My New Film Watching Project
A YEAR ON CRITERION
This year I’m starting a new film watching project with the long term goal of watching all of the Criterion Collection over several years. Filmmaker-A-Month was really fun but it’s hard to watch a month of the same director and really let singular masterpieces sink in. Some films tended to run together in my mind. And needing to watch EVERY film in their filmography was sometimes a bummer when I’d get to their worst films. For example, Rob Reiner (RIP) had the incredible run from This Is Spinal Tap to A Few Good Men but I should have stopped after that. Many of these directors either start their career with duds or get old and end their careers with some rough movies. Or they have a weird run of junk in the 80s like Robert Altman. Or I find that they had 2 or 3 great films and THAT WAS IT.
So I’m excited for this new project that will give me a wide variety of films to watch and discover. Here’s how it will work:
Each month I’ll watch 20ish films in the Criterion Collection
The films of the Criterion Collection all have “spine numbers” based on the order they were released. The most recent release was #1294 (David Byrne’s American Utopia). I’ll be starting with the first 1000.
I’ll randomly choose a number between 1 and 1000 and watch the corresponding film.
On the first of the month I’ll post which films have been chosen for that month.
If I’ve seen the film before, I’m rewatching it unless…
If I watched it during Filmmaker-A-Month (either from the director or as extra credit) I’ll choose a different number/film and cross both off my list.
I’ll continue to share the films each day here and on IG and Twitter.
Also, kind of unrelated, I’ll still be logging everything I watch on Letterboxd but for 2026 I’m going to stop giving star ratings. Going to see if that affects my viewing at all. Just sit and enjoy and don’t judge.
So come along for the ride if you can!
