2022 Movies by the Numbers

Michael Springthorpe
22 min readJan 2, 2023

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Sorry to all the Saint Omer fans for not including anything from that movie

We did it, folks! Another year ‘round the sun, and all we had to do was lose the Queen and deal with Elon Musk. While I could continue to rattle off more end-of-year buzzwords (Ukraine! Inflation! Andrew Tate!), we’re here to talk about one thing: MOVIES!

Was 2022 good for movies? Who’s to say? On one hand, you have soaring triumphs — Top Gun: Maverick topping the box office on Memorial Day AND Labor Day, Everything Everywhere All At Once making $100 million, and the standout horror offerings from Nope to Barbarian and Terrifier 2. On the other hand, in an industry still fragile from the pandemic losses, not even Disney, Pixar, or Steven Spielberg could find a box office hit, and many studios sent films that could have ostensibly been smashes (Prey, Fire Island, Glass Onion) straight to streaming.

In the end, my estimation is what it almost always is: 2022 was a good movie year. It’s certainly the year I careened off the edge and became a full-blown film freak. How crazy did I get? Well, I’m about to tell you via a massive breakdown of data I acutely maintained throughout the year. To quote Chris Pratt: let’s-a go!

Raw Numbers

This is my 6th year keeping track of every movie I watch. It all started in 2017 when, inspired by my friend, Super Producer Jake Christie, I set a goal to watch 100 movies I had never seen before. I succeeded and followed that by watching 142 in 2018, 114 in 2019, 137 in 2020, and 215 last year.

This year I watched 300 movies.

Now, in my defense, this includes rewatches and movies I watched more than once this year (more on that later), but I understand I really went crazy here. But guess what? I loved every second of it. And next year, I’m probably gonna do it again!

Bad Trip on Netflix, my first movie of the year

I started the year watching Bad Trip, a Boratesque semi-scripted, semi-improvised buddy comedy on Netflix. I watched it (virtually) with Hot Boyfriend Calum on New Year’s Day because his dumbass got COVID. I ended my movie year on the 30th, when I rented M*A*S*H so I could say I hit 300 (and to cross 1970 off my list for the year).

Of the 300 movies, I watched 278 individual titles. For those playing along at home, that’s more movies (including doubles) than I saw in 2017 and 2018 combined. 190 of those movies were new to me (also more than any year before last year), and 88 were classics I rewatched this year.

Some of my favorite rewatches were Lilo & Stitch (it can go toe-to-toe with any Disney Renaissance movie), Draft Day (maybe one of the most rewatchable, easy movies of all time, along with another favorite rewatch, Spotlight), Animal House (it never ceases to amaze me how few words John Belushi speaks in this movie), and a little arthouse film called Avatar (maybe the widest canyon of quality between watching at home vs. in a theater).

22 movies I watched this year were “doubles”, i.e. movies I had already seen earlier in the year. Most of these were just that — doubles. Some were to refresh my memory of an early-in-the-year premier (The Northman), some were indelible faves I can’t get enough of (Wet Hot American Summer), and some were showing others a movie I really loved from the year (The Menu, this year’s Birthday Movie).

The “Silence of the Lambs” prank in Jackass Forever is one of the funniest — and most evil — scenes put on film

Two movies, however, held the distinction of being watched more than twice. Quite appropriately, they are also my first and second favorite movies of 2022. I saw Jackass Forever three times this year, twice in a theater, once at home. The first time I saw it was one of the most transcendent theater experiences I’ve ever had. The entire audience was vibrating, just exploding from the pranks and stunts. And unlike Avatar, it’s just as good at home.

This year’s winner of the Love Simon Award for most watches in a single year goes to — who else? — Everything Everywhere All At Once. Previous winners of this award include Willow Creek, Booksmart, Promising Young Woman, and, of course, Love, Simon. EEAAO earns a special crown as I watched it SIX TIMES this year, five in theaters. Honestly, I’ll probably watch it six more times in 2023. I knew the moment I left the theater it was one of my All Time Favorites.

(To be exact, it’s #5 on the list, following Broadcast News, The Graduate, Talladeaga Nights, and Arrival at the top.)

