Digital Sextant

I watched just over five dozen films this year; here are my favorites (among the movies I saw for the first time):

Cinema

• Star Trek – I enjoyed this rollicking rethinking of the original space adventure.  I loved the way Abrams kept the old continuity and erased it at the same time–it’s a cute plot trick that lets them violate all sorts of old tropes about the Star Trek universe.  Awesome stuff.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – I’m a sucker for these movies, I’ll admit, but the last couple have been very good.  I’d put this movie at position #2 in my list of favorites, just following the incomparable Prisoner of Azkaban.  I particularly liked the over-used trailer line, “I’m afraid I must once again ask too much of you, Harry.”  Good ol’ Michael Gambon.
• The Invention of Lying- I’m a sucker for Ricky Gervais.  I love his Office, of course, but his mellower characters who brim with humility and shabbiness are even better.  The Invention of Lying captures this brilliantly, and it has a skewering vision of religion to boot.  Rob Lowe hasn’t played smarmy this brilliantly since Wayne’s World.
• [REC] – I only recently watched this film, so it seems a little strange to put in on the Year in Review, but it’s so darn good!  The intensity of the through-the-camera view gives it some real zest.

Television

• The IT Crowd – This britcom delights me with its cheesy canned laughter, its over-the-top characters, and its crazy boss.  Like Black Books, it operates within the genre of the sitcom, not tweaking it but making it sing.  Like jazz.
• The Lost Room – We watched this SciFi miniseries on DVD and were delighted with it.  The show tells the story of a mysterious room where something horrible happened.  The objects that were in the room each have mystical powers which amplify as they’re brought together.  Secret cabals compete to collect the objects, and villains wait around every corner.  Awesome stuff.
• Psych – My favorite television show, I think.  It’s not complicated or mentally challenging, but more like popcorn.  It’s buttery and good and you want more as soon as you’ve finished.  It’s the one show that makes me smile pretty much every time I watch it, and whose commercials I stop fast forwarding to watch.  Check out the promo at the bottom of the page.
• Dollhouse, Epitaph One – Bar none the best episode of television I watched this year.  So what if I saw it on DVD?  It’s a great post-apocalyptic story that pulls new ideas and emotions from characters who were settling into defined roles.  It demands that we think about the show in ways that were getting covered over by melodrama, and it makes everyday life in the series a bit more fragile.  Cracking good job, Joss!