my year of rest and relaxation but i like movies and have a parasocial relationship with christian bale

Let me spit some numbers at you all. In 2021, I watched 434 movies. 659 hours. 27.45 days. In 2022, I watched 380 movies. 619 hours. 25.79 days.  In 2023, I watched 321 movies. 559 hours. 23.29 days. All of these numbers were pulled directly from the beautiful “Year in Review” that my beloved Letterboxd gifts to me via email at the end of each year. Upon reading them each time, I think to myself, Oh. This is not good!

In case you are wondering, yes, I did have a life during these years. I was an undergraduate student pursuing a double major in English and Biology, with minors in Philosophy and Computer Science. Yes, I did graduate, despite spending a total of four weeks a year solely watching movies. I am now a graduate student. How I got to the point of logging 434 films in 2021 – consuming approximately 1.189 movies daily – was a bizarre, Magnolia-like string of events; as child genius Stanley Spector sat with dried tear stains on his face, staring at the live frogs pouring from the sky, muttering, “This happens. This is something that happens,” I stared at my own ungodly record of hundreds of  logged movies on Letterboxd each year, thinking, This is something that happens.

The last semester of my senior year of high school was just beginning when the COVID-19 lockdown materialized, as well as my insatiable NEED to watch any movie I could get loaded on my Macbook. Already I was used to skipping lunch in the cafeteria and instead eating a mini bag of ranch Doritos with coffee in an empty music practice room (I went to an arts high school. Please don’t kill me), with my chosen form of entertainment being pirated movies on my Macbook. After watching Gone Girl I obsessively pasted the Cool Girl monologue into my Tumblr bio, and read every single Gillian Flynn book I could get my hands on (Sharp Objects is her best; argue with a brick wall). Riddled with anxiety about college decisions, lack of close friendships, and failed romantic situations, along with general high school angst, I closed in on myself and maybe – definitely – unhealthily turned to movies for comfort. When my classes were fully online for the rest of the semester, and for the entirety of my freshman year of college, I watched all of David Lynch’s filmography, pasted pictures of The Virgin Suicides to my bare dorm walls, cried to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and rewatched American Psycho one too many times (it was quite bad, and embarrassing. I have it logged eight times in total). 

And so we end up here. An incredibly condensed ranking of both my favorite, and what I believe to be quite awful, movies of the 434 I watched in 2021. Why this year? Simply because it’s been the most concentrated of my years spent consuming movies. I need to put it all down somewhere.

FAVORITES!

Anchoress dir. Chris Newby: I watched this movie for a class focusing on the very interesting lifestyle of 16th century anchorites, people (typically women) who entirely withdraw from secular society to devote their lives to prayer and ascetic livelihood. Bound by a religious rite of consecration that resulted in them being effectively dead to the external world, they live their lives out in a cell, like a Bergman religious fever dream. All you need to know about this film is that there is a 16th-century peasant girl who is hypnotically spellbound by a Mary statue and then proceeds to hermit herself as an anchoress. Truly fascinating. This has some incredibly beautiful shots, particularly the protagonist Christine’s kiss of the Virgin Mary statue and the entire crystal cave scene. The sound design can be a bit jarring and will make you wince – Hitchcock’s The Birds made us reel in terror from birds flapping their wings aggressively; Anchoress juxtaposes Christine’s religious silence with bird squawks and flapping. It’s great. 

  1. American Psycho dir. Mary Harron: This movie has been written to death – I am fairly certain it has been written about several times even here on the website. But I love it so, so much. We have Christian Bale. I have maxed out on watching his filmography solely because I fell in love with him, and he is at his best here. We have Chloë Sevigny. Reese Witherspoon. WILLEM DAFOE. Very cool satirization of 1980s Wall Street yuppie culture. It makes me sad to see how it has been commandeered by sigma male cringe culture. Very excited to see how Luca Guadagnino chooses to adapt the novel. Petition to re-cast Christian Bale.

  2. Stoker dir. Park Chan-wook: If I went on Letterboxd and said I found this to be one of Park Chan-wook’s best films, I think I would be effectively banned from the site and forever spat upon by its users. THIS MOVIE IS SO GOOD. The most mommy-issues movie of all time; in true unhinged Nicole Kidman fashion, to her on-screen daughter, she whispers, “Little carbon copies we can turn to and say, ‘You will do what I could not. You will succeed where I have failed.’ Because we want someone to get it right this time. But not me... Personally speaking I can't wait to watch life tear you apart.”  Just like Hamlet, but a girl – after India Stoker’s beloved father dies, her weirdo uncle comes to visit and attempts to seduce her unstable mother and bring India into his creepy schemes. One of the most well-edited movies I watched during this year. All the vibes are here for this one: dark romanticism, southern Gothic stoicism, weird girl representation, cool saddle shoes. Yes. 

  3. Honorable mentions (aka I am viciously going over the word count and need to cut things out): Secretary (2002), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Mysterious Skin (2004), Arrival (2016), and Donnie Darko (2001)

YUCKY!

  1. The Kissing Booth 3 dir. Vince Marcello: I am crying. Life is a prison. Why are there three of these, plus two spin-offs? They desecrated my boy (“First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes). I can’t even tell you what the plot is; I erased every pixel of this movie from my brain. Never again!

  2. The Hills Have Eyes 2 dir. Martin Weisz: Oh, I hate everything about this! Sometimes you just watch a movie and can tell immediately that the director has questionable views on women. Sexual violence galore. Cannibalistic mutants attack a set of National Guard members, with most of the on-screen violence depicted against the female characters. Rushed, nonsensical, gratuitous in the worst way possible. Films like these give the horror genre a bad rap.

  3. Sweet Nothings dir. Mike Figgis: This is a very, very awkward thirteen minute short film from 2011 between Joanne Tucker and her husband, Adam Driver which is essentially really weird softcore pornography. At times, I will be scrolling through Instagram Reels and see a movie clip so diabolical, I immediately try to find it online to immerse myself in it, with all its bizarre grandeur. That is what happened here. Filmed entirely on NightVision, giving it an eerie Blair Witch feel, it is entirely whisper-ramblings between a couple in bed that feels invasive to witness, making you feel as if you need to shower immediately after watching. And I did. I don’t know why Adam Driver thought this was a good idea. 

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