It's gotten to the point where I can't go on the internet without learning about a new movie that's coming out before the end of the year.
A statement like that can never be anything but an exaggeration -- I'm on the internet anywhere from multiple to four dozen times a day, depending on what you consider a distinct browsing session -- but in this case it really feels close to being true.
My Letterboxd watchlist is supposed to be dwindling at this time of year, not ballooning outward toward triple digits. Remember that the watchlist no longer includes movies I've already seen, which number exactly 120 for 2022. Emancipation, whose poster I have included here, is nothing special -- it's just the latest to get added to the list. (Though I suppose, being Will Smith's first release after the Oscars, it could turn into something special, an object we will all want to gawk at.)
If I were to watch all the movies on my watchlist -- which, realistically, never comes close to happening -- I'd be well over 200 for the year. Which would be more than 30 movies higher than the record total of 170 I set last year ... which was already 19 movies higher than my previous record.
However, I do usually get down to only movies that didn't actually get released this year after all, movies I can't access because they haven't been released in Australia yet or I don't have the right streaming service, and a dozen stray others that just get overlooked. This year, I can't see how I will have any fewer than 50 still on the list when all is said and done ... and it'll probably be more, considering that I don't think I'm anywhere near done adding to my watchlist.
You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm really not. There are currently 90 films on my watchlist.
I assume you believe me, but just to prove I'm not lying, and to demonstrate exactly how ridiculous it's gotten, I'm going to list them for you, in reverse order of how I added them:
1. Emancipation
2. Descendant
3. Till
4. The Son
5. Aftersun
6. Dead for a Dollar
7. Spirited
8. Hellraiser
9. Speak No Evil
10. Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
11. Mr. Harrigan's Phone
12. Breaking
13. Bones and All
14. The Whale
15. Not Okay
16. Slumberland
17. Confess, Fletch
18. The Night of the 12th
19. Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul
20. Master Gardener
21. Women Talking
22. Wendell & Wild
23. God's Creatures
24. Tar
25. Nanny
26. Eo
27. Weird
28. Is That Black Enough for You?
29. She Said
30. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
31. See How They Run
32. Goodnight Mommy
33. I Wanna Dance With Somebody
34. The People's Joker
35. Disenchanted
36. Babylon
37. Glass Onion
38. Sharp Stick
39. White Noise
40. You Won't Be Alone
41. Blaze
42. Inu-oh
43. Mad God
44. Paris, 13th District
45. Triangle of Sadness
46. Something in the Dirt
47. The Silent Twin
48. R.M.N.
49. The Pez Outlaw
50. Incredible But True
51. The Humans
52. Emily the Criminal
53. Broker
54. Dual
55. Vengeance
56. Fire of Love
57. Dear Mr. Brody
58. Fire Island
59. Playground
60. The Fallout
61. Where Is Anne Frank?
62. Mothering Sunday
63. Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
64. A Chiara
65. The Menu
66. Strange World
67. The Forgiven
68. We're All Going to the World's Fair
69. I Love My Dad
70. Both Sides of the Blade
71. River
72. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
73. Pinocchio (del Toro)
74. The Deer King
75. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
76. Poor Things
77. The Eternal Daughter
78. The End
79. The Fabelmans
80. Showing Up
81. Avatar: The Way of Water
82. The Killer
83. Asteroid City
84. Disappointment Blvd.
85. Infinity Pool
86. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
87. Killers of the Flower Moon
88. The 355
89. Belle
90. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
There are so many titles, I am not even going to go back through and italicize them. Do me a favor and please imagine the italics.
Before you say "Wait a minute, not all those movies are coming out in 2022," I'll say "Yes, I know." But when I added them, I thought they were. And I don't like to remove them, because I'll just have to add them back next year. So yeah, you can chop about ten titles off that list for that reason.
But that still leaves 80 for 2022, and just as I'm going through I'm noticing the films I haven't added, like one of two Claire Denis films this year, Stars at Noon. There, I've just added it. That makes 91.
And before you say "I've never even heard of a lot of those films," I'll say "Neither have I." I mean, I obviously heard them mentioned at some point during the year, which is why I added them in the first place. But many of them were movies I heard of once that have since disappeared from my or anyone else's radar. Every year has some of those too.
I still feel overwhelmed by what's left.
Let's look only at my perceived obligations for the coming week or so. I've watched but not yet reviewed The Wonder, but I noticed the new Will Ferrell-Ryan Reynolds Christmas movie, Spirited, has also opened on AppleTV+. Then Glass Onion hits Netflix in time for Thanksgiving. But She Said is also now open in theaters. And so on. And so forth.
It's too much for one cinephile to handle.
Of course, the choice that most sane and rational people would make is just not to worry about it. See what absolutely interests you the most, and let everything else fall by the wayside. You'll see it eventually, or maybe you'll never see it, but either is okay. You can still have a definitive year-end list even if you don't see every movie that some person out there may love.
I'll try. Really I will. But I never said I was sane and rational.
What I don't get is that movies are supposed to be in decline. When we all bemoaned the pandemic-hastened closing of some big movie theater chains and historic single-screen cinemas, we seemed to believe it was the form itself that was in trouble, not just the venue in which that form was once most frequently viewed. People wanted TV that spun out over six seasons, not characters you were done with after two hours.
Today I won't ponder what has changed that. It feels a bit like year-end contemplation material. I'll save it until I need it then.
Today I'll just stick with the glut of titles -- a glut I should want, since it indicates the health of an industry I dearly love -- that currently feels like it will bury me.
I've worked to rein in my viewing this year, both the total number of titles I see for my year-end rankings, and the total number of new movies I see in the calendar year. In the latter area I am at 242, meaning I would have to see 36 more new films in the 41 remaining days of 2022 to exceed the 277 new-to-me movies I saw in 2021. Probably won't happen because I would expect to watch at least five more movies I've seen previously before December 31st. But at this point it's clear that it won't be a significant reduction from last year. I am sure to break 270, which would still make it the fifth most movies I have ever seen in a year. (The 325 and 303 I saw in 2016 and 2015, respectively, are safe for the foreseeable future.)
I probably won't eclipse the 170 movies I ranked last year, but at this point I wouldn't rule it out. That'll take only 51 more viewings in a longer period of time than December 31st, going all the way to January 24th.
In the past few years, my other friend who releases his year-end list and I have had to break with the Academy on revealing our lists on the same day they reveal their nominations, because those have not happened until February (last year) and March (the year before). This year, we've decided to take their January 24th release date, even though it's a few weeks after the date on which they had been revealing the nominations prior to 2021. It's close enough that it's worth restoring our previous alignment of the dates, even if it means the slog of watching as many movies as we can will carry on for most of the month. It's even a week longer than last year, when I smashed my previous record after we sort of arbitrarily chose a date of January 17th. (Which was January 16th U.S. time.)
I suppose I might end up being able to use the extra time. My dad and his wife will be visiting us in Australia from December 20th to January 20th, so at least this January 24th date clears me for a last bingeing of movies after they leave. Truth is, we'll separate from them early enough on most nights that it won't severely limit my viewing, though chances are still that I could lose two to five viewings I might ordinarily make during that time. And probably it won't be quite as easy to get out to the theater, which is usually a crucial component of the final stretch.
In any case, the cavalcade of newly discovered titles leading up to the writing of this post has changed my thinking on an intentional viewing slowdown. Whereas I had been taking one and sometimes even two nights per week off from movies recently, I think that's probably going to stop. My cinephile lizard brain requires me to keep current, either because I'm reviewing the movies themselves or because I want to stay up to speed on the discussion.
So as I start thinking about how to watch two new movies today, records will fall where they may.
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