AFTER 300...
Well, as of December 11th, 2024 I finally fulfilled my goal to watch 300 films this year. When I formulated this idea semi-drunkenly back at the end of January, I didn’t think much of it, it would just be something fun to do. I’m not going to lie, there were several times where this felt like an absolute slog and that I was not going to make it through to the end. But ultimately, I did.
Writing about every movie caused unnecessary anxiety and crunched a ton of my time, more than I would like to admit. However, it was necessary to keep me honest and on top of things. I’m unsure how many people actual read these posts, sometimes it was double digits and sometimes it was zero, and that’s okay. I didn’t expect to go viral or be any type of sensation - if I wanted to, I would have vlogged about every single one and posted it to YouTube.
This was an exercise for me to sit down and finally watch a ton of film, mostly those I hadn’t seen before. However, I didn’t realize that throughout this entire year this would be my sole life line to keeping my head above water. As I’ve talked about multiple times, I have been basically unemployed, hoping that the television and film industry that had its massive bubble burst beginning with last year’s strikes would ultimately be fixed by this point. And while it has been fine for several of my friends, I have been caught on the shit end of the stick. This blog and newsletter has been one constant (and sometimes arduous) routine that has kept me in check and given me something to do. And for that I am very thankful.
By the numbers
As you know, I watched 300 films this year, that’s the biggest number.
238 of those films were ones I had never seen before. My initial goal was to hit 200 and I’m happy I did way more than that. The biggest thing I wanted to do here was expand my film knowledge.
30 of them were films I hadn’t seen in at least ten years, and it’s always good to go back and see if your memory of it still holds true. 32 of those were films I had seen at least once in the last ten years.
The genres of those 300 films broken down look like this:
Drama - 76
Based On A True Story (BOATS) - 14
Comedy - 43
Action - 38
Thriller - 45
Fantasy - 33
Sci-Fi - 16
Horror - 29
Documentary - 6
Horror is, admittedly, a major blind spot, and I feel like I helped myself a bit by taking on this quest. It also helped my squeamishness with the genre by exposing me more to it. Drama, being such a massive and general genre, unsurprisingly eclipsed all of the others.
If we were to look at films by decade it looks like this:
1920s - 1
1930s - 4
1940s - 7
1950s - 10
1960s - 13
1970s - 24
1980s - 47
1990s - 44
2000s - 32
2010s - 30
2020s - 88
As I’ve said before, the idea of watching a lot of older films sounded like eating my vegetables. But some came as major surprises and I am so happy I finally got exposed to them.
Of the 300, 52 of those came out in 2024. That’s over 1/6th of all the films I had seen.
And through every post, I have written over 155,700 total words to talk about all 300 of these films.
What I learned
Personally, I’m pretty happy with the journey I decided upon. I got to explore multiple genres and check off classic films I’d never seen before. Some incredible, some very trying for me. But at the end of the day, it was a great exercise for myself.
To take a look at any of my favorite new films I saw this year, you can get quick links below:
I finally sat down and wrote out my thoughts on my Top 5 All-Time favorite films. This in turn made realize what I actually loved and found interesting in these films while also making me analyze the relation of the quality of film to my own personal attachments with them. It was a great exercise and an amazing reason to relive some of my favorites - not that I really need a reason. They are below:
What I found really fun was that for several of the films that interested me, I got to sit down and write out why they fascinated me. I do generally love talking about great projects and feel as if I don’t have many people I can talk to about them. This blog/newsletter provided a space for that. Sure, this is all generally going into an empty void at the end of the day, but it felt good to put ink to paper and try my best to spell out what they meant to me. It was a way for me to have the conversation I’ve wanted to have, even if no one else was on the other side. And honestly, that is fine at the end of the day. I’m not changing the world of film criticism, or trying to get a book deal (although if this somehow got me a freelance job at some place that would have been cool considering how awful this year was).
Some of my favorite write-ups can be found here.
Overall, watching so many films across so many decades, genres, and languages exposed me to so much. How things can epically fail with abundant resources or how so much can be done with so little. They allowed me to step into different cultures and realize how so many historical afterthoughts in my lifetime were harrowing, terrible events for everyone else. Film, like books, are important cultural stamps that allow us to learn so much about the world around us in such an artistic way, and that is one of the most fascinating things that draws me back in every time.
What I would have done differently
I’ve thought about this a lot, and generally, I’m very happy with the approach I took. As I previously said, I got to write some of my favorite film analysis and criticism that I’ve ever written. By also not beholding myself to just review every film I saw, I allowed myself to explore different topics: some serious and important to me, others not so much.
Sure, at times it was difficult to sit down and think of something not damning or toxic to write about when it was a movie I didn’t like (which is important because the internet is written in ink and I want to get hired again), but I think I got some good work arounds out of it. It forced me to think in new ways when evaluating films.
But, because of the difficulty of coming up with something new to write about every time, I do wish I had some type of format. Several times, I thought a “roses, buds, and thorns” (something good, something bad, and something I learned) evaluation would have been easy and consistent, especially for those films I found truly hard talk about. That would have allowed me to keep track of actual lessons I had learned from watching all of these films, which is partially a reason I watched - to learn. At the end of the day, the creativeness this forced upon me worked so much better.
What now?
I don’t plan on shutting this page down because it has been a nice outlet to write about my film going experience. As I stated earlier, writing one piece per movie I saw was hard and taxing, so I don’t think I’ll do that. But when there is something that truly captures my mind and I want to talk about what I found so astounding about it, I’ll probably have an entry for those both old and new.
I also plan on finishing out this month for a December Breakdown and so I can give a total for the year, which I myself am fascinated by. I have no reason to hit 25 films this month, although it very well might happen since I’m already at 14.
I’ll probably also use this to talk about some general film things too, like another Oscars prediction and I’ll probably do a ranking of all the new films I had seen this year. Stuff like that. All of that is to say, things will be a lot slower from here on out.
After all of this, thank you for joining along for this ride and it is greatly appreciated. It’s has been one of the only things truly keeping me sane this year and I appreciate you checking in from time to time.
Thanks,
Matt