2017 Media Diet

2017 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. Heaven’s Gate (Cimino, 1980)

2. Elle (Verhoeven, 2016)

3. Disorder (Winocour, 2015)

4. Aferim! (Jude, 2015)

5. Rak ti Khon Kaen/Cemetery of Splendour (Weerasethakul, 2015)

6. The Girl with all The Gifts (McCarthy, 2016)

7. A Monster Calls (Bayona, 2016)

8. Last Days in the Desert (Garcia, 2015)

9. Comoara/The Treasure (Porumboiu, 2015)

10. Demolition (Vallée, 2015)

*11. Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)

12. Silence (Scorsese, 2016)

13. Aquarius (Mendonça Filho, 2016)
14. Avril et le monde truqué/April and the Extraordinary World (Desmares, 2015)

15. Boi Neon/Neon Bull (Mascaro, 2015)

16. Split (Shyamalan, 2016)

        The Eighties (2016)

17. Chevalier (Tsangari, 2015)
18. 13th (DuVernay, 2016)

19. Crooklyn (Lee, 1994)

20. The Sea of Trees (Van Sant, 2015)

21. I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953)

22. Hologram for the King (Tykwer, 2016)

23. Reality (Dupieux, 2016)

24. The Founder (Hancock, 2016)

February

25. A Boy and his Dog (Jones, 1975)

26. Chopping Mall (Wynorski, 1986)

27. Jackie (Larrain, 2016)

28. Equals (Doremus, 2015)

        Channel Zero: Candle Cove (Macneill, 2016)

29. Gok-seung/The Wailing (Hong-jin Na, 2016)

30. A Most Violent Year (J.C. Chandor, 2014)

31. A Cure for Wellness (Verbinski, 2016)

*32. Shivers (Cronenberg, 1975)

33. Paterson (Jarmusch, 2016)

*34. Snowpiercer (Joon-ho Bong, 2013)

*35. Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (Shûsuke Kaneko, 2001)

36. Meteor (Neame, 1979)

37. 20th Century Women (Mills, 2016)

March

38. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. (Blair, 2017)

39. The Impossible (Bayona, 2012)

40. XX (Benjamin, 2017)

41. Forushande/The Salesman (Farhadi, 2016)

42. Logan (Mangold, 2017)

43. Taxi/Taxi Tehran (Panahi, 2015)

44. 99 Homes (Bahrani, 2014)

45. The Emperor’s New Groove (Dindal, 2000)

        Attack on Titan: SE1 (Araki, 2013)

46. Tricked (Verhoeven, 2012)

47. In Jackson Heights (Wiseman, 2015)

48. Shotgun Stories (Nichols, 2007)

49. Caddyshack (Ramis, 1980)

50. Under Sandet/Land of Mine (Zandvliet, 2015)

51. Welcome to Leith (Nichols, 2015)

52. The Monster (Bertino, 2016)

53. Ma vie de Courgette/My Life as a Zucchini (Barras, 2016)

*54. 10 Cloverfield Lane (Trachtenberg, 2016)

55. Arsene Lupin (Conway, 1932)

56. Evolution (Hadzihalilovic, 2015)

        Arrested Development: SE1 (Hurwitz, 2003)

57. Life (Espinosa, 2017)

58. L'oro di Napoli/ The Gold of Naples (De Sica, 1954)

59. Mossafer /The Traveller (Kiarostami, 1974)

60. Neruda (Larrain, 2016)

61. Kati Kati (Masya, 2016)

April

62. Obit. (Gould, 2016)

63. Powidoki/Afterimage  (Wajda, 2016)

64. I, Daniel Blake (Loach, 2016)

65. American Anarchist (Siskel, 2016)

66. Ilegittim/Illegitimate (Sitaru, 2016)

67. Personal Shopper (Assayas, 2016)

*68. The Mothman Prophecies (Pellington, 2002)

       Arrested Development: SE2 (Hurwitz, 2004)

69. Blow Out (De Palma, 1981)

70. H. (Attieh, 2014)

        Book of Blood: Vol 1 (Barker, 1984)

71. Fuocoammare/Fire at Sea (Rosi, 2016)

72. Kong: Skull Island (Vogt-Roberts, 2017)

73. Suna no onno/Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara, 1964)

74. Song to Song (Malick, 2017)

75. The Void (Gillespie, 2016)

76. The Rambler (Reeder, 2013)

        Arrested Development: SE3 (Hurwitz, 2005)

77. The Swarm (Allen, 1978)

78. Colossal (Vigalondo, 2016)

79. Leviafan/Leviathan (Zvyagintsev, 2014)

May

80. The Discovery (McDowell, 2017)

        Arrested Development SE:4 (Hurwitz, 2013)

