Way back in 2014, I set out to review every film in the Warner Bros. 50 Film Collection.  I did great at first!  However, as the years (and responsibilities) piled up, this vow soon became an impediment to completing this formerly joyous task.

Instead of plowing through the collection the way I would binge-watch, say, Community, I found myself delaying the process because I knew that each entry would require a lengthy review on this humble blog.  In fact, I’ve actually recently watched three of these films that I haven’t even reviewed yet! 

Beyond that, I sometimes would hit certain “speedbump” entries that would slow me down.  Dr. Zhivago was one, just because of the length and pace.  The Bodyguard has turned out to be another one, mostly due to quality.  I’ve never seen it, but I know it’s not great, and I find myself setting aside time to watch new films now that theaters are open, revisiting movies I’ve seen before and liked, or, at a minimum, watching movies I may not love, but which I know won’t require an essay.

It isn’t that I have a problem watching a long movie or a bad movie, it’s that knowing that I also have to write about that movie is enough to get me to pass on it when I have literally hundreds of other movies on hand from which to choose—movies that don’t double as homework. 

As this entire process has now dragged on far too long (going on eight years(!!!) now), I’ve therefore decided to shake up how I do these reviews.  I’m still going to live up to my promise, but I’m going to organize them differently to make the process more efficient.

The next entry, probably coming sometime in January, will capture the entirety of 1989-1994.  Specifically, these movies:

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
Goodfellas (1990)
Unforgiven (1992)
The Bodyguard (1992)
Natural Born Killers (Director’s Cut) (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

As I said, I’ve already watched the first three recently, but I just haven’t written about them yet.  From there, the next movie in the series is The Matrix, which, amazingly, I’ve never seen.  I’m motivated to get to that one so that I can watch Matrix Resurrections in a theater.  That means that I have to finish watching the above movies, then watch the original Matrix trilogy (which I strongly suspect I’ll get on 4k as Christmas gift) probably within the next six weeks or so.  Very doable.

That takes us to the first film in the Harry Potter series.  Like The Matrix, I’ve never seen any of these, but I purchased the entire collection on 4k when it was on sale for like $50 on Amazon at some point in the past year.  I’ll pause and watch the full series at that point, although I’ll likely only review the first one, which is the only one of the films that is actually in the WB set.

On the other hand, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy is part of the collection.  I’ve seen it only once, years ago.  That will also be a batch review. 

To recap, that means four articles: 1989-1994, The Matrix (perhaps covering the whole series), Harry Potter (probably not covering the whole series), and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Once I get through all of those, here is all that’s left:

Million Dollar Baby (2005)
The Departed (2006)
The Dark Knight (2008)
The Blind Side (2009)
The Hangover (2009)
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Inception (2010)

There will probably be a lengthy pause between LOTR and the rest of them, as I will have plowed through a total of 21 movies in fairly short order.  I may batch-review them, I may give them their own articles, but, either way, I’m still probably a year away from finishing this whole project.

Still, I only actually have a dozen films left to watch from this specific collection.  If I can get them all done by next Christmas, that will remove a consequential bottleneck that impedes both my movie-watching and my blog proliferation.

Here’s to fulfilling New Year’s resolutions!