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 releases of the year, top five older films, and top five least favorite overall.
Only full movie viewings are included.
KEY:
KEY:
*Repeat viewings
Bold: TV shows/season
Underlined: Novels
2018 Media Diet
FIVE FAVORITE NEW RELEASES (alphabetical order)
American Animals - An experiment with style and morality, this hybrid heist film creatively blends documentary interviews to weave multiple perspectives of one story.
The Favourite - A hysterical ensemble of fierce performances glowing amid the murky corridors and vast ballrooms of a social class purgatory.
Happy As Lazzaro - Shaded with the riddles of economics, a single infallible character plays out the lessons balancing society and its fables.
Let the Corpses Tan - Like a Mad Max standoff on psychedelics, this relentless crime caper blisters amid treacherous company and burns with visceral visions of violence.
The Rider - A heart-breaking struggle between passion and responsibility, soaring across the wild horizons and quiet interactions of the American Heartland.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
FIVE FAVORITE NON-NEW RELEASES (alphabetical order)
And the Ship Sails On - Diverse characters, inside and out, dance through political confrontation, building each jovial showpiece with technical hi-jinks toward a crescendo of cinematic appreciation.
The Banishment - A meditative parable that embodies awe-inspiring landscapes with the scarred humanity that corrupts peace with damnation.
Confessions - This wicked arrangement of crimes and punishments dissects social horrors with a kinetic tone and eclipses depravity with every macabre revelation.
Tampopo - A bold palette of witty comedy that mocks social etiquette while celebrating the joys of food culture.
Threads - An artfully grotesque narrative through mankind's spiral into destruction, punctuated with fact-based scenarios of nuclear doom.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
FIVE LEAST FAVORITE OVERALL (alphabetical order)
All I See is You - Disjointed characters shamble through a melodramatic maze and attempt to compensate with misplaced artistry.
Damsel - An unconventional Western that stumbles away from its finish line and aimlessly drags its genre until tapping out.
The Endless - "Endless" in the sense of convolution and incoherence, this perpetual mess overflows out of the suggestion box and into the recycling bin.
Jigsaw - The unwelcome ashes of a tired franchise are smeared and polished with nauseating color.
No Such Thing - Childish mythology, stripped of fantasy, and constipated with worn media commentary.
DIS-HONORABLE MENTIONS:
2018 Media Diet
January
1. Serpico (Lumet, 1973)
2. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jarmusch, 1999)
3. Mudbound (Rees, 2017)
4. Blind (Vogt, 2014)
5. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Baumbach, 2017)
6. The Whole Nine Yards (Lynn, 2000)
7. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (Zahler, 2017)
8. Trafic (Tati, 1971)
9. The Trouble With Harry (Hitchcock, 1955)
10. The Commuter (Collet-Serra, 2018)
11. Objective, Burma (Walsh, 1945)
12. The Post (Spielberg, 2017)
13. Shot Caller (Roman Waugh, 2017)
14. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (Smith, 2017)
15. Icarus (Fogel, 2017)
16. I, Tonya (Gillespie, 2017)
17. The Night Porter (Cavani, 2974)
18. The Big Sick (Showalter, 2017)
19. Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)
20. The Darkest Hour (Wright, 2017)
21. Beat (Verbeek, 2004)
22. Visages Villages/Faces Places (Varda, 2017)
23. Shanghai Trance (Verbeek, 2008)
24. Tesis (Amenábar, 1996)
February
25. Hao ji le/Have A Nice Day (Jian Liu, 2017)
26. Thelma (Trier, 2017)
27. The Cloverfield Paradox (Onah, 2018)
28. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (James, 2016)
29. Last Men in Aleppo (Fayyad, 2017)
30. Córki dancingu/The Lure (Smoczynska, 2015)
31. Teströl és lélekröl/On Body and Soul (Enyedi, 2017)
32. Hostiles (Cooper, 2017)
Mr Robot: SE1 (Esmail, 2015)
33. Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969)
34. The Ritual (Bruckner, 2017)
35. Cameraperson (Johnson, 2016)
36. Fish Tank (Arnold, 2009)
37. Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)
38. No Such Thing (Hartley, 2001)
39. Early Man (Park, 2018)
