben der Anderen) (2007)
836. Loaded Weapon 1 (1993)
837. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
838. Lolita (1997)
839. London (2006)
840. Lone Star (1996)
841. Lonely Guy, The (1984)
842. Long Good Friday, The (1980)
843. Long Kiss Goodnight, The (1996)
844. Look Who's Talking (1989)
845. Look Who's Talking Too (1990)
846. Lookout, The (2007)
847. Lord of Illusions (1995)
848. Lord of the Flies (1963)
849. Lord of the Rings, The (1978)
850. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
851. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
852. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003)
853. Lost in La Mancha (2002)
854. Lost in Space (1998)
855. Lost in Translation (2003)
856. Lost World: Jurassic Park, The (1997)
857. Love Actually (2003)
858. Love Bug, The (1968)
859. Lovely & Amazing (2001)
860. Lovely Bones, The (2009)
861. Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
862. MacGruber (2010)
863. Machete (2010)
864. Machine Gun Preacher (2011)
865. Mad Love (1935)
866. Made (2001)
867. Magnolia (1999)
868. Majestic, The (2001)
869. Major League (1989)
870. Major League II (1994)
871. Malice (1993)
872. Mallrats (1995)
873. Man for All Seasons, A (1966)
874. Man from Snowy River, The (1982)
875. Man in the Iron Mask, The (1998)
876. Man of the Century (1999)
877. Man of the House (1995)
878. Man on Fire (2004)
879. Man on the Moon (1999)
880. Man Who Wasn’t There, The (2001)
881. Man with the Golden Arm, The (1955)
882. Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)
883. Manhattan (1979)
884. Manhunter (1986)
885. Marathon Man (1976)
886. March of the Penguins (2005)
887. Margin Call (2011)
888. Margot at the Wedding (2007)
889. Mark of Zorro, The (1940)
890. Mary Poppins (1964)
891. M*A*S*H (1970)
892. Mask of Zorro, The (1998)
893. Mask, The (1994)
894. Masters of the Universe (1987)
895. Matador, The (2005)
896. Match Point (2005)
897. Matchstick Men (2003)
898. Matrix Reloaded, The (2003)
899. Matrix Revolutions, The (2003)
900. Matrix, The (1999)
901. Maverick (1994)
902. Me and Orson Welles (2009)
903. Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
904. Mean Girls (2004)
905. Mean Streets (1973)
906. Meek’s Cutoff (2011)
907. Meet Joe Black (1998)
908. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
909. Meet the Parents (2000)
910. Memento (2000)
911. Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
912. Memphis Belle (1990)
913. Men in Black (1997)
914. Men in Black II (2002)
915. Men of Honor (2000)
916. Mercury Rising (1998)
917. Metropolitan (1990)
918. Mexican, The (2001)
919. Michael (1996)
920. Michael Clayton (2007)
921. Micmacs (2010)
922. Midnight Clear, A (1992)
923. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
924. Mighty Ducks, The (1992)
925. Mighty Wind, A (2003)
926. Milk (2008)
927. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
928. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
929. Minority Report (2002)
930. Miracle at St. Anna (2008)
931. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
932. Misery (1990)
933. Miss Congeniality (2000)
934. Mission, The (1986)
935. Mission: Impossible (1996)
936. Mission: Impossible II (2000)
937. Mission: Impossible III (2006)
938. Mississippi Burning (1988)
939. Money Train (1995)
940. Moneyball (2011)
941. Monsoon Wedding (2001)
942. Monster (2003)
943. Monster's Ball (2001)
944. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
945. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
946. Moonlight Mile (2002)
947. Moonstruck (1987)
948. Mortal Kombat (1995)
949. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
950. Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976)
951. Motorcycle Diaries, The (Diarios de motocicleta) (2004)
952. Moulin Rouge! (2001)
953. Moustache, La (2005)
954. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
955. Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)
956. Mr. Jealousy (1997)
957. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
958. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
959. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
960. Mrs. Parler and the Vicious Circle (1994)
961. Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
962. Mulholland Drive (2001)
963. Mulholland Falls (1996)
964. Multiplicity (1996)
965. Mummy Returns, The (2001)
966. Mummy, The (1999)
967. Munich (2005)
968. Muppet Christmas Carol, The (1992)
969. Murder at 1600 (1997)
970. Murder in the First (1995)
971. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
972. Murderball (2005)
973. Music Man, The (1962)
974. My Architect: A Son’s Journey (2003)
975. My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
976. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)
977. My Bodyguard (1980)
978. My Dog Skip (2000)
979. My Fair Lady (1964)
980. My Girl (1991)
981. Mystic River (2003)
982. Nacho Libre (2006)
983. Naked Gun, The (1988)
984. Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear, The (1991)
985. Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)
986. Nanny Diaries, The (2007)
987. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
988. Narc (2002)
989. Narrow Margin (1990)
990. Nativity Story, The (2006)
991. Negotiator, The (1998)
992. Net, The (1995)
993. Network (1976)
994. New Jerusalem (2011)
995. New World, The (2005)
996. Newsies (1992)
997. Next (2007)
998. Next Karate Kid, The (1994)
999. Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008)
1000. Nick of Time (1995)
1001. Night Falls on Manhattan (1997)
1002. Night Moves (1975)
1003. Night of the Hunter, The (1955)
1004. Night Watch (2006) (Nochnoi Dozor)
1005. Nightmare Before Christmas, The (1993)
1006. Nightmare on Elm Street, A (1984)
1007. No Country for Old Men (2007)
1008. No End in Sight (2007)
1009. No Escape (1994)
1010. North (1994)
1011. North by Northwest (1959)
1012. North Country (2005)
1013. Notorious Bettie Page, The (2006)
1014. Notting Hill (1999)
1015. Nutty Professor, The (1996)
1016. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
1017. Observe and Report (2009)
1018. Ocean's Eleven (1960)
1019. Ocean's Eleven (2001)
1020. Ocean’s Thirteen (2007)
1021. Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
1022. October Sky (1999)
1023. Of Mice and Men (1992)
1024. Office Space (1999)
1025. Oh in Ohio, The (2006)
1026. Oklahoma! (1955)
1027. Old School (2003)
1028. Old Yeller (1957)
1029. Oliver & Company (1988)
1030. Oliver! (1968)
1031. Omen, The (1976)
1032. On the Waterfront (1954)
1033. Once (2007)
1034. One Day in September (1999)
1035. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
1036. One Hour Photo (2002)
1037. One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
1038. Operation Dumbo Drop (1995)
1039. Opposite of Sex, The (1998)
1040. Ordinary People (1980)
1041. Other F Word, The (2011)
1042. Others, The (2001)
1043. Our Idiot Brother (2011)
1044. Out of Sight (1998)
1045. Outbreak (1995)
1046. Outsiders, The (1983)
1047. Overnight (2003)
1048. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times (2011)
1049. Palmetto (1998)
1050. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
1051. Pandorum (2009)
1052. Panic Room (2002)
1053. Paper, The (1994)
1054. Paper Chase, The (1973)
1055. Parallax View, The (1974)
1056. Parent Trap, The (1961)
1057. Paris, Texas (1984)
1058. Passion of the Christ, The (2004)
1059. Patch Adams (1998)
1060. Patriot Games (1992)
1061. Patriot, The (2000)
1062. Pay It Forward (2000)
1063. Payback (1999)
1064. PCU (1994)
1065. Peacemaker, The (1997)
1066. Pearl Harbor (2001)
1067. Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
1068. Pelican Brief, The (1993)
1069. Penelope (2006)
1070. People vs. George Lucas, The (2010)
1071. Perfect Murder, A (1998)
1072. Perfect Stranger (2007)
1073. Pet Sematary (1989)
1074. Peter Pan (1953)
1075. Phantom, The (1996)
1076. Phantoms (1998)
1077. Phenomenon (1996)
1078. Philadelphia (1993)
1079. Philadelphia Story, The (1940)
1080. Phone Booth (2002)
1081. Picture Perfect (1997)
1082. Pineapple Express (2008)
1083. Pinocchio (1940)
1084. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
1085. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
1086. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
1087. Planet of the Apes (1968)
1088. Planet of the Apes (2001)
1089. Platoon (1986)
1090. Player, The (1992)
1091. Playing by Heart (1998)
1092. Pleasantville (1998)
1093. Pollock (2000)
1094. Pollyanna (1960)
1095. Predator (1987)
1096. Predator 2 (1990)
1097. Prehysteria! (1993)
1098. Prestige, The (2006)
1099. Pretty Persuasion (2005)
1100. Pretty Woman (1990)
1101. Priceless (Hors de prix) (2008)
1102. Primal Fear (1996)
1103. Primary Colors (1998)
1104. Primer (2003)
1105. Princess Bride, The (1987)
1106. Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, The (2004)
1107. Problem Child (1990)
1108. Producers, The (1968)
1109. Producers, The (2005)
1110. Professional, The (1994)
1111. Prom Night in Mississippi (2008)
1112. Proof (2005)
1113. Proof of Life (2000)
1114. Proposition, The (2006)
1115. Psycho (1960)
1116. Public Enemies (2009)
1117. Pulp Fiction (1994)
1118. Pump Up the Volume (1990)
1119. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
1120. Punisher, The (2004)
1121. Pure Country (1992)
1122. Pursuit of Happyness, The (2006)
1123. Queen, The (2006)
1124. Quiet, The (2006)
1125. Quiet Man, The (1952)
1126. Quills (2000)
1127. Quiz Show (1994)
1128. Rabbit Hole (2010)
1129. Rad (1986)
1130. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
1131. Rails & Ties (2007)
1132. Rain Man (1988)
1133. Rainmaker, The (1997)
1134. Ransom (1996)
1135. Rat Race (2001)
1136. Ratatouille (2007)
1137. Real Genius (1985)
1138. Rear Window (1954)
1139. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
1140. Red Dragon (2002)
1141. Red Eye (2005)
1142. Red Riding Hood (2011)
1143. Reign Over Me (2007)
1144. Remains of the Day, The (1993)
1145. Remember the Titans (2000)
1146. Renaissance Man (1994)
1147. Rendition (2007)
1148. Reno 911!: Miami (2007)
1149. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
1150. Rescue Dawn (2007)
1151. Rescuers Down Under, The (1990)
1152. Rescuers, The (1977)
1153. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
1154. Restrepo (2010)
1155. Return to Me (2000)
1156. Revenge of the Nerds (1984)
1157. Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987)
1158. Richie Rich (1994)
1159. Right Stuff, The (1983)
1160. Ring, The (2002)
1161. Rising Sun (1993)
1162. Risky Business (1983)
1163. River Runs Through It, A (1992)
1164. River Wild, The (1994)
1165. Rize (2005)
1166. Road to Perdition (2002)
1167. Road Trip (2000)
1168. Robin Hood (1973)
1169. Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)
1170. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
1171. RoboCop (1987)
1172. Rock, The (1996)
1173. Rocket Science (2007)
1174. Rocketeer, The (1991)
1175. Rocky (1976)
1176. Rocky II (1979)
1177. Rocky III (1982)
1178. Rocky IV (1985)
1179. Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (1975)
1180. Roger Dodger (2002)
1181. Role Models (2008)
1182. Romancing the Stone (1984)
1183. Romeo + Juliet (1996)
1184. Romeo and Juliet (1968)
1185. Romero (1989)
1186. Ronin (1998)
1187. Rookie of the Year (1993)
1188. Rounders (1998)
1189. Royal Tenenbaums, The (2001)
1190. Rudy (1993)
1191. Rumpelstiltskin (1987)
1192. Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
1193. Runaway Bride (1999)
1194. Runaway Jury (2003)
1195. Rushmore (1998)
