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16 January 2019

2019 Will Be Better!

You heard it here, first, folks! The year 2019 will be the greatest year for movies in the 10,000 history of humanity. You'll be grateful that Norwegian Morning Wood broke this story first! Last year we actually weren't too bad in our looking ahead predictions. Chances are pretty high that this will be the exact End of Year List we go through next December. Let's begin:

Godzilla: King of the Monsters - 05/19



This may seem weird. Godzilla (2014) was kinda shitty for the first 90 minutes but delivered a satisfying ending fight. I didn't even see Kong: Skull Island (2017) but it apparently wasn't total shit. That's something I guess. I'm still a fan of the Big G, though, and a film that promises Rodan, Mothra, and the biggest bastard of them all, King Ghidorah in fully realized glory all directed by Michael Dougherty of Trick R Treat (2007) and Krampus (2015) fame sounds good on paper. Even though Toho knocked anything American Godzilla can do out of the par with Shin Godzilla (2016), this should give us a good dose of monsters, fire breath, and hurricane wing winds. Or it'll just blow all its goodwill like Gareth Edwards' take.

Avengers: Endgame - 04/26



Infinity War was the culmination of a lot of threads building up to the ultimate battle against a Universal threat. Then Thanos won and everybody died. Endgame promises a lot, but will it deliver a lame cop out or some true pathos for these characters? The trailer pretends we're not just going to go back in time via Ant-Man and the Quantum Realm and change everything. Still - THIS, I promise, THIS ONE will be the last one, I swear. At any rate, it's a momentous shift from the past ten years of Marvel Superhero films (totally this one and not another one ten years from now), and we just gotta see how this ends. Again.

Detective Pikachu - 05/19



What the hell is this? How is the first live action Pokemon movie a thoroughly American affair starring Ryan Reynolds? Based on the Detective Pikachu offshoot brand of all things. Where's my Pokemon Snap movie?! The trailer had charm, nostalgia, wit, mystery, and a whole lot of really weird and creepy furry shenanigans to pique my interest. Sure it's based on a previous property, but it looks bold in a way other retreads don't. Could this become the greatest video game movie of all time?

Spider-Man: Far From Home - 07/05



If you know anything about me by now, it's that I like my superhero movies real, real weird. Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio fits that bill and that's a major reason to be excited for this. We got a trailer just under the wire, and we can already deduce a few things - like, are the elemental monsters attacking London all a ruse or do we really get Hydro-Man and Molten Man in the mix? I just hope we can get something like this or this, or hell, even Mysterio created Old Man Logan. Mysterio is the shit and totally bonkers. His powers are so limited - he's just a special effects artist...but generally that's enough leeway to make him the most powerful villain of all time.

Joker - 10/04

This anti-hero movie is in the same slot as Venom (2018) was this year - and although that movie was fairly dumb, it was still a nice little side adventure through brain eating and lethal protection. Joker is good enough to attract Joaquin Phoenix to work for Todd Phillips alongside Robert DeNiro and Zazie Beetz for some reason. This is the age we're at now - where we get the giant bombastic superhero movies, but they're also just our psychotic character dramas and dark comedies now, too. Whatever it takes. Phillips always walks that weird dark edge, and Joaquin is amazing, so hopes are high. This is in addition to the fact that every non-Jared Leto Joker has been instantly iconic.

Ad Astra - 05/24

This is like Interstellar (2014) but with Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones, directed by James Gray, who has given us many long, contemplative films, most recently Lost City of Z (2016), which is totally underrated. We don't know too much more about this other than it has something to do with finding Tommy Lee Jones in space across some long journey. We're down.

Six Underground - Sometime

This is a $150 million Michael Bay Netflix movie starring Ryan Reynolds written by the dudes who made Deadpool (2016). This is the biggest no brainer of all time. Despite spending most of his time churning out Transformers movies that have all gotten worse with time, Bay did gift us with Pain & Gain (2013) which showed that his whip-fast, heavy cut, in-your-face style can actually be extremely effective with the right source material. Plus it's Netflix - total no brainer watch.