Names

Now we begin the hard number crunching. To give some context for the rest of this write-up, I keep a spreadsheet of every movie (and book and song and TV show and podcast and…) that I watch each year. For the movies, I track a number of data points about each. This year, I also started using Letterboxd (@springthorpeman), which provides me with some auto-generated stats as well. That’s mostly what the rest of this fuckin thing is gonna be.

Out of the 26 letters of the alphabet, the movies I watched this year began with every single letter, except Q and Y. This year also had a number (2001: A Space Odyssey) and a punctuation mark (“Sr.”).

The Documentary “Sr.” is groundbreaking for showing how short Robert Downey, Jr. is in real life

As always, the most common letter was T. The stranglehold that the word “The” has on movie producers is something nooooobody is talking about. After T, the most common letter was S (thanks, Star Wars and Spider-Man!).

Of the “The” titles, the first non-”The” word covered every letter, except C, J, O, V, X, Y, and Z. All this means is that I reeeeally didn’t see any movies beginning with Y this year. So in 2023, I will be watching Yesterday, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Yellow Submarine, and The Year of Living Dangerously. (Do not hold me to this.

A wordcloud of movie release years, sized by how many movies from that year I saw

Release Year

This year, I watched at least one movie from every year from 2022 through 1970. That’s 52 years! In my opinion, that means I fully understand everything about Hollywood and the movies. Ask my opinion on anything, it will be correct and highly informed.

The year with the most movies was 2022, but you knew that already, because you looked at the wordcloud. 2022 had 83 movies, followed by 2021 with 25, 2002 with 10, 2016 with 9, and a four-way tie for fifth, 2009, 2008, 2003, and 2001, all with 7. 18 years only had one movie, but yet I saw TWO movies from 1931! (They were Frankenstein and Dracula, and like all of the classic Universal Monster Movies, are available on Peacock!)

Beyond 1970, I also saw movies from 1931 (mentioned above), 1964 (Dr. Strangelove), and 1968 (2001). Totally unrelated, but my favorite podcast, Blank Check, did a series on Stanley Kubrick this year.

Each red dot represents a day I saw a movie this year

Viewing Date

300 movies isn’t quite one movie a day, but it’s pretty damn close. It did mean that I watched a movie most days, but you’d be surprised how many days I didn’t see a movie. Overall, I watched movies on 202 days, and was film-free on 163. That’s about 80% of the days this year with at least one flick.

My longest moviewatching streak was 10 days, stretching from January 15th through to January 24th. My longest dry spell was 11 days, July 8th-18th. That was right around the first two weeks of Summer Camp, AND I was rehearsing a play, AND I did BATSU!. I just wish I slept more.

The month with the most movies was December, naturally, as it’s the confluence of Awards Season and Going Home For Christmas. December, with 36, narrowly edged out its competitor, January, with 35. By far the month with the fewest movies was July, with a wimpy 12. (Again, Summer camp is coocoo.)

According to Letterboxd, my most common day for watching movies was Sunday, and my least common was Friday. That is because I hate God and love to Party.

I watched every single one of these movies in one day, my god

Most days, I only watched one movie. Plenty of days, I doubled up. But on a few extra special days, I watched even more. There were nine different days I watched 4 or more movies. January 17th, February 5th, February 6th, August 27th, and September 4th all had 4 films. May 19th and December 26th (my birthday!) both had 5 films.

May 7th I watched 6 movies, all as a part of Super Producer Jake Christie’s 24-Hour Livestream for charity. (Jake also helped with September 4th, as three of those four were the original Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which he had never seen. Happy Labor Day!)

On March 28th, I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once for the first time. I was too emotionally drained to see another movie afterwards, but the following day I was so moved by the spirit of cinema that I watched a whopping SEVEN movies (I was on Spring Break, lay off me). They were, in order, Get Out, The Evil Dead, Argo, Jackass Forever, The Terminator, The Silence of the Lambs, and CryptoZoo.

In this picture, Michelle Yeoh is indicating where EEAAO falls in my rankings for the year

Score & Rankings

So here’s the thing: most movies are good. Plain and simple. I’m tired of fighting with wrong people about that, so if you came to this looking for a takedown of the year’s films, or a perfect bell-curve-ass spread of ratings, look somewhere else. (Also, if you know literally anything about me, why would you expect that??)

