I only watch one movie per day. How in the world do you ever get anything done besides film viewing? Don’t get me wrong, I love cinema as much as the next person, and am amazed at how many you’ve watched in a month. It’s just that I can see how you can watch that many without doing anything that needs to be done.
Landen-Step Up 2? How did that get in there.
I probably watched about 40 movies in January but I don’t work in the winter so I have a lot of free time. In the summer I probably watch closer to 15 a month. Considering I read about 3 books a week also.
i tend to agree with christopher. i try to watch 3 or 4 films per week because i find that when i go over this, i don’t have the time to fully digest, let alone thoroughly think about what i am seeing. i too keep a film journal and i notice that when my watching patterns become more obsessive, and i begin to creep into the 20’s for a month, that i tend to lose track of each individual film as its own special piece of art that needs its own special attention and it feels like i am just cataloging them for the mere fact that i can say that i have seen them, as opposed to the attempt to wring the most substance from all my viewings.
but then again, i could probably spend a month easy breaking down both viridiana and the virgin spring(the last two on your list) as they are both complex works, and i find that watching titles such as them right on top of each other is almost a tad untenable for the realm of concise analysis and understanding.
I agree with Christopher, that does seem like a lot to fit into one month but I’ll leave it to Landen to reply rather than speculate myself.
At the beginning of the year, I decided that I would attempt to watch every feature film in the Criterion Collection in chronological order of its release. I began with Nanook of the North and I’ve worked my way up so far to Le Million. It’s an interesting way to approach the collection, giving me a visceral sense of cinematic history as I go (though of course many key influential films will be missed along the way.) I’m blogging about it too @ criterionreflections.blogspot.com
So here’s what I’ve watched so far, in detail:
Nanook of the North
Haxan
Body and Soul
King of Kings
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Pandora’s Box
Under the Roofs of Paris
The Blood of a Poet
Borderline
The Golf Specialist (and also The Pool Sharks, released in 1915, after I made a late decision to include selected short films)
The Threepenny Opera (both German and French versions)
Le Million
I’ve also gone to the theater and seen a few more:
Gran Torino
Revolutionary Road
The Never Ending Story
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
and watched a few other DVDs:
Salesman
My Man Godfrey
I always tell myself to keep a log of what I read/watch for the month but I always seem to forget, maybe this will inspire me to.
I try and not watch too much of the same thing because it begins to lose its touch and becomes somewhat mundane,I think watching alot of films is fine as long as there’s plenty of variety.
I only catch 2 or 3 films a week but it’s great you’re able to watch so many. I’m quite curious as to how many films hardcore cinephiles like those on this site actually go through in a month.
I also keep track and will compile a top 10 that were worth watching/recommending. January would be (+2):
Park Row
The Steel Helmet
Dark Waters
The Third Part of the Night
Accident
Let the Right One In
Frozen River
Daughters of Darkness
Seventeen
Gushing Prayer
The Crimson Kimono
Baxter, Vera Baxter
Well just over my Winter Break (2 weeks) I watched 41 movies. Of course when I’m not on break I’m busier and have to keep it to like 10 a week. I kept track from break and here is the list:
-A History of Violence
-Andrei Rublev
-All That Heaven Allows
-Around the World in 80 Days
-L’avventura
-The Bad Sleep Well
-Belle de jour
-Children of Paradise
-The Conformist
-The Conversation
-Doubt
-Dracula
-The Elephant Man
-Going My Way
-Grand Illusion
-The Greatest Show on Earth
-The Hidden Fortress
-Hiroshima mon amour
-Jules and Jim
-King Kong
-The Lady from Shanghai
-The Last Emperor
-The Leopard
-The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
-Marley and Me
-Mutiny on the Bounty
-Nashville
-Network
-Notorious
-The Passion of Joan of Arc
-Persona
-Revolutionary Road
-Shadows
-Sherlock Jr.
-Simon of the Desert
-Spellbound
-La Strada
-To Be or Not To Be
-Tropic Thunder
-The Visitor
-Wall E
Orgiastic cinephiles cripple their grasp on life.
Spectating gluttonously at the long table of cinema, neo-realism is obliterated by hollywood sentimentalities chokingly swallowed along with half-chewed spaghetti westerns before a quaff of french new wave brings forth an upheaval of undigested response.
These lists of films consumed reflect not refinements but spillage.
The auteurs are not opiates. Lifetimes of engagement created these pearls of cinema. If these films haven’t touched and changed you, zealotry is your calling card.
