Why am I doing this?
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...
A question nobody's asked me, but which I'm going to answer anyway is "What made you decide to watch one hundred years of movies over the course of a decade?" And, the answer is that Star Wars made me do it. Yep, my movie watching marathon actually began with George Lucas' epic space-based soap opera.
Back at the beginning of 2017 - on 1st January in fact so literally right at the very beginning of the year, I'd had a nice relaxing day and chose to end it by watching a film. But rather than just sticking one on TV, I decided to make an event of it. I got the house tidy, set up my front room with some ambient lighting, lit the tealight candles that exist around the house usually for decorative purposes, grabbed a drink and some snacks, and got myself comfortable.
The film I chose to watch was Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. I wanted to watch the entire series in order as I'd had The Force Awakens for Christmas. Phantom Menace isn't the greatest of the series, although it does seem to have got better somehow with time, but I thoroughly enjoyed my evening. So much so, that the following Saturday evening, I did the same again. Well, almost the same. I watched Attack of the Clones. Watching the same film as the previous week would have been a little strange. Every subsequent Saturday, I watched the next film in the franchise, until I'd caught up with the latest one. And it became something I really looked forward to each weekend.
The way I watched the Star Wars movies at the beginning of 2017 made them feel more meaningful - like they had weight again. I'm sure this is something else I'll write about at some point, like how films have somehow lost their value due to them being more readily available. After Star Wars, I wanted to continue watching films in a similar way. But how? I thought about picking another franchise. Star Trek perhaps, or Indiana Jones or Jurassic Park Or, I could pick a theme. Space films for a while, then comedies, then horror.
But, I decided to watch films from a particular year instead. On a Thursday evening towards the end of February 2017, I picked out Gattaca to watch on Now TV. I'd never watched it before, but caught a few minutes of it a few weeks earlier, and what I saw intrigued me, I decided to watch that. It was only when it finished that I spotted it was made in 1997. It astounded me that it was 20 years old, and it got me thinking of other films I watched in 1997 - films like Austin Powers, Tomorrow Never Dies, Good Will Hunting, Men in Black, Hercules. They really didn't feel like 20 year old films. But I thought, why don't I just watch films from 1997? And then in the following month, I could pick out another year at random. Or even move onto 1998, and then 1999...
But then I thought, what about the films of 1996? There were some memorable films in that year too. And 1994 - Mrs Doubtfire, Speed, The Flintstones (well, I liked it!). Why don't I go a bit further back? It didn't take me long to realise that there were ten months remaining in 2017, and as there are ten years in a decade, I could watch an entire decade's worth of films over ten months. I'd watch 1990 in March, 1991 in April, 1992 in May, 1993 in June, until I reached 1999 in December.
And that's what I did. Originally the idea was to watch one film a week. I started with Gremlins 2: The New Batch on the first Friday of March 2017. Over the following weekends, I watched Edward Scissorhands, Pretty Woman and Days of Thunder. At the time, I subscribed to Now TV, so just looked for films that were available on it from 1990.
What this enabled me to do is narrow down the search selection. Too often, I've found myself scrolling through hundreds of films thinking, "I'll watch that, no, actually, what about this? Ohhh, I've just spotted another. I'd rather watch this other film tonight, but I'll watch that other film another time." In the end, choice paralysis takes over and I watch nothing. With a smaller choice, it meant picking a movie was easier.
This also enabled me to watch films that I'd often wanted to watch, but for whatever reason, just hadn't done. Edward Scissorhands and Days of Thunder were both films I'd never watched before. And I found I really enjoyed them.
In April 2017, I followed up with 1991. Films I watched from that year were The Addams Family, Hot Shots, The Naked Gun 2 1/2, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Commitments. It was actually The Commitments that made me realise that I was loving what I was doing. Up to then, I'd sort of watched familiar, major movies. The Commitments was also a very popular and well-regarded film at the time, but isn't the sort of film you'd think about when thinking of 90s films. It probably isn't one that would make you say, "Hmmm, I fancy watching The Commitments tonight."
What I discovered was that this method of choosing only films from a particular year was providing me with an opportunity to discover films that I'd probably otherwise overlook. As they were also sort of 'one-time-only' movies, it made them feel more special too. I began looking forward to what films were also available from that year, and knowing that once the year has past, I would have another selection available to me.
So, the process continued through the remainder of the year, and I reached the end of the 1990s, as planned, by December 1999. The final film I watched of 1999 was Fantasia 2000 but my journey to it was amazing. I'll talk more about it another time
So, that explains how I began watching films from years each month, but of course doesn't explain how I ended up going all the way back to 1930 with the intention of watching one hundred years of movies.
In my next post I'll talk more about how things progressed in 2018 and 2019. It's probably obvious that I continued with the 2000s and 2010s during those years. But I'll talk about it anyway, and then how I made the decision to go back in time to the beginning of talking pictures. And also how I did actually experience some of the silent movies from the start of the 1900s up to 1929.