Four of these six movies had been on my radar for less than two weeks.
Yep, just because it's almost time to stop watching movies for 2023, it doesn't mean there aren't still movies forcing their way onto your watchlist.
I was actually going to have even one more, but the second movie I cued up on Friday night, and watched about one minute of before discovering this information, actually meets my criteria for a 2022 movie, as it had a limited U.S. release in November of '22 (despite the 2023 release date that show on Prime). So I abandoned Next Exit, before it had the chance to make my list of movies to watch before January 23rd even longer.
What I did end up watching was:
Swallowed and Robots on Friday night.
Society of the Snow and Fast X on Saturday afternoon/evening.
And Good Grief/The Burial on Sunday afternoon/evening.
And did I mention these were all on the projector in my garage?
Only Fast X and The Burial had been on my watchlist prior to a few weeks ago, when Society of the Snow reared its head based on the (it turns out very justified) ravings of a friend.
Fast X was one I was going to leave on the cutting room floor this year, but like John Wick: Chapter 4 before it, it turned up for free on a streaming service so I decided to just go for it. I've seen every other Fast & Furious movie. Why stop now? (And I liked this one better than the ninth installment, I'm glad to report.)
If it looks like I'm cramming, that both is and isn't true.
Yes I was happy not to be on the pace to break my record of 175 from last year, and I am still well on that pace. But a certain FOMO also sets in at this time of year, at the same time, paradoxically, that I am also just feeling so done with it all. Movies don't really get a fair shake in this big lead-up to finalizing my rankings, yet I don't see another way to go about it. At whatever point you cut off your list, you'll probably be cramming it all in before that anyway, and any individual film might feel rode hard, put away wet, and forgotten almost immediately.
Then there's the fact that you lose your ability to parse differences between movies. Seeing as many really good movies, right up until the end, as I'm seeing this year, I can't decide if a movie should make my top ten or not even make my top 25. The struggle is real.
So while I did cram a little bit this weekend, I also didn't, because I anticipate having a few fruitless days at the end of this week, and I'm really just trying to make up for them in advance.
We're going to a friend's beach house this weekend -- remember, summer here in Australia -- and it's possible I won't watch a movie Friday, Saturday or Sunday night. (It's not certain whether we're going down on Friday night or Saturday morning.) Although it would be possible to jam in a movie, it's also a little tacky when it's a social weekend away, and the adults will likely remain in each other's company until bedtime.
So I'm at 152 for the year now, and still hope to only be in the mid to high 160s by January 23rd -- just getting there through a slightly different route.
And who knows, maybe I will just take an actual night off sometime as well. You know, rest my eyeballs, without social impropriety even being a consideration.
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