I suppose the reasons for the long list is due to a number of factors; A) I work from home so my collection beckons to me while I should be doing work, not to mention when I get sick of listening to music I throw on a film’s commentary instead, B) I usually fall asleep to a movie every night, obviously ones that don’t need to be fully absorbed (hence Step Up 2: The Streets, as well as others,) C) I’ve run into a bit of a financial wall, at least until tax season is over, so instead of going out and spending money I stay in and watch movies.
I think it’s definitely worth it to say that not every month do I watch so many. January has kept me cooped up and so I tend to watch a lot of films. Despite the girth of the list, I do make it a special occasion when I watch a film like Viridiana or The Virgin Spring so that I can fully absorb it and think about it. The Simpson’s Movie? That’s a coffee and donuts flick.
I’m happy to see that people have responded to this thread so quickly. I posted it when I went to sleep and I’m just waking up to the responses right now! I hope I answered a lot of the questions, so forgive me if I don’t respond directly to you, it’s not an intentional snub. Let’see if I can catch up:
@Dave: Chronological is my favorite sort of organization. Good luck with your viewings! Pandora’s Box is a favorite of mine
@Mr. King: Steel Helmet kicked my ass. So good, and completely shocking. Frozen River is at the top of my Netflix Queue
@Drew: I’m actually envious of your list. Wanna trade? I know you want to say you’ve watched D-Wars!
@Cineaste: I’m not going to lie, there is some truth to what you speak. But I do try to fully absorb films that require more out its audience than eating popcorn. Wages of Fear effected me more than any film I’ve seen in a good long while. But perhaps I am a zealous film watcher.
Here is my list that I started keeping since discovering the auteurs site (so it is more than one month’s worth). I keep track of a large number of films that I am hoping to view, many based on suggestions on this site. If possible, I get them from our local library. I love, too, to keep track of what I have seen. I am watching much more since joining this site, just so I can possibly begin to keep up with the rest of you “orgiastic cinephiles” (thanks Cineaste). Sometimes I do a blitz on a director, hence a couple of Antonioni films. I made several great discoveries in the process of viewing (I had only seen a couple of films here before – most are new to me), with a few duds and some so-so. Thanks for the thread Landen – I am a film junkie, too!
Berlin Alexanderplatz – Fassbinder
Mouchette – R. Bresson
Taste of Cherry – Kiarostami
Ulysses’ Gaze – Angelopoulos
The New World – Terrence Malick
Cleo from 5 to 7 – A. Varda
Leolo – C. Lauzon
Aguirre: Wrath of God – Herzog
Z – Costa-Gavras
Ikiru – Kurosawa
Umberto D. – de Sica
Yi-Yi – E. Yang
Face of Another – Teshigahara
Pather Panchali – S. Ray
Late Spring – Ozu
Fitzcarraldo – Herzog
Vagabond – A. Varda
Madadayo –Kurosawa
Weeping Meadow – Angelopoulos
Red Beard – Kurosawa
L`Eclisse – Antonioni
Wind Will Carry Us – Kiarostami
2046 – Wong Kar-Wai
The Complete Mr. Arkadin – Welles
The World – Jia Zhang-ke
4 – Khrzanovsky (2004)
Red Desert – Antonioni
L’Avventura – Antonioni
Irreversible – Noe
3 Iron – Kim Ki-duc
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Gondry
After Life – Hirokazu
Rififi – Dassin
Bottle Rocket – Wes Anderson
The Fall – Tersem
Bad Timing – Roeg
Pierrot le Fou – Godard
Sideways – Payne
The Fire Within – L. Malle
Bob, it’s funny you saying you’re finding yourself watching more since discovering this site, it’s been the opposite for me, before the auteurs I would dedicate time to sit and watch whereas now I’m sidetracked by the discussions of many films I’m yet to even see.
Seven Samurai
L’Avventura
Walkabout
Diabolique
And God Created Woman
Kwaidan
Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse
Bicycle Thieves
Army of Shadows
The Spy who came from the cold
Europa
Alexander Revisited
Once Upon A Time in The West
Elisabeth
Valkyrie
No Country for Old Man
Brotherhood of the Wolf
The Jacket
The Big Sleep
Be kind Rewind
The Great Escape
Flight of the Phoenix
Mummy Trilogy
American Gangster
The Good German
Midnight Express
Taxi Driver
Apocalypse Now
The Assassination of Jesse James
Wall-E
The Steel Helmet
I shot Jesse James
The Dark Knight
In January I watched…
- Dracula (1931)
- To Have and Have Not
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
- The Dark Knight
- Run Silent, Run Deep
- From Here To Eternity
- The Godfather
- Ace In the Hole
- Duck Soup
- The Birds
- Straw Dogs
- Rear Window
- The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
- The Ice Storm
- On the Waterfront
- The Mighty
- Bottle Rocket
- The Last Emperor
- Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters
- Amarcord
- Under the Volcano
- High Sierra
- Ran
- The Ox-Bow Incident
- Dead End
- It’s A Wonderful Life
- The Vanishing
- The Battleship Potemkin
- Animal Farm
- White Heat
- Brazil
- Apocalypse Now
And I watched Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters and The Ice Storm again with commentary.
