Sunday, June 18, 2017

My first 100 reviews, and then some

Not of all time, mind you. I'm close to 1,400 if you include all the reviews I've ever written for one publication or another.

But this "milestone post" celebrates my one hundredth review for ReelGood, the Australian website that has engaged me as a freelancer since December of 2014.

My Cousin Rachel ignominiously claims the honor, or "honour" if I want to be Australian about it. "Ignominiously" not because the movie is bad, but because I've already forgotten about it five days after seeing it. (Not true, but I thought it was rather average -- meaning I still awarded it a 7/10. See other posts for my ongoing struggle with my personal ratings system.)

On the occasion of this milestone, instead of giving you a ponderous think piece about what it means to be a critic in our current world or what criticism means to me, I thought I'd do a "service" to potential future readers. (Hello, potential future readers! How has the future been treating you?)

That "service" will be to create a repository for all of these 100 reviews ... though unless you read this post within the next few days, there will be more than 100 in the list.

That's right, I'm going to create links to all of my ReelGood reviews, and add a new link every time a new one posts.

The purpose of this -- since I'm sure you're asking yourself that right now -- is to create a single location to point people who have asked to see some of what I've written. They can then choose from the whole list, in order to read a review that's germane to their own experience. I mean, if you want to see if I have valid film opinions and can argue them successfully, wouldn't you rather read a review of a film you've already seen, on which you already have your own perspective? With this post, you'll now have a chance to choose between all of them.

The way I used to handle this when it came up, which was maybe every other year, was to send them a flat list of all the reviews I'd written for AllMovie, the site that employed me from 2000 to 2011. By the end of my run there, it was more than 1,200 movies long. They'd then have to go to that site and search the title, if my disproportionate response to their innocent query didn't already shut them off to the whole idea of reading my reviews in the first place.

Now, technology is my friend and I can do this in a much easier way. Though to be honest, it's been more than a couple years since anyone's actually asked me this.

Never mind that it's now possible to search my reviews on ReelGood by clicking the hyperlink that appears on my name, something that wasn't possible until the site was redesigned about a year ago. So yeah, I'm about to commit to a fairly arduous undertaking that will also be essentially redundant.

But, I can't speak to how future redesigns may handle this functionality, so might as well.

Oh, and don't worry. I'll still keep updating my most recent three on the right side of this page. (I know you were worried.)

Reconsidering this list has allowed me to notice some funny things, like the fact that I reviewed The Assassin and Creed consecutively, and that five movies before that, I reviewed Justin Kurzel's Macbeth. A year after this, Justin Kurzel would direct Assassin's Creed ... which I did not review, nor see.

Okay. Probably don't need to bore you with any more preamble, although whether you'll continue "reading" at all after this is up to you. "Glancing" might be the better word.

Here we go, in chronological order:

1. Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
2. Foxcatcher (2014, Bennett Miller)
3. The Interview (2014, Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen)
4. St. Vincent (2014, Theodore Melfi)
5. The Wedding Ringer (2015, Jeremy Garelick)
6. Love is Strange (2014, Ira Sachs)
7. The Gambler (2014, Rupert Wyatt)
8. The Last Five Years (2015, Richard LaGravenese)
9. Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015, Mark Burton & Richard Starzak)
10. The Age of Adaline (2015, Lee Toland Krieger)
11. Clouds of Sils Maria (2015, Olivier Assayas)
12. While We're Young (2015, Noah Baumbach)
13. Gemma Bovery (2015, Anne Fontaine)
14. Woman in Gold (2015, Simon Curtis)
15. Spy (2015, Paul Feig)
16. Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter)
17. The Emperor's New Clothes (2015, Michael Winterbottom)
18. Freedom Stories (2015, Steve Thomas)
19. Love & Mercy (2015, Bill Pohlad)
20. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon)
21. The Gift (2015, Joel Edgerton)
22. Irrational Man (2015, Woody Allen)
23. Everest (2015, Baltasar Kormakur)
24. The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015, Marielle Heller)
25. Tangerine (2015, Sean Baker)
26. Sicario (2015, Denis Villeneuve)
27. Pan (2015, Joe Wright)
28. Macbeth (2015, Justin Kurzel)
29. The Walk (2015, Robert Zemeckis)
30. Mistress America (2015, Noah Baumbach)
31. Sleeping With Other People (2015, Leslye Headland)
32. Knight of Cups (2015, Terrence Malick)
33. The Assassin (2015, Hsiao-Hsien Hou)
34. Creed (2015, Ryan Coogler)
35. 99 Homes (2015, Ramin Bahrani)
36. Hotel Tansylvania 2 (2015, Genndy Tartakovsky)
37. The Night Before (2015, Jonathan Levine)
38. Truth (2015, James Vanderbilt)
39. Room (2015, Lenny Abrahamson)
40. Mississipi Grind (2015, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
41. The Good Dinosaur (2015, Peter Sohn)
42. Suffragette (2015, Sarah Gavron)
43. Carol (2015, Todd Haynes)
44. The Big Short (2015, Adam McKay)
45. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016, Michael Bay)
46. How to be Single (2016, Christian Ditter)
47. Zootopia (2016, Byron Howard & Rich Moore)
48. Rams (2016, Grimur Hakonarson)
49. Midnight Special (2016, Jeff Nichols)
50. Eddie the Eagle (2016, Dexter Fletcher)
51. Green Room (2016, Jeremy Saulnier)
52. The Meddler (2016, Lorene Scafaria)
53. Money Monster (2016, Jodie Foster)
54. Hello, My Name is Doris (2016, Michael Showalter)
55. Miles Ahead (2016, Don Cheadle)
56. The BFG (2016, Steven Spielberg)
57. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016, Jake Szymanski)
58. Swiss Army Man (2016, Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert)
59. Star Trek Beyond (2016, Justin Lin)
60. The Salesman (2016, Asghar Farhadi)
61. Certain Women (2016, Kelly Reichardt)
62. Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade)
63. The Lure (2016, Agnieszka Smoczynska)
64. Christine (2016, Antonio Campos)
65. Seoul Station (2016, Sang-ho Yeon)
66. Paterson (2016, Jim Jarmusch)
67. The Shallows (2016, Jaume Collet-Serra)
68. Don't Breathe (2016, Fede Alvarez)
69. Snowden (2016, Oliver Stone)
70. Pete's Dragon (2016, David Lowery)
71. Yoga Hosers (2016, Kevin Smith)
72. The Red Turtle (2016, Michael Dudok de Wit)
73. Deepwater Horizon (2016, Peter Berg)
74. Cafe Society (2016, Woody Allen)
75. Under the Shadow (2016, Babak Anvari)
76. Hell or High Water (2016, David Mackenzie)
77. American Honey (2016, Andrea Arnold)
78. Arrival (2016, Denis Villeneuve)
79. Morgan (2016, Luke Scott)
80. The Family Fang (2016, Jason Bateman)
81. Office Christmas Party (2016, Josh Gordon & Will Speck)
82. Little Men (2016, Ira Sachs)
83. Bad Santa 2 (2016, Mark Waters)
84. Hidden Figures (2016, Theodore Melfi)
85. Manchester by the Sea (2016, Kenneth Lonergan)
86. Lion (2016, Garth Davis)
87. The Birth of a Nation (2016, Nate Parker)
88. Fences (2016, Denzel Washington)
89. Loving (2016, Jeff Nichols)
90. A Cure for Wellness (2017, Gore Verbinski)
91. Life (2017, Daniel Espinosa)
92. The Lego Batman Movie (2017, Chris McKay)
93. The Fate of the Furious (2017, F. Gary Gray)
94. Raw (2016, Julia Ducournau)
95. Colossal (2017, Nacho Vigalondo)
96. Free Fire (2016, Ben Wheatley)
97. John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017, Chad Stahelski)
98. 20th Century Women (2016, Mike Mills)
99. Hounds of Love (2017, Ben Young)
100. My Cousin Rachel (2017, Roger Michell)
101. Cars 3 (2017, Brian Fee)
102. Transformers: The Last Knight (2017, Michael Bay)
103. Una (2017, Benedict Andrews)
104. Lady Macbeth (2017, William Oldroyd)
105. A Monster Calls (2016, J.A. Bayona)
106. American Made (2017, Doug Liman)
107. The Lovers (2017, Azazel Jacobs)
108. Girls Trip (2017, Malcolm D. Lee)
109. The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017, Charlie Bean)
110. Song to Song (2017, Terrence Malick)
111. Battle of the Sexes (2017, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)
