Another year in movies: Remember you must love

The best film of the year was 28 Years Later. The best time I had in the cinema was at Weapons. Seeing old films on the big screen was often a transcendental experience. I saw all three Evil Dead films at a triple feature at the cinema just down the road and it was fucking awesome.

After returning to the big city and an actual choice of movie theatres, I saw a lot more films at the cinema that in previous years - after doing the maths for this year's movies, 13.84 percent of the films I saw were as bright light in big dark rooms.

I've had more free time in the morning and think I have finally found my tribe - I keep seeing the same middle-aged guys who, for whatever reason, have free time during weekday mornings and go to see the dumbest action shit and weird arthouse nonsense at 10am on a Tuesday. I've also been seeing lots of classic films on the big screen this year: Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me and 28 Days Later still blew my mind.

Despite this, the number of films that were repeat viewings this year was much less than previous years at 13.07 percent, so I'm quite pleased with myself for not just relying on the old classics and trying something new. The amount of prequels, sequels and remakes - 16.9 percent - is also well down on the previous few years since I started taking notes on this sort of thing.

Overall I saw 265 films this year, which is about the same amount as always (I did lose a lot of time early in the year to 30 for 30 documentaries and a Lost re-watch). But the amount of films that were non-English language; made before I was born; or made in the country of my birth were all lamentably less than four percent this year, which I blame entirely on the addictive nature of straight-to streaming action nonsense.

The next year will be more of a television year, because there is a lot I need to catch up on, but I need to do something about those numbers of proper cinema. Those are rookie numbers. I can do better with less.