The Film List Thing III: This Time, It's Still Personal

Oh, is it 2014? OK then. Time for a brand new version of that list I do every year (2012 & 2013). I made 136 visits to the cinema in 2013, beating 2012's record of 106. I think I'll try and break that, but I don't know whether logistics may get in the way. I don't know. I'm not going to set a target. The previous few years this little pre-blurb has included a promise or a target or something. I'm not doing that this year. I might not even include the obligatory 'How I score' thing, because hopefully people have got the idea that 5/10 means average. Last year, I seemed to give more 6/10s than ever before, but last year was phenomenally good year. Oh, this is a list of films I've seen at the cinema in 2014, not a list of 2014 films I've seen. I recommend checking out my Letterboxd page for a fuller list of films what I've done a watch of with more better reviews because I haven't consigned myself to five words. Always rambley, this bit. Living up to the blog thing's name. Anyway-

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: 7/10- Surprisingly neat in all senses.
Last Vegas: 5/10- Sexist, ageist, annoying, passively funny.
American Hustle: 5/10- Lightweight and empty. J-Law's fantastic.
12 Years a Slave: 8/10- A masterpiece of historic proportions.
The Railway Man: 7/10- Surprisingly good, watchable and un-Oscar-y.
Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom: 5/10- Mandela & Elba are great. Otherwise not.
The Wolf of Wall Street: 7/10- Gatsby meets Apatow. Pulpy fun.
Inside Llewyn Davis: 8/10- My favourite Coen Brothers film.
August: Osage County: 5/10- Endless irritating monologues. STOP IT.
Robocop: 5/10- Some interesting things. It's alright.
The LEGO Movie: 8/10- Your inner child deserves it.
Dallas Buyers Club: 8/10- McConaughey does very good acting.
Out of the Furnace: 5/10- An actor's movie, easily forgotten.
Lone Survivor: 5/10- Graphic injury balances flag-waving.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit: 6/10- It's actually kinda good fun...
Mr Peabody and Sherman: 6/10- Worth it for the puns.
Her: 7/10- A touching study of love.
Stranger by the Lake: 8/10- A haunting study of dicks.
The Invisible Woman: 4/10- Charles Jog On, more like!
Prince Avalanche: 6/10- Performance of Paul Rudd's career
Only Lovers Left Alive: 8/10- So arty, but so good.
Cuban Fury: 6/10- Throwaway but funny. Frost's great.
300: Rise of an Empire: 5/10- Schlock saved by Eva Green
Non-Stop: 6/10- Actually kinda great. Who'd've guessed?
Under The Skin: 8/10- Good god. What a film.
The Grand Budapest Hotel: 8/10- Wes Anderson's funniest film yet.
Need For Speed: 4/10- Car chases are fundamentally boring.
A Long Way Down: 6/10- A fun romp, badly pitched.
Starred Up: 7/10- Gritty and gripping. Great performances.
Labor Day: 5/10- Nicholas Sparks with A Levels.
The Muppets: Most Wanted: 7/10- A funny enough follow-up.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier: 7/10- Marvel does politics. Very well.
The Legend of Hercules: 3/10- Dull, hollow codswallop without merit.
The Double: 8/10- The most Ayoade film ever.
Calvary: 8/10- Brilliant. Chris O'Wowd more like.
The Last Days on Mars: 4/10- So forgettable I've already SQUIRREL
The Raid 2: 6/10- It's not quite The Raid.
Noah: 7/10- Straight from the Bonkers Testament.
The Quiet Ones: 5/10- The Quiet What? Forgotten it.
Suzanne: 7/10- Interesting characters. All else superfluous.
The Love Punch: 6/10- Thompson & Brosnan are a joy.
Transcendence: 5/10- Half-baked Nolan aper.
We Are The Best!: 7/10- Very, very easy to like.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2: 7/10- Oi, action, gedoutta my romcom.
Locke: 8/10- Man talks about concrete. Compelling.
The Lunchbox: 7/10- Characters characters characters characters CHARACTERS
Blue Ruin: 6/10- Very solid Coens-esque thriller.
