One Year Film Watching Experiment

[BarronVangorToth]

I'm on my computer an obscene amount each week, and I always have a DVD running. A year ago, I decided to note in each DVD when I watched it. This would give me at the end of a year an indication which were my favorites. Basically I ended up with two groups: Group A I watched zero or one times. Group B I watched three or four times.

People usually find best recommendations for films from people who like what they like. So I guess if you like some or most of the films in this list, you'll like the rest.

Alphabetically, from my list of films I've watched 3 or 4 times in the last year:

1. 11:14
2. 12 Monkeys
3. 21 Grams
4. 25th Hour
5. 2001
6. A Beautiful Mind
7. A Few Good Men
8. Adaptation
9. Almost Famous
10. American Beauty
11. American History X
12. American President
13. American Psycho
14. Apocalypse Now
15. As Good as It Gets
16. Batman Begins
17. Beautiful Girls
18. Big Fish
19. Big Lebowski
20. Blow
21. Boiler Room
22. Boogie Nights
23. Boondock Saints
24. Born on the Fourth of July
25. Breakfast Club
26. Bright Lights, Big City
27. Bubba Ho-Tep
28. Cape Fear
29. Carlito’s Way
30. Casino
31. Chasing Amy
32. Clerks
33. Clockwork Orange
34. Collateral
35. Color of Money
36. Confidence
37. Crash
38. Crow
39. Dark City
40. Deer Hunter
41. Desperado
42. Dogma
43. Donnie Brasco
44. Donnie Darko
45. Door in the Floor
46. Ed Wood
47. Elizabethtown
48. Equilibrium
49. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
50. Fargo
51. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
52. Fight Club
53. Finding Neverland
54. Full Metal Jacket
55. Game
56. Gangs of New York
57. Garden State
58. Gattaca
59. Ghost World
60. Gift
61. Gladiator
62. Go
63. Godfather Trilogy
64. Goodfellas
65. Goodwill Hunting
66. Green Mile
67. Groundhog Day
68. Hard Eight
69. Heat
70. High Fidelity
71. History of Violence
72. Ice Storm
73. Insider
74. Jackie Brown
75. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
76. Jerry Maguire
77. Jersey Girl
78. Kill Bill 1&2
79. Last Samurai
80. LA Confidential
81. Leaving Las Vegas
82. Less Than Zero
83. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
84. Lost in Translation
85. Machinist
86. Magnolia
87. Mallrats
88. Man on the Moon
89. Memento
90. Mystic River
91. Ninth Gate
92. Office Space
93. Once Upon a Time in Mexico
94. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
95. Pi
96. Pirates of the Caribbean
97. Poolhall Junkies
98. Prophecy
99. Pulp Fiction
100. Punch Drunk Love
101. Raging Bull
102. Requiem for a Dream
103. Reservoir Dogs
104. Road to Perdition
105. Rounders
106. Rules of Attraction
107. Saving Private Ryan
108. Scarface
109. Shattered Glass
110. Shawshank Redemption
111. Shining
112. Sideways
113. Signs
114. Sixth Sense
115. Sin City
116. Snatch
117. Spider-Man 1&2
118. Stand
119. Stay
120. Suicide Kings
121. Swingers
122. Talented Mr. Ripley
123. Taxi Driver
124. Thin Red Line
125. Tombstone
126. Traffic
127. Training Day
128. Trees Lounge
129. True Roman
130. Truman Show
131. Unbreakable
132. Unforgiven
133. Usual Suspects
134. Vanilla Sky
135. Village
136. Wonder Boys
137. X-Men 1&2
138. Young Guns 1&2

[Borodog]

By my estimate that is approximately 1000 hours of movie watching.

[BarronVangorToth]

[ QUOTE ]
By my estimate that is approximately 1000 hours of movie watching.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm on my computer 60+ hours a week between working on my WWE card game, writing, and playing online poker ... which translates to 30-35 movies (assuming it isn't a week to, say, watch every episode of Sopranos / 24 / Dawson's Creek / Six Feet Under / etc etc).

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
By my estimate that is approximately 1000 hours of movie watching.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm on my computer 60+ hours a week between working on my WWE card game, writing, and playing online poker ... which translates to 30-35 movies (assuming it isn't a week to, say, watch every episode of Sopranos / 24 / Dawson's Creek / Six Feet Under / etc etc).

[/ QUOTE ]

Not criticizing; just running the numbers. 141 films, assuming 2 hours per film and 3.5 views per film, comes out to 987 hours of viewing.

[diebitter]

You have some good choices there BVT, and some I'm sort of surprised at. I guess by definition you liked all these, right?

May I ask your opinion and stuff on a few of them?

I haven't seen, and intrigued by the following. What in a sentence (or however long you like, I just don't want to make it a chore, is all) was good or worth watching about it?