Knives Out - 11/27

Moving on from blockbusters, this is some kind of Daniel Craig murder mystery by Rian Johnson. Listen, The Last Jedi (2017) gets better every time I watch it, and I'm excited with what he can do with a smaller story. There's not a ton of info yet about this, and to be honest, a who-dunnit is either contrived or gives itself away too early, but Johnson can dig into these tropes and give us something interesting. I hope.

The Lighthouse - Someday

In 2016 Robert Eggers gave us The Witch, and this is his follow-up - some kind of monster maritime thing starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. We know it's a black and white horror fantasy of some kind, which seems right up Eggers' alley. The Witch is endlessly rewarding and Eggers is an incredible visual filmmaker who is also pretty proud of brutally murdering babies in his first scene. Sea Monsters are in these days.

Uncut Gems - Whenever

Speaking of Rober Pattinson, the Safdie Brothers were last seen behind Good Time (2017) but this time nabbed Adam Sandler, LaKeith Stanfield, and Idina Menzel for some reason. This is a "what the hell" kind of stunt casting, but I was really into their style in Good Time. Sandler has moments of brilliance whenever he's not in an Adam Sandler movie and this is some kind of diamond crime drama movie. Maybe he's a crusty jewel thief? Whatever, we'll see it.

Other Movies That Might Not Suck:

Rocketman - To me, Bohemian Rhapsody didn't go nearly gay enough. Hopefully the Elton John version can correct that.
Ford vs Ferrari - James Mangold does a car rivalry film
Boss Level - the beginning of the long and storied acting career of Rob Gronkowski
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - I don't think Tarantino is totally washed of his Weinstein association, and the Manson connection here seems exploitative, but this movie will probably be very good.
SHAZAM! - DC is finally getting fun and weird
Hobbes and Shaw - the only two great remaining parts of the Fast and Furious franchise
Velvet Buzzsaw - This also just got a trailer and it's weird as hell. I love how Jake Gyllenhaal has gone crazy.
Brightburn - what if Superman was evil. Or more like, what if he just was Superman - we couldn't handle that shit. This should poke holes in all of Man of Steel (2013)'s pretensions.
Cold Pursuit - what the fuck is the tone of this trailer going for? This will always be known as the Liam Neeson snowplow movie.
Us - this looks nuts. Lupita, Peele, and M'Baku are a good combination.

There are some other big films that we've ignored here. If I were to get real, Captain Marvel looks okay in the sense that I'll definitely catch up with it on Netflix in a few months, but I don't see it elevating above Doctor Strange (2016) good but not great levels. We're also getting a ton of Disney live action sequels that I could totally care less about (somehow Dumbo, Aladdin, AND The Lion King). There are also high profile Disney Animated films Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2, that I don't really think can improve on the perfect of their previous installments.

Hmm. These were all Disney movies. The studio is either going to have an amazing year or a terrible one. With Mary Poppins Returns (2018) sinking I wonder if the studio that could do no wrong will turn a corner. Then again, they've had at least as many high profile flops, from John Carter (2012) to Pete's Dragon (2016) to A Wrinkle in Time (2018) over the past few years. We'll see.

What are you hyped for?

04 January 2019

2018 TV Watching Retrospective

As I did an exhaustive analysis of my movie watching in 2018, which soared, my TV watching sorely declined. After nailing 867 episodes of 81 shows last year, all I could manage was 476 episodes of 54 shows. TV is declining for me, what can I say? Here's a graph!


