That subject line simply refers to the year that had the most movies that were the best movie I'd watched on the day that I watched them.
Um, I'm not sure if that helped.
So I need to tell you something -- remind you, actually, since I've discussed it before -- about one of my obsessive movie lists that I keep. This list, kept in Microsoft Word, has dates listed from January 1 to December 31, and then a list of movies I saw on each date and in what year I saw them.
Probably better if I show you than tell you. So if we are going for today's date, for example, it looks like this:
January 25 = 8
Big Fan (2010), Oklahoma! (2013), Knights of Badassdom (2015), Cake (2016), Patriots Day (2019), Look Who's Back (2020), Big Time Adolescence (2022), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (2024)
That's actually quite a low number for January in particular, and a low number for any date really. My data of what day I saw something only goes back to 2002 (or 2003 in the case of January 25th, since I started keep track of the dates I watched things in March of 2002), but that means I had to not watch a movie on January 25th in any year from 2003 to 2009. Which is very strange especially by my current standards.
There is, however, an explanation for that. January 25th is usually after my ranking deadline, so I may still be taking a few days off, or may be watching old favorites that I had been denying myself while cramming at the end of the previous year. This document only captures new viewings, not repeat viewings. (I keep track of the dates of repeat viewings as well, but not in this manner.) In fact, of those eight titles listed above, only Big Fan was watched in time to rank it that year.
You may have noticed that one January 25th title is bolded, which is David Wnendt's Look Who's Back, a 2015 film that I didn't see until 2020. It's a comedy about a return of Hitler, the actual Hitler, in modern-day Germany, and it lacerates just as well as it makes us laugh, ultimately finishing on an extremely ominous note. I bet watching it today would feel especially relevant, though it felt relevant in 2020, when Trump had already been upon us for nearly four years.
Look Who's Back is my favorite of those eight movies I've seen on January 25th, and that's why it's bolded. The bolding can change as soon as I see a better movie on January 25th, but that has not happened yet. (And probably won't happen tonight as I am taking this weekend to watch old favorites ... just as I earlier said I did on this date.)
I've been keeping this list for, I don't know, ten years? Longer? Not as long as I've been keeping track of the dates I watched movies. I had to backfill based on that list, which is the sort of project I love.
The point is, in that time it never occurred to me to do what I have now done: see which year has the most movies that were my favorite that I saw on that date.
The subject of this post make a little more sense now?
And I'll tell you I found the results of this little exercise very interesting.
But it's not "just" an exercise. In other words, it's not a project I'm doing just to see myself project. Or worse, just to make you see me project.
What it's actually doing, in a way I find compelling, is helping me identify the period of my life over the last 20+ years where I was watching the most movies that increased my love of the cinema. And that might help me answer the question of why that period was so fruitful.
Now I should say, there is obviously quite a bit of luck involved with this. Some dates have a fairly pedestrian movie as the best movie from that date, just because I happen to have only seen other pedestrian movies on that date. And then there are the days where I have to choose the best from among three five-star movies. It's just how it goes. Still, I think that luck should even out over 366 days.
So what I will do here is list the years in decreasing order of which days had the most, and then just for fun, I'll go into detail about the titles that allowed the top ranked year to win. (I won't, however, include the other movies it beat out to win that title. Too tedious.) And then I'll close with some thoughts about what it all means.
So here we go (newer years listed first in ties):
2014 - 23
2017 - 22
2013 - 22
2009 - 21
2018 - 20
2016 - 20
2019 - 19
2020 - 17
2011 - 17
2010 - 17
2023 - 16
2022 - 16
2012 - 15
2021 - 14
2008 - 14
2024 - 13
2005 - 10
2004 - 10
2003 - 10
2006 - 8
2002 - 8
2025 - 3
Yes, I've already seen enough good movies in three-plus weeks of 2025 to put it solidly on the board.
So 2014 wins. More on why that might be in a minute. But first, let's look how 2014 got there. Here are the list of dates where I saw my favorite movie on that date in 2014, and that movie:
January 29th: The Hunt (2012, Thomas Vinterberg)
March 1st: All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)
April 8th: The Lego Movie (2014, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller)
April 17th: Mr. Nobody (2009, Jaco Van Dormael)
May 6th: Breaker Morant (1980, Bruce Beresford)
June 14th: TiMer (2009, Jac Schaeffer)
June 23rd: Edge of Tomorrow (2014, Doug Liman)
July 1st: Enemy (2014, Denis Villeneuve)
July 3rd: The Orphanage (2007, J.A. Bayona)
July 7th: Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer)
July 15th: Cheap Thrills (2013, E.L. Katz)
August 16th: The Skeleton Twins (2014, Craig Johnson)
August 27th: Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002, Phillip Noyce)
September 7th: Boyhood (2014, Richard Linklater)
September 17th: Unhung Hero (2013, Brian Spitz)
September 27th: Joe (2013, David Gordon Green)
October 18th: Gone Girl (2014, David Fincher)
October 26th: Like Father, Like Son (2013, Hirokazu Kore-eda)
October 27th: Whiplash (2014, Damien Chazelle)
November 8th: Life Itself (2014, Steve James)
November 17th: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
November 30th: What We Do in the Shadows (2014, Taika Waititi)
December 23rd: The Babadook (2014, Jennifer Kent)
Pretty solid year.
