I don't think it was "too" brutal, just that it was single-minded and repetitively so. Which entirely works for the subject matter (films concerning slavery should be brutal) - and I keep meaning to read Northup's book. But in the context of McQueen's overall filmography, it feels diminishing, another engagement…

Does that make it his last negative review?

I think directors applying their skills to something indulgently pulpy like Shutter Island should be mandatory in mid-late career. Keeps 'em young at heart.

I didn't think the acting was bad (that Brad Pitt scene aside), but I am glad that Vishnevtsky had some negative things to say about the movie, and we're at a point where we can re-evaluate the film. I appreciate it unto itself but feel Steve McQueen's an aggressively one-note director (that note: misery and lots of…

And when I got there, they told me he just left. And when I asked Christopher Nolan if he'll ever come back again, he said he didn't know.

And what it has to say is "you're an awful, awful person for choosing to watch this specific film (and most other films, but especially horror films)", and in doing so, I find its enterprise to be tone-deaf and insulting. Or maybe I just can't handle the truth, right?

Of course, of course…

The most distracting bits for idiocy for me weren't CGI Walker, but:

I interpreted the movie as being told pretty explicitly in alignment with Hushpuppy's point of view, and emphasizing the fact that she's thoroughly at the mercy of powerful, erratic forces that she has little control over, including nature, her father, the Bathtub community, and the rescue workers. That exceptionally…

It's one of my only sources of joy in this saddle world.

Also, "terminal" doesn't necessarily have an immediate time frame. I know someone who went to a summer camp for terminally ill kids when she was young. She's now in her late 20s. What she's got will eventually kill her…sometime.

I'm really happy to see World's End on this list.

And its not a claim I made - it is all those things, and Boyhood is innovative and many interesting things too. Neither film is a bad choice for best film of the half/decade, either.

Bah! Carlouse more like.

I think Skyfall is an exceptionally well-told story (in terms of its character relationships and cinematography), even if the story itself is so concerned at a meta-level with whether the concept of "Bond" is out of date that it fails to notice how much its casually pilfering from The Dark Knight and two-decade-old…

I appreciate and embrace The Tree of Life, though understand why others would be annoyed by it.

It did feel a bit too soon to crown Boyhood, but then, what else is it going to be? Like the A.V. Club's choice of Eternal Sunshine for the best film of the last decade, it seems sort of….well-there-you-go definitive as a "top movie" choice.

Having recently re-watched Oslo, I'd easily put it in my Top 15 or so. Just so brilliantly focused, sketched, empathetic, conscious of time and the relationship between individual and collective memory.

I was more interested by its reception than its content: from the toast of Cannes to being rejected by its creators to being casually mocked by hipster lesbians on Youtube to now, apparently, being the A.V. Club consensus choice for 64th best film of the half-decade.

On my own personal list (which exists in my head and on social media and matters to….no one), I put The Raid 2 at #3 for the year. So yes, yes.