On August 6th 2012, after selecting a pre-created blog format offered by Gmail, I uploaded the very first post to this page; a faux-review of Brave, at that time the most recent Pixar release. I examined in, I think, pretty fair fashion what made it the first major (non-Cars) letdown for many fans who had up to then been ride-or-die for Pixar. As was still kosher at the time, I even quoted Rotten Tomatoes!
11 years and about 9 months have passed, and I am now posting the 400th article on this site. With one, exceedingly brief exception, I have not changed the page layout at all, and after that initial post I learned very quickly to ignore aggregate review sites. It's been a journey, to be certain. But it's one that must have an end; life and circumstance have been pulling me away from this site for some time, and now that this not-insignificant milestone is finally here, I believe it's time to pause, take a look back, and gather a few thoughts.
Though much has happened between then and now, I can still recall much of what I thought and hoped at the time I started. I was fresh out of college, having spent four years drenching myself in campus theater, developing my first deep tastes and takes on film, music, and pop culture, and had a circle of friends and contacts with whom I shared these passions. Plus, those years were when many of us came of age in tandem with Youtube and Facebook, producing the first nascent generation of amateur, independent online „celebrities“ dedicated to media criticism, commentary, and comedy. The figures of this first wave- most notably the Walkers and Bob Chipman- had a massive and hard-to-summarize impact on me, though it left its scars as well.
At the time, all I knew was; I wanted in. I had already begun regularly following traditional critics like Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott, supplemented by the new voices from my generation. The „plan“, such as it was, was to start with amateur reviews posted to my blog, after which I had hazy dreams of somehow going viral or hitting on the right contact to land some kind of official or regular work as either a written critic, or making the leap to Youtube like the growing ranks of video essayists I was already deeply obsessed with.
Even given the exceedingly volatile and happenstance nature of the modern internet and what does or does not „make it“- something I did not appreciate at the time but very soon came to grasp- there actually was a window where it looked (to me) like it might work out that way. Thanks to the creativity and efforts of some of my best friends, the Cinema Joes podcast was up and running regularly right about when the major podcast boom started, and in 2016 the views on this site started to rise to numbers that maybe, possibly, pointed to something more taking shape. After several years of averaging a few thousand views a month, or or less, October of 2016 saw this number shot up to just shy of 5,000. The very next month shot way over, and for about a calendar year I saw my view count spike to between 10,000 and 15,000 in most months, hitting a high of 17,666 clicks in July of 2017.
As mysteriously as this spike began- I can't point to any particular post or string of posts at this time that seemed primed to win the algorithm wars- it ended. I last topped 5,000 in November of 2017, after which my views cratered (almost) for good. Here too, I can't see any impetus as to why. My rate of posting was actually increasing at the time- 2013 was the lone year I managed a whole post per week, but in 2018 I came very close with 50 posts over the course of the year. So it's not like I was slowing down at this particular moment. It's something I will never be able to know.
Nonetheless, the fact that I at least seemed to have something going kept me thinking that, if I can just get my pace back up, another spike was possible.....and then COVID happened.
If I'm being honest, the slowdown started before then; life was already pulling me away enough that I dropped from 50 posts in 2018 to just 33 in 2019. But, entering 2020, I had been actively planning to reinvest more time in the site, hoping to get into a stretch where I would watch as many movies as possible and do a full review for literally every single one of them. Up until then, I had been able to top 50 or 60 official new releases per year, so actually committing to that goal would have been a not-insignificant spike in my content output. BUT, suddenly theaters were closed, the amount of new movie content available was reduced to a trickle, and with the world trying to crush us, I very simply had too many more important things to worry about. The rate of new releases I was able (and had the energy) to see collapsed, and to be frank, has never really recovered.
