240 hours on screen, give or take

And so, another year comes to a close. A banner year for me in many ways – two weeks in Europe, new job, moving back across the country – small things, really.

Trumping them all (ok, but not really) is breaking my own personal record for number of films watched these last 365 days: 160 movies. I realize this accomplishment is just as easily seen as nothing to really brag about. After all, that’s 240 hours (or 30 work days or 15 weekends or one full month) of my life spent in front of a screen of some sort, taking in a feature film. Imagine what else I might’ve accomplished with those same 240 hours?

Actually, let’s not imagine that. Imagining that would imply that I wish I’d been spending my time doing something else, when in reality I enjoyed every one of the approximately 14,440 minutes I spent watching movies.

Here’s what I learned:

• I officially went into full geek mode for film tracking in 2015, after wishing this time last year that I had more data with which to geek out.
• 45 of the 160 films were documentaries (28%) and a whopping 73 (45%) were foreign films. By comparison, I watched 20 documentaries in 2014 and I couldn’t tell you how many foreign films – not because there were so many, but because I wasn’t tracking that last year (see above).
• I saw the most movies in theaters (55, 32 of which were festival screenings) followed by screening links (35) and Netflix (33). I watched four films via in-flight entertainment on airplanes.
• Only 9 of the films I watched were made before the year 2000; that number goes up to 23 when you add in films made before 2014.

So, without further ado, read on for the 160 ways in which I spent some of my time on every third day of the year.