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
2022 Media Diet
January
1. It’s A Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946)
2. The Night House (Bruckner, 2021)
3. Licorice Pizza (Anderson, 2021)
4. The Suicide Squad (Gunn, 2021)
5. Undine (Petzold, 2020)
*6. Enemy (Villeneuve, 2013)
7. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Coen, 2021)
8. Spider-Man: No Way Home (Watts, 2021)
9. 1945 (Török, 2017)
10. Jupiter Ascending (Wachowski, 2015)
11. Thief (Mann, 1981)
12. Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021)
13. Kissin’ Cousins (Nelson, 1964)
14. Strange Victory (Hurwitz, 1948)
15. Hackers (Softley, 1995)
16. Belle (Mamoru Hosoda, 2021)
17. The Cremator (Herz, 1969)
18. Despair (Fassbinder, 1978)
*19. The Double (Ayoade, 2013)
20. Ema (Larraín, 2019)
21. The Merchant of Four Seasons (Fassbinder, 1972)
22. Pumping Iron (Butler, 1977)
23. All That Heaven Allows (Sirk, 1955)
*24. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch, 2013)
25. Ice Station Zebra (Sturges, 1968)
February
26. The Nines (August, 2007)
27. Baal (Schlöndorff, 1970)
*28. Wizards (Bakshi, 1977)
29. Nightmare Alley (del Toro 2021)
*30. The Boy and the World (Abreu, 2013)
31. New Order (Franco, 2020)
32. Invasion U.S.A. (Zito, 1985)
33. I Only Want You To Love Me (Fassbinder, 1976)
34. Quick Change (Murray, 1990)
*35. Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962)
36. Sundown (Franco, 2021)
37. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Fassbinder, 1972)
38. Summer of Soul (Questlove, 2021)
39. The Forty-First (Chukhray, 1956)
40. Big Bug (Jeunet, 2022)
41. The Worst Person in the World (Trier, 2021)
*42. Pontypool (McDonald, 2008)
43. Red Rocket (Baker, 2021)
44. Hell Comes to Frogtown (Jackson, 1988)
March
45. Paddington (King, 2014)
46. Paddington 2 (King, 2017)
47. Columbus (Kogonada, 2017)
48. The Batman (Reeves, 2022)
49. The Summit of the Gods (Imbert, 2021)
50. Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (Vuorensola, 2005)
51. Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)
*52. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Spielberg, 1989)
53. After Yang (Kogonada, 2021)
54. Master (Diallo, 2022)
55. CODA (Heder, 2021)
*56. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
*57. Fantastic Planet (Laloux, 1973)
59. Turning Red (Domee Shi, 2022)
60. I’m Your Man (Schrader, 2021)
*61. Doppelganger (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2003)
62. Get Duked! (Doff, 2019)
63. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Cretton, 2021)
64. Gandahar (Laloux, 1987)
April
65. The Mitchells vs the Machines (Rianda, 2021)
Cowboy Bebop SE1 (Hajime Yatate, 1998)
66. Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973)
White Noise (DeLillo, 1985)
67. Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (Newley, 1969)
66. And Then There Were None (Clair, 1945)
67. Fire and Ice (Bakshi, 1983)
68. Wolfwalkers (Moore, 2020)
69. Hi, Mom! (de Palma, 1970)
70. The Hole (Frammartino, 2021)
71. Vortex (Noé, 2021)
72. Brother’s Keeper (Karahan, 2021)
73. The Mole: Undercover in North Korea (Brügger, 2020)
74. Aloners (Hong Seong-eun, 2021)
75. Petrov’s Flu (Serebrennikov, 2021)
76. Ahed’s Knee (Lapid, 2021)
77. Mad God (Tippett, 2021)
78. The White Buffalo (Thompson, 1977)
79. Everything Everywhere All At Once (Kwan, 2022)
80. Emperor of the North (Aldrich, 1973)
*81. Pumpkinhead (Winstone, 1988)
82. Welcome to the Dollhouse (Solondz, 1995)
83. The Northman (Eggers, 2022)
*84. Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988)
85. Marty (Mann, 1955)
86. Le Quattro Voltre/The Four Times (Frammartino, 2010)
87. Memoria (Weerasethakul, 2021)
88. The Gift/Il dono (Frammartino, 2003)
89. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Fleischer-Camp, 2021)
90. Great Freedom (Meise, 2021)
May
91. They Want Me Gone (Britton, 2022)
92. White Lightning (Sargent, 1973)
93. Petite Maman (Sciamma, 2021)
94. The Moonshine War (Quine, 1970)
*95. They Live (Carpenter, 1988)
Euphoria SE2 (Levinson, 2022)
96. Fear X (Refn, 2003)
97. A Hero (Farhadi, 2021)
98. The Devil (Zulawski, 1972)
99. Billion Dollar Brain (Russell, 1967)
100. Jungle Cruise (Collet-Serra, 2021)
101. The Survivor (Levinson, 2021)
*102. Miller’s Crossing (Coen, 1990)
103. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata, 2013)
104. Flee (Poher Rasmussen, 2021)
105. Gunda (Kosakovskiy, 2020)
June
*106. The Stranger (Welles, 1946)
107. Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg, 2022)
108. Living in Oblivion (DiCillo, 1995)
109. Men (Garland, 2022)
Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke, 1973)
110. Mademoiselle (Richardson, 1966)
111. Malcolm X (Lee, 1992)
*112. Road to Perdition (Mendes, 2002)
113. The Sea Wolf (Curtiz, 1941)
114. Radio Days (Allen, 1987)
115. The Madness of King George (Hytner, 1994)
116. Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream That One Calls Human Life (Quay, 1995)
*117. 5 Centimeters per Second (Makoto Skinkai, 2007)
118. Kin-dza-dza! (Daneliya, 1986)
119. Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (Shaffer, 2022)
July
120. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Gormican, 2022)
*121. Beetlejuice (Burton, 1988)
122. American Pop (Bakshi, 1981)
123. We’re All Going To the World’s Fair (Schoenbrun, 2021)
124. Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein, 1938)
*125. The Green Knight (Lowery, 2021)
126. The Three Caballeros (Ferguson, 1944)
127. Scalpel (Grissmer, 1977)
128. Showgirls (Verhoeven, 1995)
129. Interiors (Allen, 1978)
*130. The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
131. I Married A Strange Person! (Plympton, 1997)
*132. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tykwer, 2006)
133. The War of the Worlds: Next Century (Szulkin, 1981)
134. The Lathe of Heaven (Barzyk, 1980)
135. Nope (Peele, 2022)
136. Vabank (Machulski, 1981)
August
*137. Starman (Carpenter, 1984)
138. Querelle (Fassbinder, 1982)
139. Landscape in the Mist (Angelopoulos, 1988)
*140. Pontypool (McDonald, 2008)
141. Prey (Trachtenberg, 2022)
142. Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet, 1975)
143. Hospital of the Transfiguration (Zebrowski, 1979)
144. Jurassic World Dominion (Trevorrow, 2022)
*145. Cool Hand Luke (Rosenberg, 1967)
*146. The Apple (Golan, 1980)
147. Bullet Train (Leitch, 2022)
148. Greenland (Waugh, 2020)
149. Top Gun: Maverick (Kosinski, 2022)
150. Crossroads (Hill, 1986)
151. Fire of Love (Dosa, 2022)
152. Three Thousand Years of Longing (Miller, 2022)
153. Antlers (Cooper, 2021)
154. Golem (Szulkin, 1980)
155. Stop Making Sense (Demme, 1984)
September
156. Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Reitman, 2021)
*157. Godzilla, (Honda, 1954)
*158. Bedazzled (Ramis, 2000)
Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami, 1987)
159. Woyzeck (Herzog, 1979)
*160. 5 Centimeters per Second (Makoto Shinkai, 2007)
*161. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson, 2009)
162. My Best Fiend (Herzog, 1999)
*163. The Thirteenth Floor (Rusnak, 1999)
*164. Confessions (Tetsuya Nakashima, 2010)
165. The Devil’s Eye (Bergman, 1960)
166. Lucy in the Sky (Hawley, 2019)
*167. The Fog (Carpenter, 1980)
168. Manhattan Baby (Fulci, 1982)
169. The Road to El Dorado (Bergeron, 2000)
The Hellbound Heart (Barker, 1986)
*170. The Sentinel (Winner, 1977)
171. Go (Liman, 1999)
172. Waking Ned Devine (Jones, 1998)
October.