112. Ingrid Goes West (2017, Matt Spicer)
113. Geostorm (2017, Dean Devlin)
114. Brigsby Bear (2017, Dave McCary)
115. Loving Vincent (2017, Dorota Kobiela & Thomas Welchman)
116. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017, Yorgos Lanthimos)
117. Jigsaw (2017, Peter & Michael Spierig)
118. Lucky (2017, John Carroll Lynch)
119. In This Corner of the World (2016, Sunao Katabuchi)
120. Only the Brave (2017, Joseph Kosinski)
121. Wonder Wheel (2017, Woody Allen)
122. The Florida Project (2017, Sean Baker)
123. Call Me by Your Name (2017, Luca Guadagnino)
124. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017, Jake Kasdan)
125. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017, Martin McDonagh)
126. Coco (2017, Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina)
127. The Shape of Water (2017, Guillermo del Toro)
128. Sweet Country (2017, Warwick Thornton)
129. Winchester (2018, Peter & Michael Spierig)
130. Annihilation (2018, Alex Garland)
131. Peter Rabbit (2018, Will Gluck)
132. Mary Magdalene (2018, Garth Davis)
133. Unsane (2018, Steven Soderbergh)
134. Super Troopers 2 (2018, Jay Chandrasekhar)
135. Tully (2018, Jason Reitman)
136. Chappaquiddick (2018, John Curran)
137. Deadpool 2 (2018, David Leitch)
138. The Bookshop (2017, Isabel Coixet)
139. Gringo (2018, Nash Edgerton)
140. Hereditary (2018, Ari Aster)
141. Ocean's Eight (2018, Gary Ross)
142. The Incredibles 2 (2018, Brad Bird)
143. Disobedience (2017, Sebastian Lelio)
144. Two is a Family (2016, Hugo Gelin)
145. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018, Stefano Sollima)
146. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018, Peyton Reed)
147. Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation (2018, Genndy Tartakovsky)
148. The Gospel According to Andre (2018, Kate Novack)
149. BlacKkKlansman (2018, Spike Lee)
150. RBG (2018, Betsy West & Julie Cohen)
151. Mandy (2018, Panos Cosmatos)
152. Wildlife (2018, Paul Dano)
153. Climax (2018, Gaspar Noe)
154. Shoplifters (2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda)
155. Cold War (2018, Pawel Pawlikowski)
156. Everybody Knows (2018, Asghar Farhadi)
157. The Happytime Murders (2018, Brian Henson)
158. The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018, Desiree Akhavan)
159. Three Identical Strangers (2018, Tim Wardle)
160. Hearts Beat Loud (2018, Brett Haley)
161. A Simple Favor (2018, Paul Feig)
162. The House With the Clock in its Walls (2018, Eli Roth)
163. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018, Gus Van Sant)
164. Custody (2018, Xavier Legrand)
165. Bad Times at the El Royale (2018, Drew Goddard)
166. A Star is Born (2018, Bradley Cooper)
167. The Old Man & the Gun (2018, David Lowery)
168. Suspiria (2018, Luca Guadagnino)
169. Bohemian Rhapsody (2018, Bryan Singer)
170. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018, Lasse Halstrom & Joe Johnston)
171. Creed II (2018, Steven Caple Jr.)
172. The Children Act (2017, Richard Eyre)
173. Sorry to Bother You (2018, Boots Riley)
174. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman)
175. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018, Marielle Heller)
176. Eighth Grade (2018, Bo Burnham)
177. Vice (2018, Adam McKay)
178. Holmes & Watson (2018, Etan Cohen)
179. The Favourite (2018, Yorgos Lanthimos)
180. Mary Poppins Returns (2018, Rob Marshall)
181. Green Book (2018, Peter Farrelly)
182. Capharnaum (2018, Nadine Labaki)
183. Escape Room (2019, Adam Robitel)
184. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, Barry Jenkins)
185. What Men Want (2019, Adam Shankman)
186. The House That Jack Built (2018, Lars von Trier)
187. Paddleton (2019, Alex Lehmann)
188. Hotel Mumbai (2019, Anthony Maras)
189. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019, Mike Mitchell)
190. Fighting With My Family (2019, Stephen Merchant)
191. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018, Terry Gilliam)
192. Mid90s (2018, Jonah Hill)
193. Avengers: Endgame (2019, Joe & Anthony Russo)
194. Long Shot (2019, Jonathan Levine)
195. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (2019, Rob Letterman)
196. All is True (2019, Kenneth Branagh)
197. Brightburn (2019, David Yarovesky)
198. High Life (2018, Claire Denis)
199. Tolkien (2019, Dome Karukoski)
200. Toy Story 4 (2019, Josh Cooley)
201. Men in Black: International (2019, F. Gary Gray)
202. Child's Play (2019, Lars Klevberg)
203. Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho)
204. Never Look Away (2018, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
205. Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019, Richard Lowenstein)
206. Hail Satan? (2019, Penny Lane)
207. Booksmart (2019, Olivia Wilde)
208. Crawl (2019, Alexandre Aja)
209. The Australian Dream (2019, Daniel Gordon)
210. Ophelia (2018, Claire McCarthy)
211. Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019, Paul Downs Colaizzo)
212. The Day Shall Come (2019, Chris Morris)
213. Extra Ordinary (2019, Enda Loughman & Mike Ahern)
214. The Lodge (2019, Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala)
215. Downton Abbey (2019, Michael Engler)
216. Abominable (2019, Jill Culton)
217. The Dead Don't Die (2019, Jim Jarmusch)
218. Birds of Passage (2018, Ciro Guerra & Cristina Gallego)
219. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019, Joachim Ronner)
220. Hustlers (2019, Lorene Scafaria)
221. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019, Vince Gilligan)
222. The Laundromat (2019, Steven Soderbergh)
223. Doctor Sleep (2019, Mike Flanagan)
224. Last Christmas (2019, Paul Feig)
225. Terminator: Dark Fate (2019, Tim Miller)
226. Knives Out (2019, Rian Johnson)
227. Ford v. Ferrari (2019, James Mangold)
228. The Good Liar (2019, Bill Condon)
229. Jojo Rabbit (2019, Taika Waititi)
230. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019, Celine Sciamma)
231. Jumanji: The Next Level (2019, Jake Kasdan)
232. Little Women (2019, Greta Gerwig)
233. Dolittle (2020, Stephen Gaghan)
234. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019, Marielle Heller)
235. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020, Cathy Yan)
236. Color Out of Space (2020, Richard Stanley)
237. Emma (2020, Autumn de Wilde)
238. The Invisible Man (2020, Leigh Whannell)
239. Downhill (2020, Nat Faxon & Jim Rash)
240. The Platform (2019, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia)
241. Uncorked (2020, Prentice Penny)
242. Coffee & Kareem (2020, Michael Dowse)
243. Onward (2020, Dan Scanlon)
244. Love Wedding Repeat (2020, Dean Craig)
245. Tigertail (2020, Alan Yang)
246. Circus of Books (2020, Rachel Mason)
247. Extraction (2020, Sam Hargrave)
248. The Willoughbys (2020, Kris Pearn)
249. All Day and a Night (2020, Joe Robert Cole)
250. Becoming (2020, Nadia Hallgren)
251. Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics (2020, Donick Cary)
252. The Wrong Missy (2020, Tyler Spindel)
253. The Assistant (2020, Kitty Green)
254. The Lovebirds (2020, Michael Showalter)
255. The Trip to Greece (2020, Michael Winterbottom)
256. Endings, Beginnings (2020, Drake Doremus)
257. The Last Days of American Crime (2020, Olivier Megaton)
258. Burden (2020, Andrew Heckler)
259. Da 5 Bloods (2020, Spike Lee)
260. Disclosure (2020, Sam Feder)
261. Resistance (2020, Jonathan Jakubowicz)
262. Wasp Network (2020, Olivier Assayas)
263. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020, David Dobkin)
264. Dogs Don't Wear Pants (2019, J-P Valkeapaa)
265. The Personal History of David Copperfield (2020, Armando Iannucci)
266. Desperados (2020, LP)
267. Waves (2019, Trey Edward Shults)
268. The Old Guard (2020, Gina Prince-Bythewood)
269. Fatal Affair (2020, Peter Sullivan)
270. The King of Staten Island (2020, Judd Apatow)
271. The Kissing Booth 2 (2020, Vince Marcello)
272. 23 Walks (2020, Paul Morrison)
273. The Hater (2020, Jan Komasa)
274. Deerskin (2019, Quentin Dupieux)
275. First Cow (2020, Kelly Reichardt)
276. Marona's Fantastic Tale (2020, Anca Damian)
277. Shiva Baby (2020, Emma Seligman)
278. The Killing of Two Lovers (2020, Robert Machoian)
279. Just 6.5 (2019, Saeed Roustayi)
280. La Llorona (2020, Jayro Bustamante)
281. Les Miserables (2019, Ladj Ly)
282. All Together Now (2020, Brett Haley)
283. Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020, Dean Parisot)

If you've kept reading, congratulations! You get some stats, which will be written in June of 2017 and never updated.

In my first three calendar years writing for ReelGood, I reviewed my #1 movie each year: Birdman, Inside Out and Toni Erdmann, though since Birdman was my very first review for the site, I didn't feel comfortable giving it a full 10/10. So I opted for the 9/10 ... and in two-and-a-half years of hindsight, that's probably the appropriate rating for it anyway. (Is a person more likely to make a movie his #1 if he has written about it rapturously? Discuss.)

I have not reviewed three films by any one director among these first hundred, but I've reviewed two each by the following: Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent and Hidden Figures), Denis Villeneuve (Sicario and Arrival), Ira Sachs (Love is Strange and Little Men), Jeff Nichols (Midnight Special and Loving), Noah Baumbach (While We're Young and Mistress America) and Woody Allen (Irrational Man and Cafe Society). Come on guys (because you're all guys), leave some reviews for somebody else!

I have given 10/10 four times (Inside Out, Creed, Toni Erdmann and The Red Turtle) but 1/10 only once (Yoga Hosers). I've never given 0/10, though my editor did give Jupiter Ascending a poop emoticon as its rating, so I know less than 1/10 is possible.

Alright, you're free to go.

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