My work here wasn't dead, not yet. But the blow had been struck. I managed only 46 posts combined for the first two years of the pandemic, before my productivity collapsed even further. As you can see, there are only 9 posts apiece for the past two years. This post will just be my 5th of 2024. And here I am now. I am not the next Roger Ebert. I am not the successor to the Nostalgia Critic (yes, that was a very explicit goal I had for a not-insignificant amount of time). I don't even have an unpaid gig for a fan site. Cinema Joes is (for the time being) on ice. I am simply me, doing my thing. This will be the 400th post on a 12-year-old blog. As of this writing, this site has a total view count of 344,000+. Certainly more than nothing, to be fair.
The weirdest thing, though, is this; after years of ignoring the stats page, when I finally checked back in to do some number-crunching for this post, I found that, somehow.....my views spiked to an all-time high last year???? Out of (seemingly) nowhere, September 2023 saw this page top 22,000 views, and then almost hit 20,000 again a few months later in February. These two huge spikes easily outstrip the best months of my „optimism“ phase. How? Why?
I suspect- I would very much like to believe- that this was Barbenheimer's doing. I may have gone just a touch nuts last year over the first major, worldwide cultural Movie Moment since probably the first Avengers movie and dedicated no less than 3 massive articles to the Barbenheimer craze. In all honesty, I do think this batch ranks among my best pieces of writing, so I will go to my grave believing that my working thesis is correct, and they offered me one final window of internet glory.
Interestingly, though, none of those are among my most-viewed posts. This is another fun little well to play in. As of right now, there are exactly 11 out of my 399 posts that have topped a thousand views. The ranking of my most-viewed posts, as of May 2024, are as follows:
My Top 10 Favorite Naruto Arcs and/or Story Moments (3,630)
My 10 Favorite Avatar Fights (2,750)
Reflections: The End of Legend of Korra (2, 610)
The Problem with Naruto (2,380)
Nippon Review: Death Note – Light up the NEW World (2,280)
Review: How To Let Go Of The World (and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change) (1,310)
Review: Queen of Katwe (1,240)
Nippon Reviews: Dear Deer (1,120)
Review: Der Nachtmahr (1,100)
My Top 10 Favorite Naruto Fights (1,090)
Review: Star Wars Rogue One (1,050)
What a delightfully weird mix this is. About half of these, most notably the top four, are the sort of listicle/problems-with sort of articles that I would absolutely expect to top these sorts of statistics. A big part of the mid-2010's was that it saw the end of both Naruto and Bleach, two of Shonen Jump's Big Three, in fairly controversial fashion. For a certain sect of anime fans from my generation, there is no understating Naruto's impact, so I find myself quite pleased to see my 3 main posts on the topic here. Plus, I consider both my Avatar Month series and pretty much all my seasonal reviews of Korra to among by better pieces of media analysis, so again, seeing at least two out of that batch top my view counts is deeply satisfying.
As for the more typical film reviews that somehow made their way here.....it is beyond me to figure out the how and why. Given that anything Star Wars is potential algorythm bait, Rogue One isn't a shocker. I remain a big fan of Der Nachtmahr, and I may very well be one of the only English-language reviews ever written on this almost entirely unknown German psychadelic sci-fi tribute, so maybe I won points for that. As for the rest? None of these are among either the best nor the worst films I have treated here. They are all perfectly fine movies I enjoyed, but I don't recall ever returning to or recommending any of them after I finished writing my review.
The fact that my highest-viewed regular review is a Japanese Death Note film- one of many live-action expansions of the universe Japanese cinema has produced- might be the funniest part of this. Important to note, this is NOT the Netflix adaptation, which I also reviewed here and which had the dubious distinction of receiving the worst film rating I have ever put to paper. No, this is simply a mid-level live-action take on a manga property, something that is a dime-a-dozen in Japan and is otherwise of absolutely no importance or note. I truly don't get it, and I do believe I never will.
