2007: A Year in Films
So, 2007 is quickly coming to an end, and soon everyone will be evaluating the year's slate of films. Top 10 lists will sprout up across the land, and award after award will be handed out. It's all fun, it's all overwhelming, and it's all silly in the end.
I like coming to some sort of overall assessment regarding the year. I usually make this judgement by observing how many films I gave a perfect 4-star rating to in a respective year. Here's the tabulation for the past five years:
2006 - 6 films
2005 - 9 films
2004 - 2 films
2003 - 4 films
2002 - 5 films
As you can see, both 2006 and 2005 were incredible years in my opinion. 2004 was a downer. Of course, this is just me; I recall many critics praising 2004, as well as other critics trashing 2005 and/or 2006.
So, where does 2007 fall? It has been a weird year in that there have been A LOT of very good movies, but nearly no great films. I look at my list of 2007 films, and I've given only three films a 4-star rating. However, 17 movies have received a 3.5-star rating.
Therefore, it hasn't been a bad year, per se. But I'm longing for some more greatness -- for films that I feel will stand the test of time. I still have a dozen or so films to see before making my Top 10 list, and I'm pretty confident some quality films are in that group.
At least I hope that's the case.
I like coming to some sort of overall assessment regarding the year. I usually make this judgement by observing how many films I gave a perfect 4-star rating to in a respective year. Here's the tabulation for the past five years:
2006 - 6 films
2005 - 9 films
2004 - 2 films
2003 - 4 films
2002 - 5 films
As you can see, both 2006 and 2005 were incredible years in my opinion. 2004 was a downer. Of course, this is just me; I recall many critics praising 2004, as well as other critics trashing 2005 and/or 2006.
So, where does 2007 fall? It has been a weird year in that there have been A LOT of very good movies, but nearly no great films. I look at my list of 2007 films, and I've given only three films a 4-star rating. However, 17 movies have received a 3.5-star rating.
Therefore, it hasn't been a bad year, per se. But I'm longing for some more greatness -- for films that I feel will stand the test of time. I still have a dozen or so films to see before making my Top 10 list, and I'm pretty confident some quality films are in that group.
At least I hope that's the case.
posted by John | 2:15 AM
1 Comments:
I completely agree with your "many very good, no great" assessment for the year in film. Nothing I've seen this year would crack my Top 6 or 7 from last year but it's hard to complain when you've got vets like the Coens doing some of their best work and brilliant newcomers like Tony Gilroy, too. Still, I'm waiting for a film to really pick me up and shake me. Then again, at this point last year, I hadn't seen "Children of Men" or "Letters from Iwo Jima" yet either.
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