Best of What I Watched in 2008
Part of my ode to retirement is to report that I watched over 400 movies and TV shows on DVD in 2008, 60% from our King County Library and 40% from Netflix. My viewing choices were determined by mood, availability, variety and curiosity.
I keep a personal rating system for what I watch, which I use for rating every movie, regardless of source. Netflix uses a 5 star rating system, with 3 or more stars being considered positive ratings. This is good for their marketing, because it skews users toward more favorable ratings, and hence more recommendations from Netflix. Netflix does not let users rate with half stars or decimals. But Netflix does report the results of their recommendation algorithm as a decimal, and my personal rating system also uses a decimal. What is frustrating is that a movie I might personally rate 2.6, marginal, I have to give either 2 stars for "dislike" or 3 stars for "like" at Netflix, and so I incline to give it 3 stars. And a movie that I personally rate 3.4, I cannot bring myself to give a Netflix 4 star rating of "really liked", so it also gets 3 stars. Thus both 2.6 and a 3.4 movies, though almost one full star apart, are rated the same by me at Netflix. But happily, the Netflix algorithm seems to be able to figure me out, because the decimal recommendations Netflix reports as their best guess for how I will like a video are very close to my own decimal ratings.
My personal rating system is actually more like a four star one, with only a handful of movies earning a four and rarely one getting a five (usually when I rate it based on memory of having seen it in the past). I try not to pick movies to watch unless I think I might actually like them, but a few clinkers still slip in. Overall though, most of what I watch falls in the 2.8 to 3.4 range. Bear in mind that I am rating movies for my own taste, not as a critic advising a wider audience. I gave 34 videos 3.5 stars or more in 2008, 9 from the library and 25 from Netflix. Below is a breakdown of the 34.
Only 2 were from 2008, because the newest ones are harder to get sometimes, so I usually wait to see them later. From 2007 came 12, from 2000 to 2006 came 10, from the 1990s came 5, one each from the 80s, 60s and 40s, and 2 from the 1930s. Dramas accounted for 15, documentaries 8, romance and musicals 3 each, and one each animated, western and what Netflix calls gay. There are only 4 foreign films, 2 French, a German and a Zulu.
Top rated for me was Anne of Green Gables: the Sequel; I just really like the characters and subject matter, the portrayal by the cast and especially by the lead, and the overall production look. Runners up were three of different genres from 2007, the musical Across the Universe, the documentary Body of War, and the TV drama Brothers & Sisters. The follow up group includes: Spitfire Grill, 1996 drama; Return to Lonesome Dove, 1993 western; Cranford, 2007 PBS drama; Alive Day Memories, 2007 documentary; The Jane Austen Book Club, 2007 drama; Warm Springs, 2005 drama; and Sense and Sensibility, from 2008.
Rounding out my list are: the partially animated Enchanted from 2007; French comedy The Closet from 2000; political comedy Bill Maher: the Decider from 2007; six documentaries, For the Bible Tells Me So, No End in Sight and Taxi to the Dark Side, all from 2007, After Innocence from 2006, The God Who Wasn't There from 2005 and Memphis Belle from 1944; eight dramas, Recount from 2008, Mom at Sixteen from 2005, Gracie's Choice and the Zulu film Yesterday from 2004, The German film The Tunnel from 2001, the French Le Haine from 1995, Nothing But a Man from 1964 and Dead End from 1937; gay film And the Band Played On from 2001; the musical documentary Broadway the Golden Age from 2000 and the Astaire and Rogers Swing Time from 1936; and three romances, August Rush from 2007, the French film Nellie & Monsieur Arnaud from 1995, and the dancing film Strictly Ballroom from 1992.
I like character driven dramas, some period pieces and road quests, message pictures and political documentaries. I avoid horror, thriller, sci-fi and most action films. I expect to follow the same general approach to movie viewing for 2009, though political documentaries may be fewer. As for recommendations beyond the above listings, I would tailor them to the individual, based on their personal genre and sub-genre preferences.
posted by Tom Blake | 10:23 AM
11 Comments:
Tom,
It looks like we still have the same taste in movies. Our college days fell at a time when foreign movies were the only indy movies and they werebecoming popular in the US. I saw Forbidden Games a few years back and that still is an all time favorite for me. Thanks for your list. Jan and I will get a few of them from Netflix.
