Matthew Evan Balz's Media Diet: 2020

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 releases of the year, top new discoveries, and least favorite overall.

Only full viewings are included.

KEY:
Asterisk*: Repeat viewings
Bold: TV series/season
Underline: Books

January

1. Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)

2. On My Skin: The Last Seven Days of Stefano Cucchi (Cremonini, 2018)

3. The Meg (Turteltaub, 2018)

4. Game Night (Daley, 2018)

5. Mac and Me (Raffill, 1988)

6. I Think We're Alone Now (Morano, 2018)

7. Bird Box (Bier, 2018)

*8. Lunacy (Svankmajer, 2005)

Legion SE1 (Hawley, 2017)

9. Godzilla: The Planet Eater (Hiroyuki Seshita, 2018)

Bojack Horseman SE3 (Bob-Waksberg, 2016)

10. I Am Not Your Negro (Peck, 2016)

11. Burning (Chang-dong Lee, 2018)

12. Destroyer (Kusama, 2018)

13. Capernaum (Labaki, 2018)

14. Hair (Forman, 1979)

15. Fyre (Smith, 2019)

16. Cold War (Pawlikowski, 2018)

17. Bad Boy Bubby (de Heer, 1993)

Homecoming SE1 (Esmail, 2018)

18. Santa Sangre (Jodorowsky, 1989)

19. Guardians (Andreasyan, 2017)

Kingdom SE1 (Kim Seong-Hun, 2019)

20. Roar (Marshall, 1981)

21. The Hidden Face (Baiz, 2011)

22. Map to the Stars (Cronenberg, 2014)

*23. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)

February

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

*25. Boy and the World (Abreu, 2013)

26. The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (Dunham, 2018)

27. Citizen X (Gerolmo, 1995)

28. Howard the Duck (Huyck, 1986)

Xavier: Renegade Angel SE1 (Chatman, 2007)

*29. Yellow Submarine (Dunning, 1968)

30. Before We Vanish (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2017)

31. Manderlay (von Trier, 2005)

32. Topaz (Hitchcock, 1969)

Xavier: Renegade Angel SE2 (Chatman, 2009)

33. The Cranes Are Flying (Kalatozov, 1957)

34. Stardust (Vaugn, 2007)

35. Sleep Tight (Balagueró, 2011)

36. Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Chia-Liang Liu, 1980)

37. Upgrade (Whannell, 2018)

Rick and Morty SE1 (Harmon, 2013)

38. Boy Erased (Edgerton, 2018)

39. Tangerines (Urushadze, 2013)

40. The Eyes of My Mother (Pesce, 2016)

41. Under the Roofs of Paris (Clair, 1930)

Game of Thrones SE1 (Benioff, 2011)

42. Bone Tomahawk (Zahler, 2015)

Rick and Morty SE2 (Harmon, 2015)

*43. The Matrix (Wachowski, 1999)

March

44. Letter Never Sent (Kalatozov, 1960)

Game of Thrones SE2 (Benioff, 2012)

45. Everybody Knows (Farhadi, 2018)

46. Gate of Flesh (Seijun Suzuki, 1964)

47. Loft (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2005)

48. Altered States (Russell, 1980)

49. Greta (Jordan, 2018)

Game of Thrones SE3 (Benioff, 2013)

50. Captain Marvel (Boden, 2019)

51. Never Look Away (Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018)

Russian Doll (Headland, 2018)

52. Birds of Passage (Gallego, 2018)

Game of Thrones SE4 (Benioff, 2014)

53. The Sisters Brothers (Audiard, 2018)

54. Climax (Noé, 2018)

55. Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder, 1975)

56. Arctic (Penna, 2018)

Rick and Morty SE3 (Harmon, 2017)

57. Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2016)

58. Free Solo (Chin, 2018)

59. The Greatest Story Ever Told (Stevens, 1965)

60. Dragged Across Concrete (Zahler, 2018)

Game of Thrones SE5 (Benioff, 2015)

61. Love Actually (Curtis, 2003)

62. Us (Peele, 2019)

63. Popeye (Altman, 1980)

64. Woman at War (Erlingsson, 2018)

The Walking Dead SE9 (Nicotero, 2018)

