films i have seen this year PART ONE!

here are the first bunch of films i have seen this year and what i thought of them!

127 Hours 3/5
24 Hour Party People 4/5
30 Century Man 4/5
80 Blocks From Tiffany's 3.5/5 - weirdly enjoyable action film with james brolin. weirdly enjoyable because it's got this strange pseudo documentary style thing going on and has a villain who is believably a bit bonkers. surprisingly good for this sort of thing
A Fistful of Dollars 4/5
A Journey to Avebury 3/5 - very early derek jarman film with a coil soundtrack. weird, haunting and beautiful
A Touch of Satan (MST3K) 3.5/5
Addams Family Values 3/5
Alice Sweet Alice 4.5/5 - crazily good this. it's sort of a bog standard horror film along the lines of angry sister takes vengeance on her much more popular younger sibling... but then liberally sprinkled with absolutely terrifyingly weird moments like the masks, the landlord, the first killing... actually all the killings thinking about it. crazy film. almost a masterpiece



Alien 4/5
Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County 3/5
All the President's Men 4/5
Altered States 4/5
Alyce 2/5 - absolute tosh until the last twenty minutes, where the people responsible for this nonsense suddenly seem to go "bugger this - this whole self important pseudo "alice in wonderland" crap is getting us nowhere and decide to just go for the laughs. has a very, very funny final line but you have to wade through some utter nonsense to get to it
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 3/5
Arietty 3/5
Artemis 89 4/5 - it's crazy, bloated, insane and pretentious AND has sting in it. but it's also brilliant...
At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul 3.5/5 - i'm taking my time with coffin joe because... he's a bit on the weird side. but he's also absolutely unique in horror cinema. there's something genuinely disturbing about these films
Auto Focus 3.5/5
Basket Case 3/5
Basket Case 2 3/5
Basket Case 3 3/5 - basically a piss take of the first two. many people hate it, but... but... it has this moment in it which is about the greatest bit of cinema i've seen all year!



Bay of Blood 2.5/5 - one of the earliest slasher films and either a statement of intent or just a brilliantly lazy bit of couldn't-care-lessery from mario bava. nothing makes any sense and the very ending is one of the most fantastically silly things i've ever seen in a horror film
Bedlam 3/5
Being There 3/5
Bell From Hell 4/5 - this would get higher if it wasn't for the fact i couldn't make out a lot of what was going on because of the terrible print i found online. also because i imagine a lot of the nuances of the film really only make sense if you know your spanish history. whatever those quibbles, it's an extraordinary thing, a slippery film which constantly confounds your expectations. also contains a lovely riff on my favourite short story, "the open window" by saki



Bells 2/5
Berberian Sound Studio 4/5 - best new film of the year hands down. an incredible thing. although having said that, i'm seeing "the master" on thursday so maybe we should see what we think then. but otherwise, this is a very, very clever film about sound, about cinema itself and about the interior world of the mind. best sound design of a film for ages...
Beyond the Black Rainbow 2/5 - it looks amazing. it sounds amazing. the photographs promise something extraordinary. the set design promises something amazing. the film itself? nothing. there is nothing to it. there is promise of something - and i can't help but imagine with the imagination and intelligence at work here, something wonderful will eventually come from the director - but it never gets anywhere close to anything but lazy pastiche. the best example of this is the very end where the director boxes himself into a corner and goes "hell with it, may as well make a slasher film now". biggest disappointment of the year
Black Moon 3.5/5
Black Narcissus 5/5
Black Noon 2.5/5
Blind Beast 3.5/5
Blood and Roses 3/5
Blood Suckers 1.5/5 - hello! i'm a british horror film and have patrick macnee, peter cushing, edward woodward AND patrick mower in it. how can i fail to be anything short of brilliant? BECAUSE I MAKE NO SENSE AND AM MADE BY AN IDIOT! hilarious fun though...
Blow Out 3/5
Bottle Rocket 3/5
Brotherhood of Satan 4/5 - brilliantly nasty low key shocker. one of the reasons i've watched so many horror films this year is because at their best they'll take you along a particular road of preconceptions and then - at their best - at the very last drive the narrative into something brilliant and shocking and downright odd. and the end of this film is a perfect example of this
Burn After Reading 3.5/5
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker 3.5/5 - very hoary and generic for the most part... but then suddenly you get the completely insane character of the homophobic policeman and ON TOP OF THAT one of the most utterly bonkers performances you'll ever see from the aunt. crazy