Having looked over all 399 past posts, in many cases rereading some for the first time in years, it's fascinating to try and grasp all that has happened in this time. I began writing before Obama's reelection, in the wake of the titanic gamechanger that was the first Avengers movie, meaning I have been writing for what is now the bulk of Marvel's box office dominance. At the same time, it was only a year or so later when the horrifically abortive DCEU was launched, something I only very, very passingly touched on, since I knew to stay well away from that train wreck.
This is likely to get way out of hand, but I would like to at least try to do a recap of what I consider the most important, interesting, well-written, or significant posts I’ve done over the past 12 years. Here and there I found a few new thoughts on something I wrote about ages ago. Sometimes I found my opinions from them refreshingly relevant and durable, while, of course, there is plenty that has not aged well. I already took myself to task for my first ten Top Ten Films lists, so I won't rehash that here. However, I thought it would be fun to make a „definitive“ list of the best films from each year that I would put on my own iteration of an all-time (and unranked) Great Films list, ala Roger Ebert.
This will not be an exhausting re-examination, more a collection of thoughts on a loose timeline.
August 2012:
It all began with Brave New Film, my first-ever post.
September 2012: End of the Nostalgia Critic
Yes, this is one of the elephants in the room. The original run of the Nostalgia Critic had slightly preceeded me starting college and first discovering the TGWTG/Channel Awesome site, and the first attempt to retire the character happened right after I graduated. The timing was far too poetic to ingore. Looking at what I said then- noting how the very amateurish style of many of these first-wave Youtube videos made it feel like we were watching close friends, not distant media figures- I can see now I had already fallen into a form of the parasocial trap that has led to a great amount of controversy and pain for many online creators and their fans over the years. I get why I felt this way and can't fault myself for it. But it's clear I did not see the turns coming.
October 2012:
My first „official“ film review, of PTA's enigmatic The Master.
December 2012:
The first Hobbit movie comes out and I raved. This has a very strong Before Times vibe now.
January 2013: Return of the Nostalgia Critic
Oh boy. I was somewhat sceptical at the time and actually wrote, „let's hope he (Doug Walker) doesn't end up regretting this.“ In time, we are all Nostradamus.
February 2013:
My first ever Top Ten list! I've already done my mea culpa over picking Lincoln, but both it and Cloud Atlas remain my two favorite films from this year. The other keepers; The Secret World of Arrietty, Moonrise Kingdom, and Cabin in the Woods.
March 2013: Top Ten Films Nominated for Animated Feature
that DIDN'T win
This was a great idea and I am very glad I committed to it. Redoing it now would be too much of a chore, since the number of amazing snubs that qualify for this has since doubled and doubled again.
April 2013:
It was here when Roger Ebert passed, and I wrote one of literally countless tributes that flooded the web over the subsequent weeks. Given all we later experienced with Channel Awesome, I am particularly grateful for the fact that, the more we learn about Roger and who he was, the more we realize that some heroes really do exist.
It was also in this month that I took a stab at my own Top 20 All-Time Favorite Films list. This was directly inspired by Doug Walker doing the same, and while I like how it turned out, I have come to realize that this is not the sort of thing that should be limited to a set, arbitrary number. Best Of or Favorites lists should grow, deepen, and expand, not remain static to force a kill-your-darlings blood fued.
Summer 2013:
Alongside Man of Steel, JJ Abrams' 2nd take on Star Trek with Into Darkness was the season‘s major blockbuster. This was the first time I truly hated a film and went OFF in a review. I stand by everything I said then, and I even commented directly on the concerns I suddenly had about the upcoming Star Wars sequel series. Again, with time, Nostradamus, etc. etc.
October 2013:
This month featured my review of Gone Home. Other than my ranking of the Pokemon Gameboy games, this is the only video game review I ever did. It is unique in this, but I also think I found a great angle to examine this criminally underappreciated gem of an indie. This post remains a personal favorite.
