Why am I here?

I was always known as the "Movie Guy" by the people who know me. Even within my group of movie-watching friends, I am the Movie Guy.

I suppose it's not without reason. I watch quite a lot of movies, and usually more than once*. I also like to research and talk about films and film theory more than any other topics, if I could I would do nothing else with my day but watch and discuss movies. However, I have a confession to make.

The truth is, as many movies I have watched, and as many other movies that I have read about, there are still so many movies I haven't seen. I've never watched a film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kurbrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean-Luc Goddard, Werner Herzog, Orson Welles, and a whole lot of other prolific directors. I've only seen one film from Alfred Hitchcock: The Birds (1963). I've never exposed myself to the Chinese film industry, or watched a good deal of French or Italian film, and my knowledge of Japanese film is limited to a few Studio Ghibli works and some Godzilla movies. I haven't seen Titanic, or Braveheart, or Gladiator, or half the blockbusters everyone else has seen. I don't really deserve the title of the "Movie Guy"; my passion doesn't make up for a lack of experience.

In 2016, I seek to begin to change that. I've resolved to watch 366 films, one for every day of the year, that I have never seen before. I want to expose myself to all manner of film, everything I've been missing out on. Everything I've been meaning to see, everything I want desperately to see.

It won't be perfect. Watching a film a day will get tiring sometimes, and there are as many films that I don't want to see as those that I do. However, they will all be documented here: some thoughts and opinions, a bit of an informal review of every film I watch this year. I'm still learning and developing how I criticise, so some of this will probably a little messy, as I'm not used to putting my opinions so blatantly out in the open for everyone to see. It's a little daunting, but I'm excited for it.

Let's do this.

Agent Maine

*I've found some films simply necessary to watch no less than three times in order to read as much of the movie's message as possible, some films are so easy to digest that I can throw them on in the background while I do other things and not lose an experience for doing so, and others I watch half a dozen times simply because I enjoy them so much

Written January 2nd 2016, published July 1st 2016