if we had a conversation this year, it probably came up that I'm in my ✨movies era✨. i’ve watched a lot of movies! so obviously i have to write a year in review, which i will not publish until January so that it covers the true full spectrum of what i watched in 2022.
the truth is that my ✨movies era✨ started at the end of 2021. for years, but especially since college, i have been a TV girlie. i consumed unfathomable amounts of tv. but i got bored! i could go on about this, but we are past peak tv in my humble opinion—networks have prioritized quantity over quality, and i was getting sick of falling in love with characters or story only for the show to be unceremoniously cancelled or the good writers leave or etc. if i could watch 5 episodes of an hour long show in a day, why did i have a hard time sitting down for a movie?
so when january came around and i was newly employed but still largely working from home or only going between work and home (covid), i just … fell into the habit of watching at least one movie every day. by the end of january, i’d watched 38 films, many of which i had never seen before.
obviously this was not sustainable. i ended up with two targets: 300 movies in the year, or a stretch goal of an average of 6 movies per week (keep the sabbath holy or whatever, this comes out to 312 movies in a year). along the way i discovered that this was an excellent exercise in personal data collection.
i watched 320 movies in 2022. about 80% were new to me. about 49 ****i saw in theaters, usually at the Angelika. the rest were streaming, typically from HBO (83), criterion (50), or Netflix (40). my top actors were Cate Blanchett (best movie: Tár), Cary Grant (you cannot make me choose), Maggie Smith (Travels with my Aunt), and Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading & the Oceans films will always bring me comfort)—7 movie views each.
a common question i got was: how do you choose what to watch? it was purely vibes. there were so many movies i had heard great things of but never seen, movies i had loved but not watched in 10+ years, mostly things that both were streaming and i had heard something about. sometimes i just listed all the films available on criterion and chose more or less at random. so, some of the movies i watched were shockingly great and some were frustratingly terrible.
the complete list of movies i watched is available on my letterboxd (a service deserving of its own ode entirely). below are some of my favorites, by decade
a trip to the moon (1902) is a good time! the effects are really astounding esp given the time
holiday (1938) is a great lil love triangle, with katherine hepburn at her most fun.
the thin man (1934) myrna loy x william powell is a duo that truly cannot be beat, they’re so watchable
it happened one night (1934) every romance trope you have ever known is in this movie
ok this was a killer decade for movies i watched this year, i will limit to top three:
leave her to heaven (1945) i will NEVER get over how deliciously evil the lead of this film was. pairs well with tár
mr blandings builds his dream house (1948) there are no new jokes, watching the two lil girls in this film roast their father for being an ad man made my day
the lady eve (1941) it turns out that some classic hollywood movies were really sexy??? who knew?? also an iconic revenge plot
to catch a thief (1955) if you need to be reminded that women can be criminals too!!