New Year's and Movie Bad Habits

Every year, during the holiday break (which for me is usually some variation of December 23rd-January 2nd, give or take a day), I make a point of checking out from my life.  Not just in the sense that I spend time with friends & family, but also that I spend time with me.  I relax, truly relax & not think about what's next on a list and what I need to get done.  I also work my way through a list, trying to assess projects I've put off all year that I can finally get done (which went over super well this time, as I cut that number by a considerable amount this break), and also I focus on things I want to do in the next year.  

I'm very much a New Year's resolution person, but I feel like New Year's is more about habits for me than resolutions.  My birthday is almost exactly six months after New Year's (the end of June), and on my birthday each year I pick thirty things I want to be true about my life a year later.  New Year's is a good time to assess how I'm doing on those, correcting behaviors for things that I've slacked (or not done at all), and to pick a few routines (not necessarily resolutions, but routines) I can start to implement in January to maybe better track to hit the birthday goals so I have a shot of making them "true" by my birthday.

This year, one of the resolutions I have is around movie-watching, and I thought it was an interesting thing to discuss on a blog where I regularly discuss movies.  I don't post all of my reviews here anymore as I simply did not have the time to keep up with the amount of movies I was watching while also doing the rest of my life, but I do still do a mini-review of every film I see on Letterboxd, which you can follow me on here.  A lot of people are waiting on their Letterboxd year-end stats, but I do know that while Letterboxd will say higher (due to TV specials that they track but I don't as an official "film") I saw 312 films this year.  It's not a record for me (that is 2021, where I somehow saw 351 films in one year, almost certainly because by the end of quarantine I was watching any comfort movie I could to take my mind off of the loneliness waiting for my vaccine), but it's extremely admirable, and in-line with the goal of 300+ in one year that I had privately set for myself.

In general, I will admit that while I love tracking movies I've seen, and I really am in love with the entire concept of Letterboxd (basically a way to track what your friends and critics you admire online watch on a regular basis...it's like a curated Rotten Tomatoes), part of it sometimes bothers me.  I love watching people go on their cinematic journey, seeing people who are randomly revisiting Z-Grade horror franchises from start to finish or someone who is watching a specific star of the month (like we do here!) and filling in obscure gaps in their filmographies.

But it does feel like Letterboxd and especially Film Twitter promotes the concept of "consumption" for movies, as if it's less a pleasurable joy and more a sport or a mountain to be climbed.  I'm going to sound in this article like I'm judging here, and I am to a degree though I mean this mostly for how I view the world (this is not about a specific person, for the record, but instead about what this behavior promotes) and ultimately this is just something that I struggle with personally.  I feel like there's this perverse thrill when people see hundreds & hundreds of movies in a year that it's less about celebrating a pastime and more about churning through, trying to check off of a list, but it's hard for me to comprehend when you watch that many movies that you're really enjoying them.  This is a weird criticism coming from me, who is the Crown Prince of curating lists, but movies are kind of a sacred space for me.  They are when I am happiest, and as someone who struggles with issues of mental health, specifically related to depression & anxiety, they are a respite.  Going to a movie theater has always been hallowed ground for me because it's where I go to find peace.  No matter what the movie or how good (or bad) it is, there's something kind of celestial about the movie starting, me engaging with the characters & worlds in front of me for a few hours, and then going home.  No cell phones, no internal distractions...just me and some shimmering lights.  

It also becomes its own event.  Even if I do a couple of movies in theaters (which I usually do at least a couple of times a year, especially during awards season), it's solitary time, and it is bookended by a car ride to let it sort of wash over me.  This can be the case when I'm at home, but I have to work at it.  I have had movies in the past couple of years where I forced myself to have a movie theater experience, especially during the pandemic.  Pictures like Mank, The Father, and The Blair Witch Project where I got the lights in my theater room all down, my cell phone in another room, and watched in darkness & wonder.  

But more often than not, I'm not as cautious about it.  Increasingly, when I'm watching a movie, I feel like I'm just multitasking.  I'm balancing my checkbook on my laptop or have my cell phone in hand, texting while I'm doing it.  I have the movie on in the background, and I'm definitely "watching" it in the sense that I know what is happening and it's there...but it's not immersive, and it doesn't have that uniform "specialness" that I associate with film.  It feels less like cinema and more (I'm going to say a word I avoid because I believe every pejorative about it) like I'm watching "content."  When I find myself rewinding because I wasn't paying attention, or only looking up at key scenes...that's watching the movie, but I'm hardly experiencing something I love.  It feels like I'm just trying to focus on my numbers, trying to get through the lists...partially because I am.  And it's started to impact my attention span in general.  I struggle to, for example, sit and do another task (like, say, reading or cooking) without cell phone breaks.  This is new for me in the past couple of years.  As someone who has always had a slight phone addiction, this has entered a new level and so I will be finding ways to fix it.

So in 2023, I will be focusing not just on my movie-watching goals, but truly movie-experiencing.  I don't want to have a list of 300+ movies that were on when I was in the room, but are movies that I actually sat & thought about & loved (or hated) & that are part of my story.  Movies mean too much to me to let them become things on a checklist.  I will continue to curate my viewing points around lists.  We'll still have OVP-focused films (we will hit the 1990's this year), Stars of the Month, and I'll continue to keep up on new releases, but I am going to be watching them with less distractions.  I don't want to ever have movies just be something to do to kill time.