Quite often when people find out what I do for a job they ask me what films I’ve seen recently and much of the time I struggle to name a title. I think one of the reasons is that I watch films for several reasons – it may be a matter of teaching preparation, research for an article, book chapter or conference paper, looking for film-making ideas, curiosity, obligation, collective family viewing choices, and just pleasure. Out of interest, I decided to keep a list of what I’m watching this year. I’ve done this before, although not for a while, and it’s always intriguing to see what patterns – if any – emerge.
1/1/18 The War Game (Watkins, 1969)
2/1/18 Grass (Cooper, Schoedsack, 1925)
3/1/18 A Matter of Life and Death (Powell, Pressburger, 1946)
4/1/18 Jabberwocky (Gilliam, 1977)
10/1/18 Hue and Cry (Crichton, 1947)
13/1/18 Songs from the Second Floor (Andersson, 2000)
15/1/18 The Grey (Carnahan, 2011)
17/1/18 Tout va Bien (Godard, Gorin, 1972)
19/1/18 Terra Formars (Miike, 2016)
20/1/18 Kanal (Wajda, 1957)
21/1/18 Darkest Hour (Wright, 2018)
25/1/18 Robocop (Verhoeven, 1987)
1/2/18 The Greatest Showman (Gracey, 2017)
2/2/18 You, The Living (Andersson, 2007)
3/2/18 Under the Skin (Manskiy, 2015); Welcome to Leith (Nichols, Walker, 2015)
4/2/18 Touki-Bouki (Mambety, 1973); Blue Steel (Bigelow, 1989)
9/2/18 The Wall (Die Wand) (Polsler, 2012); Baby Driver (Wright, 2017)
11/2/18 Now You See Me 2 (Chu, 2016)
19/2/18 The Crucible (Hytner, 1996)
22/2/18 The Death of Stalin (Ianucci, 2017)
23/2/18 Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)
24/2/18 Sparrow (To, 2008)
25/2/18 The Business of Fancydancing (Alexie, 2002)
28/2/18 Strike (Eisenstein, 1924); Punishment Park (Watkins, 1971)
6/3/18 Eisenstein in Guanajuato (Greenaway, 2017)
7/3/18 Blades of Glory (Gordon, Speck, 2007)
8/3/18 Hail, Caesar! (Coen, 2016)
12/3/18 La Silence de la Mer (Melville, 1949); Bend it like Beckham (Chadha, 2002)
15/3/18 Fantomas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine (Feuillade, 1913); Estate, a Reverie (Zimmerman, 2015)
17/3/18 The Falling (Morley, 2014); Annihilation (Garland, 2018)
19/3/18 Fantomas II: Juve vs Fantomas (Feuillade, 1913)
22/3/18 Fantomas III: The Murderous Corpse (Feuillade, 1913)
24/3/18 Bridget Jones’s Diary (Maguire, 2001)
25/3/18 Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017)
27/3/18 Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (McDonagh, 2017)
30/3/18 Fantomas IV: Fantomas vs Fantomas (Feuillade, 1914)
