Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

It feels weird to be closing the chapter on 2020 as this entire year has been one big blur and it hasn’t fully registered that a new year is nigh, let alone the fact it’s December.

As usual I’ll take you through some stats and some favourites from 2020 across Film, Television, Books and heck a few personal accomplishments too.

What are we waiting for? Time to say goodbye to 2020.

FILM

I use Letterboxd to keep a record of the films I watch throughout the year, for which I am pretty vigilant with, and normally write a few lines of review.

This year being a year like no others saw me reaching an all time high of 230 movies watched in 2020. I enjoyed having a little more time to re-watch some old favourites and press play on those I scarcely remembered having seen before. There were 59 rewatches in total in 2020.

The first movie I watched was a rewatch in Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2/5) and the last Just Mercy (3.5/5) . The shortest movie I watched at 63minutes was Education and the longest at 169minutes was my rewatch of Interstellar.

My lowest rated movies at 1/2 a star was only two; Hard Kill and The Christmas Temp, compared to last years eight. However I did end up with fourteen one star movies so there’s that!

Looking at my highest rated, my five star re-watch of Harry Potter and the Prisoner Azkaban doesn’t quite count, and my two, four and a half ratings were also re-watches; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and The Departed.

We’ll find more variation in my four star movies which totalled twelve and included; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Manchester by the Sea, Searching and Jojo Rabbit.

I was quite pleased and surprised with reaching 230 movies this year and hope I’ll be able to inject some of that energy into my reading next year.

TELEVISION

TV Time does the job of noting all the television I watch and I am very vigilant with this. There are a few shows I may have only watched one episode of that I might not have logged but it’s a good 98% accurate.

The Stats.
On average in 2020 I watched about 13 episodes of television a week, which, if you ask me really isn’t that much. Interestingly it’s a little higher than last years average. Also surpassing 2019 is the total number of television episodes I watched in 2020… A demonic 666.

There are so many one offs and unconfirmed renewals, cancellations and varying reasons for watching a television series not to mention lengths.

This is all to say a few of my standout shows from the year include; Lovecraft Country, Blood of Zeus, Las Chica’s Del Cable, The Split, and I May Destroy You.

BOOKS

Does anyone use anything other than Goodreads to log their reading? If so don’t tell me – I’m quite at my leiure.

The Stats. 
I set myself a goal of 36 book this year – a nice three book a month average. I manged to surpass this and reach 40 books.

Across the 40 books I read a total of 14,803 pages. The first book I read in 2020 was Not The Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher, which felt like a gender reversal modern day take on the movie, How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days. It was underwhelming and I gave it 2/5.

My last review which received 5/5 and allowed me to end the year on a high was Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. It was a pleasant read and a fun mystery to watch unfold.

The longest book I read was Hanya Yangihara’s A Little Life, which yes – still comes to mind and hits me with a wave of melancholy – it was almost worth it though as a I gave it 4/5.

Feel free to have a peruse at the other 37 books that made up my 2020 in reading over on GOODREADS.

OTHER

There are the lists you make and the personal promises you try and keep but it’s hard to keep track of a list of what you tell yourself you’ll accomplish in a year. Things drop off and new things are scrawled on, but ultimately you’ll know what you’re patting yourself on the back for – and these are a few of mine.

I won my sixth year of NaNoWriMo
With no room to go out and film I shifted into creating content for Sassy Jam
I began writing on Medium as a way to expand past film reviews
I randomly took up and really enjoyed gardening
I completed writing the first draft of my feature film script

It’s hard to say for certain but I am heavily guestimating that I wrote over 100,000 words in 2020 which includes of course my 50,000 for NaNo, the feature film, my shorts and all my personal posts and paid ones. If anyone knows of an app or way to keep track of how much you write in a year please let me know!

Here’s to more goals being met, books being consumed, television being watched, and movies to marvel in 2021.

Happy New Year