January 2014:
It was here when I made my „infamous“ defense of the Hobbit movies. I still get why I said this. I did see the warning signs, but it was only after seeing Linday Ellis' documentary examination of the production that I realized I was way too nice and hopeful. Ah well. I know what I intended, and I still feel that the movies didn't HAVE to be the clusterfuck they turned into.
It was also this month when I began my yearly original Film Awards. I think this was a great idea and I was able to repeat for a few years afterwards. I feel deeply that the „Milkshake Award“ is one of the best ideas I've ever had.
February 2014:
What stays from my Top Ten List? Wolf of Wall Street, Fruitvale Station, Key of Life, Inside Llewin Davis, and Asura.
At this
time, I still cared about both the Oscars AND the Golden Globes, and made the
effort of doing formal picks for both. This also happened to be right in the
middle of David Russell's Shit Trilogy of Silver
Linings Playbook, American Hustle,
and Joy. American Hustle dominated awards nominations and pushed out so many
other, better movies, it almost felt like a personal insult. My By The Numbers
rant over this, especially the conclusion, is one of the best things I have
ever written and will ever write.
March 2014:
I had
completely forgotten that I made an argument for Zoe Saldana as Wonder Woman.
Gal Godot did fine, but ever since Israel has gone off the genocidal deep
end.....yeah, maybe I had the better idea and studios should have listened to
me.
July 2014:
The Wind
Rises came out and I wrote what was, at that time, the longest and probably
most tortured review I ever made. Unlike some, I still do not believe it to be
pure, naive apologia for Japanese war crimes. But I get why the movie doesn't
get the job done for some. It might be the most cerebral film Miyazaki ever
made.
September 2014:
This month
included the 100th post on this site, my review of Cloudburst,
a quiet and sweet road trip/hijink film about two retired lesbians.
October 2014:
I had also
forgotten that I did a reaction to GamerGate. Once again, in hindsight, SO MUCH
of what would definie MAGA and the current wave of right-wing populism sweeping
of the globe could be seen in its first creeping manifestations here.
December 2014:
The
Legend of Princess Kaguya hit theaters, and it destroyed me. I will always
remember breaking down in tears for a solid half-hour after we left the
theater. Few movies have ever touched me so deeply and so immediately.
January 2015:
I got my
Top Ten list done early this time around. Kaguya as my top pick is
eternal. The other keepers from this year; Boyhood, The Lego Movie,
Selma, The Wind Rises, Life Itself, Like Father Like
Son, Noah, Inherent Vice, HTTYD 2.
February 2015:
This was
the first time I did a Top Scores lists in addition to a straight Top Ten. This
is a tradition I plan to continue.
Spring/Summer 2015:
What
followed over the next few months was a huge number of tribute articles. Naruto
ended and I did a series of final reflections and Favorite lists, after which I
threw myself into Avatar Month. I remain very happy with how both of these
projects turned out, and my picks, particularly for Avatar, stand fairly
unchanged even after I did a rewatch of both shows a couple years ago.
August 2015:
This was
when Jon Stewart stepped away from The Daily Show „for good.“ His final show,
essentially a massive tribute party with every single current and past
correspondent gathered to celebrate, was incredible emotional, especially in
retrospect after it was held right after the first GOP debate for the 2016
presidential election. The shape of The Daily Show and the end of Jon Stewart's
tenure was a true watershed moment for me and many others in my generation. I
think I said what was most important in my tribute.
December 2015:
The Star Wars sequel trilogy officially began, and it's another Nostradamus point for me; all the concerns I voiced about how the new film series could drop the ball ended up being straight on me the money.
Sometimes,
I genuinely hate being right.
January 2016:
2016 was many things, nearly all of them bad. One of the first things it became was the Year Everybody Died. There were many hard blows, but on a personal level, Alan Rickman was the hardest. I shared my one meeting with him in my tribute post.
Fury Road topped my Best Films list this time around. The other greats; When Marnie Was There, A Girl Walks Home At Night, Pale Moon, Ex Machina, The Big Short, Brooklyn.