Tarzan: 1/10- DON'T LOOK INTO THE EYES!
Tracks: 7/10- Extreme dogwalking with Mia Wasikowska
Plastic: 4/10- #Bantz #Lads #LadsOnTour #FitBird #Misogyny
The Other Woman: 4/10- A passable attempt at filmmaking.
Bad Neighbours: 7/10- Told you Zac Efron's funny.
Frank: 8/10- Blimey. Bizarre, black, bewildering, brilliant.
The Wind Rises: 8/10- A beautiful meditation on life.
Sabotage: 2/10- How has Arnie got worse?
In Secret: 5/10- Liz, you can do better.
Pompeii: 5/10- Entertaining up to a point.
Concussion: 5/10- Saggy ending undermines good hour.
Godzilla: 7/10- A well-crafted blockbuster spectacle.
The Two Faces of January: 5/10- Solid enough thriller lacking tension.
X-Men: Days of Future Past: 7/10- The greatest ensemble cast ever?
Postman Pat: The Movie: 4/10- Early in the BORING morelikeamIrightguysamIright
Blended: 6/10- Sweet and good-hearted fluff.
Fading Gigolo: 6/10- Woody Allen's value for money.
Exhibition: 6/10- Sporadically successful artistic life-slice.
Maleficent: 7/10- Surprisingly great Disneyfied Jolie vehicle.
Grace of Monaco: 3/10- I laughed the whole way.
A Million Ways to Die in the West: 5/10- Let's say it's not Ted.
Edge of Tomorrow: 8/10- Smart, witty, sharp science fiction.
Oculus: 7/10- Freshest horror film in years.
22 Jump Street: 8/10- So funny. Love Lord & Miller.
Belle: 6/10- Well assembled, important genre piece.
The Fault in Our Stars: 6/10- The book, word-for-word.
3 Days To Kill: 3/10- McG. Please. Stop it. Please.
Devil's Knot: 5/10- Just Wikipedia the story instead.
The Art of the Steal: 6/10- AKA Ocean's Thirds Team. Fun.
Jersey Boys: 7/10- Big! Girls! Don't! Cry! Big...
Walking on Sunshine: 4/10- Hannah Arteton isn't her sister.
Cold in July: 6/10- An effective if forgettable thriller.
Chef: 7/10- Tasty metaphors and appetising comedy.
The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared: 7/10- Deadly knockabout Sweedish comic fun.
Transformers: Age of Extinction: 2/10- About seven hours too long. And it's only three hours long.
Boyhood: 9/10- Richard Linklater's historic magnum opus.
Begin Again: 8/10- Charming, beautiful stuff. Great soundtrack.
How To Train Your Dragon 2: 6/10- Perfectly entertaining, well animated fare.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: 7/10- Visual miracle, storytelling to match.
Tammy: 5/10- An absolute mess. Occasionally funny.
Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie: 2/10- About as funny as cornflakes.
National Theatre Live: SKYLIGHT: 8/10- Mulligan and Nighy. Phenomenal acting.
The Purge: Anarchy: 6/10- Such an improvement. Horrory fun.
Pudsey the Dog: The Movie: 2/10- Awful. Jessica Hynes, what happened?
The House of Magic: 5/10- Forgettable, but not without charm.
Earth to Echo: 6/10- Old-fashioned Spielberg-style romp.
Guardians of the Galaxy: 7/10- An awful lot of fun.
The Nut Job: 5/10- That ending. Those credits. ...Wow...
Step Up: All In: 5/10- Another Step Up movie. Shrug.
What If: 7/10- Zoe Kazan on world-beating form.
The Inbetweeners 2: 8/10- The best Inbetweeners film imaginable.
Hercules: 4/10- Prespcription: More mythical beast punching.
Planes: Fire and Rescue: 3/10- Shonky and boring. Good combination.
Into the Storm: 5/10- Fun nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless.
The Unbeatables: 5/10- Poorly dubbed Argentine Footballing twoddle.
Hector and the Search for Happiness: 5/10- Simon, stick to Edgar & JJ.
Deliver Us From Evil: 5/10- Disappointing yet decent Sinister follow-up.
The Rover: 8/10- Wrenchingly atmospheric and sprawlingly brilliant.
SIN CITY DOUBLE BILL- Sin City: 6/10- Style > substance, but what style.
SIN CITY DOUBLE BILL- SinCity 2: A Dame to Kill For: 6/10- Refreshingly fast paced noir nonsense.
Lucy: 8/10- Brilliantly inventive, creative and existential
The Expendables 3: 4/10- Just read the cast list.
Let's Be Cops: 4/10- Let's just go home instead.
