2022: What Kind of Year Has It Been? Plus Plans for 2023

Posted on January 30, 2023 by jaycluitt

Hi there, reader! Happy New Year! Or Happy one-twelfth of the way into the New Year! Wait, January can’t already be almost over, right? Bloody hell. OK, see, this is what I’m going to talk about. I’ve had the majority of this post written, images and links set up, just waiting for me to finish it for a couple of weeks now, and I just haven’t been able to kick it out of the draft airplane and let the… the… the parachute of publication open up? No? That doesn’t make sense, but so be it. I could’ve posted this and moved on to edit a podcast or write an actual damn review, but instead I’ve kept thinking about how to finish this one or, more accurately, how to start it with this ultimately inconsequential opening paragraph. So that’s what I’ve decided is going to be the theme of my 2023, getting on with it. Not sure what to do on a morning where I’ve got lots of things that need doing? Just sodding pick one and start. Even less sure what to do on a rare day where there’s nothing urgent? Go for a run. Watch a film. Read a book. Go back to sleep. Whatever, just do it. None of this undecided, introspective nonsense, that just leads to stressing out and panic attacks. As such, here’s my update on how 2022 went, and my plans for 2023, compared to last year’s post, which can be found here: 2022 goals post. Not sure what to do now? Read it, silly!

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2022 Movies Ranked

Posted on January 14, 2023 by jaycluitt

Hey, remember me? I used to write here from time to time, but haven’t been very active (on here at least) since I transcribed the lyrics to the end-credits song of a bad shark movie you’ve probably never seen. Well I’m back for my annual new year posts, starting off with ranking all the new releases I saw in 2022, and I’m keeping up the tradition of being a little late, and seeing a few more 2022 releases since I started this post, and the longer I leave finishing this post the more films I’ll need to add to it, and so on. Anyway, also as always there’s a bunch of new films I didn’t get to for various reasons that I’ll hopefully get to in my 2022 wrap-up post, but currently I’ve seen 70 new releases from last year (up from 57 in 2021). Here’s a list of some of the films I haven’t seen yet, but hope to soon, although many of them are available streaming to me right now, and have been for a while, so the fact that I still haven’t seen them yet doesn’t bode well: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Troll, The House, The Northman, Studio 666, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Bones and All, Elvis, The Woman King, Decision to Leave, Brian and Charles, Triangle of Sadness, Aftersun, Living, Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, The Worst Person in the World, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Emily the Criminal, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Violent Night, Vengeance, Bros, Avatar: The Way of Water. That’s enough of the films I haven’t seen, here’s the ranking of the 70 I did, starting out with a couple that I actually haven’t. You’ll see what I mean. Oh, and as always this ranking is true as of today, and will almost certainly be different tomorrow. That’s the case more so this year than ever before as 2022 had a lot of films I really liked, but no particular one that was immediately deemed better than all the rest.

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2021: What Kind of Year Has It Been? Plus Plans for 2022

Posted on February 8, 2022 by jaycluitt

Believe it or not, but this is actually my new year post, regardless of the fact that it’s being posted partway into the second month of the year. Wait, the second month of the year? As in, this new year began OVER A MONTH AGO?!? Whilst my mind continues to recover from reeling over the ongoing and what should be by now highly anticipatory passing of time, let’s get into how last year, 2021, panned out for me. As usual, we’ll be doing this in terms of the aims I set out at the start of last year.

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2021 Movies Ranked

Posted on January 6, 2022 by jaycluitt

Here it is! My annual ranking of all the new releases from the previous year! As usual this list is comprised of films that were released in the UK in 2021, so there are some films that were released in other countries in early years. Also, as usual, I didn’t see every film I would have liked to, so here’s a list of films that would have been eligible but that I haven’t seen yet, and that I’m going to try and watch as soon as possible: Nobody, Coda, The Matrix Resurrections, House of Gucci, Minari, The French Dispatch, Pig, No Sudden Move, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Shiva Baby, West Side Story, The Green Knight, Petite Maman, Another Round, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Eternals. Of these, I’m most annoyed I didn’t see Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The French Dispatch in the cinema, they just came out during a particularly busy period for me and I had to choose between them, Last Night in Soho and Dune. I have no excuse for why I haven’t seen Coda, Minari, No Sudden Move, Another Round or The Green Knight, as they are all available for me to stream right goddamn now in my own goddamn home, but I still haven’t done so yet. Anyway, enough of the films I didn’t see, here’s my list of the films that I did:

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2020 Year in Review

Posted on December 31, 2020 by jaycluitt

Another year is over, and for this I’m sure we’re all grateful. I’ll go into more detail with how 2020 treated me personally in a future post, but for now it’s time for the annual listing of every new release I watched this year, from worst to best. It’s a shorter list than previous years at just 39 new releases (as always, bear in mind these are UK releases, so there’s a fair few films many of you would consider 2019 films on here), so I’ve also listed some shorts/TV specials, and listed my top 10 new-to-me, non-2020 films at the bottom too.

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Life Vs Film in 2020

Posted on January 2, 2020 by jaycluitt

Happy New Year! It’s a new year (it’s not a new decade, don’t get me started), so let’s take a look at everything that happened to me in the past twelve months. Those of you who just follow my exploits on the blog will be forgiven for assuming that I’ve been in a coma. I haven’t, it’s just that, like pretty much every year, I started out on a fairly average trajectory and rapidly spiralled into doing nothing, but that’s only here, what about everywhere else? Well, I think the best way to look at this will be to run through my resolutions from 2019: Continue reading →

2019 Review of the Year – Movies

Posted on December 31, 2019 by jaycluitt

It’s that time of year again! As the new year looms ever closer on the horizon, here’s my ranking of every new release I saw in 2019. It wasn’t a banner year for new releases (I’ll go into more detail tomorrow), but I saw 54, which isn’t terrible. Here’s the ranking: Continue reading →

2018 Review of the Year

Posted on January 1, 2019 by jaycluitt

Well, that’s another year over, so it’s time for my traditional ranking of all the new releases I saw in the past twelve months. I find that the only way I can ever actually finish these lists is if I just post the list, with pictures, and no explanations why. If there’s a particular placing that’s puzzles you, ask in the comments, and remember, I’m in the UK, so not all these films may be considered 2018 releases for you, but they are for me. As such, Paddington 2 isn’t on here, but it’d be pretty darn close to #1. Here’s my list:
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2017 Review of the Year

Posted on January 5, 2018 by jaycluitt

2017 wasn’t my best year for film-watching. In fact, it was my worst for some time, mainly due to various other time-consuming events in my life (y’know, like getting married and all). However I did manage to watch 54 films released in the UK in 2017, and here’s my ranking of them all: Continue reading →

2014 Review of the Year Part 3 of 3

Posted on January 12, 2015 by jaycluitt

Here it is, the final part of my review of 2014 (that’s, for various reasons, taken me a little longer to write than anticipated, seeing as last year I posted a third of the whole list a day for three days straight). You can read part 1 of the list here, and part 2 of the list here. Or, you can skip them entirely because really, the only important part is here, with my Top 20 Films of 2014: Continue reading →