ShowEpisodesPercentage of Total
Seinfeld357.35%
The Good Place326.72%
Arrested Development316.51%
The Office285.88%
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia234.83%
The Simpsons234.83%
Saturday Night Live214.41%
The Venture Bros204.20%
BoJack Horseman204.20%
South Park183.78%
American Vandal173.57%
Ash vs. Evil Dead153.15%
Last Week Tonight142.94%
Broad City142.94%
Future Man132.73%
Brooklyn Nine-Nine122.52%
Rick and Morty122.52%
Mary Shelley's Frankenhole112.31%
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee102.10%
The Fix102.10%
The Last Man on Earth91.89%
Marvel Avengers Assemble91.89%
The End of the Fucking World81.68%
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt81.68%
Disenchantment81.68%
Adventure Time51.05%
Documentary Now!51.05%
Evil Genius40.84%
Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law40.84%
Big Mouth40.84%
Monty Python's Flying Circus30.63%
Mystery Science Theater 300030.63%
Black Mirror20.42%
Community20.42%
Aggretsuko20.42%
Drunk History20.42%
Bob's Burgers20.42%
Dave Chappelle: Equanimity10.21%
The Detour10.21%
Dave Chappelle: The Bird Revelation10.21%
30 Rock10.21%
American Ninja Warrior10.21%
Korgoth of Barbaria10.21%
The Terror10.21%
Seth Rogen's Hilarity for Charity10.21%
Review10.21%
Gurren Lagann10.21%
Futurama10.21%
Sense810.21%
Maniac10.21%
Family Guy10.21%
Rocko's Modern Life10.21%
A Young Doctor's Notebook10.21%
The Tigers of Scotland10.21%

The most serious show I watched was probably Evil Genius, followed by Tigers of Scotland. Seinfeld won, of course. My Simpsons was way down, after hitting 105 last year and 222 the year before that.

Arrested Development and Always Sunny remain pretty strong, but props to The Good Place for being a relatively recent, contemporary show and not something that peaked in the 90s! I was definitely off my game for most of the year, and not into a ton of new shows like I used to be. The Last Man on Earth was cancelled, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is coming back but not this fall, and I just can't do The Flash anymore. To be honest, I've been kind of sick of The Simpsons after they couldn't have handled their Apu controversy with less aplomb. I'm still super into everything...90s... but stopped regularly watching every week.

I mean, it wasn't that hard to because the show got terrible. STARTING WITH SEASON 28.

What did you watch this year?

02 January 2019

2018 Movie Watching Retrospective

This is one of my favorite times of the year, people. It's that moment where I tally up my insane movie-and-tv-tracking mission and see what I did over the past year. For the original big list, check this out:

2018
2017
2016
2015

This is getting a little out of hand. Luckily we have graphs.

-->
2015201620172018
Movies198220224249
First-Time Viewingsn/a117133157
First-Time View Percentagen/a53.2%59.4%63.1%
Streamingn/a5581157
Streaming Percentagen/a25.0%36.2%63.1%
TV86845510
TV Percentage43.4%38.2%24.6%4.0%
Theater10111216
Theater Percentage5.1%5.0%5.4%6.4%

In 2015 I didn't keep track of first-time viewings and lumped both Netflix Streaming and Netflix DVD together as "Netflix" for some reason. It was such a childish time. So while we don't have great data for that, we can see some other dramatic changes here. My first-time viewings have improved dramatically, which is good to see. In a truly staggering complete coincidence, I also streamed exactly 157 movies this year - I swear! I didn't quite realize how many movies I...didn't stream in years past. Even since 2017 I nearly doubled my streaming.

Check out movies on TV. I got rid of cable half-way through 2017 and you can see the results. Nearly a 90% drop in three years. My theater watching has been steady and I don't really get out as much as I should, but I happily watched the most movies in theaters than I ever have since I started keeping track of this!

Repeat viewings this year are almost exclusively Marvel Films. There's something just so easy about throwing it on Netflix a few months after watching. They just go down easy, and that's sort of the point. I saw THOR: Ragnarok (2017) three times, almost exclusively because my friends' kids were really into it. Ditto with Infinity War (2018). Other repeats were Black Panther (2018) and Step Brothers (2008).

