Common Sense Movie Reviews - 2011 A Year In Review

Well it's that time of year again when everyone and their dog who has a blog feels the need to trounce out their Top 10 films of 2011.  I've never had the ability to do those very well as ten new films or less is usually all I get around to seeing in any given year (I'm still working on my Top 10 of 2007)!  That's even more so the case this year as I think I can count on one hand how many 2011 films I've actually seen and off the top of my head I think I saw three.  So my lack of time and interest in most of the films released this year saves you all the the trouble of reading another list. So in place of that I figured I'd take a moment to recap some of this site's highlights over the last year, and offer a small preview of what I look forward to publishing in the future.  I don't normally like to clutter the site with commentary and non-review posts so bare with me on this rare occasion as I do so.

If you've been following this site for longer than a year you'll notice my film tastes have drastically shifted.  If you had told me three years ago I'd be more interested in low budget British horror, Italian Thrillers, and a slew of international B-movie actresses I'd never heard of I'd have called you crazy.  While in general the catalog of these film may be mediocre by most standards, I have to say I haven't had so much fun with film as I have exploring these cult genres.  It's as if I'm venturing into a completely unexplored galaxy, it's been a fun ride.  

Note worthy additions and accomplishments:

1.  Cliff Note Reviews - probably my biggest problem in prior years was that constantly posting new and full reviews was taking up extremely too much time, and I always felt the need to do a full review for everything I saw.  Eventually that led to a couple burnouts.  Cliff Note Reviews has enabled me to briefly comment on a film in a few sentences and saved me a great deal of time in not only writing but also formatting and picture selection.

2.  Record breaking visits - since I now only post around 1-2 times a week I've been amazed at the fact my daily and monthly hits have significantly increased.  Seems each month I'm beating the previous months record.  I think a lot of this is probably dependent on the fact what I'm reviewing isn't as widely exposed on the internet as a lot of modern day films so I'm gaining higher hits on Google.

3.  Actor themed series - while the Russell Crowe series ended in 2010, I've only seen a fueled amount of interest in number of views for it this year.  So much so that my Top 10 Russell Crowe list was not only the most viewed post this year but also has become the most viewed post of the combined three and a half years of this site's existence!  I've also seen a growing interest in the Barbara Bouchet series that started this year, which really wasn't a surprise as not much about this lovely actress or her films is very accessible on the web.  But the biggest success of this year was everything Eva Green themed.  My review of Womb quickly became one of the hottest posts on the site and should be breaking the Top 10 All-time viewed reviews shortly.  Also the ill fated Camelot reviews stoked up a lot of appeal, sadly that show ran of steam rather quickly.

Still to come:

In terms of what I have planned for the coming year there's not going to be a whole lot of changes.  I had planned to move the site to Wordpress but after slowing down and not posting as much I've put that idea behind me for now, as Blogger is sufficient for the time being.  The Barbara Bouchet series will resume, I'll continue to review giallos and Hammer films, have mini marathons featuring Marisa Mell, Helga Line and Monica Bellucci as well has future mini marathon's of other cult actresses such as Ursula Andress, Bridgette Bardot and a few others.  As always I'll continue to port old Rotten Tomatoes reviews over to fill in the gaps when I don't have much time to write, they'll be the occasional Cliff Note Review, and every-once in a while a modern film that I felt was good enough to feature.  So hopefully next year the fun will continue, and I appreciate all the people who find a little bit of enjoyment in this site as I enjoy doing it.  As always feel free to comment, just keep it civil!  Cheers to a wonderful 2012 for us all!