I have a rating system for the books I read or listen to. I took the opposite approach to yours. I started with the idea that a binary system would be sufficient. Either I liked the book or I didn't. I did not want shades of gray, but that turned out to be too simple. Instead of a two numbered rating system, I ended up with 5, like you. But unlike you I don't use decimals. I put qualitative defintions after my numbers:
1 - didn't finish it
2 - barely got through it (probably used the fast forward button a lot)
3 - most every book falls into this category, meaning I liked it
4 - I liked it a lot
5 - read it again. About the only books that fall into this category are some histories, some biographies, some science books, and the Teaching Company's courses.
The most recent 1 was Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. He wrote well meaning he wrote complete gramatically corect prose, but with little real flair. His description of the Chicago meat packing plants was riveting, but so depressing that I finally could listen no longer. Teddy Roosevelt was impressed by the book. He was repulsed by the description of the bodies of the workers who had fallen to their death in the cooking operations ending up in the canned food consumers ate.
And my most recent 5 was Lion in the White House by Donald Aida, a biography of Teddy Roosevelt.
My most recent 4 was Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor.
My most recent 3 was a Michael Chabon thriller.
John from Phoenix
John,
I also saw Forbidden Games again recently and still consider it great. I gave it 5 stars at Netflix. The college film series that concentrated each quarter on films from a particular country were a great idea and the man who presented the films was very good. For years I kept the sheets he handed out on the films. By the end of the quarter, the national culture of the movies we were watching did not feel as foreign.
Some old movies don't hold up, maybe because they relied on their freshness too much. I have been disappointed with revisits to French New Wave movies, for example. Some old comedies hold up, while others do not. I am not sure of the reason for the difference.
You mentioned some books, but did not name any recently viewed movies you liked, other than Forbidden Games. Do you have your own movie rating system in addition to Netflix? Do you have any Netflix "friends"? Contact me privately if you would like to consider setting that up.
I will try to put together my 2008 reading list next.
Was I the responsible party for getting you to use the "Friends" on NetFlix, Tom? :)
I will say that I do look at your queue to see what films you have in yours that may interest me. Movies I may not have heard of or some oldies but goodies.
I'm really glad to have NetFlix. I think the movie I'd been wanting to see and actually did thanks to NetFlix was "Casablanca" because I'd heard so much about it. I did enjoy watching it.
~Rake
Reiko,
Yes,it was you who first hooked me up with Netflix "friends", and thank you for doing that. Two of my kids are also Flix friends. In fact it was Anna's friend Seth who led me to Netflix. Old folks like me can learn much from you young folks if we open up a little.
Anna and I noticed a while back that the Flix queue that she was seeing for me was not accurate. It was showing the middle part of my queue as being the top. We thought maybe the fact my queue was so large could be causing the problem. I should check on that again.
We watched the Jane Austen Book Club tonight. Jan loved it. I thought it was entertaining, but I expected more. Although I have read many of her stories, I failed to make the connection between the characters in the movie and the characters in her books. I assume there was supposed to be such a connection. In particular I could not see why the male member of the club was interested in the blond member. And the character of the blond member was a mystery to me. We did not see her past and why she showed no interest at first, then jealousy, then submission. All we saw was that she loved dogs. Maybe the book would be better than the movie in explicating this.
John from Phoenix
I liked (I'll use your phrase and avoid any comment on it as double entendre) the "male member", because he was so genuinely open and willing to pursue his interest in the books regardless of any stereotyping. He was joyfully marching to his own drummer. In movies, I always identify the female character that I find most attractive. It is usually a second lead, or even a bit player. Maybe I avoid the female lead because I know I am not a leading man type. I suppose the reason the male member of the book club went for the blonde was the very openness I admired. She seemed like a tough case to relate to, but he was open to trying. Maybe it will work and maybe not - just like in real life. I wonder how the romantic pairings in Jane's novels would have stood up to the test of time. My suggestion for you to understand the blond is that you ask Jan.
