In September, I had the good fortune of attending the Toronto International Film Festival and watched a total of 36 movies, 1 bunch of short films, and the first three episodes of a tv show, averaging 3.88 screenings per day. A few weeks later, I attended ImagineNATIVE film festival and managed 2 screenings per day. From there, I decided I’d keep the momentum going and set a goal of watching a movie a day for the rest of the year. Of course, life is somewhat unpredictable, so there were days when I just didn’t have the time, but I managed to watch a lot of movies since October.
My goal was to grow the list of films I was familiar with, hoping it could help further inform my acting and filmmaking, and it did. I’ve become a little more fluent in the language of film, more familiar with different styles, and I understand great acting a little better. It also inspired me more to see what was out there and what people were making, not only recently but since movies became a thing. What I didn’t expect from my little Movie-a-Day experiment was that my life improved in other ways, not just in relation to film and acting. The time I spent on my phone doom-scrolling or pointlessly browsing has dropped considerably, probably playing a part in improving my mental health. After work, if I catch myself scrolling pointlessly on my phone or laptop, I redirect myself to pick a movie instead.
Even my sleep improved. When I was browsing social media, watching YouTube videos, or bingeing tv shows, it was so easy to lose track of time watching one thing after another late into the night. There’s no cliffhanger to make you play the next episode, or autoplay, or advertisements for the next video. A film ends when it ends, and then I was done. It was so much easier to shut my laptop and take a walk outside after a movie. Hell, it was sometimes even better than a book when I consider how often I’ve accidentally pulled all-nighters trying to finish a good story before going to sleep. If I’m short on time, I choose a shorter film to line up with when I wanted to go to sleep. Movies helped me with boundaries and limitations that I otherwise struggled with when it came to consuming media as an ADHD person.
Now the end of the year approaches, and I’m considering continuing my movie-a-day into the new year and the foreseeable future. We’ll see.
Back when I was attending TIFF, I was posting “Ivy’s Spoiler-Free One-Liner Film Reviews” in my Instagram stories. To finish off the year and my movie-a-day challenge, I’ve decided to give you all my Spoiler-Free One-Liner Film Reviews for every movie I’ve watched since TIFF. If any of these pique your interest, I encourage you to seek them out and watch a movie you maybe haven’t seen before.
| The New Boy | Cate Blanchett tried her best, but couldn’t save this one for me. |
| Robot Dreams | Pretty cute and overall a fun family-safe movie about a dog and his robot. |
| Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell | Three hours of what is hands down my favourite cinematography of any film, slowly and methodically chronicling life in Vietnam. |
| I Don’t Know Who You Are | Skip. |
| *Toll | Highly recommend this film about a toll-worker who tries to get the money for her son’s conversion therapy. |
| Working Class Goes to Hell | The beginning had promise and the ending was wild, but the two did not stitch together very well. |
| Nickelback: Hate to Love | A below-average documentary about an above-average band. |
| How to Have Sex | An entertaining and poignant film, despite the title sounding like a sex ed video. |
| Copa 71 | A good documentary, if you’re in the mood for something that isn’t too heavy and you’re a fan of soccer/football. |
| Backspot | A debut movie, and you can tell, but would probably still be enjoyable to non-film nerds. |
| *They Shot the Piano Player | A vibrant animated masterpiece fiction/documentary uncovering the mystery of a man who lived in Buenos Aires in the 70s. |
| Fitting In | When I saw it, it was still a bit unpolished with what I assume were production troubles. |
| Mr. Dressup | Depends heavily on nostalgia, of which I didn’t have much. |
| The King Tide | Canadian Banshees of Inisherin, with some Firestarter mixed in. |
| Irena’s Vow | This wasn’t bad, but nothing new among WW2/Holocaust films. |
| *The Monk and the Gun | A movie about Bhutan opening its borders and becoming a democracy doesn’t sound like it would be fun, but oh my god it was. |
| La Chimera | Less interesting than I expected from a film about treasure hunters in 1980s Italy. |
| A Road to a Village | A movie about what happens to a small family when a road connects their remote Nepali village to the nearest city. |
| Dream Scenario | Nicolas Cage’s character irked me too much to enjoy this. |
| Seven Veils | Black Swan vibes, minus the gut punch. |
| I Do Not Come to You By Chance | Like The Godfather, but Nigerian. |
| Quiz Lady | A fun romp with sisters. |
| Ru | It was good, but I’ve seen better films about Vietnamese refugees. |
| Yellow Bus | It was decent, but the end left me unsatisfied. |
| Rustin | Worth watching just for Colman Domingo, but it’s got more going for it too. |
| Mandoob | I can’t remember what happens in this. |
| Nyad | I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, and the acting was great. |
| Concrete Utopia | Gave me the best kind of dystopian dread. |
| A Normal Family | Meticulously crafted, but I didn’t buy into a crucial plot point. |
| The Burial | It was kinda fun, if only for Jamie Foxx. |
| The Movie Teller | It was good, but could have been better if it hadn’t skipped over its own most interesting parts. |
| The Critic | This was a star-studded disappointment. |
| Wildcat | It ended right when it was starting to interest me. |
| Riddle of Fire | This felt like playing a fantasy video game. |
| American Fiction | I could see why it won the TIFF Audience Choice award. |