1196. Rush Hour 2 (2001)
1197. Safe Men (1998)
1198. Saint, The (1997)
1199. Saints and Soldiers (2003)
1200. Sandlot, The (1993)
1201. Santa Clause, The (1994)
1202. Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
1203. Saturday Night (2010)
1204. Savages, The (2007)
1205. Savannah Smiles (1982)
1206. Saved! (2004)
1207. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
1208. Saving Silverman (2001)
1209. Say Anything... (1989)
1210. Scarlet Street (1945)
1211. Scary Movie (2000)
1212. Scent of a Woman (1992)
1213. Schindler's List (1993)
1214. School of Rock, The (2003)
1215. School Ties (1992)
1216. Score, The (2001)
1217. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
1218. Scream (1996)
1219. Scream 2 (1997)
1220. Scream 3 (2000)
1221. Screamers (1995)
1222. Scrooged (1988)
1223. Se7en (1995)
1224. Sea of Love (1989)
1225. Seabiscuit (2003)
1226. Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
1227. Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The (1947)
1228. Secret of My Success, The (1987)
1229. Secret of NIMH, The (1982)
1230. Secret Window (2004)
1231. Selena (1997)
1232. Sentinel, The (2006)
1233. Serendipity (2001)
1234. Serenity (2005)
1235. Serious Man, A (2009)
1236. Serpico (1973)
1237. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
1238. Seven Days in May (1964)
1239. Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
1240. Sexy Beast (2000)
1241. Sgt. Bilko (1996)
1242. Shadow, The (1994)
1243. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
1244. Shallow Grave (1994)
1245. Shallow Hal (2001)
1246. Shanghai Knights (2003)
1247. Shanghai Noon (2000)
1248. Shattered Glass (2003)
1249. Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)
1250. She's All That (1999)
1251. Shining, The (1980)
1252. Shipwrecked (1991)
1253. Shop Around the Corner, The (1940)
1254. Shotgun Stories (2007)
1255. Showgirls (1995)
1256. Shrek (2001)
1257. Shut Up & Sing (2006)
1258. Shutter Island (2010)
1259. Sidekicks (1992)
1260. Sideways (2004)
1261. Siege, The (1998)
1262. Signs (2002)
1263. Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)
1264. Simon Birch (1998)
1265. Simple Plan, A (1998)
1266. Sin City (2005)
1267. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
1268. Single Man, A (2009)
1269. Singles (1992)
1270. Sirens (1994)
1271. Sister Act (1992)
1272. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)
1273. Six Days Seven Nights (1998)
1274. Sixth Sense, The (1999)
1275. Skulls, The (2000)
1276. Sky High (2005)
1277. Slackers (2002)
1278. SLC Punk (1999)
1279. Sleepers (1996)
1280. Sleeping Beauty (1959)
1281. Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)
1282. Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
1283. Sleepy Hollow (1999)
1284. Slither (2006)
1285. Smokin’ Aces (2007)
1286. Snake Eyes (1998)
1287. Snakes on a Plane (2006)
1288. Snatch (2000)
1289. Sneakers (1992)
1290. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
1291. So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)
1292. Social Network, The (2010)
1293. Solaris (2002)
1294. Soldier’s Story, A (1984)
1295. Solo (1996)
1296. Some Like It Hot (1959)
1297. Something New (2006)
1298. Son of Rambow (2008)
1299. Song of the South (1946)
1300. Sound of Music, The (1965)
1301. Sound of My Voice (2011)
1302. Sound of Thunder, A (2005)
1303. Source Code (2011)
1304. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)
1305. Space Jam (1996)
1306. Spaceballs (1987)
1307. SpaceCamp (1986)
1308. Spaced Invaders (1990)
1309. Spanish Prisoner, The (1997)
1310. Spartan (2004)
1311. Specialist, The (1994)
1312. Species (1995)
1313. Speed (1994)
1314. Sphere (1998)
1315. Spider-Man (2002)
1316. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
1317. Spider-Man 3 (2007)
1318. Spy Game (2001)
1319. Squid and the Whale, The (2005)
1320. St. Elmo's Fire (1985)
1321. Stand by Me (1986)
1322. Standing Still (2006)
1323. Star Trek (2009)
1324. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
1325. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
1326. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
1327. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
1328. Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
1329. Star Trek: Generations (1994)
1330. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
1331. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
1332. Star Wars (1977)
1333. Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999)
1334. Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones (2002)
1335. Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith (2005)
1336. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
1337. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)
1338. Stardust (2007)
1339. Stargate (1994)
1340. Starship Troopers (1997)
1341. Starter for 10 (2007)
1342. State of Play (2009)
1343. Station Agent, The (2003)
1344. Stepmom (1998)
1345. Stick It (2006)
1346. Sting, The (1973)
1347. Stir of Echoes (1999)
1348. Strange Wilderness (2008)
1349. Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
1350. Straw Dogs (1971)
1351. Street Fighter (1994)
1352. Streetcar Named Desire, A (1951)
1353. Strictly Ballroom (1992)
1354. Stripes (1981)
1355. Striptease (1996)
1356. Submarine (2011)
1357. Suburban Commando (1991)
1358. Sudden Death (1995)
1359. Suicide Kings (1997)
1360. Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
1361. Sum of All Fears, The (2002)
1362. Summer Magic (1963)
1363. Summer of Sam (1999)
1364. Summer School (1987)
1365. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
1366. Sunshine (1999)
1367. Sunshine (2007)
1368. Super Mario Bros. (1993)
1369. Super Size Me (2004)
1370. Super Troopers (2001)
1371. Superbad (2007)
1372. Superman (1978)
1373. Superman II (1980)
1374. Superman III (1983)
1375. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
1376. Superman Returns (2006)
1377. Suspect (1987)
1378. S.W.A.T. (2003)
1379. Sweet Hereafter, The (1997)
1380. Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
1381. Swimfan (2002)
1382. Swimming Pool (2003)
1383. Swing Kids (1993)
1384. Swingers (1996)
1385. Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
1386. Switch, The (2010)
1387. Switchback (1997)
1388. Sword in the Stone, The (1963)
1389. Swordfish (2001)
1390. Synecdoche, New York (2008)
1391. Syriana (2005)
1392. Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)
1393. Taking Lives (2004)
1394. Taking Woodstock (2009)
1395. Talented Mr. Ripley, The (1999)
1396. Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)
1397. Talk to Me (2007)
1398. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
1399. Tangled (2010)
1400. Tango & Cash (1989)
1401. Tao of Steve, The (2000)
1402. Tape (2001)
1403. Tarzan (1999)
1404. Taxi Driver (1976)
1405. Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)
1406. Team America: World Police (2004)
1407. Teen Wolf (1985)
1408. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
1409. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991)
1410. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)
1411. Teeth (2008)
1412. Telling Lies in America (1997)
1413. Tender Mercies (1983)
1414. Terminal, The (2004)
1415. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
1416. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
1417. Terminator, The (1984)
1418. Terminator Salvation (2009)
1419. Thank You For Smoking (2006)
1420. That Darn Cat (1997)
1421. That Darn Cat! (1965)
1422. That Thing You Do! (1996)
1423. There Will Be Blood (2007)
1424. There's Something About Mary (1998)
1425. Thin Man, The (1934)
1426. Third Man, The (1949)
1427. Thirteen (2003)
1428. Thirteenth Floor, The (1999)
1429. This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)
1430. Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967)
1431. Three Amigos (1986)
1432. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (2005)
1433. Three Days of the Condor (1975)
1434. Three Kings (1999)
1435. Three Men and a Baby (1987)
1436. Three Men and a Little Lady (1990)
1437. Three Musketeers, The (1993)
1438. Three Seasons (1997)
1439. Thumbsucker (2005)
1440. Thursday (1998)
1441. Tigerland (2000)
1442. Time to Kill, A (1996)
1443. Timecop (1994)
1444. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
1445. Titanic (1997)
1446. To Die For (1995)
1447. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
1448. Tom and Huck (1995)
1449. Tombstone (1993)
1450. Tommy Boy (1995)
1451. Tootsie (1982)
1452. Top Gun (1986)
1453. Top Hat (1935)
1454. Total Recall (1990)
1455. Town, The (2010)
1456. Toy Soldiers (1991)
1457. Toy Story (1995)
1458. Toy Story 2 (1999)
1459. Toy Story 3 (2010)
1460. Traffic (2000)
1461. Training Day (2001)
1462. Traitor (2008)
1463. Tree of Life, The (2011)
1464. Tremors (1990)
1465. Triplets of Belleville, The (2003)
1466. Troll 2 (1990)
1467. Tron (1982)
1468. Tron: Legacy (2010)
1469. Tropic Thunder (2008)
1470. Troy (2004)
1471. Troop Beverly Hills (1989)
1472. Trouble with Angels, The (1966)
1473. True Grit (2010)
1474. True Lies (1994)
1475. True Romance (1993)
1476. Truman Show, The (1998)
1477. Truth About Cats & Dogs, The (1996)
1478. Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
1479. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)
1480. Turkey Bowl (2011)
1481. TV Set, The (2007)
1482. Twins (1988)
1483. Twister (1996)
1484. Two Girls and a Guy (1997)
1485. U-571 (2000)
1486. U.S. Marshals (1998)
1487. Unaccompanied Minors (2006)
1488. Unbreakable (2000)
1489. Uncle Buck (1989)
1490. Undefeated (2011)
1491. Under Siege (1992)
1492. Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)
1493. Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
1494. Undiscovered (2005)
1495. Unfaithful (2002)
1496. Unforgettable (1996)
1497. Unforgiven (1992)
1498. United 93 (2006)
1499. Unknown (2011)
1500. Unknown White Male (2006)
1501. Unlawful Entry (1992)
1502. Untouchables, The (1987)
1503. Up (2009)
1504. Up in the Air (2009)
1505. Urban Legend (1998)
1506. Usual Suspects, The (1995)
1507. V for Vendetta (2006)
1508. Valiant (2005)
1509. Van Wilder (2002)
1510. Vanilla Sky (2001)
1511. Varsity Blues (1999)
1512. Vertical Limit (2000)
1513. Vertigo (1958)
1514. Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, A (2011)
1515. Very Long Engagement, A (2004)
1516. Village, The (2004)
1517. Virgin Suicides, The (2000)
1518. Virtuosity (1995)
1519. Visitor, The (2008)
1520. Volcano (1997)
1521. W. (2008)
1522. Wackness, The (2008)
1523. Wag the Dog (1997)
1524. Waiting for Guffman (1996)
1525. Waitress (2007)
1526. Waking Ned Devine (1998)
1527. Waking Sleeping Beauty (2010)
1528. Walk the Line (2005)
1529. WALL-E (2008)
1530. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
1531. Waltz With Bashir (2008)
1532. War of the Worlds (1953)
1533. War of the Worlds (2005)
1534. WarGames (1983)
1535. Watchmen (2009)
1536. Waterboy, The (1998)
1537. Waterworld (1995)
1538. Wayne's World (1992)
1539. We Were Soldiers (2002)
1540. Wedding Crashers (2005)
1541. Wedding Planner, The (2001)
1542. Wedding Singer, The (1998)
1543. Weird Science (1985)
1544. Wet Hot American Summer (2002)
1545. Whale Rider (2003)
1546. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
1547. What Dreams May Come (1998)
1548. What Lies Beneath (2000)
1549. What Women Want (2000)
1550. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
1551. While You Were Sleeping (1995)
1552. White Christmas (1954)
1553. White Fang (1991)
1554. White Men Can’t Jump (1992)
1555. White Squall (1996)
