Fourth Annual Movie Ratings Recap

For the last four years I have darkened the doors of my family members' e-mail in-boxes by writing reviews of movies I saw in the theater and assigning a grade to each of those flicks. Then, in January of the succeeding year, I would issue a ratings recap, showing the titles of each reviewed movie and their respective grades.

In 2008, 2009 and 2010 I saw twenty-nine, twenty-one and thirty-one movies, respectively. For that entire three year period I gave only one movie, "The Kids Are All Right" from 2010, a grade of A. I bestowed a grade of A- on ten movies*, and luckily only had to suffer through two movies ranked lower than a C-: "Vantage Point" (D) from 2008, and "Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past" (D-) from 2009.

I saw twenty-eight movies in the theater during calendar year 2011, and, as noted above, on a monthly (sometimes semi-monthly) basis I wrote a review, assigned grades and e-mailed them to the fam. What follows here is a recap of the list of those movies and their respective grades. Within each grade, the movies are listed in order of preference. For example, of the eleven movies to which I assigned a grade of B+, I liked "Bridesmaids" the best and "Water For Elephants" the least. If you haven't done so already, you may want to refer to the Prelude I posted on this blog three days ago. It explains my theory of grading.

Without further ado, here is my Movie Ratings Recap for 2011.

MOVIE RATINGS RECAP FOR 2012:

A True Grit
A- Drive; Win Win; The King's Speech; Moneyball
B+ Bridesmaids; Midnight In Paris; The Ides Of March; Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows; My Week With Marilyn; Page 1: Inside The New York Times; J Edgar; Jane Eyre; The Black Swan; Crazy Stupid Love; Water For Elephants
B The Fighter; Friends With Benefits; The Trip; The Descendants; Contagion; One Day; Like Crazy
B- Cedar Rapids; The Double Hour
C+ Footloose; Certified Copy; Melancholia
C None
C- None
D None
D- None
F None

Movies which arrived in Minneapolis toward the end of 2011 which I still plan on seeing include "The Help," "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," "The Artist" and the American version of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." My initial decision not to see "Dragon Tattoo" was based on the fact that I doubted the original 2010 movie from Europe could be improved upon very much by the American film makers; I gave the original a grade of A-. However, after seeing the trailer of the American film and excerpts from a few critics' reviews, I've changed my mind.

Please don't forget to turn your cell phone ringers off, and if you slurp your soda or text during the movie, I just might dump my popcorn over your head.

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* The ten movies I've graded A- during 2008-2010 are: from 2008, "Under The Same Moon," "Roman De Gare" and "Juno"; from 2009, "The Wrestler," "Inglorious Basterds" and "Doubt"; and, from 2010, "Inside Job," "Shutter Island," "Crazy Heart" and "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."