*173. Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007)
*174. Gremlins (Dante, 1984)
175. Sole Survivor (Ederhardt, 1984)
176. Lake Mungo (Anderson, 2008)
*177. Hausu (Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1977)
*178. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Dante, 1990)
*179. Lifeforce (Hooper, 1985)
180. Eaten Alive (Hooper, 1976)
181. Hellraiser (Bruckner, 2022)
182. The Woman in Black (Wise, 1989)
9183. Body Snatchers (Ferrara, 1993)
*184. Cries and Whispers (Bergman, 1972)
185. Bad Moon (Red, 1996)
186. C.H.U.D. (Cheek, 1984)
187. From Beyond (Gordon, 1986)
188. Triangle of Sadness (Östlund, 2022)
189. Dark Waters (Baino, 1993)
190. Halloween Ends (Green, 2022)
191. Martin (Romero, 1976)
*192. Revenge of the Dead (Avati, 1983)
193. Hellraiser: Judgment (Tunnicliffe, 2018)
November
194. Barbarian (Cregger, 2022)
*195. In the Mouth of Madness (Carpenter, 1994)
*196. Everything Everywhere All At Once (Kwan, 2022)
197. Tár (Field, 2022)
198. The Sea Beast (Williams, 2022)
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream (Ellison, 1967)
199. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Appel, 2022)
200. Armageddon Time (Gray, 2022)
201. Meatballs (Reitman, 1979)
202. Evil Dead Trap 2 (Hashimoto, 1992)
203. The Banshees of Inisherin (McDonagh, 2022)
204. Athena (Gavras, 2022)
*205. Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter, 1986)
206. Su Xiao Xiao (Sun-Fung Lee, 1962)
207. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook, 2022)
208. The Lost City (Nee, 2022)
*209. Nope (Peele, 2022)
210. Bones and All (Guadagnino, 2022)
*211. Matawan (Sayles, 1987)
*212. Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)
213. RRR (Rajamouli, 2022)
December
214. Fatman (Nelms, 2020)
*215. The Meaning of Life (Gilliam, 1983)
*216. Harold & Maude (Ashby, 1971)
217. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (del Toro, 2022)
*218. The Nightmare Before Christmas (Selick, 1993)
219. Return to Dust (Ruijun Li, 2022)
220. All Quiet on the Western Front (Berger, 2022)
221. The Wonder (Lelio, 2022)
*222. The Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1934)
223. Flux Gormet (Strickland, 2022)
224. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Johnson, 2022)
225. Troll (Uthaug, 2022)
226. Bardo: False Chronicles of a Handful of Truths (Iñárritu, 2022)
227. The Perfumier (Willbrandt, 2022)
228. Americathon (Israel, 1979)
*229. Alice (Jan Svankmajer, 1988)
FIVE FAVORITE NEW RELEASES (in alphabetical order)
The Banshees of Inisherin - Beautifully stark mirror of civilization’s perpetual struggle of purpose, complacency and the toxic personalities which doom both, as meticulously exerting as classic theatre.
Il Buco/The Hole - Casting our senses into the awe of the unknown, a singular human lifespan is held against the ageless grandeur of Earth, lecturing on the progress and geographies of mankind without uttering a word of dialogue.
Master - Foreboding terror that reaches across cultures and generations, critiquing the genre with modern racial tensions, metaphysical media, and the societal lore that lurks in our neighborhood.
Memoria - An existential rebuke of civilization, passionately portrayed on screen in the emotional longing for unreachable worlds and distant histories now obscured by our misaligned dreams.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
Mad God
Tar
Triangle of Sadness
FIVE FAVORITE NON-NEW RELEASES (in alphabetical order)
Belladonna of Sadness - Vibrant onslaught of colorful imagery and animation styles that awaken an emotional journey with explosive fantasy and nightmarish damnation.
The Cremator - A stream of inventively surreal cinematography galvanizes this delusion of philosophies and haunting historical allusions.
Le Quattro Voltre/The Four Times - Spiritual odyssey of a soul manifesting through majestic landscapes and forms, painting a poetic link between humanity and simple natural wonders.
The War of the Worlds: Next Century - Soviet-era science fiction with hypnotic Kafka-esque art design that pulls back the hypnotic cloak of media and technological manipulation far ahead of its time.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?
Emperor of the North
Gandahar
The Gift
Golem
Gunda
A Hero
Kin-dza-dza!
Lake Mungo
Landscape in the Mist
The Summit of the Gods
Great Freedom
FIVE LEAST-FAVORITE FILMS (in alphabetical order)
Antlers - Melodramatic character tropes insensibly exploit a predictable rural gloom and native stereotypes.
Eaten Alive - Horror caricatures and monotonous confrontations with the low-budget aspirations of a high school stage play.
Jurassic World Dominion - Dragging easter eggs across a meandering fever dream of fan service scrapes the barrel's bottom like an excavation for extinct entertainment.
The Nines - Blindingly ambitious Hollywood-on-Hollywood drivel stumbles around overwrought performances and painfully disjointed concepts.
The Perfumier - Soiling the fragrance of an impressive franchise, this insulting depiction wastes its originality and abandons the uninspired scenes to sniffle in desperation.
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS
Americathon
Bad Moon
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
The Three Caballeros
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Movies: 229
Books: 5
TV shows/seasons: 2
Most viewed directors:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder: 5
Michelangelo Frammartino: 3
If anyone can find a typo/misspelling, please report for credit.
