5 Years Of Movie Watching

Most of my blog posts have been about video games in some way, because Giantbomb is obviously a gaming site, but I don't just play video games all the time, I also watch a lot of movies. While I was still in college I actually minored in film studies and, inspired by the classes I was taking at the time, began keeping a list of every movie I watched and the exact date I saw them. This didn't include movies I re-watched, only films I saw for the first time, and I also included shorts and television series that I watched to completion. It has now been 5 years since I started this project and I have amassed a huge list of 797 movies, short films and TV shows I watched from 2012 to 2016. That is a lot, and a lot of it is honestly forgettable garbage. I will never watch most of these movies again but there are a handful of very memorable titles that have stuck with me or that are just so weird that I could never forget them. So I thought it would be fun to go through each year and share my personal favorite movies I saw throughout the past half-decade.

Each year lists the movies I began and ended the year with followed by a list of my 15 favorite films I watched that year along with the worst movie I saw. I am not including TV shows or shorts in order to keep it simple and the favorites are listed in chronological order.

There are so many movies I've watched over the past 5 years and every time I look through them all I pick different favorites but these are the films I remember fondly or that I still re-watch. I hope you enjoy looking through my choices.

2012: Stolen Summer (1/11) - Krull (12/28)

1. Redline (1/20)
2. Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust (2/11)
3. The Night of the Hunter (2/15)
4. Lethal Weapon (3/8)
5. End of Evangelion (4/6)
6. The Raid Redemption (4/17)
7. Die Hard (4/23)
8. The Cube (5/23)
9. Battle Royal (7/9)
10. Fantastic Planet (7/17)
11. The Fifth Element (8/28)
12. Ed Wood (9/7)
13. Enter the Dragon (10/4)
14. An American Werewolf in London (10/7)
15. Wreck-It-Ralph (11/10)

Worst: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12/20)

2013: Looper (1/2) - The Fantastic Adventures of Unico (12/29)

1. Yellow Submarine (1/8)
2. Dredd (1/17)
3. Clue (1/29)
4. For a Few Dollars More (2/13)
5. Time Bandits (3/14)
6. Suspira (3/21)
7. Paper Moon (4/18)
8. Pulp Fiction (5/30)
9. Wake in Fright (6/27)
10. Repo Man (7/29)
11. Drive (8/11)
12. Mean Streets (8/15)
13. The Big Lebowski (8/24)
14. Hausu (9/22)
15. On the Waterfront (12/10)

Worst: Only God Forgives (10/29)

2014: The Royal Tenenbaums (1/4) - Hard Day's Night (12/29)

1. Donnie Darko (1/15)
2. The World's End (1/18)
3. The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1/22)
4. The Lego Movie (2/8)
5. Grand Budapest Hotel (3/30)
6. Wizard of Speed and Time (6/20)
7. Snowpiercer (7/4)
8. Flash Gordon (7/12)
9. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (9/23)
10. Galaxy Quest (10/15)
11. Stand By Me (11/13)
12. King of Comedy (12/3)
13. Arthur Christmas (12/12)
14. Eraser Head (12/28)
15. Hard Day's Night (12/29)

Worst: Midnight in Paris (6/8)

2015: Dark Crystal (1/2) - The Hateful 8 (12/31)

1. Never Ending Story (1/12)
2. Apocalypse Now (1/31)
3. John Wick (2/17)
4. Walkabout (3/25)
5. Blues Brothers (5/3)
6. Mad Max: Fury Road (5/15)
7. This is Spinal Tap (6/4)
8. Rock & Rule (6/16)
9. High Noon (6/17)
10. Deer Hunter (6/26)
11. Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade (7/4)
12. Sorcerer (9/15)
13. Face in the Crowd (10/19)
14. Dog Day Afternoon (10/25)
15. Unico in the Island of Magic (11/3)

Worst: Jupiter Ascending (7/27)

2016: Sweet Smell of Success (1/1) - Rouge One (12/31)

1. Sweet Smell of Success (1/1)
2. The Dog of Flanders 1997 (1/10)
3. The Hidden (1/17)
4. Aguirre the Wrath of God (1/30)
5. Phantom of the Paradise (3/6)
6. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (3/12)
7. East of Eden (3/13)
8. The Wanderers (4/22)
9. The Outsiders (4/29)
10. Black Narcissus (8/30)
11. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Collector's Edition (10/14)
12. The Exorcist (10/31)
13. American Graffiti (11/9)
14. Arrival (11/25)
15. Groundhog Day (12/9)

Worst: Money Monster (9/9)

Here's to another 5 years of movie watching!