Last year I started keeping a list of all movies I watched at home and at the cinema (and the books that I read, a considerably shorter list). I watched so many movies at home that I couldn’t keep an entirely accurate record, and didn’t start at the beginning of the year, so that list is somewhat incomplete. I saw so few movies in the cinema, by contrast, that it’s easy to take about them as a group. In hindsight, I must say that I am very happy with the movies I ended up managing to see (the majority in the last two–three months of the year), the list being: (reverse chronological)
- Avatar
- Where The Wild Things Are
- The Boys are Back
- Moon
- Up
- Inglourious Basterds
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- Watchmen
Obviously my tastes in cinema-going (less so when watching movies at home) tend towards the mainstream. With the exception of Harry Potter, which I saw for a fundraiser and entirely against my will (but which I ended up not half minding), I would highly rate all of the movies above and recommend them unconditionally to most of my peers. I’m not going to try and rank them in order of preference or anything, but I’d have to say Inglourious Basterds would be my pick of the bunch. It promises great things to come for one of the most unique directors around whose movies just keep improving, and, in my opinion, raises the cultural bar for Hollywood cinema in general. Let’s never see a German character simply speak English-with-a-fake-German-accent-to-show-they’re-German again (let along without-even-the-accent-but-with-an-eyepatch — not that I saw that movie).
I should point out that I’m aware of less-than-positive views on Inglourious Basterds due to its irreverent view of certain events in history that should be taken more than seriously, but to be honest I’d prefer to see a movie that attempts some sort of catharsis as this one does, as opposed to reminding everyone how terrible a time and what a tragedy it was. But it’s easy for me to say that who has no direct link to the events in question.