December Summary

December Summary

10/10 - Citizen Kane
08/10 - I Love You, Man
09/10 - It's a Wonderful Life
04/10 - The Tourist
05/10 - Manhattan
02/10 - Valhalla Rising
03/10 - Circle of Iron
05/10 - The Warriors
08/10 - Black Swan
05/10 - High Fidelity
07/10 - The Night of the the Hunter
08/10 - The Social Network
10/10 - The Third Man
06/10 - True Grit
08/10 - The King's Speech

Quick Facts:
Movies seen in December: 15
Time spent watching movies in December: 1606 minutes (26 hours, 46 minutes)

Best Movie Seen (Overall):
The Third Man
I could write probably about ten pages on why this is one of the best movies ever made. It's simply amazing even by 2010 standards. There's so much that works here so I'll just simply say: The Third Man is perfect. Citizen Kane is not surprisingly the runner-up here. Heralded as the best movie ever made I actually think The Third Man is better but I still see the awesomeness that Citizen Kane is. Given just about any other movie, Citizen Kane would be the automatic first spot, but as it was, Citizen Kane comes in second.
Runner-up: Citizen Kane
[The Third Man was a repeated viewing; Citizen Kane was a first time viewing.]
[Note: These two films will not be included in the next two rankings.]

Best Movie Seen (First Viewing):
It's a Wonderful Life
I had avoided watching It's a Wonderful Life forever but I finally saw it and realized why people watch it each and every year. It's great on so many levels and really is just as touching as expected. It's message is a little cheesy but it still works because all the little stuff works so well. The Social Network barely edges out The King's Speech for second here. This is probably as close as I can think this spot has ever been but The Social Network is just a tad greater than The King's Speech.
Runner-up: The Social Network

Best Movie Seen (Repeated Viewing):
I Love You, Man
Here we have another default winner in this category. I tend not to do many rewatches unless I already know they are awesome and with only two this week and one being the best film I saw this year, that leaves I Love You, Man at first here. Really, though, that shouldn't take away from this movie as it really is a quality film. I gave it an 8/10 and in most months it would easily get this spot even if there was competition.
Runner-up: None

Worst Film Seen:
Valhalla Rising
Surprisingly I saw this in a few lists as one of the best movies of 2010. It doesn't deserve to be there at all. Valhalla Rising doesn't succeed at much except being pretty. The character development is completely lacking and everything is really boring. Circle of Iron comes in second here since it doesn't succeed at a whole lot either. It's a pretty boring movie with a few bright spots but not enough to save it from being second here.
Runner-up: Circle of Iron

Most Surprising Film Seen:
The Social Network
This is a tough award this month as nothing really jumps out as being the most surprising. However, "that Facebook movie" ended up being one of the highlights of 2010 and being amazing on many levels so I guess it wins here.

First runner-up: The King's Speech
Second runner-up: It's a Wonderful Life
The King's Speech surprised me only in the most basic sense. It was a really solid movie but everyone said it was going to be great. I still hesitated given the subject nature. In the end though, it lived up to the high praise and even surpassed it on some accounts. For It's a Wonderful Life, it really lived up to all the high praise only here the praise was even more. I expected more so I wasn't as surprised as I was with The King's Speech. Still though, I guess it should place here given that not much else I watched this month surprised me.

Most Disappointing Film Seen:
High Fidelity
I didn't expect huge things from High Fidelity but I was expecting more than just an average movie. It was fun and quirky at times but the overall plot was really lacking. Cusack did pretty well and did a great job at carrying the movie but everything seemed to work out without much effort from him. I mean, I think he did a good job making his character likable through his acting, but from a plot perspective, he didn't do much.

First runner-up: Manhattan
Second runner-up: The Tourist
Both of these also got in the average range. Manhattan was my first New York City Woody Allen movie so I had high hopes here. It ended up being boring with some interesting characters and good acting by Allen. Similar to High Fidelity it was an okay movie carried by the acting. The Tourist actually got some Golden Globes nominations so I was hoping for some fun action and a popcorn thriller here. Instead, it was lacking on a lot of accounts and I don't think it deserves much of the (small) praise it's getting.

