Movie Challenge Is Dead, Long Live Movie Challenge

50 movies in 50 days is a lot as it turns out, and while I have a few more days before it officially ends there are just too many sparks flying in other parts of my workshop at the moment for me to stick with it in the way I wanted to. I only got through 26 movies from my list, which I’m pretty bummed about, and after reviewing things a little bit I think I figured out what went wrong this time around:

1. Too much dense material. While my list changed quite a bit as I went, I still tried to stick to some of the major themes and it ended up just being much harder to jump in and out of than I needed it to be. The best example of this was when I had to start watching Nymphomaniac vol. 2 at like 7:30 in the morning to stay on track, and by around 8:15am I felt like I was putting myself through a Clockwork Orange experiment. I think this list needed more filler than I initially thought.

2. No TV Series Conversion Rate. This is a controversial one, but given that Sloane and I have a list of shows we’ve been chewing our way through I should have probably figured out some kind of foreign exchange rate for the more cinema-adjacent ones we’ve been watching like Beef. I also don’t have access to any solo TV time at night, and since Sloane and I’s movie taste is really different I had a hard time playing catch up. If I wasn’t able to watch in my office before or during work hours I wasn’t able to catch up later, and this snowballed pretty hard.

3. Too many un-streamable movies. I made my list by just adding stuff I’ve wanted to watch rather than sticking with a single point of access or maybe 2 or 3 at the most. This played into point 1 some, and also just meant I ended up having to pay to stream a decent number of them. If I do a time-based watch challenge again I’m picking stuff I can find in 1 or 2 places.

Top 5 From My List

1. Everything Everywhere All At Once: A bunch of people told me I would love this movie and I hate how right they were.

2. The Worst Person In The World: I didn’t think I’d ever love a movie like this again, and Julie is an essential counterpoint to the goofy unreality of most of the romantic genre.

3. Shiva Baby: Rachel Sennott was amazing in this and I hope we have 100 more movies from her.

4. Tár: This movie is only going to get better and more impactful with time, I think. It’s refreshing to see a director move more like a surgeon, and each incision Todd Field makes here is profound.

5. The Whale: This is the best and most clever adaptation of a fiction work I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever. Anyone who shit on this movie is a certified Goob.

I’m spending some time putting together a list for the next movie run, and will likely have a post about that in the next week or so. I don’t think this next one will be time-based, just a more focused list that I can chomp my way through alongside the other stuff I’m working on. If you want to contribute anything to the next list hit my digits.