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DVRfest 2023 (11.10.23 - 11.13.23, 14 movies)

Date Viewed	Movie	Director	Notes
11.10.23	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson	Hey this site still exists! I watched a movie, everybody! Not only that, It's a whole weekend of movies! Yep, DVRfest 2023 is officially started! It's no secret I have not been watching much lately, didn't go to Fantastic Fest this year... so there's plenty to pick from for my own personal fest, plenty to catch up on. Tonight is catching up on "new" movies, or maybe "big" movies that I missed, or maybe "the glaring ones I have to get through before diving into more interesting picks." Whatever you call it, the fest started with this animated sequel to the pretty Spider-Man thingy. Spider-Man was one of my favorite books as a kid when I went through my comics phase. I've probably mentioned that a dozen times on this journal as I've sat through bleh Spider-Man movies, terrible Spider-Man movies, decent Spider-Man movies, and good Spider-Man movies. My most common complaint is that with each reboot comes this need to tell us all about Uncle Ben and Aunt May and this origin story that takes half the movie. But then a movie came along that leveraged that trope into a fun multi-verse story taking wild comics-only Spider-people and mashing them together and everyone was surprised because it was really good and the animation was great and changed from universe to universe and everyone was impressed. Then they basically did the same thing but with the film Spider-Men and again everyone was surprised and impressed that they took all these struggling rebooted franchises with good actors in varying degrees of crappy movies and mashed them together and it was great. But then this movie comes along and does the same thing... a third time... with even more Spider-people from increasingly obtuse storylines and uses kinda the same plot as the previous movies... and is super long, then ends on a cliffhanger and a promise of a third... third movie. It's kinda... I mean there's only so far you can go through the looking glass before the novelty wears off and you're up your own ass. Yes, this movie was gorgeous and it's so dense you have to pause to see everything and it's really slick and colorful and vibrant. It's still good, and I liked it... but I do think it falls victim to the typical sequel thing of "the same but MORE!" And now I don't even get a resolution? So there's the MCU I gotta remember (side note, Loki season 2 is like the same EXACT plot), and the non-MCU Sony Spider-Man live-action universe of Venom and Kraven and Morbius and shit... AND the animated Spider-Verse Multiverse? Which acknowledges the others but is also separate from? THat's a lot of shit when I just want to watch a movie for a couple hours. Again, I can't stress enough how pretty the movie is. The art and animation styles are once again so expressive. I did have a good time watching this. I guess not knowing it was a part-2-of-3 was a little jarring though. Guess I'll be prepared for the next one. So that got the palate activated, but what's next? Well, the biggest movie of the year!
11.10.23	Barbie	Greta Gerwig	Oppenheimer is not available for home viewing yet so I couldn't do the double feature like this summer but... that's probably ok because I think the movies have nothing to do with each other anyway. Instead, this is kind of an examination of the toy line in an entertaining and girl-empowering way. I can see how the entire right hates the movie because it says words like patriarchy over and over again which I guess is triggering for some, but really let's be honest: this is a movie for young girls. As such, there are some jokes in here for the parents but just like any pixar film or other kids movie you can't be upset if there's some actual moral behind it. Although... I mean it's cool that Mattel could poke a little fun at itself (although I noticed they had a perfect part in the movie for one of the Barbies to say "math is hard" and they didn't... guess that one still stings) but I also bet a new generation of girls wants some damn barbies for christmas. I guess similar to the above paragraph, you can't go to a movie called Barbie and also be outraged at the marketing. In terms of what I thought of it... I liked it alright. Didn't love it, it felt a tad too long, but I didn't dislike it either and I can't imagine a better Barbie movie so there's that. Parts of it were fun. I hate to say, but Ryan Gosling kinda stole it. Ken's journey was much more interesting and entertaining than Barbie's. Without Ken, this movie would've been really not great. ok! So, my website shit the bed trying to add the last entry and I'd rather watch movies than try and troubleshoot or engage with support on a friday night, so who knows when these notes will make it online but rest assured I'm writing them in realtime. Next up is a movie I'm legit psyched to see.
