This past December was meant to be primarily focused on movies directed by women. Little did I know that this theme would only make up a mere part of what the month consisted overall. As more work and other holiday-related priorities took over this month, I had less time than I anticipated for more movie stuff. As always, this was expected, but it’s got me wondering if I should officially begin my lookout for another job or some other options that would help me to improve upon the consistency of my writing. I know I don’t get paid for my writing and don’t get much traffic on this blog anyway (and I greatly appreciate anyone who has read any of what I write!), but upkeep is more of a personal goal of mine. It would be nice if I could get a job with writing on movies (one of my 2015 resolutions), but in the meantime I just need to work on improving my substance.
Anyway, despite my utter failure in writing about all the lady-directed films I watched in December (even though I didn’t see many at all – another failure), I did have a fairly successful month. I watched a lot of things I’ve been putting off, such as the first Mad Max, Tim Burton’s first installment in the Batman franchise, and Best Picture winners Gladiator and From Here to Eternity. I also completed my yearly viewing of A Christmas Story though never got around to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, another holiday favorite. I also regret not getting along to Nancy Meyers’ The Holiday, a relevant film that would also count for my lady-directed movies goal. Finally, I watched a wonderful documentary that I’m sure is to be a life-long favorite – Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning (I’ve linked the review below).
So, here is the full list of films I watched & rewatched in December. I’ve linked the reviews that I wrote for Lady-Directed December. Asterisks indicate rewatches.
- Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983)
- Somewhere (Coppola, 2010)
- Galaxy Quest (Parisot, 1999)
- Lords of Dogtown (Hardwicke, 2005)
- The Punk Singer (Anderson, 2013)
- Eve’s Bayou (Lemmons, 1997)
- Force Majeure (Östlund, 2014)
- A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (Amirpour, 2014)
- Mad Max (Miller, 1979)
- Female Trouble (Waters, 1974)*
- Tomboy (Sciamma, 2011)
- Paris is Burning (Livingston, 1990)
- Tiny Furniture (Dunham, 2010)
- The Kids Are All Right (Cholodenko, 2010)
- The Muppet Christmas Carol (Henson, 1992)
- Pet Sematary (Lambert, 1989)
- Strange Days (Bigelow, 1995)
- Glitter (Curtis-Hall, 2001)
- Arthur Christmas (Smith & Cook, 2011)
- A Walk on the Moon (Goldwyn, 1999)
- A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983)*
- A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas (Strauss-Schulson, 2011)
- Bad Santa (Zwigoff, 2003)*
- Wild Wild West (Sonnenfeld, 1999)
- Good Burger (Robbins, 1997)
- Batman (Burton, 1989)
- Gladiator (Scott, 2000)
- From Here to Eternity (Zinnemann, 1953)
- The Parallax View (Pakula, 1974)
New-to-me: 26
Rewatch: 3
Total watched in 2014: 644
Total new-to-me in 2014: 545
I made just a tad under my movie-a-day goal, but still got a decent variety of all kinds of stuff. Although my movie-watching in general has waned significantly, I think it’s a noteworthy improvement over last month anyway. And since I’ve exceeded my goal of 500 new-to-me for the year overall, I can’t be too disappointed!
As per tradition, this January will be devoted to catching up on all the movies from this past year that I never got around to. I watched a total of around 80 films from 2013 when I made my top 20 list of the year. By the end of 2014, I’ve only seen around 30 from the year, with many more that I’m super interested in watching but previous endeavors have prevented me in doing so. I’m less inclined toward the big-budget blockbusters and more toward the smaller indie hits that people have been recommending all year long, but I’m gonna try to watch as many varied things as possible.
One more minor change to my blogging I should cover before I end this: since I have found that my efforts to review every film watched within a certain theme have proven stressful – and, at least at this point in my life, impossible – I will only be reviewing the films that I want to review and that I know I will enjoy reviewing. I’ll still try to keep everything consistent either way, but there’s no point in upkeeping a blog that no one reads anyway, right?
Anyway, that’s all I got for y’all this time around. I’m about to go work on my next blog post now: my top new film discoveries of 2014! As always thanks for reading, and may you all have a happy new year of movies and excitement.
Films Like Dreams, Etc. 