Note: A lot of those movies listed with 2013 release years were actually ranked in 2014 by me, because the IMDB release year in many cases indicates a festival debut.
So first some general comments on the results, then specifically about 2014.
It's not surprising that the older years on the list were less represented. I've realized that although I don't think I've become a bigger movie fan over the years, at least not recently, my move to Australia did allow me to watch more movies, because I suddenly had way fewer conflicts at night. When I lived in the U.S., I spent many nights watching sports, as well as socializing with friends. In Australia, American sports are on during the day ... and I have fewer friends. (But also we're all older and would socialize less anyway, even if I were still living in Los Angeles.) Also the easier availability of "free" movies on streaming understandably increases my totals significantly.
As an example of how much things have changed over the period we're looking at here, in the year 2003 -- the first complete year on my list keeping track of my viewings in order -- I saw only 114 new movies. The next year, it was only 105, which remains the lowest total since I started keeping track of this stuff. (I don't include 2002 because it was only a partial year, and understandably did not fare very well in this exercise.)
Those numbers are to be contrasted with the 287 new movies I saw in 2024. It's simple math: the more movies you see, the more chance any individual movie has of being better than other movies you saw on that same date in other years.
Then of course the more years it has been since you've seen something, the more chances there are for you to use recency bias to get all hot and bothered about a new movie and elevate it above a movie that might be better.
However, if the higher quantity were truly a hard and fast rule, you'd easily expect the year with the most movies seen to have the best shot at having the most best movies, if all else is equal. My results don't bear that out.
In fact, in 2014, I saw only 211 new movies -- which is the fewest for any year since 2008, when I got married and when I saw only 193.
How the heck do you explain this?
I shall endeavor to try, but each explanation has evidence that counteracts it.
For starters, I was unemployed until mid-March that year, when I finally got the job that I still have today. That might suggest I had more time to watch good movies, but consider:
1) Only two of the 23 days were from before I got my job (January 29th and March 1st).
2) I had specifically decided to limit my watching to three movies per week while I did not have a job, so as not to distract any more than necessary from my job search. I guess that worked.
It's possible that with fewer movies on my schedule, I was more selective in what I watched. I also know I was first enjoying the benefits of the generous Melbourne library rental periods, which allowed you to take out movies for three weeks at a time -- as opposed to the two days (!) you could borrow movies when I lived in Los Angeles. Probably those movies were higher quality, classics I hadn't seen before ... but then again you don't really see those titles represented to a higher degree among the titles listed above. Only two of them are from the 20th century.
But I think there is something interesting about the fact that there were only two favorite movies in the first three months of 2014 ... and then 21 after I started my job on St. Patrick's Day, the first one coming on April 8th. In fact, each month from June through November includes at least two dates where I still have yet to see a better movie.
Could the massive relief of getting a job have injected an immediate sense of equanimity into me, which made it easier for me to relax and enjoy movies?
I think that's very possible.
I was quite stressed out when I was first looking for jobs. I couldn't even look for one for the first three months I was here at the end of 2013, because my visa didn't allow it. Then once it did, it was almost already Christmas and no one was hiring then anyway. Early in 2014, I got so frustrated at one point that I shouted out "Nobody in this fucking country wants to hire me!" My wife and I still laugh about that now and again.
When your life is not settled, when you are depressed about something, when you are anxious about something, when you are mourning ... these are not good times to consume movies. You just can't give them your full heart and mind like you would at other times. It's a key reason why I try not to watch anything I think I might like immediately after Donald Trump wins an election.
But as soon as that negative condition is relieved ... well it may just be that you are even more inclined to give your full heart and mind than in an ordinary time where nothing particularly interesting is happening one way or another. The relief itself creates a high, maybe a heightened sense of engagement.
That first year in Australia still remained hard for me, even after I started work, as I was still feeling unsettled, still missing my friends back in LA, still staring off into the distance, a thousand yards at a time. However, getting this job -- which I still have and which I still love -- clearly started to pave the way to greater calm. And I think the continued introspection of a big move like this, and all the changes it entails, blended with that increased sense of calm to allow me to really interface effectively with the movies I saw, both intellectually and emotionally.
Or, maybe it was just a really good year for new releases.
Yes, the fact that some of these films happen not to have been eclipsed by better films in the intervening years is partly due to luck. Not all of the titles listed above are movies I would consider personal favorites. The Lego Movie, The Orphanage, Cheap Thrills and Joe, in particular, figure to have a pretty flimsy hold on their titles.
But as I said earlier, this sort of luck tends to equal out, the larger the sample size gets. I may have a fixed sample size, as it will always and forever be 366, but it's large enough for these purposes. Plus the individual movies themselves create that larger sample.
And whatever the reality, this exercise has shown me something interesting about myself and how I may react to particular periods of unusual activity in my life ... and how my experience of movies improves or suffers as a result.
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