Film366

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine set out to watch 52 new-to-him movies in one year. Not to be outdone, last year, i made a goal to watch 366 new-to-me films, one for each day of the year (it was a leap year). It was a lofty goal, but on weekends where i didn’t have a lot going on, i figured i could watch a bunch of movies, to cache up for days where i couldn’t.

My parameters were that the movie had to be one that i had never seen before, it had to be of sufficient length that it could be generously considered “feature length” (i settled on around 75 minutes for that), and documentaries would count so long as they met the length requirement. After each film, i wrote down a few paragraphs of review in a Field Notes notebook, gave the movie a rating, and recorded it in my spreadsheet.

For the first couple months, i did really well; i had ended up banking a good 20 or 30 movies ahead. However, sometime around April, i landed a big project at work that frequently kept me late. When May came around i was able to pick up steam again, but after a few weeks, i found i was getting burnt out on watching movies altogether. It was hard to muster the attention span. Sadly, this was when the whole project fell apart. I started slipping behind, going an entire week without watching anything. Not even an episode of a television show. I It’s sad when your goals die.

But, some stats: The first movie of the year was fun spy romp Burn After Reading, on January first. The last recorded movie of the year was the biopic about Mexican rock singer Gloria Trevi, Gloria, which i watched on September 25th. I know i had seen a few more movies after that point (both a Star Wars movie and a Harry Potter film came out that autumn afterall) but by this point i apparently had given up on notating what i had seen.

The 146 recorded films combined totaled 10 days, 19 hours, and 47 minutes. The average movie i watched was made in 2004. The average rating was 3.28 stars out of 5. There were nine movies that i gave 5 stars: The Enemy Below, Diplomacy, Mad Max: Fury Road, Othello, War of the Buttons, Closer to the Moon, The Conversation, Amadeus, and Look Who’s Back. I only had two 1 star movies: Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning and Bad Ass 3: Bad Asses on the Bayou. I would not recommend either of these two films.

So what did i learn? There were a lot of good movies that i had missed growing up. There were a lot of bad movies that i ended up enjoying despite their badness. And there were a lot of really amazing movies made over the years. I regret not seeing it out, but that’s a lot of movies to watch, and i honestly made it further than i thought i would.

The Movies