April

65. The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019)

66. Muriel, or The Time of Return (Resnais, 1963)

67. Hotel Mumbai (Maras, 2018)

Game of Thrones SE6 (Benioff, 2016)

68. In Fabric (Strickland, 2018)

69. Dogman (Garrone, 2018)

70. Toni Morison: The Pieces I am (Greenfield-Sanders, 2019)

71. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan, 2018)

72. Ash is Purest White (Jia, 2018)

73. Rafiki (Kahiu, 2018)

74. Meeting Gorbachev (Herzog, 2018)

75. Styx (Fischer, 2018)

76. Los Silencios (Seigner, 2018)

Game of Thrones SE7 (Benioff, 2017)

77. Lifeboat (Hitchcock, 1944)

78. Pet Sematary (Widmyer, 2019)

79. Ghost Stories (Dyson, 2017)

80. A Land Imagined (Siew Hua Yeo, 2018)

81. Shazam! (Sandberg, 2019)

82. The Captain (Schwentke, 2017)

83. If…. (Anderson, 1968)

84. John Wick: Chapter 2 (Stahelski, 201&)

85. Island of Doomed Men (Barton, 1940)

86. Stalingrad (Bondarchuk, 2013)

Bojack Horseman SE4 (Bob-Waksberg, 2018)

87. The Mustang (Clermont-Tonnerre)

88. November (Sarnet, 2017)

89. Senna (Kapadia, 2010)

90. High Life (Denis, 2018)

May

91. Avengers: Endgame (Russo, 2019)

92. The Red Turtle (Dudok de Wit, 2016)

93. Under The Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2018)

94. House of Games (Mamet, 1987)

95. Knock Down the House (Lears, 2019)

96. Palindromes (Solondz, 2004)

97. Pokémon Detective Pikachu (Letterman, 2019)

Little Women (Alcott, 1868)

98. Hail Satan? (Lane, 2019)

99. Little Women (Cukor, 1933)

100. Holiday (Eklöf, 2018)

101. Possum (Holness, 2018)

102. Ask Dr. Ruth (White, 2019)

103. Little Women (LeRoy, 1949)

*104. The Color of Pomegranates (Parajanov, 1969)

Game of Thrones SE8 (Benioff, 2019)

105. Little Women (Armstrong, 1994)

106. Kes (Loach, 1969)

107. Les Enfants Terribles (Melville, 1950)

*108. The Matrix (Wachowski, 1999)

109. Paris Is Burning (Livingston, 1990)

Perfume SE1 (Kadelbach, 2018)

110. It Stains the Sands Red (Minihan, 2016)

*111. Exorcist 3 (Blatty, 1990)

*112. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam, 1975)

113. The Fall of the Louse of Usher: A Gothic Tale for the 21st Century (Russell, 2002)

June

114. Idiocracy (Judge, 2006)

Monster (Dean Myers, 1999)

115. Sweet Country (Thornton, 2017)

116. Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Dougherty, 2019)

*117. You, the Living (Andersson, 2007)

118. Bloody Birthday (Hunt, 1981)

119. Boys Don’t Cry (Pierce, 1999)

120. El Norte (Nava, 1983)

121. Lord of Illusions (Barker, 1995)

122. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2004)

123. The Dead Don’t Die (Jarmusch, 2019)

*124. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)

125. American Pastoral (McGregor, 2016)

126. Blood Rage (Grissmer, 1987)

127. Humanoids from the Deep (Peeters, 1980)

128. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Talbot, 2019)

*129. A History of Violence (Cronenberg, 2005)

Money Heist SE1 (Pina, 2017)

Black Mirror SE5 (Brooker, 2019)

130. If Beale Street Could Talk (Jenkins, 2018)

131. Fifty Shades Darker (Foley, 2017)

July

132. Kaili Blues (Bi Gan, 2015)

133. Midsommar (Aster, 2019)

134. Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma, 1974)

Stranger Things SE3 (Duffer, 2019)

Dark SE2 (bo Odar, 2019)

135. Keane (Kerrigan, 2004)

136. Claire’s Knee (Rohmer, 1970)

137. Excalibur (Boorman, 1981)

*138. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (Ritchie, 1998)

