Ranking the Directors

A few days ago I re-watched Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained and began thinking about how highly I've rated the vast majority of his films. I wondered exactly what ratings I'd given his movies so went through my reviews and calculated the average, thus combining two things I love; movies and statistics (I'm fun, I know). I then replicated this with Charlie Chaplin, the man who I consider to be my favourite film maker. Seeing as I'd already done these two, I thought I might as well go through my entire blog and work out the mean average mark I'd given directors. To be fair, I've created two categories, one for directors for whom I've reviewed more than three films and one group for those directors for whom I've reviewed exactly three films. Anything less than that has been ignored. The results surprised me as many of the directors who I consider my favourites, rank lower than those who I'd consider less important to me. Below are the two lists.

Park Chan-wook. 9.3 from five films. Park ranks as my favourite director in terms of average and is also amongst my favourites generally. His Oldboy is one of my favourite films of all time and his first American movie, Stoker, also impressed me last year, making my Top 10 of 2013 list.

Billy Wilder. 8.0 from four films. Twelve months ago I'd never seen a Billy Wilder film but now I count some of his films amongst my favourites. I was blown away by Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment and his average would have been much higher if I'd enjoyed Sabrina more. I can't wait to see more of his movies.

Quentin Tarantino 7.8 from ten films. There is only one Tarantino film which I haven't loved and if it wasn't for Death Proof, his average would probably be over 8. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are 10/10 films for me.

Werner Herzog 7.6 from eight films. Had I split Herzog's documentaries and features, the result here would have been quite different. I much prefer the likes of Encounters at the End of the World to Aguirre.

Alfred Hitchcock 7.5 from thirteen films. I was a late convert to Hitchcock and with only thirteen films reviewed, I still have some way to go. I'm a bit surprised that my average is just 7.5 as I've rated Rope, Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho extremely highly. His average is let down by the likes of North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Martin Scorsese 7.4 from seven films. I'd class Scorsese as my favourite film director of all time so to be at just 7.4 is a little misleading. This is because I'm currently reviewing his films in order (the recent Wolf of Wall Street aside). Once the likes of Goodfellas and Raging Bull have been reviewed, his average will shoot right up.

Peter Jackson 7.3 from four films. I think The Lord of the Rings trilogy was brilliant but wasn't so keen on the first Hobbit and although the second was better, I'm yet to review it.

Steven Spielberg 7.2 from ten films. Generally speaking, the more recent the Spielberg film, the lower I'll have rated it. This wasn't the case with Lincoln but Tintin is no Schindler's List.

Ridley Scott 7.0 from five films. Alien is an outstanding movie but I'm not huge Blade Runner fan.

David Cronenberg 6.9 from eight films. I have a love/hate relationship with David Cronenberg. The Fly I love. Crash I hate. A Dangerous Method I love. A History of Violence I, well don't hate but don't love either.

Kim Ji-woon 6.8 from four films. Korea's Kim has made some incredible movies, perhaps none more so than I Saw the Devil. His American début, The Last Stand was a big let down but was at least directed with aplomb.

Charlie Chaplin 6.7 from forty-five films. I've reviewed more Chaplin films than most of the other names on this list combined but I find him languishing with just a 6.7 average. Although I love the guy more than any other man should love a man, some of his early films are poor, even to a huge Chaplin fan. The Kid, The Circus and City Lights are three of my favourite films however.

Sam Raimi 6.5 from six films. I loved Evil Dead when I saw it for the first time last year but I'm no huge fan of the Spider-Man trilogy and didn't enjoy Oz the Great and Powerful.

Steven Soderbergh 6.0 from four films. I thought that Side Effects was a good film but I'm not usually excited by a new Soderbergh movie.

Lars von Trier 5.5 from four films. Von Trier is a fascinating director whose films infuriate me. The 8/10 I gave Antichrist shows how poorly I've marked his other movies.

I've only reviewed three of the following directors movies.

