What I Watched in November

For my reviews of all of these movies check me out over at Letterboxd.

November

1. Seven Up! (Almond, 1964)

2. The Hangover Part III (Phillips, 2013)

3. Pacific Rim (del Toro, 2013)

4.  The Place Beyond the Pines (Cianfrance, 2012)

5. Ballad of the Skeletons (Van Sant, 1997)

6. Pulse 2: Afterlife (Soisson, 2008)

7. The Blue Umbrella (Unseld, 2013)

8. Monsters University (Scanlon, 2013)

9.  Castello Cavalcanti (Anderson, 2013)

10. After Earth (Shyamalan, 2013)

11. 7 Plus Seven (Apted, 1970)

12. The Colony (Renfroe, 2013)

13. A Hijacking (Lindholm, 2012)

14. Nights and Weekends (Gerwig, Swanberg, 2008)

15. The Internship (Levy, 2013)

16. Syndromes and a Century (Weerasethakul, 2006)

17. Blissfully Yours (Weerasethakul, 2002) 

18. Oldboy (Lee, 2013)

19. Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr, Hranitzky, 2000)

20. Holy Motors (Carax, 2012)

Total films watched in 2013: 217

Moving to Letterboxd!

Hey fellow film fanatics! I'm moving this rather antiquated film list blog over to the super sleek and cool site Letterboxd. It's sort of like a social network for movie lovers.

It allows you to create a profile (mine pictured above) that gives some info, shows your favorite films, displays recent films you've "liked" etc.

The bulk of what I'll be doing over there is a "Diary". This is a calendar where every movie you watch will be and also where you can see my ratings and reviews. That's right: I said reviews! For years people have been asking me why I don't write up reviews on all the movies I watch. I'm going to try to do shorthand, concise reviews on the stuff I watch moving forward.

I've also rated the 600+ movies I have seen the last few years. So you can browse through my personal ratings by high or low scores, release dates, duration, etc. Pretty cool!

Check me out! Getting an account is fast and easy. I'd love to have some more friends over there so we could follow each other, swap comments, recommendations, etc.

What I Watched in October

October

1. Stories We Tell (Polley, 2012)

2. No One Lives (Kitamura, 2012)

3. Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (Greutert, 2010)

