As with last year, I kept a list of cinema visits for the year.

Films (at the cinema, in seen order):

1. The Spirit
2. New Shorts: Funny Shit
3. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
4. Slumdog Millionaire
5. Frost/Nixon
6. Better Things
7. Revolutionary Road
8. Hansel and Gretel
9. Los Cronocrímenes (Timecrimes)
10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
11. Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys)
12. Role Models
13. Tokyo Sonata
14. Gran Torino
15. Surveillance
16. Franklyn
17. Flame & Citron
18. Watchmen
19. The International
20. Bronson
21. In The City of Sylvia
22. The Boat That Rocked
23. Two Lovers
24. Cherry Blossoms
25. Martyrs
26. Let The Right One In
27. Monsters Vs Aliens
28. Knowing
29. In The Loop
30. Star Trek
31. The Grocer's Son
32. London Sci-Fi Film festival Blink of An Eye Shorts Programme 1
33. Kurôn wa kokyô wo mezasu
34. Eyeborgs
35. The City of Lost Children (with Marc Caro)
36. London Sci-Fi Film festival Blink of An Eye Long Shorts/Short Longs
37. London Sci-Fi Film festival Blink of An Eye Shorts Programme 2
38. Synecdoche, New York
39. Coraline
40. Observe and Report
41. Drag Me To Hell
42. Terminator Salvation
43. Brüno
44. Public Enemies
45. Sunshine Cleaning
46. Moon
47. Inglorious Basterds
48. The Hurt Locker
49. Jetsam
50. District 9
51. Away We Go
52. Antichrist
53. Surrogates
54. Up
55. Adventureland
56. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
57. Fantastic Mr Fox
58. 9
59. An Education
60. The Men Who Stare At Goats
61. Cold Souls
62. Coco Avant Chanel
63. A Serious Man
64. Paranormal Activity
65. Where The Wild Things Are
66. Avatar
67. Sherlock Holmes
68. Thirst
69. Fish Tank
70. Unmade Beds

Bonus

Knowing about films can win you prizes! At least, it did for me. The Sonic Tonic had a halloween special podcast, which included snippets from horror flicks in between tracks. Whoever could identify the most won a t-shirt. I got all of them but one. Go me! As promised to the ST guys, here's my best myspace-esque photo of my winnings. Props to Paul Cripps for the tip-off and to my mum for always letting me stay up past my bedtime to watch scary films.

This year, I also recorded all the films I saw via oo5, which is Mike Stenhouse's twitter app for ratings stuff, so all of the films above have a score out of 5.

Best

The start of the year had some really amazing films such as Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire and Gran Torino. Let The Right One In, which I was hugely anticipating and felt rewarded for doing so, was brilliant, and Away We Go, A Serious Man and happily quite few others kept the year going with some real treats. However, my two favourites this year were sci-fis. The first is an obvious instant classic; Moon. It's 70's-esque styling and Sam Rockwell's staggering performance put it up there with 2001, in my mind.

My other favourite, that I rated fairly averagely initially, is Timecrimes. It's a Spanish language film about time-travel, but it's not your usual showy film about changing the past and getting into a mess by accidentally shooting your aunt or butterfly or something, but a more subtle, accidental story that still has all the clever complexities you'd expect for the genre. I don't want to ruin it, but it's just such a neat film made on a tiny budget. It's shot beautifully and the surprises last right up until the end. I really can't recommend it enough.

Worst

Well, there were quite a few. Some failed because I'd built them up and expected a lot more, such as Hansel and Gretel, Franklyn and Martyrs. Others were just plain stinkers, such as Surrogates, Unmade Beds, Knowing and The Boat That Rocked (the last much more astutely criticised by Patrick over on Talking Animal).

Paranormal Activity took the biscuit for me, though. I'd fallen into the hype trap and seen the trailers and the chatter about it (on twitter, of all places to take seriously) and actually thought that it could be the new Blair Witch. How stupid of me. I'm astounded that anyone thinks that film is good. It's 81 minutes of a hell-of-a-lot of nothing - mostly a couple of pretty terrible actors whimpering and arguing with each other and unconvincingly never leaving their house to, you know, go to school or have jobs, but film every dull moment of their lives up until the final 5 minutes where there's a bit of genuine, well almost, thrill. As with the massively underwhelming Google Wave, it's the hype-machine success of the year that leaves you muttering "...is that it?".

Books

I somewhat failed at reading this year. I'm blaming my commute going from around 40 minutes spent on a tube to get to work to about 10 minutes. It's barely enough time to read your email and scowl at a few commuters, let alone open a book and really get into it. I did read The Outsider, The Road to Serfdom, the new Scott Pilgrim (which I rather nerdily now keep in it's plastic wrapper due to having a limited edition signed inlay plate), Let The Right One In and a couple more K. Dicks. I didn't really think to record what I read, so there is probably others. Must try harder this year.