1901 - The Big Swallow
1911 - The Lonesdale Operator
1921 - The High Sign
1931 - Working Girls
1941 - All That Money Can Buy
1951 - Symphony in Slang
1961 - Beep Prepared
1971 - Four Nights of a Dreamer
1981 - Orderly or Disorderly
1991 - Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah
2001 - Millennium Mambo
2011 - Trespass
2021 - Godzilla vs. Kong
1962 - Mothra (USA Edit/Dub)
1994 - Until the End of the World (Director's Cut)
Sometime in the past couple of months, I discovered the 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever podcast. I love films. I love lists. I love stupidly ambitious projects. So, naturally, I love everything about this podcast.
After discovering that podcast, I stumbled onto the Films by the Year website. It is the chronicle of one man's "Quest to View Films in Chronological Order".
Films by the Year began around 2011 as a way to organize my film viewing by watching a film from each decade beginning with the 1890s up to the present decade. I begin with years that end in zero, 1890, 1900, 1910, etc. and once I’ve watched a film from each decade I return to the 1890s and start with films from years that end in one, 1891, 1901, 1911, etc. and so on.
I had tried focusing on individual years in the past, but I almost always got bored sticking to the same year. This method of cycling through decades, though, immediately appealed to me. It gives some focus, but continues to allow for watching at whim. It has been fun looking at years, deciding what to watch, then also being flexible about what I watch depending on what is available or what my mood is when I get to a year. If I don't feel like spending a lot of time in a year, I give myself permission to watch a short film from that year and then I move on.
I started in 1901. The Big Swallow. It's a ridiculous trick film of a guy swallowing a camera and a camera operator. I had seen it before. I'll see it again. It's not the best of these early "one trick" films, but it's a good one.
One film down and it has taken me... one minute.
Turning to 1911, I watched The Lonedale Operator, an early D.W. Griffith thriller. A young woman working as a telegraph operator at a railroad station is attacked by some vicious thieves. It's fine. I got bored by it, then was delighted by the end when she holds off the thieves with a monkey wrench.
That was another 17 minutes.
1921 brought me The High Sign starring Buster Keaton, directed by Keaton and Ernest Cline. I found it pleasant throughout, but nothing too special. But the next day and all throughout the following week, I kept thinking about it, about how great it was. And I kept making the secret sign of the Blinking Buzzards.
Working Girls from 1931 was the first feature length film in this project at 77 minutes. Watching a fast moving pre-code film like this one, it's easy to wish that all feature films were less than 90 minutes. This film is a pretty standard romantic comedy and a comedy in the older sense, a narrative with a happy ending, a comedy in the Shakespearean mold that ends in multiple marriages. It's breezy and charming throughout.
All That Money Can Buy is a decent adaptation of "The Devil and Daniel Webster". I admit that I was bored by James Craig's performance, but this is somewhat made up for by the fact that Walter Huston is electric every time he's on screen.
Symphony in Slang is a short cartoon from 1951 directed by Tex Avery. It has a great premise, drawing out literal versions of slang expressions, but I found it more tedious than fun as it went on and on and on.
Beep Prepared is an average Road Runner & Coyote short. 'Average' in this case mening Excellent As Usual.
Four Nights of a Dreamer is a Bresson film that I had never even heard of before (or completely forgotten). It's an adaptation of a Doestevsky short story. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's about young dumb love and maybe it's the best film ever made about the fickle, fleeting affections and allegiances of youth. But it's still about young dumb people and maybe I'm just too old and weary.
Orderly or Disorderly is an early short film from Abbas Kiarostami. Like Symphony in Slang, it's got a clever premise that goes on too long. Unlike Symphony in Slang, Orderly or Disorderly subtly changes into something else and revived my interest as it went along. The basic idea is simple. A shot of something 'orderly' followed by a shot of something 'disorderly'. I described this to co-workers the morning after I watched it as "a Sesame Street sketch." It's charming for a few minutes. It wears one's patience past the ten minute mark... until it doesn't. As the film and the shots progress, Kiarostami and his fellow filmmakers lose control of the project. They begin talking over the action, talking to each other about how the shots are surprising them and how they are losing control. The last shot is of a city traffic intersection. Regardless of how many times they try and how much effort they put into making an orderly shot, they simply cannot get an orderly shot. The cars and the pedestrians defy their filmmaking plans. By the end of the film, something like 18 minutes, I loved it.
