- Zodiac (David Fincher)
- This is England (Shane Meadows)
- Bug (William Friedkin)
- Control (Anton Corjbin)
- Death Sentence (James Wan)
- Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)
- Tell No One (Guillaume Canet)
- Red Road (Andrea Arnold)
- The Lookout (Scott Frank)
- Sicko (Michael Moore)
I have spent the majority of the year working my way through a lot of older films at the expense of recent releases. I thought Zodiac was superb as was This is England and Anton Corjbin???s Control was absolutely superb, every shot is a work of art. I am sure some might be surprised with me including Death Sentence but I do love a good revenge film and this one of the few films that met my expectations. Knocked Up was good fun, I found it to be much funnier than Superbad and one of the better comedies I have seen in the past few years. William Friedkin returned to form with the psychological thriller Bug and Joseph Gordon Levitt once again proved that he is one of the most interesting young actors in Hollywood with his excellent role in The Lookout. I expect that there will be additions to this list once I have seen Eastern Promises, The Lives of Others and Planet Terror.
The biggest disappointments of the year were Outlaw (Nick Love), Die Hard 4.0 (Len Wiseman) and Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino). As I wrote in my blog post, Outlaw was an atrocity that could have been so much better. A good cast, excluding Neanderthal Danny Dyer of course, was well and truly wasted. The only good thing Death Proof had going for it was Kurt Russell otherwise it was a two-hour bore. Surely Tarantino is still capable of better things than this?
In my next post I will move on to look at my favourite DVD releases of the year.