Two Days, One Night: 7/10- A Marion Cotillard acting masterclass.
If I Stay: 6/10- I cried. It's still meh.
The Keeper of Lost Causes: 5/10- Generic, but Scandinavian, detective guff
Obvious Child: 7/10- Frances Ha meets Juno. Wonderful.
Million Dollar Arm: 6/10- Feel good Disney nonsense. Fun.
Before I Go To Sleep: 6/10- Excellent casting, decent enough thriller.
The Guest: 7/10- A worthy You're Next follow-up
Sex Tape: 3/10- Diaz: most annoying woman alive.
Pride: 8/10- Wonderful. Angry, funny, moving, brilliant.
A Most Wanted Man: 5/10- I'm going to miss Hoffman.
The Boxtrolls: 7/10- More please, Laika, and soon.
The Hundred-Foot Journey: 6/10- Sweet film about sour food.
The Riot Club: 7/10- God, it made me angry.
A Walk Amongst the Tombstones: 4/10- Liam Neeson is Liam Neeson
Wish I Was Here: 5/10- Average indie fare. Sporadically meaningful.
Magic in the Moonlight: 6/10- Minor Allen but still good.
The Giver: 5/10- Good ideas without the execution.
I Origins: 7/10- Cult classic in the making.
What We Did On Our Holidays: 6/10- Outnumbered without Karen. Still works.
Maps to the Stars: 8/10- A brilliantly twisted pseudo-satire.
Dolphin Tale 2: 5/10- Rufus the Comedy Pelican forever.
Gone Girls: 8/10- So gripping. Affleck is excellent.
Life After Beth: 5/10- Entertaining if sloppy zombie fare.
The Maze Runner: 5/10- Hunger Games intensity, no ideas.
The Rewrite: 5/10- It's a Hugh Grant film.
Effie Gray: 5/10- Up and down. Solid performances.
'71: 8/10- Intense, shocking, moving, powerful. Fantastic.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 3/10- A shellish experience. Ha ha.
Annabelle: 5/10- Another forgettable, average faux-horror.
Dracula Untold: 2/10- Unbelievably boring. A fangless task.
The Judge: 5/10- Umm, it's alright, I suppose.
Fury: 6/10- Needs to stop and breath.
The Book of Life: 7/10- Wonderful, affirming, well-meaning stuff.
Bogowie: 7/10- Tomaz Kot. An incredible presence.
The Babadook: 8/10- You can't get rid of...
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: 5/10- Steve Carrel equals free pass.
This Is Where I Leave You: 5/10- Great cast, poorly used. Formulaic.
Love, Rosie: 5/10- Meh. Collins and Claflin work.
Serena: 5/10- Sufficient J-Law. Insufficient Toby Jones,
Mr Turner: 7/10- Much admired, but not loved.
Ouija: 3/10- So, so, so, so boring.
Horns: 6/10- Great first hour, falls away.
Nightcrawler: 8/10- Jake Gyllenhaal. So very good.
Interstellar: 8/10- Hugely ambitious, largely successful. Impressive.
Laggies: 6/10- A Rockwell/Knightley bouncing party
The Skeleton Twins: 8/10- Outstanding. But keep it secret.
Nativity 3: Dude, Where's my Donkey?!: 2/10- In the ditch. It's dead.
The Drop: 7/10- An actor's film, well acted.
The Imitation Game: 8/10- Important, timely, fantastic. Cumberbatch shines.
What We Do In The Shadows: 7/10- Funny funny funny funny funny.
The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part 1: 7/10- Still intense, but weakest yet.
Get On Up: 7/10- Chadwick Boseman IS James Brown.
No Good Deed: 3/10- Not even Elba can save it.
Paddington: 8/10- Endlessly charming and so wonderful.
Leviathan: 8/10- Dangerous and powerful Russian thriller.
Men, Women and Children: 6/10- Awful dialogue. Good everything else.
Get Santa: 5/10- It's alright. Very ITV Christmas Eve.
The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies: 4/10- Well I'm glad that's over.
Black Sea: 6/10- Pretty good claustrophobic nautical thriller
St Vincent: 6/10- It's funny. And I cried.
Annie: 6/10- Just stay away from Diaz.
Unbroken: 6/10- Jack O'Connell rules the roost
Penguins of Madagascar: 7/10- I laughed the whole way.
Tinkerbell and the Legend of the Neverbeast: 6/10- I enjoyed it. Shut up.
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb: 3/10- Beyond boring. Don't make another.
Dumb and Dumber To: 5/10- Funny enough, but not properly funny.
Big Eyes: 8/10- Delicate and moving; Adams fantastic.