Steve McQueen - 9.0
Michel Hazanavicius - 8.7
John Lasseter - 8.7
Christopher Nolan - 8.7
Sidney Lumet - 8.3
Wim Wenders - 8.3
The Coen Brothers - 8.0
Paul Thomas Anderson - 7.7
Shane Meadows - 7.0
Tim Burton - 6.7
Guillermo del Toro - 6.3
Paul Verhoeven - 6.3
Ivan Reitman - 6.0
James Whale - 6.0
Judd Apatow - 5.7
Tony Scott - 4.7

You might also like
The Oscar Challenge
500 Reviews. The Story So Far
Six of the Best... Films About Film

Top 10 of 2013

January 25th 2014 marks the second birthday of this blog and following on from last year, I've again chosen the day before this anniversary as the day to post my Top 10 films of the previous year. The extra month from December has given me the chance to catch up on some of the cinematic releases I missed earlier in the year as well as see some of this year's crop of Oscar nominated films. I saw a lot fewer films in 2013 than in 2012, partly thanks to a new job and partly because of a mid year blip during which I briefly lost the love of writing and subsequently watched fewer movies. Nevertheless I saw a total of 271 films of which 94 were eligible to be included on this list. (Last year's numbers were 391 & 100). To be included, I had to see a film that was released in UK cinemas between 25/01/13 and 24/01/14. Because of the slightly odd timing for an end of year list and crappy cinema release dates in the UK, a few of last year's Oscar nominated films were eligible for this list and films such as Her, Dallas Buyers Club and Inside Llewn Davis, which haven't been released yet cannot be included. The films below begin at my 10th favourite of the year, progressing to my favourite and I've also included my girlfriend's top 5 for a female/weirdo perspective. There's no bottom 5 this year because I didn't see enough of the truly awful films. As always, click on a film's title for a full review (if I wrote one).

10. Rush. As a huge Formula One fan I had my doubts about an American director taking on one of the sport's most fierce rivalries but Ron Howard captured the two personalities of Hunt and Lauda brilliantly. He also captured the speed, danger and to some extent noise associated with the sport as well as the grease and glamour that accompanies it. As a fan of the sport, I felt that the film stayed true to the routes of the story yet entertained and my girlfriend was enraptured by the movie as much as I was despite only enjoying the sport for Jenson Button's face. The movie looks great and sounds incredible while it allowed one of my favourite actors, Daniel Bruhl to give a fantastic performance that helped him reach a larger audience than ever before.

2014 Oscar Nomination Predictions

With the awards season already in full swing, we're now on the eve of the nominations for the 86th Academy Awards. As with the 2013 Oscars I'm joining in with Film Actually's annual Oscar prediction competition and as with 2013, I'm going to use my Britishness as an excuse for a poor showing. As my fellow countrymen will know, the likes of The Wolf of Wall Street, Her, Inside Llewyn Davis and Dallas Buyers Club haven't been released in the UK yet so it puts us at a slight disadvantage compared to our American chums. Despite this, I'm going to use my expert film knowledge as well as other award ceremonies as a guide and have a stab at predicting the nominations and winners in 21 of the categories. The list of my predictions is below and my predicted winner is in red.

According to my predictions, 12 Years a Slave will be the winner nominations wise with an impressive (14). Gravity will get (11) with American Hustle on (10), Captain Philips not far behind with (8) and The Wolf of Wall Street and Rush on (5) nominations apiece. 

For the Oscar winners, I'm predicting that Gravity will win a total of (6) awards with 12 Years a Slave taking (5) home and American Hustle (2).

For those who want to keep an eye on awards buzz all year round, head over to Film Actually for up to date and insightful awards news, predictions, rumours and lists.

BEST PICTURE
12 Years a Slave
Gravity
The Wolf of Wall Street
American Hustle
Captain Philips
Philomena
Nebraska

2014 BAFTA Awards Thoughts and Predictions

Early this morning, this year's BAFTA nominees were announced. Now widely considered as one of the major award ceremonies (along with The Golden Globes) in the run up to the Oscars, the BAFTA awards have long been a well respected and coveted prize on both sides of the Atlantic. Below is a full list of the 2014 BAFTA Award nominees, the winners of which will be announced at the 67th BAFTA Award ceremony on February 16th at the Royal Opera House. Alongside the list of nominees you'll find my prediction and personal choice of which film or person I'd like to see win.

BAFTA gave us no real surprises with its announcement this morning with the most nominations going to Gravity (11), 12 Years a Slave (10) and American Hustle (10). Saving Mr. Banks performed strongly with (9) nominations, continuing its showing as a dark horse during this year's awards season. Behind the Candelabra received (5) nominations, this despite it not being released theatrically in the States. It's Mandela (1) nomination that will perhaps be dubbed this year's snub but there are no nominations for Spike Jonze's Her and Dallas Buyer's Club, the latter especially I expect to perform better in America. 

Top Ten 'New to Me' Films of 2013

As my second year of film blogging draws to a close, I thought today was a good day to look back on some of the best films I've seen this year. Ahead of my 'Best of 2013' list which I'll publish in late January on my blog's two year anniversary, the list below is of the top ten 'new to me' films of the year. The list is taken from all of the films I've seen this year for the first time which weren't released in 2013.

