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 Star Wars series in story order as I'd had The Force Awakens for Christmas. Phantom Menace isn't the greatest of the series, although somehow it does seem to have got better with time, but I thoroughly enjoyed my evening. So much so, that the following Saturday, I set up my environment again, and watched Attack of the Clones. 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. Although I didn't catch this film on release, it got me to thinking films that I did watch 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 onwards to 1998, and then 1999...
But then I thought, if I'm going forward, what about earlier films? What about the films of 1996? There were some memorable films in that year too. And a couple of years before that, in 1994, there were others. Films like Mrs Doubtfire, Speed, The Flintstones (well, I liked it!). And then I thought, why don't I just watch films from the entire decade? I'd figured out that the month after February is March (proof that I understand calendars!). This means that there are ten months remaining. As there are ten years in a decade, I could dedicate each month to each year of the 1990s. I'd watch 1990 in March, 1991 in April, 1992 in May, 1993 in June, and so on, 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 I just browsed that 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 discover films that I'd never watched before, purely because I'd missed them on their original release, and they'd never really been on my radar to watch since. It wasn't that they didn't appeal. Edward Scissorhands and Days of Thunder were both films that were pretty big in their time, but they'd simply passed me by. But, seeing them listed as films available on Now TV from 1990, meant they were an option. And, I really enjoyed watching them.
In April 2017, I followed up with 1991. Films I watched from that year were The Addams Family, Hot Shots, The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Commitments. I'd seen all of them apart from The Commitments before. But it was actually The Commitments that made me realise how much I was loving what I was doing.
Up until that film, my choices had been mainstream typical early 1990s Hollywood fare. They were all familiar well-known hits from their respective years. The Commitments was more indie than the rest. It was well-regarded at the time, and does still get fairly regular outings on TV nowadays, but it isn't a film you'd think to watch unless you happened to already be a big fan of it. You wouldn't proactively pick it out. Again, having a narrower filter applied meant that The Commitments could be an option. I picked it out, watched it, and it became my favourite of 1991. Yep, this method of being able to only choose films from one year provided me with the opportunity to discover films I'd probably otherwise overlook.
It also made the films feel more special too. Although I wasn't setting up my room, lighting tea light candles, and so on, for every movie now, in a way, watching the film was sort of a 'one-time-only' event. I'd only watch films from 1991 in April 2017. And I'd only watch them once. In May 2017, 1991 would be history. We'd be in 1992. Even though it was self-imposed, having a limited choice of films to watch, and limited time window in which to watch them, strangely made me appreciate the films I had chosen to watch, and the year itself, even more. And while each new month would take me onto a new year, and I'd wonder what other films I could have watched, but didn't, from the year now past, I also enjoyed the anticipation of seeing what films I could rediscover or discover for the first time from the new year's selection.
So, the process continued through the remainder of the year, and I reached the end of the 1990s, as planned, by December 1999. During 2017, other films I watched from the 1990s included Wayne's World, Death Becomes Her, Groundhog Day, Sleepless in Seattle, The Firm, Indecent Proposal, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Lion King, Stargate, Clueless, Hackers, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Primal Fear, Independence Day, Starship Troopers, As Good as It Gets, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Truman Show, Great Expectations, Sleepy Hollow, American Pie and The Matrix. Some were ones I'd watched before, others for the first time. The final film I watched of 1999 was Fantasia 2000. But my journey getting to it was amazing. I'll talk more about it another time. Overall, during 2017, I watched 78 films from the 1990s.
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.