My Top Rated Shows Watched in 2009

Sister-in-law Shirley suggested I do a year end piece on my top ten or on academy award style winners. I still have Siskel & Ebert lists that Shirley sent me each year, going back at least to 1992, on which I periodically check off my viewing. A personal list of favorites of an individual, like Siskel or Ebert, is helpful if you are familiar with the tastes of the individual. Lists and winners determined by group voting, like the academy awards, are less specific guides, but I still consult them for leads to movies to investigate.

NPR did a fun piece this morning about the academy best movie category being expanded to ten films. Seems they want to make sure enough blockbusters are being promoted to help sell tickets and also to pump up the ratings for the academy awards TV show.

I don't go to theaters to watch movies. What I watch comes from Netflix and the public library. I like a variety and have lots of historical interest in movies. During 2009, I watched 420 DVDs, in 17 different genres, in 17 different languages other than English, released in years from 1924 to 2009.  I rated them for myself as explained elsewhere in this blog. Below is a list of the dozen top rated ones, rated 3.7 or above. When I compiled the list from my database, I was surprised to see that eight are documentaries and only one of the 12 is from before 2000.

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy. From PBS American Experience in 2000, excellent documentary on this fascinating case from the Jim Crow era.

John Adams. The 2008 HBO miniseries on our second President.

Anne Frank: The Whole Story. From ABC in 2000, this drama tells the story of what happened to Anne after their hiding place was discovered.

Beyond Belief. Documentary from 2006 about two 9/11 widows who travel to Afghanistan to meet with widows there.

What I Want My Words To Do To You. Documentary from 2003 about a writing program for women prisoners who read from their writing and have them performed for other inmates by professional actresses.

Freedom Writers. Drama from 2007 with Hilary Swank as a teacher inspiring at-risk students to keep journals about what violence does to their lives.

War Made Easy. Documentary from 2007 about how in the last 50 years American Presidents have propagandized us into wars.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster.  Documentary from 2008 about the pressure of sports and competition and steroids.

Cats of Mirikatani. Documentary from 2006 about a Japanese artist who was visting America at the time of Pearl Harbor and the bittersweet life he has led since then.

Leila. A drama from Iran in 2000, telling the story of societal pressures on a couple having difficulty conceiving a child.

October Road - Season One.  Drama series from ABC in 2007 about an author returning to his small town roots and confronting old friends upset aboout how he portrayed them.  This is an example of a good one season series that became grossly inferior in its second year.

Frost-Nixon.  The documentary of the original interviews from 1977.

How about letting us know what shows you watched in 2009 that you rated tops?

Christmas Movies

Rake suggested this post. Christmastime lasts about a month and is a time when many people are drawn back to religion and experience a renewal of generous feelings toward others.  The length of the holiday and the emotions evoked make Christmas a part of numerous movies. Some movies center on the theme, either embracing the story of the birth of Jesus, the existence of Santa Claus, or both. Some find a comic holiday angle, or, at least in the case of Santa Claus, satirize it.

I don't have childhood memories of Christmas and movies. I think Mom may have taken us to see "Come to the Stable", when I was 8 or 9, but going to Catholic school, I got enough religion and did not seek it at the movies. Literary classics on the screen seemed like just more school.  The annual Amahl opera on TV bored me senseless, though I never watched more than the first few minutes. By the time animated Christmas fare came along I was too old to be interested.

Scrooge in the Christmas Carol is the classic literary embodiment of a miserably selfish person opened to love by the spirit of Christmas. Many such classics of literature, including stories for children, have been made into Christmas movies. As parents, we watch these with our children, delicately explaining the stories, balancing fact and fantasy.

I love movies about people who hide their hurt inside and then come to realize there are other people who hurt even more, who they decide to reach out to help, and thereby end up helping themselves too. This theme is perfectly at home in a Christmas movie. "It's a Wonderful Life" has become a Christmas staple on TV. Though not a purely Christmas movie, the climactic community generosity perfectly summarizes the message of the entire movie and fully embodies the personal Christmas spirit of giving. Another film where Christmas comes as an appropriately climactic part, though this time in a sad way, is the wonderfully nostalgic "Meet Me in St. Louis", in which Judy Garland introduced the song, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".

Christmas episodes usually appear about a week ahead of the holiday on television series.  I just watched a particularly good one called "So-Called Angels", from the 1994 short lived but very good family and teen series, "My So-Called Life".  (Too many intelligently written TV series have never made it beyond one year, or two at the most, which could be the theme for another blog post).

The funniest Christmas movie has to be the TBS marathon subject, "A Christmas Story". I crack up every time I see it and I can remember almost every scene. I'll be watching it again this year.

How about sharing your Christmas movie memories and musings?

What are your earliest movie theater memories?

Tell us about your first trips to the movies.

