being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips
Having kept track of every film I’ve watched this year, I decided the other evening to rank ’em, partly because I hadn’t yet done it & partly just because that’s what I do. I won’t replicate the list cos that’s boring, but I found a few things interesting:
1. Four films managed to stick in my mind as new personal favorites, a pretty large number I would think, considering the list only encompasses 38 films as of the last one I finished about a half hour ago (The Rules of Attraction; number 17).
2. Out of the 38 films, I only have seen three in theaters (one on New Year’s Day, one after having seen the movie already on my computer [shhhh….], & the other was to spend time with my 9 year old sister [Bridge to Terabithia, which prompted me to re-read the book, thankfully]).
3. Somehow August Underground’s Mordum made my top 20 (number 20 exactly, for my credit). It’s possible I will expand on this film at some point, but all I can really say right now is that I consider it to be the most vile destruction of society I have ever witnessed. If the disgusting illustrations painted in American Psycho were fleshed out, only Mordum could ever come close, I think. Don’t ever watch it, please. It’s not even worth yr curiosity; I could lose a lot of potential friends.
& 4. The Glass Key ended up being the worst movie I’ve seen so far this year.
On the subject of preference & style, I have a lot of issues with finishing off a list like this. There are several movies that I’ve seen this year that I liked a lot but wouldn’t recommend to people I respected (High Tension, Point Break, Riki-Oh [one of my four new favorites], to name 3), & there are also a few that I thought were well made but could hardly stay interested the whole time (La Bestia nel Cuore, The Departed). Then of course there are always those movies that are good & everyone knows it (Pan’s Labyrinth, Miller’s Crossing, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pan’s Labyrinth). The most interesting films, I think, are those that are spectacularly bad, & there isn’t a soul who can plausibly deny it (plausibly being the key word here [hardy har]).
I don’t know where I’m going with this. Part of me is really disappointed so far in this year’s list, but maybe that’s just because last year’s was packed to the brim with odd gore relics that I treasure even to this day. This year’s only got 1, maybe 2 (if you can count Pigs as gory, I just count it as second only to The Glass Key as worst film I’ve seen this year), & that upsets me a bit. Ted & I, we spent a lot of ca$h a year ago on great movies like Dead Alive, Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, Cannibal Holocaust, & the entire Guinea Pig collection. Now that we’ve bought them all, they mostly sit there in Ted’s house waiting for school breaks when I can make it up & over & we can spend a solid chunk of time revelling in our own gag reflexes.
Does this make any sense? I think the point I’m trying to make here is that taste is flexible & possibly entirely unimportant. Taste, however, is inevitable, & in terms of film, this is what you should remember.