2023

Movies

Jul 1, 2023: Halftime Report

I am six months into 2023. I think that now is a good time to look back and see how I am doing towards my movie watching goals for this year.

My first goal for 2023 was to watch 60 movies. So far I have watched 48 movies. I should at least be within striking distance of the century mark if I continue at this pace. I have far exceeded my expectations here. Thirteen (or roughly one-fourth) of the movies I have watched have been movies I have seen before. Most of the films I had seen before (11/13) are ones that I had not watched in over 20 years. 

My second goal for 2023 was to watch at least 3 movies from each decade from the 1930s through the 2020s. I have almost reached that goal already. I have watched at least 3 movie from each decade except for the 2000s, One more movie from that decade and I will have achieved that goal. I won't make any promises but I think getting that up to a minimum of 5 movies per decade is doable by year end.

My third goal for 2023 was to watch at least 6 foreign language films. I have achieved that goal. I have watched three films in French, two in Japanese, and one in Korean. I think I should be able to watch another six by year end. I am going to try and include some films in languages other than the three I just mentioned.

My fourth goal for 2023 was to watch at least 6 animated films. I am close to achieving that goal. I watched one of the animated movies, Funan, twice so the count to date should probably be five. The first time I watched Funan was in the language in which it was originally recorded, French, and the second time I watched it with the English voice track. Two of the films were in French (Funan and Persepolis) and so counted for both categories. None of the animated films were in Japanese. I should really try to watch at least one Japanese animated film in the second half of the year.

My fifth goal for 2023 is to watch at least 6 documentary films. I have achieved that goal and I am not counting the documentaries on Doctor Who DVDs that I watch. I do count feature length documentary films that are included as extras on movie DVDs. I think I should be able to watch another six documentary films in the second half of the year.

My sixth goal for 2023 is to watch at least one movie from each of twelve years that I selected. I have watched films from five of those twelve years. I think I should be able to achieve this goal by year end.

Six of the films I have seen so far this year were part of the American Film Institute's celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Warner Bros. See AFI - Warner Bros Centennial for a list and links to the films that I saw as part of this program.

See my 2022 page for more about my goals for 2023 

Oct 25. 2023

I have less than two and a half months to go in the year. I have achieved some of my movie watching goals that I set for myself but not all of them. Here are some movie watching goals that I would like to reach by year end. 
  • Watch one movie each from 1952 and 1956
  • Watch one foreign film that is in a language other than French, Japanese, Korean, or Chinese because I have already seen movies in those languages
  • Watch enough films such that I have watched at least seven films from each decade from the 1930s to the 2020s; in order to achieve this goal I need to watch 2 more from the 1930s, 1 more from the 1950s, 1 more from the 1970s, 1 more from the 2000s, and 1 more from the 2020s
  • Watch two films from the 1920s, so far I have yet to watch any
  • Watch one more foreign animated movie and one more domestic animated movie
  • Watch two more films that star non-White actors
  • Watch one English language film that is not from the US or the UK
  • Watch one more documentary 

How many movies did I watch in 2023?

As of Dec 16, 2023 according to Letterboxd I have watched 109 films but according to my spreadsheet I have watched 108 films
  • Funan - both times on Netflix; first with the French vocal track and the second time with the English vocal track; I logged it twice both in Letterboxd and in my spreadsheet
  • Alphaville - first time I watched it (this year) was at the AFI and the second time was at home, later that day, on Kanopy; I logged it twice in my spreadsheet but just once on Letterboxd
  • Ruthless - first time I watched it at the AFI and the second time was at home on the Internet Archive; I only logged it once on Letterboxd and in my spreadsheet
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - The first time I saw this movie was in June in the theater and the second time was in November at home on Netflix; it is logged twice on Letterboxd and in my spreadsheet 
  • There were also two concert films that I logged on Letterboxd but did not write about or include in my spreadsheet although they can be found in my list of films above and elsewhere in this blog

