estimated reading time: 5-6 minutes

Hi everyone, I’ve been busy wrapping up my first year of my DMA program (more on that later perhaps!) and after waiting for FOREVER, I finally got to watch Godzilla Minus One (2023). This spurred a thought where I looked at all the movies I watched for the first time this year, and realized that my 2024 list is very…interesting??? So I will walk you through my Letterboxd 2024 watchlist, it’ll be half rapid-fire reviews and half an explanation (but not an apology) for my behavior.

For context, I hate streaming services just as much as any average consumer. What I used to do in the past was pay for one streaming service like Netflix or Max for a few months, and once I had watched the things I wanted to watch, I would cancel it. Really the only services I long term subscribe to are Crunchyroll Premium and Discord Nitro (and they just bumped up Crunchyroll to be $2 more expensive…ugh). But since most services cost upwards of $13 a month, I just changed to renting movies on my Apple TV for $4 a pop. I don’t know if it’s cheaper in the long haul, but it definitely helps me to make more conscious decisions when deciding to put money towards a single movie (instead of the whole service).

All that to say, let’s get this train together. This is my 2024 Letterboxd list of “movies I have watched for the first time this year.”

Starting strong with Saltburn. You know, I had seen the hype and discourse surrounding the film in late December, but didn’t decide to watch it until a few days into the new year. However, it was not giving me life. Pass. A few weeks later, I was mindlessly browsing through Apple TV recommendations, and organically came across Cruel Intentions. This movie is a product of its time, but my goodness…there are very few movies that deserve the description “cunt.” This is one of them. That led me to watch Clueless, which I ended up liking a lot more.

Then we make a hard right turn into…this phase. I was thinking about the Sopranos, and how much I missed watching the Sopranos, so I decided to watch Goodfellas instead. For my first time watching a Martin Scorsese film, this one was a good one. I was shocked, gooped, gagged at all the riggery and misogyny. But I loved it. Then one night, I worked up the courage to watch American Psycho. Keep in mind, these are all movies I’m watching for the first time, and while I read spoilers sometimes, I often don’t remember them so I go in blind. All my residual knowledge from American Psycho comes from its memes. Unfortunately for you all, Christian Bale is one of the hottest celebrities to me so I had a hard time balancing my attraction and my disgust. He slays though.

Watching Goodfellas however, led me to have a brief stint into the mafia genre. So I basically made a backwards chronological walk, I watched the Sopranos years ago when I lived in NYC, I watched Goodfellas sometime in February, and then watched the two Godfather films. Again, not knowing anything going in, I did not know those films are 3+ hours long!!! So I actually had to split watching the first Godfather into 2 nights because I started watching at like 8pm? On a weekday??? And then made the executive decision to choose sleep. I watched the second one that weekend, starting at a reasonable 7pm and ending somewhere close to 11pm due to bathroom breaks and nighttime routines.

Then, my friend Joel (hi Joel!) told me he had watched Ex Machina in a limited theatre run and enjoyed it, and I went to watch it pretty much that same night. The rest of the movies are pretty much in line with my normal interests (sci-fi, action, kaiju movies), except for Inglourious Basterds. Every time I give Quentin Tarantino a chance, I am always slightly let down, and slightly weirded out every time a foot scene comes on. We all know Tarantino has a thing for feet, and knowing that, it makes every scene with bare feet in his movies just that much more uncomfortable for me. I am just not a Tarantino fan (the only things I do like are O-Ren Ishii and Gogo Yubari from the Kill Bill franchise). But I watched the original RoboCop for the first time! It was so good! It aged so well!

As a Trixie & Katya fan, it only made sense that I finally watched Contact. Even though I knew some of the references, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it! Then I watched Blade Runner 2049, and that was also surprisingly good. I feel like Blade Runner is a story that is meant to be slept on by critics and fans in its original theatrical release, only to be lauded years later. John Wick Chapter 4…this was kinda random, but because I was traveling so much last year, I watched the first three films on plane rides. I never finished the fourth, and flights from Eugene don’t have planes that have screens in the seats. So I just rented it and finished it so I could say I watched all of it. Then the last film I watched was Godzilla Minus One, so now we are back to the beginning of the circle.

I hope this list illuminates some of my thinking behind my insane list. We’re only halfway through the year, and based on previous year lists, I tend to average about 20 new films a year. Well not new, but new to me. If you want to add me or follow me on Letterboxed, my username is foulvillain. I don’t post reviews, I just log in films and rate them. But I like keeping track of what I watch or read, it’s fun for me.

Happy Pride Month, see y’all next time!

what i’m watching: One Piece (somewhere in the Dressrosa Arc)