What can you learn from a year of watching movies? Will they make you a better person, more empathetic, less harsh in your judgment, more discerning? Certainly, it is an education of sorts; films aren't simply about film, they're about subjects, people and stories. But after watching a movie about it, do you know and understand what it means to grow up in a Brazilian slum or witness the destruction of 500 year-old Buddha, or do you merely think you do? Art is not life, after all. I don't mean these questions in a just theoretical sense.

Or if some day, you look back over your life, and think, "I spent approximately 30 of those years sitting in a movie theatre," might you decide it would have been better to be a physical creature instead of, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, a set of ragged eyes scuttling across a movie screen. D.H. Lawrence wrote, "We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living incarnate cosmos." Instead, we're sitting in a movie theatre thinking, "What a piece of crap!"

Do movies really matter; are they all ephemera, or even worse, just sales?

This time of year, it is traditional to make a top ten list. Looking back over the past year of films, it is surprising how many of them have disappeared out of my head, while others refuse to leave. I'm still trying to shake The Exorcist: The Beginning out of my sticky brain. The ones that remain do so because they are either stunningly good or bad. On the good side are: Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story; Ballet Russes; As Hours Go By; Kung Fu Hustle; It's All Gone Pete Tong; The History of Violence. On the bad side are: The Chronicles of Narnia; Bridget Jones; and more Canadian films than I care to recall. And on the even worse side, are the ones that I don't remember at all. Any movie with Drew Barrymore just seems to vanish completely.

Whether this "here today, gone later today," is a form of planned obsolescence, or simply more like what Gertrude Stein meant when she said, "There is no there there," such movies leave me feeling oddly empty. So much time, energy and enough money to save several developing nations, poured into something that leaves no trace, except a dusty DVD sitting on a shelf.

Loathing messiness

Film critic A.O. Scott recently speculated the reason there are so few thrilling films these days, is that there are fewer howlers. Instead, thin, bland, utterly forgettable movies get made by the bushel, each one starring a different version of Jennifer Aniston. Writes Mr. Scott, "And Hollywood, once notorious for excess, has come to loathe messiness. What the French call folies de grandeur -- works of megalomaniacal madness, overlong, over budget, over the top -- are in danger of extinction... As the grand follies are driven to extinction, so too are the cheesy, campy, guilty pleasures that used to bubble up with some regularity out of the B-picture ooze of cut-rate genre entertainment. Those cherished bad movies -- full of jerry-built effects, abominable acting, ludicrous story lines -- once flickered with zesty crudity in drive-ins and grind houses across the land."

In light of this, I have come to feel an odd affection for films that, at least, gave me a few shell-shocked moments of surprise, such as Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark with the Pia Zadora in-waiting that is Tara Reid. Or Ben Kingsley's meringue pompadour in A Sound of Thunder. That stuff was so fluffy and white, it ought to have been sitting on a bowl of jello instead of someone's head. These films, at least, had the good grace to provide a couple of inadvertent guffaws.

But there were also some soul killing moments, when I felt my life ebbing away in 90-minute increments. Call it the dark sight of the soul up there on screen. The Hollywood hype engine spins its wheels, in order to generate a level of Christmas-grade excitement every week. It's like unwrapping the biggest, gaudiest-looking present to find yet another pair of tube socks. After the pairs number in the hundreds, you might start to get a little cranky. Hence the cliché that critics hate everything. No, they don't, they just hate tube socks.

Good badness

Badness is goodness occasionally, seems to be Scott's point, and he is on to something. One cannot subsist on a diet of tofu and carrot juice alone; although you may technically be able to survive, you'll be thoroughly unpleasant to be around. A little corndog, or snack cake is needed every now and then, thus something like Joss Whedon's Serenity hit the spot perfectly, not too stupid, just smart and snarky enough to please the soul.

But if you must have something even more challenging, akin to eating wheatgrass and stinging nettles, then this year, as last year, documentaries offered up some difficult-to-swallow subjects. From the evils of Monsanto, to the evils of the Saskatchewan Police, but mostly, the evils of the US government, real life can be hard to take, but it is necessary medicine for a culture whose mainstream media appears to be bought and paid for. Documentaries have come into their own, or perhaps, more correctly, returned to the scrappy days of old, when films like Titicut Follies, and Hearts and Minds, rocked audience's image of the world. In an era when truly adult films are difficult to find, the docs have responded like it was a medical emergency. Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, Solanas' Social Genocide, Albert Nerenberg's Escape to Canada, The Future of Food, not to mention a glut of nonfiction features at the VIFF, the Amnesty International Film Festival, DOXA and Whistler Film Festival.

These films covered stories that might never have come to the silver light of cinema otherwise. It is a credit to the filmmakers that they could train their lenses on some truly horrifying things and not look away. Audiences should feel the same level of courage and outrage. Fight the power, one film at a time!

Big bad world

There is a big world of film out there. Here is a very brief summation -- the French are really French; no one is quite as weird at the Japanese; the English are funnier than everyone else and everyone in the entire world is obsessed with sex. Watching films from every corner of the globe, can give you a new perspective on the world. You end up thinking people are pretty much the same, the world over.

