Due to a friend’s recommendation about a year ago, I signed up on Letterboxd, a sort-of social media for film buffs. The first movie I logged was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, a classic. Now that I’ve been logging the movies I watched, I’m going to use my Letterboxd diary to analyze some of the movies that I saw this year.
My favorite movie from the school year: Parasite I saw Parasite when I came home to Sacramento from Boston for Christmas break and I was totally blown away. Parasite totally deserved the Oscars that it won this year. It had a great combination of genres that culminated in a movie that gave great performances, insane twists, and an overall fantastic experience.
Longest movie I watched: The Irishman Okay even though this was the longest movie that I saw this year, it didn’t really feel like it. I got the chance to see it in the theaters instead of Netflix, so that might’ve made it easier. I’m not really sure why so many people were surprised at the length of the movie since so many of Scorsese’s other movies are three hours or nearly three hours, like Casino, Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, and more.
Shortest movie I watched: Westworld As a big fan of science fiction, I really enjoyed Westworld. I think that the length of the movie was perfect for the content that it had. I think that if it were any longer, it would have dragged out with scenes that weren’t necessarily important. The film gives you all that you might need from this story line: seeing the two main characters explore Western World, you see scenes of the other worlds (Medieval World and Roman World), and malfunctioning robots trying to kill the main character. I loved this one and I was totally entertained throughout. Also I might be the only one who sees this but James Brolin totally looks like he could be played by Christian Bale. I cannot unsee it.
(New) director that I watched the most of: Martin Scorsese I saw The Departed a few years ago and since then it has been one of my favorite movies, but for some reason before this year I never really dived into any of Scorsese’s other works. Big mistake, because it turns out that I love most of his movies and I wish I had seen them sooner. I watched his first movie, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Irishman, Casino, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore this past year and I still have many more to go before I complete his filmography.
Most moving (new) movie that I saw: Paths of Glory I didn’t know what to expect when going into Paths of Glory. Many of Kubrick’s movies make it into my favorites list, but this one seemed different than most of the ones that I had seen and I haven’t watched a lot of his earlier filmography. I had seen it labeled as anti-war, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to culminate to that since it does depict World War One. Paths of Glory really moved me. I was delightfully surprised at its content, half courtroom drama, half war film.
How many movies I rewatched: 40-something I am the kind of person that loves to watch movies over and over again. This year in particular, it was Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, as I am now into double digits with that one. Many of the letterboxd rewatches that I did this year weren’t as excessive as that, and were mainly just me watching other movies that I love but have seen before.
Favorite movie of 2019: Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood Although I saw this before the school year started, I saw it many times into each semester as well. It was the first movie I saw of 2020 and I anticipate I will watch it many more times throughout the coming year.