It was in
the Spring and Summer of this year that Bleach, which at one time could be
argued to be the best of the Big Three, crashed and burned and ended in
spectacular fashion.
October 2016:
With less
than a month before Hell Day, I did a joke post assigning a Devil Fruit power
from One Piece to each of the prominent presidential candidates from both
parties. Absolutely a good idea and I had fun doing it....but after the
election it immediately ceased to be funny. I don't know if I would ever feel
comfortable trying something like it again.
November 2016:
A rare
highlight from this year; November saw my 200th post go up. Nothing
fancy, just my review of the first Doctor Strange film. Very standard
Marvel fare, and I haven't thought of it since I posted the review.
January 2017:
In my post
discussing then-current „controversy“ over how some A-List celebrities were
reacting to the election, I offered something of a mission statement regarding
how my thoughts and attitudes towards the mixing of art and politics were
already shifting as a result. I hoped, at this time, there would be something
of a broader cultural awakening, especially since #MeToo gained traction a
short while later. Sadly, this would prove too optimistic a thought on my part.
February 2017:
I topped my
Best Films list with 13th, for overtly political reasons. It
still holds water, but as I've said previously, Swiss Army Man or Silence
would have been more accurate picks. Other new classics from this year include Censored
Voices, The Handmaiden, Der Nachtmahr, Arrival, and Kubo
and the Two Strings.
March 2017: A Circus, A Camera, and Ryan Gosling
We had already been subjected to so much that, by the time the Oscars managed to offer up possibly the most insane slip-up of its entire run, it really did feel like God or the Universe really was just punking us. Haha, ok, fine, life is a simulation, can we go back to the Good Place again? Please?
The most
insane part about the La La Land/Moonlight slip up is how, in the sort of
coincidental timing capable to provoke a true spiritual crisis, this happened
literal weeks before the most famous comedy duo in Germany actually did pull
off a major, and hilariously successful, punk of the German equivalent of the
Oscars, one that ALSO centered around La
La Land and featured a Ryan Gosling „look-alike“ (they don’t really look
alike). As a historian I can confirm that this is one of the funniest things to
ever happen ever, and I will never get tired of rewatching their
mini-documentary following the whole scheme.
April 2017:
Here I officially began Films for the Trump Years. This remains, in my book, one of the most important and meaningful projects I started over the course of the blog. I initially had a massive list of movies, including quite a few documentaries, touching on dozens upon dozens of topics, fields, and eras in history, as well as some fictional and fantastical works I felt were relevant. I had a notion to do maybe one per month, which, had I done so, would have meant a cool 48 entries or so going into Biden's inaugeration.
In the end, that proved to be too much. I stopped at an even 20 posts (22 films/shows total, since two of them were double features). Nonetheless, I think I was still able to cover quite a lot of ground, and had enough chances to make some nice outside-the-box picks. The entire collection features some of my best and most important writing. The full list is as follows:
Part 1: Selma (April 2017)
Part 2: Good Night and Good Luck (May 2017)
Part 3: 13th (July 2017)
Part 4: Get Out (August 2017)
Part 5: Chasing Ice/Chasing Coral (September 2017)
Part 6: The Big Short (October 2017)
Part 7: Human Flow (November 2017)
Part 8: Moonlight/Winter’s Bone (December 2017)
Part 9: Black Panther (February 2018)
Part 10: Arrested Development (March 2018)
Part 11: Bowling for Columbine (April 2018)
Part 12: [T]error (August 2018)
Part 13: Angels in America (September 2018)
Part 14: Do The Right Thing (March 2019)
Part 15: All The President’s Men (May 2019)
Part 16: Ken Burns‘ The Vietnam War (December 2019)
Part 17: Malcolm X (May 2020)
Part 18: Songs My Brothers Taught Me (August 2020)
Part 19: Totally Under Control (October 2020)
Part 20: The Social Network (December 2020)
It was also
around this time when I wrote about how One Piece was avoiding the traps that
felled Naruto and Bleach and was actually even better then than when it had
first started. And guess what's happened since then? IT'S ONLY GOTTEN EVEN
BETTER, BITCHES.
