Watching every film on the National Film Registry
Posted: Tue May 27, 2025 9:00 pm
Growing up I used to be one of those guys who was always like "movies just don't appeal to me" or "I'm not much of a movie guy" since I thought they were too long and either really stupid entertainment or too pretentious, so I never really gave them a chance and just casually dismissed the medium.
But recently I've realized that throughout all this I've been missing out on some great cultural capital over the past century. So as a part of "reinventing myself" to become a more artistically literate person, I've decided to watch every single film listed on the National Film Registry's list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Film_Registry
This will probably take a few years at least unless I watch like ten films a week.
Initially, I was planning on doing the AFI top 100, but not only is that list fairly short, it is far too restrictive and looks ONLY at the biggest and most essential stuff. Meanwhile, the NFR, while of course including the biggest and most essential stuff (there's a lot of overlap), also includes a lot more niche content, and more variety, since it wasn't just compiled by a bunch of snobby critics. Not only does it include films, but it includes a lot of indie stuff, documentaries, short subjects, and experimental artistic stuff. And even then, this is still scratching the surface, but it serves as a succinct opener to American cinema. Of course there are some things in there that are questionable (Iron Man? Home Alone? Spy Kids? Really?). I might also delve into the Criterion Collection after this, which has essential films globally (I'm looking at UK, French, and Japanese cinema next).
Will watching all of these films make me a film buff? Not really, since I'm only going through the most significant stuff, and a real film buff spends his or her time on film analysis and watching everything he or she can get their hands on. But I can at least pretend to be more well versed.
Anyway, I've made a spreadsheet cataloguing every film I've seen so far on this journey. I've seen a lot of the films listed before, but for the intents of this list, I'm gonna rewatch them all for the sake of completeness. You can see my ratings and any comments I made here, and if you scroll to the right you can see what each of my ratings indicate.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
So far the vast majority of the films I've seen have been good or artifacts, which basically are films that are only listed due to their importance in the development of film technologically, or only listed because of their importance in extremely niche contexts. Only one film on here I've watched I actually fucking hated, and over 80 films in that isn't so bad.
Thoughts?
But recently I've realized that throughout all this I've been missing out on some great cultural capital over the past century. So as a part of "reinventing myself" to become a more artistically literate person, I've decided to watch every single film listed on the National Film Registry's list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Film_Registry
This will probably take a few years at least unless I watch like ten films a week.
Initially, I was planning on doing the AFI top 100, but not only is that list fairly short, it is far too restrictive and looks ONLY at the biggest and most essential stuff. Meanwhile, the NFR, while of course including the biggest and most essential stuff (there's a lot of overlap), also includes a lot more niche content, and more variety, since it wasn't just compiled by a bunch of snobby critics. Not only does it include films, but it includes a lot of indie stuff, documentaries, short subjects, and experimental artistic stuff. And even then, this is still scratching the surface, but it serves as a succinct opener to American cinema. Of course there are some things in there that are questionable (Iron Man? Home Alone? Spy Kids? Really?). I might also delve into the Criterion Collection after this, which has essential films globally (I'm looking at UK, French, and Japanese cinema next).
Will watching all of these films make me a film buff? Not really, since I'm only going through the most significant stuff, and a real film buff spends his or her time on film analysis and watching everything he or she can get their hands on. But I can at least pretend to be more well versed.
Anyway, I've made a spreadsheet cataloguing every film I've seen so far on this journey. I've seen a lot of the films listed before, but for the intents of this list, I'm gonna rewatch them all for the sake of completeness. You can see my ratings and any comments I made here, and if you scroll to the right you can see what each of my ratings indicate.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
So far the vast majority of the films I've seen have been good or artifacts, which basically are films that are only listed due to their importance in the development of film technologically, or only listed because of their importance in extremely niche contexts. Only one film on here I've watched I actually fucking hated, and over 80 films in that isn't so bad.
Thoughts?