Let's break down 2018 a little more:

By Media:

-->
MediumNumberPercentage
Amazon Prime10.40%
BluRay20.80%
Digital Download20.80%
DVD166.43%
Hulu3614.46%
Kanopy176.83%
Netflix DVD4618.47%
Netflix Streaming9538.15%
Roku10.40%
Theater166.43%
TV104.02%
Vimeo10.40%
YouTube62.41%
Total Streaming15763.05%

Last year I streamed 74 movies on Netflix and exactly 1 on Hulu. I did not know that Kanopy existed. My TV Channel breakdown used to be epic. Now it is not, but:

-->
ChannelMovies
AMC2
Comedy Central2
Comet2
Freeform1
FX1
HBO1
SyFy1

These channels are bizarre. Let's get into the years:

By Decade:

-->
DecadeNumberPercentage
1930s20.80%
1940s10.40%
1950s31.20%
1960s83.21%
1970s187.23%
1980s228.84%
1990s2811.24%
2000s4718.88%
2010s12048.19%

Getting a film from every decade going back to the 1930s was a big goal of mine. In 2017 my 2000 and above sat around 80%. We're around 67% this year. The 70s tripled, 60s quadrupled, and 80s and 90s also boosted. 70s almost matched the 80s after the 80s and 90s were largely equal last year. These are all positive developments.

Oldest Film: Dracula (1931)
Most Recent Film: VICE (December 25, 2018)

By Year:

-->
YearNumberPercentage
193910.40%
194410.40%
195820.80%
195910.40%
196010.40%
196210.40%
196310.40%
196831.20%
196920.80%
197010.40%
197120.80%
197210.40%
197310.40%
197420.80%
197531.20%
197620.80%
197720.80%
197810.40%
197931.20%
198010.40%
198110.40%
198210.40%
198331.20%
198420.80%
198520.80%
198620.80%
198731.20%
198862.41%
198910.40%
199010.40%
199141.61%
199220.80%
199341.61%
199431.20%
199531.20%
199610.40%
199720.80%
199852.01%
199931.20%
200020.80%
200120.80%
200231.20%
200331.20%
200452.01%
200531.20%
200672.81%
200741.61%
200893.61%
200993.61%
201052.01%
201152.01%
201252.01%
201341.61%
201452.01%
201572.81%
2016124.82%
20173413.65%
20184317.27%

It was a huge goal of mine to hit every year dating back to 1970. That was way harder than it seems. I ended up snagging every year back to 1968, which is pretty cool. I may not decide to do that again, but it was a good accomplishment and really made me realise how hard it is to search for these specific things. I also weirdly saw a lot of 1988 movies.

In terms of watching films that actually came out that year, in 2015 I had 27, then 35, 39, and this year 43. Good things!

By Month:

These are the films I saw in each month. I'm wondering if this is a worthwhile breakdown. It's still kind of fun I guess.

-->
MonthNumber
January15
July15
September16
June19
December21
February21
November21
May22
April23
October24
August25
March27

Average: 20.75 per month.

There's no rhyme or reason to this. March was my least movie month in 2017 and January was my most. Straight up. I'm not sure there's much use in keeping track for trends, but it's kind of fun.

Repeat Viewings

Films I saw in both 2018 and 2017 include:

-->
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Mad Max: Fury Road
Skyfall
The Departed
The Last Jedi
THOR: Ragnarok
Wonder Woman

Films I saw in both 2018 and 2016 include:

-->
The Witch
22 Jump Street
Jackass 3.5
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
JAWS
Sausage Party

I decided not to include films in both 2018 and 2015, because things will soon get exponentially ridiculous. I will say, however, that I've seen Step Brothers in 2016, 2017, and twice in 2018, meaning at four times it ties THOR: Ragnarok, which I've seen four times since 2017. I also have watched A Christmas Story every year for the past three years, but not in 2015.

And of course there's only one film I've seen every year since 2015 (since 2014, actually), which is The Interview. I need to keep up this streak for sure. I really like how this list is mostly popular comedies or big superhero movies but also The Witch (2016) in there.

This is a lot. I have some more thoughts about this year, such as my strong amount of Terry Gilliam films, all three Godfather movies, and a lot of Clint Eastwood that I ended up seeing. I think a more qualitative analysis deserves its own post. DON'T YOU?!

What does your movie watching look like? Is it totally insane? Are you totally insane? Movies!