My Year in Movies (2022)
Quantity, quality, trends, and future goals.
2022 was both a volatile and stayed year, broadly and personally. I started the year unemployed, I was extremely fortunate in being hired onto the initial team at The Sports Bra, the country’s (world’s?) first sports bar exclusively catered to women’s sports. After some growth and decay within that business, in an organic and reasonable manner, I phased out of my position there, and am once again unemployed.
Even when I was working, I’ve had a ton of down time during the nine-to-five timeslot. It was productive and nourishing to use this time to search for work, but also to learn and lean into film projects and homework. Spending the fruitful hours of the day on things I enjoy and want to be doing was a true pleasure.
This schedule allowed me to watch the most movies I’ve logged (230) since I started logging everything in 2019 (excluding 2020 (267 films), which for obvious reasons was the easiest year to watch a metric ton of them).
I started and ended the year with movies on New Year’s Eve. I’m a bit surprised that I never saw a movie more than twice, as I typically latch onto at least one film’s vibe, such that I return to it for comfort and grounding. The closest candidate to that this year was Todd Haynes’ THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (2021), which I believe I can, and will, watch annually until time stops. Also, I hosted a TOP GUN (1986) showing, and then went to TOP GUN: MAVERICK (2022) twice in theaters (once opening weekend, then a week later in IMAX).
I’m happy that I watched mostly new-to-me-things, and also mostly not-new releases. I had a minor goal of watching more things that were older than I am, and it was an exciting and educational decision.
As far as rating movies go, I’m torn. I am always dancing across the line in the sand, thinking that applying a narrow range of numeric values to movies is either helpful, or hollow. Currently, I’m mostly not rating the movies I watch, but I am loosely ordering movies by “favorite” in my yearly lists. One thing that my rating spread reveals that is true to my beliefs is this: Movies Are Good.
Some projects that defined my selections this year were: reading THE METHOD: HOW THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LEARNED TO ACT (2022)and watching some iconic actors do their thing; re-listening to MIKE NICHOLS: A LIFE (2021), an audiobook I love dearly, and starting the Nichols filmography chronologically; as always, watching along with my favorite movie podcast Blank Check, which this year covered Sam Raimi and Stanley Kubrick, among others. It was the first time I saw most of Kubrick’s films and, lord, that man is talented and political and ironic and good. I watched a box set of four Basil Dearden films, which included one of my favorite finds of the last couple of years, ALL NIGHT LONG (1962). I also listened to the book about the making of CHINATOWN (1974), titled THE BIG GOODBYE: CHINATOWN AND THE LAST YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD (2020). Good book, good movie.
In 2023, I have a couple of goals. In terms of programming and hosting people for movies, I will be leaning hard into the new Hayao Miyazaki film, and watching everything he’s previously made, and hopefully screen two or three or four of them for my friends. I also want to finally tell on myself and screen Terrence Malick’s TREE OF LIFE (2011), a movie that I’ve said many times is so important to me that I would never watch it with even a single other living being. It’s time to move past that insecurity, and share something, even, and especially, if others feel differently about it (they will). Of course, I’ll read more about Hollywood, and check more boxes, eliminate more blind spots, and watch a ton of 2023 releases. Finally, since just going for it with this publication has been a healthy and enriching choice, I want to push forward with another creative project that I may as well put out into the world now, if only to apply more encouragement to myself: start a (movie) podcast. More on that, hopefully, in the future.
It was a good year! The new releases might have had fewer five-star affairs than a typical year, but that is leading into a very stacked 2023 schedule, at least for major marquee titles. It’s going to be a good year.
As always, I’d love to hear how your year in movies (or books, or television, or pottery, or stage plays, or music, or coloring books, or puzzles) was. What did you discover about the things people made? What did you discover about yourself?
Most of you reading this are already subscribed. I’m thankful for that. If there’s someone out there whose taste you like, or who could use some taste influencing, I encrouage you to share with them, and with me.
I’ll be back next week, hopefully writing about one of the recent great movies I’ve seen.
TTFN,
B