September 2017:
Ah yes. My
review of Netflix's live-action Death
Note adaptation. One of the most heinous crimes ever set to film, and
receipient of my worst-ever rating. But oh, how it was merited, and oh, how
much fun it was shredding this one to pieces.
October 2017:
After 4
years of additional NC material, I returned to the Channel Awesome well to list
my favorites of the Walker's post-hiatus work. It is very weird, and somewhat
painful, to revisit this one knowing what was coming barely half a year later.
January and February 2018:
When I looked back on 2017, I had the sense that it had been a particularly special year for great action movies. So much so that I made my one and only Top Ten Action Scenes list. I still think my picks are the correct ones, but there was SO MUCH I had to leave on the cutting room floor. As far as the movies themselves, the works from my main list that rank on my all-time list are Wonder Woman, Your Name, The Last Jedi, Lady Bird, Paradise, Thor: Ragnarok, Dunkirk, Human Flow, A Silent Voice, and Get Out.
April 2018:
Oh boy. This was a hard month. It started with Isao Takahata passing. It ended with Change the Channel.
For all that has happened in the world since I became an adult, few things have been as personally jarring. I spent a good decade watching, on average, 1-2 Walker videos per week at minimum. Hurt and torn by the stories coming out, feeling a deep sense of personal betrayal that revealed the extent to which parasociality had infiltrated by consumption of CA content, I have not watched a single piece of content by the Walkers in the 6 years and counting since then. What was once unfathomable became, almost overnight, a forced necessity that soon felt so normal, I stopped questioning it after a year or two. I really did imagining myself making it to Channel Awesome myself one day, and becoming the next Nostalgia Critic, or perhaps the equivalent for a subset like historical films. It felt inevitable around the time I finished college.
In the ways that count, I have moved on. The really good stuff on YouTube has gotten even better and deeper than I previously imagined. It’s not what I thought it would be, but at least some of the best content creators do make open and honest efforts to address mistakes, to address parasociality head-on, and to find the right side of history. There is at least some of the support there that I had assumed to be there at Channel Awesome. I am grateful for that. The pain became a dull ache, and then reduced itself to a shadow of regret when I think on it now.
My decision to neither delete nor alter my previous posts lauding the Walkers was the right one. No sense whitewashing the past, no matter how awkward or disappointing. As such, I felt it was critical to balance the scales by highlighting the content creators that I was able to experience and enjoy specifically as a result of their involvement, however brief, with TGWTG/CA. I am glad that I made the time to highlight these artists. There are plenty of other online personas, especially YouTubers, who have come to match and even exceed the old CA group in their influence on me, but I very quickly realized I would not have the time to devote proper posts to all of them. But this list, as it stands, is a fine one. Even here, though, multiple rounds of drama, harassment, attempts an cancellation, and other „scandals“ around both these and other prominent YouTubers. The wonderful utopia I had believed in, of online content creators mutually supportive of each other and able to unite on the right side of history, has only ever existed in sporadic pieces.
The official timeline of the Producers in Focus series is:
Lindsay Ellis (April 2018)
Todd in the Shadows (May 2018)
Jacob Chapman (July 2018)
Suede (August 2018)
The Rap Critic (September 2018)
Kyle Kallgren (February 2019)
Weekly Manga Recap (March 2019)
Leon Thomas (July 2019)
January 2019:
Here’s another surprise that hit me when prepping for this; once I narrowed down what post was my 300th post on the site, I found to my great amusement that it was the one- the ONLY- Worst Films list I ever made. I have always taken pride in avoiding enough bad movies to never having the material for a list like this, but enough got around the radar this one time that I took a swing at it. It was fun, sure, but I sure as hell hope I never feel the need to do it again.
