johnlink’s 2012 in review
In the past, this year-end review has been very number heavy. I’m less interested in doing that now. They still show up at the end of the blog, but I’m going to talk about movies more than talk about numbers. I’m not sure that anyone cares what the average ACTING score was for movies I had previously seen before (6.64). As always, though, this list is about movies I saw in 2012. I don’t make an effort to go out and see everything in theaters, so it would be pointless for me to talk about the best movies made this year. What follows, I hope, gives a bit of entertaining insight into the stuff I watched this past year.
I had a good year of movie watching. I saw 191 films, 124 of which I had never seen before, and 186 of which had never been written about on this blog. I close in on 500 articles written, which is a pretty nice milestone.
Everything I mention below will contain a link to the article I wrote for easy access.
The worst movie I saw this year was LEGION. Just a pointless effort and a crappy film. I wanted my time back. I give some honorable mention to SALT for inviting my fury. I talked about how bad that movie was over the course of the next several articles. It’s feebleness infested other movies.
The best movies I saw comes as a three way tie. Going into this year, only THE USUAL SUSPECTS had ever hit an overall score of 9.75 (nothing has ever hit 10). This year, SHAWSHANK, THE INSIDER, and CASABLANCA all hit the 9.75 benchmark.
But I had seen all those movies before working on this project. The best movie I saw this year which I had never seen before had to be TREE OF LIFE. Just an amazingly moving film, and one which really spoke to me.
My favorite pretentious finds of the year are two fold. First is the documentary SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE. A very cool and unique documentary. Secondly is the German animated silent film THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED. This is another film I never knew existed, and which just blew me away with its ambition and its innovation.
My less pretentious favorite find was THE ART OF GETTING BY. This is a movie for young adults which I expected nothing out of. Instead, I saw a sweet and enjoyable movie with some nice performances.
Less of a find (in the sense that everyone knows about it) was THE AVENGERS. I really loved what they did with the team concept, and it earned a ’10’ in the MOVIE category from me for being so damned entertaining.
I gave a lot of ’10s’ this year. I gave 4 films perfect marks for ACTING (SHAWSHANK, TREE OF LIFE, WINTER’S BONE, and MANHATTAN). I gave 6 movies perfect WRITING scores (SHAWSHANK, CASABLANCA, INSIDER, CAINE MUTINY, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, and WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.
I gave only 2 in the FILM category (SHAWSHANK and TREE OF LIFE) but I gave 11 in the MOVIE category. They are (with some flourishes so this looks neater): The magnificent CASABLANCA, the powerful INSIDER, the joyous AVENGERS, a wonderfully rebooted BATMAN BEGINS, the well spoken RESERVOIR DOGS, the classic RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARC, an old favorite CITY SLICKERS, vintage Cruise in A FEW GOOD MEN, a great cat-and-mouse story CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, the best of the series in HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, and an unexpectedly solid suspense film THE NEXT THREE DAYS.
I watched a whole bunch of series, which was a resolution of this blog for 2012. Most of them reside under the COMPLETE SERIES REVIEW tab on the right, so I won’t like to them all here. But I was happy to get through the INDY films, the JACK RYAN series, all of Nolan’s BATMAN movies, the original STAR TREK film s (none of which I’d seen), and all the HARRY POTTER films. There are others as well. It was a good year for movie series on this blog.
For 2013, I’d like to continue to knock some big titles off of my list. I’d also like to revisit some movies I watched in ’09 when my format was much different. There are some great films which I reviewed that year which don’t stand up to the standard I’ve set myself presently.
Most importantly, I’d like to reach out further into the blogging community and make some more friends. 2012 was a great year of growth for this blog, and there is no reason that 2013 can’t be better.
Now onto some raw numbers from 2012:
Number of films watched: 191
Number of films watched that were new to me: 124
Number of films watched which I had previously seen: 67
Number of films seen in theaters: 6
Number of films between 1900-1929: 2
Number of films between 1930s: 3
Number of films between 1940s: 4
Number of films between 1950s: 10
Number of films between 1960s: 5
Number of films between 1970s: 12
Number of films between 1980s: 14
Number of films between 1990s : 32
Number of films between 2000s: 45
Number of films between 2010-present: 64
Number of films from current year: 12
Most represented year: 2011
Number of films which spawned sequels or were sequels: 74
Number of films which were later remade: 5
Number of films which were remakes themselves: 11
Number of films viewed in 3D: 0
Number of foreign (non-English speaking) films: 6
Number of animated films: 3
Number of documentaries: 2
Number of black-and-white films: 13
Number of films ranked for a second (or more) time: 5
Average FILM score total: 5.4
Average FILM score for films new to me: 5.14
Average FILM score for previously viewed films: 5.9
Average MOVIE score total: 7.37
Average MOVIE score for films new to me: 7
Average MOVIE score for previously viewed films: 8.04
Average ACTING score total: 6.34
Average ACTING score for films new to me: 6.18
Average ACTING score for previously viewed films: 6.64
Average WRITING score total: 5.53
Average WRITING score for films new to me: 5.08
Average WRITING score for previously viewed films: 6.37
Net bonus points given: 37
Number of films given bonus points (negative or positive): 57
Average bonus point per film: 0.3
Negative bonus points given: 13
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