On a genetic level, there is no such thing as race, no matter what we look like on the surface. But if we didn't have culture to offer differentiation, what would we do to entertain ourselves? Part of the glory of foreign films is to see how the rest of the world lives, loves and see how weird they really are. It is also about the opportunity to feel, even a little bit, what it is like to be a Ethiopian orphan growing up in Israel, or a runaway in Cuba, or a disaffected Czech hockey fan. It is often a relief to be taken outside of your own life and concerns, and placed, however briefly, into someone else's. Occasionally it feels good to come back to your own life, two hours later. At least you don't live in Siberia.

Arctic Anarchic

Oh Canada, you so C.R.A.Z.Y. It is important to go out to movies, and be with the great unwashed occasionally, and seeing C.R.A.Z.Y at the soon-to-be-departed Vogue theatre, on one of the last night's of the VIFF was to experience the hive mind at work. Now I know how the Borg must feel, let me tell you, it feels GOOD! So much of movie going is context, whom we are with, what is happening around us. Million Dollar Baby probably wouldn't have affected me as much, if I hadn't watched it with my six-foot tall brother, who cried his heart out.

Much of movie going is also about the movie theatres, and that is a sad story. This year in Vancouver, the Capitol 6 closed, the Vogue will follow, and the Ridge will soon turn from a repertory theatre into a first run member of the Leonard Schein empire. At the recent tribute to producer Robert Lantos at the Whistler Film Festival, Lantos mused on the whole issue of a downturn in the film industry, whether it was the result of the overall shoddiness of films, or the fact that 90% of theatres are now cineplexes located in malls.

The mall is the domain of the under 25 set, a group that marketers lust after. Films are advertised, and arguably made, for this demographic, but what Lantos observed is that this one group is bombarded with entertainment choices from video games to DVDs, and they are also much more likely to get these choices for free. At another discussion, a distributor made the old joke, "We know 50% of our advertising budget is going to waste, we just don't know which half." Cue the slightly bitter laughter. The industry is right in the middle of an enormous change. Where it goes, from here to eternity, is anyone's guess.

The hero of Tristam Shandy says, "Art is no match for life." The best it can do is throw back a pale shadow. But you have to have some awed respect for the sheer effort of making a movie. Here's an analogy. Imagine that one day you decide it's time to have a baby. First, you must struggle to bring the little bugger into actual existence. After battling infertility of the brain, you finally conceive. Oh, happy day! Now, you must convince other people to give you money, lots of it, in order to give your baby a proper life. You cajole, you wheedle and whine, every day growing bigger and fatter with your child. Next, comes the labour pains, which can take years. You can have as many drugs as you like, but it probably won't help, the birth will still tear you apart. It can be a grinding, bloody process, not unlike pushing a bowling ball through a drinking straw, Finally, your giant infant emerges, ripping you stem to stern, as it springs into being. Think of the skull of Athena. After this, you set about introducing your new child to the world, only to have someone come along, and pronounce, "Your baby is ugly and stupid." And not only is this person not content to keep this opinion to themselves, it is their business to tell as many people as possible every possible nuance of your baby's ugliness and stupidity. How would you feel about such a person?

Critic, critique thyself.

Artists often haven't a clue what they're doing; it's the job of the critic to tell them. But if you're a critic, how do you know if you're heading in the right direction? That's why The Tyee is a useful experiment, if sometimes a painful one. People will tell you, bluntly, unmistakably, whether you're trying hard enough or not. The most you can do is keep on keeping on, trying a bit harder each time. (Oh, for the infamous tough dame-ness of Pauline "Tough shit, Bill" Kael.) David Mamet wrote recently in Harper's magazine, "Critics exist, thus, as a secondary form of dramatic entertainment, gauging the public mood, licensed both to laud the worthless and to disparage the work of their betters for the amusement of the audience. So much for critics." He has a point, but he is also oversimplifying matters. Most of the critics I know are passionate, caring, and even occasionally truly intelligent and knowledgeable, otherwise they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. Canada has produced some truly fine film analysis, just pick up Cinema Scope Magazine to see hard core criticism in action.

Since movies are arguably the dominant form of our culture, everyone has an opinion about them. But whether this is a critical opinion is a different matter. Movies can be good places to set social and cultural debates, but all too often, audiences tend to be overwhelmed by all the bright pretty flashing lights. Movies embody social and cultural ideas, debates and agendas and ferreting these out requires serious analysis.

And of course, movies are more than simply vehicles for a current set of social ideas. They are wonderfully entertaining and occasionally, they achieve the status of art. And art, when it is great, be it documentary, animation, or French film, frees you from the physical, lets you run wildly through the universe, fighting evil, righting wrongs, exploring infinite possibilities. Everyone can relate because everyone has a movie inside their head, running all the time, starring themselves, with eyes for lenses, and a head for film stock; each of us is the author, director, editor, actor; it is our life, just like a movie.

Dorothy Woodend reviews films for The Tyee every Friday. Lucky for us, she'll be back here in the New Year.