@Bob: The Fall? Your thoughts on it? Personally it was one of the most visually magnificent films I’ve ever seen, and I’m a sucker for a fairy tale, so I ended up loving it.
I’ve noticed a lot of people watching the original Dracula. Coincidence or am I missing a common thread?
Revolutionary Road
The Wrestler
Rosemary’s Baby
The Reader
Down by Law
Elephant
The Trial
Band of Outsiders
SANS SOLEIL
Fires on the Plain
The Spirit of The Beehive
If….
Naked City
Didn’t see much this much but high school takes up a ton of my time.
@Yves: Drop out :) At least you spent your time watching very worth while films. I need to pop in Fires on the Plain again.
Anyone have any recommendations for films I absolutely should see in February? Perhaps with a romantic tone for Valentines or something for Black History month. Black Orpheus maybe…
Damn, now I want to work at home. Got any jobs you could recommend Laden?
I certainly wouldn’t recommend doing web design for shitty horror films. That’s what I do and I’m quite sick of it. Maybe workman’s comp is better suited? Get paid to recover at home.
LANDEN- I really hope you watched those in order. Bee Movie followed by Virgin Spring, talk about a double bill.
@Josh: I certainly did. But not in the same day. I think we should work on getting a Bee Movie/Virgin Spring double bill going at revival houses. A Hollywood children tale and rape go together like fine cheese and wine.
Here, here cineaste. For whatever it was that you said.
Since I saw this post I kept track in February. It was a pretty good month movie watching wise. I saw a ton of films I had wanted to see for a long time. So here’s my list:
2001: A Space Odyssey* My Metier
-Aguirre: The Wrath of God
-Amarcord
-American Psycho
-Apocalypse Now*
-Before Sunrise
-Capote
-Carl Th. Dreyer
-Cries and Whispers
-The Crowd
-The Dark Knight*
-The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
-Don Quixote
-Do the Right Thing
-Frost/ Nixon
-Hannah and Her Sisters
-Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
-High Noon
-His Girl Friday
-I Confess
-Ikiru
-Inland Empire
-Letter from an Unknown Woman
-Little Miss Sunshine*
-My Voyage to Italy
-Othello
-Pan’s Labyrinth
-Persona*
-π
-Punch-Drunk Love
-Requiem for a Dream
-The Searchers*
-The Tales of Hoffman
-The Thin Red Line
-Tucker: The Man and His Dreams
-Ugetsu
-Vampyr
-Wings
-The Wrestler
*=These were all rewatches.
I like this opportunity to show off, so I’m going to cut and past my log into here (which includes dates). January was a good month for me, I had time off from school for winter break plus I took a class on Bergman. Without further ado:
Save the Green Planet 1/2/09
Blood Wedding 1/3/09
Spider Baby 1/4/09
Army of Shadows 1/4/09
Pandora’s Box 1/5/09
Paranoid Park 1/5/09
Through A Glass Darkly 1/6/09
Rolling Thunder 1/7/09
Winter Light 1/7/09
Motel Hell 1/8/09
The Silence 1/8/09
Death Wish II 1/9/09
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin 1/9/09
Head On 1.9.09
Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS 1.10.09
Sword of the Beast 1/11/09
Un Chien Andalou 1/12/09
Death Wish 3 1/13/09
The Girl Next Door (1999) 1/14/09
Blow-Up 1/15/09
Vampyres (2007) 1/16/09
Hardcore 1/16/09
Bad Ronald 1/16/09
Rocktober Blood 1/17/09
Bram Stoker’s Dracula 1/17/09
Rape Squad 1/17/09
The Norliss Tapes 1/18/09
Slumdog Millionaire 1/18/09
Atonement 1/19/09
King of New York 1/19/09
La Strada 1/19/09
The Terror of Tiny Town 1/20/09
Juliet of the Spirits 1/20/09
Deep Crimson 1/21/09
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown 1/21/09
Death Wish V: The Face of Death 1/22/09
Crimes and Misdemeanors 1/22/09
Virgin Spring 1/23/09
Last House on the Left 1/23/09
Blood Freak 1/31/09
Gran Torino 1/31/09
i try to watch a movie a day or at least 25 per month. doesn’t stop me from doing other stuff but i see some people’s points too. i also keep a log and rate them (out of 5 *s)
decision at sundown (budd boetticher) 1957 ***1/2
grande ecole (robert salis) 2004 *
