2015 Recap

2015 has been a crazy year. 2013 was the first year in which I kept a log of all of the new-to-me films I watched, and that year I logged 50. In 2014, I logged 211. This year, my count was 519. I learned so much about film this year-I watched my first Tarantino, first Bergman, first Kubrick, first James Bond. Throughout 2014, as I started immersing myself in film forums and blogs and websites, I felt like I knew so little-I had an enormous mental list I "lovingly" referred to as "films everyone has seen except me". Now, as we head into 2016, that feeling is finally gone. I still haven't seen everything, of course, but I've reached a place where I feel like I fit into this crazy world of cinema enthusiasts, and maybe I even have my own things to contribute. So I would say it has been a pretty good year. Read on to see my year-long journey in more detail!

Films Watched

Click here to see all 519 films I watched for the first time in 2015. Additionally, I re-watched 48 films, for a grand total of 567.

Series

One of my major focuses this year was catching up on the big film franchises. I had never seen a Muppets, Bond, Mad Max, Batman, or Godfather film before, and I'd only seen one each of the Star Wars and Jurassic Park series (and that was many years ago). This year I watched 5 of the 8 theatrical Muppets films, 21 of the Bond films, all of Mad Max, both Burton and Nolan's Batman, the first two Godfathers, and all of Star Wars and Jurassic Park. I feel much more entrenched in pop culture than I did at this time last year!

2014 and 2015 films

Last year, I did not go to the theater almost at all, and got very behind on digital/home video releases of the year's films, leading to over 100 films to catch up on this year. I managed 91 of them, with another 15 or so that I'll get to later. Here is my top 15 of 2014. As for 2015 films, I again this year rarely went to the theater, but Netflix and my local library kept me well supplied with the big hits and a few smaller things. Here is my top 15 of 2015, although this is still very open to change, as I have a lot of anticipated films still to see (such as The Force Awakens). 2 of the films on my list are ones I've watched since the new year!

My Favorite Film

I've seen a few different people who can watch as many films as I did in a year, and come out of it with a top 5, or a top 10 list of their best discoveries. I can't do that. I can't even make a top 50! I love so many of these films so deeply, and so equally that trying to rank them is ridiculous. Instead of trying to crown my absolute favorite, I'm going to talk about one specific film that had an impact unlike any other. It has a fast runtime, only 90 minutes, but every moment I was engrossed, begging for it not to end. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and re-watched it the very next day (a very rare occurrence for me) because I found myself unable to focus on other films, too desperate to enter this one's world again. And that film is a hidden little gem called Electrick Children.

 Even with a re-watch, this film remained perfect to me. The vibrant color palette, the premise that's unlike anything you've ever heard of, the perfect cast. While it's unfortunately too small-time to ever get the mainstream attention it deserves, I really believe this to be the film of a generation. The aesthetics, the performances, the combined sincerity and creativity-this film feels like my generation. I've never felt that way about any other recent teen film, so that's pretty awesome. This was Rebecca Thomas' debut feature, but she's now been signed on to direct Looking for Alaska (new John Green adaptation) and a live-action Little Mermaid. I'm very exited to see what she does with these big properties, especially if they make it possible for her to make more personal features like this one. If you're like me and want to support women in film but don't quite know where to start, here's a really exiting and unique voice who is definitely worth your time.

Looking Toward 2016

So, after all that gushing over Electrick Children, it shouldn't be too surprising that I'm participating in the #52FilmsByWomen challenge. I may not watch exactly one a week, but definitely 4-5 a month. I'll also have a series of monthly post wherein I will discuss each film I watched.  

I have also made a watchlist of 100 films that I am determined to see this year, seen here (getting tired of Letterboxd links yet?). These aren't the films I'm most exited to see, or the most critically acclaimed-they're simply the ones that have been staring at me the longest, and I'm ready to knock them off my list of films to see. I made a similar list last year, but I made the mistake of haphazardly picking the films, and I ended up not being able to find many of them. I've learned from my mistake, and I've confirmed that I will be able to access all of these at any point in 2016.

I think the most important thing this year will be for me to chill the fuck out. By the end of 2015, I actually felt very stressed out over my film-watching-I kept trying to cram viewings of certain things in before the end of the year, and it was exhausting. It's also been a good couple of months since I was able to truly just watch whatever I wanted, there was always something I had to watch because I had it out on a 2-week loan from the library or it was disappearing from some streaming service. I have a good batch of films I plan to watch this year, as mentioned, but for the most part I'll do my best to just watch whatever feels right, the way I used to. 

So that was 2015. Now, onto 2016! May we all have another great year full of great movies :)