81. Gates of Heaven (Morris, 1978)

82. Get Out (Peele, 2017)

83. Your Name (Makoto Shinkai, 2016)

84. Casting JonBenet (Green, 2017)

85. In Which We Serve (Coward, 1942)

86. Gojira X Mekagojira/Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla (Masaaki Tezuka, 2002)

87. Command and Control (Kenner, 2016)

88. One-Eyed Girl (Matthews, 2014)

89. Ba wang bie ji/Farewell My Concubine (Chen, 1993)

90. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (Nelson, 2006)

91. Proof (Moorhouse, 1991)

92. Beyond the Gates (Stewart, 2016)

93. Seoulyeok/Seoul Station (Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)

June

94. Afterschool (Campos, 2008)

95. Pretty in Pink (Deutch, 1986)

        The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood, 1985)

96. Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho/The Way He Looks (Ribeiro, 2014)

97. El Clan/The Clan (Trapero, 2015)

98. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Gunn, 2017)

99. It Comes at Night (Shults, 2017)

        Hannibal SE:1 (Fuller, 2013)

100. Un monstruo de mil cabezas/A Monster with a Thousand Heads (Plá, 2015)
101. Blind Chance (Kieslowski, 1987)

        Hannibal SE: 2 (Fuller, 2014)

July

102. Stake Land 2: The Stakelander (Olsen, 2016)

103. Okja (Joon-ho Bong, 2017)

104. Mall (Hahn, 2014)

        Hannibal SE: 3 (Fuller, 2015)

105. Moana (Clements, 2016)

106. No Escape (Dowdle, 2015)

107. A Ghost Story (Lowery, 2017)

108. Salt and Fire (Herzog, 2016)

*109. Little Shop of Horrors (Oz, 1986)

110. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)

111. My Bloody Valentine  (Lussier, 2009)

*112. Friday the 13th Part 3 (Miner, 1982)

113. Baby Driver (Wright, 2017)

114. Goodbye Solo (Bahrani, 2008)

115. Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017)

116. Zero Days (Gibney, 2016)

117. Resident Evil: Vendetta (Takanori Tsujimoto, 2017)

118. Pandemic (Suits, 2016)

August

119. Wonder Woman (Jenkins, 2017)

120. Herz aus Glaz/Heart of Glass (Herzog, 1976)

121. A Simple Plan (Raimi, 1998)

122. Xiong Moa/Evil Cat (Dennis Yu, 1987)

        Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later (Showalter, 2017)

123. Starry Eyes (Kolsch, 2014)

124. Boardinghouse (Wintergate, 1982)

125. Stridulum/The Visitor (Paradisi, 1979)

126. Satan Place: A Soap Opera from Hell (Aschbrenner, 1988)

127. Things (Jordan, 1989)

128. The Lego Movie (Lord, 2014)

129. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (Glosserman, 2006)

130. Basic Instinct (Verhoeven, 1992)

131. Isle of the Dead (Robson, 1945)

132. The Mummy (Freund, 1932)

133. The Transfiguration (O’Shea, 2016)

134. Into the Mouth of Madness (Carpenter, 1994)

135. Enrages/Rabid Dogs (Hannezo, 2015)

136. Bad Boys (Bay, 1995)

137. The Messenger (Moverman, 2009)

138. Buster’s Mal Heart (Smith, 2016)

139. Dumbo (Armstrong, 1941)

140. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (Kuenne, 2008)

September

141. Wind River (Sheridan, 2017)

142. Logan Lucky (Soderbergh, 2017)

143. Imperial Dreams (Vitthal, 2014)

144. Zui hao de shi guano/Three Times (Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2005)

145. Blackfish (Cowperthwaite, 2013)

146. The Midnight Swim (Smith, 2014)

147. The Lost Continent (Carreras, 1968)

148. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie/The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (Grau, 1974)

October

149. Suspicion (Hitchcock, 1941)

150. Welt am Draht/World on a Wire (Fassbinder, 1973)

151. Gerald’s Game (Flanagan, 2017)

152. The Bad Batch (Amirpour, 2016)

153. Blade Runner 2049 (Villenueve, 2017)

154. Grave/Raw (Ducournau, 2016)

155. Bacalaureat/Graduation (Mungiu, 2016)

*156. The Ring (Verbinski, 2002)

*157. Busanhaeng/Train to Busan (Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)

158. Zombi 3 (Fulci, 1988)

159. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Clayton, 1983)

