2015 Media Diet

In 2009 I learned about my friend's habit of logging every movie he watched into an annual list. Starting mid-year, I took up this task and recorded every feature-length film I viewed. Not long after that, I was introduced to "Steven Soderbergh's media diet," which inspired me to expand my list and include novels and TV series. In addition are the stats on most-viewed directors as well as my lists for top five favorite releases of the year, top five favorite non-recent releases, and top five least favorite overall.

Only full movie viewings are included.

KEY:

*Repeat viewings

Bold: TV shows/season

Underlined: Novels

January

1. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Oz, 1988)

2. The Trip to Italy (Winterbottom, 2014)

3. It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Hertzfeldt, 2012)

4. Hide Your Smiling Faces (Carbone, 2013)

5. Vi är bäst/We Are The Best! (Moodysson, 2013)

6. Bez konca/No End (Kieslowski, 1985)

7. Unbroken (Jolie, 2014)

8. The Grand Seduction (McKellar, 2013)

9. Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014)

10. The Immigrant (Gray, 2013)

11. Omar (Abu-Assad, 2013)

12. The Congress (Folman, 2013)

13. Autómata (Ibáñez, 2014)

14. Biohazard: Damnation/Resident Evil: Damnation (Kamiya, 2012)

15. The Babadook (Kent, 2014)

16. Locke (Knight, 2013)

17. Enemy (Villeneuve, 2013)

18. Jack & Diane (Gray, 2012)

19. Arlington Road (Pellington, 1999)

20. Koto no ha no niwa/Garden of Words (Shinkai, 2013)

21. Cheap Thrills (Katz, 2013)

22. Deathdream/Dead of Night (Clark, 1974)

23. Tôkaidô Yotsuya kaidan/The Ghost of Yotsuya (Nakagawa, 1959)

24. Såsom i en spegel/Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman, 1961)

25. The Man With the Iron Fists (RZA, 2012)

*26. Lost Horizon (Captra, 1937)

27. L’image manquante/The Missing Picture (Pahn, 2013)

28. Batalla en el cielo/Battle in Heaven (Reygadas, 2005)

29. God Told Me To (Cohen, 1976)

February
30. Selma (DuVernay, 2014)

31. Into the Woods (Marshall, 2014)

32. American Sniper (Eastwood, 2014)

33. The Brothers Bloom (Johnson, 2008)

34. Ta’m e guilass/Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997)

35. Mr. Turner (Leigh, 2014)

36. The Captive (Egoyan, 2014)

37. Ernest and Celestine (Aubier, 2012)

38. Whiplash (Chazelle, 2014)

39. Frank (Abrahamson, 2014)
40. Seul contre tous/I Stand Alone (Noé, 1998)

41. Frida (Taymor, 2002)

42. Virunga (Einsiedel, 2014)

43. Obvious Child (Robespierre, 2014)

44. National Gallery (Wiseman, 2014)

45. Theory of Everything (Marsh, 2014)

46. La double vie de Véronique/The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski, 1991)

47. The Overnighters (Moss, 2014)

48. Young Ones (Paltrow, 2014)

49. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (Amirpour, 2014)

March

50. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (Clooney, 2002)

51. The Protector 2 (Pinkaew, 2013)

52. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Andersen, 2003)

53. Top Gun (Scott, 1986)

54. Kis Uykusu/Winter Sleep (Ceylan, 2014)

55. Redline (Koike, 2009)

56. 20,000 Days on Earth (Forsyth, 2014)

57. The Sweeney (Love, 2012)

58. Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 1965)

*59. Footlight Parade (Bacon, 1933)

60. Relatos salvajes/Wild Tales (Szifrón, 2014)

61. Na-moo-eobs-neun san/Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim, 2008)

62. How to Steal a Million (Wyler, 1966)

            Freaks and Geeks (Feig, 1999)

63. ’71 (Demange, 2014)

64. ABCs of Death 2 (Ascher, 2014)

*65. Silver Linings Playbook (Russell, 2012)