1556. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
1557. Whole Nine Yards, The (2000)
1558. Why We Fight (2006)
1559. Wild America (1997)
1560. Wild at Heart (1990)
1561. Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken (1991)
1562. Wild Things (1998)
1563. Wild Wild West (1999)
1564. Willow (1988)
1565. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
1566. Winter Passing (2006)
1567. Wizard, The (1989)
1568. Wizard of Oz, The (1939)
1569. Wolf (1994)
1570. Wonder Boys (2000)
1571. Wordplay (2006)
1572. Working Girl (1988)
1573. Wrestler, The (2008)
1574. Wuss (2011)
1575. X Files, The (1998)
1576. X-Men (2000)
1577. X-Men: First Class (2011)
1578. X2: X-Men United (2003)
1579. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
1580. Year One (2009)
1581. Yes (2005)
1582. Yes Men Fix the World, The (2009)
1583. You Can Count on Me (2000)
1584. You've Got Mail (1998)
1585. Young@Heart (2008)
1586. Young Adult (2011)
1587. Young Frankenstein (1974)
1588. Young Guns (1988)
1589. Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
1590. Your Highness (2011)
1591. Yours, Mine & Ours (2005)
1592. Youth in Revolt (2009)
1593. Youth Without Youth (2007)
1594. Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
1595. Zero Effect (1998)
1596. Zodiac (2007)
1597. Zombieland (2009)
1598. Zoolander (2001)
1599. Zoom (2006)
1600. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
1601. 10,000 BC (2008)
1602. 101 Dalmatians (1996)
1603. 12 Angry Men (1957)
1604. 12 Monkeys (1995)
1605. 12 Rounds (2009)
1606. 13th Warrior, The (1999)
1607. 13 Going On 30 (2004)
1608. 2 Days in the Valley (1996)
1609. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
1610. 21 (2008)
1611. 21 Grams (2003)
1612. 25th Hour (2002)
1613. 28 Days Later... (2002)
1614. 300 (2007)
1615. 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
1616. 3 Ninjas (1992)
1617. 40-Year-Old Virgin, The (2005)
1618. (500) Days of Summer (2009)
1619. 8 Mile (2002)
1620. 8MM (1999)
1621. 9 (2009)
My Gaming Year in Review, 2011tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17132012-01-05T19:29:51Z2012-01-16T02:41:59Z I bought an Xbox 360 in December 2010, though I already owned a few games for the system. My former roommate had one, and we lived together for four years, so it made sense to pick up a few...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
I bought an Xbox 360 in December 2010, though I already owned a few games for the system. My former roommate had one, and we lived together for four years, so it made sense to pick up a few used titles to play when he wasn't using it. However, he and I parted ways in the fall of 2009, so I went quite a while without playing video games. It had been even longer since I'd owned a gaming system: I sold my PlayStation 2 in summer 2004 to help defray the cost of moving to California after college, meaning I hadn't been anything remotely like a real gamer in years. I knew I wanted to get back into gaming, but I also wasn't sure what kind of gamer I'd become. I spent the year finding out what I like and don't about games, as well as discovering just how much my gaming preferences have changed.
What follows is a mostly chronological list of the games I played in 2011:
Medal of Honor: Airborne (unfinished, sold)
One of the carryover titles I sold soon after I got my own Xbox was Medal of Honor: Airborne. I was a huge fan of first-person shooters growing up, especially the Medal of Honor series, so I'd picked this up years earlier while living with a roommate. I knew when I fired it up this time, though, that my days with simplistic games stuffed with infinitely spawning enemies were at a close. I still like a good combat game, and I'm not even averse to playing through something as narratively derivative as a World War II shooter laden with hilariously somber quotes about the cost of battle. But I want a shooter to be a real game, by which I mean a challenge I am asked to solve. Just running around and triggering waves of enemies (or, equally troublesome, their elimination) by hitting hidden checkpoints is pointless. There's no strategy, no thrill. It's just mindless explosions. I've got a feeling I won't be returning to the MoH series for quite a while.
Burnout Paradise (unfinished)
Leaving a racing game unfinished isn't the same as quitting on a narrative. Burnout Paradise is meant to be played in discrete chunks. It's a great game, too, and one of the very few racing titles I like. (I got hooked on the series with Burnout Revenge.) I like the open-world set-up that lets you start challenges whenever you want or just drive the roads to explore and set speed records. The challenges are more interesting than typical races, too, involving stunts and crashes. It's a solid title.
The Orange Box (unfinished)
I bought this just to get my hands on a copy of Portal again, and the game remains as pleasing and frustrating as ever. Pleasing because it demands concentration and smarts as you build out the moves in your head you will need to execute; frustrating because too many of the solutions rely not on intellect but on twitchy reflexes. This problem was solved in the sequel, which I loved.
Fallout 3 (finished)
An amazing game, and the first title to really show me the possibility of open-world storytelling. I fell in love with the postapocalyptic wasteland of Fallout 3, and I was enamored of the karma system that let you influence the world around you through your actions. I also really liked the mix of RPG and FPS in the combat system, which let me stack moves with the game's special targeting system or just fight it out in real time. Great powers, great choices, great story. The enemies scaled up as you went along, too, though there seemed to be a plateau at the end. Once you level up past a certain point, you can take down most enemies with some basic strategy (though I will never forget the genuine worry I felt when I had to fight mirelurks). My only real complaint is that the main narrative seemed to reach a point of no return toward the end, and while I thought I'd have time to explore the world some more between missions, I found myself rocketed toward the end. (Though that also meant recruiting an ally in Fawkes, which meant mowing through enemies like so much grass.) In a lot of ways, 2011 was the year I relearned how to play games.
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The Beatles: Rock Band (unfinished)
I had to. Great songs and interface, though the Beatles-style guitar controller isn't quite as good as the previous Rock Band models. The buttons don't have quite enough give, but that could just be a fluke with my hardware.
Fallout: New Vegas (finished, sold)
I was so excited to play this after loving Fallout 3, which made my disappointment that much greater when I discovered an unwieldy, messy game. The maps were poorly layered (the map on the HUD was never clear about whether certain areas adjoined each other or if one was inside the other), the story was far too broad and complicated, and the overstuffed narrative led to burnout long before the game ended. I powered through out of sheer determination. Once I saw how things would end, I loaded an old save and maxed my persuasion skills (I usually load up on charm when I play an RPG to take advantage of more character loyalties and dialogue options) so that I could pass every speech check from there to the end. Then I just talked both final bosses out of fighting me. I'd have tried to fight them, but my companion dog vanished and couldn't be found, thanks to a glitch in the game. Not a title I'd be willing to replay.
Alan Wake (unfinished)
This came as a free download with my Xbox, but I wasn't too intrigued. I played through the first level or two, but it was a bit heavy on the cut-scenes for my taste. I don't mind cinematics that forward a narrative; these just seemed like padding.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (unfinished, sold)
I will always remain somewhat of a sucker when it comes to the opportunity to wield a lightsaber and fling objects with my mind. Plus, this was maybe $5 used at GameStop. Still, it got old quickly. Some fun Star Wars flair aside, it's a pretty repetitive button-masher with fiendishly hard bosses (typical for a Star Wars game) that become harder to beat when the game takes over the camera and limits your movements and sightline. I'm curious about the sequel, but only mildly.
Gears of War (unfinished, sold)
This was another bargain-bin pickup that I remembered from playing at a friend's house years before. I found it at turns too maddening and too simple, and the erratic AI of my teammates grew tiresome. Not a big loss.
Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (revisits)
I revisited these on a few occasions throughout the year just to have a palette cleanser. I stand by what I said about needing more from a game than just bodies and bullets, but these remain reliable guilty pleasures when I need to really unplug in times of high stress.
Halo 3 (finished, sold)
This was the first Halo game I'd played all the way through, and though I liked a lot of the combat situations (I was especially taken by the aerial stuff, which totally took me by surprise), I found the actual play-through to be sluggish and uninvolving. Now, obviously, the caveat is that I was fresh to the series, so maybe with the previous two installments under my belt I'd have been more forgiving of the experience. I think not, though. It's a pretty game, but a pretty standard run-and-gun.
Portal 2 (finished)
As challenging and as wonderful to play as you've heard. The game ditches the nail-biting mechanics of the original in favor of big rooms that give you all the time in the world to solve the puzzles inside. The new additions — cubes that redirect lasers, bridges made of light, and a number of gels that alter the physical properties of surfaces — are physically pleasing like few other game objects, but the real triumph is the way the producers have made a very linear story feel like a giant world that's under your control. Rooms are designed to push you along a specific path, and there's only one way to win the game, but there are many ways to play it, and that's what makes it so rewarding. My favorite section is the middle third, in which you navigate through staggering caverns while playing tests that introduce a 1960s-era story and a host of new tools to use. A fantastic experience.
Red Dead Redemption (finished)
This has to be one of the best games I've ever played. Period. The gorgeous open world is a joy to behold, and you can ride what feels like forever through the open West without suffering load screens or frame lags as you move between regions. On top of that, the generous amount of side quests and mini-games make the world of New Austin and its environs feel completely at the player's disposal. This was a game I could craft as I saw fit. I loved the honor and fame systems that let you choose how to morally navigate the world; I chose to play as a good guy, largely because it's a lot easier to move through the game's world when the merchants respect you and outlaws fear you. (Not to mention that it's a pain in the ass to fend off bounty hunters and law enforcement.) The combat's great, too, and the escalating levels of Dead Eye made for nice challenges. Above all, the story was strong, and I found myself hooked on learning what would happen to John Marston on his long journey home. Just about perfect.
