ANNOUNCEMENT: IMDb Top 150 Watch-Through

Hey everyone,

Last week was the One Year Anniversary of my very first article! If you want to re-read my very first entry to prove that practice makes better, I've linked it here. It's been a joy, especially during a difficult time in our world and lives, to have a forum to do one of my favorite things: introduce people to and discuss my favorite movies.

I'll admit it's sometimes been difficult to balance creating my deep dive articles, making lists, planning ahead, and pursuing my non-blog quest to continue watching more films that I haven't seen in order to better understand the form, find new favorites, and create new recommendations; I also have a full-time job and plenty of more important and wonderful things (like getting married this December) that compete for my time!

With that in mind, I've come up a way to merge my desire to see new movies with my desire to recommend, analyze, and opine on them in a way that you find enjoyable and useful, and fortunately imdb.com exists. I think this is a great vehicle for me to align with you in terms of what's next on the list, and to open some broader discussions and collectively expose ourselves to films that people seem to think are worthy of exposure. IMDb users, real people, are able to log on and rate each film from 1-10. IMDb keeps a constant list of which 250 films are the most highly-ranked on average, which is where I plan to work from.

Here's a link to the list: https://www.imdb.com/chart/top/

• How will this work?: I'll watch my way through the list, beginning at #150 and working my way up, 15 at a time. Once I've seen them all, I'll write out my thoughts for you to digest, and can use to help yourself figure out what to watch next.

• Why only 150?: 250 just feels too daunting, which is a bummer because Chinatown is literally #151 at the time of this writing and I love that movie. Starting at 150 allows for me to plan for 10 installments of 15 films each. Maybe I'll finish out the list in the future, maybe I won't.

• Will I still do deep dives?: Sure, but far less frequently than before. Watching these movies, most of them for the first time, is gonna take a lot of work and I sincerely hope you join me in this!

• Will I make other lists?: Same answer as above, and as awards season rolls back around I'll plan to cover that as thoroughly as I did in 2020; I'm looking forward to an awards season full of movies people actually watched this year.

Let's get started.