Best Scene Seen:
The Third Man - the sewers
Combine perfect cinematography and perfect tension at the climax of a top-notch movie and you get the guaranteed best scene for this month. Everything culminates here in incredible action by 1949 standards. Tilted cameras, eerie shadows, and mesmerizing use of black and white imagery all work so well here. This is cinema at its finest.

First runner-up: The Social Network - the opening dialogue
Second runner-up: It's a Wonderful Life - the ending money scene
The Social Network starts fast with the quick wit and banter in the opening scene and never lets up. Erica has been heralded as the "Rosebud" of modern cinema and while I don't think that much praise is necessary I do think the scene is perfect for the rest of the movie so it does deserve some praise. The end of It's a Wonderful Life is amazing and quite the tearjerker. It's movie and it completely works because of the previous two hours of the movie.

Best Character:
Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) from The Social Network
The "modern Citizen Kane" is more relatable to me as a character than a tycoon already in his old age which was Kane at his worst. Here, though, Zuckerberg is just around my same age at times and already a wicked businessman. It's haunting, but Eisenberg lends just enough positive character traits to him to make him almost (but not quite) likable.

First runner-up: Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) from The King's Speech
Second runner-up: Kane (Orson Welles) from Citizen Kane
Logue is almost a stereotypical character but he's still pretty lovable. His quirkiness and eccentricity makes him a little bit of a fool but he still gets the job done and that's the important thing for his character. He succeeds and it's very moving when he does. At second runner-up, Kane is perhaps one of the most analyzed characters in film history. I couldn't write anything new here on him but he's a phenomenal character study and so much comes together here that he - like Mark Zuckerberg - comes off as just short of likable.

Voting Update:
05/10 --> 04/10: Fast & Furious
This movie was pretty forgettable when I look back. When I saw the recent trailer for Fast Five I tried to remember what happened in this one and couldn't recall much. It was okay I guess but not really deserving of a 5/10 score.
06/10 --> 07/10: The Thing
With watching Black Swan I was reminded of body horror classics and The Thing came to mind. This is like when I bumped (500) Days of Summer up this same way: it was good but with time I realized I liked it more than I did immediately after the viewing.
04/10 --> 03/10: Brüno
This movie was funny only occasionally. It wasn't really worthy of the 4/10 score when I realized that I have that score reserved for films that "falls just short of being average." That's not what Brüno was by my standards of average.
06/10 --> 05/10: Sherlock Holmes
This movie had some good moments but this was something I debated back when I gave it the original score. After about a year of grading stuff, I realize that 5/10 score is more fitting.
07/10 --> 06/10: Coraline
Coraline was a very enjoyable movie and it was pretty impressive visually. But Coraline really doesn't deserve a 7/10 score. It's good but it's not very good, thus it has to get a bit of a demotion.
03/10 --> 02/10: Inferno
This movie I noted as being really really bad. It started off actually really good but it plummeted in quality like nothing I had seen before. Inferno deserves to be knocked for this and thus it gets a lower score.

This is a demotion in most everything but I need to push that definition of "average" to a 5/10 and scale things accordingly.

December Comments:
I saw some amazing movies this month. There was a terrible lull right there in the middle but the start and the end were both pretty solid. I got to see some of the candidates for Best Picture of 2010 in Black Swan, The King's Speech, and The Social Network (and maybe True Grit). The middle group was a bunch of cult films almost and they were worth a watch but ended up being just average.

January Outlook:
With the first month of 2011 will come some new movie watching goals. I don't know how much free time I'll have this coming month but I hope to get about 10 watches in with some of those being some more Oscar bait movies. I'm going to make a post specifically for 2011 as a whole as well but for now, I'm introducing a new thing I plan on doing for each of these summarizing posts. I'm going to list three movies that I hope to check out in the following month and list them as the last bit in the post.

January 2011 Hopefuls:
[ ] Machete
[ ] Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
[ ] True Grit