2015 was a big year for me as I viewed a whopping 274 films
for the first time; this number does not reflect any films that I may have a
repeat viewing nor any television series.
Over the course of my own personal evaluation I’ve realized that I
watched a lot of horror films (as to be expected) but I also watched a lot of
documentary films.
Another surprise for
me was that I watched so few animation films.
I’ll try to keep this short by hitting upon the highlights and looking
at 2015 “by the numbers.”
First off I watched twenty-seven films theatrically with
five of those films in 3D.
This may
surprise many people that may only go to the theater 3-5 a year much less see
five films in 3D.
I actually enjoy
watching films in 3D so I try to see some of the bigger films in this format
(i.e.
Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic
World, Mad Max: Fury Road, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, and
Terminator: Genysis).
My theatrical highlights are as follows 1)
Mad Max: Fury Road, 2)
Spotlight, 3)
Ex Machina, 4)
Creed, 5)
Crimson Peak, 6)
The Gift, 7)
The Visit, 8)
A Walk in the Woods, 9)
Insidious: Chapter 3, and 10)
Unfriended.
My favorite film in 3D was
Mad Max: Fury Road with
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
being a close second (although the film itself was just “okay” viewing it in 3D
was worth it).
I watched fifty-seven films on Netflix all of various genres
but most importantly this is how I viewed over 85% of my documentaries. Netflix has an amazing selection of
documentary films which is one of the main reasons I use the service. I also viewed a ton of television series here
as well but since I wasn’t keeping track of those I don’t have specific
numbers. I watched one hundred
eighty-four films via DVD/Blu-Ray and only five films by other means (mostly
You Tube or film festival).
A lot of what I watched was via DVD/BD but Netflix is my
second go-to way to view films.
There
are many other outlets to view films such as Vimeo, Hulu, and Amazon, to name a
few, but these are not outlets I chose to use last year.
I guess I’ll have to change that for this
year.
*****
One of the reasons why I’ve been keeping track of all this
is to see how much my viewing habits of films I missed from the previous years
will have improved. Part of me spent
last year not only watching films released in 2015 but also catching up with
films that I had missed from the previous year.
I ended up viewing twenty-eight films released in 2015 most
of which I watched theatrically.
I spent
more time catching up with films released in 2014 with forty-nine.
Netflix has made it easier to catch up with films
I’ve missed especially in older decades.
My favorite films to catch up with from 2014 were 1)
The Babadook, 2)
Cake, 3)
Invaluable: The True Story of an Epic Artist,
4)
Maps to the Stars, 5)
Cold in July, 6)
The Judge, 7)
Dead Snow 2: Red
Vs Dead, 8)
Divergent, 9)
Blood Glacier, and 10)
3 Days to Kill.
I watched eighty-two films from the ‘10s and
forty-five from the ‘00s but what’s more important are the films from the
former decades as I tried to continuously catch up on films that I had missed
or were suggested to me by friends.
The ‘90s were a great year for me growing up but there were
so few films that I needed to catch up with (only eighteen) and the same goes
for the ‘80s (eleven).
In the decade of
my birth the ‘70s I caught up with seventeen films that I happened to have
missed.
In the decades preceding the ‘70s
I viewed twenty-one films.
The major highlights
of these decades are
Hiroshima Mon Amour
(1959),
The Seventh Seal (1957),
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966),
I Married a Witch (1942),
Harvey (1950),
The Long, Hot Summer (1958),
Strike
(1925),
Breathless (1960),
The Epic of Everest (1924), and
Stormy Weather (1943).
With each passing year my list of films that I need to watch
dwindles and with Netflix it’s become easier and easier so I’m sure that in
2016 I’ll have an even better time finding new films that I may have missed.
*****
In terms of genre, horror is the one that exceeded all
others with having watched one hundred and fourteen of which fifteen were released
in 2015.
I won’t go into detail about my
favorite horror films of 2015 (as that will be saved for another article) but I
do want to mention some of the highlights from the years previous to 2015 –
The Babdook (2014),
Here Comes the Devil (2012),
Don’t
Look Now (1973),
Thale (2012),
Byzantium (2013),
The Last Circus (2010),
Under
the Skin (2013),
The Sentinel
(1977),
Horns (2013),
Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead (2014),
The Tall Man (2012),
Rosewood Lane (2011),
Maniac (2012),
Blood Glacier (2014) and
Black
Rock (2013).
Documentaries made up thirty-four of the films viewed but
surprisingly none of them were released in 2015.
Some of these highlights included –
Blackfish (2013),
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011),
Invaluable:
The True Story of an Epic Artist (2014),
Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier (1995),
Birth of the Living Dead (2013),
Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001),
The Central Park Five (2012),
Crips
& Bloods: Made in America (2008),
Living
on One Dollar (2013), and
The Epic of
Everest (1924).
As mentioned earlier I viewed only seven animated films none
of which were released in 2015. Of these
that I viewed only two stand out which are Despicable
Me (2010) and The Secret World of
Arriety (2010).
*****
As you can see I viewed a large variety of films in
2015. If you’re wondering about the
other genres, I didn’t really track them but I’ll post a complete list so you
can have a clearer idea. I tend to watch
all types of films from all decades and genres and many times people suggest
films to me. I also love the classics
and black and white films and many days I’ll just watch a bunch of those types
of films. I think that all films and
genres have merit if you stop to take a few moments to explore them all. I’ll certainly continue to do so and I hope
that having read this article you will to.
Documentaries that focused on a single individual can fall
into two camps – one is that it’s too pretentious to actually say something serious
about the subject or two it tells a well-rounded and comprehensive look at the subject’s
life and career both the good and the bad.
Unfortunately, the second one only actually happens when the subject has
already passed on. So it is with great
pleasure that To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story (2017) belongs in the
second type and Kodder is very much still alive. 