4. Tokyo/Glow (Bensimon, 2010)

5. Transformers Prime Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising (Heuck, Tidwell, Waterman, 2013)

6. The Lords of Salem (Zombie, 2012)

7. WWE: The Top 25 Rivalries in Wrestling History (Dunn, 2013)

8. VH1 Rock Docs: Yo! The Story of Yo! MTV Raps (2012) 

9. Toy Story of Terror (MacLane, 2013)

10. The Midnight Meat Train (Kitamura, 2008)

11. The Mole Man of Belmont Avenue (Bradecich, LaFlamboy, 2013)

12. Oblivion (Kosinski, 2013)

13. World War Z (Forster, 2013)

14. This Is the End (Goldberg, Rogen, 2013)

Total films watched in 2013: 197

What I Watched in August & September

August

1. Hot Dog... The Movie (Markle, 1984)

2. G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Chu, 2013)

3. WWE for All Mankind: Life & Career of Mick Foley (Dunn, 2013)

4. Spring Breakers (Korine, 2012)

5. Hellraiser: Revelations (García, 2011)

6. Bullet to the Head (Hill, 2012)

September

1. The Central Park Five (Burns, Burns, McMahon, 2012)

2. Aftershock (López, 2012)

3. Scary MoVie (Lee, 2013)

4. Mud (Nichols, 2012)

5. Howling V: The Rebirth (Sundstrom, 1989)

6. Star Trek Into Darkness (Abrams, 2013)

7. One Man's Loss (Sansom, 2012)

8. Get In the Trunk 3: All Trunks Go to Heaven (Hammons, 2013)

Total films watched in 2013: 183

I'm back! Had to recharge my batteries quite a bit. In two months (May-June) I watched nearly 60 movies. By the time Aug. rolled around my motivation dropped off. I had to reassess. I usually try to see the bulk of new releases, I was also really focused on narrowing down the 75 or so films I hadn't seen from TSPDT's 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films list, etc. I found myself in the beginning of Aug. with stacks of DVDs but little desire to spend hours in-front of the TV. So I detoxed. During Aug. I only caught four films on my own time and then another two as part of an event with my movie club the Night Owl Society (we're meeting 1-2 times monthly nowadays). Sept. the inspiration began to return but it was more an issue of finding time. Work, family, my website Review the World, other hobbies (inc. the usual copious amounts of wrestling/MMA, TV fare, and animated series'), etc. plus my traditional night time routine has suffered as I may not get to start anything until after 11PM and my babies are usually up by 7AM if not earlier. I took a new position at work too. My old job had me in an area with lots of downtime and I'd secretly e-mail myself tons of movie reviews, essays, etc. it really helped my love of it thrive. My new role is much more demanding and challenging and leaves me zero time to indulge in that so I'm finding myself a bit disconnected from that community sadly.

I have narrowed my focus a bit. I'm trying to be a little more selective with what titles I choose given how little free time I do have. For example, not every new release is finding itself instantly slotted in my queue, unless it's something that interests me or peaks my curiosity, I'm putting it in a separate list of stuff I'll (probably) get to one day down the road. The TSPDT list bowled me over and I got into the rut of watching stuff because of a compulsion to "need to" and less out of enjoyment of it and that's skewed. Now that I've taken some time off from "serious" cinema and been watching more genre fare, etc. I'm feeling better prepared to adjust that ratio and find a better balance.

I've been contemplating doing some "more" in regards to film criticism or reaction or whatever. One idea is to go back through these monthly lists and do a series of vlog (video blog) entries where I'd give thoughts on a lot of the stuff I've watched these last few years, make recommendations, etc. Inspired by many of the film writers and blogs I've enjoyed over time I also contemplated trying my hand at writing about film seriously again which I haven't done since this blog initially launched in its earlier incarnation. We'll see! Right now I just want to focus on whatever film is in-front of me and worry less of the peripheral stuff. I've coined a new phrase I'll leave you with, here at IWMMTY we say keep your "Eyes Wide Open"!

What I Watched in July

July

1. Tai Chi Zero (Fung, 2012)

2. The Bay (Levinson, 2012)

3. DeadHeads (Pierce, Pierce, 2011)

4. The Ellington Kid (Sully, 2012)

5. The Last Exorcism Part II (Gass-Donnelly, 2013)

6. Side Effects (Soderbergh, 2013)

7. Snitch (Waugh, 2013)

8. The Last House on the Left (Iliadis, 2009)

9. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Klayman, 2012)

10. The Loneliest Planet (Loktev, 2011)

11. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (Scardino, 2013)

12. The Conjuring (Wan, 2013)

13. Movie 43 (multiple directors, 2013)

14. Chernobyl Diaries (Parker, 2012)

Total films watched in 2013: 169

What I Watched in June

June

1. In the City of Sylvia (Guerín, 2007)

2. John Dies at the End (Coscarelli, 2012)

3. Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul, 2004)

4. The Piano Teacher (Haneke, 2001)

5. Cloud Atlas (Tykwer, Wachowski, Wachowski, 2012)

6. Unknown Pleasures (Jia, 2002)

7. Eye Myth (Brakhage, 1967)

8. Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz, 2010)

9. LEGO Batman: The Movie - DC Super Heroes Unite (Burton, 2013)

10. Black Book (Verhoeven, 2006)

11. Bad Cars (Deptula, 2012)

12. Man of Steel (Snyder, 2013)

13. Before Midnight (Linklater, 2013)

14. Brother Bear 2 (Gluck, 2006)

15. Mama (Muschietti, 2013)

16. The Best of Youth (Giordana, 2003)

17. Zenith (Nikolic, 2010)

18. Grave Encounters (Vicious Brothers, 2011)

19. Notre musique (Godard, 2004)

20. La ciénaga (Martel, 2001)

21. Sexy Beast (Glazer, 2000)

22. On Departure (Duffy, 2012)

23. Still Walking (Koreeda, 2008)

24. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Kunuk, 2001)

25. Weighting (Bowser, Larson, 2011)

26. The Nature Between Us (Campbell, 2008)

27. Picnic (Pereda, 2010)

28. The Secret Adventures of the Projectionist (Sacker, 2008)

29. Game Over (PES, 2006)

Total films watched in 2013: 155