66. The King of Comedy (Scorsese, 1982)

67. The Ruins (Smith, 2008)

68. Three Days of the Condor (Pollack, 1975)

April

69. The Full Monty (Cattaneo, 1997)

70. Serena (Bier, 2014)

71. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (Rowland, 1953)

72. Ohayô/Good Morning (Yasujirô Ozu, 1959)

73. The Angry Silence (Green, 1960)

74. It Follows (Mitchell, 2014)

75. Girlhood (Sciamma, 2014)

76. No One’s Child (Rsumovic)

77. En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron/A Pigeon Sat on A Branch Reflecting on Existence (Andersson, 2014)

78. Free Fall (Pálfi, 2014)

79. Theeb (Nowar, 2014)

80. Pervert Park (Barkfors, 2015)

81. Timbuktu (Sissako, 2014)

82. Crack in the Mirror (Fleischer, 1960)

83. Fehér isten/White God (Mundruczó, 2014)

84. What We Do in the Shadows (Clement, 2014)

85. Prince Avalanche (Green, 2013)

86. Operazione paura/Kill, Baby, Kill (Bava, 1966)

87. L'écume des jours/Mood Indigo (Gondry, 2013)

88. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him (Benson, 2013)

89. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her (Benson, 2013)

90. Greenberg (Baumbach, 2010)

91. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them (Benson, 2014)

92. While We’re Young (Baumbach, 2014)

93. Black Death (Smith, 2010)

94. Three Kings (Russell, 1999)

95. Ex Machina (Garland, 2015)

96. The Believer (Bean, 2001)

97. Funny Face (Donen, 1957)

May
98. Life Itself (James, 2014)

99. Coming to America (Landis, 1988)

100. Theater of Blood (Hickox, 1973)

101. Norte, the End of History (Diaz, 2013)

102. Tales from the Darkside (Harrison, 1990)

103. Salt of the Earth (Wenders, 2014)

104. Sharknado (Ferrante, 2013)

105. Rikugun/Army (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1944)

106. The Hunger (Scott, 1983)

107. The AristoCats (Reitherman, 1970)

108. Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015)

109. Une vie de chat/Cat in Paris (Felicioli, 2010)

110. My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (Corfixen, 2014)

111. Le dernier des injustes/The Last of the Unjust (Lanzmann, 2013)

112. Clouds of Sils Maria (Assayas, 2014)

113. Margot at the Wedding (Baumbach, 2007)

*114. Mad Max (Miller, 1979)

*115. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981)

*116. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Miller, 1985)

117. Moonstruck (Jewison, 1987)

118. The Boxtrolls (Annable, 2014)

119. [REC] 4: Apocalypse (Balagueró, 2014)

June

120. The Squid and the Whale (Baumbach, 2005)

121. Tomorrowland (Bird, 2015)

122. Man Push Cart (Bahrani, 2005)

123. Wet Hot American Summer (Wain, 2001)

*124. Tom yum goong/The Protector ( Pinkaew, 2005)

125. The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (Tibbitt, 2015)

126. Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)

127. Mr. Jealousy (Baumbach, 1997)

128. The Better Angels (Edwards, 2014)

129. Swingers (Liman, 1996)

*130. R.I.P.D. (Schwentke, 2013)

131. Inside Out (Docter, 2015)

132. Omoide no Mânî/When Marnie Was There (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2014)

133. VHS: Viral (Benson, 2014)

134. Sleepaway Camp (Hiltzik, 1983)

135. Dope (Famuyiwa, 2015)

136. Japón (Reygadas, 2002)

July

137. Jin ling shi san chai/The Flowers of War (Zhang, 2011)

138. It’s Alive (Cohen, 1974)

*139. Independence Day (Emmerich, 1996)

*140. San daikaijû: Chikyû saidai no kessen/Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (Honda, 1964)

141. Du Barry Was a Lady (Del Ruth, 1943)

142. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Gomez-Rejon, 2015)

