My 2010 Movie Yearbook

For the past few years I've written an annual Top 10 Best/Worst Movies Of The Year blog. This year, honestly, I can't be bothered. As you probably already know if you're reading this post, Jesse and I also do a yearly Top 10 list on The Sidetracked Podcast, so writing and posting a text version here seems a bit redundant. However, if you're interested, my previous best/worst of the year blogs can be found at the following links: 2007, 2008, 2009

With that said, I did something this year that I've never done before. I kept a chronological list of every single movie I watched for the entirety of 2010. So, instead of writing up a bunch of reviews, here is that list with a few notations and other tidbits.

Number Of Movies I Saw In The Theater In 2010: 43

Number Of Trips I Made To The Theater In 2010: 48

Number Of Movies Released In 2010 Which I Saw In 2010: 62

Total Number Of Movies Watched In 2010: 236

***The films I saw in the theater are marked by this symbol:

JANUARY
District 9
Disturbia (commentary)
Bad Boys (commentary)
The Brothers Solomon (commentary)
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (commentary)
Austin Powers (commentary)
Cliffhanger (commentary)
28 Days Later (commentary)
Beverly Hills Cop (commentary)
American Pie (commentary)
American Pie 2 (commentary)
Youth In Revolt
Bowfinger (commentary)
American Wedding (commentary)
The Rundown
Bulletproof Monk
Daybreakers
Up In The Air
The Book Of Eli
Big Fan
The Lovely Bones
Universal Soldier: Regeneration
The Cove
Basket Case
Evolution
Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 3
Youth In Revolt
Slither
The TV Set
Dune
The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus
Outland
Innerspace
From Hell
Election
Stuck
Primal Fear
The Road
Give 'Em Hell Malone
Legion
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Mission Impossible 3 (commentary)
Edward Scissorhands (commentary)
Xtro

At the beginning of January I performed my annual rummaging-through of my comic book collection, which usually spans the course of several sittings, and is the reason why I watched so many commentaries, as they didn't require my full attention at all times. The discerning reader will also notice that I went through a bit of a Seann William Scott phase after re-visiting the entire American Pie trilogy. This endeavor resulted in more bad viewing experiences than good.


FEBRUARY
The Toxic Avenger
Gattaca
The Hard Way
A Serious Man
Zombieland
The Time Traveler's Wife
Whiteout
Law Abiding Citizen
Planet Hulk
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Cold Souls
Couples Retreat
House Of The Devil
Club Paradise
The Tournament
Edge Of Darkness
The Skeleton Key
Phone Booth
Black Dynamite
Shutter Island
The Invention Of Lying
Where The Wild Things Are
Triangle
Severance
Cop Out
Talladega Nights
Mr. Woodcock
Shutter Island
The Sandlot


MARCH
The Wolf Man
The Last Temptation Of Christ
Dead Snow
The Quiet Earth
Gentlemen Broncos
Brooklyn's Finest
Raw Deal
Super High Me
The Fourth Kind
Collateral
Whip It
Ghost In The Shell
Alice In Wonderland
Ink
The Lathe Of Heaven (1980)
Kick-Ass
Nacho Libre
Once Upon A Time In America
Ninja Assassin
Green Zone
Training Day
Repo Men
Elvis
Bait
Cobra
The Pit And The Pendulum
Old School
Slap Shot
Friday
The Thin Blue Line

Up until this point, as you can see, 2010 was a very dense movie-watching year for me. I would attribute this partially to the fact that the end of every year brings about a lot of retrospective looks at the previous year's films, and I was excited to begin a new year of viewing. Honestly, looking back at this list now, I'm a bit surprised that I watched so many films between January and March, but as you'll see, things thinned out considerably in the coming months.


APRIL
The Staircase
From Beyond
House
The Machinist
The Rookie
Hot Tub Time Machine
The Princess And The Frog
The Crazies (1973)
The Losers
Ghostbusters
Tales From The Script
The Accidental Spy
Gorgeous
The Medallion

I wish that I'd kept a list like this one a few years ago when I fell deep into my first heavy Jackie Chan kick and watched about 30 of his movies over the span of a few weeks. Thanks to all of the Hollywood Video locations in my area going out of business around this time, I was able to pick up many of Jackie's less popular films for next to nothing, which allowed me to go on another mini JC spree at the tail end of April, which trickled over into May and even a bit in June.


