Looking Forward: December ’15 in Film + A 2015 Recap

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I must confess that I’ve been less enthusiastic about discovering new films this year than I have been in the previous five or so. It isn’t because I’ve grown wary of the medium – quite the contrary, it seems that I’m always finding new things to love and appreciate about film each day. Unfortunately, real life grown-up things have set in and taken over as of recent. Both I and my boyfriend Malcolm (my ever-faithful viewing companion) have had some pretty serious stuff come up throughout the year, mainly issues related to health, finances, and family. While I have always hailed film as being a terrific way to deal with my own fight with anxiety and depression – almost like a form of therapy – there are also a lot of days in which I’m simply just not willing to expend the amount of energy it takes to sit and pay attention to a movie for two hours. While I had prided myself on keeping a personal movie-a-day goal, I’ve realized this year that this may not be the most viable option after all. I’ve found out more than ever that my so-called “bad movie days” had been popping up more than ever – not because of any struggle to support or appreciate the medium, but because of a newfound struggle with my own stability. Rather than my usual mindless binging of film that has become very standard practice, my mental health had really taken a front seat this year and I’m all the happier for it.

That’s not to say I didn’t have a fun movie year, because boy was it a blast. I begun 2015 with a continuation of the themed months that I was getting into in the latter part of last year. January was devoted to catching up with some of 2014’s releases before the Oscar season set into full play. February being Black History Month, I used that backdrop as a means to watching new films directed by and primarily starring Black folks. March was the start of my James Bond challenge, where I attempted to watch every single Bond film in chronological order (issues related to mental/emotional health prevented me from getting far with this, but I still completed every Bond film of the 60s and plan to continue onwards!). April was the month dedicated to trash cinema, which I may have gotten a little carried away with. May was supposed to be my queer cinema month, but it was also the month I started both my Billboard challenge and Cinephiling With Epilepsy, so I only watched twelve films in the entire month. June was also slim in that regard, as I was writing entries for the latter project (on which I’ve now fallen off). From July through September, I basically just watched a random assortment of things (mostly trash), held together by rewatches of all the pre-Inside Out Pixar films and first-time watches of a lot of women-directed films. October was devoted solely to horror films, as it usually is. And December, as I mentioned earlier, was essentially composed of a whole bunch of 2015 releases I had missed earlier in the year. How it all comes full-circle so beautifully.

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So for anyone who’s interested, here are all the films I watched throughout 2015. This list includes not only first-time watches, but rewatches as well (which are indicated by asterisks). They are ordered chronologically, from first watched to last, and my December viewings begin at #416.

Blue Ruin (Saulnier, 2014)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson, 2014)
Under the Skin (Glazer, 2014)
The Immigrant (Gray, 2014)
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (Fiennes, 2012)
Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014)
J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother) (Dolan, 2009)
Bambi Meets Godzilla (Newland, 1969)*
Ah Pook Is Here (Hunt, 1994)
Nose Hair (Plympton, 1994)
Maleficent (Stromberg, 2014)
The Imitation Game (Tyldum, 2014)
The Babadook (Kent, 2014)
Bloodsport (Arnold, 1988)
It Felt Like Love (Hittman, 2014)
Kingpin (Farrelly & Farrelly, 1996)
Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014)
Nightcrawler (Gilroy, 2014)
Ida (Pawlikowski, 2014)
The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (Herz & Kaufman, 1989)
Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (Olnek, 2012)
The Babadook (Kent, 2014)*
Grosse Pointe Blank (Armitage, 1997)
Lucy (Besson, 2014)
The Boxtrolls (Annable & Stacchi, 2014)
Filth (Baird, 2013)
He Took His Skin Off For Me (Aston, 2014)
Toy Story That Time Forgot (Purcell, 2014)
Where Are They Now? (Cutts, 2014)
The One I Love (McDowell, 2014)
Snowpiercer (Bong, 2014)
Wetlands (Wnendt, 2014)*
American Sniper (Eastwood, 2014)
Tweetie Pie (Freleng, 1947)
Speedy Gonzales (Freleng, 1955)
Magoo’s Puddle Jumper (Burness, 1956)
Special Delivery (Weldon & Macauley, 1978)
Knighty Knight Bugs (Freleng, 1958)
Every Child (Fedorenko, 1979)
Manipulation (Greaves, 1991)
A Légy (The Fly) (Rófusz, 1980)
Charade (Minnis, 1984)
Anna & Bella (Ring, 1984)
Een griekse tragedie (A Greek Tragedy) (Van Goethem, 1985)
Creature Comforts (Park, 1989)
Bob’s Birthday (Fine & Snowden, 1994)
The Chicken From Outer Space (Dilworth, 1996)
Mood Indigo (Gondry, 2014)
Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)
Batman Returns (Burton, 1992)
Batman Forever (Schumacher, 1995)
Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Oz, 1988)
Adventures in Babysitting (Columbus, 1987)
Borgman (Van Warmerdam, 2014)
Selma (DuVernay, 2014)
Carmen Jones (Preminger, 1954)
Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats) (Dolan, 2010)
Mommy (Dolan, 2014)
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (Lee, 2014)
Poetic Justice (Singleton, 1993)
Dark Girls (Duke & Berry, 2011)
The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete (Tillman Jr., 2013)
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (Bergqvist, 2000)*
BASEketball (Zucker, 1998)
Me and My Moulton (Kove, 2014)
Feast (Osborne, 2014)*
The Bigger Picture (Jacobs, 2014)
A Single Life (Blaauw, Oprins, & Roggeveen, 2014)
The Dam Keeper (Kondo & Tsutsumi, 2014)
Sweet Cocoon (Puiraveau, et al., 2014)
Footprints (Plympton, 2014)
Duet (Keane, 2014)
Histoires de Bus (Bus Story) (Tali, 2014)
Deux jours, une nuit (Two Days, One Night) (Dardenne & Dardenne, 2014)
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Van Peebles, 1971)
Shaft (Parks, 1971)
Black Dynamite (Sanders, 2009)
A Most Violent Year (Chandor, 2014)
Deep Cover (Duke, 1992)
Virunga (Von Einsiedel, 2014)
Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (Barclay, 1996)
Mr. Turner (Leigh, 2014)
Wild (Vallée, 2014)
Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)*
Dredd (Travis, 2012)
Cyborg (Pyun, 1989)
The Interview (Goldberg & Rogen, 2014)
How to Train Your Dragon (DeBlois & Sanders, 2014)
Big Eyes (Burton, 2014)
The Road to El Dorado (Bergeron & Paul, 2000)
Panic Room (Fincher, 2002)
El Mariachi (Rodriguez, 1992)
Desperado (Rodriguez, 1995)
Anaconda (Llosa, 1997)
Rachel Getting Married (Demme, 2008)
The Greatest Show on Earth (DeMille, 1952)
Glengarry Glen Ross (Foley, 1992)
Power/Rangers (Kahn, 2015)
What We Do in the Shadows (Clement & Waititi, 2015)
The Adventures of Milo and Otis (Masanori, 1986)
Thief (Mann, 1981)
The Great Muppet Caper (Henson, 1981)
Muppet Treasure Island (Henson, 1996)
