I am going to watch 365 films this year. Care to join?
More than two weeks into 2014 I have finally figured out what I wanted to do for my New Year’s resolution. First I wanted to be pretentious and give myself a vague task, something about enjoying every moment, and convince myself that I followed it at the end of the year.
Not this time. This year will be about finishing what I have started. For this reason I came up with one of the few things that I would consistently enjoy – cinema.
So, my New Year’s resolution is to watch one good movie every day of the year. I call it
365 Days of CinemAN
, after the cinema club I ran and wholeheartedly loved for three years before leaving Baku.
I have already started the research and came up with the list using IMDB.com. So far it includes more than 200 American, European, Eastern, Asian, classic, documentary, musical and other kinds of mostly non-mainstream films. The only requirement is that they have to be good, which I evaluate based on their IMDB ratings, awards, reviews, opinions of my multiple film-obsessed friends, and whether or not Tom Cruise is in the movie. Sometimes, I will re-watch movies that I have already seen just because they are worth it, and because I think you should learn about them.
Every week I will write my thoughts about the seven films I watched. Although my Bachelor’s degree is in filmmaking, I am not a professional critic, but neither are most of my readers. That is why I hope that some of them will find my amateur film junkie opinion useful and enjoyable.
Please recommend me your favorite films, or even those you have been telling yourself you should watch because you are a sophisticated person, but they still collect dust on your DVD shelves. It is okay. We will watch them together.
By the time I finished writing this introduction, I decided to Google it to see if anyone did such a thing. It turned out there was a “365 Days of Film” challenge on Tumblr, Reddit and other social media sources. Even though the films there were mostly mainstream, I liked the idea.
So I say we call it a challenge, too. And if you are as insane as I am, I invite you to take it with me: watch the films I review, and tell me what you think.
Action!
