{"id":14322,"date":"2013-01-02T12:51:50","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T20:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2013\/01\/02\/14322.html"},"modified":"2013-01-02T12:51:50","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T20:51:50","slug":"movies-watched-in-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2013\/01\/02\/movies-watched-in-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Favorite movies watched in 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I watched 70 movies in 2012: 49 that I hadn't seen before, 21 that I had (though usually not in the past ten years or so). Almost all of my favorites were ones I had seen before; unsurprising, given that I was rewatching them specifically because I had liked them a lot the previous time(s).<\/p>\n

Rather than list everything I watched, I'll just list my top twelve favorites, roughly in order starting with my most favorite; movies with the same ranking number are approximate ties. An asterisk indicates a movie I hadn't seen before.<\/p>\n

\n
1. Shakespeare in Love<\/dt>\n
Third time I've seen it, I think. It gets better every time I see it; this time, it was near-perfect.<\/dd>\n
2. Brazil<\/dt>\n
Not quite as perfect as previous watchings, but still remarkably good.<\/dd>\n
3. A Fish Called Wanda<\/dt>\n
Still hilariously funny (even the humor-of-embarrassment bits), but one particular scene (involving fish) is still pretty painful to watch, and the movie's mocking of Ken's stutter is a little distressing.<\/dd>\n
3. Love Actually<\/dt>\n
Still very funny and thoroughly charming, and even manages some depth. If only they had left out the fat jokes.<\/dd>\n
4. The American President<\/dt>\n
Funny and charming and all-around delightful. Good to see Sorkin in peak form. (Last time I saw this was before I watched West Wing<\/cite>.) Lots of great facial expressions.<\/dd>\n
4. * Avengers<\/dt>\n
A lot of fun. Some problems, but nothing huge.<\/dd>\n
4. * Conversation(s) with Other Women<\/dt>\n
Really good, really unusual.<\/dd>\n
4. Out of Sight<\/dt>\n
Still really good. Sharp, often funny, and great chemistry between Clooney and Lopez. It gets a little oddly dark in the second half, shifting the tone and sort of the genre, and the scene in the trunk near the beginning is a little offputting; but even so, very good.<\/dd>\n
4. * Phineas & Ferb: The Movie<\/dt>\n
Very fun, very funny. (Had never seen the show before this. Have now seen the show, but I like the movie better.)<\/dd>\n
4. *? The Sound of Music<\/dt>\n
Lovely and charming and very funny in places. Enjoyed it a whole lot. Might deserve to be a little higher on this list. I'm not actually certain whether I've seen this before or not, but I've certainly been listening to the songs since high school or earlier.<\/dd>\n
4. 10 Things I Hate About You<\/dt>\n
Still excellent and still very funny and smart.<\/dd>\n
4. Up<\/dt>\n
Still excellent, still hilarious and very sad, still has some annoying gender stuff.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Looking at this list, I'm disappointed about political stuff, specifically about diversity of characters.<\/p>\n

For example, I think the majority of them technically pass the Bechdel test, but I don't think any of them do much better than a technical pass; most of them feature one prominent female character surrounded by several prominent male characters. There are few if any people of color in most of them, and I think no more than three or four queer (or even ambiguously quasi-queer) characters in the entire set.<\/p>\n

My five runners-up to this list (left out to make this entry a little less long) include more people of color and more queer characters, but still very few women. Maybe I should make more of a point of intentionally watching more diverse-charactered movies. Most of the above favorites came out ten or more years ago, but that's not an excuse; by and large, the more recent ones lower down on my list don't do much better in these areas.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched 70 movies in 2012: 49 that I hadn’t seen before, 21 that I had (though usually not in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}