Dr. No (Young, 1962)
Shaolin Soccer (Chow, 2001)
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (Elkabetz & Elkabetz, 2015)
Leviathan (Zvyagintsev, 2014)
Teen Witch (Walker, 1989)
From Russia With Love (Young, 1963)
Goldfinger (Hamilton, 1964)The Loving Story (Buirski, 2011)
Relatoes salvájes (Wild Tales) (Szifron, 2014)
Thunderball (Young, 1965)
You Only Live Twice (Gilbert, 1967)
The Hunting Ground (Dick, 2015)
The Invisible War (Dick, 2012)
Entre Nos (La Morte & Mendoza, 2009)
Downloaded (Winter, 2013)
Avatar (Cameron, 2009)
L.I.E. (Cuesta, 2001)
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (Dore, 2015)
Get Shorty (Sonnenfeld, 1995)
The Muslims Are Coming! (Obeidallah & Farsad, 2012)
Jerry Maguire (Crowe, 1996)
Philadelphia (Demme 1993)
Dancer in the Dark (Von Trier, 2000)
In & Out (Oz, 1997)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Jackson, 2002)
Frozen Fever (Buck & Lee, 2015)
Cinderella (Branagh, 2015)
The Karate Kid (Avildsen, 1984)
Good Morning Vietnam (Levinson, 1987)
Sense and Sensibility (Lee, 1995)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Hunt, 1969)
Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta (Castle in the Sky) (Miyazaki, 1986)
Mystic River (Eastwood, 2003)
Case Study: Barbituates (1969)
Case Study: Amphetamines (1969)
Case Study: LSD (1969)
Case Study: Heroin (1969)
Annie (Huston, 1982)
How to Marry a Millionaire (Negulesco, 1953)
The Amityville Horror (Rosenberg, 1979)
Mystic Pizza (Petrie, 1988)
Thank You For Smoking (Reitman, 2005)
Pink Flamingos (Waters, 1972)*
Deep Blue Sea (Harlin, 1999)
Sharknado (Ferrante, 2013)
Frogs (McCowan, 1972)
The Village (Shyamalan, 2004)
Saved! (Dannelly, 2004)
Itty Bitty Titty Committee (Babbitt, 2007)
Intrastella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (Takenôchi, 2003)
We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (Nibbelink et al., 1993)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (DeBlois, 2014)
Space Jam (Pytka, 1996)
Mom and Dad Save the World (Beeman, 1992)
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (Marshall, 2004)
White God (Mundruczó, 2015)
Bande de filles (Girlhood) (Sciamma, 2015)
It Follows (Mitchell, 2015)
The Nutty Professor (Shadyac, 1996)
Jack and Jill (Dugan, 2011)
Transformers (Bay, 2007)
The Warriors (Hill, 1979)
Megamind (McGrath, 2010)
The Last Airbender (Shyamalan, 2010)
Battlefield Earth (Christian, 2000)
Scooby-Doo (Gosnell, 2002)*
Red Hook Summer (Lee, 2012)
Der Wald Vor Lauter Bäumen (The Forest For the Trees) (Ade, 2003)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Schultz, 1978)
Cowboys & Aliens (Favreau, 2011)
Spy Kids (Rodriguez, 2001)*
Mac and Me (Raffill, 1988)
The Beautician and the Beast (Kwapis, 1997)
Kon-Tiki (Rønning & Sandberg, 2012)
Along Came Polly (Hamburg, 2004)
License to Drive (Beeman, 1988)
Cecil B. Demented (Waters, 2000)
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (Khouri, 2002)
A Knight’s Tale (Helgeland, 2001)
Fantastic Voyage (Fleischer, 1966)
Romancing the Stone (Zemeckis, 1984)
Antonia (Gorris, 1995)
The Hours (Daldry, 2002)
L’Inconnu du lac (Stranger By the Lake) (Guiraudie, 2013)
Sedmikrásky (Daisies) (Chytilová, 1966)*
Parting Glances (Sherwood, 1986)
Better Than Chocolate (Wheeler, 1999)
Velvet Goldmine (Haynes, 1998)
The Skeleton Twins (Johnson, 2014)
Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho (The Way He Looks) (Ribeiro, 2014)
Life Partners (Fogel, 2014)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam & Jones, 1975)*
Ex Machina (Garland, 2015)
Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015)
The Fall (Singh, 2006)*
La French (The Connection) (Jimenez, 2015)