160. Le notti del terrore/Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (Bianchi, 1981)

161. It (Muschietti, 2017)

*162. Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

163. Howling 2: Striba - Werewolf Bitch/Howling 2: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (Mora, 1985)

164. The Conjuring 2 (Wan, 2016)

November

165. Monster Squad (Dekker, 1987)

166. The Florida Project (Baker, 2017)

167. Loving Vincent (Kobiela, 2017)

        Stranger Things SE:2 (Duffer, 2017)

168. A nagy füzet/The Notebook (Szász, 2013)

169. First They Killed My Father (Jolie, 2017)

170. The Survivalist (Fingleton, 2015)

171. La planète sauvage/Fantastic Planet (Laloux, 1973)

172. Wonderstruck (Haynes, 2017)

173. Gold (Gaghan, 2016)

174. Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017)

175. The Killing of A Sacred Deer (Lanthimos, 2017)

176. The Black Cat (Ulmer, 1934)

*177. Don’t Look Now (Roeg, 1973)

178. Live By Night (Affleck, 2016)

179. Mammal (Daly, 2016)

180. One of Us (Grady, 2017)

181. Coco (Unkrich, 2017)

182. The Parking Lot Movie (Eckman, 2010)

183. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (McDonagh, 2017)

December

184. Justice League (Snyder, 2017)

135. Last Flag Flying (Linklater, 2017)

136. The Breadwinner (Twomey, 2017)

137. Wonder Wheel (Allen, 2017)

138. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)

139. Super Dark Times (Phillips, 2017)

140. The Shape of Water (del Toro, 2017)

        Mindhunter (Penhall, 2017)

*141. Black Christmas (Clark, 1974)

142. Island of Lost Souls (Kenton, 2932)

143. Red Road (Arnold, 2006)

        Dark (Baran bo Odar, 2017)

144. Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017)

        Black Mirror SE:4 (Brooker, 2017)

        Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami, 2002)

145. Lost City of Z (Gray, 2016)

FIVE FAVORITE NEW RELEASES (in alphabetical order)

Blade Runner 2049 - A stark, organic neo-noir saga comprising endlessly inspired set pieces of theological torment throughout a gluttonous dystopian carcass.

The Florida Project - Heartful and hopeful odysseys contend with the economic and social depravity of a commercialized wonderland.  

A Ghost Story - A quiet and contemplative observation of belonging, small creative choices take dreamy imagery and construct an unseen world beyond time and existence.

The Shape of Water - Swimming in espionage and sympathy, human abnormalities are colored with fantasy and fairy tale richness.

Your Name - His most ambitious and financially successful accomplishment, Makoto Shinkai’s transcendental storytelling spans timelines and spirituality, painting small emotional spaces into mesmerizing dreamscapes.

HONARABLE MENTION:

Call Me By Your Name

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Lady Bird

The Salesman
Super Dark Times

FIVE FAVORITE PAST RELEASES (in alphabetical order):

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father - The pillars of family and reconciliation are shaken by an unraveling abyss of gripping criminology and grisly murder.

Fantastic Planet - An otherworldly parable saturated in magnificent monsters and macabre adventure, illuminated with nostalgic animation.

H. - Composing beauty in the craft of chaos, this trek into the oddities of motherhood ascends into the atmospheres of surrealism.

Heaven’s Gate - Infinite landscapes set this epic American western amid showstopping scenes of grandeur and the explosive showdowns of legend.

World on a Wire - Retrofuturist elegance and suspense hypnotically edit together a deep visual labyrinth of reflective metaphors.

HONARABLE MENTION:

20th Century Women

Afterschool

Blow Out

Buster’s Mal Heart
Electricity

FIVE LEAST FAVORITE OVERALL (in alphabetical order):

Beyond the Gates - Cliche lighting and horror fandom cannot shape uninspired art design or a numb script.

Boardinghouse - Witless narrative wielding an unhinged format, all mixed inside a blender set to “boring.”

Chopping Mall - Comically routine checklist of horny teenyboppers and overzealous slasher extravaganza.

The Sea of Trees - Cycles through misery after misery until tired resolutions end the smallest symbolic curiosity with a shrug.

The Rambler - A boring stream of lowly characters and indecisive genre falling off the tailgate of weak shock effects.

DISHONARABLE MENTION:
I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore.

Pandemic

Salt and Fire

Starry Eyes

The Swarm

STATS

Movies: 145

Books: 3

TV Shows/season: 15

Most viewed directors:
            Paul Verhoeven: 3
            Ramin Bahrani: 2
            J.A. Bayona: 2
            Werner Herzog: 2
            Alfred Hitchcock: 2
            Pablo Larrain: 2
            Sarah Adina Smith: 2

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