143. Yume to kyôki no ôkoku/The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (Sunada, 2013)

144. Self/Less (Singh, 2015)

145. Le chat du rabbin/The Rabbi’s Cat (Delesvaux, 2011)

146. Sik san/The God of Cookery (Chow, 1996)

147. Witness (Weir, 1985)

148. The Green Prince (Schirman, 2014)

149. Dirty Dancing (Ardolino, 1987)

150. Ant-Man (Reed, 2015)

151. Faults (Stearns, 2014)

152. Hei kek ji wong/King of Comedy (Chow, 1999)

153. Chop Shop (Bahrani, 2007)

154. Amy (Kapadia, 2015)

155. LFO (Tublen, 2013)

156. The Guest (Wingard, 2014)

August

157. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (McQuarrie, 2015)

158. Fletch (Ritchie, 1985)

159. Fantastic Four (Trank, 2015)

160. Byôsoku 5 senchimêtoru/5 Centimeters Per Second (Makoto Shinkai, 2007)

            Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (Wain, 2015)

161. The Battery (Gardner, 2012)

162. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger (Berlinger, 2014)

163. Fed Up (Soechtig, 2014)

164. Irrational Man (Allen, 2015)

165. Heaven Can Wait (Beatty, 1978)

166. Jimmy’s Hall (Loach, 2014)

167. Song of the Sea (Moore, 2014)

168. Slow West (Maclean, 2015)

169. Sharknado 2: The Second One (Ferrante, 2014)

170. Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Forbes, 1964)

            The Red Badge of Courage (Crane, 1895)

171. Mistress America (Baumbach, 2015)

September

172. The Visit (Shyamalan, 2015)

173. Exporting Raymond (Rosenthal, 2010)

174. The Counselor (Scott, 2013)

175. Transformers: Age of Extinction (Bay, 2014)

*176. Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman, 1975)

*177. The Island of Dr. Moreau (Frankenheimer, 1996)

178. Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (Gregory, 2014)

179. Black Mass (Cooper, 2015)

*180. Meet the Feebles (Jackson, 1989)

181. Deux jours, une nuit/Two Days, One Night (Dardenne, 2014)

182. Time Lapse (King, 2014)

183. Suicide Theory (Brown, 2014)

184. Pawn Sacrifice (Zwick, 2014)

185. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Zellner, 2014)

186. 30 Seconds Away: Breaking the Cycle (Kohler, 2015)

187. Neptune (Kimball, 2013)

October

188. Sicario (Villeneuve, 2015)

189. Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (Ferrante, 2015)

190. The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (Jeunet, 2013)

191. El Club/The Club (Larrain, 2015)

*192. The Fog (Carpenter, 1980)

193. The Martian (Scott, 2015)

*194. A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984)

195. Crimson Peak (del Toro, 2015)

*196. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (Sholder, 1985)

            American Horror Story: Coven (2013, Falchuk)

197. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (Russell, 1987)

198. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (Harlin, 1988)

199. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (Hopkins, 1989)

200. Steve Jobs (Boyle, 2015)

201. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (Talalay, 1991)

202. New Nightmare (Craven, 1994)

*203. The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)

*204. Hellraiser (Barker, 1987)

*205. Creepshow (Romero, 1982)

*206. Creepshow 2 (Gornick, 1987)

*207. Zombi 2/Zombie (Fulci, 1979)

*208. Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

*209. Re-Animator (Gordon, 1985)

November

210. Beasts of No Nation (Fukunaga, 2015)

211. Freddy vs. Jason (Yu, 2003)

212. Men, Women & Children (Reitman, 2014)

213. Spectre (Mendes, 2015)

214 Ich seh ich seh/Goodnight Mommy (Fiala, 2014)

215. Bad Santa (Zwigoff, 2003)

216. Dear White People (Simien, 2014)

217. Love (Noé, 2015)

218. The Duke of Burgundy (Strickland, 2014)

*219. Children of the Corn (Kiersch, 1984)

220. Room (Abrahamson, 2015)

221. Otoshiana/Pitfall (Teshigahara, 1962)

222. Leviathan (Castaing-Taylor, 2012)

223. The Vampire Bat (Strayer, 1933)

*224. Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015)

*225. Exorcist III: Legion (Blatty, 1990)

