Beginning in 2023, I am planning to watch all 100 entries on the 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Movies of All Time list. I’ll plan to watch one per week, usually on Sunday or Monday. For movies longer than 3 hours, I’ll probably split the viewing over multiple days.
There are a few goals for this project:
- Speedrun the history of (artsy) cinema
- See if my experience of some entries is improved by training up my patience and having more context
- Synthetically recreate the thrill of novelty, by acclimating my eye to the language of films that predate various cinematic innovations
- See a bunch of movies I wouldn’t normally
- Complete something akin to the canon of a given art form in my life
For each movie, I want to give a short review that reflects on movie and how it fits into the broader goals. Lastly, I want to approach each movie with an open mind; every single movie on this list is there because at least a handful of people, who watch a lot of movies, thought this was one of the ten best movies ever made. I want to think about why that might be, for each case.
Let’s get started!