Love & Mercy (Pohlad, 2015)
The Killer Shrews (Kellogg, 1959)
Bande de filles (Girlhood) (Sciamma, 2014)*
Live From New York! (Nguyen, 2015)
Omoide no Mānī (When Marnie Was There) (Yonebayashi, 2015)
Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amélie) (Jeunet, 2001)*
12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)*
Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)
The Brood (Cronenberg, 1979)*
Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955)*
The Wolfpack (Moselle, 2015)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)*
3 Idiots (Hirani, 2009)
Lava (Murphy, 2015)
Inside Out (Docter, 2015)
Coming to America (Landis, 1988)
Infinitely Polar Bear (Forbes, 2015)
Eden (Hansen-Løve, 2015)
What Happened, Miss Simone? (Garbus, 2015)
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (Morgen, 2015)
Die Puppe (The Doll) (Lubitsch, 1919)
Zemlya (Earth) (Dovzhenko, 1930)
Chuck & Buck (Arteta, 2000)
High Fidelity (Frears, 2000)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Eagle vs. Shark (Waititi, 2007)
The Overnight (Brice, 2015)
Kill Bill Vol. 2 (Tarantino, 2004)
Paulie (Roberts, 1998)
Advantageous (Phang, 2015)
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981)
Man of Steel (Snyder, 2013)
The Decline of Western Civilization (Spheeris, 1981)
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (Spheeris, 1988)
The Decline of Western Civilization Part III (Spheeris, 1998)
Beyond Clueless (Lyne, 2014)
Tangerine (Barker, 2015)
Assault on Precinct 13 (Carpenter, 1976)
Hitch (Tennant, 2005)
The People vs. George Lucas (Philippe, 2010)
Love Story (Hiller, 1970)
Laurence Anyways (Dolan. 2012)
Unbreakable (Shyamalan, 2000)
Finding Nemo (Stanton & Unkrich, 2003)*
WALL-E (Stanton, 2008)*
Adams Family Values (Sonnenfeld, 1993)
The Incredibles (Bird, 2004)*
La Planéte Sauvage (Fantastic Planet) (Laloux, 1973)
Okuribito (Departures) (Takita, 2008)
Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (Kaufman, 2001)
Ratatouille (Bird, 2007)*
Pumping Iron (Butler & Fiore, 1977)
24 Hour Party People (Winterbottom, 2002)
Chicken Run (Lord & Park, 2000)*
A Bug’s Life (Stanton & Lasseter, 1998)*
Up (Docter & Peterson, 2009)*
Amy (Kapadia, 2015)
Monsters Inc. (Unkrich, Silverman, & Docter, 2001)*
Cars (Ranft & Lasseter, 2006)*
They Live (Carpenter, 1988)*
Harmontown (Berkeley, 2014)
Irrational Man (Allen, 2015)
The Stanford Prison Experiment (Alvarez, 2015)
The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie (Hillenburg, 2004)*
The SpongeBob Movie: Fish Out of Water (Tibbitt, 2015)
Creep (Brice, 2014)
Sinister (Derrickson, 2012)
The End of the Tour (Ponsolt, 2015)
Best of Enemies (Gordon & Neville, 2015)
Fantastic Four (Trank, 2015)
Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Chow, 2013)
Teenage (Wolf, 2013)
Starship Troopers (Verhoeven, 1997)
Three From Prostokvashino (Popov, 1978)
Kung Fury (Sandberg, 2015)
Becket (Glenville, 1964)
Home (Johnson, 2015)
The Three Caballeros (Ferguson et al., 1944)
Pain & Gain (Bay, 2013)*
Straight Outta Compton (Gray, 2015)
Rugrats Go Wild (Eng & Virgien, 2003)
Mortal Kombat (Anderson, 1995)
Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Ritchie, 1998)
My Bloody Valentine (Mihalka, 1981)
Basic Instinct (Verhoeven, 1992)
Runaway Train (Konchalovsky, 1985)
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Smith, 2001)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Liebesman, 2014)
The Business of Being Born (Epstein, 2008)
Bacheha-Ye aseman (Children of Heaven) (Majidi, 1997)
Ju-On: The Grudge (Takashi, 2002)
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (Herek, 1989)
Cool World (Bakshi, 1992)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (July, 2005)