| *Dear Jassi | An easy recommendation for anyone interested in a modern Romeo and Juliet story across Canada and India. |
| Tautuktavut (What We See) | Covid-era immersion into life in Igloolik, Nunavut, which could be sluggish but for a few scenes here and there which made it recommendable. |
| I’m Just Here For the Riot | Hindsight is 20/20, and this documentary about the 2010 Vancouver riots took advantage of that. |
| Ishi | If you’ve seen five minutes of this, you’ve seen the whole thing. |
| *Red White & Brass | A fun comedy based on the real-life story of some Tongans who form a marching band within a month to attend a sold-out rugby game. |
| Inky Pinky Ponky | A classic coming-of-age, but with a trans Tongan protagonist. |
| Café Daughter | Suffered heavily from an apparent lack of time and budget. |
| Mamà | A slow and beautiful portrait of the filmmaker’s Maya Tzotzil mother. |
| *Hey, Viktor! | Funny and creative and clever. |
| 102 Minutes That Changed History | Just the generic 9/11 documentary. |
| Elemental | It’s good as long as you don’t think about it too hard. |
| Something From Tiffany’s | One of those mindless low-budget rom-coms à la Hallmark for when you’re burnt out on artsy films. |
| Bottoms | This was mid. |
| Marcel the Shell with Shoes On | A cute, sweet, and slow family-safe movie. |
| Blue Valentine | Not the kind of romance I’m into, but Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are at the top of their game here. |
| *Killers of the Flower Moon | Make sure you have a very comfortable seat when you watch this one. |
| Crazy Stupid Love | This did not age that well, for all the attention it has gotten recently. |
| Taxi Driver | For being such a famous film, there was a lot more to it than I realized. |
| The Lost City | It was carefully designed by Hollywood to hold your attention for two hours, and it succeeded with me. |
| Verona | A quiet Canadian indie film starring a talented friend. |
| The Killing Fields | This was pretty good, actually. |
| *The Color Purple (1985) | I was scared to watch this for so long, but turns out it’s actually massively approachable and also quite beautiful. |
| No Country For Old Men | Everything else was good, but its villain is what made this famous. |
| Ford v Ferrari | Not the two-hour car commercial I expected, and also a great performance from Christian Bale. |
| *Mustache | A highly entertaining coming-of-age about a muslim boy and his mustache, and highly recommended. |
| The Green Knight | Moody vibes and Dev Patel, but a plot straight from Arthurian legends, which if you’re familiar, you’ll understand is strange at best. |
| Sound of Metal | Really fucking good. |
| Broadcast News | It was alright I guess. |
| West Side Story (2021) | Stephen Spielberg actually improved upon the original, and Rachel Zegler was incredible. |
| Hacksaw Ridge | Cognitive dissonance in a movie, but I’ll always be fan of Andrew Garfield’s acting. |
| Drive | Wayyy more violent than I expected, and I think the reasons for its fame are weak. |
| Apocalypse Now | A feast of a film. |
| The Stranger | I need to watch this again. |
| Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes | A lot went right, but I’d have done some things differently. |
| The Sting | A good heist movie with a twist I didn’t see coming. |
| Raging Bull | Damn, Robert De Niro can ACT. |
| My Octopus Teacher | It was kinda cool and kinda cute. |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest | I’ve seen homages to this film that were better than the film itself. |
| *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid | Paul Newman and Robert Redford made this film great. |
| *The Wind Rises | My new favourite Studio Ghibli film, but I still haven’t seen them all. |
| Raiders of the Lost Ark | A classic adventure, you know what this is. |
| Puss in Boots | It took a few tries, but once I got through the first act, it was actually quite enjoyable. |
| No Hard Feelings | Managed to draw a chuckle or two from me, but my preferred style of humour and the comedy of this movie only partially overlapped. |
| The Holdovers | For lovers of Good Will Hunting or Dead Poets Society. |
| The Woman King | Kind of like a good superhero movie, but the superheroes are a female army of Dahomey warriors in the 1820s, led by the indomitable Viola Davis. |
| A Man Called Otto | It was fine. |
| My Girl | I couldn’t quite figure out what they were trying to do, unless all they were trying to do was make people cry, in which case mission accomplished. |
| *Rocky | A couple strings were dropped, but overall an inspiring underdog story with a great protagonist. |
| Do The Right Thing | No wonder it’s a classic. |
| Goodfellas | It took some concentration to keep track of what was happening when. |
| Broker | It was good. |
| Barbie | As advertised. |
| Rush | Worth watching for Daniel Brühl’s performance. |
| Anatomy of a Fall | A decent courtroom drama, but the main conflict felt lopsided and as a result I couldn’t buy into the stakes very much. |
| Poor Things | Weird and spectacular, though the side characters felt somewhat distant. |
| Die Hard | More Christmassy than expected, and Alan Rickman was great. |
| *The Quiet Girl | An excellent film, and no wonder it won best international film at the Oscars. |
| Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret | An enjoyable 1970s coming-of-age but where the protagonist explores Christianity and Judaism. |
| The Glass Castle | The book was better. |
| Maestro | I’m very impressed by Bradley Cooper, both for his direction and acting in this one. |
| Good Morning Vietnam | Wouldn’t have been a very good movie if not for Robin Williams. |
| The Last Duel | Probably the most violent film on this list and often hard to watch, but compelling and well-done. |
| The Lobster | Weird, but I liked it. |
| *Pig | I thought it would be weirder, but it was great. |
| Along Came Polly | Not great. |
Precarious Writer 