With due respect to Richards excellent 100 Films In A Year blog, here’s the start of my list of films I have seen (for the first time- it’s not counting films re-watched) during 2012. I’ve not drawn up a list like this before but this would seem to be the best time for it- we are nearing the end of 2012 and it also marks the fact that I’ve now cancelled my Lovefilm subscription, so I shouldn’t be seeing quite so many films in future! I guess I have decided that I’m seeing too many movies these days- its becoming such that the films are blurring in my memory, that my brain just can’t take in so many films anymore. I’ve recounted before the feeling that films are too disposable these days, that access to films now is just too much like sensory overload. As a movie fan it might seem tantamount to heresy to be writing this, but its just too many movies. Its overkill.
So anyway, here’s the start of the list. Its chronological, starting from January with films I had bought me for Christmas last year. Just missing the list are Super 8 and the awful Conan reboot, both of which were presents I saw pre-New Year (for the record, Super 8 was a lovely film and Conan one I wished I had never seen at all, but at least it was a freebie).
1) Rise of the Planet of the Apes
2) Point Blank
3) Captain America
4) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (the David Fincher one)
5) The Adjustment Bureau
6) Transformers 3
7) Cowboys & Aliens
8) The Princess of Montpessier
9) Melancholia
10) Red State
11) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
12) Troll Hunter
13) I Am Number Four
14) The Descendants
15) NEDS
16) Extremely Close & Incredibly Loud
17) Priest
18) Fair Game
19) The Man Who Could Cheat Death
20) Real Steel
Well, that’s the first twenty. Looking at the list its clear there’s not really any ‘classics’ in there and to be honest there’s a few of them that I drew a complete blank with- I had to check titles for some of them against their IMDB entry to figure out what the films even were, suffering a complete disconnect with the titles. As for the more easily accounted for, ROTPA and Captain America were ‘okay’ genre flicks that teased at better sequels. I thought Adjustment Bureau wasn’t bad, Melancholia truly dire pretentious rubbish. The others were all pretty ‘meh’ – all pretty disposable really, fairly harmless and forgettable. I remember Priest for its very good Christopher Young soundtrack more than anything else.
the ghost of 82 