I’ve always liked to think that I’m “into movies”, but until recently I hadn’t taken that label seriously. Over the last 3 months I’ve basically watched a movie every single day. In celebration of this 100-day milestone, I reflect on whether I’ve earned that label, or become a version of Perfect Blue’s Mima Kirigoe by losing myself in the process.
My villain origin story
For the longest time my log of movies was kept in a little Notion database. I would log only the serious movies I had seen, along with notes such as who recommended it to me and how I felt about the movie. It was basically my own Letterboxd before I discovered the platform. On 22 July 2017 I watched Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, a movie which was recommended to me by a friend I’m no longer in touch with. It was my first 10/10 rated movie. I fell in love with the movie, not because it was necessarily a warm or relatable movie (of which it is absolutely not), but because of how well it managed to draw me into its world and experience its intensity.
Despite the experience, it failed to disrupt my habits of Adam Sandler comedies and broad Hollywood crowdpleasers albeit with some otherwise good recommendations sprinkled throughout. For more than eight years, Requiem for a Dream was my only 10/10 movie. At best I would watch two movies in a week, but there were definitely periods of weeks, if not months, where I went without watching anything. It would really take a stint of unemployment to ignite my passion for cinema.
Due to a well-timed break between jobs, I had a two week period blissfully naive to responsibility. It was when I found my second love, my second 5 star movie (I had finally migrated to Letterboxd by now). On 20 November 2025 I watched Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express. A movie, where despite containing little dialogue, it similarly pulled me into its world as Requiem had done, this time a neon-lit environment of urban missed connections. Not long after, on 28 February 2026, my next 5 star, given to Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. Intense, dramatic, aesthetic.
For the first time, I consciously became aware that there exists a whole world of movies that I would actually enjoy. Movies that don’t just cater to existing in the moment. So I hunted, read reviews and found “similar movie” lists. And was up to watching about 3-5 movies a week.
The streak
Technically my 100 day run starts on 23 March 2026, but honestly, it was after watching Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue on 25 March that really ignited it for me. And it still probably sits as my favourite movie. It did a fantastic job of using stylistic and intense animation to its advantage to bring me inside Mima’s worldview. As well, the movie makes social criticisms that are just as relevant, and necessary to make, in today’s landscape.
Realising my next 5 star was maybe around the corner (I had just gone from 8 years between gems to finding three in three months), I was now taking my watchlist seriously. And so I kept watching, driven by two intertwined motivations:
- My outwards desire to keep discovering new movies.
- My inwards desire to understand what I loved about the movies I was watching.
On the former, I’ve relied on a range of recommendation methods, from personal to impersonal. I’ve found movies through friends, reviews, Letterboxd lists, recommendation tools, and LLMs. I have strong reservations against using LLMs in creative work, and so this has been conflicting. However I’m willing to draw a line in using it strictly for recommending, and not helping me form the opinion of movies.
On the latter, this is definitely the driving force behind what keeps me picking a movie and putting it on every night. And still a question I don’t have a refined answer on. If the desire is the engine running this streak, then not having an answer is the fuel.
The other 5 stars movies I have logged so far:
- Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, watched 17 April 2026
- Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows, watched 18 April 2026
- Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, watched 24 April 2026
- Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher, watched 20 June 2026
- Isao Takahata’s The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, watched 22 June 2026
- Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi, watched 28 June 2026
I can draw some loose connections that all these movies make their point by letting you into someone’s internal life and worldview. Crudely, turning interiority into spectacle. But they do so at extreme ends of the spectrum. Aronofsky and Kon through visual maximalism and literally watching characters break apart as they struggle with interior vs exterior lives. And Kore-eda, Yang, and Ramsay, who showcase the burden of class pressure and what it means to be family through quiet routine and the things left unsaid. All wonderful movies, and I would recommend them to anyone who has the time to sit with the weight of them.
While these are all emotionally heavy movies, I do allow myself a break sometimes. Netflix picks seem to earn the lowest rating, averaging 3.09 stars from me, and yet I will still return to them very regularly, at least once a week. Maybe it’s to keep the streak alive, maybe to maintain the habit and solidify the routine, maybe a secret hope that streaming platforms will actually host good movies.
Given the most recent 5 star was two days ago though, I am very much still in pursuit of resonating movies. And each day, the pursuit is strong enough to make me choose another one off of the watchlist.
Living vs Experiencing
Excluding a 15 day window where I was travelling, I have averaged 8.3 movies per week. Whether you look at that stat, or just the gross volume of 108 movies in 100 days, it is a lot. And it can honestly only occur in the absence of other things. To find 16 hours per week to watch movies is to give up 16 hours a week of other productive activity. Whether that means socialising, exploring creative endeavours, doing self-motivated work or learning, or just living more tangible experiences.
This whole time I’ve also demanded from my movies. At the core of my streak is a desire to keep finding heavy-hitters, to find the next 5 star. Aside from the Netflix and other streaming platform movies, I’ve gone into every movie with an expectation that the movie makes me feel. As if I have the right to walk away from a movie feeling more enlightened with an expanded worldview, or even just feel sad.
Both of these beg the question whether I’m choosing to simulate a rich life by living vicariously through the synthetic worlds of the movies I watch. Despite largely avoiding crowd pleasing and award-bait movies, the ones I do watch are nonetheless still manufactured to elicit particular moods and reactions from their viewers. As noted earlier, they turn interiority into spectacle. And damn, am I hooked.
In Perfect Blue, the movie centres on Mima’s dissolving sense of identity and selfhood as she struggles to live out her own life and overcome a version of her that is thrust on her by the people around her. A similar argument can be made that by consuming so much, my experience and worldview is augmented by the lens created by other people.
Where Mima and I differ is the agency over our processes. I choose what I watch, what I take from it, and whether I allow it to replace or enrich the rest of my life. That doesn’t necessarily resolve the tension, but it makes it my responsibility.
Something I actively try to keep control of. I’ve even made experiences out of the movie watching process. I hired a private cinema to watch Satoshi Kon’s Paprika as a birthday party, and watched Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love presented with a live orchestra.
Cinephile?
Nope. During this process I have been truly humbled by how little I’ve seen. 108 movies doesn’t even start to make a dent in exploring every facet of international and historical cinema canon. But along the way I have learned what I love and have found good success in picking my next movie. For now, I’ll keep watching for the love of the game. But if someday the streak and I go back to seasonal viewing, well so be it.
Follow the streak while it lasts: https://letterboxd.com/baely.