11.10.23	The Killer	David Fincheer	New David Fincher!!! And it's not Mank! It's about a hitman! That's cool! Actually, the plot is 100% what seemingly every movie about a hitman is about, but this movie is more about execution than innovation. You're watching Michael Fassbender and in his head via the narration with a cold methodical precision that could just as easily have been about David Fincher if the movie was about making a movie rather than killing people professionally. So the pairing of directorial style and subject is just about perfect here, enough to make me forget about the familiar plot and go along for the ride. In that mode, I really enjoyed it. I like a movie where the hitman listens to The Smiths. I do with the plot was a little different, but I guess that came from the graphic novel source material. I also kind of wish for a version of the film without the voice-over as then it would be nearly dialogue-free. In that way it reminded me of the George Clooney movie The American, or at least the first half of it. The voice-over definitely adds color and I think the movie needs it, but it's also great that the film is so visual that we spend most of it watching Fassbender work in silence. I'd still trade it for a third season of Mindhunter in an instant, but oh well. I'm happy with this. I think there's time left for one more recent movie and I think we'll stick with the Netflix thriller genre and give this Benicio Del Toro movie a try.
11.10.23	Reptile	Grant Singer	Benicio is looking pretty low-energy in this police procedural mystery, but more in a haggard Richard Price way than phoning it in. This actually reminded me a lot of the first season of True Detective and Prisoners although not as weird or brutal. Instead it was just a solid thriller that kept my attention and did some interesting stuff. There's some Jonathan Demme-esque looking straight at the camera in there, some hints of Robert Towne or James Ellroy with the twists and turns, and solid performances throughout. I got everything I was hoping to get from this, which was something akin to the late Philip Seymore Hoffman's movie A Most Wanted Man where you get to watch a smart guy be good at his job. I suppose you could describe The Killer in the same way, but I was less sure about this one so maybe more pleasantly surprised. I'd write more but it's late and I'm tired. Plus this is just the beginning. Tomorrow is going to be interesting.
11.11.23	Wild Strawberries	Ingmar Bergman	As has become tradition, today will be devoted to two gods: Fate and the Criterion Collection. I'm down to 8(!) criterion dvds/blu-rays that I've never seen, a couple of which have been sitting on the shelf for like 20 years. The good news is that a huge chunk of these (probably not all) will get watched today! The bad news is that there's one movie here with a running time of 287 minutes so if that one comes up my day is pretty much set. So I've got my d8 at the ready... let's see what's first? roll: 2 spine: 139 I can't say that I'm the biggest Bergman fan. I saw (and own) Seventh Seal back when I was going through those top 100 lists and of course didn't love it. Since then I've more or less avoided following up even with the films I hear mentioned more nowadays like Persona and Virgin Spring. But back then when I was in my film snob phase I bought this disc thinking "i should see this" and it immediately felt like homework. 20-some odd years later and I finally cross it off the list. There were many such purchases by the way. That's largely why this tradition exists. I'd probably never watch this movie if a made-up rule and a roll of the die didn't bind me to do it. I must admit I did more or less sit through this one. I get that it's really well regarded, and think maybe some of the dreams were pretty new and inventive back in the day... and maybe, like Ozu lovers, Bergman fans like to settle down and slow their roll and lollygag through a film as contemplative as this one but I had a hard time focusing. So now I've seen two Bergman movies. Am I motivated to watch more? Probably not. I'm not saying this was a terrible movie, but it's not for me. Once upon a time I'd have felt pressure to like it but these days I don't care. Bergman has enough fans, I don't need to force myself into that club. Maybe someday I'll watch Persona and that will change my mind... but until then, Next!
