How I got 19 days ahead of last year's pace

When I closed off my 2024 list of movies ranked at a record 177 films, I exhaled massively. Not only is it exhausting to watch that many movies, especially since you've watched about 30 in the final three weeks, but in this case the exhale also was anticipatory. I wasn't going to watch that many movies again in 2025, no way no how.

See, my family and I were going to Europe for six weeks. That would knock me out of contention right there.

Nope.

The other day, after I watched the 126th film I plan to rank in 2025, I checked to see where that pace compared to 2024. Because I list the order I watch the films each year, I was able to find #126 of 2024 (Mikael Hafstrom's Slingshot) very easily, and then only had to check one more place to see what day I watched it.

I watched Slingshot on November 23, 2024. 

I watched #126 of this year, the Jacinda Ardern documentary Prime Minister, on November 4, 2025.

Nineteen days. It's almost enough to pull out an Ed Rooney quote. 

How on earth did this happen?

If I want to answer this question, I can't go through the year and second-guess every bad Netflix movie I've watched. That might depress me too much. And I haven't even watched nearly all of them. I've forcibly skipped some of them that in other years I might have caught.

But I can attack the assumption that I would see fewer movies during the time I was in Europe.

Which seems ridiculous on the surface. I only watched nine movies in the month of September. If you want to find the last month where I watched fewer than nine movies, you have to go back to March of 2014, when I watched only seven, part of a conscious "movie diet" to start that year. That "diet" was designed to help me focus and finally get a job after more than six months in Australia, more than three of which I'd been eligible to work. And I guess that diet worked, since I got a job that month and I've been with the same employer ever since, though in several different roles.

The point is, I actually did what I was trying to do. I enjoyed Europe rather than keeping up my movie pace.

Still: Nineteen days ahead of last year's pace.

Perhaps I couldn't have guessed how much the movies on the plane would fill in the gap.

So let's actually see what number movie I was on on the day I left in August, and the same number I was on the same day the previous year.

The last movie I watched before getting on the plane, on August 20th, was Eddington, my #86 movie of 2025. On August 20, 2024, I watched Doug Liman's The Instigators, which was my #78 movie of 2024. 

So I was already eight movies ahead of my pace this year, even when I left. Perhaps I had been subconsciously front-loading, knowing about the Europe trip. But also, the Europe trip was my second international trip of the year. And on that first trip, I watched exactly eight movies that can be ranked for 2025, on just the plane rides.

So I was on the exact same pace, if you take out that trip. But surely I should have then fallen behind when I went to Europe?

Let's look at my numbers on the date I returned.

We got back to Australia on October 4th. My last movie on the plane was Karate Kid: Legends, my 101st movie of 2025, an increase of 15 from when I left. In 2024 you have go to October 6th to find the closest eligible match, on which date I watched The Platform 2, my 100th movie of 2024, an increase of 22 movies from the total I had on August 20th. 

So being in Europe for six weeks only resulted in seven fewer current-year movies than I'd watched during the same period the year before, which was more than cancelled out by my previous international trip. 

And then since getting back, I've been piling them on, another 25 movies in 34 days -- and that's just the 2025 movies. Actually it's 27, because I've watched two more since I checked my pace. 

What the hell am I going to do?

I know I should not fret about what now seems the likelihood that I will set another viewing record this year. Some people would be proud of that. There was a time when I would have been proud of that.

But I had these wild ideas that I might watch like 25 fewer films this year. Ranking 150 movies would be a perfect number. I don't need to watch more than that, just so an additional couple dozen films can round out the lower tiers of my rankings. 

I'm at 128 now, so to stop at 150, I'd have to watch only 22 more films between now and January 22, when the Oscar nominations are announced. I'm more likely to watch 52 films or even 62 films in that period than I am to watch 22, especially since I keep on hearing about movies I hadn't heard about, and adding them to my Letterboxd watchlist. Which currently has 76 films on it. 

Well I've got at least one idea to slow my roll.

A thing I was going to tell you about separately, though I might as well mention it now, is that I am holding open auditions for a #1 movie this year. I've seen a lot of good films this year, especially recently, when I've added four movies to my top 20 in the past week alone. But I haven't seen the movie, the one I know I would be happy with as a #1 if my ranking deadline were today.

So I think I will set aside some time -- maybe late December, maybe between Christmas and New Year's -- to rewatch the contenders. Not only to decide if any of them is worth being my #1 movie of the year, but also to figure out where they truly belong compared to each other within my top ten, which is also quite a mystery to me right now. 

Even with this, I will probably still break my record, just because the titles keep popping up. 

I'm okay with this. I have to be okay with this. This is what I do.

I just won't ever fool myself again that I might have a "year off" ... unless I actually decide that this is no longer what I do.