THE LIST: Every film I watched in 2013 rated

Here it is. The list that no one’s been waiting for. In my geekiness, I rated every film I watched this year out of 10 immediately after I watched them. And here they are along with my favs of the year.

1 The Conversation 8
2 Young Adult 6
3 Moon 9
4 The Perks of Being a Wallflower 6
5 Avengers Assemble 8
6 This Must Be The Place 8
7 Over The Edge 7
8 Looper 3
9 Tiny Furniture 3
10 Silver Linings Playbook 6
11 Drive 7
12 No 8
13 Cafe du Flores 5
14 Ruby Sparks 5
15 Django Unchained 8
16 Stoker 6
17 Indie Games: The Movie 9
18 Bully 7
19 Man on Wire 8
20 Take This Waltz 8
21 The invisible war 7
22 Compliance 7
23 Persona 5
24 Attack the Block 4
25 Bernie 7
26 Martha Marcy May Marlene 8
27 Cyrus 7
28 All The Presidents Men 8
29 Undefeated 8
30 Woody Allen: A Documentary 7
31 Chronicle 7
32 Dazed and Confused 7
33 Sleep Furiously 7
34 Rust and Bone 6
35 Samsara 7
36 Man of Steel 4
37 Before Sunrise 7
38 Before Sunset 8
39 Before Midnight 8.5
40 The Hunt 9
41 Suspension of Disbelief 5
42 In The Loop 8
43 Tony Takitani 2
44 The Interruptors 8
45 Pay it Forward 4
46 Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close 7
47 Galaxy Quest 6
48 Seven Psychopaths 7
49 The Amazing Spider-Man 4
50 Flight 5
51 I Wish 7
52 Liberal Arts – DNF
53 Ironman 3 7
54 Marley 7
55 Lantana 5
56 Cloud Atlas 6
57 Wreck it Ralf 6
58 Life and Times of Harvey Milk 7
59 The Place Beyond the Pines 8
60 Beware of Mr Baker 8
61 Stories We Tell 8
62 The Hidden Face 2
63 Frances Ha 8
64 God Grew Tired Of Us 8
65 You’ve Been Trumped 6
66 Upstream Color 7
67 In the House 6
68 Olympus Has Fallen 6
69 This is 40 7
70 John Dies at the End 7
71 World War Z 4
72 What Maisie Knew 8
73 Gravity 7
74 Star Trek: In to Darkness 1
75 The Way, Way Back 4
76 The Great Hip Hop hoax 8
77 Kick Ass 2 3
78 Nostalgia For The Light 7
79 Stone Roses: Made of Stone 8
80 Argo 7
81 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives ??
81 Blue is the Warmest Colour 9
82 Computer Chess 3
83 Now You See It 4
84 The Act of Killing 9
85 Pacific Rim 6
86 Spring Breakers 7
87 Gremlins 2 7
88 The Great Gatsby DNF
89 The Big Wedding 1
90 The World’s End 6
91 Star Wars Ep.3 Revenge of the Sith 5
92 The Matrix 8
93 Star Wars Ep.4 A New Hope 8
94 Side Effects 7
95 Sky High 6
96 Star Wars Ep.6 Return of the Jedi 7
97 Blackfish 8

The best of the year (In no particular order. And yes, I know that these aren’t the ones that necessarily scored the highest marks – but they’re the ones that have stuck with me):
Before Midnight (the final half an hour is probably my favourite 30 mins of cinema this year)
The Act of Killing
Indie Games: The Movie
Blue is the Warmest Colour
Stories We Tell
Beware of Mr Baker
The Hunt
Moon

The two that I couldn’t even get through
Liberal Arts
(this was heavily recommended but I’ve rarely seen such a pretentious, self indulgent waste of my time – I lasted 40 mins before I quit)

The Great Gatsby
(Tobey Maguire’s awful voiceover/Tobey Maguire’s face/it was like watching a 3D film without the 3D glasses – I gave this one less than 20 mins before I had to switch off)

The un-rateable
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

(Have any of you seen this? It won the Cannes Palm D’Or. It’s surreal and beautiful and confusing. I still have no idea whether I love it or not)

The inevitably bad
Star Trek: Into Darkness

(Just in case anyone had a final sliver of hope that the new Star Wars films will be any good, JJ Abrams puts a nail firmly in that coffin)

Stuff that inspires me: #4 Beasts of the Southern Wild

At the start of this week I went for a job interview. The final question put to me wasn’t exactly what I was expecting: what was the best film I’d seen in the last year? I didn’t pause; I didn’t have to think; it was an easy choice. Beasts of the Southern Wild is actually the best film I’ve seen in a few years.