11.11.23	Metropolitan	Whit Stillman	roll: 3 spine: 326 Last year I watched Last Days of Disco and liked it so I picked up this and Barcelona to complete the "set." Depending on how I roll I may get to watch both today, we'll see. For now, let's watch Whit Stillman's first movie. I don't know about you, but every once in a while a movie comes along that so perfectly describes your own life experience that it's not only like the movie is about you but it's also like the actors are playing people you knew. You know... late night black-tie after parties, talking about social mores and discourse, sipping tipples in upper east side apartments. giving your tophat to a new friend. That sort of thing. I suppose if I were Whit Stillman then all of that might be true, but for the most part, watching this movie, I was astonished at how foreign this scene is. Beyond foreign. Alien. How crazy was the birth of 90s american independent cinema that you had these kids, Do the Right Thing, and King of New York all happening at the same time? People talk about the magic of New York City... it's right there. How can one metroplex contain such drastically different viewpoints!? Throw in Night on Earthk, Johnny Suede and In the Soup a year or two later and you have quite the cinematic stew going. It's funny, having watched it first, to think about Last Days of Disco being the polished bigger budget version of a Stillman film, but I suppose it makes sense. At its heart this movie is the same - it's about a group of friends hanging out and talking - but the sets are more modest, the photography less slick, and the actors a few years younger. I can't help but think of this whole graduating class of actors coming from this era... the post-modern educated upper/middle class white kids... as one body, and then I watch this movie and find out that it's literally true. I think of them as all the same because they're all in every one of these movies! Just a moment of appreciation for that early wave of 90s indies that hit video store shelves. None of them played local theaters for me, but thanks to the previews in front of rental VHSs I feel like I knew about all of them. You'd rent Reservoir Dogs and get a trailer for Barcelona, Gas Food Lodging, and Bad Lieutenant. Watching Miller's Crossing would let you know about Roger & Me, Drugstore Cowboy, Sex, Lies, & Videotape. That was the start of what became late-decade shit like Pi and Rushmore and Kids, Swingers, Welcome to the Dollhouse... culminating in 1999: arguably the best year for movies since my birth. It was a hell of a time to come of age and spend hours in a video store staring at box art wondering if Lair of the White Worm was gonna have naked women in it or not. Anyway, back to the deb parties and preppy kids (sorry, Urban Haute Bourgeoisie). I liked this more than Wild Strawberries which is funny because it's no faster paced or more exciting... I think just by virtue of being in English and made thirty years later I found it more palatable. For all of there homogeneity I do like actors like Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols (who I most closely associate with an early 2000s hbo show called Mind of the Married Man) so it's fun to see them so so young. So evocative of its time and place in cinematic history, but also tinged with a bit of nostalgia for me and right in my strike zone for witty dialogue that borders on too arch (is that my strike zone? huh!). So basically exactly what I thought about Last Days of Disco a year ago. I have a hunch that I'll feel the exact same for Barcelona. Next!
11.11.23	Until the End of the World	Wim Wenders	roll: 6 spine: 1007 Well I suppose it had to happen sometime. At least it's not midnight. Really if I was PLANNING to watch a nearly 5-hour movie this would be the best time to start! I've more or less liked the other Wim Wenders movies I've seen (Paris, Texas; Wings of Desire; Buena Vista Social Club; the documentary for making of Million Dollar Hotel), and a sci-fi road movie sounds fun!Iincidentally, this is the only thing I know about this movie; it was a complete blind-buy. So... See you on the other side??? Ah ok this is the director's cut. The theatrical cut was around three hours. That makes more sense, like how Ridley Scott's talking about his 5-hour Napolean cut. In that context, it's still a really fucking long movie but at least there's some context. And to be honest, sometimes the length helps a movie to feel suitable epic or momentous. Then again, sometimes not. This was a bit of both. When I try to imagine a three hour cut of this I'm not sure what they would cut. Certainly there's plenty that can go, but they can make a broad range of different movies there. If they tried to fit everything in - all the locations and all the stuff in the second half - that'd make for a pretty abreviated experience to be sure. However, you could make an "ultimate road trip" movie with just the fist half of the film, or you could make a sci-fi movie with just the second half. The road trip stuff really comes to a screeching halt when they reach Australia and kind of becomes a different movie. They work together... kinda... in a few ways that are nice, but I kinda think Wim Wenders had an idea to make a movie in Australia and conned the producers into letting him travel across the globe for a while too. Did I mention that it's fucking long? It's past midnight now. It basically killed the day. And I'm not afraid of long movies... I watched Intolerance, I sat through Snaked on a Plane for an entire day... if it was available when I was watching silents I probably would've seen the 8-hour cut of Erich von Stroheim's Greed. Part of me couldn't help but compare this to Fassbinder's World on a Wire (which was technically a TV movie like a 2-night deal) which isn't fair. For one this movie came out in the early 90s which feels odd to me. I wasn't expecting so much early CGI, although picturing a future where search software is called "Bounty Bear" where a 3d-model of a bear walks along a digital street looking in buildings saying "I'm searching... hold on a minute... found him" is pretty hilarious. Although I should say they nailed the car dashboard maps and video calls... so all the future stuff (the film is set in 1999) is pretty fun. Like most of the cars are these boxy 80s things then there's a random buck rogers rocket-car out of nowhere. There's not much actual speculation in setting the film in the future though... mostly I'm surprised they had budget to production design these future props and wardrobe and still go literally around the world to shoot. The stuff in Australia is really where it enters Altered States territory, but with early digital imagery that looks like stock CG effects now but was probably pretty novel back then. And the soundtrack is also pretty great. Stuff like Julee Cruise and Can mixed in with U2, REM, and Lou Reed. In the end, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm glad I watched it, and there were segments which I found captivating. But there were also times where I'd check the time and think "it's been 80 minutes and I have no idea what this movie is" or "well, only 3 hours left." The ending also definitely keeps going to the point where I was like "end already geez." Minor spoiler alert (it's in the damn title) but there's a sorta-kinda apocalyptic event in the movie and I thought "oh, poetic ending. nice framing device." but there was 2 HOURS left!!! There was a whole movie's worth of movie after I thought it was ending! Those last two hours were the most interesting to me. ok. 1am. The bad news is I'm not getting through this pile today but the good news is I have time for one more. Next!
