The 2016 Movie Watching Challenge

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine did an amazing movie-watching challenge, where she solicited recommendations from fifty-two of her friends; they each gave her five movies to watch per week. Yeah, crazy right? Well, she ended up completing the challenge with only a brief delay, which was amazing and inspiring. Last year a bunch of other friends picked up the idea with varying numbers of movies per week, and now it’s my turn. I’ve been planning to do it for months, but I wanted to wait until January 2016 to start with a clean slate.

So here’s what I want you to do.

First, let me know you’re interested in participating. I’ve started a group on Facebook to keep track of all the weeks and recommendations. Let me know here, or on Facebook, or Twitter that you’re in, and I’ll invite you to the group (or I think you can request an invite from the link above, but if not, let me know).

Second, once you’re in the group, you’ll be assigned a week pretty much on a first-come, first-serve basis. That’s the week I’ll watch and write about the films you assign me. If you’re not on Facebook or don’t want to be in the group, that’s fine! Just let me know what you’d like me to watch, and I’ll let you know when it slots into the schedule. I’ll still be posting updates here as well.

Third, recommend me TWO films you think I should watch. Now, how you decide what films is up to you. It can be great films I’ve missed, it can be your personal favorites you want to share, it can be new films, old films, good films, bad films, well-known films, obscure films. It DOES NOT MATTER. This is not about filling blind spots, although you can certainly choose to do that if you want, it’s about seeing a wide variety of films I might not otherwise seek out, or haven’t gotten to as quickly as I should.

I’ll be writing about the films I see here on my blog, and sharing the posts to Facebook/Twitter. They won’t be “reviews” since I don’t even do those, but they’ll be my honest reactions and thoughts on the film. I’ll also be ranking each film on my Flickchart, and keeping track of who has the highest-ranked recommendations. There’s no prize except kudos, but stats are fun.

Here are a few links that might be helpful in figuring out what to recommend to me:

• List of every film I’ve ever seen – If you’re thinking of something specific, you can check here to see if I’ve seen it already; I also have general ratings listed on whether I liked it or not (this page is long, it may take a while to load)
• Top Ten lists on the left side of my blog – Toward the bottom of the left nav bar is a list of links to my Top Ten-ish lists for each year; a good quick look at my faves by year
• My Flickchart – This is a ranked list of every film I’ve ever seen; I’m in the process of reranking it for greater accuracy, but in broad strokes, it’s a decent snapshot of my taste. I rank according to what I flat-out like the most, not what I think are the best/greatest films, whatever that means
• My Unseen Films – My unseen film list on Flickchart, which is ranked according to Flickchart’s global rankings; a good quick look at major films I haven’t seen
• Letterboxd Films to See – You’re welcome to look at my self-identifed lists of things I’d like to see on Letterboxd, but I encourage you to go outside of things I already want to see and surprise me with things I don’t know about or wouldn’t have chosen to see myself (but I realize I’m pretty inclusive with my “want to see” lists and it may be easier to go that route)
• There are a very few films I will veto. If you suggest one of them to me, I will politely ask you to choose something else. As an example, Salo is one of them. You might want to generally stay away from sadistic films, torture-porn, hardcore exploitation and stuff along those lines.

As I said, I plan to start in January 2016, so I’d love to have a solid group of recommendations a couple of weeks before that so I can start sourcing the films. I have Netflix Instant and DVDs, Amazon, HuluPlus, and a great library system, so I should be able to get most things unless they’re very difficult to find, and I’ll let you know if I have trouble sourcing something so you can choose something else.

Here’s to a great and varied year of moviewatching and discussion!