A Bug's Life

I like the movies! 61 films this year, 20 (plain text) were watched in the cinema (3 rewatches), the other (italics) were on video/DVD/tv (17 rewatches, largely due to efforts to sort through the VHS mountain and discard/replace).

Slumdog Millionaire
Frost/Nixon
The Wrestler
The Fountain
¡Abre los Ojos!
The Dark Knight
Pan's Labyrinth
The Orphanage
Johnny English
Moulin Rouge

Dushman
The Man With Two Brains
Cabaret
Trainspotting
Bronson
Watchmen
Stage Beauty
The Libertine
Mar Adentro
Star Trek

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Unforgiven
Tombstone
Monsters vs Aliens
Historias Minimas
Sunshine Cleaning
Public Enemies
Aeon Flux
Moon
Futurama: Bender's Game

Bolt
Schindler's List
The Usual Suspects
Leon
Wild At Heart
Inglourious Basterds
The Time Traveler's Wife
District 9
Secrets and Lies
Shine

L.A. Confidential
Nosferatu
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
Dr Strangelove
Delicatessen
The Unbelievable Truth
Hitch
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus
The Year My Voice Broke
Grosse Point Blank

Brazil
The Player
The Men Who Stare At Goats
Strictly Ballroom
The Shawshank Redemption
Avatar
Boogie Nights
The Mission
Sherlock Holmes
Fame!
Mystery Men

I have a top few of 2009. I've talked about them a lot, but I'm blowed if I can find where now!
The Wrestler: What do you do when your body is your life, it makes your living, but it's getting too old for your career? Mickey Rourke struggles as an aging wrestler (and in a parallel story, Marisa Tomei as his stripper not-quite-girlfriend) with this change. Strong performances, on the effects of changes and decisions and how difficult it can be to make changes. As a non-follower of pro wrestling, it was effective to see the balance of showy ringside tricks for effect, and the real punishment the wrestlers put their bodies through. Having to make big, splashy injuries to wow the crowd, while strapping up more serious ones and pretending there's nothing wrong. Reality is difficult and complicated.

Moon: 2001-ish futurism, the NASA-white equipment buried under years of accumulated dust and grime. Compelling watching, I was quite transported for the duration and it came as a shock when the credits rolled and I found myself in a cinema. A chap works the solo Moon mining shift for three years, and is looking forward to being relieved and going home, when (as the trailer shows) he goes to a damaged vehicle and finds a man who looks like him. Truth, lies, identity, how you adapt to such a long period of isolation, madness? paranoia? All in a very matter-of-fact way. We're amazed he's on the Moon; he's not, it's just a job. We're naive to think this is special.

Frost/Nixon: The story was new to me, what impressed was the way the balance of power shifted back and forth between the men, conveyed by micro-expressions on the giant on-screen faces. Like Mornington Crescent, you look at the two and you just know who's winning at any time.

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus: Terry Gilliam's work tends to stick with me. It's an amazing mind, Gilliam's and Parnassus's, and we are treated to many explorations of its every-varying wonders. There are lies and misdirection about who people are, layered with the cast being players in a travelling show (which would have looked not out of place in C15 or C19 to non-historian me but which crunches mightily against their modern audience in shell suits and shopping malls).

There are a few I hugely enjoyed at the time, and thought would become favourites, but their impact has diminished away from the gosh-wowness of the big screen. Star Trek, The Dark Knight and Watchmen (both IMAX rewatches). Avatar was a lovely exploration of a fantastical new world, but I'm too uncomfortable with the Earth cultural dominance bits (the pantomime genocidally-inclined colonel and the American who becomes the Best Na'vi Ever Better Than Any Actual Na'vi) to become fond of it. There is an account of an early version, with more subtlety and backstory, that I think is stronger, but probably too long to film? (from surliminal)

Old favourites, good old favourites, I liked you as much this time as the first or possibly more and can see myself enjoying you again in the future. Pan's Labyrinth, Cabaret, The Man With Two Brains, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Dr Strangelove, Delicatessen, Brazil. Silly creepy funny quirky. And many more, which I haven't rewatched this year.

I must have watched Secrets and Lies before, but I didn't remember much of it, and it was a lovely, funny, affectionate yet unblinkered piece of people being bloody complicated and emotionally tangled and keeping a British face on things.
I had watched The Unbelievable Truth, not remembered it, watched it again, and still not remembered it and had to refresh my memory via IMDB. Actually, it has some similarities with Secrets and Lies - suburban lives, complications, a new person enters with a secret that affects the dynamic.

I'm glad I saw Trainspotting at last but found it terribly depressing in the main. Wild At Heart is an old favourite that seems to have passed its Best Before date - or maybe I have? Young people doing foolish things in an environment where the 80s colours and Wizard of Oz imagery serve to distance us from reality.