As I continue to explore kaiju films, I find that I love the 'Heisei Era' of Godzilla films (1984-1995). Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is no exception. It's stupid. It's an instant candidate for inclusion in a Top Ten Ridiculously Stupid Time Travel Movies list. It's also just undeniably fun.
Millennium Mambo is a vibe. It's cinematic poetry. It's the story of a girl who repeatedly makes bad decisions, especially in relationships, but really in all aspects of her life. I think that the extent to which anyone enjoys this film depends on how willing they are to identify with a young person making terrible mistakes. Having occasional voiceover from 10 years in the future is crucial to the film's framing. The film is not just about making stupid decisions. It's about surviving them. It's about looking back at stupid decisions after time has passed. I have continued to think about this film as the weeks have passed. It might be the best film of this ones cycle.
Trespass is a bad film. It was a box office bomb that deserved to bomb. At some point last year, I stupidly said that I was going to watch every Nic Cage performance. This was one of them. As always, he gives it 100%. The problems here are mostly script problems. Anyhow, I'm now at something like a couple dozen films watched out of 7,000 films that he has acted in.
I watched Godzilla vs. Kong because I had heard that the American Godzilla "Monsterverse" films were bad, not loved by fans. Since I hadn't seen any of them, I wanted to know for myself. They're bad. At least, this one is bad. It reminded me of the recent Jurassic World movies (I've seen at least one of them). It seemed like it was written by a committee and tested at every point to be the least offensive and the most broadly appealing to "average" Americans, whatever that means. I hated this movie and resented watching it. At least now I know to avoid the rest of these.
I have finally arrived at the point in which I get to write about the "problem" movies.
I remember that on the old blogs, I consistently championed dating films based on their IMDB date, which always reflected the first theatrical release anywhere in the world. I still think this makes sense.
But.
I've discovered recently that IMDB (and Letterboxd and everywhere else) do not care to distinguish between different cuts of a movie.
The easiest way to discuss this is to point to Blade Runner. As most film fans know, there are many different cuts of the film. Are all of these the same film? In some sense, sure, yes. In another sense, no, not really.
The same could be said of the multiple editions of The New World. The same could be said of the distinctions between Jackson's LotR theatrical releases and later Director's Cut versions. IMDB and Letterboxd do not have separate entries. Regardless of which version you watch, you only have one place to log your viewing under one date, the original date of the first cut.
This is problematic because not all cuts are equal.
I watched Mothra as my '61 choice, but... I watched the U.S. version, which has ten minutes cut and an English dub. The U.S. version was released in '62. I still haven't watched the 1961 Japanese version. All I've watched is the '62 American version. They are different films. They're related. They're close to one another. But they're different films.
Until the End of the World was my original choice for 1991. But the film in 1991 was released in a heavily cut version of under 3 hours that Wenders was not happy with. It got a mixed to poor critical reception. The 4h47m cut that I watched on the Criterion Channel was released in 1994 (though I just recently read the Criterion booklet essay by Bilge Ebiri that mentions Wenders showing it places in '93!) and had a better reception.
Why would I consider the version I watched to be from 1991? It didn't exist in 1991. It was screened as I watched it in 1994. Maybe 1993!!!!
All of this is enough to make one realize that any organization of films by year is kinda stupid. But we still do it. And that's fine. But when I make lists.... does Until the End of the World make it on my Top Ten of 1991? or my Top Ten of 1994? or my Top Ten of 1993? It really wasn't available to me until 2026 when it was recommended to me by a friend and I became aware of it. Is it a 2026 film? Probably not, but it will at least make an appearance on whatever sort of end-of-year list I make now at the end of 2026.
After this, after Mothra and Until the End of the World triggering this crisis of "JUST WHAT IS A RELEASE YEAR????", after this, one might think that I'd give up on this silly and arbitrary project. But, nope. I've already started on the Twos.