Batman: Arkham Asylum (finished)
Good game. Not great, but good. The combat's solid, and I loved being able to play as Batman while swinging between gargoyles and taking out henchmen. Yet I found the boss levels to be, well, overly traditional "boss levels" in a classic platformer sense. I never quite got over the whiplash between giant maps that welcomed exploration and limiting battles that required a monotonous pattern of running, jumping, and throwing Batarangs. Still, well worth playing, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Assassin's Creed II (finished)
I briefly played Assassin's Creed a few years ago, and I found it fun but stressful. Looking back, though, I realize it's because back then I was more interested in shooters and open combat and less willing to try a game that asked me to be OK with running and hiding from major threats. (After you assassinate big targets, you pretty much have no choice but to high-tail it through the village and go to ground.) I don't remember what inspired me to pick this one up aside from its high critical and consumer reviews and a desire to check out a franchise rumored to be good, but whatever it was, I'm glad I followed the urge. This turned out to be a wonderful game with dazzling physics, great puzzles, and a strong narrative to augment the gameplay. The combat was always a little wonky — it's usually easier to just run up and assassinate someone rather than engage them in a straight-up fight — but fighting is downplayed here, anyway. The real fun is running around and exploring the maps, climbing everything in sight (seriously, everything), and using a variety of learned techniques to distract your enemies and turn the city's crowds against them. Tons of fun. I just purchased the third entry, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and I'll likely check out Revelations after that.
Mass Effect (finished)
A great friend of mine urged me to play this for months, finally loaning me his copy to make sure I did it. I've already thanked him profusely for making me see the light. This is a killer RPG with great first-person combat and exploration, and it's the kind of game that I really wouldn't have enjoyed before now. The scope's enormous, but what really won me was the variety of gameplay options and narrative choices at key moments. There's also not a lot of hand-holding, which shows a respect for the gamer; after a few tutorials, you're expected to just jump in and get it, which was awesome. Some repetitiveness did creep in during the side quests, which all seemed to take place in identically designed bunkers and mines. Still, that's a minor reservation The game's an epic space opera with memorable characters and legitimately tough choices: I found I felt good when I could please my teammates and sad when I had to leave some behind. That's the sign of a good game.
L.A. Noire (unfinished, sold)
This was a disappointing way to end the year, though I'm currently on to other, better games. L.A. Noire's biggest failing is that it pretends to be an open-world game that puts you in charge of the narrative (not unlike a lot of the other RPG/FPS combos I played in 2011), but in reality it's a narrowly focused game that's essentially idiot-proof. The story revolves around Cole Phelps, a dickish LAPD cop who shuffles between desks as you guide him through cases and try to unravel ever larger mysteries. The trouble is that the story is too much of a mess. As I worked through cases, I would want to interview certain suspects only to be told they were unavailable; other times, I'd know that the likely suspect was probably innocent, but the case would resolve and end without my consent before I had time to question my other suspects. I knew I was being shuttled toward a "twist" that would reveal a killer on the loose and the wrong man behind bars, but that twist would've been a lot more believable if the guys I'd arrested actually had enough motive and evidence against them to be guilty. In addition, the game seemed to think I was an idiot. When tasked with deciphering location-based clues, my on-screen persona would eventually feed me the right answer; when pursuing subjects on foot, I was reminded what buttons to press to capture them (though, in another annoying twist, I was only allowed to tackle them when the game wanted me to, which it announced via the prompts); and so on. It's a great idea for a game, but the execution's awful. I quit halfway through and didn't look back.
The Best: Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 3, Assassin's Creed II, Portal 2, Mass EffectThe Worst: L.A. Noire, Gears of War, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Fallout: New Vegas]]>
My Cinematic Year in Review, 2011tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.17112012-01-04T14:27:35Z2012-01-04T21:03:26Z I've kept a running list of every movie I've ever seen (or as near as I can recall) for years now, but 2011 was the first time I charted my monthly movie-viewing habits with the same approach I take...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
I've kept a running list of every movie I've ever seen (or as near as I can recall) for years now, but 2011 was the first time I charted my monthly movie-viewing habits with the same approach I take to my nightly reading. There aren't too many firm conclusions to be drawn in terms of scheduled viewing or preferred genre, though it's interesting to note that my paid reviews drive most of my screenings. I rarely get to the theater for something I'm not reviewing, mostly because I can't stand the graceless and selfish attitudes in which most theater audiences seem to revel. In 2011, it was June by the time I went to a theater to see something for pure consumption, not review, purposes. Also, the only movies I saw in September were ones I was paid to see.
All told, I saw 79 films in 2011. That only counts those films I hadn't seen before, too; repeat viewings of previous releases or cable favorites aren't included in the final tally. I've included links below to those films I've reviewed, and any other thoughts that have come up for those I haven't.
JanuaryThe King’s Speech (2010): Sweet, small, and easy-going. Not the most magnificent movie ever made, but entertaining.
Restrepo (2010): An absolutely riveting war documentary that captures the sisyphean nature of battle in all its horror.
Casino Jack (2010): A decent turn from Kevin Spacey, but mostly forgettable.
Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010): The documentary that inspired the feature film is a little better, but too overstuffed.
The Extra Man (2010): Genuinely awful and off-putting. Unfunny and awkward at every turn.
The Green Hornet (2011)
La Moustache (2005): Nice existential thriller from France about a man who shaves his mustache and promptly begins to question his sanity when his wife tells him he never had one. Pleasingly ambiguous.
FebruaryUnknown (2011)
Easy A (2010): Solid, smart comedy that wouldn't be half of what it is without Emma Stone in the title role.
Cedar Rapids (2011)
Waking Sleeping Beauty (2010): A great documentary about the modern Disney renaissance, which included their releases from 1989-1994 (basically The Little Mermaid to The Lion King). It makes you realize just how much heart the creatives there used to have, and why Pixar saved the company.
Crazy Heart (2009): I missed this award contender from the end of 2009, and I was glad to finally catch up with it. Great music, great performances.
MarchThe Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Despicable Me (2010): Cute, if insubstantial. Steve Carell has some surprisingly moving scenes, though.
Red Riding Hood (2011)
Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times (2011): A fascinating look behind the scenes at the Times, albeit one that doesn't quite know how to handle the industry's self-immolation.
New Jerusalem (2011): An actor's piece, through and through. Well-observed, but very slow.
Turkey Bowl (2011)
A Bag of Hammers (2011): I walked out. Too sloppy and cute by half.
Wuss (2011): One of those festival entries you only see at festivals, for good reason. Can't even remember what happens.
The Other F Word (and here) (2011)
Sound of My Voice (2011): Amazing movie. Great story, wonderful cast. When it finally earns a theatrical release, I'll go see it again.
Undefeated (2011)
Buck (2011)
How to Train Your Dragon (2010): DreamWorks isn't up to Pixar's level, but films like this (and Kung Fu Panda) are solid family movies.
I Am Comic (2010): I checked this out because I'm a comedy nerd. It's average. There are more penetrating comic docs out there, but it's worth visiting if you're a completist or collector.
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AprilDevil in a Blue Dress (1995): This movie's less than 20 years old, but it feels like it might as well be from another planet. It's a nuanced adult drama, but not preachy or self-serious. It's got adventure and mystery, but it's not a remake or ironic meta-narrative. It's just a solid movie. Well worth seeking out.
Your Highness (2011)
Tron: Legacy (2010): Worth not a single cent more than the 99 I paid to rent it from Redbox. Maybe less.
Gun Fight (2011): Riveting if depressing documentary about gun control and modern crime. It might not move you from one side of the fence to the other, but it's still got some fascinating moments.
Fast Five (2011)
MayEverything Must Go (2011)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949): Sometimes, my wife and I will stay in on a Friday night, order some food, and watch whatever old movie happens to be on TCM. One friday night in May, it was Take Me Out to the Ball Game, a 1949 musical starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as baseball players who fall in love with Esther Williams, who just swims around. Ideal escapism.
The Tree of Life (2011)
JuneBeginners (2011)
Submarine (2011): A great, bittersweet coming-of-age story.
Bridesmaids (2011): Like most comedies bearing the Apatow imprimatur, this one's about 20 minutes too long, and so many of the scenes go absolutely nowhere. Yet it's worth it just to see Melissa McCarthy throw herself into a manic role and come out the other side. She's practically in her own movie (a better one).
JulyThe Night of the Hunter (1955): Stunning, gorgeous, haunting, and totally unforgettable. One of the two best non-2011 movies I saw during the year. The sad part is that it was so ahead of its time that audiences in 1955 didn't bite, and Charles Laughton never directed again. It was also screenwriter James Agee's last movie made while he was alive.
Horrible Bosses (2011)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
Adam (2009): Tolerable in a direct-to-cable kind of way.
Meek’s Cutoff (2011): Proof that you have to be Terrence Malick to get away with abandoning a traditional narrative.
Night Moves (1975): Wonderful neo-noir from the 1970s, which means it's all about infidelity and depression and being stuck between two equally unpleasant outcomes. Amazing work from Gene Hackman, as always.
Super 8 (2011): J.J. Abrams' film was written off as Spielberg Lite by a lot of people, but that's unfair both to Abrams and to Spielberg (who served as executive producer). It's really a solid story about the end of childhood, set against an admittedly splendiferous and Spielbergian backdrop about alien invaders. The film's biggest fault is actually that it doesn't acknowledge its own era's culture in the right ways. It's set in 1979, which means these movie-mad kids should be hip-deep in Star Wars talk (and that the nerdy movie buff who leads their film crew should be able to speak Close Encounters at the drop of a hat). By pretending those movies don't exist, Super 8 tries to live in their universe instead of exploring its own.
Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
X-Men: First Class (2011): I saw this at the $1.50 theater, which was a perfect price for the experience. Fun, and better than Ratner's X-Men, but still a little weak. I would, though, watch an entire miniseries about a young Magneto hunting former Nazis.
AugustThe Change-Up (2011)
Source Code (2011): Soft even by pop-sci-fi standards, Source Code is a fun movie for Saturday afternoons with low expectations. The mechanics of the time travel aren't internally consistent, but still, not a bad way to spend a couple hours.
Animal Kingdom (2010): A gripping crime drama that doesn't pull any punches. People start dying almost immediately, and the ones you like the most are in the most danger.
Fright Night (2011)
Our Idiot Brother (2011)
Good News (1947): This is the 1947 version of the 1927 stage musical that was also put on film in 1930. (The next time someone complains about Hollywood's modern obsession with remakes, send them to Google.) Peter Lawford and June Allyson flirt and sing. It's a pleasant Friday night.
It Should Happen to You (1954): George Cukor's film is billed as a romantic comedy, but it's got a heart of sad loneliness. Judy Holliday stars as a deluded woman who uses her savings to rent a billboard in the heart of New York City and plaster her name on it in hopes of becoming famous. The film's a shrewd, heartbreaking look at love and human nature. Bonus: It's the first on-screen appearance of Jack Lemmon.
Forbidden Planet (1956): Total classic. The animation's pretty good for 1956, too.
Kiss Me Kate (1953): Like having a really bad fever dream.
