The Classic Movies Project

One of the proudest accomplishments I associate with The FAT Website is its sheer longevity and the breadth of content it has accumulated in that time.  Sixteen years, over two thousand posts and over five hundred reviews spanning film, television, video games and whisky.  The film reviews remain my most passionate writing subject.  One day I’d like to catch Roger Ebert’s milestone of 10,000 movie reviews.  In truth, I’ll fall well short of that.  I think I’d take 1,000.

Yet if there’s one aspect of film reviewing I’d like to expand upon, its reviewing classic films.  The immediacy and contemporary nature of blogging and social media means that usually I’m writing about what I saw this week at the cinema.  So even though I’m sorta happy with having punched out 250 reviews, it also means I’ve written about Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus but not about Casablanca.  I’ve written about the merits of Jackass 3D but not about what makes 12 Angry Men so special to me.  I haven’t written about my favourite films nearly as much as I’d like.

So I’d like to try and change that over the next couple of years.  That doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing about new release films.  I’ll still make time for that.  But my aim is to try and knock out a couple of classic film reviews each month.  Going back to stuff like Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps [1935] to more recent fare like Jurassic Park [1993].  I may not catch Ebert for total reviews written but one day I’d like my collection of classic film reviews to rival the quantity of his Great Movies essays.  He did 300 of ’em.

To help work out where to start and what to watch, this weekend I penned my hundred favourite films of all time.  I didn’t do very well.  I couldn’t narrow it down to less than 150.  So I’ll start by writing about the films that made my list this weekend.  They include the likes of The Third Man, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Rear Window and The Invisible Man.  Then there’s Psycho, Harvey, Mutiny on the Bounty and Lawrence of Arabia.  More recently, I’m looking forward to revisiting the likes of Fargo, Die Hard, Grave of the Fireflies and Slingblade.

My first milestone will be posting a list of my hundred favourite films of all time with a review for every entry.  Once I get there, I’ll aim for a Top 500 list.

Wish me luck!