2020 Movies - By the Numbers

Look, obviously a few things were different this year per my availability to sit on my ass and watch movies.  

And watch movies I did.  There wasn't much on in the way of baseball until July or so.  I had time to do podcasts almost once per week (we'll get to that).  And, we instituted twice-per-week movie parties (Tuesdays and Fridays.  Jenifer runs Tuesdays, I manage Fridays).  Plus, I don't really follow that many TV shows, so I had some time to watch whatever.  And I think when you review the list, you will say "whatever did he watch these movies for?"

Anyway

For comparisons:

 in 2019, I watched 204 movies

in 2018, I watched 179 movies

In 2020, I watched 269 movies that I am aware of.  I have blog posts entries for each of these movies, and some metadata on each movie to help me track.  

This number includes only movies I watched in their entirety.  If I watched part of a movie, it's not included.  

It is possible I've missed some movies, one way or another.  Whether I forgot to mark it, or write it up, or whatever.  So I'll say - at a *minimum* I watched 269 movies in 2020.  I'll adjust the post if I figure out I missed anything.  

For the complete numbers in a spreadsheet, you can click here.

Signal Watch 2019 Subjective Opinion Movie Awards - 2019! (The Mellies!)

We've already shared the breakdown of all the movies we watched last year, so now it's time to talk about some of our favorite things and to drag some movies we maybe didn't like all that much.

We don't just talk about movies that came out in 2019, we try to talk about all the "new to me" movies we saw, and maybe a special selection or three of movies we'd seen before, but which deserve special mention.

The Mellies are nominated by and voted upon by the only opinion that matters:  mine.  They are also not reflective of the panoply of films released in any given year - because I may watch a lot of movies, but I don't have that kind of time.  And, honestly, I'm just not that interested in a whole lot of what comes out.

Krypto Awards: Worst and Best of 2018

It's been a few days since 2018 wrapped, so it's fair to call it a year and take a look over the list of movies we watched and name a few as outstanding and a few...  we'll still say "outstanding", just, you know, in a different way.  I'll mostly discuss "new to me" movies, of which I watched over 100 (my life is a shallow, meaningless parade of nothing-better-to-do).  This list might look different in a month, so, you know, this is what I think today.

You can see the complete list from 2018 here.  Check the tabs for filtering by categories.

As always, there were movies I had to go back and look up and say "what was that again?".  It happens.  But this is why I write them up.  There aren't that many "this is terrible" movies because I generally don't go to see movies unless I *think* they'll hit the mark for me, but fate is a funny thing and it happens.  Also, unless RiffTrax or MST3K is involved, I turn off movies I'm not enjoying, which disqualifies them from consideration.

With that - Let's consider this the "Krypto Awards" for 2018.

Did Not Like

Movies in 2017 (for me)

In 2017, at the height of my "oh, who cares?" moment, I made the decision to stop posting on every movie I'd watched.  But I've found it's sort of weird to me, personally, that I can't go back and see a list of everything I watched in a year or refresh my memory from my notes when a movie comes on.  Thus, in 2018, I'll be at least dropping the name of the movie and some info for my personal reference.  That's what you can learn from the change in format that started at the beginning of the year.

When I was writing up every movie I'd seen, I said it allowed me to spend more time with a film, and that's still true.  In 2017 I leaned into writing more of my personal experience, dropping some notes on how I engaged with the movie, and rarely got much into straight up attempts at criticism.  There's enough of that out there, and you can Google any movie and find reasonable reviews and critiques.

Television in 2017 (for me)

Here was the thing about television in 2017:  there was so damn much of it.  

I think we're all pretty comfortable at this point just telling people "I've already got too many shows, I'm not looking for anything new."  Anything and everything is discussed as if it's must-see water-cooler discussion material, but the fact is, the audience is so splintered, and there's so much supposedly quality content on, none of it qualifies as required viewing nor are characters and storylines part of the shared cultural lexicon.

The 2016 Kryptos - Television

way more effort went into this graphic than I want to admit

2016.  It seems so far away now.  Heck, Christmas was, like, two years ago at this point.  But let us remember that all too vital part of all of our lives - TELEVISION.

Oh, you don't own a television?  You haven't had cable in ten years?  Well, la di dah, mister fancy pants.  Some of us stay in touch with the people.

Between cable, internet streaming options and sports, it was certainly a year in which I watched a metric ton of TV.  You couldn't not be told you had to watch this show or that show by your friends or co-workers.  And some of them you didn't try, some of them you watched and didn't like and just prayed they'd never ask about whether you'd tried it or not, and some of it was maybe not the best thing but you still tuned in.  And some of it you set your schedule around watching.

Here's a quick rundown of some of what we watched:

The 2016 Kryptos - Movies

Welcome to the 2016 Krypto Awards.  This isn't just for movies, but that's where we're gonna start - by looking back at the Good, Bad and Ugly of 2016 movie-watching here at The Signal Watch.  If you haven't seen our post on what all we watched this year, numbers-wise, you can check it out here.

It's tough to say "Best Picture" means a whole lot, but we'll try to narrow it down some.  We're only really talking about the movies we saw for the first time in 2016, which really narrows the field here from 160+ to 88 films.

Of course, we didn't just want to heap congrats on things we adored.  We kind of hated some things this year, so we'd be negligent if we didn't discuss what didn't work for us and take some cheap shots on our way out the door.

So - Let's get to it.

The 2015 Kryptos! We Talk the Best and Worst and What Made an Impression in 2015

Hey, everybuddy!

Welcome to the 2015 Signal Watch Awards, or, as we're calling them here - The Kryptos!  We've named the awards after everyone's favorite flying super dog.  We were going to call them The Jimmies, but that sounded like a crappy local pop-punk band, or some sort of speed the kids would be doing by crushing up their ADD meds, and we're not doing it.

So, welcome to the First Annual Kryptos - for 2015!

It's sepia for class