226. Nightmare on Elm Street (Bayer, 2010)

227. The Good Dinosaur (Sohn, 2015)

December

228. Krampus (Dougherty, 2015)

229. Art School Confidential (Zwigoff, 2006)

230. Bulworth (Beatty, 1998)

231. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) (Six, 2015)

232. In The Heart of the Sea (Howard, 2015)

233. The Grudge (Shimizu, 2004)

234. Chi-Raq (Lee, 2015)

235. Macbeth (Kurzel, 2015)

236. True Romance (Scott, 1993)

237. Tangerine (Baker, 2015)

*238. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (Lucas, 1977)

239. Brooklyn (Crowley, 2015)

240. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)

241. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)

242. Edge of Tomorrow (Liman, 2014)

243. The Baby (Post, 1973)

244. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)

*245. Gojira no jyakushu/Godzilla Raids Again (Motoyoshi Oda, 1955)

*246. Mothra vs. Godzilla (Honda, 1964)

247. The Hateful Eight (Tarantino, 2015)

FIVE FAVORITE RELEASES OF THE YEAR:

Amy - A bittersweet front row pass to a prisoner of the art and industry of music, whose life and death is wholly conveyed by the same encroaching technology which both groomed and persecuted her.

LFO – Minimal in scope but extensively creative in form, the content structures a careful balancing act of technological implications, psychological influence, and dangerous ambition.

Mad Max: Fury Road – A mosaic of artistic achievements where every second of colorful brutality conveys a worn civilization of exuberant mythology and inventive warfare. 

National Gallery – Insight into an self-reflective landscape where the talents and abilities throughout the history of mankind are as much on display as those minds who work to build, maintain, and observe such splendors.  

Sicario – Evoking tension through its subtleties and cryptic social politics, the dream-like visual tone syncs to the dark rhythmic beats of horror as the wayward ideologies of a hero’s crusade interweave with vengeance and carnage.

HONORABLE MENTION

Room

Beasts of No Nation

FIVE FAVORITE NON-NEW FILMS:    

5 Centimeters Per Second – A hypnotizing cascade of emotional memories against the vast epochs of existence that erupt around them, cradling them side-by-side through a flowing perspective of love, time, and technology.

 
Battle in Heaven – An emotionally devastated reality where characters across all social standings struggle under the weight of death, sexual appetite, and religious redemption, capsizing their dreams into hopeless visual purgatory. 

 
The Hunger – Both horror and romance, the seductive vampire lore here is wrapped in modern elegance and bestowed with beautiful otherworldly aesthetic.

 

It’s Such a Beautiful Day - A surreal onslaught of innovative compositions blended with philosophical narration and witty absurdity.

Norte, the End of History – An epic tale of fate--transcending philosophical metaphor and poetic imagery--where human souls bear the burden of consequence, guilt, redemption, and the long-distant ideology of true justice.

HONORABLE MENTION

Séance on a Wet Afternoon

Ernest and Celestine
The Overnighters
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
The King of Comedy
Double Life of Veronique

FIVE LEAST FAVORITE OVERALL:

Art School Confidential – Implementing none of the titular “art,” this cast of stereotypes revel in their predictability and monotonous attempts at generic relevance. 

  

 

The Baby – A cold expanse devoid of acting and artistic merit but instead filled with a ridiculous story of ridiculous people struggles to reach an underwhelming twist ending.

 

 

The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) – Overwhelming vulgarity that compromises any entertainment, spectacle, or endurance.

 

Margot at the Wedding – Unlikable characters acting reckless and immature throughout a saturated compilation of life's disturbingly cringe-worthy moments.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl – An unnecessary abundance of visual flair and unsympathetically melodramatic characters emphasize this movie’s annoying uniquenesses, forcing caricature roles into a delusional dramatic environment.

DIS-HONORABLE MENTION
Sharknado
Sharknado 2
Sharknado 3
The Visit
Prince Avalanche
Greenberg

STATS

Movies: 247

Books: 1

TV Shows/season: 3

Most viewed directors:
            Noah Baumbach: 6
            George Miller: 5
            Tony Scott: 3
            Anthony Ferrante: 3

If you locate a mistake/typo, you win a prize.