Since I told you a few posts ago that I watched 46 movies over the course of 2007, I know you've been waiting on pins and needles to find out what they were. Well, it's finally time for me to present to you the movies of 2007.

Forty-six is a new record for me (that is, since I started keeping track at the beginning of 2005). I more than doubled last year's total of 20 movies, and it was a narrow victory over 2005's 42. The reason for the huge one-year increase is easy to explain. Shelly and I joined Blockbuster Total Access in January 2007, which sends two DVDs a month to our house, each of which can be exchanged for a DVD in the store. For the first nine months of the year, we also got a free in-store coupon to get a fifth movie (but then they cut that part of the program without decreasing our price; this month, the price goes up with no additional benefits. I'm a bit miffed at Blockbuster now). But for the first three weeks of the program, we got unlimited access to three movies at a time (a plan that would cost more than what we are willing to pay), and I made it my goal to get the most out of my free access. So I saw 12 movies in January.

Nearly all of these movies came through that Blockbuster program. Only one (Harry Potter 5) did I see in the theater (and that was only because Shelly insisted), a couple (Darby O'Gill and The Prestige) I saw at the same friend's house at parties, and one (The Da Vinci Code) I actually found at the library.* I have no regrets that all but one of the 46 movies I saw were on DVD. Sure, theaters are great, but it's so much more convenient and cheap to wait a couple of months and see them on DVD later. I can't understand people who can't go on with their lives till they've seen the new cool movie the VERY WEEKEND IT COMES OUT.

The only movies I saw in 2007 that I had seen before were Harry Potter 4 and E.T., and the latter had been since the 80s. That's pretty cool, I think.

Here, then, are the movies and the date on which I watched them.

1. Batman Begins (1/5/07). Definitely the best of the Batman movies (at least those which I've seen).

2. The Break-Up (1/8/07). Mean, nasty people yelling at each other. You know a movie is bad when it makes even Jennifer Aniston unlikable. Ew.

3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) (1/9/07). I don't know if I've seen the original Gene Wilder version all the way through, but this Johnny Depp version was magical and whimsical and just downright weird. Just the way it should be.

4. The Producers (2005) (1/10/07). I liked this better than the Broadway show (when I saw it Nathan Lane was there, but an understudy was filling in for Matthew Broderick). It was just as funny, but less crass. Will Ferrell rocks.

5. X-Men: The Last Stand (1/12/07). A lot of metaphysical questions still linger with me about plot holes, but what do you want out of an X-Men movie?

6. King Kong (2005) (1/12/07). One of these days, Andy Serkis is going to win an acting Oscar for a computer-generated character. Mark my words.

7. The Notebook (1/16/07). I actually got snoogered into reading the book this movie is based on a few years ago. Silly drivel, both.

8. Shrek 2 (1/17/07). For some reason, Shelly refuses to have anything to do with Shrek. It doesn't make any sense. So I watched this one alone. Me likey.

9. The Lake House (1/23/07). The more romantic comedies I see, the less I like the genre. This one, however, was actually a little bit intelligent and witty. A little bit.

10. Finding Neverland (1/24/07). A classic case of too-high expectations. I had heard it was an emotional masterpiece, but all I saw was a somewhat entertaining story about a guy who ignores his family. See Walk the Line.

11. The Devil Wears Prada (1/27/07). If they made a movie of Anne Hathaway reading the phone book, I'd probably watch it. But stick her in a movie with a good script and Meryl Streep's tour de force, and you get one of my favorite movies on this list.

12. Nacho Libre (1/29/07). Not as funny as Napoleon Dynamite or School of Rock. Pretty funny, though.

13. Walk the Line (2/5/07). Why did everyone love this movie so much? It's just about a guy who's selfish and mean. Maybe you have to be a fan of Johnny Cash's music. See Finding Neverland.

14. Cars (2/6/07). Not the best work Pixar has ever done, but still better than 95% of the work any other studio, live-action or animated, has ever done. Do these guys take good-movie-making steroids?

15. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2/12/07). Do you think they'll ever use real animals in talking-animals movies again? Why bother, if the computer-generated animals are this good?

16. Bewitched (2/14/07). Is it just me, or does Nicole Kidman look nothing like she did when she first started making movies? Really. Compare her in, say, Far and Away and in Bewitched. She's had so much plastic surgery and hair bleaching she's almost unrecognizable, but it's been so gradual we haven't noticed. I liked the earlier cute redhead version better. Will Ferrell, by the way, rocks.

17. Superman Returns (2/18/07). The thing I noticed most was how no one in the cast other than Kevin Spacey looked like they were having fun. Maybe they should have cast Johnny Depp as Superman. Can you imagine a movie with Johnny Depp as the good guy and Kevin Spacey as the bad guy? Wouldn't that movie have been at least six or seven times better?

18. Must Love Dogs (3/9/07). A formulaic romantic comedy. Yawn. It doesn't even use the dog gimmick very well.

19. Diamonds Are Forever (3/10/07). Shelly had never seen a Bond movie, so I picked one at random from the shelves at Blockbuster. This wasn't the one to pick. I still think Bond movies are generally good, but I'll be hard pressed to get Shelly to watch the next one with me.

20. Darby O’Gill and the Little People (3/17/07). Note the date on which I watched it, at a St. Patty's Day party. Amazing (and I mean amazing) special effects for any time period, let alone for 1959 (and I mean 1959), when it was made. Astounding movie for that reason alone, and the bonus is that Sean Connery sings (and I mean sings)!

