Join me as I Julie & Julia my life through film.
According to my Letterboxd account, which I set up this summer* while consuming films as if they were my only derivations of pleasure in This Life, I’ve watched over 1,300 movies (I’m calling them “movies” because it’s more inclusive of the fact that realizations such as Rob Bowman’s Elektra (2005) starring Jennifer Garner have homes on this list). In late June, I spent a span of a few days foaming at the mouth while tracing fragmented memories of one movie to another until I was confident that I’d marked-as-watched at least a majority of the things I can remember seeing throughout my stupid little life. Some I’d seen within the last year or two or seven, some I’d screened in tandem with classes over the years, and some I’d rented from my local Blockbuster or maybe watched at a friend’s house or maybe hallucinated a viewing experience.
*For the historians reading this from their subaquatic desks, this was Covid-19 Summer 2020!
My goal (imagine if I wrote “dream”…) is to complete, over the course of this next year, a musing on every feature film, movie, or work of cinema (CHi-nə-mə) I’ve ever seen. Because I don’t know how else to do so, I plan to proceed in alphabetical order by title, and this will, according to the mathematics I did on my iPhone 7’s Calculator app, result in roughly 25 musings per week. If you’re here salivating for some A.O. Scottian write-ups or Anthony Lanean reviews for these films, I’m afraid you’ll wither away from the sheer lack of critical rigor—my reflections will mostly skim across the surface, or engage in an obsessive deep-dive; some will favor what I remember about the viewing contexts over all else; most will be comprised of any recollections that come to the surface. Of course, key scenes, notable lines (unlikely because I don’t do well with quotes as I am not Cam Jansen (a throwback for the girls)!), absurd characters, abrasive set designs, and anything else I might remember, including vague or just plain incorrect summaries, will make appearances as well. When applicable, I’ll note where or how I watched, and if I don’t, it’s because I probably did so via the 13” screen of my 2013 MacBook Air <3 (this is presumably a nauseating amount).
Electing to “study” “film” [REDACTED] years ago (a lady never shares her true age) left me feeling largely unequipped to do so, at nobody’s fault but my own. I’m still navigating the throes of accepting that there will always be films I haven’t seen but for whatever reason feel inclined to insist I’ve “seen parts of”, directors whose names I can nod along with while unable to enumerate a single characteristic, and film festivals I could not, at this stage in my life and burgeoning debt, justify paying to attend. And that’s… ok. We should be working with our own lexicons, not those of everyone else, like those of people who might experience a full-body orgasm when they say “Tarkovsky” (I have never seen a Tarkovsky film), or others who might be tempted to invalidate someone else’s queer identity because they haven’t seen The Devil Wears Prada (reader, it took me many years).
This is largely an exercise in dislocated and piecemeal autobiography, or perhaps indexical memoir, or maybe it’s just a project of pure, unmessy self-indulgence. So, if you’re willing to both flatter me and inundate yourself with movies you probably haven’t thought about in years, please subscribe! I’m encouraging anyone with their own recollections of the films to share in comments—it can almost be like, I don’t know, a place for people to connect? A forum? I also urge anyone noticing trends and/or holes in my viewing pattern (i.e. the racial, gendered, regional makeup of filmmakers; the subject matter) to hold me accountable (I’m sure it’s bleak given many years of lacked perspective, for example to this day no one will tell me what “gay” is)! This can be a projection into the future of film-watching just as much as it’s a revisiting of the past.
I am fervently in love with anyone who has read this far, so to those of you: thank you for coming along and send me your ring size.
Matthew
