100 Years of Great Films

Movies as a hobby is a somewhat recent development for me. I watched movies as a kid, sure, but that was largely dictated by what DVDs my Dad had picked up. Trips to the cinema happened, but were somewhat rare. I enjoyed movies as a way to pass the time, but would often be wary of committing to spending a couple of hours "just" on a movie. Especially when much more digestible TV Shows or the positively addictive well of YouTube videos was right there. Who has time to watch a 2 hour movie? But a dozen 10-minute YouTube videos flies by.

It began to shift in my final year at university, when one of my flatmates and I had a whiteboard (and later a Google Sheet) with a list of films we felt like we "should" have seen. Things like The Usual Suspects, which we'd heard referenced a lot but never actually watched. The Usual Suspects happens to be a movie that I enjoyed in the moment, coming off the high of its twist ending, but that I seem to like a little less every time I think about it. In a similar way, my thoughts about, and taste in, films has changed a lot in the years since.

Where my interest exploded was over the COVID lockdowns. Suddenly, there was so much time available to watch films and little time for anything else. Gathering friends for a watch party was a little reprieve from the isolation. Discovering Letterboxd and watching my stats and diary entries rack up definitely encouraged the completionist part of my brain as well. It was at this time that I set out to watch at least one from every of the last 100 years. 2020 seems a good time to set that milestone and 1920 is a somewhat legitimate starting point for cinema. The silent era of the 1920s being a bit better preserved that the decades prior. And so my 100 Years of Film journey was set as a target and, given the COVID volumes of film watching, quickly wrapped up in August on that year. I loved expanding my horizons and exploring deep into the territory of old movies across genres, countries, languages, directors, styles... it ignited my love of movies new and old.

But there was a problem. For some of the years, the movie I had picked was, well, a bit naff. A disappointment. And so, I decided I should set out on my "Quest for the Best". I wanted to make sure every year had an entry which I had rated as least three stars out of five, which is my tipping point for saying that I liked it.

As an aside, this 3 star tipping point was actually inspired by my university flatmate - although he later waned on the philosophy - as he felt that there was no point in trying to distinguish between the different levels of bad. They are just bad. My ratings try to follow the five star scale, no half ratings, of how I felt about the film:

• 1 Star - Bad. Boring. I did not enjoy myself. In some ways, the worst sin a film can commit is being dull and that is what most often lands a film in the dustbin of single stardom.

• 2 Star - Okay. Not bad, not terrible. Just okay. It passed the time. I also use this a lot as my "not for me" category for all those movies that have something about them, but not quite enough to win me round.

• 3 Star - I liked it. It gets a little heart on Letterboxd. I try not to bow too much to peer pressure, or a desire to "cultivate" a stricter distribution, and be honest when I found myself liking a film.

• 4 Star - A stand out. The more films that I watch, the harder it is for something to stand out from the crowd. But films manage it still and set themselves above the pack.

• 5 Star - An emotional connection. It has to really make me feel something. That might be joy, tension, sadness, fear... whatever. But you have to feel something for it to be a truly 5 star experience.

I'm also a big believer in accepting how subjective a rating is going to be. It'll be skewed by how I felt on the day. Or who I watched it with. Whether I watched it at home, or in the cinema. So I rate that experience of watching the film - which Letterboxd's diary system is fantastic at enabling. You can change your mind and don't need to worry about retroactively changing scores. I've very little interest in trying to achieve "consensus". I want to stand by my own opinions and hear the weird and the wacky preferences from others. Just rate how you felt! There's no such thing as "so bad, it is good" - that's just a good movie that you had fun with. And if a movie seems "crafted", but bored you, then don't give it the benefit of the doubt. It's always more interesting to hear someone's opinion unswayed by the reviews of others. One of my favourite reviews is the one in which Roger Ebert gave consistently panned Cars 2 a rating of 3.5 out of 4.

With all that said, my new Quest is a lot harder than my original 100 years challenge. Now, watching a film from that year is no longer a guaranteed gap filled. I may not like it and get sent back to seek another. On my first pass, I had tried to seek a variety of cinema but this time I went for more likely candidates.

In August this year, 6 years after my original list, I watched Heaven Can Wait and... my Quest is complete. Yay!

I could go further: chasing 4s, or 5s; ensuring I've seen at least two or more from each year for fair comparison; reevaluating those 3s with a more critical eye years later. My viewing volumes definitely skew towards films released in my lifetime, so I would like to spend more time visiting the pre-90s, but I think I am happy without a set challenge for a little while. We will have to see how long it takes for inspiration to strike!

For now, I am just happy to have seen all these little slices of history.

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