40. Vendredi Soir/Friday Night (Denis, 2002)
41. The Naked Kiss (Fuller, 1964)
42. Amarcord (Fellini, 1973)
March
*43. Airplane! (Abrahams, 1980)
44. Strong Island (Ford, 2017)
45. Annihilation (Garland, 2017)
47. Nostalghia (Pellington, 2018)
48. Mute (Jones, 2018)
49. The Square (Östlund, 2017)
50. A Fantastic Woman (Lelio, 2017)
51. Thoroughbreds (Finley, 2017)
52. Red Sparrow (Lawrence, 2018)
53. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (Akerman, 1975)
54. Beau travail (Denis, 1999)
Mr Robot: SE2 (Esmail, 2016)
55. Ak-Nyeo/The Villainess (Byung-gil Jung, 2017)
Ash vs Evil Dead: SE2 (Raimi, 2016)
56. Sid & Nancy (Cox, 1986)
57. Shock Corridor (Fuller, 1963)
58. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Besson, 2017)
59. Mister Lonely (Korine, 2007)
60. Nelyubov/Loveless (Zvyagintsev, 2018)
61. Reprise (Trier, 2006)
62. 50 Shades of Grey (Taylor-Johnson, 2015)
April
*63. Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981)
64. Qing shao nian nuo zha/Rebels of the Neon God (Tsai Ming-liang, 1992)
65. Isle of Dogs (Anderson, 2018)
66. Iron Man 3 (Black, 2013)
67. Den skyldige/The Guilty (Möller, 2018)
Robopocalypse (Wilson, 2011)
68. Lots of Kids, a Monkey, and a Castle (Salmerón, 2017)
69. Bad Genius (Poonpiriya, 2017)
70. Let the Sunshine In (Denis, 2017)
71. Let the Corpses Tan (Cattet, 2017)
72. Iceman (Randau, 2017)
73. 12 Days (Depardon, 2017)
74. Foxtrot (Maoz, 2017)
75. Prince of the City (Lumet, 1981)
76. Ready Player One (Spielberg, 2018)
77. R U There? (Verbeek, 2010)
78. The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood, 1995)
The Walking Dead: SE9 (Darabont, 2018)
79. Real Fiction (Ki-duk Kim, 2000)
80. You Were Never Really Here (Ramsay, 2017)
*81. Evil Dead 2 (Raimi, 1987)
82. War for Planet of the Apes (Reeves, 2017)
83. A Quiet Place (Krasinski, 2018)
84. I Vitelloni (Fellini, 1953)
85. Imperium (Ragussis, 2016)
86. Good Time (Safdie, 2017)
87. Thor: The Dark World (Taylor, 2013)
88. Summertime (Lean, 1955)
89. Despicable Me 3 (Balda, 2017)
90. Field of Dreams (Robinson, 1989)
May
91. Rampage (Peyton, 2018)
92. Clean, Shaven (Kerrigan, 1993)
93. Lean on Pete (Haigh, 2017)
94. Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015)
95. Captain America: Civil War (Russo, 2016)
96. Doppelganger (Kurosawa, 2003)
97. Spider-Man: Homecoming (Watts, 2017)
98. Polytechnique (Villeneuve, 2009)
99. Kaleidoscope (Jones, 2016)
100. Morvern Caller (Ramsay, 2002)
101. Society (Yuzna, 1989)
102. The Rider (Zhao, 2017)
103. 45 Years (Haigh, 2015)
104. Blair Witch (Wingard, 2016)
105. Thor: Ragnarok (Waititi, 2017)
106. Avengers: Infinity War (Russo, 2018)
107. The Intruder (Denis, 2004)
108. Voyeur (Kane, 2017)
Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury, 1953)
109. Deadpool 2 (Leitch, 2018)
110. I Will Walk Like A Crazy Horse (Arrabal, 1973)
The Terror: SE1 (Kajganich, 2018)
111. Willard (Mann, 1971)
*112. Army of Darkness (Raimi, 1992)
113. Time After Time (Meyer, 1979)
114. The Red Badge of Courage (Huston, 1951)
115. Solo: A Star Wars Story (Howard, 2018)
*116. The Iron Giant (Bird, 1999)
June
117. RBG (Cohen, 2018)
118. Disobedience (Lelio, 2017)
119. Tampopo (Juzo Itami, 1985)
120. Mutant/Night Shadows (Cardos, 1984)
121. The Pornographers (Shohei Imamura, 1966)
122. Hereditary (Aster, 2018)
123. First Reformed (Schrader, 2017)
124. Interior (Beckler, 2014)
125. Nenette and Boni (Denis, 1996)
126. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Yates, 2016)
127. Ben (Karlson, 1972)
128. Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (Hiroyuki Seshita, 2017)
129. Club Zeus (Verbeek, 2011)
130. Incredibles 2 (Bird, 2018)
131. Once Were Warriors (Tamahori, 1994)
132. On Chesil Beach (Cooke, 2017)
133. The Long Good Friday (Mackenzie, 1980)
134. My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea (Shaw, 2016)
135. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Neville, 2018)
136. The Harder They Come (Henzell, 1972)
True Detective: SE1 (Pizzolatto, 2014)
July
137. Real Life (Brooks, 1979)
138. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)
139. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Sollima, 2018)
*140. Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
The Handmaid’s Tale: SE1 (Miller, 2017)
141. How To Describe a Cloud (Verbeek, 2013)