REPEAT VIEWINGS
If I've seen a film for a second (Or third) times, it goes down under here. The rating is out of 5, from 'Well, I didn't really want to see it for a second time...' to 'Already booking my third trip'. It's entirely on how the film holds up, seeing it again within a month, rather than the quality of the piece. If there's another rating after the initial one, that means I've seen it three or four or how many ever times.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: 4/5
The LEGO Movie: 4/5, 4/5
The Muppets: Most Wanted: 5/5
The Grand Budapest Hotel: 5/5
The Amazing Spider-Man 2: 2/5
Boyhood: 5/5
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: 2/5
Guardians of the Galaxy: 4/5, 5/5
The Babadook: 3/5
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1: 3/5

My year with Frances Ha

"It's that thing when you're with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it's a party... and you're both talking to other people, and you're laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other's eyes... but - but not because you're possessive, or it's precisely sexual... but because... that is your person in this life. And it's funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it's this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It's sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don't have the ability to perceive them. That's - That's what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess."

-Frances

There are many types of love. The paternal love, manifesting itself as pride and devotion. There is the corresponding love of a child for their mother or for their father; a knowingness that, to them, they owe everything, and they are the people in this world they need to make proud. The close-knit love that comes with sibling-hood or a deep friendship. The romantic love, and the life-affirming freedom of vesper that comes with it. Then, there is the type of love most commonly found within movie critiques such as this one; a form of extreme fondness, more often than not for something or someone who has not chosen to have an impact on our collective lives, but has nonetheless continued to do so. When most people think of their favourite movie, they only address it with this fifth breed of love. Today, on the one-year anniversary of Frances Ha's UK release, and hence, me watching it for the first time, I am going to attempt to explain why and how I feel all four for Noah Baumbach's godwork of a movie.

How I hate the box office

This weekend saw Transformers 4: Age of Extinction and Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie top the US and UK box office charts respectively. Now, I haven't seen either film, so shall refrain from labeling those who have made them such idiots until after I have done so, but for contrast, here are the peak chart positions for some of my favourite films of the last year or so. Pass this on to anyone who's spent their money to see these films and see if they feel proud of their selves.

Remember. Mrs Brown's Boys is the UK's number one movie this week. Number one. ONE.

How to save the games industry in 60 seconds flat

Lately, I've been, perhaps, somewhat disenfranchised with video games. I always assumed it was due to my growing interest in film and inability to hold too many interests at once, but there seemed to be very little for me in gaming. The video games media are hounds, the developers fronted by heartless suits and the community overflowing with the ravished and the dumb. All unfair generalisations, but I suppose I just found cinema more welcoming, and as I began to see that, I began to wonder why I continued to follow games as I had before. The list of games I actively wanted to play shrunk to a handful of first-party Nintendo titles. All of these were perhaps a factor, but I do wonder whether the true reasoning is infinitely simpler and infinitely sadder: I like to view video games as an art. While Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time may not necessarily be thought-provokers, they are intricately designed to within an inch of its life. You wouldn't discount van Gough's Sunflowers as art because they're not there to question the human condition: Instead, they celebrate what there is in this world. In the case of video games, they celebrate what there isn't.

