Sunday, December 30, 2012

My 2012 in Movies, by the Numbers

2012 was a big year for me in movies. Big in that I restarted my podcast, The Long and Late Movie Show with Russell Hainline and eventually the lovely Shira Selkovits. 2012 was also big in that I spent a lot of money watching movies this year. Between Netflix, Amazon Video, and movie theaters, I spent $1,496.53 this year. That's a pretty staggering amount in my case. After seeing this I wanted to delve a bit deeper and see what my spending was like at the theaters this year.

I have seen 72 films in 2012 that were released in 2012. For an non-professional movie-goer, I think this was a pretty good clip, a little more than a film per week. For a full list of the films I have seen in 2012 check out this list on Letterboxd. http://letterboxd.com/lategordon

First, here is a graph on which theaters I spent the most on this year:

Graph of my 2012 Spending at Theaters
My top theater this year was the AMC Orpheum 7 because after I moved into Manhattan in March of 2012, this theater was the closest one to me. Not counting food, I spent $318 out of a total of $722.30 there this year. These numbers could easily have been higher if I did not take advantage of AMCs deal of $6 movies before Noon numerous times.

Next, is my Theater spending per month:

Monthly Spending at the Movies
You can see that my monthly spending at the theater rises during the year until August. This makes sense. As the year went along better movies started to come out, including the big blockbuster summer releases.

There is hope for my 2013 to have a lower spend. I recently joined the website Moviepass, and for $30 a month I can see one movie per day. With there help, I hope my yearly movie costs drop by fifty percent and at the end of 2013, I don't talk about how much money I have spent at the movies, but rather how many movies I saw per month.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Quick thoughts on Jack Reacher




Jack Reacher has the parts to be a good popcorn action flick. For the most part it is successful. The action is well done, however the story is a mess. The villain's plan when given a once over, is really ridiculous and unnecessary.

Tom Cruise is good as the savant investigator Reacher. His performances in the action scenes are great. Cruise doing what Cruise does best. The direction of the action is also great. The two major action scenes, a car chase and a shoot out at a quarry are well done and exciting.

Werner Herzog as the main villain is scary and creepy. He delivers some great villainous speeches that seem a part of another movie.

** stars