2014: Year Review

I set out at the beginning of last year to try and watch 365 films in 365 days. I managed 280, which equates to roughly 23 consecutive days of film watching with no sleep. It has been difficult to try and fit them in, not to humblebrag but I’ve been on 5 holidays in 2014, moved flat, got a promotion at work and the World Cup was on. Plus I’m out, a lot. I’m fairly happy with the amount I covered in the spare time I had and that I have actually been able to keep up with the reviews. There have been several times where I have thought about packing this in, but certain blogs such as Big Ron and A Year In Film have kept me motivated. The overall aim was to encourage me to seek out films I have been putting off for a while and broaden my film horizons, and I would say it was a success.

Well, to an extent. Although I am still yet to watch several of the ‘classics’, I did go to 4 film festivals, got stuck right into VOD/Netflix and uncovered some really interesting pockets of cinema. From the outright weird such as ‘Taxidermia’ to the low budget indies like ‘The Den’, across all types of Asian cinema (Hong Kong, Korea, Japan), I have enjoyed them all in one way or another. Even the ones I have rated poorly, you were worth watching to enable me to appreciate great films when they came along. You put everything in perspective.

This started out as a way for me to keep a list of everything I was watching, and so I could share it with friends. With over 5,000 followers now having been featured on the Tumblr ‘trending’ spot it would be a shame to stop now that the year is up. I will continue with my no nonsense, unqualified, uneducated and spoiler free film reviews, in the hope that maybe what I watch, you will want to watch too.

The pressure is off now for this challenge, and film can be enjoyed again. I’m looking forward to being able to watch TV shows without feeling that I should be watching a film instead. Putting off True Detective, Black Mirror, The Walking Dead and Homeland is a thing of the past. With 2 more reviews still to put up from last year and 3 more from this year, I figured there’s not much point in delaying this post anymore. For now, the blog has been renamed from ‘film2014’ to ‘movieblort’ until I think of a better name. Movie, because of movies, and blort because that’s the sound I think they would make, just a consistently mediocre mess of words. Blort. Also, this is now being transferred over to WordPress too.

Anyway, without further delay, I have compiled what I believe to be my Top 20 of 2014 below. The most notable omission here is probably Interstellar quite simply because I haven’t seen it yet. And Boyhood because I just didn’t enjoy it as much as these films. I didn’t want to make a list that included a load of films not out yet, or obscure foreign ones to be edgy, these are the 20 films in a rough sort of order that would make up my list.

1. Whiplash
2. Birdman
3. Wolf of Wall Street
4. The Raid 2
5. Enemy
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel
7. Nightcrawler
8. The Guest
9. Blue Ruin
10. What We Do In The Shadows
11. They Came Together
12. 12 Years A Slave
13. The Double
14. Mistaken for Strangers
15. Killers
16. Snowpiercer
17. Nymphomaniac (Part 1)
18. Frank
19. The Rover
20. Locke

As usual, suggestions are always welcomed both in terms of the blog name and future movies to watch.

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for reading.