My Pop Culture Year - Movies

I know I am a little late for lists, but things have been on hold for a while, so here we go. I’m going to start with the movies that I watched in the past year. I have been watching anything that was nominated for any kind of Oscar (including best costume) from 2009 to 2012, Films that were on the AFI best films of the 20^th century, and other films for fun as you’ll see below.

First, a couple of the Oscar movies that jumped out as particularly good:

The Visitor, Rachel Getting Married, Winter’s Bone, Rabbit Hole, Animal Kingdom, and Dogtooth.

All of these deal with, in one way or another, family function and dysfunction – Dogtooth at the most horrific level one could imagine (I suppose I could add The Descendants to this list). I enjoyed the action films, they are fun, but not as fulfilling as these movies. This is not because they offer a great picture of family life nor do they all have a happy conclusion. Instead, they speak to reality in such a way that I can find places of connection or reflection with my own life or the lives of people I know. I will say that none of these are happy, go-lucky movies, but instead carry a good deal of pain. In an odd way I think this might be a good thing.

Movies:

OSCARS

127 Hours

The Visitor

Barney’s Vision

A Better Life

Country Strong

Milk

Toy Story 3

The Help

Salt

Rachel Getting Married

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1

True Grit

My Week With Marilyn

Another Year

Doubt

Winter’s Bone

The Town

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Rabbit Hole

Bolt

The Illusionist (Animated)

The Artist

The Tempest

Changeling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2

The Way Back

The Dark Knight

Tangled

Anonymous

Tron: Legacy

Hereafter

The Descendants

Blue Valentine

Frost/Nixon

Foreign Films

Australia

In A Better World (Hæven)

Animal Kingdom

Dogtooth

Animated Shorts

Day and Night

The Gruffalo

Short Films

The Confession

The Crush

Documentaries

Gasland

The Inside Job

This is my second go at the AFI top 100 list. I am using a marriage of the first list and the updated list. As one could expect, some of the movies are on the list because they were significant at the time, but do not hold up today, and others continue to be solid, great movies. Of the ones I watched this year Buster Keaton’s The General was new, so it was the first time I had ever seen it (the first Buster Keaton movie I had ever seen). If I had to rank them I would put Some Like It Hot and The General on the tier, The African Queen and Star Wars (A New Hope) on the second, and Sunset Boulevard, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and All About Eve on the first. Great movies!

AFI 100 Best

Sunset Boulevard
The Bridge on the River Kwai

Some Like It Hot

Star Wars (A New Hope)

All About Eve

The African Queen

The General

This final list of movies is thanks in large part to Netflix streaming – it makes it so very easy to watch almost anything!

FUN/OTHER

Sin City

Bunraku

Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief

The Punisher

Searching for Bobby Fisher

Sheirk

The Lincoln Lawyer

Revolver

Rango

Mr. Deeds

Mississippi Burning

The Muppets

Airplane

A Knight’s Tale

Thor

Melencholia

Blood and Bone

Chocolate (Fury)

Good Will Hunting

Hoosiers

You Kill Me

God Bless America

Extract

Red Dawn (original version)

Paranorman

Rounders

Shooter

The Longest Yard (Remake)

War Inc.

Mean Girls

The Incredible Hulk

The Avengers

Megamind

The Hobbit

The following I watched while reading Cinematic Mythmaking by Irving Singer

The Lady Eve

My Fair Lady

Pygmalion

The Heiress

Washington Square

La Belle et la Bête

Beauty and the Beast

8½

2001: A Space Odyssey

Total – 96 Movies

Just in case you thought I was lazy, I also watched two seasons of Sherlock and all of Battlestar Galactica (the newer version).