2023: The Year In Movies

The return of my annual long December vacation helped push a healthy increase in movie watching for me, with my highest total since the lockdown in 2019.  I managed to watch 88 movies last year, my third consecutive year under 100, despite being home all day and not needing to bother with pesky things like a commute.  Or exercise.  The extended WGA and SAG strikes limiting new output probably didn’t help either.

Here’s a look back at the first 50 movies I watched last year and what recollection, if any, I have of them. The films are listed in the order I saw them.

Luckiest Girl Alive (2022)
Mila Kunis stars as a woman who sees her life start to unravel when she is faced with a years-old trauma.

Do Revenge (2022)
Two high school girls decide to trade off and get revenge on each other’s bully.

Orphan: First Kill (2022)
A long-delayed sequel to the 2009 horror film.

Margaux (2022)
A smart house sets its targets on a group of friends who have rented it for the weekend.

American Pie Presents: Girls’ Rules (2020)
The latest sequel to the comedy hit flips the script and has a trio of girls looking to lose their virginity before graduation.

Sick (2022)
Two friends quarantine at a lake house, but they quickly find out they are not alone.

The Menu (2022)
A chef prepares his final meal, taking out his frustrations on his diners on the way out.

Death on the Nile (2022)
Hercule Poirot takes on another case, based on the Agatha Christie novel.

Unhuman (2022)
A bus full of high school students try to survive after a crash leaves them vulnerable to an attacker.

Shotgun Wedding (2023)
A destination wedding goes off the rails when the wedding party is held hostage. Continue reading →

You Ought To Be In (31) Pictures

Many years ago, using the weekly TV guide that came with the Sunday Chicago Tribune, I started keeping track of all of the movies I had seen over the course of my lifetime.  The guide would list the two main stars for each movie, and that is a tradition that I’ve carried on in my database ever since.  Given those guidelines, it is time once again to look at the now 107 actors that have starred in at least 10 films that I have seen, as of July 1.

We continue today with the one actor that has starred in exactly 31 movies that I have seen, a level left bare 3 years ago.

Tom Hanks

In 1984, Tom Hanks splashed on to the movie scene in the aptly titled Splash.  My biggest Tom Hanks year was 2017, when I saw four of his films, and there were six other years where I saw at least two of his films.  He has added a single new film, retaining his second-place position, which came earlier this year when I saw A Man Called Otto, the adaptation of the similarly named Fredrik Backman novel.