year 5 wrap-up / year 6 preview

Another year gone, and I'd honestly hoped to be done with this project by now.  Or at least to have under 200 films left on the list - I came close, the number's at 205, which is well under the number of days in a year, but to help me out Hollywood's going to have to stop making new movies that I want to see.  I went to the theater 5 or 6 times in 2013, which for me is a lot. Seeing "Life of Pi", "Star Trek Into Darkness", "Iron Man 3", "The Wolverine" and "Man of Steel" on the big screen gave me a big head-start on the movies of 2013, and represent my best hope for making some progress.

Oh, and let's not forget "Les Miserables", the first film of the year that sort of set the tone - so many films this year that were either classic literary stories ("The Three Musketeers", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "Jane Eyre", "Vanity Fair", "Little Women", "Tom Jones") or were just generally downbeat stories about the human condition ("The Lost Weekend", "Blue Valentine", "Once Around", "The Descendants", "50/50", "The Sessions", "The Pursuit of Happyness" and "Precious").   And riffing off the theme of revolution and war, that was fertile territory as well ("Marie Antoinette", "Joyeux Noel", "War Horse", "The Patriot", "Troy", "Zero Dark Thirty", "The Thin Red Line", "Red Tails", "U-571", "The Alamo" and "Cold Mountain").

I also got WAY too bogged down in crime films ("Collateral", "Miami Blues". "China Moon", "Stone", "The Brave One", "Billy Bathgate"), and serial killer films ("Summer of Sam", "Zodiac", "Natural Born Killers", "American Psycho", "Taking Lives", "The Bone Collector").  There were more of those than I thought, and it's a really dark subject, it turns out.   Having also covered politics, racism, 9/11, school shootings, epidemics, alien invasions and apes taking over the world, I'm anxious to move on to other topics.

On the positive side, I finished off a fair number of franchises ("Harry Potter 7 Pt. 2", "Rocky Balboa", "The X-Files", Ace Ventura, Dirty Harry and all the James Bonds) and got to some films that have been on the list for what feels like forever ("Gone With the Wind", "C.S.A", "Kill Bill").  I also completed what I think will be my last sports chain ("The Fighter", "The Boxer", "Tin Cup", "Hardball", "Goon", "The Mighty Ducks" and "Slapshot") and my last Western chain ("The Claim", "Tombstone", "Wyatt Earp", "Open Range", "Heaven's Gate" and "The Missouri Breaks").  Really, in both cases, if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.

The best film of the year, according to my highly unscientific rating system, was "The Dark Knight Rises".  I was as nitpicky as I could be, but still could find nothing wrong with it, so I gave it a "10".  A brilliant fusing of three recent comic-book storylines, action-packed and full of nice surprises.  Considering that this year's runners-up with scores of "8" were "Iron Man 3", "The Wolverine", "Kick-Ass" and "Star Trek Into Darkness" - yeah, I may have a favorite type of film.  Seeing the films on the big screen may skew the results, because I also gave "Les Miserables" an "8".

Speaking of "Les Mis", most of the principal cast showed up again and again throughout the year - Anne Hathaway came back in February for a 4-pack of dark romance films ("Brokeback Mountain", "Love & Other Drugs", "One Day" and "Rachel Getting Married") and then topped all that by playing Catwoman in "The Dark Knight Rises".  Hugh Jackman fought giant robots in "Real Steel" and ninjas in "The Wolverine", and Russell Crowe followed up his failure to catch Jean Valjean with his failure to prevent Krypton from blowing up in "Man of Steel".  Helena Bonham Carter showed up in "Dark Shadows", but Sacha Baron Cohen was never heard from again, since no channel ran "Hugo" or "The Dictator".  As I said, it was a tough year. 

So now I have to deal with the 205 movies left on the list, and I've already torn the order apart and re-structured it for the new year.  I found some new acting connections between films, and I'm ready to go.  I'm going to finally get to the Woody Allen films I haven't seen, and if I can add films at a somewhat slower rate, I may get to the Hitchcock films also.  Still, even with blocks set aside for animated films, kiddie literature films, and February romances, the schedule's only good until April or May, then I'll probably want to reorganize the whole thing again.

Turner Classic Movies ran an interesting block of movies last night - "Beach Party", "The Cheap Detective" and "The Loved One", followed by "East of Eden".  I eventually figured out they were doing tributes to Annette Funicello, Eileen Brennan, Jonathan Winters and Julie Harris, all actors who passed away in 2013.  Damn, that's a good idea, and I wish I could do something like that, having covered actors' birthdays it would be another good bit of symmetry.  But's it's also sort of downbeat, and I've already stolen at least two organizational ideas from TCM.

While I'm thinking about endings, how do I end this project?  When do I end this project?  Can I get my list down to zero films, or even close?  Do I stop at 1,900 films or an even 2,000?  What should the last film be?  Can I keep it going until the new "Star Wars" film in Dec. 2015?  Because I started with a "Star Wars" film, and again, symmetry.  I just have to keep going until I can figure out a way to make it stop.  My list is only down 8 films from last year at this time, so at this rate, finishing will only take another...crap, 25 years.

And with that, I'm on to 2014's movies...