Film 71 - The Matrix

Just like Blade Runner, it's a masterpiece which at times is impossible to follow. To be fair, it made a lot more sense most of the time, but at times near the end I just didn't get it.

You can't deny that it's a masterpiece though, and another film that I'm glad I got round to watching.

Film 70 - Hard Candy

About the most disturbing film I have ever had the fortune/misfortune to see. It tricks with your emotions so well, as you start by believing that Jeff (the paedophile) deserves what's coming to him, but as the torture increases you start to realise how much of a psychopath - 14 year old - Hayley is.

It's one of the most insane films ever, 14 year old girl seduces - not that he needed seducing - paedophile before drugging him and torturing him. A particularly nasty segment comes when she pretends to castrate him whilst he's tied up. Neither him nor the audience know that she hasn't actually done it until he manages to free himself.

Hard Candy is one of those films that it's impossible to love, difficult to even like, and may even make you wish you hadn't watched it. But it will make you think.

Film 69 - Smart People

It failed to rivet me, having the same problem as so many 'comedy-drama' films: it wasn't funny enough and it wasn't dramatic enough.

Few films can pull off this lack of anything on the surface that makes you love it, and those are the ones that have an awful lot underneath. Smart People, just like the Royal Tenenbaums, failed to pull off this ultra-indie style of film.

FIlm 68 - Sliding Doors

Another really good film, with a concept that fascinated me, and given that it was built around getting or not getting on to a tube train, and the alternative realities that followed.

Symmetry was something that was obvious throughout the film, as similar things happened in both universes to slightly different effects and at slightly different times.

The best moments in this film came towards the end of the film, it was an unashamed rom-com throughout with an interesting uniqueness, so towards the end came the point which was most interesting in both ways, with the better reality dying but it looking like in the end almost being resurrected, which also had a brilliant symmetry to  it.

Film 67 - Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Another superlative comedy film, surpassing the other John Hughes film I've watched this year for laughs but maybe not for emotional impact.

Still, it isn't a film to be dismissed as a cheap laugh, there are some genuinely profound moments amongst the crazy madcap stuff that goes on.

EDIT: Actually it's the third John Hughes film I've seen this year... I didn't know he wrote and produced Home Alone.

Film 66 - Shallow Hal

One of those movies that had more than you'd see on the surface. If you look at it shallowly you see a comedy about fat people and good looking people and how one who sees himself as the latter eventually finds a way to see past looks and love a fat person.

The other way of looking at is is that it's a very funny film that contains some important debates about what beauty is and how judgemental our society is.

I prefer to look at it the latter way, but any right thinking person should find thinking about it that way deeply uncomfortable. And that's a good thing.

Film 65 - Slumdog Millionaire

A brilliant, sad, feel-good, moving, heart-warming - there aren't enough adjectives - film.  Simply blew me away with the emotions it made me feel, the quality of the storyline.

Possibly the best Danny Boyle film in this list (the fourth that I've watched) and given that they are all brilliant films, that is a high accolade.

The moment with the cricket question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, would have worked better if I hadn't known the answer (therefore knowing the host was tricking him).

N.B. Second Danny Boyle film to feature toilet diving. Urgh!