confessions of an amateur cineaste

By title in chronological order

In my Letterboxed profile for now. It’ll get moved to a page here when I have time to fix all the links.

By the numbers:

Total: 90, if you like round numbers & include sing-along Buffy.
Free: 22
Revival: 18
Festivals: 26 (4 of which were free)
Collections of shorts: 3
Actual first-run features I went to and paid for like a normal person: 26. THAT IS NOT THAT MANY, PEOPLE. It’s one every two weeks.

By the totally made-up and random categories:

Best features: No Country For Old Men, Zodiac, Once.

Runners-up: Atonement, Lust, Caution, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Also touching: Juno, Hula Girls.

Feature I respect, but could never see again: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Best documentaries: Red Without Blue, Blood on the Flat Track: The Rise of the Rat City Rollergirls, Manufactured Landscapes

Best feature by a new director: Away From Her, Dir. Sarah Polley

Best gay films: No Regret, The Bubble (Which isn’t saying a lot. Really, I’d like to just say Happy Together. It’s definitely the best one I saw. Bless revival!)

Most surprisingly gay films: Spider-Man 3, Superbad

Movie worth seeing solely for Chris Cooper: Breach

Proof that commercial films can still be awesome: The Bourne Ultimatum, Michael Clayton

Biggest inducer of directorial expectation whip-lash: The Boss of It All, Dir. Lars von Trier

Best supporting cast: Into the Wild

Best use of genre: Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, The Host, Sunshine

Film that left genre behind: I’m Not There

Best song: “Falling Slowly”, Once

Best cinematography: Roger Deakins, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Dariusz Wolski (and, let’s be honest, Tim Burton), Sweeney Todd

Best special effects: Zodiac, for seamless background work *seriously*, The Golden Compass, for Pantalaimon.

Still unseen, for which I am sorry: For the Bible Tells Me So (because it only played for a week), The Savages, Persepolis, & There Will Be Blood (because they are only just coming out), Grace is Gone (because fuck if I know *when* it’s coming out), Control & This is England (because I suck).