One of the most annoying things about being a young critic – or just any young person who likes to talk about movies – is the pressure to pretend like you’ve already seen every great film ever made. Some of that is a purely self-imposed anxiety about sounding knowledgeable enough to justify your opinions, but mostly it’s the fairly explicit comments like “What!? How have you not seen X!?” or “Come back to me when you’ve watched Y, then maybe you’ll know what you’re talking about”.
But no one, not even Edgar Wright or Quentin Tarantino, has seen every great film ever made, even when you leave aside that anywhere between 70% and 90% of films made before 1929 are lost. The last time anyone could conceivably watch ever film every made was the early 1930s, and more great films have probably gone unnoticed or forgotten than will ever be recognised. People have families and friends and interests and jobs and also just can’t physically stare at screens for a long time with no breaks. Even if you could somehow make time to watch a film every day, not including new ones, it would take you years to make a dent in the canon of great American cinema, let alone every other country, let alone alternative, experimental and avant-garde film, let alone all the great movies that were dismissed on release and have yet to be rehabilitated by dorks like us.
You don’t have to pretend to have seen all the “great” or “important” films to think, speak or write about movies. We sure haven’t. You can find out our favourite new releases of the year when we post the Sundae Film Awards 2018 in March, but we’re ending 2017 with a look back on the best films we saw this year that didn’t come out this year.
These films are great, and you should watch them. But it’s not a big deal if you don’t.
Continue reading “The Year in Film(s That Didn’t Come Out This Year)” →
The Sundae 