2015 ranking

I watched what feels like a million operas last year, and I read some books (13, which is more than I expected) but saw very few films. 6451 told me recently that he relies upon the Munich film festival for his yearly movie fix, and apparently I did so too with the Berlinale. Besides the 20 or so films from the Berlinale, I saw another 27 films (some of which were seen during the PIFF, and a bunch of them were short films). From what I can tell this is comparable to my movie intake from 2007, which has been steadily rising ever since to almost 200 in 2011, then dropped to a bit over 100 in the following two years, and during my Berlin years (2014 and 2015), films became significantly less important. As a result, this year’s ranking is even less impressive than last year’s.

1. Ida
2. Leviathan *
3. Koza *
4. Under Electric Clouds *
5. Nuclear Nation 2 *
6. Aferim! *
7. Ode to my Father *
8. Spectre *
9. Love, Theft and other Entanglements *
10. You’re ugly too *
11. The Diary of a Teenage Girl *
12. End of winter *
13. St. Vincent *
14. Ten no Chasuke *
15. Der Geldkomplex *

Yes, besides “Ida”, I have seen all of these films in movie theaters, either at the Berlinale and/or with somebody (which means that it was primarily a social outing in the broad sense). Interestingly enough, “Ida” still trumps them all, even though I thought that a lot of them were amazing films. In fact, I would say that 1-6 were amazing, 7-12 were very good and the last 3 were meh. Also, somehow the region one could vaguely describe as “Europe east of Germany” seems to be claiming the “amazing” category except for “Nuclear Nation 2”. All of this means that I really need to get back into films, and perhaps this posting and my anticipation for the 2016 list on “They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?” will help.