This was
directly followed by usual Best list. Into
the Spider-Verse remains unassailable as my top pick, but the other
all-timers from 2018 include; Passage of
Life, Sorry To Bother You, Bad Times at the El Royale, Foxtrot, The Death of Stalin, The
Night Is Short Walk On Girl, Black
Panther, and Taste of Cement.
December 2019:
This was
the year where I clearly started to slow down. But I kept at it, and it was in
December of this year when The Rise of
Skywalker came out, ending the hashed-up Shit Circle Abrams and Disney made
out of everything in the sequel trilogy that isn’t The Last Jedi (which is a masterpiece and if you have an issue with
that you can FUCKING FIGHT ME). To this day, TROS remains the only one of the
official 9 Star Wars movies I intend to never see again, for as long as I live.
2020:
I truly hit my wall here, in terms of both overall film consumption and my writing capacity. In many ways, I was extremely fortunate; my work was not affected by lockdowns, so while there was little else to do, my work day remained unchanged, so I did not suddenly have entire days to devote to binge watching. I still had way more time than before, but somehow- and I do think this was an effect of the pandemic- my brain seemed to fundamentally shift in some way. I often just couldn’t find the energy or desire to watch movies or TV shows even when I did have time (and I had plenty of time). Instead, I largely survived 2020 by just getting through my workday, and then sinking into Minecraft in the evenings.
I did keep posting though. 2019 had been normal enough for another Top Ten List. The newbies on my favorites list from that year consist of; I Lost My Body, A Hidden Life, HTTYD 3, Us, John Wick 3, Knives Out, Little Women, The Lighthouse, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Jupiter’s Moon.
One major project I took on in the wake of an entire decade ending was to make a massive, Best Of 2010 list. It swelled to 25 films in total, plus two trilogies as honorable mentions, so it was a bit unwieldy. However, this did mean there was very little I had to leave out. The specific order may be something I could eventually quibble with, but the films themselves I selected were all solid, justifiable picks. I absolutely plan to do something like this every decade, I find it a very nice and fun way to look back in regular intervals and really think about what movies will have the most staying power as great works of art.
There was one other significant
highlight of 2020, as far as this site is concerned. After bits of design work
and storyboard ideas for what the last Star Wars movie may have been started to
surface, I started to feel pissed all over again at how much potential had been
tossed down the drain in favor of the utter blandness of TROS. And so, I
embarked on my first-ever work of fan fiction, a long-running series I was
eventually able to finish that is, basically, my own personal Episode IX. I
wrote it for myself, me, and I, so it’s okay that no one ever read or will read
it.
2021:
It was
touch-and-go for a bit, but in the end, I was able to scrape enough titles
together that met my criteria to keep on making Top Ten lists. Other than the
Hamilton Broadway filming, the best titles of 2020 that stick around in my book
are Birds of Prey, Ainu Mosir, Totally Under Control, and Corpus
Christi.
By this
time, I really could feel the steam going. I finished Films for the Trump
Years, and by 2023 I had my Episode IX take concluded as well. I also pretty
much stopped writing „normal“ reviews by this time, instead waiting until I had
the inspiration to mash together films or topics into some bigger argument I
felt worth making. I kept on at this point mostly because I just wanted to make
it here, to #400.
January 2022:
2021 was
another pandemic year, but despite this, my film count ticked up again and I
had a very solid list of new great movies to celebrate, including Ushiko, West Side Story, Along the
Sea, The Green Knight, Dune, Licorice Pizza, Inside,
and The Mitchells vs. The Machines.
April 2022:
I had a bundle of fun revisiting
my first 10 Top Ten picks. A VERY fun and worthy exercise, with a few mea
culpas to be had.
January 2023:
The last two years have, for my money, been absolute bangers as far as movies are concerned. The heavies from 2022 were Nope, The Woman King, The Batman, Prey, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Banshees of Inisherin, and of course, my beloved Everything Everywhere All At Once.
