Lists

My 2009 List of Lists

by James McNally on January 3, 2010 · 2 comments

in Lists

I’ve been avoiding making any year-end “Best of 2009″ list and have been waiting for the flood of other people’s lists to pass me by, but now, goaded by TSS co-founder and now-just-occasional con­trib­utor Jay Kerr, I’ve decided to draw atten­tion to some of the best films I saw in 2009 in my own unique way. No simple Top Ten for me. No way. I’m far too afraid of get­ting the order wrong, and besides, I’m not a pro­fes­sional film critic. I don’t see most of the major releases. In fact, if I don’t want to see a cer­tain film, I don’t see it. And if I see it and don’t feel like reviewing it, I don’t review it. So I’m not really qual­i­fied to come up with a com­pre­hensive list. Instead, enjoy a whole bunch of non-ranked lists from my filmgoing exper­i­ences of 2009. Films marked with an * actu­ally appeared on my 2008 list as well.

P.S. I also get con­fused as to which films are actu­ally eli­gible for these lists. Some films I saw in 2009 haven’t been released the­at­ric­ally yet, while others that were released the­at­ric­ally I actu­ally saw in 2008 or before. And some­times things that come out in the US have dif­ferent release dates in Canada, or vice versa. It makes my head hurt.

Favourite Documentary Films of 2009

Favourites from TIFF 2009

Favourite Non-Festival Films from 2009

Favourite Films from 2008 That Are Appearing on a Lot of 2009 Lists

Favourite Undistributed Films of 2009 (no known dis­tri­bu­tion in US or Canada)

Perhaps this next list is most important, because it tells you that I’m far from qual­i­fied to judge 2009’s best films when I haven’t seen many which are being con­sidered for awards and are on other critics’ lists.

Biggest Omissions in My Filmgoing in 2009

Tagged as: 2009faves

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My Arthouse Education

by James McNally on July 21, 2009 · 4 comments

in Lists

Paradise Cinema, Toronto

I’ve just real­ized that 2009 marks the more-or-less 20th anniversary of the begin­ning of my cinephilia. Back in the late ‘80s, Toronto had a handful of rep­er­tory cinemas under the Festival banner. The flag­ship was the Bloor Cinema, but I also saw films at the Revue, the Capitol (now an “event theatre”) and the Fox. The Kingsway, the Paradise, and later the Royal were a bit far for this east-end boy to get to at the time, but luckily they rotated the films around a fair bit. Each month, the news­print Festival pro­gramme opened up a world of cinema riches to a young lad like myself. Though the Festival theatres no longer operate as a chain, most are still func­tioning movie houses, though it’s pain­fully evident that the best days of Toronto’s rep­er­tory cinemas are now gone. Here are some of the films I saw that made an impres­sion on me all those years ago. In par­tic­ular, I think the first four are sadly over­looked nowadays.

Thanks to John Vetterli for making his photo avail­able under a Creative Commons licence.

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Top Films of 2008

by James McNally on January 5, 2009

in Documentaries,Lists

I’m gen­er­ally not a fan of year-end “best of” lists but on the other hand, I always seem to have an opinion on every other list I see so it’s only fair that I try to put together my own. It’s bound to be a little idio­syn­cratic, since I see most of my films at film fest­ivals. There are a number of sig­ni­ficant films that I haven’t (yet) seen but I wanted to limit my list to what I actu­ally saw in 2008. Since I see so many doc­u­ment­aries, they get their own list, although I think the hard boundary between doc­u­mentary and fic­tion is becoming more per­meable all the time. I’ve lim­ited myself to ten in each cat­egory, though there is no ranking.

Documentaries

Dramatic Features (and One Short)

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Oscar Doc Shortlist Announced

by James McNally on November 18, 2008 · 5 comments

in Awards,Documentaries,Lists,Oscars

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their doc­u­mentary short­list yes­terday. Here are the 15 films selected:

Though I’ve seen just three of the nom­in­ated films so far, I’m pretty con­fident saying I’d be bit­terly dis­ap­pointed if Man on Wire fails to win the Oscar. Like some other com­ment­ators, I’m sur­prised and a bit let down that Yung Chang’s Up the Yangtze (review) wasn’t shortlisted.

Documentarian AJ Schnack (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) is breaking these down over on his excel­lent blog, All These Wonderful Things.

Tagged as: nominations, shortlist

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AJ Schnack on Top Doc Fests

by James McNally on February 28, 2008

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Lists

Filmmaker AJ Schnack (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) is put­ting together his list of the top 25 doc­u­mentary film fest­ivals in the world, with lots of input from other film­makers and industry rep­res­ent­at­ives. I was very pleased that Toronto took two places in the top ten, with TIFF coming in at #2 and Hot Docs at #6.

As of this writing, he’s only posted the top ten, but I’m looking for­ward to seeing the rest of the list, and (hope­fully) get­ting to attend some of these fest­ivals in the future.

As a side note, I’m heading to #4 (South by Southwest) in just over a week! Maybe I’ll have a chance to talk up Toronto a little bit with AJ and others while I’m there.

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