139. Prospect (Caldwell, 2019)

Bojack Horseman SE5 (Bob-Waksberg, 2019)

140. Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1992)

141. The Magician (Bergman, 1958)

142. Caesar Must Die (Taviani, 2012)

143. The Art of Self-Defense (Stearns, 2019)

*144. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (Fleischner, 2013)

*145. Weekend (Godard, 1967)

146. The Shock Doctrine (Winterbottom, 2009)

147. Playing For Time (Mann, 1980)

148. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Tarantino, 2019)

149. Suburban Sasquatch (Wescavage, 2004)

150. Deadly Prey (Prior, 1987)

151. WarGames (Badham, 1983)

August

152. The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese, 1988)

153. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Audiard, 2005)

*154. The Dark Crystal (Henson, 1982)

*155. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)

156. In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi, 2016)

157. Tattooed Life (Seijun Suzuki, 1968)

158. My Beautiful Laundrette (Frears, 1985)

159. Valerie and her Week of Wonders (Jires, 1970)

160. The Farewell (Wang, 2019)

161. The Hit (Frears, 1984)

162. Story of a Prostitute (Seijun Suzuki, 1965)

163. Invader ZIM: Enter the Florpus (Vasquez, 2019)

*164. Airplane (Abrahams, 1980)

165. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Kasdan, 2017)

166. Give Me Liberty (Mikhanovsky, 2019)

*167. Safe (Haynes, 1995)

*168. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004)

169. American Factory (Bognar, 2019)

September

170. Dersu Uzala (Kurosawa, 1975)

The Trial (Kafka, 1925)

171. The Trial (Welles, 1962)

Euphoria SE1 (Levinson, 2019)

172. Luce (Onah, 2019)

*173. Heathers (Lehmann, 1988)

174. Light of My Life (Affleck, 2019)

Mindhunter SE2 (Penhall, 2019)

175. It Chapter Two (Muschietti, 2019)

176. The Amazing Johnathan Documentary (Berman, 2019)

177. The 36th Chamber: The Final Encounter (Yang Ming Tsai, 1981)

*178. Hobo With A Shotgun (Eisener, 2011)

179. Booksmart (Wilde, 2019)

Too Old To Die Young (Refn, 2019)

180. Weightless (Albertin, 2017)

181. Savage Youth (Johnson, 2018)

182. The Plague Dogs (Rosen, 1982)

183. Gothic (Russell, 1986)

184. Ad Astra (Gray, 2019)

185. A Family Submerged (Alche, 2018)

186. The Nightingale (Kent, 2018)

187. The Sound of Silence (Tyburski, 2019)

Disenchantment SE2 (Groening, 2019)

188. To Die For (Van Sant, 1995)

189. Police Story (Chan, 1985)

190. Donnybrook (Sutton, 2018)

191. One Cut of the Dead (Shin’ichirô Ueda, 2019)

October

192. Police Story 2 (Chan, 1988)

193. Sweet Movie (Makavejev, 1974)

194. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola, 1992)

195. Joker (Phillips, 2019)

Tomie (Junji Ito, 1987)

196. Spider-Man: Far From Home (Watts, 2019)

197. Monos (Landes, 2019)

198. The Souvenir (Hogg, 2019)

199. Damnation Alley (Smight, 1977)

200. The Referee (Zucca, 2013)

201. Kissing Candice (McArdle, 2017)

202. Valley of Shadows (Gulbrandsen, 2018)

Undone (Bob-Waksberg, 2019)

203. God Loves Uganda (Williams, 2013)

204. The Witches of Eastwick (Miller, 1987)

205. Transit (Petzold, 2018)

*206. Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982)

207. The Stuff (Cohen, 1985)

208. Vampire’s Kiss (Bierman, 1988)

209. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (Gilligan, 2019)

210. The Whistlers (Porumboiu, 2019)

211. Our Time (Reygadas, 2019)

212. Fiend Without A Face (Crabtree, 1958)

*213 Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)