That said, this year, I am proud to say I have (sort of) nerfed my scores a bit. No longer am I considering 5 a “Death Rating”. Hell, when I first started this, I felt bad giving out a 7. This year, thanks to Letterboxd putting a graph of my ratings front and center, I started to feel bad.

It still looks like this, though:

In my defense, why are YOU wasting your time watching movies you don’t like?

So, sure, my ratings are still pretty topheavy, but I gave out MULTIPLE under-5 scores this year! That’s called growth.

Each movie I see gets a rating out of 10. On Letterboxd, scores are out of % stars, with half-stars allowed. Now, a smart person would understand that the stars correlate exactly to the 10-rating, and there would be a 1-to-1 comparison. But a GENIUS person (like me) knows that the 10-Rating also has half points, which makes it a lot more fun. Is a 4.5-Star movie a 9? Or is it a 9.5? Depends!

Now, a Perfect 10 (coded on Letterboxd as 5 Stars with a “Like”) to me is not some precious gem I hoard like a dragon. If a movie is a blast, I’ll give it the ol’ Hamilton treatment. (I do not shoot the movie dead in New Jersey, Hamilton is on the $10 bill.) This year, I gave out 45 10s. SUE ME, CINEPHILES.

Of those 45, only 3 were from this year (EEAAO, Jackass Forever, and Turning Red). Technically, I also gave 10s to Thor: Love and Thunder, Bros, Avatar: The Way of Water and The Menu, but I downgraded them all upon rewatch, and while I don’t count them as “Perfect 10s”, I will still include them in my stats as such.

27 of those Perfect 10s were for movies I had already seen. They included masterpieces like Death Becomes Her, Licorice Pizza, The Devil Wears Prada, and Dr. Strangelove. There were also some movies that won Best Picture at the Springys (the better version of the Oscars, as given out by me) like Arrival, Get Out, Jurassic Park, Knives Out, Palm Springs, Spotlight, Wet Hot American Summer, and last year’s Dune.

This is a pie chart.

By far the worst movie I saw this year was 1994’s The Fantastic Four, which is barely a movie. It was made for almost no money so the producer, Bernd Eichinger, could maintain the rights to the Marvel property. It wasn’t even released, and you can watch it on YouTube right now. But you shouldn’t.

The other worst movie I saw this year was Robert Zemeckis’ “live action” Pinocchio remake. Somehow it feels even less like a movie than The Fantastic Four.

Now, without further ado, my rankings for this year:

I also liked The Matrix Resurrections, Parallel Mothers, Flee, and The Worst Person in the World from 2021, but not including them looked better, to be honest.

DISTNOTMITM

Now that we got all that dumb score nonsense out of the way, we can get to what you’re all waiting for: Does It Say The Name Of The Movie In The Movie?

As the world’s foremost scholar of what movies Sa The Name Of The Movie In The Movie, it is my solemn duty to report to you that, unfortunately, only 100 movies that I saw say the name of the movie in the movie.

But it’s still always fun when it happens! Some great ones: I was sure “Sr.” would be a no, but RDJ and RDS have a conversation on camera about the title! The Whale, deplorable as it is, has an ongoing motif from Moby Dick and does not, as I feared, have a mean teenager call Brendan Fraser a whale. Decision to Leave does say the name via subtitle, and I would love if anyone who actually knows Korean can confirm if it actually says it. Until then, I will still count it as a yes.

Leonardo DiCaprio just heard them say “the aviator”

A whole 166 movies do not say the name of the movie in the movie. Now, there are some asterisks here. If Netflix just let Rian Johnson call it Glass Onion, the movie would count! Similarly, Guillermo del Toro’s (smart) marketing choice to put his name before Pinocchio blocked his beautiful little fairy tale from getting a yes. Additionally, I like to imagine that the Predator in Prey says “prey” in his Predator language, especially when Amber Midthunder appears on his facescreen.

7 movies had the name of the movie written down in the movie. To no one’s surprise, 3 of them are Wes Anderson Movies. 4 movies had the name of the movie sung in a non-diegetic song. So, for example, Mamma Mia! counts as a Yes because it’s a musical and the characters are singing. But when Roy Orbison plays in the soundtrack of Pretty Woman, that’s Song.