Smash His Camera (Gast, 2010)
Black Sheep (Spheeris, 1996)
Cars 2 (Lasseter & Lewis, 2011)
The Woman Chaser (Devor, 1999)
Que Horas Ela Volta? (The Second Mother) (Muylaert, 2015)
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (Gibney, 2015)
Strictly Ballroom (Luhrmann, 1992)
The Wrecking Crew (Tedesco, 2008)
The Descendants (Payne, 2011)
Tammy (Falcone, 2014)
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (Herek, 1991)
The Theory of Everything (Marsh, 2014)*
Cinderella (Branagh, 2015)*
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Miller & Ogilvie, 1985)
Ravenous (Bird, 1999)
Fido (Currie, 2006)
Cujo (Teague, 1983)
Ich seh, Ich seh (Goodnight Mommy) (Fiala & Franz, 2015)
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Heller, 2015)
Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga (Baron Blood) (Bava, 1972)
La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) (Bava, 1960)
Leprechaun (Jones, 1993)
Heaven Knows What (Safdie & Safdie, 2015)
Cockneys vs Zombies (Hoene, 2012)
Children of the Corn (Kiersch, 1984)
American Psycho 2: All American Girl (Freeman, 2002)
The Wicker Man (Hardy, 1973)*
Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (Le Prince, 1888)
Annabelle Serpentine Dance (Heise & Dickson, 1895)
Sandow (Dickson, 1896)
Le Reve D’un Astronome (The Astronomer’s Dream) (Méliès, 1898)
Life of an American Fireman (Fleming et al., 1903)
What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City (Porter & Fleming, 1901)
Oculus (Flanagan, 2013)
Predator (McTiernan, 1987)
Sleepy Hollow (Burton, 1999)
Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)
It Follows (Mitchell, 2015)*
Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)*
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)*
Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1957)
Dawn of the Dead (Snyder, 2004)
The Mist (Darabont, 2007)
Housebound (Johnstone, 2014)
Grabbers (Wright, 2012)
Stake Land (Mickle, 2010)
Aloha (Crowe, 2015)
Predestination (Spierig & Spierig, 2014)
Jennifer’s Body (Kusama, 2009)
The Monster Squad (Dekker, 1987)
Dead Ringers (Cronenberg, 1988)*
Crimson Peak (Del Toro, 2015)
Paddington (King, 2015)
Hotel Transylvania (Tartakovsky, 2012)*
Stage Fright (Sable, 2014)
Humanoids From the Deep (Peeters, 1980)
Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985)*
Back to the Future Part II (Zemeckis, 1989)
Dracula (a.k.a. Horror of Dracula) (Fisher, 1958)
Boxing Helena (Lynch, 1993)
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (De Bello, 1978)*
Saw II (Bousman, 2005)
The Loved Ones (Byrne, 2009)
Haute tension (High Tension) (Aja, 2003)
Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Selick, 1993)*
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Selick, 1993)*
Vincent (Burton, 1982)*
The Descent (Marshall, 2005)*
Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980)*
The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)*
Million Dollar Baby (Eastwood, 2004)
First Blood (Kotcheff, 1982)
The Punisher: Dirty Laundry (Joanou, 2012)
Robin Hood Daffy (Jones, 1958)
Malysh i Karlson (Junior and Karlson) (Stepantsev, 1968)
Ménilmontant (Kirsanoff, 1926)
Everything Will Be OK (Hertzfeldt, 2006)
The Old Man and the Sea (Petrov, 1999)
Jidô shôka eiga: Muramatsuri (The Village Festival) (Ōfuji, 1930)
The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg (Gillett & Palmer, 1936)*
Bold King Cole (Gillett, 1936)*
Spy (Feig, 2015)
All Things Must Pass (Hanks, 2015)
Middle of Nowhere (DuVernay, 2012)
Nine to Five (Higgins, 1980)
Jupiter Ascending (Wachowski & Wachowski, 2015)
Seeking a Friend For the End of the World (Scafaria, 2012)