21. Stranger Than Fiction (~3/31/07). Did I mention that Will Ferrell rocks? And he doesn't have to be silly to rock. He rocks in a serious mindjerker drama too. But really, the star of the show was the script. Fascinating concept, well-executed. Bravo!

22. The Phantom of the Opera (4/14/07). Maybe you couldn't get me to watch a movie of Emmy Rossum reading the phone book. But if she were singing the phone book, you could.

23. Good Night and Good Luck (4/20/07). Did TV guys really smoke that much back in the day? Really?

24. The Pursuit of Happyness (5/11/07). It's 117 minutes long. At least 110 of those are gut-punchingly depressing. The final seven minutes are happy and uplifting. Sure, I cheered with the rest of you at the end, but did you have to drag me through all that first?

25. Mr. and Mrs. Smith (5/12/07). A classic case of too-low expectations. How could I have known that an Angelina Jolie movie would actually be kind of good? (Seriously, how many good movies has she made? Can you even think of any?)

26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (5/24/07). No, this isn't the sequel to the last movie I watched. Jimmy Stewart is great, and it was fun to see my city as it was many years ago. But I felt cheated by the ending. Come on, Capra. You can do better than that.

27. Serenity (6/21/07). Add my name to the list of people who wishes Firefly were never cancelled from TV, and who had never heard that it even existed until after it was cancelled and this movie was made. A series with this kind of writing and spirit would have been far better than Star Trek.

28. Happy Feet (7/4/07). Yeah, it was cute, the animation was good, the Mexican penguins were funny, and yadda yadda. I just couldn't get over how Mumble never physically became an adult penguin. Did nobody notice that he was still a chick years after his friends matured?

29. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (7/20/07). Part of Shelly's July-long Potterfest. I still liked the third movie the best, but this is a close second (until Order of the Phoenix).

30. The Prestige (7/21/07). Macabre and disturbing, but I have to admit I really liked it. I wouldn't see it again, but I was thinking about it for days afterwards. Haunting.

31. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (8/11/07). The best move The Powers That Be made was casting Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood. I mean, when else has an actor so perfectly matched a character from a book? She totally made the movie for me.

32. Catch and Release (8/15/07). Everything that is wrong with romantic comedies is in this film. This even beats Pride and Prejudice for the award of making a jerk the romantic lead.

33. The Da Vinci Code (8/20/07). How can you not love a movie where the protagonist says the following line with all the urgency he can muster: "I have to get to a library. Fast!"

34. Music and Lyrics (8/25/07). I have a confession to make. I'm sort of a closet Drew Barrymore fan. She plays the same character every time (then again, so does Hugh Grant), and her physical beauty is marred by her goofy-looking-ness, but maybe I just fell in love with her when she played Gertie.

35. Bridge to Terabithia (8/29/07). Okay, so it's a maudlin tearjerker. But it got me. Precisely out of a kid's imagination. Anna-Sophia Robb is awesome.

36. All the President’s Men (9/11/07). Talk talk talk talk. Would it kill you to throw in an explosion, movie? Or even a scene set outdoors?

37. Blades of Glory (9/12/07). Will Ferrell, as has been established, rocks. My roommate held his own well in the presence of greatness, but I'd like to see him do something other than a screwy comedy.

38. Invincible (9/21/07). The best thing about this movie was the fact that it was based on a true story. Can you imagine an NFL team (or any pro sports team) picking some guy off the street today?

39. War of the Worlds (10/2/07). Whatever you may think about Tom Cruise as a person, you've got to admit he's good at what he does for a living. So is Steven Spielberg. I tried really hard to see the irony and beauty in the ending, but it didn't sit well when I first read the story years ago, and it doesn't sit well now.

40. We Are Marshall (10/20/07). What, you mean Bobby Bowden coached at West Virginia? I thought he was created ex nihilo as the Florida State coach.

41. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (10/30/07). Yes. It was definitely Gertie.

42. Spider-Man 3 (11/3/07). I can believe a guy can turn into sand, and I can believe black oobleck can come from outer space and draw out your evil side, sure. But my suspension of disbelief ends when you ask me to accept that a guy will want to kill another guy because he ratted out his dishonest Photoshopping of news photos.

43. The Queen (11/19/07). As if the Bobby Bowden revelation wasn't enough, now you're telling me that they regularly let the Queen just drive off in a Range Rover by herself in the middle of nowhere?

44. Ocean’s Thirteen (12/14/07). I counted. There were exactly three women with speaking parts in this movie. Two of them had only one scene each. Really.

45. Ratatouille (12/15/07). Yes. Yes, the Pixar guys do take good-movie-making steroids. How else do you explain such consistent superb excellence with every movie they make? I mean, who even thinks up these concepts? A rat cooking in a fancy French restaurant? Brilliant!

46. The Bourne Supremacy (12/31/07). As thrilling as the movie was, I was disappointed in two things. First, I thought Jason Bourne was an insensitive prick who didn't care how many people around him died, so long as he stayed alive (witness the car-chase scene, which I admit was one of the coolest car-chase scenes ever). Second, Julia Stiles was not among the dead.

My favorites were Ratatouille, The Devil Wears Prada, Stranger Than Fiction, and Serenity, in that order. My least favorites were The Break-Up, The Notebook, Catch and Release, and Walk the Line, in that order (mostly romantic comedies, I see).

* The reason for so many movies in 2005 was the Cambridge Public Library, which had a constant supply of recent Hollywood movies for one-week, free checkout. It's a wonder video stores can stay in business in Cambridge.