214. Blood Car (Orr, 2007)

215. Angst (Kargl, 1983)

216. The Mountain (Alverson, 2019)

217. Synonyms (Lapid, 2019)

218. The Tingler (Castle, 1959)

219. I Lost My Body (Clapin, 2019)

220. The Stepfather (Ruben, 1987)

221. Shadow (Yimou Zhang, 2018)

November

222. The Dig (Tohill, 2018)

223. Multiple Maniacs (Waters, 1970)

224. Jojo Rabbit (Waititi, 2019)

225. Parasite (Joon-ho Bong, 2019)

Dark Crystal Age (Matthews, 2019)

*226. Seoul Station (Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)

227. Zombieland: Double Tap (Fleischer, 2019)

228. The Lighthouse (Eggers, 1998)

229. Tomie (Ataru Oikawa, 2019)

230. Doctor Sleep (Flanagan, 2019)

Bojack Horseman SE6 (Bob-Waksberg, 2019)

231. Maria Full of Grace (Marston, 2004)

232. The Forgiveness of Blood (Marston, 2011)

233. Colossus: The Forbin Project (Sargent, 1970)

234. Closet Monster (Dunn, 2015)

235. La Collectionneuse (Rohmer, 1967)

236. Fists in Pocket (Bellocchio, 1965)

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

December

238. The Irishman (Scorsese, 2019)

239. Le Plaisir (Ophüls, 1952)

240. Knives Out (Johnson, 2019)

241. Out of Sight (Soderbergh, 1998)

*242. Natural Born Killers (Stone, 1994)

243. The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Rohmer, 1963)

244. Marriage Story (Baumback, 2019)

245. Atlantics (Diop, 2019)

246. The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open (Hepburn, 2019)

247. Deerskin (Dupieux, 2019)

248. A Hidden Life (Malick, 2019)

249. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Gilliam, 2018)

Notes From Underground (Dostoyevsky, 1864)

*250. Trainspotting (Boyle, 1996)

251. An Elephant Sitting Still (Bo Hu, 2018)

FIVE FAVORITE NEW RELEASES (in alphabetical order)

Atlantics - A poetic parable, sparkling with emotional maturity, and respectfully translating love and greed through international crises.

In Fabric - An audacious embrace of surrealism that compares to David Lynch, where vibrant horror and humor deliver with satirical sobriety.

Long Day's Journey Into Night - A spiritual successor to Bi Gan's KAILI BLUES, leaping even further into dreamlike experimentation to bridge thematic visuals with ambitious technical feats.

Parasite - An unconventional procedural story fueled with stark performances and mischievous editing, twisting itself down a descent of increasingly grisly moral dilemmas.

Under the Silver Lake - Hyperactive noir sleuthing the dry fantasies and ironic cultures of a contemporary Los Angeles.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
A Marriage Story
The Art of Self-Defense
Deerskin
High Life
Monos

FIVE FAVORITE NEW DISCOVERIES - PRE-2019 (in alphabetical order)

Kaili Blues - Nuance perspective wandering amid hypnotizing environments and the poetic confrontations within.

The Last Temptation of Christ - A bold retelling of the biblical tale of Christ, emphasizing legendary themes but also inventing profound spaces for deeper motifs.

Letter Never Sent - Wild landscapes punished with merciless ferocity, dictating the metaphysical journey across beauty and struggle, both of man and nature.

To Die For - Genre-hopping within an unpredictably fresh narrative, woven from an array of irresistible characters.

The Trial - A black-and-white labyrinth of Earthly philosophies, erected with Kafka's absurdist words and Welles' otherworldly compositions.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Excalibur
Kes
November
The Plague Dogs
Le Plaisir
The Sisters Brothers

FIVE LEAST FAVORITE (in alphabetical order)

Blood Car - One more nauseating mini-budget plea for recognition via millennial tropes and self-gratifying quirks.

Damnation Alley - A hollow daydream of an apocalyptic wasteland, depleted of vision or production budgets, barren of actors, and altogether overrun with camp.

The Fall of the Louse of Usher: A Gothic Tale for the 21st Century - Ken Russell's friends and neighbors blissful prance around his garage bellowing extravagance and wielding poor CGI (yet the man has earned it).