Blow
Carlito's Way
Crash (which one, BTW)
Fear and Loathing
Machinist


I do have several others, but don't wanna be pushy [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[MicroBob]

I have no idea whether I can trust your film opinions or not. I like some of the films on your list...while others made me want to throw-up.

I think I will try some randomness with any future recommendations you may offer here. For 50% of your recommendations I will take what you say as gospel. For the other 50% I'll assume your recommendation just isn't going to coincide with my tastes at all.


haven't decided how to go about choosing which 50%. But I think every other one should work fine for me.

[BarronVangorToth]

[ QUOTE ]
You have some good choices there BVT, and some I'm sort of surprised at. I guess by definition you liked all these, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. I like quite a few more films than those listed above, but I figure I don't really like them that much if I only grabbed them 0 or 1 times in the last year. This all sort of goes along the line of thinking you know what you like versus actually knowing ... and I guess the proof is, as always, in the pudding: those are the movies I like. An example would be Gattaca -- I don't think I've ever noted this movie at any time anywhere and yet ... I grabbed it four different times in the last year. That must say something about me liking it.

[ QUOTE ]


Blow
Carlito's Way
Crash (which one, BTW)
Fear and Loathing
Machinist


[/ QUOTE ]


Blow - Johnny Depp is one of my favorite actors, so I think there may be more films that I rewatch due to him. Meaning, if you don't like him, movies with him you maybe should discount accordingly. (Likewise: Kevin Smith's stuff I love ... so if you hate one, you probably won't dig the rest too much.) Great story in Blow (most of my film choices aren't really action movies, but they aren't obscure french films either), great music, great acting, and it all comes together really well by the end.

Carlito's Way - this is another movie I wouldn't normally mention, but I grabbed it three times in the last year. Al Pacino is Al Pacino and is usually good. Exciting story and really great visuals.

Crash - I like both, but this is about the newer one that many people don't like because they think Brokeback should've won. The earlier one is fine ... but this one is better. It's my favorite movie of last year. Complex weaving of various narratives into one clear picture. I went to see it 3 or 4 times in the theater and the story never bores. I especially like the guy from the Shield and how he interacts with his daughter.

Fear and Loathing - again, Johnny Depp is brilliant. Amazing drug trip of a movie and it's just so ridiculous, it's great. One of Depp's best preformances.

Machinist - what Christian Bale went through for this movie is unreal. Almost no one's heard of this one as it was hard to see the first time around (my friends and I had to make a trip into NYC as no theater in CT had it, sort of like Brick). It's a disturbing movie and you really get behind Christian's character, wanting him to somehow overcome. And what an ending...

[BarronVangorToth]

[ QUOTE ]
I like some of the films on your list...while others made me want to throw-up.


[/ QUOTE ]


There are a few oddities in the list (Kevin Smith, for example, if you're not a fan you're not a fan and you can just discount those movies -- this goes along with the fact that I'm a huge fan of "standard" shows like Sopranos, Six Feet Under, 24, and West Wing ... but I also adore Dawson's Creek) but I think there is some cohesive whole between them ... not just sure yet precisely what it is yet.

As far as some making you want to throw up -- which ones?

[MicroBob]

Some of the throw-up films are relatively popular and/or received decent reviews.

Beuatiful Mind, Magnolia, Gangs of NY, Suicide Kings, Truman Show are a few of them.
I've only seen parts of Spiderman 1 and 2 but I'm pretty sure that if I saw all of it they would make the list also.


I dig Kevin Smith movies (although I'm not all ga-ga about Chasing Amy like so many others seem to be).
Ghost World was definitely worthwhile.
Caught part of Wonderboys on late-night cable again the other night and I think that movie is just wonderful.


Others on your list I'm kind of 'meh' about.
Not great...but I didn't really dislike them either.
Donnie Brasco and Blow are a couple of those films.


25th hour I still can't make up my mind about. I thought parts of it were outstanding. And then I thought Spike Lee screwed it up completely with some his ego-driven additions to an otherwise wonderful story with great acting.

[BarronVangorToth]

Chasing Amy is my favorite of Kevin Smith's films by the ol' country mile. I think it has a lot of appeal even outside those caught up with the KS mythos.

Rewatch 25th Hour - I have to start breaking these 140'ish movies down into where I think I rate them, but I have no doubt 25th Hour will make my personal top 10.

Spiderman + X-Men - I've always been a comic book guy, so I understand when people don't dig these movies ... people that aren't comic people often don't like them, and that's fine. Much like Batman Begins.

Wonder Boys was a great book and a great movie, it would probably be in my personal Top 30'ish somewhere.

By the way, on Ghost World, if you can stand graphic novels at all, there is a wonderful one that was the movie's source material.