Lastly, I have no idea if The Fantastic Four says the name of the movie in the movie or not, because I barely paid attention to that shit.

The comic from Alison Bechdel that popularized “The Bechdel Test”

Bechdel Test

There are three simple rules:

  1. Does the movie have at least two female characters
  2. Who talk to each other
  3. About something other than a man?

Those are the guidelines for The Bechdel Test, a test invented by Liz Wallace and popularized by Alison Bechdel meant as a “bare minimum” for movies in terms of female representation. By no means is it an authoritative or foolproof metric — movies can be “good representation” and fail, also what exactly is “good representation” anyways? But it’s a stat, and your boy loves a stat.

124 movies passed the Bechdel Test this year! Woohoo! We solved sexism! Unless….

Oh no! 142 movies didn’t pass the test! Rats! The digits are even switched! Sorry, ladies, one more year under the glass ceiling I guess.

The Bechdel Test briefly entered the pop culture consciousness this year because gay men are sexist for not dating women

A handful of movies may have passed the test. Typically I give them a “Maybe” or even a “Yes?” or “No?”. Especially with the Maybes, I tend to err on the side of Hollywood Is An Arm Of Our Sexist Capitalist Machine so if I have doubts, they’re probably true.

Two movies I saw this year were classic documentaries (Val and “Sr.”) so they didn’t pass, but they get a slide. (Just kidding, they’re both about white men from Hollywood.)

One movie left me unsure of a ruling this year, though. In recent years, the test has been expanded to not just be about women, but people of any gender besides men: trans folks, nonbinary people, agender peeps. So with that in mind, I ask you: do Minions have gender?

A selection of my favorite directors from this year: Daniels (EEAAO), James Cameron (Avatar: The Way of Water), S.S. Rajamouli (RRR), Chinonye Chukwu (Till), Guillermo del Toro (Pinocchio), Domee Shi (Turning Red), Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness), Jordan Peele (Nope), Sarah Polley (Women Talking)

Directors

For the first time this year, I kept track of who directed each movie I watched this year. Fortunately for me, Letterboxd also does that for you, but I tracked some other stats. Overall, I saw pictures from 219 different directors! A lot of them new to me as well!

In addition to just the person, I also recorded which directors were queer, female or nonbinary, or people of color. Those numbers don’t look quite as good.

25 directors were women. (I did not see any movies directed by a nonbinary person this year.) That puts us at 12.76%. While that is a similar percentage, that’s FEWER than last year! Here are the female directors I watched this year:

Brenda Chapman ⋅ Cathy Yan ⋅ Charlotte Wells ⋅ Chinonye Chukwu

Domee Shi ⋅ Emma Seligman ⋅ Gina Prince-Bythewood ⋅ Halina Reijn

Jane Campion ⋅ Jennifer Kaytin Robinson ⋅ Julia Ducornau

Kelly Fremon Craig ⋅ Lana Wachowski ⋅ Lena Dunham ⋅ Lila Neugebauer

Lily Wachowski ⋅ Mary Harron ⋅ Nancy Meyers ⋅ Nicole Holofcener

Olivia Wilde ⋅ Penny Marshall ⋅ Phyllida Lloyd ⋅ Sarah Polley ⋅ Sian Heder

Sophie Hyde

11 Directors were members of the Alphabet Soup Mafia (i.e. the LGBTQ community). That’s a measly 5.24%. Queer they are:

Andrew Ahn ⋅ Bryan Singer ⋅ David Moreton ⋅ Elegance Bratton

Emma Seligman ⋅ Halina Reijn ⋅ Lana Wachowski ⋅ Lily Wachowski

Pedro Almodovár ⋅ Sophie Hyde ⋅ Stephen Daldry*

*British Stephen Daldry (of The Hours and The Reader) has publicly identified as gay for many years, but — I shit you not — he was so affected by 9/11 that he decided to break up with his male partner, marry a woman, and start a family. He continues to identify as gay because “the public “doesn’t like confusion”. Bisexuality is real, but that doesn’t make that story not funny.