11.11.23	Quai Des Orfevres	Henri-Georges Clouzot	roll: 2 spine: 193 I can't remember when I bought this french noir from Henri-Georges Clouzot. I remember renting Diabolique after hearing Clouzot was like a French Hitchcock and not liking it much, but I think Wages of Fear is a legit masterpiece. Which side will this film fall on? let's find out. Well, I fell asleep. Being drowsy doesn't really work when you have to read subtitles. AKA Jenny Lamour (i think the original title is the location of police headquarters), this must be a pretty early french noir if the story holds true that french filmmakers didn't see any 40s american pictures until after the war. The plot is pretty straight-forward in a kind of Hitchcock vein, where a jealous husband sneaks out to murder what he thinks is a tryst but shows up to find the guy already dead. So the cops think he did it because he set up an alibi with holes in it, but meanwhile it was the wife who actually did it and her alibi is shaky as well. At that point, it becomes the police inspector's movie as he tries to put all these pieces together. It was a pretty fun watch, but no Hitchcock in my opinion. No Wages of Sin either, although I guess this shows the seeds or something, being one of Clouzot's earlier hits (or perhaps his breakout hit as the back of the dvd case suggests). It would've made for a fine midnight movie but makes an even better Sunday matinee. And that puts a button on another year of Criterion random rolls. I halved the pile down to 4(!) which mean next year (assuming I don't go making a bunch of blind buys this year) I'll finally reach the end of the list. What happens then you might wonder? Well I know the answer but you'll just have to wait and see. As for tomorrow (today), we're diving back into my list of double features from earlier this year to make some room on the old hard drive.
11.12.23	The Private Eyes	Lang Elliott	Sticking with a Sunday Matinee theme, I figured I'd start with a double feature of crack investigators, starting with this Tim Conway / Don Knotts mystery in the vein of Murder by Death or Clue. I saw this as a kid and remember loving it. Like LOVING it. There's an animated intro a la The Pink Panther, starring the dude from Three's Company and Dorf. What's not to like? I remember my mom saying it was "slapstick" humor and thinking "ok, i like slapstick." Well... having seen it again as an adult, I can say that this is not slapstick. It's also not funny. What was I thinking? Dumb kid... I guess I'm being too hard on my past self. I remember thinking it was so cool the bit with eyes cut out of paintings and secret passages and stuff, but whereas I think Clue has stood the test of time this really didn't. Maybe it's just Conway's brand of humor that I don't really connect with these days. I'm sure I might think Dorf is pretty dumb too but I definitely loved it as a kid. I never really watched Carol Burnett though so... I dunno. I'm a little disappointed that this wasn't more fun. Kinda feel like I squandered my one slot of the weekend to watch something I've seen before. Hopefully the next one will be good!
11.12.23	The Night Stalker	John Llewellyn Moxey	Darren McGavin is Carl Kolchak, ace reporter on the Las Vegas beat circa 1972, following a mysterious case of girls showing up dead that "have lost a lot of blood." I've heard about this movie/series on and off for years so I finally decided to give it a watch. I didn't know it was a TV movie but damn is it a good one. You've got early 70s OG vegas footage, you've got a cadre of old noir faces making up the supporting cast, you've got that groove-heavy 70s TV movie score, and you've got a Richard Matheson script. All in a tight 74 minute runtime. I quite liked this. Yes, it's a little rough around the edges, like some shots are just out of focus and the act breaks come out of nowhere, but there's also a lot of charm and style going on. It definitely has that 70s vibe that stands alongside stuff like Duel. and Don Siegel. I really only know Darren McGavin as Ralphie's dad from A Christmas Story (and his performance there lives on forever) but hs same shtick kind of works as a reporter too. Mostly it's just a great premise. Something akin to a Stephen King story (in fact, his short story The Night Flyer feels borderline homage). A very fun watch. Actually, let's keep this train rolling and turn a double feature into a triple feature.