MAY
The Hammer
Ghostbusters II
Kick-Ass
Iron Man
Iron Man 2
The Slammin' Salmon
The Human Centipede
The Prisoner
The Tuxedo
The Trouble With Harry
Iron Man 2
Grizzly Man
Leaves Of Grass
Robin Hood
The Fisher King
The Company Of Wolves
A Sound Of Thunder


JUNE
Police Story
Splice
Fire and Ice
Gladiator
The Karate Kid (2010)
The A-Team
The Karate Kid (1984)
Cloverfield (RiffTrax)
From Paris With Love
Goodfellas
Toy Story 3
Do The Right Thing
Charlie's Angels
Knight & Day
The Last Samurai

As a massive fan of everything MST3K, I'm surprised that I never got around to trying out Rifftrax until June of 2010, but I finally gave one a shot with Cloverfield this month. I enjoyed the experience and look forward to downloading some more 'trax in the future.


JULY
Taps
Pontypool
The Crazies (2010)
Ed Brubaker's Angel Of Death
Predators
Inception
Inception
Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths
3 Days Of The Condor

July was my least productive month as far as movies were concerned. This can be partially attributed to my week-long family vacation to North Carolina, during which I only watched Inception for a second time. I did watch portions of several movies on TV during the week (including Superstar, Miss Congeniality, and Hope Floats), but I only included movies on this list which I viewed in their entirety.


AUGUST
Bronson
Vanilla Sky
Ghostbusters
Night Moves
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
The Expendables
Alien (virtual workprint)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Date Night
Paper Heart
The Losers
G.I. Joe: Rise Of The Cobra
The Deep

Locating and watching a copy of the "virtual workprint" of Alien was a noteworthy achievement in August. The virtual workprint is a cut of the film which literally utilizes every piece of footage available to create the most complete, though not necessarily very "finished", version of the film possible. The theatrical and director's cuts of Alien are absolutely both superior to the virtual workprint, but for a fan of Alien as big as I, viewing this version of the film was an incredible, memorable, eye-opening experience.


SEPTEMBER
Who Can Kill A Child?
Clash Of The Titans
I Love You Phillip Morris
The Girl Who Played With Fire
Prince Of Persia
Futurama: Bender's Game (commentary)
White Men Can't Jump
Over The Top
MacGruber
The Last Exorcism
The Town
Piranha 3D
Night Of The Creeps
Halloween III: Season Of The Witch
Candyman
Ginger Snaps
Eden Lake
The Collector
More Than A Game

As you can see, with October rapidly approaching, I began to get into the Halloween spirit by watching several back-to-back horror movies. The trend continued into the beginning of October, but I think that I accumulated about 2 or 3 times as many horror films as I actually got around to watching.


OCTOBER
Spontaneous Combustion
The People Under The Stairs
Night Of The Demons
Splice
Wishmaster
La Bamba
The Poughkeepsie Tapes
RED
Altered
The Social Network
Sword Of The Stranger
Dreamscape
Aliens
The Monster Squad
Paranormal Activity 2
Jonah Hex
Sleepaway Camp

Notable in October is that this particular viewing of Aliens was my first time seeing the film on Blu-ray with color correction overseen by James Cameron himself. For me, it was probably about as close to a religious experience as I'm bound to have.


NOVEMBER
Catfish
The Last Broadcast
Batman: Under The Red Hood
Skyline
Dead Calm
Wall-E
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1
Salt
Faster
Buried
The Bad News Bears (1976)
Big
Despicable Me


DECEMBER
Get Him To The Greek
The Hole
Sin City
Pieces
Unico In The Island Of Magic
TRON
True Grit (1969)
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
Monsters
Machete
Shaun Of The Dead
How To Train Your Dragon
TRON Legacy
AVATAR
True Grit (2010)

Around this time of year I normally try to catch up on a large number of films released in the previous 11 months that I'd somehow missed out on. Between Get Him To The Greek, The Hole, Monsters, Machete, and How To Train Your Dragon, you can see that I made a valiant effort to do just that, but other endeavors impeded my ability to watch as many films over the last few months as I'd have liked. Still, I'd say that I had a fairly movie-packed year overall.

And that's that. 236 movies in 365 days. If only I'd kept track of all of the TV shows I watched this year...now THAT would be a list. I know that over the course of 2010 I re-watched all 9 seasons of Seinfeld, 7 full seasons of The Simpsons, 2 seasons of 24, and the entire run of Peep Show to date (7 seasons). Then there's all of the Dexter, LOST, Breaking Bad, Bored To Death, Futurama, Venture Brothers, Walking Dead, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 that I caught up on this year.

Jeez...when did I find the time to sleep?!