Jan 1, 2024

The year 2023 is over and done with. Here are my overall thoughts about what I watched.
  • I watched 115 movies, according to my spreadsheet but 116 movies according to Letterboxd. The difference can be explained by my notes from Dec 16, 2023. Either way, I watched more movies this year than I probably have in any of the past 23 years. I watched twice as many as in 2022.
  • I watched at least 7 movies from every decade from the 1930s to the 2020s, plus 2 movies from the 1920s. Movies from the 1940s accounted for about a quarter (29/115) of the movies I watched. Movies from before my lifetime accounted for about half (54/115) of the movies I watched. Another quarter (31/115) of the movies were from the first 30 years of my life and the last quarter (30/115) were from the past 20 plus years of my life.
  • I divided foreign language films into two groups, foreign language and foreign language animated. I watched 10 foreign language films and 5 foreign language animated films.
    • Foreign language
      • Japanese: Stray Dog (1949), Sanjuro (1962), Lady Snowblood (1973)
      • French: Alphaville (1965), Le Deuxième Souffle (1966), Priceless (2006)
      • Cantonese: Hard Boiled (1992)
      • German: The Blue Angel (1930)
      • Korean: Beasts Clawing at Straws (2020)
      • Swedish: The Seventh Seal (1957)
    • Foreign language animated
      • Japanese: Perfect Blue (1997), Spirited Away (2001), The Boy and the Heron (2023)
      • French: Persepolis (2007), Funan (2018)
  • I watched (in addition to foreign language animated films) 6 animated films that were in English.
    • The Secret of NIMH (1982), Mulan (1998), Toy Story 3 (2010), The Lego Batman Movie (2017), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
  • Roughly thirty percent of the movies I watched were films I had seen before but there were only a handful of those re-watches that I had last seen in the past 10 years. In most cases it had been 20 or more years since I last watched the films that I had seen before.
  • I saw nine documentary films on varying subjects. Seven of them were some way or another related to films or film making.
    • The Memphis Belle: The Story of a Flying Fortress (1944), George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1984), The Spencer Tracy Legacy: A Tribute by Katherine Hepburn (1986), Obsessed with Vertigo (1997), The Last Mogul: The Life and Times of Lew Wasserman (2005), Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist (2010), Life Itself (2014), Wasted Talent (2018), Is That Black Enough for You? (2022)
  • I saw five films that I classify as foreign English-language films, four or them were from the UK and one from Australia.
    • United Kingdom: Brief Encounter (1945), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Croupier (1998), Attack the Block (2011)
    • Australia: Breaker Morant (1980)
  • I saw fourteen films in English and ten in foreign languages that star non-White characters and/or were made by non-White people. I realize that this is a statistic that many people will shrug their shoulders at or look down upon but if I want to make sure that my viewing habits reflect the diversity of the United States of America and the world at large then I think it makes sense to make sure that I watching more than just movies made by White people whether they are from the US or other countries.
    • English: Stormy Weather (1943), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Putney Swope (1969), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Enter the Dragon (1973), I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), Menace II Society (1993), Blade (1998), Mulan (1998), Training Day (2001), Black Dynamite (2009), Attack the Block (2011), Dolemite Is My Name (2019), Is That Black Enough for You? (2022), The Woman King (2022)
    • Foreign languages: Japanese (3), Cantonese (1), Korean (1)
    • Foreign language animated: Japanese (3), French (2)
  • In terms of venue, I saw 34 movies in movie theaters, 26 on DVD, and 55 on one streaming service or another. I saw 33 of the 34 movies which I saw in theaters at the AFI Silver Theater. For the first time since 2020 I did not see any movies at the Majestic. I saw 25 movies on DVDs that I borrowed from the library. A few of them were inter-library loans. I saw more films on Kanopy (16) than I did on any other online service. I also saw movies on Netflix (10), Tubi (10), Amazon (7), and then a few each on Hulu, Pluto TV, the Internet Archive, and YouTube.
Here's the list of movies I watched in 2023 in the order in which they were released. See my Movies by Date Watched page for a list of all the movies I have watched in 2023 in the order in which I watched them.

1920s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s

Television

I started to watch some shows that I had not seen before including
  • Moonlighting (Season 1, Episodes 1-6 of 6)
  • Dexter's Laboratory (Season 1, Episodes 1-9 of 13)
  • The Tick (2016) (Season 1, Episodes 1-10 of 12)
There are three shows that I watched in their entirety.
  • The RKO Story (Episodes 1-6 of 6)
  • Slip (Episodes 1-7 of 7)
  • Watchmen (2019) (Episodes 1-9 of 9)
I continued to watch or returned to watch more of the following shows or seasons of shows
  • Abbott Elementary (Season 1, Episodes 11-13 of 13)
  • Atlanta (Season 4, Episodes 1-10 of 10)
  • Better Call Saul (Season 3, Episode 10 of 10)
  • Better Call Saul (Season 4, Episodes 1-3 of 10)
  • Captain Harlock (1978) (Episodes 25-42 of 42)
  • Chewing Gum (Season 2, Episodes 1-6 of 6)
  • Crash Landing on You (Episodes 2-6 of 16)
  • The Invaders (Season 1, Episodes 16-17 of 17)
  • Invincible (Season 2, Episodes 0-4 of 4)
  • NewsRadio (Season 5, Episodes 10-22 of 22)
  • Orange Is the New Black (Season 6, Episodes 1-13 of 13)
  • The Orville (Season 1, Episodes 6-12 of 12)
  • Outlaw Star (Episodes 23-26 of 26)
  • The Phil Silvers Show (Season 2, Episodes 29-36 of 36)
  • The Phil Silvers Show (Season 3, Episodes 1-16 of 37)
  • Schitt's Creek (Season 2, Episodes 1-13 of 13)
  • Teen Titans (Season 3, Episodes 1-13 of 13)
  • The Tick (2001) (Episodes 6-9 of 9)
  • UFO Robo Grendizer (Season 2, Episodes 23-26 of 26)
  • UFO Robo Grendizer (Season 3, Episodes 1-15 of 22)
  • Un Village Français (Season 3, Episodes 1-12 of 12)
I watched some Doctor Who (1963) this year including stories from five of the first seven Doctors. Here's the list of the stories I watched but for more about my Doctor Who viewing habits, I tend to bounce around and don't watch them strictly in order, see my Doctor Who page.
  • Remembrance of the Daleks
  • Image of the Fendahl
  • Death to the Daleks
  • The Visitation
  • The Sun Makers
  • The Monster of Peladon
  • The Daleks
  • Underworld
  • Planet of the Spiders
I watched some Star Trek: The Next Generation this year, seven episodes total from seasons 3, 4, and 5. I have not seen all of this show and am not planning to try to do so. Here's the list of the episodes I watched. I tend to skip around a bit. For more about all the episodes I have watched in recent years see my Star Trek page.
  • Ensign Ro
  • Unification - Parts 1 and 2
  • Yesterday's Enterprise
  • The Mind's Eye
  • Redemption - Parts 1 and 2
I watched a total of 290 episodes of television in 2023. I haven't listed all of them here. There are some shows that I watched just an episode or two of that I haven't bothered to list but they can be found in the blog. Doctor Who is the show that I watched most consistently with Phil Silvers probably running a close second.

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