Underpants, Apes and the horror before Horror

This year I've decided to keep a list of all the films I watch. I've heard tell on these here interwebs of a strange breed of human which attempts to consume 500 or even 1000 films over the course of a year.  Should a brave anthropologist wish to carry out a study into this peculiar behavior I'm sure she would conclude that her subjects display a frightening degree of detachment from what the rest of us loosely define as 'real life'.  For, if nothing else, our understanding of narrative cinema undoubtedly requires at the very least some recognition of the human experience.  Maybe, of course, these people are not watching conventional narrative cinema.  Maybe they're watching swirling psychedelic projections of parrot feathers and cat vomit projected upside down through a pair of underpants onto the wall of a public lavatory.  But I suspect, in the same way that those wishing to smash capitalism chose as their symbol of resistance a mask mass-produced by Warner Brothers and a video campaign visually indebted to the worst Hollywood drivel, these 1000-film-a-year types probably aren't.

Which brings me back to my experiment.  Which is an experiment designed not so much to see how many films I can squeeze into 365 days (and how far I can shun healthy human interaction) but to better understand just what types of film I'm watching.  Recently someone thought it would be a good idea to let me speak at a social sciences conference at the local College.  The topic I chose was 'Representations of gender in mainstream cinema' and my presentation included a condemnation of Hollywood, and those indigenous film industries who seek to emulate it, for stripping visual storytelling of all it's beautiful uncertainties, reducing it to little more than monosyllabic filmic grunts.  More worrying, I suggested, is the extent to which we, the audience, not only lap this stuff up but often don't recognise how bad it is.  I consider myself amongst film fans who do recognise the horror that is mainstream cinema but wonder how much of the stuff I still consume.  Do I really watch more genuinely independent fare than the average person?  Do I watch more short films, more foreign language films, more experimental underpant projections?  That is the purpose of this experiment.  So let us begin, as is the convention, at the start.

The 26 films I watched in January were (click on them to go to the film's IMDB entry):

• Zomblies
• The Hangover
• Night At The Museum 2
• Devil's Playground
• Ink
• Zodiac
• The Hit List
• Dark Water (original)
• Terminator Salvation
• The Last House On The Left (original)
• Dark Water (remake)
• 3:10 To Yuma (remake)
• Westworld
• Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
• The Last House On The Left (remake)
• Vampyr
• Escape From New York
• Unforgiven
• A Sound Of Thunder
• Black Death
• Murders In The Rue Morgue (1932 version)
• Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
• The Guard
• Brotherhood Of The Wolf
• The Social Network
• La Haine

Now I know it's only January's list but I'm worried already.  This is a true representation of my cinematic consumption for a whole month.  The vast majority of what I watched was in English with only two in French, one in Japanese and no other languages represented.  Only one was a documentary, though I don't think it's director would be entirely happy calling it that, only one was a short and only one was silent.  I went to the cinema to see one of them and, with the exception of short film Zomblies which I watched on my PC, the rest were watched via LoveFilm, either streamed to my TV or rented on disc.

The most prevalent country of origin was the U.S.

Before reviewing these films I thought it might be fun to do another couple of charts.  So here you go.  Lucky readers.

January 2012 saw a clear slew towards more contemporary fare, with 8 of the 26 films watched having been made in the last 2 years alone.

 

Happily, most of the films I watched were original stories rather than remakes, sequels or franchise installments.  Films that were franchise installments and sequels have only been counted once as franchise installments.  Murders In The Rue Morgue has been listed as an original because it's based on a literary work.

All in all January's viewing has not been, shall we say, diverse.  It also includes a film starring Danny Dyer which you must promise never to speak of.  Ever, to anyone.  There are, however, some real gems too.  La Haine remains one of my favourite films of all time.  Mathieu Kassovitz's story of three friends from the Parisian suburbs whose lives take on a new dimension when one of them finds a cop's gun, lost during a recent riot is a brilliant exploration of life of the fringes of a first world society, infused with humour and gritty urban absurdity.

The Guard is a film that I've been meaning to see for some time.  On paper it sounds like another hackneyed buddy cop movie but on screen it's one of the most original and funny films in recent memory.  Don Cheedle is an FBI agent sent over to Ireland to work with local cop Brendan Gleeson on a drug smuggling case.  Gleeson's character Sergeant Gerry Boyle is unorthodox but more in a darker Local Hero way than a clichéd Beverly Hills Cop way.

Other films of special mention include the magnificently dark and depressing Black Death but then I have a penchant for films that offer little if any light at the end of the tunnel.  Sean Bean admittedly churns out another version of Boromir, which in itself was a version of Richard Sharpe, but he's always rather good at these tough warrior types hiding their humanity just below the surface of a violent exterior.

Vampyr, the 1932 horror directed by Carl Theodor Dryer is a perfect demonstration of the very best of horror cinematography, featuring shots that have since been used and abused by directors who have no idea of how to employ them effectively.  And despite being 80 years old Vampyr still has one of horror's most terrifying death scenes.  A true masterpiece of the genre before the genre even existed.

At the other end of the scale, I subjected myself to the atrocious remake of The Last House On The Left, the nonsensical pretensions of A Sound Of Thunder plus duller than dull The Social Network.  However, special mention must go to Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes a jaw-droppingly appalling 'origin story' in the Planet Of The Apes franchise.  This is a film with no redeeming features.  The characters are so poorly written than you can't believe it's possible for them to exist without being sucked into a vortex of their own mediocrity.  The special effects look like a snail smeared it's gooey trail across the designer's screen, and the artist, so depressed at being involved with such a terrible project, just shrugged and said, "Ah well, that'll do" before jumping from his window.

Everything that is wrong with mainstream cinema can be found in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, a script that treats the audience like idiots, unnecessary and in-your-face special effects, characters that are nothing more than dire clichés, big money being wasted right before your eyes.  These are the things I want to eradicate from my list as the year progresses.  February has begun and I've not watched anything yet.  Hopefully, this month's films will be a more diverse bunch.  I might even watch some of them through my underpants.  See you on the 1st of March....