27 days, 27 movies—one for every letter of the alphabet, all chosen because they might secretly be great.
Last year I attempted something maybe ridiculous: I watched 27 movies—one for every letter of the alphabet (with an extra number entry)—all pulled from my IMDb watchlist. The idea was simple: pick movies I had been meaning to see for years but probably wouldn’t get around to otherwise. These were all well reviewed movies, that had 80 or higher on Metacritic.
This year I’m trying a different angle. Instead of clearing out the backlog, I’m hunting for hidden gems: movies that the world seemed to ignore, dismiss, or misunderstand, but that might actually speak to me. Some will be under-appreciated oddities. Some will be cult favorites. Some might be fascinating disasters (think Showgirls, or Joker: Foie a Deux, maybe. The only rule is that they are movies I suspect I might genuinely enjoy—even if almost nobody else did.
For the next 27 days, I’ll watch one film for each letter of the alphabet and write about it here.
We begin with not A, but a numeral. The # 8, specifically.
The first film is one I know almost nothing about: 8-Bit Christmas. Yes, today is St. Patrick’s Day, and yes, it is definitely a Christmas movie. But the title alone is enough to intrigue me. I grew up in the NES era, and the idea of a movie about childhood Nintendo obsession has enormous potential.
What I’m hoping for, honestly, is something stranger than the trailer probably promises—maybe a world where Neil Patrick Harris and June Diane Raphael somehow get rendered into chunky 8-bit sprites and have to fight their way out of a video game.
Hopefully that’s what I am getting with this one. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck.
Avidavr: Media Reviews 