Here’s my overdue year-end watching report. About 109 total titles viewed (multi-episode series counted as one title). Only about five of these were seen in theaters; the others are from netflix and various libraries. Looking back over my year end list, I failed to recognize a significant (more than 2-3) number of titles. I think this is due to the as well as the practice of picking crappy titles for decent movies. Titles composed of a verb and a string of concrete nouns or titles involving a character’s name are obviously easy to remember, while titles based on more abstract nouns or phrases—The Sea, Taking Sides, The City of No Limits—draw blanks.
Most of what I watched I would call “decent”—in other words, a “good” movie, probably worth having watched. Some of the less impressive films were still worth watching either because of what they were attempting or just because some aspect of the movie’s “flavor” was interesting to me (e.g., cinematography, costumes and setting, concept).
That said, there were some movies that activated my imagination and rang the aesthetic bells more strongly for me than others. My examined biases include a preference for “exotic” settings, “poetic” imagery and dialogue rooted in intelligent exploration of “ideas” without pretentious or long tedious silences (conversation or narration—even effective use of music—usually speaks more to me about a character’s nuances than an ambiguous shot of someone sitting in a chair, for example), beautiful explosions of deep imaginative feeling, unexpected and generous action and plot bends.
Among others, these come to mind as especially liked:
Howl’s Moving Castle
Walk on Water
Brideshead Revisited (the Jeremy Irons miniseries)
The Gathering Storm
Winged Migration
Planet Earth
Haunting:
Quest for Fire
Into the Wild
Old favorites re-viewed:
The Lover
Out of Africa
I was surprised by:
Beowulf
Oasis
The Darjeeling Limited
I remember liking, or Seth remembers me liking:
Unfinished Piece for Player Piano
The City of No Limits
Best of Youth
Overrated:
No Country for Old Men
Old Joy
Etcetera:
The Burmese Harp
Offside
Bleak House (2005)
Travelers and Magicians
Mountain Patrol: Kekexili
Nashville
Apocalypse Now
etc.
Anna of the six(!) remotes
Anna, I know what you mean about memorable titles. I quite often have to use Netflix as a reminder of what some movie was that I watched just in the last month and rated pretty good. I have not seen a movie in a theater for a few years. Theaters are best for spectacles, which are not usually high on my list, so I get by fine with my wide screen HD set up. I also like potty breaks, playing back scenes where I missed the dialogue (something that increases with age), and using subtitles for some UK movies when the dialect and slang are hard to catch. I also appreciate many of the special feature on DVDs. I used to watch movies a second time with the commentary on, but now usually find it too time consuming.
I have seen many films you listed, and have added others to my lists. The Planet Earth films have oodles of choices at the library, so I could use a recommendation. I will also be going through the Academy Award nominee lists for more possibilities. The Awards show last night was well done.
I am interested in how couples decide on what and when to watch. Susan has finally convinced me to plan my movie watching alone and she will join me when and if she is interested. Since she works full time, her opportunities to watch are more limited.
I have managed to hold the line at four remotes.
I agree with Anna about the movie No Country for Old Men. I read the book and loved it. I saw the movie and thought it was just so-so. The only thing I enjoyed about the movie was seeing how the characters were casted. Some were just as I pictured them, but others were a big surprise to me.
John from Phoenix
Jan and I saw Warm Springs. I enjoyed it very much and Jan slept through most of it. I liked the way FDR was portrayed as a man with many weaknesses, but with a tinge of the greatness most of us now credit him.
Tonight we watched The Lives of Others set in East Berlin in 1984. It won best foreign film at the Academy Awards in 2007. I enjoyed this one a lot too, and Jan again slept through most of it.
We were just married 25 years in November, and we are still searching for things we agree on.
John from Phoenix
I also thought "No County" was marginal. I liked "The Lives of Others". John, it sounds like you may need to start movies a little earlier for Jan. Falling asleep during a movie is not always a sign of non-interest. My best alert time is actually in the morning, like most old timers. I am not a nap taker, but if I eat lunch and then try to watch a movie, I invariably fall asleep. I do a little better in the evenings.
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