25 movies this year were directed by people of color, giving us 12.76% again. Here they are:

Andrew Ahn ⋅ Ang Lee ⋅ Carlos López-Estrada ⋅ Cathy Yan ⋅ Chinonye Chukwu

Daniel Kwan ⋅ Domee Shi ⋅ Eduardo Sánchez ⋅Elegance Bratton

Gina Prince-Bythewood ⋅ Guillermo del Toro ⋅ Hayao Miyazaki

John Singleton ⋅ Jordan Peele ⋅ Kitao Sakurai ⋅ Lin-Manuel Miranda

Oz Rodriguez ⋅ Park Chan-wook ⋅ Qui Nguyen ⋅Robert Rodriguez

Ryan Coogler ⋅ Ryusuke Hamaguchi ⋅ S.S. Rajamouli ⋅ Taika Waititi ⋅ Ting Poo

My most watched directors (clockwise from top left): Sam Raimi, Hayao Miyazaki, Wes Anderson, Jeff Tremaine

Two directors topped my list in terms of most movies watched by them: Sam Raimi and Hayao Miyazaki. The Blank Check podcast did a Sam Raimi series this year, plus I wanted some background before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. I had never seen a single Miyazaki movie, so Hot Boyfriend Calum got to show me a bunch of them this year. I love them and Totoro is my best friend.

Next on the list is Wes Anderson, a director I only recently realized is one of my all-time faves. Upon realization, I made a point to watch all of his films (I missed Rushmore, which I watched in December 2021, and Isle of Dogs, which I saw in 2018 and was fine not going back). After Wes is Jeff Tremaine, who is definitely the least recognizable face on this list, until you remember he directed all of the Jackass movies.

Other multiple-hits include Stanley Kubrick (EVER HEARD OF HIM?) with 5, and Lana Wachowski, Gore Verbinski, Ridley Scott, and George Lucas, all with 4.

Actors

Unlike directors, I don’t keep track of actors in each movie I see. Thankfully, Letterboxd does it for me! The actor I saw the most of this year was Anthony Daniels, best known as C-3P0, at 12 films, but that’s because I watched every single Star Wars movie this year.

Funnily enough, though, the next four actors — Willem Dafoe (11), Bruce Campbell (9), Owen Wilson (9), and Adam Driver (9) — are all boosted by their franchise history and close relationships with directors (remember all those Sam Raimi and Wes Anderson movies I watched?).

After those boys, four actors tied with 8 movies: Bill Murray (cough cough Wes Anderson cough), Frank Oz (aka Yoda), Ted Raimi (peep the last name), and Meryl Streep (no particular reason here, I’m just gay).

I’ll level with ya: I just googled “comedy drama mask” so I could break up the paragraphs

Genre

I love a genre description. Splitting something as being a comedy OR a drama is not for me. So whenever I list a movie’s genre (as determined by moi) I tend to go overboard. Yes, TÁR is a comedy. It’s MOSTLY a drama, but it’s there. Is this a bad definition? Maybe! But what are you gonna do, not read the rest of this?

RRR had the most genre tags attached to it, with seven. They were: epic, action, adventure, historical, superhero, fantasy, and war. Obviously this is me squeezing a Telugu-shaped peg into an American hole, but for the sake of continuity it works.

movies only got one genre tag this year. They were: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The French Dispatch, Wet Hot American Summer (all comedies), Boyz n the Hood, Causeway (both dramas), Spiderhead (sci-fi), and Val (documentary).

To no one’s surprise, Comedy reigned supreme, with 139 movies getting tagged with it. Following as a distant second was Action with 82, then Drama with 78, Sci-Fi with 65, and Fantasy with 42. (Note: I am a stickler for the sci-fi/fantasy and action/adventure splits.) All in all, my movies represented 73 different genres!

Twelve genres were only represented by 1 movie this year. They were: Addiction (Flight), Wuxia (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Steampunk (Castle in the Sky), Courtroom (Philadelphia), Mob (Midnight Run), Time Loop (Palm Springs), Sword & Sandal (The Woman King), Found Footage (The Blair Witch Project), and Legal (Till).

My old home theater, the AMC Magic Johnson. I miss her.

Location

It’s important to remember that we see movies in places. It’s actually impossible to watch a movie not in a place. Think on that for a little bit then come back to this.

Now that you’re back, let’s talk about the places. I watched movies at 30 different locations this year. Second and third place, respectively, go to my and Hot Boyfriend Calum’s old apartments. I watched 74 movies in 10B and 29 movies in the Lower East Side.

