I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

I exported a list of every Netflix movie I rented in 2005. With a combination of narcissism and embarrassment I present my list.

This isn’t every movie I watched last year, since I also have a Kim’s membership and went to Film Forum a fair amount this year. It was a good year for movies there—the totally great Harold Lloyd series, the pre-war Paramount series, and Summer of Samurai. (I didn’t see any of the Naruse series (zzzz), and haven’t yet been to the Hitchcock series that goes into February.)

I started and finished a couple of anime teenage girl high school soaps (the fascinatingly misogynist/sadomaschostic Boys over Flowers, cute but bland Fruits Basket) and TV series (the entire Bewitched first season & I, Claudius). Most of this list is either anime or TV series… I tend to see real movies in theatres rather than at home.

The stand-out anime was Paranoia Agent, which was a great Twilight Zone-through-a-JHorror-filter series with a typically Japanese let-down of an ending. The worst one might be a toss-up between Dears (misogynist robot sex comedy/plagiarism of Chobits, a more successful misogynist robot sex comedy), Magical Meow Meow Taruto (a really boring acid trip), and Cyberteam in Akihabara (why?)—but nothing has unseated last years champ Puni Puni Poemy as the worst anime in the universe. I look forward to the rest of Otogi Zoshi, which has been compared to last year’s top series Twelve Kingdoms, but I’ve only just started this month.

On the live action front, I really enjoyed Shaolin Soccer and Hero but liked Kung Fu Hustle and House of Flying Daggers (seen in the theater) far less. Kikujiro was unexpectedly great, proving Beat Takeshi can be a dirtbag even without a gun in his hand. The mid-50s commercials on the Topper TV (written by little Stevie Sondheim!) disk were worth the rental even the show was pretty uninspiring (except for inspiring Will Hines’ impression of Leo G. Carroll)—the vaguest cigarette ads using nonsense statistics delivered my a lisping news anchor. The Bob Newhart Show in its first season was not what I expected… it was pretty unfunny but there was something about it—depressing and engaging at the same time—and the themesong was inappropriately wonderful. And Tabitha, a 70s short-lived Bewitched spin-off, was just putrid.

Next year—more Roman epics! More bad anime! More… of the same.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 31st, 2005 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Adventures in Media, J*Stuff.