Reviewing What I Viewed
I’ve been reading (and enjoying) a lot of Best-of-2007 movie lists and reviews (including the annoyingly herky-jerky four-way discussion on Slate.com). I’ve been realizing there were a lot of movies I wanted to see when I first heard about them or read a good review (or even a super-superlative mention, but then never got around to seeing. What’s weirder, though, is that I’ve been realizing that I enjoy reading literary movie reviews almost more than I enjoy seeing the movies themselves.
Anyway, I got to wondering: What movies did I actually see in 2007? What could I realistically put on my top-three or top-five or top-ten list for the year? So, off the top of my head, here are the ones I remember seeing, sorted by how I saw them.
1. Movies in mainstream first-run theaters.
- Spiderman 3
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- The Bourne Ultimatum
- Ratatouille
- Music and Lyrics
- 300
- Hot Fuzz
- The Golden Compass
2. Movies in discount second-run or independent theaters.
- Zodiac
- Breach
- The Host
- Superbad
- Blade Runner (the final cut)
- The Simpsons Movie
- King of Kong
- 3:10 to Yuma
- Live Free or Die Hard
- Ocean’s Thirteen
- Bridge to Terabithia
3. Movies on video.
- Premonition
- Shooter
- Once
In the end, of course, Wikipedia helped a lot in spurring my memory.
While I’m at it, I’ll also include a list of the movies that (so far) got away — the ones I didn’t see but wanted to. These I’ve sorted into lists based on my level of interest.
1. The personally compelling movies.
- 28 Weeks Later
- Reign Over Me
- No Country for Old Men
- The Mist
- I am Legend
- There Will Be Blood
2. The curiosity-stirring movies.
- 30 Days of Night
- The Number 23
- Fracture
- Sunshine
- Rescue Dawn
- Eastern Promises
- Into the Wild
- Michael Clayton
- Reservation Road
3. The guilty pleasures.
- The Pathfinder
- Next
- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
- Transformers
- The Kingdom
- Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
