My Year in Netflix

I've been very lax on writing up movies the last couple of months, partly because I've been adjusting to my new environment, partly because I haven't been watching as many movies as I used to, and partly because I'm just damned lazy most of the time. I also haven't seen more than a handful of movies this year in theaters, due to lack of money, time, or availability of the really interesting films that have come out this year. (Oh, Synecdoche, New York, why won't you play near me?) So as it comes towards the end of the year, that time in which all of those who style themselves critics feel the compulsive need to assemble a "best-of" list, I find myself pretty much shit-out-of-luck.

On the other hand, I've spent the majority of 2008 filling in gaps in my film knowledge by using Netflix to view classic films. And while my consumption has declined in the last couple of months, according to my rental history, I've rented and viewed eighty-six films this year, excluding TV-on-DVD and a handful of movies that I didn't watch all the way through for one reason or another. So I've decided to compose a "best-of" list of the movies I saw during 2008, a list that aside from being an examination of my own personal year of film, is also a celebration of sorts of Netflix itself, and an appreciation of the ability to get to cheaply see such a variety of movies in a single year.

In that vein, I'm posting today a list of all the movies that I've seen this year. I know there are still a dozen days left (and I'll surely see at least a couple more movies before the clock strikes midnight on Dec 31), but any movies that I see this year will be considered for my 2009 list. (It'd be nice to think I'll have the stick-to-it-tiveness to do this next year, as well, isn't it?)

Here's the list of all the movies that I have returned to Netflix during the year 2008.

28 Weeks Later
3:10 to Yuma
A Fish Called Wanda
A Simple Plan
Audition
Baby Face
Battle Royale
Bella
Bound
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Brokeback Mountain
Bruce & Lloyd Out of Control
Catch and Release
Chinatown
City of God
Creation Adventure Team
CSA: Confederate States of America
Dawn of the Dead
Day of the Dead
Desk Set
Do the Right Thing
Double Indemnity
Downfall
Encounters at the End of the World
Following
For the Bible Tells Me So
Freaks
Gangs of New York
Ginger
Hard Candy
Husbands and Wives
Ichi the Killer
Idiocracy
In Cold Blood
Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter
Kiss Me Deadly
Knife in the Water
Lake of Fire
Land of the Dead
Left Behind: The Movie
Martin
Munich
Nashville
Oleanna
Once Upon a Time in the West
Patton Oswalt: Werewolves and Lollipops
Q & A
Ravenous
Redacted
Renaissance
Repo Man
Romance
Romance & Cigarettes
Rushmore
Salò
Secret Honor
Shoot 'Em Up
Six-String Samurai
Slaughterhouse Five
Slipstream
South Park: The Imaginationland Trilogy
Stardust
Straw Dogs
Stray Dog
Taxi to the Dark Side
The Assassination of Jesse James
The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Day the World Ended
The French Connection
The Hammer
The Long Goodbye
The Maltese Falcon
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Third Man
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Wild Child
Triple B Collection: The Dallas Connection
Undead or Alive
Versus: Director's Cut
Waitress
Westworld
Wild Things
Wings of Desire
Wizard of Gore

Expect my ten-best list in the next few days, along with another couple of year-end retrospectives detailing things that are of interest to this blog.