Movie-Watching Goals

I saw someone, a week into the beautiful new year, talk about trying to watch one movie per day for the whole year. 365 beautiful movies. The responses were mostly just people saying they were already pretty far behind for something like that - with the exception of one guy who had apparently already watched over forty films. How, I do not know.

As for me, well, we're just under two weeks in, and I have watched (at the time of writing) five. But it's possible that I could bridge the gap... it's feasible.

Wake Up Dead Man was one of my first watches of the year.

I've been thinking about smaller, more specific movie-watching goals. The Letterboxd end-of-year stats summary presents you with a most-watched actor and director, who for me, in 2025, were Catherine O'Hara (mostly for voice acting roles), and Jon Watts.

Jon Watts is the director of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, and watching two of those was enough to put him at the top of my list. Suffice to say, I don't do a lot of watching-by-director. So I'd like to try and explore the films of particular actors and directors this year, and I have chosen my first targets.

Jessie Buckley, shot by Nathanial Goldberg for Elle. 

For my actor, it's Jessie Buckley. I love the projects she chooses, she just won a delicious Golden Globe, and there's something about her - I'm always excited to see her. She has become one of my absolute favourites in recent years, after I'm Thinking of Ending Things catapulted her into my heart, and then Women Talking solidified her place there. Plus, I want to read Hamnet and then watch that thing. I need to.

And for my director, it's going to be David Lean. He's a fascinating, big British director - the one behind Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge Over the River Kwai, and despite another film of his, Brief Encounter, being my absolute favourite film of all time, I've never seen any of his other stuff. He also made a documentary about salvaging Captain Cook's anchor, which is a really interesting deviation from the rest of his work. I shall be watching.

Another thing to consider is curation. I always find the Criterion Collection to be a really useful general seal of approval, since even if I don't like a Criterion-selected film, I pretty much always find it to be worth checking out, but I also had some luck with The Guardian's list of the best films of 2025.

 

I'll talk about three of them now.

1. Young Mothers

This is a very naturalistic, beautifully shot, vivid film that follows a group of teenage mothers who live in temporary support housing together. It's very stark and sad, but it also has these wonderful explorations of grief and anger and joy. A very rich, layered, lovable thing. 

 

2. 2000 Meters to Andriivka

A documentary about a Ukrainian counter-offensive mission, this is as moving and as harrowing as you would expect. It's striking to see the minute details of this mission, the incredibly fraught and slow progress the soldiers make, and their palpable but muted anguish. It is a crushing film, but it is beautiful. 

 

3. One Battle After Another

This is the freak option. A baffling movie in some respects, there's a unique sort of insane humour to a Paul Thomas Anderson venture, and there are some monumental one-shots. Every second of this movie feels like a fever. It shudders onward. It's amazing.

 

***

 

If I can get three more films this effective into me this year, I know I will be more powerful than ever. So I'm gonna watch another one, right now.