142. American Animals (Layton, 2018)
143. Damsel (Zellner, 2018)
144. Road House (Herrington, 1989)
145. Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)
146. Sorry To Bother You (Riley, 2018)
147. The Disaster Artist (Franco, 2017)
148. Leave No Trace (Granik, 2018)
149. Skyscraper (Thurber, 2018)
150. Double Suicide (Masahiro Shinoda, 1969)
151. Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (Hiroyuki Seshita, 2018)
152. Underworld Beauty (Seijun Suzuki, 1958)
153. Blindspotting (Estrada, 2018)
154. The First Purge (McMurray, 2018)
*155. Hardcore Henry (Naishuller, 2015)
156. Mission: Impossible - Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018)
August
157. Mommy (Dolan, 2014)
158. Mother! (Aronofsky, 2017)
159. John Wick (Stahelski, 2014)
160. Black Rain (Shohei Imamura, 1989)
161. Norma Rae (Ritt, 1979)
162. Mary and the Witch’s Flower (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2017)
163. Eighth Grade (Burnham, 2018)
164. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Mitchell, 2001)
165. Spring (Benson, 2014)
166. Chocolat (Denis, 1988)
167. BlacKkKlandsman (Lee, 2018)
168. Izgnanie/The Banishment (Zvyagintsev, 2007)
169. La regle du jeu/The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
Wuthering Heights (Brontë, 1847)
170. How to Talk to Girls at Parties (Mitchell, 2017)
171. Yellow Submarine (Dunning, 1968)
Disenchantment: SE1 (Groening, 2018)
172. The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Akhavan, 2018)
173. Crazy Rich Asians (Chu, 2018)
174. Resolution (Benson, 2012)
175. Wuthering Heights (Arnold, 2011)
September
176. The Little Stranger (Abrahamson, 2018)
177. All I See Is You (Forster, 2016)
178. Kahaani (Ghosh, 2012)
179. Xue di zi/The Flying Guillotine (Meng Hua Ho, 1975)
180. Searching (Chaganty, 2018)
181. Hereafter (Eastwood, 2010)
182. Mauvais Sang (Carax, 1986)
183. Zardoz (Boorman, 1974)
184. Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
185. Enter the Dragon (Clouse, 1973)
186. And the Ship Sails On (Fellini, 1983)
187. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Chia-Liang Liu, 1978)
188. The Endless (Benson, 2017)
189. Manlife (Sarnowski, 2017)
190. Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (Mari Okada, 2018)
*191. Suspiria (Argento, 1977)
192. Hold the Dark (Saulnier, 2018)
193. The Love Witch (Biller, 2016
October
194. Angel Heart (Parker, 1987)
195. Assassination Nation (Levinson, 2018)
196. The Blob (Russell, 1988)
*197. Hellraiser (Barker, 1987)
*198. Jacob’s Ladder (Lyne, 1990)
199. Cell (Williams, 2016)
200. Hell Fest (Plotkin, 2018)
*201. Invaders from Mars (Menzies, 1953)
Channel Zero: No-End House (Antosca, 2017)
202. Apostle (Evans, 2018)
203. Terrifier (Leone, 2017)
204. Invaders from Mars (Hooper, 1986)
205. Opera (Argento, 1987)
206. The Town that Dreaded Sundown (Pierce, 1976)
*207. The Return of the Living Dead (O’Bannon, 1985)
208. Five Fingers for Marsailles (Matthews, 2017)
209. Jigsaw (Spierig, 2017)
210. The Raven (Corman, 1963)
211. Lifeforce (Hooper, 1985)
212. Alice Sweet Alice (Sole, 1976)
213. Halloween (Green, 2018)
*214. Dead Alive (Jackson, 1992)
*215. The Beyond (Fulci, 1981)
216. Evil Dead (Alvarez, 2013)
November
217. The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
218. Back at the Staircase (Britton, 2018)
219. Suspiria (Guadagnino, 2018)
220. Beautiful Boy (Groeningen, 2018)
221. Kokuhaku/Confessions (Tetsuya Nakashima, 2010)
The Haunting of Hill House (Flanagan, 2018)
222. The Kindergarten Teacher (Colangelo, 2018)
223. Shelley (Abbasi, 2016)
224. Threads (Jackson, 1984)
225. Stuck (Gordon, 2007)
226. Mortal Kombat (Anderson, 1995)
227. Purple Rain (1984, Magnoli)
228. Outlaw King (Mackenzie, 2018)
229. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen, 2018)
230. Cam (Goldhaber, 2018)
231. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Trousdale, 2001)
The Good Place: SE1 (Sure, 2016)
232. The Mark of Zorro (Mamoulian, 1940)
*233. Annihilation (Garland, 2018)
234. Border (Abbasi, 2018)
*235. Blood Simple (Coen, 1984)
236. Widows (McQueen, 2018)
237. L (Makridis, 2012)
238. Intruder (Spiegel, 1989)
239. Green Book (Farrelly, 2018)
American Vandal: SE1 (Perrault, 2017)
December
240. Liquid Sky (Tsukerman, 1982)
Doctor Sleep (King, 2013)
241. L’Argent, (Bresson, 1983)
