A List of Films, Essentially

I'm trying to watch a film every day this year. I won't win. But until I give up I'll be posting here to track my progress.

[tom-watches-films]

I like these quiet little moments before the storm. It reminds me of Beethoven.

Wednesday 12/2- Leon: The Professional

I was actually amazed when I realised that I hadn't seen Leon; I certainly knew the plot and was familiar with the imagery, so I had figured that it was something I had watched once, aged 14 or something, then forgotten about. But it turns out that Wednesday was the first time I'd ever seen Jean Reno's turn as the Frenchest motherfucker ever to wear a vest in anger. It was magnificient, and Luc Besson pulled off a pretty incredible trick in making a gritty New York thriller with the colour palate of Paris in the summertime. 

Thursday 13/2- Get Shorty

Off beat Hollywood crime-comedy caper. It's good, but the only bit that sticks with you for more than a day is that bit where James Gandolfini falls down some stair. Infinitely superior to the sequel, Be Cool, which parodies the music industry.

Friday 14/2- Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Damn. Repeating myself already, but I love Kevin Smith and I was with some friends who wanted to watch it. So no apologies, I just won't watch it again for a while. Snoogins. 

[tom-watches-films]

It's a fact, sure as day follows night, sure as eggs is eggs, sure as every odd-numbered Star Trek movie is shit

Tuesday 11/2- Star Trek: First Contact

Fortunately this was film number 8 in the series. It may not be worth preserving in some kind of nuclear hardened bunker along with Citizen Kane and a Gutenberg bible, but it was a shit-tonne better than Insurrection.

Time travel in Star Trek is always fun, but it didn't feel like we really had enough time to play with the idea of the TNG crew popping up in such a pivotal point in humanity's history; the scenes on Earth felt rushed and only involved 2 non-crew members. There also didn't seem to be any link between the story on earth and the Borg-based fun unfolding onboard the Enterprise-E, which is a shame, and makes the whole experience somewhat akin to watching two related but separate episodes of TNG at the same time. Some of this might be attributable to Jonathan Frakes, who plays Cmd. Riker, making his directorial debut with this project. Maybe a more experienced director would have woven the plot strands together more expertly, but Frakes certainly knows Star Trek, and First Contact is entirely enjoyable if you do too.  

[tom-watches-films]

Feed me a stray cat

Monday 10/2- American Psycho

One of my all time favourites, but I haven't watched it for years. Endlessly quotable satire of 1980's Wall Street and a killer (see what I did there?) turn from Christian Bale with one of the most realistic portrayals of antisocial personality disorder (or psychopathy, if you aren't up on ICD-10) ever committed to film. 

I read the book before seeing the film and found it a truly harrowing experience. Long swathes of almost unreadable crap about fashion and Phil fucking Collins interspersed with nauseating sexual violence. Which was kind of the point. The film glosses over a lot of the violence because you simply couldn't release that film. What remains is less powerful but more enjoyable. 

[tom-watches-films]

The D is silent, hillbilly

Crappy weekend. Ill, tired, demotivated. So I couldn't bring myself to watch anything particularly challenging or new. So it's three old favourites.

We Were Soldiers- Pre-public drunken anti-Semitism Mel Gibson leads the US air cavalry in the battle of Ia Drang, one of the first major engagements of the Vietnam war. Stirring stuff. Lots of helicopters. 

Django Unchained- What is up with Tarantino's accent during his cameo? What was he going for? South African?

Ghostbusters- There's not much new or interesting that I can really say about Ghostbusters. It's brilliant and Bill Murray is one of the funniest men alive.

[tom-watches-films]

It's not your fault that I've already seen Good Will Hunting

Thursday 6 Feb- Good Will Hunting 

I don't need to recap this one; you know what it's about. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won the Oscar for best original screenplay and Robin Williams took the best supporting actor gong for one of his least OTT (read: coke fuelled) performances.

Director Gus Van Sant used this new found credibility to kickstart his real dream: a virtually shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, but with added scenes of Vince Vaughn wanking. Surprisingly, this film did not win any Oscars.

[tom-watches-films]

The journey so far

Well this is embarrassing. I sat down just now to type out the list of every film I've seen so far this year, but there are some big gaps. Hopefully some of the details will come back to me, but in the mean time, please take my word for it that I haven't failed quite yet.

This list is not in order until I get to 12 Years a Slave.

Clerks

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Chasing Amy

Dogma

Snowball Effect (making of Clerks)

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Alpha Papa

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

The Sting

The Departed

Up!

Iron Man 3

The Big Lebowski

Argo

Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie

12 Years a Slave

The Wolf of Wall Street

Casino

Three Kings

Analyse This

Bad Grandpa

MITT

Dredd 

Man of Steel

Thor: The Dark World

[tom-watches-films]

I like films, so I'm going to watch a lot of them this year

I like films. My tastes aren't particularly esoteric, or even that different from anybody else's, but I'm certainly what you may call pop culture literate. 

So I figured that it would be interesting to see if I could watch a film a day during 2014. Obviously I'm not going to make it, but it will still be fun to try. This is not an onerous new year's resolution. 

The Rules:

1. Any feature length production counts (including documentaries/TV movies). It doesn't have to have played in theatres, it doesn't have to be something I haven't seen before, and it doesn't have to be good.

2. If I miss I day, I can double up afterwards to catch up.

3. Rewatching is allowed, but not within the same month (necessary to prevent me from watching Spinal Tap three nights in a row, like I did last December).