The year in movies

I never actively tired before, but I knew I could see 300 movies in a year. Last year I made a list on my phone of every film I saw in 2021, and saw more than 250 without really trying, so 300 seemed like an easy goal.

Of course it fucking was. The youngest would wake up early, and then go to sleep on me, so what esle was I going to do? I wasn't going to waste my time on ten hours of medicore TV, when I could get four or five movies in the same time.

So I'm going to watch my 316th film to round out the year tomorrow and I'm finishing with Annette, because that seems like a good end-of-the-year film. I started the year with The Green Knight. The best was probably Everything Everywhere, even with the obvious moronic backlash that it's now going through, although I also had the absolute best time in the theatre at Top Gun: Maverick, Glass Onion and the new Avatar.

(Not included in this 300 are the movies I undoubtedly saw the most this year - Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit; Shaun the Sheep The Movie and Shaun The Sheep 2: Farmageddon. I see parts of these films a few dozen times a week, and they're the #1 choice for 'dad has to make the bloody dinner, so please just sit quietly for five minutes' moments. They're still great films.)

But of the films I did see this year:

* 28.4 percent were movies I had seen before, up from 26 percent last year, probably because I went through big 'I should watch all the Mission Impossibles/Indiana Jones/Butterfly Effect films' phases.

* 13.2 percent were prequels, sequels or remakes - up from nine percent last year

* 8.4 percent were made before I was born in 1975, down from 13 percent in 2021

* A paltry 6.1 percent were films that were not in English, only slightly better than last year's 4 percent.

* 7.1 percent were full length feature documentaries, up from 6 percent last year, and probably because I went on a documentary binge late in the year

* 1.6 percent were New Zealand films. What the fuck, man. It was only 3 percent last year and it's no better now.

* 0 percent were Shakespeare adaptions. No bard this year.

* 5.8 percent were in the cinema, doubled from 2 percent. It's coming back, baby!

So the main thing I take from all this is that I'm becoming more of a basic bitch in my film tastes. I think the drive to watch 300 films was an issue, because I ended up watching any old shit, and there were too many d-grade actioners and dull dramas that I missed in the 1980s. I'm not going to have a goal like this next year. (Besides, there's a tonne of TV I'd like to catch up on. I also got more burning itches for Blake's 7 and Twin Peaks rewatches, but that's a persistent issue.)

I'm still going to watch all the movies I can, I just got to watch better films.