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#12: Children of Men – Top 25 Films of the Decade

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Children of Men (2006)

Starring: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Pam Ferris, Danny Huston

Directed By: Alfonso Cuarón
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#21: The Bourne Identity – Top 25 Films of the Decade

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The Bourne Identity (2002)

Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Brian Cox, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Julia Stiles, Gabriel Mann

Directed By: Doug Liman
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#22: The Bourne Supremacy – Top 25 Films of the Decade

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The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Starring: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Karl Urban, Gabriel Mann, Joan Allen, Marton Csokas

Directed By: Paul Greengrass
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DVD Review: L.A. Confidential (Two-Disc Special Edition)

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L.A. Confidential (1997)

Starring: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, David Strathairn, Danny DeVito

Directed By: Curtis Hanson
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Top 20 Comic Book Movies of All-Time

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I admit, this story makes no sense.

I grew up a comic book fan, falling in and out of the habit as I got older. The times in my life where I stopped reading comics didn’t have too much to do with the comics themselves (although they probably did at times parallel a downturn in quality in the X-Men, the primary series I collected), but more to do with a lack of funds or my other entertainment options taking up my time. But then they started making movies about comics — more specifically, they started making GOOD movies about comics, and I decided to start reading comics again (albeit in much smaller doses).

So I write this list both as a fan of movies and a fan of comics. Thus, I’m also a big fan of movies based on comic books, when I’m not busy being a big critic of movies based on comics that fail to live up to the source material. This is a list I’ve been meaning to write for a few years now, and in that time, the list of candidates has only grown. Because the world of comic book adaptations has grown to encompass a nice variety of of genres and types, I felt a bigger list of 20 would lead to a more diverse and interesting collection than would a traditional list of 10. I’ll admit, I haven’t seen every comic book movie released, but I have seen every one that’s been released that I plan on seeing (meaning that if I haven’t seen a movie by now, I probably never will, because I’ve heard it sucks).

But first, I’ll clarify what I mean by “comic book movies”. For the purpose of this list, a comic book movie is any feature length film whose story and/or characters originally appeared in a comic book (and a comic book includes comics, comic strips, graphic novels, or manga). So films with comic book themes that didn’t originate in the world of comics, such as The Incredibles, Unbreakable, or Hancock, don’t qualify. Nor do sci-fish properties that originated elsewhere but have since become comic books, such as Transformers (not that it would ever make a list of mine).

The other thing I should clarify is what I mean by “top”. In this, I’m mostly judging the films by the quality of the films themselves, and less so by how strong they are as adaptations, although that will obviously come into play. The reason this isn’t simply a list on the best adaptations is twofold: one, I haven’t read all the source material for every comic book movie, and two, some movies don’t necessarily adapt one source as much as they borrow from several (that said, if I have read the source material, it would obviously affect my opinion of the film). Other than that, “top” is an amalgamation between “best” and “favourite”. And now, on to the list…
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TIFF 08: Day 8

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A change to the schedule today, which came with associated headaches. We realized that the 20 minutes we were giving ourselves after The Ghost to get to a different theatre (albeit one nearby) to see Chocolate simply wasn’t going to be enough, given that they start giving tickets to the rush line at about 15 minutes prior to the start of the film, and that we prefer sitting next to each other.

So we traded our tickets to see The Ghost for vouchers, getting up early to do so. Then we hopped on the subway to rush over to our next screening, realizing that the guy who did the exchange screwed up: giving us one regular voucher (which was correct), and one day voucher (which was not). Day vouchers can only be used for screenings prior to 5:00 pm, but we were planning on using it in a rush line for a 6:30 pm screening (as is our right, being Festival Lite package holders). So now we had to go back to the line from this morning, at a time when time was precious (we had to get in the rush line and grab dinner). After making the switch and grabbing some subs, we were pretty far back in the rush line for Uncertainty. But we made it into the screening (just barely), proving that the rush line process can work sometimes (largely because at this part of the week, no muckity-mucks are attending screenings anymore, so the reserved seats are turned over to rush liners).

Read on for musings on Synecdoche, New York, Gigantic, Uncertainty, and Me and Orson Welles…
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Movie Review Catch-up

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I’ve been making some changes in how I’m going to pursue this reviewing hobby of mine, starting with where my reviews will be posted, and where they won’t (besides here, of course). Another big change I’ve decided to make for this year is what I’ll be reviewing. In the past, I made a point of reviewing every movie I saw from the current year (i.e., if I saw a 2007 film in 2007, in theatre or on DVD, I tried to review it). This has become an unmanageable pace for me, particularly at the end of the year as I cram to get movies in for my year end lists and Andy Movie Awards posts.

As a result, I often feel like I have a big backlog of movies I “have” to review, which is a little silly, I know. My bigger concern is my desire to review all recent-ish movies has kept me from doing other sorts of posts, like TV or music reviews, older movies, or lists I’ve had bubbling in my head. So from now on, I’ll be doing fewer movie reviews, but hopefully more other kinds of posts, which should be fun for me (which is what this is all about, after all).

That said, the biggest reason I made a point of reviewing newish movies is that it’s the area that I think most people are most interested in reading my opinion of. If a movie is still in theatres or new to DVD, people may be interested in what I thought of it, so they can decide whether or not they want to see (that is, if they’re interested in my opinion of anything. I’ll assume some people are, otherwise, I’ll assume no one is reading this). To that end, periodically I’m going to do movie review catch-up posts, where I do mini-reviews for a handful of recent movies that I never got around to reviewing. These mini-reviews will basically be a paragraph of opinion that will mostly be summary-less, with an assigned score. I think this will be a good solution for movies I don’t have a whole lot to say about, but still have a bit of an opinion of. Sound good?

Read on for reviews of:
Be Kind Rewind (2008) 
Black Book (2007)
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Lust, Caution (2007)
Persepolis (2007)
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Top 10 Movies of 2007

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Yes, I put too much effort into this list.
Here it is, my long awaited Top 10 Movies of 2007 list (and by “long awaited”, I’m referring to myself, as I’m not sure anyone else has been waiting for this). This is later then I usually prefer to post this list (on the principle that the later you get into the year, the less people care about the previous year), but since I added a movie to this list over the weekend, I’m glad I waited. As of right now, I’ve seen 65 different 2007 movies (for the complete list, click here), including pretty much everything I think would contend for this list. Notable movies I haven’t seen yet that could’ve contended for the list include Persepolis, Lust, Caution, and The Darjeeling Limited, but I’m really happy with the way my list looks right now, as it’s been an extremely good year for movies. As it is, I had to push some really good movies off my honourable mentions list, so I better post this before more might have to go. To give you an idea of how I felt about this year, everything on list, including honourable mentions, rated 4 stars out of 5 or higher. So if you feel like you haven’t seen a lot of good movies this year, you should give some these a try.
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Top 5 Worst Movies of 2007

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I wasn’t going to do this list this year, feeling so good overall about the year in movies. Then this happened, and I figured I might as well. I’ll be force-feeding myself some more 2007 movies in the coming weeks, so there’s a good chance that something else I’ll see would have contended for this list, but I figure at some point you have to accept that you’re either not going to see everything, or you’re never going to make a list (I choose A. On that note, expect my best movies of the year list soon).

More than any other list I write, I must stress that this is the Top 5 Worst Movies of 2007 That I Saw. Some of these are plenty bad, but I’m absolutely certain that I haven’t seen most of the worst movies of the year, as I generally make an effort to avoid bad movies (whereas I am pretty confident that I’ve seen the majority of great movies, so I like that list more). Still, it’s always fun to make fun of stuff, so here we go.
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