So Few Movies

Okay, so having a kid didn’t bring my book-reading to a complete halt, but it’s pretty much done for my movie-going. My cinema visits dropped from 10 in 2007 to 5 in 2008, then 3 in 2009, and only picked up to 4 in 2010 because we accompanied him to his first full-length movie in the cinema, Space Chimps 2: The Return of Zartog. My top ten big-screen movies of 2008 to 2010 would therefore cover just about everything I saw, and most of them would be the obvious blockbusters. So I’ll have to include the small screen, even if the experience wasn’t as full as it could have been.

1. No Country for Old Men (2007)
2. Kin-Dza-Dza! (1986)
3. District 9 (2009)
4. The Social Network (2010)
5. There Will Be Blood (2007)
6. In Bruges (2008)
7. Inception (2010)
8. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
9. In the Loop (2009)
10. Space Chimps 2: The Return of Zartog oh all right, Avatar (2009)

It still seems like a pretty obvious list, with a couple of exceptions. In Bruges on DVD was a pleasant surprise, but perhaps I only liked it so much because I love Bruges itself. Jesse James was one I wish I’d caught on the big screen. Kin-Dza-Dza! is about as obscure as they come, in the English-speaking world anyway, but was unforgettably odd and funny. The rest have been pretty much discussed to death around the traps.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that The Social Network left me feeling more sympathetic towards Mark Zuckerberg than I had been, even if David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin played around with the facts for dramatic effect. Still didn’t get me to log-on to Facebook more, though.

As for Avatar, its themes and characters may not have been new, but it sure did look purty.

31 December 2010 · Film

Added by Rory on 2 January 2011.