Leading the pack, though, is my current apartment — where I live with Hot Boyfriend Calum — with 102 movies. Interestingly, that is also one less movie than both of our old apartments combined.

After our New York places, the place I saw the most movies was my childhood home in Royal Palm Beach. I watched 14 movies there this year, and 12 of them were between December 22nd and December 26th. Real freak shit, baby.

This year, I also watched movies at Hot Boyfriend Calum’s parents’ place (EEAAO, for Thanksgiving) and at Parents-To-Be Mark & Sienna’s new home in Atlanta. The place is GORGEOUS.

And now movie theaters. If you think about it, movie theaters are lowkey GOATed when watching a movie in a theater is the vibe.

This is how I imagine my mom will look after reading that last sentence.

I went to 17 different movie theaters this year. AMC got the most love (28 movies), but then again, they’re the most popular movie theater chain. This year I went to AMC 34th Street, AMC Empire 25, AMC Kips Bay, AMC Lincoln Square, AMC Magic Johnson, AMC West Palm Beach, and AMC Parkway Pointe. Lincoln Square and Empire 25 had the most, with 8 each.

Then there’s Regal, where I watched a collective 14 movies. They were: Regal E-Walk, Regal Essex Crossing, Regal Royal Palm Beach, Regal Union Square, and Regal UA Kauffman. Union Square got the most points with 6 movies (half of them were EEAAO).

I don’t think they exist outside of New York, but the next most popular chain I visited was the Angelika theaters. What started as an arthouse place in Noho has since grown into three theaters across Manhattan. The original Angelika had 4 movies, the recently-acquired Village East had 1, and my new home theater, the Cinema 1, 2, 3 had 9, more than any single theater. I love you, Cinema 1, 2, 3!

Additionally, I watched White Noise at Netflix’s Paris Theater and Drive My Car at Film at Lincoln Center.

Really can’t stress enough how good Blank Check is

I watched the movie Sully at the Bellhouse, a performing arts room, as part of a live episode of the podcast Blank Check with Griffin & David. I also watched three movies — Jurassic Park, The Princess Bride, and Mulan — at Sauced Cinemas, the movie/trivia night hosted by my friend, BATSU! Host Brian Walters.

I saw 8 movies on an airplane this year. One movie (CODA) I watched in our hotel room at Disney World’s All Star Movies hotel. Fire Island, Val, and Tropic Thunder I watched in an AirBnB in Long Beach, Long Island. Lastly, I watched Hidden Figures at school with my students, and Spider-Man 2 at my camp. (I was taking a break after coming in on a weekend!)

Notes & Errata

As is my custom, I will end with people I watched movies with. So here is the point where I just list out a bunch of other bullshit that doesn’t fit anywhere else but will tickle your fancy.

I watched a few franchises all the way through or partially this year:

  • I watched all 12 Star Wars movies this year, in release order. I hadn’t seen the original trilogy all the way through since 2005 and here’s the thing: they fucking slap. They’re so good. Even Return of the Jedi goes hard. Last Jedi will forever be my favorite, though.
  • I watched 3 Matrix movies (I watched the original in 2021). I am so sorry for everyone who doesn’t like the sequels.
  • I watched 6 MCU movies, AND 4 Spider-Man movies. Sorry, Andrew Garfield, I still haven’t caught yours, but I loved you in No Way Home.
  • Super Producer Jake Christie and I binged all three of the original Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Johnny Depp is a bad man, but those movies are nearly unimpeachable. When Bill Nighy gets an Oscar nomination this year, it will be making up for Davy Jones.
  • Every Jackass movie is amazing.
Did you know that Jackass Forever won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, for the smooch between this snake and the new Jackass, whose name is Poopies?

3 movies I watched this year began with the words “Doctor Strange”, but only one of them taught me how to stop worrying and love the bomb. 2 of the movies I saw this year were by National Lampoon. 5 movies were documentaries. 36 were animated. 17 were International.

Plenty of movies I saw this year had gay things and people in them, but 7 of them were quite explicitly quéer: Bros, Edge of Seventeen, EEAAO, Fire Island, Philadelphia, TÁR, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

I even got to go to a press screening! It was for Thor: Love and Thunder, and it was because Super Producer Jake Christie is a very good friend.

