The Reality Check

While I still have a Letterboxd Pro account, I decided to conduct a little experiment.

I've never been much of a collector of physical media, but always admired other people's fabulous collections. So I wondered, if money and space and availability weren't issues, which movies would I put down money to acquire? Which movies do I really consider essential enough to put in my own hypothetical permanent personal collection?

So I went through all my logged Letterboxd titles, year by year, from the silent era to the present day. And I ended up with 646 titles. And boy, are my biases and tastes clear.

At first, when I was working through the older titles, it felt like I was finally getting to put my own opinions across on the established film canon. Fewer Westerns! More musicals! In with "Stella Dallas" and "Hellzapoppin'" and out with all those boring old John Wayne movies and Jean-Luc Godard. I added a couple of titles like "Double Indemnity" and "Lawrence of Arabia" out of a sense obligation, because I knew they were references I wanted to have available, even if they weren't personal favorites, and a couple of guilty pleasures like the "Absent Minded Professor" movies, but there weren't many picks in either category.

Then I hit the '80s, and it all went to hell. Suddenly I was staring at all my childhood favorites, some of them absolutely terrible movies that I absolutely could not leave off the list. The power of nostalgia compelled me to include "Santa Claus: The Movie," "The Twilight Zone: The Movie," "The Golden Child," and all the Arnold Schwarzenegger "Conan" movies. I have no coherent excuse for why I have to own a copy of "The Chipmunk Adventure," but I have to own a copy of "The Chipmunk Adventure." Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Decalogue" I can leave off without any qualms, but not the Chipmunks and Chipettes having an around-the-world hot air balloon race.

And then I got to the most recent films, from the era when I was actively writing and analyzing movies to death, and making Top Ten lists and arguing about Oscar snubs, and all that. And in spite of my efforts to broaden my horizons and embrace the arthouse, my pics are overwhelmingly mainstream blockbuster fare. On the list are six MCU movies, three "X-men" movies, two "Hunger Games" movies, and the entire "Bourne" trilogy. I picked six films from 2019: "Little Women," "Us," "Parasite," "Marriage Story," "Avengers: Endgame," and "Doctor Sleep." So as much as I've gone to bat for "Jojo Rabbit," when it comes down to it, I'm going to watch The Avengers brawling with Thanos and enjoy it more. I feel like such a goddamn hypocrite.

In the end, the stats don't lie. About half of the list is comprised of films that were released after 1980, with the '90s and the '00s most heavily represented. The most heavily represented year is 2004 with twelve films. I picked ten Spielberg movies, eight from Hitchcock, eight from Kubrick, and nine from Miyazaki. Four star Eddie Murphy, five star Arnold Schwarzenegger, and six star Johnny Depp. My biggest surprise was not having a single "Harry Potter" film on the list, though I've seen them all. I guess that series just never really won me over.

And there are only seventeen silent films, mostly Chaplin and Keaton features. 122 foreign language films. 79 animated films. Eight westerns, including the "Man With No Name" trilogy. A grand total of four documentaries. Four. Aargh.

On the other hand, the criterion (ahem) here isn't solely quality. I've watched "Muppet Treasure Island" about fifty times, while I don't know if I'll ever be emotionally prepared to watch "Synecdoche, New York" again, and I own exactly the same number of copies of both movies. Over and over again, while going through all the titles, I kept rejecting movies that I admired and respected and found moving, but that I hadn't really enjoyed the experience of watching. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm never going to watch "The Nightingale" or "A Hidden Life" or "The Irishman" again. "Doctor Sleep," though it has its problems, is a stellar popcorn flick that I've already seen three times.

And it's good to be reminded of that, as I'm getting through the last few titles for 2019 and putting together my yearly list. Art's all well and good, but if you want my money, entertainment always wins out.

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