I loved 2011 at the movies, in part because it brought a change in philosophy, namely: an unwillingness to waste time on films that were certain to waste my time. It’s a rewarding approach; I recommend it. The other day I read my friend Eric Snider’s typically terrific year-end piece and, upon realizing that I had only [...]
No fancy wind-up or verbose navel-gazing. This year, we’re keeping things simple. I may have written less in 2010, but I watched roughly as much. Here are some thoughts on the year in film. The Worst, Briefly Noted 10. Charlie St. Cloud (Burr Steers) – A one-act play in three tweets: “Isn’t ‘emo Charlie St. Cloud redundant’?” [...]
This year marked my first foray to the Toronto International Film Festival — something I likely won’t repeat in 2009, for unrelated reasons — leading to a record number of films watched (315). It was also the year that I made a concerted effort to realign my grading system; I wanted to shape the grade [...]
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s critics who end each year with the sentiment that it was “the worst year in recent memory,” without even considering the possibility that perhaps it was they and not the movies that changed. In 2007, fortunately, these sorts of pronouncements have been few and far between, since [...]
My mindset at the end of each year I spend doing this seems to be the same. There are always frustrations — cinematic, professional and personal — and always moments where I start to think it would be more productive to refocus my efforts, perhaps lower my intake of new releases, or do something else [...]
I don’t, I am sorry to report, have a particular angle on the year-end summary this year. No laments or gloats on the state of the Oscar race; no whining about favorite movies being maligned, no bemoaning the favorites of others. It was rocky, great year at the movies — as great as any other [...]
“Frustrating” is maybe the best word to describe cinematic 2004 — not because the output was significantly below average, but because the number of instances wherein I was right and everyone else was wrong seemed to increase exponentially. But though the amount of good movies that were hated and bad movies that were loved is [...]
I saw over 200 theatrical releases this year — more than in any other year, I believe, and maybe too many. The Oscar race has fleshed out nicely; there is only one potential nominee that I strongly dislike (The Last Samurai), and it was snubbed almost entirely at the Golden Globes, so things are looking [...]
The Oscar race is wide open!! Well, actually, it’s not. As I write this, in the third week of January, the shortlist has been narrowed down to maybe six or seven per category. The real surprise for me is that there aren’t very many films in the running for this past year that I can [...]
The Year of September 11th is over, and so is one of the most eventful movie years in recent memory. From sure things Harry Potter to The Lord of the Ringsto out-of-nowhere triumphs like The Fast and the Furious, the multiplex certainly had a few busy seasons, while the art-houses were abuzz with the likes of Memento and In the [...]
The mantra around Hollywood is that 2000 was a terrible year for movies. I suppose that’s true in the context that there were many more bad movies than there were a year ago; on the other hand, there were a lot of highlights as well. The #1 film in 2000 was stronger than anything I [...]
1999 has passed us by and it was quite a year. Finally, mainstream films started to deviate from the traditional Act One – Act Two – Act Three storyline. Ideas leaned more and more towards the bizarre. Among the inevitable Hollywood triteness, specks of undeniable originality popped up more and more. No matter what anyone [...]