Although I've seen a lot fewer films this year than last (278 as of 27th December, compared to over 365 at the same point in 2012), I believe that this list features comparatively better films than last year's. 

10. Wings 1927. The first winner of what became Best Picture at the Oscars, Wings is a romantic drama that stands the test of time. Engaging leads and technical wizardry made it feel fresher and easier to watch than many films from the same period. Clara Bow's performance and the aerial photography are amongst the many highlights of this late period silent feature.

500 reviews, the story so far

I wrote my first ever film review on January 25th 2012 and 477 days later I've just written my 500th. I thought I'd celebrate my little benchmark with a look back at my first 500 reviews through some stats and graphs. I was interested to see a breakdown of the films I've seen in the last year and four months and chose three areas to look at. You can find all 500 film reviews so far on my A-Z page.

 

The first area I looked at was the number of films I've watched per decade. My tag line is 'Reviewing 100 Years of Film' and this graph shows that is the case and more. The earliest movie I've reviewed so far was A Trip to the Moon from 1902 and as of mid April 2013, I've reviewed 31 from the current year. Although the vast majority of films I've reviewed have been new or recent releases, there's a nice spread throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century.

The second area I looked at was film by genre. I've always said that I have no favourite genre and go for a film based on how good it is, rather than what genre it falls into. Many of the films I've reviewed can be classed as being in multiple genres but so far the most popular by far are drama and comedy. I try to watch films from as many genres as possible though and again here there is a good spread from differing genres. To simplify the graph slightly I put a lot of genres such as biopic, gangster and musical into the 'other' category. 

The final thing I looked it was my grading. I give films a mark out of ten based on my enjoyment, the film making craft, acting, writing etc and despite the ongoing joke at work that I give every film 6/10, my most frequent grading is 7-8/10. The reason this is above average is because I generally choose a film based on whether I think I'll like it. Because of this I'm invariably going to watch more 10/10 than 1/10 films. Although I think I can sometimes be a bit easy on poor films, I've still watched my fair share of stinkers as well as some of the best movies ever made.

So that's my first 500 reviews in very geeky graph form. Here's to the next 500...

The Ultimate Greatest Films of All Time #77th-115th

After weeks of work, the first part of my Ultimate Greatest Movies of All Time list is ready. I used several lists to calculate the best movies ever and over the next few days I'll be publishing the results. This first part includes the films ranked 77th-115th. The films placed above these will be published in the coming days. To see how I completed the list, click here. You can click on a film's title to read my review of it.

Top 10 of 2012

January 25^th 2013 marks the one year anniversary of my blog and this felt as good a day as any to publish my Top Ten of 2012. I considered publishing it earlier, to coincide with my Top 10 New to Me Films of 2012, but the extra month gave me a chance to see more of this year’s Oscar frontrunners and also made sense as it brings to a close my first year of blogging. I saw a total of 391 films this year, of which exactly 100 are eligible for last year’s Top 10. To be eligible I had to see it in the cinema sometime between 25/01/12 and 24/01/13. I’m yet to see the likes of Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty so they may be included next year. Also, films such as The Artist and Shame have been discounted as I originally saw them before I started blogging. The ten films are in reverse order and you can click on the title for a full review. After the Top 10 there will also be a list of my girlfriend’s Top 3 and my 5 worst films of 2012 too. Enjoy…

Top Ten 'New to me Films' of 2012

2012 has been a good year for me film wise. As I sit here three days before the end of the year I've seen over 365 films, a few poor, many good and some excellent. Before I write my Top 10 of 2012 List (which will appear on my blog's one year anniversary on January 25th 2013) I thought I'd make a list of the best films which were new to me this year. These are the films which I've seen for the first time this year and were released in 2011 or before. So without further delay, here is the Top Ten. Click the title for a full review.

Scorsese in Sequence

Scorsese in Sequence is a new feature of my blog in which I will watch, study and review every one of Martin Scorsese’s feature films, starting with 1968’s Who's That Knocking at My Door and ending with 2011’s Hugo.

Martin Scorsese is responsible for creating my love of film. It wasn’t until I was at University and first watched Taxi Driver and Goodfellas that I ever felt a love or passion for film After seeing those two in the same week I wanted to discover and watch all of his films and have since watched all but two.

I’m going to watch every one of Scorsese’s films in order and do a write up about them here. Below is the list of reviews and films waiting to be reviewed.