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This was a year in which I still watched a lof of films but where I was just as apt to watch them on a streaming platform as at a cinema.
It’s not that I’ve fallen out of love with seeing movies out in the cinematic wild, and oddly I had very few issues this year with people talking while the film was on, or otherwise causing a distractingly thoughtless ruckus; it’s honestly more than after years of frenetic workload, and another year of the same, I was just tired.
Very, VERY tired.
So, there were times when I bought tickets and didn’t go to see a film – to be fair, my left leg gave me a huge amount of movement impairing grief this year and I had to give away at least four films while I performed what I called “physio lockdown” (i.e. didn’t leave the house to rest the annoying body part) – or I just thought I’d go home and let a friend see it instead.
Overall though, I made most of the films I booked, and gloried once again in how good it is to just sit back, switch off the brain from work, work, work and just escape into a film and let its story be my own world for at least an hour or two (or, in the case of Wicked: Part One and Gladiator II, over 2.5 hours, both of which were worth the investment of time, the former more than the latter).
Here, then, are my 25 favourites films for the year, and yes, they are hugely mixed bunch but then I have always been eclectic in my tastes in all forms of pop culture storytelling and film is no different …
