November 2017: I have seen 49 movies this month.
In a sort of half-hearted New Years resolution, I thought it might be a good idea to watch more movies. This is month 6. You can follow my regular movie diary onLetterboxd. Last month’s upkeep can be found here: January 2017, February 2017, March 2017, April 2017 , May 2017. June 2017, July 2017, August 2017, September 2017, October 2017.
It is Saturday December 2nd, and I’m watching videos of YouTuber’s trying on terrible, cheap clothing from the Wish app. Normally I try to upload these videos right at the end of the month, but I was up incredibly late for the past two nights submitting alternative controls pieces to alt.ctrl.GDC. First is a 100 Button version of my #1000ButtonProject, which is now called Centenntable and the other is a 1 Button fighter I’m working on with a friend called One Punch Polychrome.
This month I hit 500 movies, which caused me to have a temporary lull while I considered how many movies that actually is. I wrote about it a bit on Unwinnable, which you can read here.
Numbers
This month I saw 49 movies, coming to a total of 4690 minutes of film. This averages out to about 95 minutes per film. The longest movie I saw this month was The Dark Knight Rises, which clocked in at 165 minutes. The shortest film was the animated short Born in a Void, which came in at just 8 minutes.
I have seen 8 movies in theaters, including Coco, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, Tragedy Girls, Justice League, Lady Bird, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Thor: Ragnarok, GeoStorm, and Blade Runner 2049. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure was the animated short before Coco. All of these movies were paid for using MoviePass, which continues to be a money saving endeavor.
In total, this puts me at 585 with 542 on Letterboxd. This puts me at 53,765 total minutes for the year, coming out to an average of 92 minutes per film.
Highlights
As we near the end of the year, my work at Unwinnable requires me to start making top 10 lists for the year. In order to give the best answer that isn’t just “oh look at these super hero movies this year that didn’t suck” I thought it best to try and see some of the stand out movies of the year that just didn’t come locally, as well as some that were playing at the local Kentucky Theater. These included movies like The Villainess, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Blade of the Immortal and Lady Bird. Of the movies of the year that resonated with me, I would say the best was probably Lady Bird.
I wrote more about the why’s in a piece for Unwinnable, but the TL;DR is that the movie manages to tell a very good story about being young and a bit narcissistic in the early 2000’s, a story that for me rings incredibly true. It isn’t for everyone, but it currently rests near the top of my Best of 2017 list.
The worst movie is definitely Patient Seventeen, a documentary on the subject of people who believe that they have implants inside of their body from aliens. While it presents itself as a “what if?” and “let’s investigate this” kind of documentary, it’s mostly wishy washy pseudo science bullshit presented in lieu of actual investigation and without any concept of inherent biases. It’s junk. I was angry having spent money renting it, on suggestion of a Motherboard article.
Trends
There were a few trends this month, namely vampires. I watched Dracula Untold, Blade Trinity, Dracula, and Tale of the Vampire across the month. Not sure why I went into a vampire trend, and for the most part the movies were a bit trash (exception to Oldman’s weirdly fever-dreamish take on the genre).
Another trend was Wakaliwood films. Made in Uganda, they’re these beautiful oddities, all enthusiasm without the finances to maybe make it work 100%. All of the movies we watched this month featured a VJ who basically narrated the entire experience, in much the same way as a Let’s Player playing a horror game. In specific, we watched Who Killed Captain Alex, Attack on Nyege Nyege Island, and a VJ narrated version of the Buster Keaton short film Cops. Full of over the top violence, stilted special effects and martial arts, the movies were fantastic and highly recommended. I’m going to try and track down more of them.
I hit 500 total films this year, which a lot of people told me was an incredibly high goal. I don’t feel accomplished. It’s a bit like collecting troll dolls or something. The only people who care would be people who are doing the same thing.
If you’re interested in seeing more, you can follow me on Letterboxd and on Twitter.