242. Alterrados/Terrified (Runga, 2017)
243. The Girl Next Door (Wilson, 2007)
244. Wakefield (Swicord, 2016)
245. Pink Floyd: The Wall (Parker, 1982)
246. Ososhiki/The Funeral (Juzo Itami, 1984)
247. Let Me In (Reeves, 2010)
248. Epidemic (von Trier, 1987)
249. The Night Eats the World (Rocher, 2018)
250. Zama (Martel, 2017)
251. As Above, So Below (Dowdle, 2014)
*252. The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)
253. Vox Lux (Corbet, 2018)
254. Roma (Cuarón, 2018)
255. The House that Jack Built (von Trier, 2018)
256. The Favourite (Lanthimos, 2018)
257. Madeline’s Madeline (Decker, 2018)
258. Anna and the Apocalypse (McPhail, 2017)
259. Lazarro Felice/Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher, 2018)
260. Mad Love (Freund, 1935)
261. The Angry Birds Movie (Kaytis, 2016)
Bojack Horseman SE1 (Bob-Waksberg, 2014)
262. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Persichetti, 2018)
263. We The Animals (Zagar, 2018)
264. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (Slade, 2018)
265. I Am Not A Witch (Nyoni, 2017)
Bojack Horseman SE2 (Bob-Waksberg, 2015)
*266. The Howling (Dante, 1981)
*267. Zombi 2 (Fulci, 1979)
268. The Other Side of the Wind (Welles, 2018)
FIVE FAVORITE NEW RELEASES (alphabetical order)
American Animals - An experiment with style and morality, this hybrid heist film creatively blends documentary interviews to weave multiple perspectives of one story.
The Favourite - A hysterical ensemble of fierce performances glowing amid the murky corridors and vast ballrooms of a social class purgatory.
Happy As Lazzaro - Shaded with the riddles of economics, a single infallible character plays out the lessons balancing society and its fables.
Let the Corpses Tan - Like a Mad Max standoff on psychedelics, this relentless crime caper blisters amid treacherous company and burns with visceral visions of violence.
The Rider - A heart-breaking struggle between passion and responsibility, soaring across the wild horizons and quiet interactions of the American Heartland.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Cam
Faces Places
Foxtrot
The Guilty
The House That Jack Built
Iceman
Leave No Trace
The Other Side of the Wind
Roma
Sorry To Bother You
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
FIVE FAVORITE NON-NEW RELEASES (alphabetical order)
And the Ship Sails On - Diverse characters, inside and out, dance through political confrontation, building each jovial showpiece with technical hi-jinks toward a crescendo of cinematic appreciation.
The Banishment - A meditative parable that embodies awe-inspiring landscapes with the scarred humanity that corrupts peace with damnation.
Confessions - This wicked arrangement of crimes and punishments dissects social horrors with a kinetic tone and eclipses depravity with every macabre revelation.
Tampopo - A bold palette of witty comedy that mocks social etiquette while celebrating the joys of food culture.
Threads - An artfully grotesque narrative through mankind's spiral into destruction, punctuated with fact-based scenarios of nuclear doom.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Amarcord
Blind
Clean, Shaven
Doppelganger
Icarus
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels
L
The Lure
Mister Lonely
Real life
R U There?
FIVE LEAST FAVORITE OVERALL (alphabetical order)
All I See is You - Disjointed characters shamble through a melodramatic maze and attempt to compensate with misplaced artistry.
Damsel - An unconventional Western that stumbles away from its finish line and aimlessly drags its genre until tapping out.
The Endless - "Endless" in the sense of convolution and incoherence, this perpetual mess overflows out of the suggestion box and into the recycling bin.
Jigsaw - The unwelcome ashes of a tired franchise are smeared and polished with nauseating color.
No Such Thing - Childish mythology, stripped of fantasy, and constipated with worn media commentary.
DIS-HONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Cloverfield Paradox
Ready Player One
Blair Witch
Terrifier
STATS:
Movies: 268
Books: 4
TV shows/seasons: 14
Most viewed directors:
Claire Denis: 6
David Verbeek: 5
Federico Fellini: 3
If anyone can find a typo/misspelling, please report for credit.
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