Spitball Army

At the start of this year, I began compiling a list of films and other entertainments that I viewed either in the theater or via disc and cable. My Mom does this and, while I can’t say that she necessarily inspired me to take up the habit, I’ve enjoyed going back to the list and reviewing it on occasion. What caused me to begin this list was an article in The New York Times, dated April 29, 2003, that alphabetizes “The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.” I printed it out, went through it – checking the ones I’d seen – and decided to subsequently start watching the ones I hadn’t. That, and a bit of a clean-sweep through some boxes of DVDs that I had piled in the corner of a closet to eventually view and pass on, propelled me to this geekiest of list-making endeavors.

Here are the films that made the top tier (9.0 to 10.0) on my 10-point rating scale, organized in ascending order by rank and the alphabet. Incidentally, it was the first time I had seen any of these fifteen films, ever.

9.0
America, America (1963)
Little Fugitive (1953)
My Mother’s Castle (Le Château de ma Mère) (1990)
Wit (2001)

9.1
Buck (2011)

9.2
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
The Wave (Die Welle) (2008)

9.3
The Descendants (2011)
The King’s Speech (2010)
Margin Call (2011)

9.4
East of Eden (1955)
Incendies (2010)

9.7
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
The Quiet Man (1952)

9.8
The Tree of Life (2011)

Of films released in 2011 (with some carry-overs from 2010 that didn’t make it to me until this year) – besides the four listed above – I also really enjoyed And Everything Is Going Fine (8.2), A Better Life (8.3), Biutiful (8.3), Captain America: The First Avenger (8.9), Certified Copy (8.0), 50/50 (8.2), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (8.4), Hugo (8.4), The Ides of March (8.3), In a Better World (8.2), Midnight in Paris (8.2; second viewing 9.1), Moneyball (8.0), Pearl Jam Twenty (8.2), Poetry (8.6), Rabbit Hole (8.4), Rango (8.8), The Way (8.5) and Winnie the Pooh (8.0).

Oh, and this: I have a part-time job as a film projectionist at a local multi-plex. I might have previously thought that might afford me an opportunity to watch more current films, but that’s the Grand Misconception. Such opportunities never arise. Thus, the relative imbalance between new and older films on this list – not a bad thing, in my opinion.