11.12.23	The Night Strangler	Dan Curtis	So according to imdb trivia, Kolchak started as a TV movie that did very well so they made another one. A third was in the works but ABC turned it into a series instead. Now, I'm not gonna track down the entire series but the internet did provide both movies which is great. This time it's Seattle rather than Vegas and other than the newspaper boss the rest of the cast has been swapped out. Al Lewis instead of Elisha Cook Jr., John Carradine instead of Charles McGraw. The killer is also a bit less iconic albeit still supernatural. It's also clear that there's a bunch of back-lot and studio photography here with just bits of Seattle location footage interspersed. Which was still cool by the way. I'm not sure I've seen a movie shot in Seattle around then, it looked pretty cool. I also hadn't heard of the Seattle underground which I guess is a real thing. It was still fun, but not as good as the first. Still, it's good to finally know what the hell this show was about, and it seems like a pretty cool concept, a little bit like the Friday the 13th series or, I don't know... was Psych like this? I didn't watch Psych. Well somehow the day has gotten away from me. It's already past midnight and I was feeling it by the end of this. I'm going to ditch another double feature and just try to get one midnight movie watched before passing out.
11.12.23	Dead End Drive-In	Brian Trenchard-Smith	This has been on the list ever since seeing that Ozploitation doc way back when at Fantastic Fest. From the visuals it looked like a post apocalyptic thing but it seems more like a bizarre future of gearhead punk rock and the drive-in is less of a fort or outpost or whatever I might've thought and more of a surreal prison where people can't leave. I liked it ok although I do have to say that I had a problem with the logic of it. The whole premise is this guy takes his brother's(?) car to the drive-in on a date with his girlfriend but the cops steal two wheels while he's fooling around. He's got one spare but without that second wheel he's stuck. Except there's like a drive-in's worth of cars there and many obviously have wheels. He says he needs a Chevy wheel, I guess to return it in good condition, but pretty quickly the car gets tagged with graffiti so... just get out of there, man. But then he gets a chevy wheel off a different wreck but he's run out of petrol. Same deal. He's gotta gas can and a siphon tube and there are cars literally all around him. One of them has to have gas? Just get out of there, man! Then his brother's(?) tow truck shows up in the drive-in to drop off wrecks! Wave him down! Hop a ride! Just. Get. Out of there. Man!? To be fair, I think they used that red and white tow truck more out of budget necessity than story, and really the mechanics of why he's stuck there I think are not supposed to be paramount compared to the commentary that's being made about society within the drive-in... i get all that, but I still couldn't help but see all the wheels everywhere constantly all around him. I will say, this was a pretty bizarre and ambitious aim for a genre picture. I can see the meeting with the financiers: Brian Trenchard Smith: "So yeah, we're gonna have weird hacked vehicles with roll-bars kinda like Mad Max and they're gonna be in this crazy future where tow trucks race to pick up the carnage of wrecks while roving gangs of gearheads swoop in and raid cars for parts, but then it's gonna be this great allegorical purgatory that they get stuck in and these immigrants will be bussed in and there will be racial tension." money men: "will it have two sets of tits and a car chase?" BTS: "...yep, it'll have those as well." MNM: "sold!"