Is this where we came in?

When my brother and I were young kids and able to get a few coins on a Saturday, we could walk to the neighborhood movie theater. In fact I seem to remember one coin, a quarter, was enough for two tickets. As the youngest, it was my job to solicit the money from our step-dad, a task made easier after his first few Olys of Saturday morning had time to work their mellowing magic. Olympia was the beer of choice, not because it was brewed with artesian water, but because it was cheap. The corner grocer knew it was OK to let two kids with a wagon pack a case home on credit, and in payment of our delivery services, movie money seemed appropriate.

We just walked to the theater, without any idea of what movie was playing or what time it started. When we got there, we looked at the posters in front to get an idea of what was on, and then bought our tickets and went inside, where we had to pass through the heavy curtains protecting the aisle from the lobby lights. Once on the dark side, we had to do that walk of faith, with our hands in front like Frankenstein, hoping there wasn't some obstacle in the aisle or maybe an unexpected drop off, all the while knowing how foolish we looked to those already seated with their eyes adjusted to the dark. Sometimes we had to just stand in the aisle until a bright scene exposed the audience long enough for us to get our bearings and grab an empty seat.

The matinees were usually cowboy movies or adventure serials and it was easy to tell what was going on because the plots were all the same, with the heros fighting the villains and ultimately winning. But since we did not start watching at the beginning, for us the victory usually came in the middle of our viewing and then we had to stay for the next beginning and keep watching until we recognized that "this is where we came in". As we graduated to more distant theaters with musicals and dramas, the plots were a little over our heads, which made it harder to recognize where we came in, particularly in the dramas.

Some screenplays are written a little like our matinee experience. The story begins in the middle and then flashes back and forward until we recognize that we have been given the whole thing.  A scriptwriter on a recent special feature I watched said the only flashbacks that are proper are ones that advance the plot. I don't know if I can explain what he meant, but I agree with him.  Starting briefly in the present and then telling the whole back story straight through is fairly common and works well, as when "Citizen Kane" dies with "Rosebud" on his lips, prefacing the telling of his tale. Too much time shifting is often a screen writer's way of trying to mask a weak story.

How Do You Decide What to Watch?

How about sharing the way you decide what movie is next on your list?

Deciding What Movie to Watch

Is there a difference between watching a movie and seeing a movie? To me, seeing seems deeper, involving a conscious effort to find the message or meaning, while watching is more akin to TV channel surfing. I watch a movie and if there is a message or meaning that I get, then I see.

By nature, I over think, and so it is with deciding what to watch. In the years before computers and film guides, movie critics were the best informed source of advice. I found the recommendations of John Hartl of the Seattle Times a good match for my tastes. Then Siskel & Ebert came to TV, with the tastes of Siskel the better match for me (I still like his guideline, "Do you care about the characters?"). Maltin's film guide was handy and extensive, but the accuracy for me was mixed, probably because of the team approach that had to be used to review so many movies.

I used to subscribe to the magazines Films in Review and Sight and Sound, but by the time the magazines arrived, the films were usually gone from the theaters. Foreign films were only shown at the Ridgemont in Greenwood and sometimes at a couple places in the University District. The University put on a quarterly film series which concentrated on films from one country each quarter. The only movies shown on TV were old Hollywood ones.

The most reliable referral source for me now is the Netflix algorithm, based on my own ratings compared with those of other members who rate like me. After watching a movie, I use the Netflix filmographies of the director and actors to find other films of interest. I also look at the reader reviews and sometimes the critics reviews (though Ebert rates so many movies good that I suspect he is influenced by the Netflix desire to keep people renting). I still check out any other recommendations I get from Netflix, family, friends and various media sources, by seeing what the Netflix algorithm predicts for me.

My Netflix queue usually has about 200 movies. If a movie is available from the King County Library (which a little over half are) I get it there, so my Library queue has about 250. I tried to maintain this second queue at Netflix, but found it cumbersome, so now I keep a database with both queues and can sort movies by genre, date, length, language and Netflix prediction. I watch 4 or 5 a week each from Netflix (which is making a smart business move during a down economy by working extra hard to keep the movies coming fast) and the library, with the mix designed to go with my mood and to provide some variety.

Susan is my resident movie watching companion, but she works full time and our tastes differ somewhat. She retires at year end, so may become more involved in movie picking after that.

In November I watched 33 movies, dated 1936 to 2009, all dramas except for 3 comedies, 3 romances, 2 documentaries and 1 sci-fi, all in English except 4 Spanish, 2 German and 1 each Hungarian, Italian and Japanese, predicted by Netflix from 3.4 to 2.8 and rated by me from 3.8 to 2. For my mathematically inclined readers (especially John), the Netflix predictions were accurate on the average to within .1, with only 4 being off by more than .5, and the median being an exact match.