Operation 101010: post-match analysis

Last night, at 11.02pm, I blogged the last of the Operation 101010 reviews, concluding the project on 10.10.10. The mission was accomplished; the gimmicky end date achieved. For the record, the individual categories and complete list of titles is as follows:

Clint Eastwood movies
1. Coogan’s Bluff
2. The Beguiled
3. Play Misty for Me
4. High Plains Drifter
5. The Eiger Sanction
6. Escape from Alcatraz
7. Heartbreak Ridge
8. Dirty Harry
9. The Enforcer
10. The Outlaw Josey Wales

Werner Herzog movies
1. Little Dieter Needs to Fly
2. Wings of Hope
3. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans
4. The Wild Blue Yonder
5. The White Diamond
6. Even Dwarfs Started Small
7. Heart of Glass
8. Stroszek
9. The Flying Doctors of South Africa
10. Rescue Dawn

Anime
1. My Neighbour Totoro
2. Sky Blue
3. Ponyo
4. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
5. Appleseed Ex Machina
6. Grave of the Fireflies
7. The Place Promised in Our Early Days
8. Millennium Actress
9. Resident Evil: Degeneration
10. Kiki’s Delivery Service

Gialli
1. All the Colours of the Dark
2. Blood Stained Shadow
3. The Black Belly of the Tarantula
4. Baba Yaga
5. Forbidden Photos of a Woman Above Suspicion
6. Short Night of Glass Dolls
7. Opera
8. The Stendahl Syndrome
9. Four Flies on Grey Velvet
10. Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes

Documentaries
1. The Aristocrats
2. An Inconvenient Truth
3. Anvil: The Story of Anvil
4. Iron Maiden: Flight 666
5. Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer
6. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
7. Religulous
8. My Kid Could Paint That
9. Fuck
10. The Cove

Eurovisions
1. Amarcord (Italy)
2. Winter Light (Sweden)
3. All About My Mother (Spain)
4. Amelie (France)
5. Funny Games (Austria)
6. A Serbian Film (Serbia)
7. The Double Life of Veronique (Poland)
8. Dead Snow (Norway)
9. North Face (Germany)
10. Cold Fever (Iceland)

Comedies
1. Intolerable Cruelty
2. Kissing Jessica Stein
3. In the Loop
4. Kick-Ass
5. Zombieland
6. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
7. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
8. Superbad
9. It Happened One Night
10. Some Like it Hot

Biopics
1. Sylvia
2. Monster
3. The Aviator
4. The Edge of Love
5. Ludwig
6. Wilde
7. The Doors
8. Immortal Beloved
9. The Gambler
10. Ed Wood

Impulse buys
1. Rise: Blood Hunter
2. Stoned
3. The Oxford Murders
4. Priceless
5. S. Darko
6. Frost/Nixon
7. Show Me Love (a.k.a. Fucking Amal)
8. Together
9. Lilja 4-Ever
10. A Hole in My Heart

Films with numbers in the title
1. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
2. 49th Parallel
3. Million Dollar Baby
4. The 39 Steps
5. Eight Legged Freaks
6. 30 Days of Night
7. 800 Bullets
8. The Ninth Configuration
9. 10 Things I Hate About You
10. Seven

Out of 100 films, 47 were movies I watched for the first time prior to reviewing. Of these, 11 were absolute gems: ‘The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans’, ‘Ponyo’, ‘Millennium Actress’, ‘Short Night of Glass Dolls’, ‘Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes’, ‘North Face’, ‘In the Loop’, ‘Kick-Ass’, ‘Frost/Nixon’, ‘Show Me Love’, ‘Together’ and ‘800 Bullets’.

‘The Aristocrats’ and ‘Fuck’ were magnificently sweary. Whilst not exactly fun to watch, ‘Grave of the Fireflies’, the two Aileen Wuornos documentaries, ‘A Serbian Film’, ‘Lilja 4-Ever’ and ‘A Hole in My Heart’ made for provocative and rewarding viewing.

In particular, the Lukas Moodysson films were a real discovery.

Of the 53 movies I had seen before, it kind of goes without saying that they were all worthwhile enough to revisit and write about. ‘Little Dieter Needs to Fly’, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, ‘Amarcord’, ‘Amelie’, ‘Some Like it Hot’ and ‘Ed Wood’ were all immediate choices from the Personal Faves list.

On the whole, Operation 101010 has provided me with 10 months of generally satisfying movie-watching. There were ten films I was ambivalent about or indifferent to: ‘Coogan’s Bluff’, ‘Sky Blue’, ‘Baba Yaga’ (which I’m prepared to forgive for its outright weirdness and the sight of Ely Galleani in bondage gear), ‘Religulous’, ‘Funny Games’, ‘Dead Snow’, ‘Stoned’, ‘The Oxford Murders’, ‘Priceless’ and ‘S. Darko’ (which, like ‘Baba Yaga’ is almost redeemed because of its general fucked-up-ness). And only three that I outright disliked: ‘Rise: Blood Hunter’, ‘The Edge of Love’ and ‘30 Days of Night’.

An acceptable result, then, but not a challenge I’m in a hurry to repeat. If anyone postulates Operation 111111 for next year (which would entail 121 films across 11 different genres or categories), I’ll be opting out.

In the meantime, I’m taking a couple of days off (I’m feeling all blogged out at the moment), during which I’ll make a point of catching up with, and commenting on, all the blogs I’ve neglected while I’ve been aiming for the Operation 101010 finish post. The Agitation of the Mind will then return to a more realistic and less cluttered schedule (seriously, the ‘Rescue Dawn’ review yesterday took me to a total of 23 posts in 10 days!) as I count down to Hallowe’en with a batch of horror movies.