11.13.23	Fort Apache	John Ford	I took today off so I could stay up late last night but I've got time enough for one more double feature I think to wind this... ragtag DVRfest to a close. This pairing was 100% title. One of those stupid programming ideas which is probably why i'm not an actual film programmer. Fort Apache is a John Ford western starring John Wayne (looking young even at 40) and Henry Fonda as a hard-assed general custer type. It's full on John Ford: Monument Valley, rousing score, dinner tables, dances. This is also the first in what's considered Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" along with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. As with most movies from the golden era of Hollywood, you kind of have to slow your pace a bit and try to put yourself back in a time before the internet when people actually had attention spans. But it's also fun to think that this movie was made as long ago as the events of the movie were when they made it. That's part of the magic of movies... to see these glimpses in time both in the storytelling and the artifice of the craft of moviemaking. Also, you know when a movie is good when it's two hours long made by a bunch of dead people and you aren't bored by one minute of it. While much of this I'd consider a classical western, perhaps the very definition, the story is still pretty nuanced and complex. You've got Fonda there being a hard-ass but it's all mixed up between military etiquette and him being a father and also him being naive to his post and searching for glory. You've got Duke Wayne the wise captain who still must abide by command, you've got a somewhat typical romeo and juliet romance (made interesting on a meta level because they were played by grown-up Shirley Temple and her husband... she was pregnant while filming but John Ford gave him a such a hard time that he almost quit were it not for Wayne's help and acting tutelage... but the couple would soon go through a public divorce with mention of alcoholism and abuse (all of this is from the imdb trivia so hopefully it's true)), and you've also got the meat and potatoes entertainment engine of these experienced seargents training new recruits. So it's a drama, western, war movie, and little bit of romance all rolled into one. Then you have the portrayal of the apache peoples (many actual navajos but speaking roles going to mexican actors) as more formidable and complicated than just a convenient faceless enemy. The plot isn't complicated but the story is made complex by the characters. To me it so represents how good hollywood used to be at manufacturing dreams. So it's not like some huge revelation that this movie is good but I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed it. When I was a kid, John Wayne was my mom's (and her sisters') favorite movie star. They'd make up quizzes to test each other with trivia. As such, I was never interested in being told what was good so I avoided watching/liking all his movies for most of my life. Well, as it turns out, there's a reason he was so beloved! He's pretty damn good here, and not as the swaggering drawling older leading man but an actual doing-the-work supporting role where he totally shines among an entire cast of interesting characters. Who would've thought! Anyway. Time for one more.
11.13.23	Fort Apache, The Bronx	Daniel Petrie	Trading the dangerous territory of the old west for late 70s/early 80s South Bronx, this cop movie stars Paul Newman as the experienced cop and Ed Asner as the new hardass captain. Other than that, the two films aren't really related except where the cops decorate the precinct with native american stuff because the neighborhood is so tough that it's like a fort in enemy territory rather than a normal police precinct. I liked this a lot, but I suspect that's more because it fits into the genre of grimy-nyc 70s movies than anything else. Lots of location photography, lots of local extras and bit roles. Young-ish Danny Aiello as a creepface cop, and Rachel Ticotin (who I mostly know from Total Recall) as a nurse/love interest to twice-her-age Paul Newman. It bears resemblance to Across 110th Street but probably a higher budget and this largely feels a little late in the genre. It definitely has more of a 70s vibe than 80s although post-apocalyptic stuff like 1990: Bronx Warriors is only a year away... Yeah now that I look a few movies up, Warriors was 79, Cruising was 80... I guess nyc was definitely still a shithole in 1981. I also want to note for the record that at one point in this movie, Newman has both a cigarette and a toothpick in his mouth. That's a move that even Paul Newman can't pull off. So yeah this was fun. Cops and drug dealers, pimps, riots, roof-jumpers, and Pam Grier as a dusthead maniac. What's not to like? And that's it! Another year down. I didn't fit as many movies in this year as I'd like but what else is new. Maybe if I retire some day I will really go all out and have this last 10 days like a real festival. Judging by the amount of junk food I've eaten over the weekend I'm not sure my colon could survive that long, but there's only one way to find out! In the meantime, this will have to do. I still had fun and since I didn't go to Fantastic Fest this is probably the most movies I've watched in a week all year. Speaking of, here's the rundown on the numbers. Movies Seen: 14 in the past week (2/day), 14 in the past month (0.47/day), 77 in the past year (0.21/day), and 3454 since the site started (0.5/day). Ouch. Not my worst year but that doesn't mean it's good. Yet this journal continues... Best not to dwell on these, we'll see how next year goes. It's always fun how whatever random films I watch, patterns and connections still emerge. Like how Peter Carey wrote both Until the End of the World and the short story used for Dead End Drive-In, or how both Metropolitan and Quai des Orfevres use the term "egotist." I do think there's a little bit of magic in here and I hope to be able to continue this tradition indefinitely. There's always more movies - more good movies - to discover, cross off the list, or dredge up from childhood and revisit. Maybe one year i'll dedicate a day to my mom's favorites or my dad's favorites since I got my love of movies from them. Maybe one year I'll have someone over to watch with me so it won't be a one-person festival. Nah...