The summer
was defined by Barbenheimer, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
January 2024:
I went back to the roots, so to speak, for Miyazaki’s return from „retirement“, to write a classic, formatted review of The Boy and the Heron. That will stand as my last formal review on this site. Fitting, in a way.
Shortly after that I did my usual Top Ten list. The best of last year, a stunningly good one, are:
John Wick 4
Guardians of the Galaxy 3
Poupelle of Chimney Town
A Haunting in Venice
Godzilla Minus One
Barbie
Perfect Days
The Boy and the Heron
Oppenheimer
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
My Small Land
And now, we are at the end. I have cast a wide net with this blog. Many pieces of myself are to be found here. Much is missing. But it’s all me, even the bad bits. I am happy I started this site. Most of what I hoped to come has not happened. But that is life, and learning that is, in a way, it’s own reward. I don’t know how many people will read this. It doesn’t matter though. I have made an honest effort. That’s all I can ask of myself, I suppose.
I have put too much effort into these articles to forget or remove them. The site will remain live as long as the internet, or at least Google, exists, though that is hardly a guarantee of anything. I will never stop watching and thinking about movies, so I will absolutely continue to do yearly Top Ten lists. This place is as good as any a spot to store them, at least until another option presents itself.
And so, this is the end, but it is not goodbye. It’s never goodbye, as long as there are good movies and good art in the world to provide out lives meaning, color, and light.
A final offering; an unranked list of all the posts here I consider genuinely good writing, ones I hope to preserve whether or not this URL survives:
The Problem With Sequels
Roger Ebert Tribute
Review: Star Trek Into Darkness
Review: First Position
Video Game Review: Gone Home
Review: Gravity
2013 Film Awards
Review: Wolf of Wall Street
American Hustle: By The Numbers
Review: Like Father, Like Son
Review: The Wind Rises
Review: Pheonix
Review: Princess Kaguya
Review: Citizenfour
Review: Inherent Vice-
Reflections: End of Legend of Korra
Reflections: End of Naruto
ALL of Avatar Month
Nippon Reviews: Further Reflections on Princess Kaguya
Nippon Reviews Appleseed Alpha
Nippon Reviews: Kami nu Tsuki
Fare Thee Well, Jon Stewart
Reflections on the Success of WTNV
The Problems with Bleach
The End of Bleach
Review: Swiss Army Man
Now More Than Ever
Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street
A Circus, A Camera, and Ryan Gosling
ALL of Films for the Trump Years
The (Lack of) problems with One Piece
Review: Death Note
Review: mother!
Review: Thor Ragnarok
Top Ten Action Scenes of 2017
Review: Der Hauptmann
In Memoriam: Isao Takahata
A Critic, A Camera, and a Wall
ALL of Producers in Focus (list the names)
Review: Taste of Cement
Review: The Night is Short, Walk On Girl
Review: Bamy
Wasting Time (July 2018)
The Top Five Worst Films (I happened to see) of 2018
Review: Spider Man Into the Spiderverse
Review Avengers Endgame
My Top 5 Favorite Pokemon Games
Review Jupiter's Moon
My Top 25 Movies of the 2010's
ALL of Star Wars: Duel of the Fates
The Underrateds: Genesis
In Memoriam: Chadwick Boseman
Review Matthias & Maxime
The Underrateds: Billy Joel
Review: Ushiku
Review: Bo Burnham's Inside
SDC Season 4 Cutest Moments
SDC Season 4 Best Dances
One Last Time
Decade Look-Back: Ranking My OWN Top Ten Picks
The Untamed and the Neverending Cycle
Barbenheimer: The Aftermath
Barbenheimer: Power and Patriarchy
Hidden Lives
Review: The Boy and the Heron
My Favorite Baseball Experiences
This Is Not Goodbye
Be safe. Be well.
-Noah