Johnny Dangerously (Heckerling, 1984)
Wild Style (Ahearn, 1983)
Magic Mike XXL (Jacobs, 2015)
Treasure Planet (Clements & Musker, 2002)
Tomorrowland (Bird, 2015)
Touching the Void (Macdonald, 2003)
Dip huet seung hung (The Killer) (Woo, 1989)
American Pie (Weitz & Weitz, 1999)
Urban Cowboy (Bridges, 1980)
Serendipity (Chelsom, 2001)
Gong fu (Kung Fu Hustle) (Chow, 2004)
The Comedy (Alverson, 2012)
Risky Business (Brickman, 1983)
Vanilla Sky (Crowe, 2001)
Trading Places (Landis, 1983)
My Week With Marilyn (Curtis, 2011)
Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap (Ice-T & Baybutt, 2012)
The Gift (Edgerton, 2015)
Majo no takkyûbin (Kiki’s Delivery Service) (Miyazaki, 1989)
My Best Friend’s Wedding (Hogan, 1997)
Pina (Wenders, 2011)
Brooklyn (Crowley, 2015)
By The Sea (Jolie Pitt, 2015)
Room (Abrahamson, 2015)
Insomnia (Nolan, 2002)
The Longest Yard (Segal, 2005)
Home For the Holidays (Foster, 1995)
Pieces of April (Hedges, 2003)
Ernest Saves Christmas (Cherry, 1988)
The Brothers Grimm (Gilliam, 2005)
Brian’s Song (Kulik, 1971)
Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World (Sallin, 2015)
Frida (Taymor, 2002)
Beyond The Lights (Prince-Bythewood, 2014)
Reel Injun (Bainbridge, et al., 2009)
Swingers (Liman, 1996)
Dope (Famuyiwa, 2015)
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (Gibney, 2015)
Trainwreck (Apatow, 2015)
Starlet (Baker, 2012)
Mistress America (Baumbach, 2015)
Blackhat (Mann, 2015)
A Very Murray Christmas (Coppola, 2015)
She’s Lost Control (Marquardt, 2015)
Atari: Game Over (Penn, 2015)
An Honest Liar (Measom & Weinstein, 2015)
Une vie de chat (A Cat in Paris) (Gagnol & Felicioli, 2010)
The Ref (Demme, 1994)
En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron (A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence) (Andersson, 2015)
Unfriended (Gabriadze, 2015)
Poltergeist (Kenan, 2015)
Despicable Me (Coffin & Renaud, 2010)
Despicable Me 2 (Coffin & Renaud, 2013)
Mickey’s Orphans (Gillett, 1931)
It’s Got Me Again! (Ising, 1932)
Building a Building (Hand, 1933)
The Merry Old Soul (Lantz & Nolan, 1933)
Jolly Old Soul (Moreno & Nolan, 1934)
Holiday Land (1934)
The Calico Dragon (Ising, 1935)
Who Killed Cock Robin? (Hand, 1935)
Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (Jackson, 1938)
Good Scouts (King, 1938)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Unfriended (Gabriadze, 2015)*
Minions (Coffin & Balda, 2015)
Carol (Haynes, 2015)
Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter (Zellner, 2015)
Get On Up (Taylor, 2014)
It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946)*
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (Chechik, 1989)*
The Hateful Eight (Tarantino, 2015)
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (Columbus, 1992)*
Bad Santa (Zwigoff, 2003)*
Conan the Barbarian (Milius, 1982)
Mission: Impossible (De Palma, 1996)
Dude, Where’s My Car? (Leiner, 2000)
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Gomez-Rejon, 2015)
Pitch Perfect 2 (Banks, 2015)
The Visit (Shyamalan, 2015)
Turbo Kid (Simard, et al., 2015)
The Big Short (McKay, 2015)
Into the Woods (Marshall, 2014)
Steve Jobs (Boyle, 2015)
He Named Me Malala (Guggenheim, 2015)

So, 467 is the grand total of viewings for the year; of those, 414 were first-time viewings. While I did exceed my primary goal of 365 new-to-me films of the year, I didn’t quite make my overarching goal of 500 viewings for the whole year – even though I got pretty close! As I mentioned earlier, this is explained by not only a slew of personal issues throughout the months, but also by my delving into a bunch of other mediums more than ever before.