SeptemberContagion (2011)
Drive (2011)
Machine Gun Preacher (2011)
OctoberDream House (2011)
The Ides of March (2011)
S.W.A.T. (2003): I wanted a laundry-day action movie, and I got one. Of course, I got hung up for a while on the fact that the movie was based on the TV show of the same name, and that characters in the movie shared names with their TV show counterparts but also referenced the show, watched it, and could sing the theme song. Basically, an ontological mindfuck. Pretty explosions, though.
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (2011): Spoiler alert: high-strung entertainers mostly look like dicks after they get fired. Conan O'Brien comes off like a mostly benevolent dictator in this doc about the comedy tour he mounted after he quit The Tonight Show.
Catfish (2010): Fake or not? (Fake.) Great story, though.
Anonymous (2011)
The Black Room (1935): The story and twist aren't really strong enough to support even a 70-minute running time, but Boris Karloff does great work playing dueling twins.
NovemberA Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)
J. Edgar (2011)
The Descendants (2011)
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011): Thoroughly moving and sweet, if a bit one-sided. The documentary focuses on puppeteer Kevin Clash, who plays Elmo on "Sesame Street," but it glosses over his other projects as well as some of the darker aspects of the way the show plays into modern consumer nightmares. (Never has "Tickle Me Elmo" been so casually dismissed.)
A Dangerous Method (2011): Great performances from the cast, and bracing (if aloof) filmmaking from David Cronenberg.
Margin Call (2011): A smart drama about the 2008 recession that feels a bit too much like it was made for cable. (Blame the small cast and few extras.) Similarly, some of the structure was a bit too new-viewer-friendly, as when the head of the firm asked to have his junior analyst explain the market like the old man was a child. I've got a feeling that a CEO in that position would probably have a pretty good grasp on liquidity.
The Artist (2011): Sweet, moving, and thoroughly engrossing, not to mention one of the most likable love stories in a long time.
DecemberYoung Adult (2011)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (U.S.) (2011)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Moneyball (2011): Not bad, not great. Brad Pitt does good work, but the rest of the film is flat.
Tootsie (1982): As entertaining and funny as you'd expect an American classic to be. Great story, great performances, and a gap in my personal viewing history I'm very happy to have finally filled.
Random Data:
Total: 79
Documentaries: 11
Movies released before 2011: 26 (about 33% of the total)
Movies released before 2000: 10
Of the 10 highest grossers of 2011, number I saw: 2]]>
My Literary Year In Review, 2011tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2012://2.15992012-01-01T15:50:45Z2012-01-02T17:12:32ZThis is the third year I've kept tabs on what I read (here's 2009 and 2010). My number's down from last year, when I read 30 books; this year, I finished 22 and abandoned two at various stages. And that...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/2009 and 2010). My number's down from last year, when I read 30 books; this year, I finished 22 and abandoned two at various stages. And that decrease becomes more stark when you realize that quite a few of my choices this year were graphic novels, which take much less time to read than traditional ones. I'm not totally sure why the number went down, or even if that's something I should be concerned about. I was always working on one book or another, and (typical for me) I'd start a new book immediately after I'd finished the one before. I think it's because I traveled more in 2011 than ever before (both for work and myself), and because I finished the year with Justin Cronin's The Passage, which runs 800 tightly scripted pages and is not a journey to be taken lightly. Yet I'm not doing this as a contest, and my goal isn't to set a new personal record every year (if only because I'd eventually have to stop working, eating, and sleeping to squeeze in more titles). I just like keeping the list because I enjoy watching patterns emerge in my reading habits, whether it's seeing recommendations from certain friends appear with more frequency or uncovering certain genre patterns. I sought out more humor writing in 2011 than ever before, and I also explored more memoirs and nonfiction. Picking a favorite is almost impossible, but for sheer emotional power and ambition, The Pale King was hard to beat.
Anyway, here's a chronological list of what I read in 2011. As always, suggestions for future reads are welcome.
The Somnambulist (2007), Jonathan Barnes
There's a ton of potential in Barnes' historical fantasy-thriller, including the pleasing device of having the reader experience time travel from the perspective of the characters who aren't traveling through time. (So our narrative moves forward as progressive meetings with the time traveler are earlier in his life.) But the final product was too cute by half, and suffered from some of the pacing and dialogue issues that trouble first novels. I finished it out of sheer commitment to the project.
And Here's the Kicker: Conversations With 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft (2009), ed. Mike Sacks
For a comedy nerd, this is a fantastic read. Sacks talks with a smart group of comedy writers to pick their brains about how they got into the industry and what they think is funny. The interviews are introduced with biographical chunks that are a little too cheesy, but the talks themselves are worth it.
Sleepwalk With Me: And Other Painfully True Stores (2010), Mike Birbiglia
Mike Birbiglia is a hilarious comic who's found success by shifting away from typical sets and telling longer narratives that weave in jokes; when I saw him a couple years ago, his show was nothing but a few stories drawn out to epic length. Those stories work wonderfully on the stage, but they don't translate that well to the page because Birbiglia commits the sin that many stand-ups do when they write a book: he assumes that a transcript of his act will work as a humorous essay. But humor written is far different from humor spoken and performed. What feels natural out loud reads as choppy and far too short, meaning much of Sleepwalk With Me reads like half-formed pieces. There are some good punch lines in here, but you're better off hearing them than reading them.
The Likeness (2008), Tana French
I really dug In the Woods, French's first novel, and The Likeness is just as good. It's not a sequel exactly, but a sequential novel involving a supporting character from the first book and now told from that character's point of view. It's a solid device that lets French poke around in whole new personalities while keeping the story rooted in the world readers have come to enjoy. Great literary mystery.
I Found This Funny: My Favorite Pieces of Humor and Some That May Not Be Funny At All (2010), ed. Judd Apatow
The title doesn't lie: some of these stories are bitter, weird, and intentionally off-putting, while others are plain anti-humor, anti-drama, and anti-enjoyable. Still, there are some highlights, including Paul Feig's piece about his brief flirtation with sports announcing (imported from Feig's Kick Me) and Conan O'Brien's "Lookwell" pilot. Some of the dramatic pieces are good, too, but overall the collection is pretty hodgepodge.
The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (2010), Dan Charnas
Dan Charnas used to be a talent scout for Profile Records and later the head of the rap division for American Recordings, meaning he had a front-row seat to the rise and bloat of hip-hop as a cultural force. His book is a dense but readable history of hip-hop from a business perspective, charting the path the music took from blowing out New York basements to dominating pop culture worldwide. Great read.
Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence (2002), Paul Feig
Now this is humor writing. Feig has worked on a number of TV series and films (he directed Bridesmaids), but it's his role as creator of "Freaks and Geeks" that earned him a place in TV history. His personal essays about growing up as a weird, repressed little geek are heartbreaking but hilarious, and anyone who's seen "Freaks" will recognize many, many story lines in Feig's own childhood. A fantastic memoir.]]>
In the Event of My Untimely Demise: 20 Things My Son Needs to Know (2008), Brian Sack
Brian Sack (who blogs at Banterist) brings his sharp wit to a series of brief, vaguely cartoonish essays written to his child. Cute but insubstantial.
What I'd Say to the Martians: And Other Veiled Threats (2008), Jack Handey
It sounds stupid and unoriginal to call something "laugh-out-loud funny," but the phrase genuinely applies here. Jack Handey's quick essays are dependably hilarious, but the books packs so many of them together that it's easy to overload. The book feels like an ideal bathroom reader.
Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions (2010), Rachel Held Evans
I don't agree with some of Rachel Evans' conclusions, but then, the book is about learning to live in those kinds of tensions. Her background mirrors my own in many ways: politically and theologically conservative upbringing, plenty of time with her church's youth group, and a growing sense of unease at the way some of the things she was taught didn't mesh with her developing understanding of the world around her. She's still a believer (as am I), but she's no longer on the same path as her parents or peers because she started asking tough questions and realizing that some of them don't have easy answers (if they have answers at all). If you grew up in a Southern church and/or went to a private religious university, this is worth your time.
Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Paul Feig
Brilliant and sad and wonderful. Feig re-creates his romantic misadventures with amazing detail, and the brief chapters make for an easy (if cringe-inducing) trip through one repressed boy's rocky sexual discoveries.
The Pale King (2011), David Foster Wallace
Wallace is my favorite author. The first thing of his I read was Infinite Jest, and after that it was over. I had to get everything. My heart broke when he committed suicide, and I met the release of The Pale King, his unfinished final work, with equal parts anticipation and sorrow. I was wowed by the book, but it's definitely a partial novel. The bare bones of a story are there, and so many sequences channel the humanity and brilliance of Wallace as well as anything he ever wrote, but it's ultimately more a coda to his career than a swan song. It's definitely one I'll revisit.
Gun, with Occasional Music (1994), Jonathan Lethem
Lethem's first novel is a compelling mix of retro-futurism and detective noir. It didn't hit me as hard as The Fortress of Solitude or some of his essays, but it was still fun to see where he got his start.
Gilead (2004), Marilynne Robinson
Absolutely beautiful. Every sentence is a finely carved work of art, and I found myself reading more slowly as the novel went on so I could revel in Robinson's pace and style. It's also one of the most realistic and moving depictions of faith and struggle that I've ever read.
Let the Great World Spin (2009), Colum McCann
McCann's novel has a number of wonderful scenes and ideas, but it's also one of those "disparate stories that are tangentially connected" books that feels like a shortcut to a novel instead of an actual profound narrative.
The Magician King (2011), Lev Grossman
I really liked The Magicians, so I was excited to get this when it dropped over the summer. The sequel is thinner than the original — the page count is smaller and the typeface is bigger — but it's still a great narrative about two characters working from different emotional places to try and achieve the same result. That said, I had the wind knocked out of me by the ending. It didn't feel like a legitimate or organic twist, but a forced and overly bitter way to make the main character grow up a little. The disappointing final pages colored my feelings about the rest of the book, but I'd like to dig back into this one in a couple years and see how I feel.
Batman: Year One (1987), Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli
I decided to catch up this year with a few Batman graphic novels that I'd always meant to read, and I figured Year One was a good place to start. It's a good book, just four collected issues, but I liked the approach Miller took to plugging some of the gaps in the hero's early years.
Batman: The Killing Joke (1988), Alan Moore, Brian Holland
What a terrifying, riveting story. The hardback edition nicely fleshes out the issue's history with background info, character sketches, and so on, but all you really need is Moore's wicked little one-shot. This is the merciless Joker that Christopher Nolan brought to life in The Dark Knight, not the cavorting goofball of so many comic book and cartoon stories. One of the all-time greats.
Batman: The Long Halloween (1997), Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale
Loeb and Sale's Long Halloween is a cool idea, unfolding over a year as a holiday-themed serial killer makes life difficult for the denizens of Gotham City, but I found myself groaning at the overly orchestrated dialogue. Comic book dialogue tends to hit one or two words in every sentence with additional force conveyed in bold text, but that means taking the narrative control away from the reader. Good dialogue has its own flow, but I found Long Halloween unwilling to let that flow build on its own. Still, a fun read.
