So of all the social medias, my favourite is probably Letterboxd. Just people I know or creators I think are fun talking about movies. At the end of 2023 I became aware of The 52 Week Movie Challenge, a list of 52 weekly prompts for a movie to watch. This seemed like just my thing, a voyage of cinematic discovery akin to the nights during COVID lockdown when I’d just let Prime’s “watch next” recommendations take me wherever they led, which is how I made a movie marathon out of To Catch a Thief, The Untouchables, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, and Burn After Reading, not a natural combination but the algorithm made its choices. Or in the same vein, that time I decided to make Oscar history my entire personality for a blog project that became a podcast. So for 2024, I decided to jump in on the challenge. By week three, the goal was to aim for movies I hadn’t seen as often as possible, and to try not to double-dip with movies I was watching for podcast content.
So here’s some capsule reviews of the process to look back at the year.
(For the curious, worst watch was Week 15, best was Week 16, in either case it’s not even close)
Week 1: A Best Picture Winner
Okay one week in and I’m already failing both objectives but there is no Best Picture winner I haven’t seen… well okay I suppose it didn’t technically say Best Picture Oscar winner so I could have gone with a Golden Globe or BAFTA or Critics’ Choice Award winner, but no, I used what Academy Vs. Audience was covering that week. Anyway I love heist/con artist movies and this is, like, the con artist heist movie, obviously I love it, there’s an Academy Vs. Audience episode if you need details.
Rated 4.5/5
Week 2: A movie “classic”
And this is when I said “Okay stop using podcast movies for the list.” But they put “classic” in quotation marks, that inherently opens it to broad interpretation. Anyway it’s Groundhog Day, obviously I love it, there’s a Recovered episode if you need details.
Rated 4/5
Week 3: low budget, big box office
What a weird time capsule this was, not only for much younger versions of Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, and Harrison Ford, but to an era when driving down main street was a chance to socialize, meet girls, to have one of those youthful nights when anything seems possible. And when being a radio DJ like Wolfman Jack could make you a national celebrity. Crazy to picture. Movie’s decent. I do recall thinking “I wonder how these kids managed when Vietnam happened,” then right before the end credits thinking “Well you didn’t need to tell me.”
Rated 3.5/5
Week 4: starring animals
The main theme of this movie is absolutely, 100%, the same song from Hamster Dance. That was throwing. Peter Ustinov’s m0mmy-issue Prince John is a lot of fun to be sure, and Fox Robin and Marian are charming (albeit in a way that gave a certain internet subculture an awakening), but I dunno, it felt like it took a long-ass time for Robin and Little John to actually score a win against the Sheriff and Prince John while they plague the countryside. Essentially, not enough Equalizing. I like a certain amount of Equalizing in stories like this.
Rated 3/5
Week 5: early film of a famous actor/actress
Okay I cheated again, I was in Mexico with the family and there was only so much time I was willing to spend watching movies in my hotel room, so I went with the one I was going to have to talk about on the internet when I got home. Anyway it’s Rocky, obviously I liked it, there’s an Academy Vs. Audience episode if you need details. Parts haven’t aged great but it’s still a solid flick and you can see how Stallone ended up a superstar.
Rated 4/5
Week 6: with subtitles
This one synced up with my pathological need to watch every Best Picture nominee, which yes I discuss in internet fashions but doesn’t really count as watching for content. Anyway it’s definitely good, a languid examination of the grief that comes from a relationship never being what you imagined it would be. It just didn’t blow me away the way it did some people I follow online. Megan “Stoobs” Cruz and I think Nikhil Clayton both raved about this one, and I had it ninth. But I also didn’t rank Anatomy of a Fall or Zone of Interest as high as Film Reddit would say I should, so I dunno, maybe that’s on me?
Rated 4/5
Week 7: stop motion film
I’ve been very, very slowly working my way through the entire Wes Anderson filmography, while trying to rank-order them, a challenge to be sure when there might be a couple months in between movies. This one isn’t quite The Fantastic Mr. Fox, although maybe that’s because when I see a criminal conspiracy trying to wipe out dogs I want it foiled fast and hard and Wes made me wait over 80 minutes. But with a Wes Anderson you can count on a stellar cast, cool visuals, and a distinctly whimsical melancholy.
Rated 3.5/5
Week 8: set during a historic war
And we’re on week three of “Hey you know what movie I meant to get around to when it came out?” A gold prospector in the closing days of WW2 turns out to have once been a legendarily brutal soldier when a group of Nazis trying to flee Finland try to steal his gold. Our protagonist is somewhere in between John Wick and Jason Vorhees, and watching terrible things happen to Nazis is just always a good time, heartily recommend.
Rated 4/5
Week 9: independent film
I tried to watch Uncut Gems for this one but the ratio of stress to enjoyment was way too unfavourable, I’m not saying it isn’t good, but I am saying it very much isn’t for me.
Pearl, Ti West’s prequel to his horror flick X, worked much better. A story of a woman trapped in a simple life by her puritanical parents and isolated farm home, who looks for a glamorous escape and takes some pretty drastic steps when she doesn’t find one. Mia Goth does well, the camera work could be very cool, and it’s the first thing I recall seeing upcoming Superman David Corenswet in, and while I’m sure his Superman will be different from the fuckboi projectionist who seduces the wrong farm girl, I could see how he got the gig.
Still need to watch the third part of the trilogy at some point.
Rated 3.5/5
Week 10: family-friendly movie
I can see how this became a sleeper hit throughout 2023. Written off as another sign of Pixar’s post-COVID woes but it just hung into theatres for the whole summer, and good for it. There’s a lot more to it than just “Water boy likes fire girl,” it’s about the experience of being the child of immigrants, big city cultural clashes, redlining, and civic infrastructure. And the final stakes are all about the difficulties that arise when the life you want for yourself and the life your parents expected you to have clash. It’s a sweet movie I was glad to get to.
Rated 4/5
On our next page, I start testing the definitions of the prompts and choices begin to disappoint.