Within my yearly Film Quests to see as many movies as possible that I haven’t seen before, I have other “sub-quests” or challenges that help determine which movies end up on my watchlist. Here’s a bit about those “sub-quests” and challenges, with individual pages about each to provide specific lists.
Academy Award for Best Picture
While I often don’t think the film deemed “Best Picture” for a given year at the Academy Awards is deserving of the honor, I want to be able to make an informed decision. Not only am I trying to see each of the winning films, I’m also trying to see the nominees. The much easier part of this is seeing the winners, of which I’ve seen each of them for the past 70+ years. The harder part is seeing all the nominees, and so I’m approaching that somewhat methodically to make it manageable. Needless to say, this is a challenge that spans many, many years of movie watching. [Full page with list here]
Half Popped Top Ten By Year
I might’ve mentioned it… I run a site called Half Popped Reviews, and one of the features there includes a listing of the Top Ten films by year based on the aggregated reviewer scores. Typically I see most of the top rated films of each year, but when something ends up near the top of the list that I haven’t watched yet, I want to find out what I’m missing. Is it a great film that flew under my radar, or is it something that the film’s target audience is the only ones providing ratings thus far. I’ve had both situations happen so far. [Here’s the full page with the start of the list]
Asian Cinema
The films of Akira Kurosawa have been very influential in Hollywood, with quite a few remakes and films directly influenced by his work considered classics of American cinema. Many filmmakers talk about him as being someone who they credit with their love of cinema and whom they “borrow from” or try to emulate in certain ways. As such, his films feel like essential viewing.
In recent years, I have found many great films coming out of South Korea to be phenomenal, and I’ve only scratched the surface. My initial interest has been with Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, based on phenomenal films of theirs to which I’ve been introduced, but there’s no doubt others I need to know about as well.
Even with my limited exposure to Bollywood, it’s clear to me that there’s a huge amount of entertainment I’ve been missing out on. I love the huge dance numbers, I love the action sequences I’ve seen, and I’ve been recommended more traditional dramas as well. This is the area that I’m probably least experienced with, but also quite excited about as well.
Horror / Monster Movies
As a kid, I was oddly fascinated by Dracula. I don’t remember why, but that was what I chose to be for Halloween at least twice growing up. Maybe it was from my favorite video game, Castlevania, but I chose the villain, not the hero. It was certainly not because of the movies, because I hadn’t seen any at that point. With all the films Dracula has inspired, it’s certainly a hole in my “movie watching resume”, one which I intend to bite into, along with films involving Frankenstein, The Wolf Man (and werewolves in general), The Invisible Man, The Mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (and potentially other bodies of water), and other wonderful villainous characters. I’ve seen some, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Although I’m not a huge fan of being scared, there are horror movies that I enjoy… horror movies that some of the serious horror movie enthusiasts would probably not consider horror hardly at all. It’s a genre beloved by some good friends of mine, and I’d like to delve into it more deeply… even if that’s more of a “snorkle” situation where my comfort level doesn’t involve going too far beneath the surface in the darker waters (especially where “sharks” roam). This is where there’s certainly some cross-over between this list and the Asian cinema list. [More details and the list can be found here.]
Guys Film Quest 