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (2011), Patton Oswalt
Like most comedians, Patton Oswalt is a great public speaker and an awful writer. Where Birbiglia's long-form comedy has at least some similarities with printed essays, Oswalt's style doesn't really work on the page. He's fantastic at knowing how to make a bit work on stage, but he's not nearly as skilled at organizing his ideas into chapters (or even coherent narratives). I checked this out on faith, but I found myself skimming almost immediately. I barely remember finishing.
Faithful Place (2010), Tana French (abandoned)
As a fan of French's previous two novels, I was sad that this one didn't connect for me. I quit after a while, but I might be able to find a way in if I wait a while and come back to it.
Batman: Dark Victory (1999), Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale
Again, another decent story undercut by rocky dialogue. Still, I'm something of a sucker for Batman origin stories, and this introduction of Robin was fun to read.
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (1999), David Foster Wallace (abandoned)
I'd never tackled Brief Interviews before, and I had to quit when the bitterness became overwhelming. It's not like I didn't know that was the point of the book; Wallace's focus here is as sharp as ever, and he digs unforgivingly into the sad and awful world of semi-fictional men. Still, it was a little too much for me to take. As a Wallace fan, I plan on coming back to this one, though I might have to do it in small sips instead of bigger gulps.
The Passage (2010), Justin Cronin
Cronin's novel (his first) hooked me from the start, opening with a sad vignette about a poor woman and her lonely child, but I didn't know just how emotionally invested I'd become until major characters went missing and I found myself saddened by the loss. The Passage feels at times like a perfect mix of I Am Legend and The Stand, but Cronin digs into the hearts and minds of his characters with more skill than your typical genre author. The novel's first third is sprawling and dense, as Cronin sets up the viral infection that will eventually turn a dozen unlucky people into vampire-like monsters whose disease will unmake the world, and things get even bigger when he abruptly jumps forward almost a hundred years to pick up the plot in the postapocalyptic wasteland of future America. Yet he makes it all work, weaving together big stories and great characters in a classic page-turner. I had more fun getting lost in this world than I'd had with a book in a long time, and I'm looking forward to the sequels. (This is the first in a planned trilogy.) A great read.]]>
Soundtracking: "Bad Reputation," Freedy Johnstontag:slowlygoingbald.com,2011://2.16652011-12-26T17:07:02Z2011-12-27T04:17:25Z I'm fascinated by how it's possible to be nostalgic for something that happened in your lifetime but that you didn't actually experience firsthand when it happened. Case in point, for me: early-1990s alternative rock and pop. I love great...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
I'm fascinated by how it's possible to be nostalgic for something that happened in your lifetime but that you didn't actually experience firsthand when it happened. Case in point, for me: early-1990s alternative rock and pop. I love great guitar pop from this era, even though I was too young for it at the time. I was 12 in 1994, and as I've said, I was a musically sheltered kid who didn't know what was happening even in mainstream modern rock, let alone the alternative or power-pop worlds I'd come to love so much when I got older.
There's something about that sound that's endlessly captivating for me. Part of it's the fact that kids my age and not much older were into bands I'm only now enjoying, but it's really a kind of wistfulness that this sound, this energy, was popular right before I was really culturally aware of musical trends outside my parentally prescribed window of country and oldies. Listening to certain records now is like hearing someone describe a party at which I arrived moments too late to do anything but help clean up.
That's how I feel about Freedy Johnston's "Bad Reputation." The singer-songwriter's fourth album, This Perfect World, hit shelves in the summer of 1994, when I was very much a confused boy who would not at all be able to appreciate Johnston's witty lyricism or his soulful but poppy angst. It was just a little beyond me at the time, and besides, it wasn't even on my cultural radar.
I heard the song for the first time on a mix tape some friends made me as a parting gift when I moved to Los Angeles after college. It's an actual tape, too, and one I wore out through repeated use to the point that the tape itself began to stretch and warp, the songs losing or gaining speed at random. It's right now locked in the small fireproof safe I use to store things like my wedding certificate and Social Security card. It's that important to me. The tape was a wonderful mix of pop and hip-hop, rock and soul, and its makers spliced in sound cues that tied into the overarching themes of travel and challenge and that also made the final product feel that much more special. It's practically impossible to duplicate. Some songs have movie dialogue between them; others cut out halfway through as the next track kicks in abruptly. It's a work of art.
One of the anchors of the tape is Johnston's "Bad Reputation," and the song's feeling of finding yourself alone in a crowd, looking for someone you can't forget, cut raggedly to my core as I drove across the country to a new home away from the people I'd spent four years weaving into my life. Everyone goes through the same basic crises right after college, and those years of rockily searching for your identity aren't that interesting to anyone who wasn't in them with you, but still, knowing that everyone else was having a tough time didn't make mine any easier. The first year after college was a tough one for me — my job had low pay and even lower morale, and I went through three apartments and eight roommates in 12 months — and I found myself turning again and again to the songs my friends had put to tape and sent westward with me.
Sometime in those early post-graduate years, I came across Kicking and Screaming. I'd only heard snatches about Noah Baumbach's first film, and those only in the context of articles that talked about his hiatus in the entertainment industry between writing and directing 1997's Mr. Jealousy and returning to the field to co-write 2004's The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou with Wes Anderson. I was so glad to find the film, too. It's a hilarious, sharply written, wonderfully observed comedy about the existential malaise that sets in in your early 20s as you stumble from the cocoon of academia into the unforgiving sunlight of the real world. The jokes worked, the characters were spot-on, and the stories of selfish heartbreak made perfect sense to a young man trying to figure out just what he was going to do with his life.
The film ends on a perfect note of reckless optimism with a young man reaching out to the woman in his life, and as it cuts to black, Baumbach cues up "Bad Reputation." It was a pretty timely choice from a technical perspective — the film came out in October 1995, just a year after Johnston's album — but for me it the resonance doubled and trebled, becoming not just a coda for the film but a reference to the very song that had carried me to California on the words and prayers of friends greater and truer than I could ever have imagined having. I didn't know the song would be there, nor that the film would speak so clearly to what I was living through at the time. But it was, and it did.
The tape my friends made me came with a note and a track listing, scrawled in a messy hand, and the note talks in part about how my friends want me to know that they will always be with me, and that I will always have people in my life willing to share in my joy, offer solace in my grief, or just make me a tape of songs they hope I'll like. That's what I think of when I listen to "Bad Reputation." I remember what it is to be lonely but brave, and loved above all, and to have nothing to hold onto but the knowledge that all things change.]]>
Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (U.S.)tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2011://2.17052011-12-21T10:30:27Z2011-12-21T13:32:00Z Hard to watch, but also not that good. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
Hard to watch, but also not that good.
Click here for the review.]]>
Review: Young Adulttag:slowlygoingbald.com,2011://2.17042011-12-16T10:29:19Z2011-12-16T16:05:12Z No. No no. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
No. No no.
Click here for the review.]]>
Boopy Doopy Boop Boop Sextag:slowlygoingbald.com,2011://2.17082011-12-09T13:09:50Z2012-02-01T17:01:04Z The last "Community" we'll get for a while wasn't one of its best. Whatever happened to the simple joys of "O Christmas Troy"? "Community" 3x10: "Regional Holiday Music"...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
The last "Community" we'll get for a while wasn't one of its best. Whatever happened to the simple joys of "O Christmas Troy"?
"Community" 3x10: "Regional Holiday Music"]]>
December 2011tag:slowlygoingbald.com,2011://2.17092011-12-09T07:18:33Z2011-12-21T13:33:16ZTinker Tailor Soldier Spy Young Adult The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (U.S.)...Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/Tinker Tailor Soldier SpyYoung AdultThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (U.S.)]]>
Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spytag:slowlygoingbald.com,2011://2.17062011-12-09T05:31:50Z2011-12-09T17:23:10Z Great, classically styled spy thriller. Click here for the review....Daniel Carlsonhttp://slowlygoingbald.com/
Great, classically styled spy thriller.
Click here for the review.]]>
Cole Abaius over at Film School Rejects invited me and a number of other writers, critics, and filmmakers to contribute our picks for the greatest films of all time. He did this as a response to the latest iteration of Sight & Sound's list of the 10 greatest films ever made, a list that's already prompted responses in the critical sphere.
It's worth noting that, for me, "greatest films" and "personal favorites" do not necessarily line up. This has nothing to do with bias, fear of going against the current, or anything as nebulous and poorly defined as "guilty pleasures." Rather, I think it's entirely possible to love and respect a film as one of the best ever made without holding it dear to your heart the way you do those films that have a more personal meaning. Writing on the subject of good bad books, George Orwell said: "The existence of good bad literature — the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously — is a reminder that art is not the same thing as celebration." In other words, I can believe Rashomon to be one of the greatest films ever made without ranking it as a personal favorite, and I can love Rushmore like nothing else without considering it to be the best film of all time. This is an area of critical and personal study I find endlessly fascinating: what we love, what we value, and how those two diverge.
Anyway, all that to say that, for the purposes of this list, I ranked what I consider to be 10 worthy candidates for the title of "best films ever made." It was tough but fun to do, and I think the individual lists make for great reading. I also think the final list is a smart representation of moviemaking at its best, and I was happy to contribute. Read on:
The 10 Greatest Movies of All Time (According to The Internet)
Also, here's the Top 10 list I submitted, along with accompanying blurbs. (Through crossed wires on my end, I'd thought blurbs were required for every film, not just our No. 1 pick. Lucky you.)
1. The Godfather: Film’s great power is to reflect the difference between who we want to be and who we actually are. No film better captures that emotional schism than The Godfather, a gorgeous, sweeping story of ruin and damnation that charts a family’s very American rise and fall. The crime story, thrilling though it is, takes second place to the heartbreaking tale of power, greed, and self-destruction. You always want Michael to make it out, but you know he never will.
2. Singin’ in the Rain: The best musical ever made, hands down, it’s also one of Hollywood’s favorite things: a story about itself. What could’ve been just another jukebox musical is instead a sweet, spellbinding love story set against the moment when pictures started to grow up (just a little). It’s a love letter to movies, and it’s impossible not to have a good time watching it.
3. Sullivan’s Travels: There’s an intriguing bit of darkness shot through Preston Sturges’ satire of screenwriters that makes it more relevant and gripping than just another workplace comedy. The laughing faces that make up the film’s final moment seem like they’re howling at the moon. A witty, fantastic road comedy.
4. Sunset Boulevard: For my own Top 10 list, I was tempted to simply submit the name “Billy Wilder” and be done with it. He’s one of the best directors of all time, and Sunset Boulevard is a masterpiece in every way. Dark, sad, funny, weird, and possessed of the kind of bittersweet nostalgia for days that never happened that always seems to show up in movies in/about Hollywood’s golden age.
5. Citizen Kane: The film’s place as an American classic makes it feel like a textbook answer instead of a movie, which is a shame, because it’s still a wonderful drama about excess, power, and the other ways we drive ourselves to destruction. It also deserves every ounce of praise it’s been given for the technical breakthroughs with which it ushered in a new type of moviemaking.