Miraculous and magical are the words that most readily come to mind. I’m guilty of over-using the phrase ‘like poetry on the screen’ for movies that I love but, in this case, I think it’s absolutely justified.

The setting is the fictional community of The Bathtub, which is clearly a hall-of-mirrors reflection of the population that lived on the edge of New Orleans during the floods. It’s a bleak, derelict, backwards corner of society and is home to the tough-as-nails Hushpuppy, who survives in a mystical world that exists largely in her own head, and her dad, Wink. As they struggle to survive, we become as intimate with nature and as confused about the boundaries between reality and fantasy as Hushpuppy – but the film is never anything but brilliant and beautiful. And despite having a dream-like quality, it feels grounded and authentic thanks to it’s stunning novice cast.

Everything comes together here. The soundtrack (by Dan Romer and director, Benh Zeitlin) reflects and drives the film. Whenever I now listen to it, wherever I am, I’m transported to a different place… back to Hushpuppy’s world.

This film is touched by genius and I’d urge everyone to see it.

(Go on, click above for the trailer)

Stuff that inspires me: #1 Paul Thomas Anderson

Everything is open to interpretation. That’s the beauty of things. There’s no right way or wrong way; we take what we can from what we experience. This series of posts is about the stuff that inspires me. I’m not trying to convince you – I’m just brain-dumping some fanboy love on to the page. Not everyone will agree. That’s ok.

For me, Paul Thomas Anderson is a writer/director who is absolutely dedicated to film-making as art. That doesn’t mean that he makes pretentious, inaccessible films (well, not to me) but, in a world in which movies have too often become disposable, brainless and fit for the lowest common denominator, Anderson produces work that strives for greatness. I love the scale of his ambition and that he paints on huge canvasses – although he handles big set pieces and under-stated gestures with the same skill.

Yes, he’s flawed… of course he is. Of Anderson’s most recent film, The Master (2012), Roger Ebert said, “In its imperfections… we may see its reach exceeding its grasp. Which is not a dishonourable thing.” I think I liked The Master more than Roger did, however I do agree that it’s ‘reach exceeded it’s grasp’. That’s undoubtedly a fault – but it’s actually something I also love. I always want a film-maker (or any artist) to risk failure, to strive to produce something brilliant and better and better and better than to settle for mediocre or safe… or worse.

Part of this is the way that his stories don’t only live through characters or styling or location but through the framework he uses to tell them. In Punch Drunk Love (2002), he told a story about the craziness of being love by making a film that was itself insane and disorientating in every way. There Will Be Blood (2007) is a movie about greed and power, based around the volatility of California’s oil wells at the start of the 20^th Century, which rumbled along with a frightening build-up of tension and energy before gushing to a raw, unpredictable finale.

I think that actors like working with him because of these things but also because he clearly treats all of his characters with care and tenderness. This doesn’t only shine through in those that we can more easily root for, such as the naïve, eager-to-please Eddie Adams in Boogie Nights (1997) but also in characters like Daniel Plainview, the tyrannical, power-thirsty oilman in There Will Be Blood. Each is crafted, looked after as they grow and sent out in to the world with love.

That’s how he managed to pull Tom Cruise’s career-best role out the bag in Magnolia (1999) – which is a great, great film. He gave us the unexpectedly brilliant performance that it now seems Adam Sandler was always destined to deliver in Punch Drunk Love, and he brought us back a great Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights.

Anderson is a painter, poet and storyteller. His work is brave and ambitious, it’s epic and intimate, he makes me question things I thought I already knew and he makes me want to do better, better, better myself. When I walk out the cinema having watched a Paul Thomas Anderson film, I feel as if there really is a genuine opportunity to do what Neil Gaiman told us to always do: Make. Great. Art.