While I listened to a whole bunch of music from this year, I haven’t been keeping as comprehensive a list as I have with music. This is mainly because I’ve yet to find a site that makes cataloging my listens as easy and sophisticated as Letterboxd makes for my viewings. Nonetheless, this year I mostly listened to a bunch of classics that correspond to my Billboard challenge. Things like the debuts of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino; classics I never got around to, like The Doors’ L.A. Woman, David Bowie’s Hunky Dory, Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, Paul Simon’s self-titled debut, Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, et al.; and deeper cuts that I was pleased to discover, like The Incredible String Band’s The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, Laura Nyro’s Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, Blue Cheer’s Vincebus Eruptum, et al. I’ve also been trying to keep up with more modern-day music by listening to the full discographies of Kanye West, Sleater-Kinney, Janelle Monáe, Muse, and others. This latter prospect, however, is far more difficult for me to keep up with, but as I’ve outlined in Lyzette’s Media Resolutions of 2015, I definitely want to try to work on this a lot more.

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This year has also further proved that I am terrible with TV and probably will always be. I did, however, watch through three amazing animated shows that are some of the best I’ve ever seen, those three being Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, and Bojack Horseman. The first is not only beautiful to look at, but also groundbreaking in its examination of queer identities and alternate models of family and relationships and, therefore, extremely important. Gravity Falls isn’t always perfect, but its story-building, snappy sense of humor, and delicate treading on some dark territories make this one of the best outputs of Disney this year. Finally, despite my reluctance upon its first season, the second season of Bojack Horseman gave some of the most realistic, powerful portrayals of depression and loneliness I’ve ever seen in a show that’s primarily a comedy. While Gravity Falls is sadly coming to an end next month, I’m looking forward to the bright futures that the other two shows have surely promised.

Along with these shows, I’ve also been really enjoying Rick and Morty and continue to rewatch random episodes of a bunch of my old favorites like Daria, The Simpsons, Futurama, and others. I fell of of my goal of watching all 300-some episodes of Dragonball Z – mainly because it’s so damn tiresome! – but I’m about halfway through and I do plan on finishing. Along with this, I’ve also been trying to get into more anime; I watched through Death Note this year and have started Psycho-Pass, Attack on Titan, and, more recently, Space Dandy. But what about live-action stuff? It’s best not to ask about that. I watched a few episodes of The Walking Dead, Gotham, Game of Thrones, and Ash vs. Evil Dead and am currently watching (and loving) season 1 of Jane the Virgin, but that’s pretty much it. Well, besides the sudden obsession I’ve developed for Xena: Warrior Princess as well (Lucy Lawless is a queen!). Above all, I’m pretty passionate about my love for animation and I hope that cartoon-themed video blog/podcast I’ve been planning for a while finally comes through in 2016!

As I detailed in my resolutions post, I want to get back into the swing of classic cinema. I really miss the undisputed flair and sophistication of all those artifacts of Hollywood’s Golden Age and I yearn to go back to that little world. Plus, there are so, so many films considered the greatest of all time that have remain shamefully unseen by myself and I’d like to finally get around to remedying a lot of those. There are filmographies I need to finish and Best Picture winners I need to get around to. While I want to do as much writing as possible, the lack of a laptop makes this hard – however, Malcolm has graciously given me his for the time being, which should hopefully be a tremendous help. And speaking of Malcolm, he recently watched and fell in love with Into the Woods last month (the Rob Marshall film, not the play) and has requested we have a month dedicated to musicals. And how could I pass up that offer? I hope to watch a whole bunch of fun, exciting musicals throughout January, both old and new, while also attempting to seek out as many films from William Wyler, Howard Hawks, and Wim Wenders as possible. See you all soon!