6. Casablanca: The unbeatable heartbreaker. Doomed romance doesn’t automatically make for good storytelling, either. It takes great characters, situations, writing, drama, pathos; Casablanca has it all in spades.
7. Do the Right Thing: Spike Lee is another great American filmmaker, and his 1989 exploration of racial tension in a Brooklyn neighborhood remains his crowning achievement. It’s staggeringly raw, an exposed nerve that Lee refuses to cover or let heal. Required viewing for all humans.
8. Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa’s output was prodigious, and he made a number of classics, but Rashomon deserves special attention for telling a story so well that we’re still remaking it decades later. The “narrative with shifting perspectives” feels like an old trick now, and it’s rarely done well, but Rashomon showed the power of playing with audience perception and how the truth is never what we think it’s going to be.
9. The Apartment: The Apartment might not get as many mentions today as Some Like It Hot, the film Billy Wilder made before it, but it holds up just as well. The story is simple — nebbish underling loans his apartment to corporate execs who need a place to have affairs — but it quickly evolves into something much more complex, mature, and dark. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine are fantastic.
10. Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back: Borrowing basic structure and sensibility from Westerns, The Empire Strikes Back is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made thanks to its attention to character above all else. It’s a chase movie that doubles as a meditation on sacrifice and growing up, and the small number of locations means we get to spend time feeling out the fantasy world before us. It’s also damn nice to look at, employing the kind of color temperatures and painterly compositions sadly foreign to the genre. There have been six movies and host of spin-off stories set in George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, but this outshines them all.
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I bought an Xbox 360 in December 2010, though I already owned a few games for the system. My former roommate had one, and we lived together for four years, so it made sense to pick up a few used titles to play when he wasn't using it. However, he and I parted ways in the fall of 2009, so I went quite a while without playing video games. It had been even longer since I'd owned a gaming system: I sold my PlayStation 2 in summer 2004 to help defray the cost of moving to California after college, meaning I hadn't been anything remotely like a real gamer in years. I knew I wanted to get back into gaming, but I also wasn't sure what kind of gamer I'd become. I spent the year finding out what I like and don't about games, as well as discovering just how much my gaming preferences have changed.
What follows is a mostly chronological list of the games I played in 2011:
Medal of Honor: Airborne (unfinished, sold)
One of the carryover titles I sold soon after I got my own Xbox was Medal of Honor: Airborne. I was a huge fan of first-person shooters growing up, especially the Medal of Honor series, so I'd picked this up years earlier while living with a roommate. I knew when I fired it up this time, though, that my days with simplistic games stuffed with infinitely spawning enemies were at a close. I still like a good combat game, and I'm not even averse to playing through something as narratively derivative as a World War II shooter laden with hilariously somber quotes about the cost of battle. But I want a shooter to be a real game, by which I mean a challenge I am asked to solve. Just running around and triggering waves of enemies (or, equally troublesome, their elimination) by hitting hidden checkpoints is pointless. There's no strategy, no thrill. It's just mindless explosions. I've got a feeling I won't be returning to the MoH series for quite a while.
Burnout Paradise (unfinished)
Leaving a racing game unfinished isn't the same as quitting on a narrative. Burnout Paradise is meant to be played in discrete chunks. It's a great game, too, and one of the very few racing titles I like. (I got hooked on the series with Burnout Revenge.) I like the open-world set-up that lets you start challenges whenever you want or just drive the roads to explore and set speed records. The challenges are more interesting than typical races, too, involving stunts and crashes. It's a solid title.
The Orange Box (unfinished)
I bought this just to get my hands on a copy of Portal again, and the game remains as pleasing and frustrating as ever. Pleasing because it demands concentration and smarts as you build out the moves in your head you will need to execute; frustrating because too many of the solutions rely not on intellect but on twitchy reflexes. This problem was solved in the sequel, which I loved.
Fallout 3 (finished)
An amazing game, and the first title to really show me the possibility of open-world storytelling. I fell in love with the postapocalyptic wasteland of Fallout 3, and I was enamored of the karma system that let you influence the world around you through your actions. I also really liked the mix of RPG and FPS in the combat system, which let me stack moves with the game's special targeting system or just fight it out in real time. Great powers, great choices, great story. The enemies scaled up as you went along, too, though there seemed to be a plateau at the end. Once you level up past a certain point, you can take down most enemies with some basic strategy (though I will never forget the genuine worry I felt when I had to fight mirelurks). My only real complaint is that the main narrative seemed to reach a point of no return toward the end, and while I thought I'd have time to explore the world some more between missions, I found myself rocketed toward the end. (Though that also meant recruiting an ally in Fawkes, which meant mowing through enemies like so much grass.) In a lot of ways, 2011 was the year I relearned how to play games.
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The Beatles: Rock Band (unfinished)
I had to. Great songs and interface, though the Beatles-style guitar controller isn't quite as good as the previous Rock Band models. The buttons don't have quite enough give, but that could just be a fluke with my hardware.
Fallout: New Vegas (finished, sold)
I was so excited to play this after loving Fallout 3, which made my disappointment that much greater when I discovered an unwieldy, messy game. The maps were poorly layered (the map on the HUD was never clear about whether certain areas adjoined each other or if one was inside the other), the story was far too broad and complicated, and the overstuffed narrative led to burnout long before the game ended. I powered through out of sheer determination. Once I saw how things would end, I loaded an old save and maxed my persuasion skills (I usually load up on charm when I play an RPG to take advantage of more character loyalties and dialogue options) so that I could pass every speech check from there to the end. Then I just talked both final bosses out of fighting me. I'd have tried to fight them, but my companion dog vanished and couldn't be found, thanks to a glitch in the game. Not a title I'd be willing to replay.
Alan Wake (unfinished)
This came as a free download with my Xbox, but I wasn't too intrigued. I played through the first level or two, but it was a bit heavy on the cut-scenes for my taste. I don't mind cinematics that forward a narrative; these just seemed like padding.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (unfinished, sold)
I will always remain somewhat of a sucker when it comes to the opportunity to wield a lightsaber and fling objects with my mind. Plus, this was maybe $5 used at GameStop. Still, it got old quickly. Some fun Star Wars flair aside, it's a pretty repetitive button-masher with fiendishly hard bosses (typical for a Star Wars game) that become harder to beat when the game takes over the camera and limits your movements and sightline. I'm curious about the sequel, but only mildly.
Gears of War (unfinished, sold)
This was another bargain-bin pickup that I remembered from playing at a friend's house years before. I found it at turns too maddening and too simple, and the erratic AI of my teammates grew tiresome. Not a big loss.
Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (revisits)
I revisited these on a few occasions throughout the year just to have a palette cleanser. I stand by what I said about needing more from a game than just bodies and bullets, but these remain reliable guilty pleasures when I need to really unplug in times of high stress.
Halo 3 (finished, sold)
This was the first Halo game I'd played all the way through, and though I liked a lot of the combat situations (I was especially taken by the aerial stuff, which totally took me by surprise), I found the actual play-through to be sluggish and uninvolving. Now, obviously, the caveat is that I was fresh to the series, so maybe with the previous two installments under my belt I'd have been more forgiving of the experience. I think not, though. It's a pretty game, but a pretty standard run-and-gun.
Portal 2 (finished)
As challenging and as wonderful to play as you've heard. The game ditches the nail-biting mechanics of the original in favor of big rooms that give you all the time in the world to solve the puzzles inside. The new additions — cubes that redirect lasers, bridges made of light, and a number of gels that alter the physical properties of surfaces — are physically pleasing like few other game objects, but the real triumph is the way the producers have made a very linear story feel like a giant world that's under your control. Rooms are designed to push you along a specific path, and there's only one way to win the game, but there are many ways to play it, and that's what makes it so rewarding. My favorite section is the middle third, in which you navigate through staggering caverns while playing tests that introduce a 1960s-era story and a host of new tools to use. A fantastic experience.
Red Dead Redemption (finished)
This has to be one of the best games I've ever played. Period. The gorgeous open world is a joy to behold, and you can ride what feels like forever through the open West without suffering load screens or frame lags as you move between regions. On top of that, the generous amount of side quests and mini-games make the world of New Austin and its environs feel completely at the player's disposal. This was a game I could craft as I saw fit. I loved the honor and fame systems that let you choose how to morally navigate the world; I chose to play as a good guy, largely because it's a lot easier to move through the game's world when the merchants respect you and outlaws fear you. (Not to mention that it's a pain in the ass to fend off bounty hunters and law enforcement.) The combat's great, too, and the escalating levels of Dead Eye made for nice challenges. Above all, the story was strong, and I found myself hooked on learning what would happen to John Marston on his long journey home. Just about perfect.
Batman: Arkham Asylum (finished)
Good game. Not great, but good. The combat's solid, and I loved being able to play as Batman while swinging between gargoyles and taking out henchmen. Yet I found the boss levels to be, well, overly traditional "boss levels" in a classic platformer sense. I never quite got over the whiplash between giant maps that welcomed exploration and limiting battles that required a monotonous pattern of running, jumping, and throwing Batarangs. Still, well worth playing, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Assassin's Creed II (finished)
I briefly played Assassin's Creed a few years ago, and I found it fun but stressful. Looking back, though, I realize it's because back then I was more interested in shooters and open combat and less willing to try a game that asked me to be OK with running and hiding from major threats. (After you assassinate big targets, you pretty much have no choice but to high-tail it through the village and go to ground.) I don't remember what inspired me to pick this one up aside from its high critical and consumer reviews and a desire to check out a franchise rumored to be good, but whatever it was, I'm glad I followed the urge. This turned out to be a wonderful game with dazzling physics, great puzzles, and a strong narrative to augment the gameplay. The combat was always a little wonky — it's usually easier to just run up and assassinate someone rather than engage them in a straight-up fight — but fighting is downplayed here, anyway. The real fun is running around and exploring the maps, climbing everything in sight (seriously, everything), and using a variety of learned techniques to distract your enemies and turn the city's crowds against them. Tons of fun. I just purchased the third entry, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and I'll likely check out Revelations after that.
Mass Effect (finished)
A great friend of mine urged me to play this for months, finally loaning me his copy to make sure I did it. I've already thanked him profusely for making me see the light. This is a killer RPG with great first-person combat and exploration, and it's the kind of game that I really wouldn't have enjoyed before now. The scope's enormous, but what really won me was the variety of gameplay options and narrative choices at key moments. There's also not a lot of hand-holding, which shows a respect for the gamer; after a few tutorials, you're expected to just jump in and get it, which was awesome. Some repetitiveness did creep in during the side quests, which all seemed to take place in identically designed bunkers and mines. Still, that's a minor reservation The game's an epic space opera with memorable characters and legitimately tough choices: I found I felt good when I could please my teammates and sad when I had to leave some behind. That's the sign of a good game.