Speaking of Jake, he held a 24-hour livestream for charity in May. I joined for 13 hours — there’s no way I could’ve done more — and watched along with 6 movies over the course.

In 2022 I completed the Stevie Nicks-maru, which is where you watch both movies named after her song “Edge of Seventeen” (1998’s Edge of Seventeen and 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen) back-to-back.

I saw 13 biopics this year. The people they documented were: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson (all Hidden Figures), Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp (both Tombstone), Capt. Sully Sullenberger (Sully), Elvis (Elvis), Frank Abagnale (Catch Me If You Can), Howard Hughes (The Aviator), Queen Elizabeth II (The Queen), “Weird” Al Yankovic (Weird), Virginia Woolf (The Hours), and Dewey Cox (okay, he’s not a real person, but Walk Hard is still a biopic).

Of the many movies I saw in theaters this year, 7 were IMAX: Everything Everywhere All At Once, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World: Dominion, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Avatar: The Way of Water.

You don’t really think about how many movie titles have a colon in them until it’s laid out for you like above

People

We’ve reached the final chapter of this modern-day War & Peace. You have to watch movies in Places, but you get to choose to watch movies with People.

Now, me? I actually mostly watch movies alone. You don’t get to 300 movies in a year without watching lots of stuff by yourself. In 2022, I watched 174 movies solo (58%). But don’t get me wrong, I’m not just laying in bed watching things on my laptop. I have a couch and a big TV with a soundbar, too! (I also love to go to theaters by mself.)

But it’s always better to watch movies with others.

I watched movies with 65 different people this year. Sixty-five! And that’s even grouping some people together (I’ll explain why later). My only hope is that next year I can make that number grow even higher.

Leading the pack is, of course, Hot Boyfriend Calum with a remarkable 83 movies! We love watching movies! Or, rather, I love watching movies, and he likes watching them. I’m very happy any time Calum wants to watch a movie with me, and especially thankful any time he agrees to watch more than one in a day.

Look at this CUTIE! (This is Calum, by the way)

Next in line — after an unsurprisingly steep drop off — is Super Producer Jake Christie. Jake and I are some of each other’s go-tos for MCU premiers and other big releases. This year, we saw 19 movies together, including Top Gun: Maverick, White Noise, the Pirates trilogy, and his livestream.

Before Calum, I had my old roommates, Laura and Lauren! This year, we watched 13 and 7 movies together, respectively, all at my old place, 10B. Next in line are my Mommy, Daddy, and sister (Jenna). Yes, I still call my parents that, but it’s also funny. Mommy has 11 movies this year, Daddy had 9, and Jenna had 5.

But that’s just the Top 7, there’s still 58 more people to name! Before I do that, I just want to say, again, how much I love sharing movies with other people. Playing Framed, discussing Glass Onion, shit-talking on a livestream. It’s my favorite pasttime, and it brings me endless joy to be able to do it with people I love and who love me.

So…thank you Addison, BATSU! Host Brian Walters, Caleb, Aakriti, Addy, Children’s Book Author Mike Ross, AC, Kevin, Michael, Skylar, Megan, Annica, my 2nd Graders from last year, Lily, Heather, Jay, Roger, Kurt, Espo, Jen, Justin, Vanessa, Vanessa (not a typo), RJ, Savannah, Faith, Dez, Auntie Moe, Joe, Mike, Parents-To-Be Mark & Sienna, Hunter, Raphael, Cecelia, Jerome, Nitz, PattyMo, Rico, Malik, Big Wos, Anthony Mayes, Hunter Covington, Dalbin, Kofie, Sean Jordan, David, Zach Harper, DragonflyJonez, Jackson Safon, Mike Golic, Jr., Tracy, Sam, Dean, Marie Bardie, Ben Hosley, Griffin Newman, and David Sims.

I’ll see you all at the movies in 2023.

Or, as they say on Pandora, Oel Ngati Kameie at the Movies

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Michael Springthorpe
Michael Springthorpe

Written by Michael Springthorpe

Camp Director, Teacher, Performer, and Writer who moved to New York City, then realized there's no woods here. @springthorpeman on Twitter and Instagram.