The Search for Another Frances Ha

I all but sacrificed my late teenage years in favour of sitting alone in a plush chair accompanied only by a projector and a few dozen other people, whom I largely chose to ignore. I made a point of seeing near-enough every film that saw UK cinema release. On a regular basis, I would wonder why. Upon opening Facebook, a means of viewing the loudmouthed and the insecure's personal highlights reels, I would see people performing the kind of actions those on the screen I was slavishly watching were doing (Namely: Having friends). The majority of films released are, almost by definition, average, and a further 60-odd percent of the remaining films are rubbish. Last year, I sat through four movies where Bruce Willis contemplates his retirement whilst holding a machine gun. I sat through the Moshi Monsters Movie, for crying out loud. They say time is money, and if that's the case I feel it would only be just if I were reimbursed on a similar pay scheme to that Willis demands for movies nowadays.

However, once in a while a film comes along that makes all the glazed-eyed bald-headed snooze-a-thons in the world worthwhile. More precisely, once. Frances Ha was my favourite film of last year, and one that reinvigorated my love of both cinema and of the world. It's a film filled with such frame-to-frame effervescence that I feared the projector may combust and leave into an optimistic doughnut in the place of ashes. Greta Gerwig puts in the performance of a lifetime, and by which I don't just mean the best performance she'll ever put in, I mean the best performance I've seen in my lifetime. It's perfect, encapsulating cinema that swept me up over it's 87 minutes into a ball from which it has yet to release me. I've seen it seven times now, and after five of these viewings I've thought to myself "This is hands-down my favourite film". Very few films have ever garnished this level of affection from me. Certainly none of the standard-issue action flicks and hackneyed romcoms have hit me that hard.

What should win the BAFTAs

The nominees, ranked in order-

Best Picture
12 Years a Slave
Gravity
Philomena
Captain Phillips
American Hustle

A plug for a thing

   'This is my favourite radio show ever'
 - Jason Statham

 'This show literally changed my life for the better'
 - Mahatma Gandhi

'Sliced bread had better buck up it's ideas'
 - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

Listen in as TIME magazine Man of the Year 2026, James Bosson, and 2017, Robbie Owen, attempt to be passively entertaining on the radio.

*Not fit for human consumption.

D:One, 10 am 'till 12, every Friday
http://www.doneradio.com/

The Welsh regional dispute told via. the opening paragraph of classic books

"The Great Moffet"
by F. Scott Fitzgerald-Jones

In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me a piece of advice which I have been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever anybody else is being criticized," he told me, "Just remember that all the people in the world know less about rugby than you."

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I always knew what was best for Welsh Rugby and acted on my instincts, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the worlds' leading expert on central contracting. The abnormal organisation is quick to fumble and attempt to mimic this quality when it appears in a normal person.

The Grand Owen Awards 2013 - The Results!

Hello and welcome to the 2013 Grand Owen Awards! It's been an eventful year- literally some things have happened, and during which time, a large number of films have come out. The registered Owen voters comprise of a panel of the utmost experts Britain has to offer, and by which I mean one bloke whose opinion very few people care about. Which is funny, because more people watched last years' ceremony, in which Danish drama A Royal Affair scooped the big prize, than the Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes put together. So, for the hundreds and thousands around the world, it is worth noting that all results are done purely on UK release dates, meaning that films such as Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty, which were up for the last 'Awards season' are eligible, whilst the likes of 12 Years a Slave and Her are not. This is very much reflected in the nominations.

This year, Edgar Wright's surprisingly deeply thematic sci-fi comedy The World's End scooped the most nominations, a record seven. The sheer delight that is Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha follows behind with a stand-out five nominations. There are no 'technical awards' here, and gone are the Razzie clones (Bruce Willis and his performances in A Good Day To Die Hard, GI Joe 2 and RED 2 can be relieved), replaced instead by another acting award- The best performance in a bad film. It's the sign of a great actor when you can shine in a pile of rubbish, perhaps more impressive than the performances put in by most stars up for the 'bigger' awards. This, after all, is a celebration of cinema in all it's glory, and it's about time we got that celebration under way...