L.A. Noire (unfinished, sold)
This was a disappointing way to end the year, though I'm currently on to other, better games. L.A. Noire's biggest failing is that it pretends to be an open-world game that puts you in charge of the narrative (not unlike a lot of the other RPG/FPS combos I played in 2011), but in reality it's a narrowly focused game that's essentially idiot-proof. The story revolves around Cole Phelps, a dickish LAPD cop who shuffles between desks as you guide him through cases and try to unravel ever larger mysteries. The trouble is that the story is too much of a mess. As I worked through cases, I would want to interview certain suspects only to be told they were unavailable; other times, I'd know that the likely suspect was probably innocent, but the case would resolve and end without my consent before I had time to question my other suspects. I knew I was being shuttled toward a "twist" that would reveal a killer on the loose and the wrong man behind bars, but that twist would've been a lot more believable if the guys I'd arrested actually had enough motive and evidence against them to be guilty. In addition, the game seemed to think I was an idiot. When tasked with deciphering location-based clues, my on-screen persona would eventually feed me the right answer; when pursuing subjects on foot, I was reminded what buttons to press to capture them (though, in another annoying twist, I was only allowed to tackle them when the game wanted me to, which it announced via the prompts); and so on. It's a great idea for a game, but the execution's awful. I quit halfway through and didn't look back.
The Best: Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 3, Assassin's Creed II, Portal 2, Mass Effect
The Worst: L.A. Noire, Gears of War, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Fallout: New Vegas]]>
I've kept a running list of every movie I've ever seen (or as near as I can recall) for years now, but 2011 was the first time I charted my monthly movie-viewing habits with the same approach I take to my nightly reading. There aren't too many firm conclusions to be drawn in terms of scheduled viewing or preferred genre, though it's interesting to note that my paid reviews drive most of my screenings. I rarely get to the theater for something I'm not reviewing, mostly because I can't stand the graceless and selfish attitudes in which most theater audiences seem to revel. In 2011, it was June by the time I went to a theater to see something for pure consumption, not review, purposes. Also, the only movies I saw in September were ones I was paid to see.
All told, I saw 79 films in 2011. That only counts those films I hadn't seen before, too; repeat viewings of previous releases or cable favorites aren't included in the final tally. I've included links below to those films I've reviewed, and any other thoughts that have come up for those I haven't.
January
The King’s Speech (2010): Sweet, small, and easy-going. Not the most magnificent movie ever made, but entertaining.
Restrepo (2010): An absolutely riveting war documentary that captures the sisyphean nature of battle in all its horror.
Casino Jack (2010): A decent turn from Kevin Spacey, but mostly forgettable.
Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010): The documentary that inspired the feature film is a little better, but too overstuffed.
The Extra Man (2010): Genuinely awful and off-putting. Unfunny and awkward at every turn.
The Green Hornet (2011)
La Moustache (2005): Nice existential thriller from France about a man who shaves his mustache and promptly begins to question his sanity when his wife tells him he never had one. Pleasingly ambiguous.
February
Unknown (2011)
Easy A (2010): Solid, smart comedy that wouldn't be half of what it is without Emma Stone in the title role.
Cedar Rapids (2011)
Waking Sleeping Beauty (2010): A great documentary about the modern Disney renaissance, which included their releases from 1989-1994 (basically The Little Mermaid to The Lion King). It makes you realize just how much heart the creatives there used to have, and why Pixar saved the company.
Crazy Heart (2009): I missed this award contender from the end of 2009, and I was glad to finally catch up with it. Great music, great performances.
March
The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Despicable Me (2010): Cute, if insubstantial. Steve Carell has some surprisingly moving scenes, though.
Red Riding Hood (2011)
Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times (2011): A fascinating look behind the scenes at the Times, albeit one that doesn't quite know how to handle the industry's self-immolation.
New Jerusalem (2011): An actor's piece, through and through. Well-observed, but very slow.
Turkey Bowl (2011)
A Bag of Hammers (2011): I walked out. Too sloppy and cute by half.
Wuss (2011): One of those festival entries you only see at festivals, for good reason. Can't even remember what happens.
The Other F Word (and here) (2011)
Sound of My Voice (2011): Amazing movie. Great story, wonderful cast. When it finally earns a theatrical release, I'll go see it again.
Undefeated (2011)
Buck (2011)
How to Train Your Dragon (2010): DreamWorks isn't up to Pixar's level, but films like this (and Kung Fu Panda) are solid family movies.
I Am Comic (2010): I checked this out because I'm a comedy nerd. It's average. There are more penetrating comic docs out there, but it's worth visiting if you're a completist or collector.
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April
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995): This movie's less than 20 years old, but it feels like it might as well be from another planet. It's a nuanced adult drama, but not preachy or self-serious. It's got adventure and mystery, but it's not a remake or ironic meta-narrative. It's just a solid movie. Well worth seeking out.
Your Highness (2011)
Tron: Legacy (2010): Worth not a single cent more than the 99 I paid to rent it from Redbox. Maybe less.
Gun Fight (2011): Riveting if depressing documentary about gun control and modern crime. It might not move you from one side of the fence to the other, but it's still got some fascinating moments.
Fast Five (2011)
May
Everything Must Go (2011)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949): Sometimes, my wife and I will stay in on a Friday night, order some food, and watch whatever old movie happens to be on TCM. One friday night in May, it was Take Me Out to the Ball Game, a 1949 musical starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as baseball players who fall in love with Esther Williams, who just swims around. Ideal escapism.
The Tree of Life (2011)
June
Beginners (2011)
Submarine (2011): A great, bittersweet coming-of-age story.
Bridesmaids (2011): Like most comedies bearing the Apatow imprimatur, this one's about 20 minutes too long, and so many of the scenes go absolutely nowhere. Yet it's worth it just to see Melissa McCarthy throw herself into a manic role and come out the other side. She's practically in her own movie (a better one).
July
The Night of the Hunter (1955): Stunning, gorgeous, haunting, and totally unforgettable. One of the two best non-2011 movies I saw during the year. The sad part is that it was so ahead of its time that audiences in 1955 didn't bite, and Charles Laughton never directed again. It was also screenwriter James Agee's last movie made while he was alive.
Horrible Bosses (2011)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
Adam (2009): Tolerable in a direct-to-cable kind of way.
Meek’s Cutoff (2011): Proof that you have to be Terrence Malick to get away with abandoning a traditional narrative.
Night Moves (1975): Wonderful neo-noir from the 1970s, which means it's all about infidelity and depression and being stuck between two equally unpleasant outcomes. Amazing work from Gene Hackman, as always.
Super 8 (2011): J.J. Abrams' film was written off as Spielberg Lite by a lot of people, but that's unfair both to Abrams and to Spielberg (who served as executive producer). It's really a solid story about the end of childhood, set against an admittedly splendiferous and Spielbergian backdrop about alien invaders. The film's biggest fault is actually that it doesn't acknowledge its own era's culture in the right ways. It's set in 1979, which means these movie-mad kids should be hip-deep in Star Wars talk (and that the nerdy movie buff who leads their film crew should be able to speak Close Encounters at the drop of a hat). By pretending those movies don't exist, Super 8 tries to live in their universe instead of exploring its own.
Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
X-Men: First Class (2011): I saw this at the $1.50 theater, which was a perfect price for the experience. Fun, and better than Ratner's X-Men, but still a little weak. I would, though, watch an entire miniseries about a young Magneto hunting former Nazis.
August
The Change-Up (2011)
Source Code (2011): Soft even by pop-sci-fi standards, Source Code is a fun movie for Saturday afternoons with low expectations. The mechanics of the time travel aren't internally consistent, but still, not a bad way to spend a couple hours.
Animal Kingdom (2010): A gripping crime drama that doesn't pull any punches. People start dying almost immediately, and the ones you like the most are in the most danger.
Fright Night (2011)
Our Idiot Brother (2011)
Good News (1947): This is the 1947 version of the 1927 stage musical that was also put on film in 1930. (The next time someone complains about Hollywood's modern obsession with remakes, send them to Google.) Peter Lawford and June Allyson flirt and sing. It's a pleasant Friday night.
It Should Happen to You (1954): George Cukor's film is billed as a romantic comedy, but it's got a heart of sad loneliness. Judy Holliday stars as a deluded woman who uses her savings to rent a billboard in the heart of New York City and plaster her name on it in hopes of becoming famous. The film's a shrewd, heartbreaking look at love and human nature. Bonus: It's the first on-screen appearance of Jack Lemmon.
Forbidden Planet (1956): Total classic. The animation's pretty good for 1956, too.
Kiss Me Kate (1953): Like having a really bad fever dream.
September
Contagion (2011)
Drive (2011)
Machine Gun Preacher (2011)
October
Dream House (2011)
The Ides of March (2011)
S.W.A.T. (2003): I wanted a laundry-day action movie, and I got one. Of course, I got hung up for a while on the fact that the movie was based on the TV show of the same name, and that characters in the movie shared names with their TV show counterparts but also referenced the show, watched it, and could sing the theme song. Basically, an ontological mindfuck. Pretty explosions, though.
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (2011): Spoiler alert: high-strung entertainers mostly look like dicks after they get fired. Conan O'Brien comes off like a mostly benevolent dictator in this doc about the comedy tour he mounted after he quit The Tonight Show.
Catfish (2010): Fake or not? (Fake.) Great story, though.
Anonymous (2011)
The Black Room (1935): The story and twist aren't really strong enough to support even a 70-minute running time, but Boris Karloff does great work playing dueling twins.
November
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)
J. Edgar (2011)
The Descendants (2011)
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011): Thoroughly moving and sweet, if a bit one-sided. The documentary focuses on puppeteer Kevin Clash, who plays Elmo on "Sesame Street," but it glosses over his other projects as well as some of the darker aspects of the way the show plays into modern consumer nightmares. (Never has "Tickle Me Elmo" been so casually dismissed.)
A Dangerous Method (2011): Great performances from the cast, and bracing (if aloof) filmmaking from David Cronenberg.
Margin Call (2011): A smart drama about the 2008 recession that feels a bit too much like it was made for cable. (Blame the small cast and few extras.) Similarly, some of the structure was a bit too new-viewer-friendly, as when the head of the firm asked to have his junior analyst explain the market like the old man was a child. I've got a feeling that a CEO in that position would probably have a pretty good grasp on liquidity.
The Artist (2011): Sweet, moving, and thoroughly engrossing, not to mention one of the most likable love stories in a long time.
December
Young Adult (2011)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (U.S.) (2011)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Moneyball (2011): Not bad, not great. Brad Pitt does good work, but the rest of the film is flat.
Tootsie (1982): As entertaining and funny as you'd expect an American classic to be. Great story, great performances, and a gap in my personal viewing history I'm very happy to have finally filled.
Random Data:
Total: 79
Documentaries: 11
Movies released before 2011: 26 (about 33% of the total)
Movies released before 2000: 10
Of the 10 highest grossers of 2011, number I saw: 2]]>
The last "Community" we'll get for a while wasn't one of its best. Whatever happened to the simple joys of "O Christmas Troy"?
"Community" 3x10: "Regional Holiday Music"]]>