the third secret (charles crichton) 1964 ***1/2
guess who’s coming to dinner (stanley kramer) 1967 *
la morte accarezza a mezzanote/death walks at midnight (luciano ercoli) 1972 **1/2
pursued (raoul walsh) 1947 ****1/2
exotica (atom egoyan) 1994 **1/2
hated: g.g. allin and the murder junkies (todd phillips) 1994 *
chronik der anna magdalena bach/the chronicle of anna magdalena bach (daniele huillet & jean-marie straub) 1968 *
to sir, with love (james clavell) 1967 ***1/2
the panic in needle park (jerry schatzberg) 1971 ***1/2
buchanan rides alone (budd boetticher) 1958 ****
modern romance (albert brooks)1981 ****1/2
the silent partner (daryl duke) 1978 ****
this sporting life (lindsay anderson) 1963 ****
parpaillon/up and down (luc moullet) 1993 **
ikiru (akira kurosawa) 1952 ****1/2
les aventures de rabbi jacob/the mad adventures of rabbi jacob (gerard oury) 1973 **1/2
brigitte et brigitte (luc moullet) 1966 **1/2
henry fool (hal hartley) 1997 ****
berg-evjind och hans hustru/the outlaw and his wife (victor sjorstrom) 1918 ***1/2
darling (john schlesinger) 1965 ***1/2
the informer (john ford) 1935 ****1/2
les bonnes femmes (claude chabrol) 1960 ****
streets of fire (walter hill) 1984 **1/2
Just my top 5 recommendations for the month:
Two Deaths
My Summer of Love
El Norte
Revanche
Sonic Fiction : Synaesthetic Videoes from Austria
This thread is actually an intervention…….hehe.
I happened to keep track this month so here is my list for the month of May:
-Arsenic and Old Lace
-Bananas
-The Battle of Algiers
-Before Sunrise*
-Boogie Nights*
-Bram Stocker’s Dracula
-Catch Me If You Can*
-Dancer in the Dark
-Dry Summer
-Eyes Wide Shut*
-Far from Heaven
-The Housemaid
-The Lady Eve
-Melinda and Melinda
-One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
-Pickpocket
-Sansho the Bailiff
-Saraband
-sex, lies, and videotape
-Swing Time
-Up
-Wild Strawberries*
*=rewatches
I was really busy this month so I am shocked I was able to watch this many films.
It Happened One Night
Food
Up
The Cranes Are Flying
Charlie WIlson’s War
The Big Heat
Secretary
The Lady From Shanghai
Withnail & I
Night of The Living Dead
Synecdoche, New York
Persepolis
The Squid and The Whale
Swimming Pool
Harlan County, USA
Fat Girl
Lord of the Flies
Rebecca
Slacker
Changeling
Do The Right Thing
Slaeman
Dry Summer
Reservoir Dogs
Burden of Dreams
Notorious
Videodrome
American History X
Sunshine Cleaning
One Day In September
Rosemary’s Baby
28 Days Later
American Psycho
Sid & Nancy
Being John Malkovich
General Idi Amin Dada
Fargo
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
Sunset Boulevard
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Time Bandits
Kids
A Mighty Wind
Landen Celano
I’d hate to clog the forums with unneeded topics, but I didn’t see anything quite like this in the 39 pages of them.
As peculiar as it may be, I keep a thorough log of each film I see when I see it. I thought it might be a good discussion starter to post the list of films I watch each month, (and I invite everyone else to do the same) despite how embarrassing they might be. Some of them might be my first time, others might be the twentieth.
Without further ado, here’s the massive list from January ’09:
The Dark Knight
Last Chance Harvey
Wristcutters
Bottle Rocket
2 Days in Paris
Oldboy
Wanted
D-Wars: Dragon Wars
Chungking Express
Grand Hotel
The Nines
Step Up 2: The Streets
I’m Not There
Out of the pAst
Casino Royale (2006)
Life of Brian
Bridge to Terebethia
Man on Wire
Slumdog Millionaire
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Son of Rambow
Tokyo Story
All the President’s Men
The Visitor
The Counterfeiters
Gun Crazy
Ghandi
The Set-Up
Dillinger
Kung Fu Panda
Born to Kill
Crossfire
Wall-E
The Wackness
Confessions of a Superhero
Wages of Fear
Mon Oncle
The Spirit of the Beehive
West Side Story
Laura
Wild Strawberries
The Lost Weekend
Horton Hears a Who
Clash by Night
Branded to Kill
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
The Simpson’s Movie
Bee Movie
The Virgin Spring
Viridiana