JANUARY: From manly tomb raiding to Nic Cage disappointingly failing to lose his shit

January was a busy month for movies - largely because I spent most of the new year's portion of my holidays lying on a couch absorbing movies rather than going outside. Outside was icy, snowy and did not have movies. No feckin' contest.

1. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life: Yes, I saw it before. Yes, I knew it was going to suck. Yes, I watched it purely for His Manliness, Gerard Butler. Yes, I am a girl. Shut up. **

2. The Horse Whisperer: Enjoyable in a sort of forgettable way. I didn't emotionally connect to it much. I'm possibly the wrong age group. *** new

"You don't want to be in love! You want to be in love in a movie!"

I love movies. LOVE. I'm using the word 'love' here, about movies.

So this year, one of my New Year's Resolutions was to watch more movies. I'm watching them, listing them and rating them. And broadening my horizons as I go, not just reaching for my confortable old favourites all the time. So far, it's been great!

I've watched something like 85 movies this year already and maybe 35 of them were films I had never seen before. Many of the films I've watched have been mediocre - only two have received five starred perfection (The Dark Knight, which I'd obviously seen in the cinema when it first came out and The Killing Fields which I'd managed to avoid for years because it's sounded like such a downer. It is, but God, it's incredible) but three received one star (The Covenant, Season of the Witch and Your Highness. Your Highness was the worst; at least I enjoyed the crappiness of the other two.) But there are plenty of enjoyable, great or awesome movies in there too, from a broad range of genres and eras.

The rules for this resolution/challenge/thing are pretty simple: Watch movies. It doesn't count if you miss more than 15 minutes of a film, even if you've seen it before. Add them to the list and give it a rating as soon as possible after seeing the film. Note if film is 'new' i.e. you haven't seen it before. 

The star ratings pretty much speak for themselves. I'm really more concerned about how I felt about a film rather than trying to break it down too much. I also bear in mind the film's own intentions - I don't think that you can judge all films on the same criteria. The vague descriptors for each star rating are as follows:-

***** Perfection

****  Awesome

***    Enjoyable

**      Not very good

*        Utter shite

This movie experiment was made possible by Cineworld Unlimited Card, Screenclick and the awesome power of the internet.