It’s August now, which means Colin, John, and I have completed a total of 10 Criterion Months over nine years. Is this an occasion worth celebrating? Well, after the first time I ran our stats in 2021, I always knew I wanted to do an even more robust breakdown someday. You tell me, when is the best time to crunch these numbers again? This year, upon the completion of our tenth Criterion Month? Next year, to mark a decade of Criterion Months? Maybe 2027, when we will have done one full calendar year’s worth of Criterion Months (but just shy of 365 reviews)? I don’t know, I just chose the one I got to write soonest. Let’s look at the charts!
We typically each review 10 movies in a Criterion Month, so across 10 Criterion Months it should be no surprise that we’ve reviewed just above 300 movies; 302 to be exact. But wait, why isn’t it 300 on the dot? Because in 2019 and 2020, I reviewed 11 movies, a tradition I tried to get started so that we could have review a movie every day of July and was totally unsuccessful in passing on to Colin and John. But I’m no hero, John actually is the one who has written the most posts both overall and in a single month: way back in the 2017 Shocktober Criterion Month, John reviewed an accursed 13 movies, putting my eight and Colin’s nine posts to shame. And lest you think Colin’s been taking it easy on us, let’s take a look at runtimes…
Colin has given himself a commanding lead when it comes to total time spent watching Criterion movies, a fact that would probably be true even if this wasn’t a feature of the blog. According to the numbers I pulled from Criterion’s website, he’s currently at seven days, 15 hours, and 35 minutes of movie time – that’s about 90 minutes more than John and five-and-a-half hours more than me. In fact, of the top 10 longest movies we’ve covered, Colin picked the six longest.
Looking over those six, none of then are even in English! Actually, none of our top 10 were American or English-language movies. What’s the deal, Criterion, couldn’t be bothered to put Avengers: Endgame in the closet? And yes, I am worried that I’ll be kicked out of the top 10 as soon as next year.
On the flip side, I had the pleasure of having watched the only two movies we’ve picked that were less than an hour long. You know, it was the summer of 2020, it was weird times. But just because I’ve watched the shortest movies doesn’t mean we don’t all tend toward briefer encounters…
I broke up all our reviews into runtime buckets and by far we all skewed toward the shorter end. Most of the movies we’ve picked have been two hours or less, with a great deal of them an hour and a half or shorter. I can tell you that between the three of us, the average movie runtime was 1 hour and 47 minutes. And while I haven’t reviewed any movies longer than three hours, I have (barely) reviewed the most movies that run between two-and-a-half and three hours… I admit I’m really digging for a win there, that basically means nothing. But when you’re writing 10 whole posts in a month, you’ve got to find ways to make it easier for yourself.
Speaking of time, our bias towards movies made after 1959 has gotten a little stronger since 2021, with the 1960s becoming even more cemented as our most preferred decade. None of us have picked older movies than the oldest ones we had picked by 2021, so I’ll skip repeating that recap here. Back then I did wonder who would be the first of us to cover a movie from the 2020s, and it was the very next Criterion Month that I got my answer: John picked The Worst Person in the World in 2022. So far we’ve picked seven movies from this decade, and I am the one who has chosen the most of them, four.
Out of all those movies, we have somehow ended up with a three-way tie for our most-picked director. Of course Mildly Pleased’s overall favorite director, David Cronenberg, is here, as I have little doubt our beloved Canadian maniac is the director most discussed on this blog, but within the confines of Criterion Month, he’s currently locked in a dead heat with France’s Agnès Varda and Hong Kong’s Wong Kar Wai, each at five films picked. Will a dark horse emerge in the years to come? Who knows!
I think it’s interesting that repeating directors is much more of a me and John thing than Colin. There’s not a lot of blue in that chart. And when it comes to who has picked the same director the most times, it’s another three-way tie: I’ve picked Wong Kar Wai movies four times and John has picked Akira Kurosawa and Richard Linklater movies four times. What’s the deal Colin? You actually proactively watch old movies by filmmakers you like outside of July or something?
A special shoutout to Whit Stillman, who has only made five movies and I’ve reviewed all three of them that are in the Collection. I wonder if there are any other directors whose entire Criterion collection we’ve covered? In case you were wondering, the Cronenberg Criterions we haven’t covered yet are Naked Lunch, A History of Violence, and last year’s The Shrouds.
Another thing that probably won’t surprise you is the distribution of countries we tend to pick from: the USA is still in a commanding lead with 112 picks, more than a full third of all the movies we’ve written about. France is second with 45 and Japan is third with 29, having broken away from the UK, which is now way down in fourth at 22. One caveat on this data: to avoid counting the same movie multiple times, it just takes the first country listed on Criterion’s website, so some international productions might not show up. But I believe we’ve written about movies from every continent except Antarctica and that’s pretty cool. We probably need a bit more focus on the southern hemisphere though, and that goes for everyone.
But now let’s get to the main attraction: star ratings!
That’s right, we tend toward giving these movies four stars! Who could have guessed? We were all hoping John would finally give a movie five stars this Criterion Month, but we didn’t even get particularly close. Since 2021, John has only gone as high as a 4.5 three times, twice in 2022 and once in 2023. Across all three of us five stars are in decline, of our 17 five star reviews, only three of the posts were from after 2021: I awarded them to Citizen Kane (lol) and Chungking Express and, happily, just a little while ago, Colin gave five to Daisies. You could say Colin’s never met a Criterion he doesn’t like, the lowest he’s ever rated any of these movies is three stars.
Which begs the question, are our best days behind us? I don’t know, but the data suggests we’re getting better, on average, of picking movies we’ll at least like. Colin’s average rating is 4.1 stars, his Criterion Month with the highest average rating was 2017 (4.3 stars) and his lowest was 2018 (3.9 stars). John’s average rating is 3.6 stars, his Criterion Month with the highest average rating was 2018 (3.9 stars) and his lowest was Shocktober 2017 (3.0 stars). My average rating is 3.9 stars, my Criterion Month with the highest average rating was 2019 (4.1 stars) and my lowest was Shocktober 2017 (3.1 stars). Our overall average rating is 3.9 stars. So generally we like doing this, and as long as we’re not watching Salò, we’re having a pretty good time.
And finally, spine numbers. John picked our lowest spine number, #1, in 2020 when he reviewed Grand Illusion. Can’t really beat the first Criterion movie. Colin has our current highest spine number, #1262, which is Killer of Sheep, a film Criterion just released this May. Is this interesting? I don’t know, I guess you could say we’re doing well covering the spread?
We have picked 10 movies that don’t have spine numbers and, surprise surprise, I was the one who chose all of them. I’ve been a lot better about it since 2020, my only selections without spine numbers since then have been from box sets; The Complete Films of Agnès Varda and the World of Wong Kar Wai don’t have spine numbers, I’m presuming because some of the movies included were previously released by Criterion and have their own spines already.
And there you have it, all the data I could easily pull from doing this crazy posting spree 10 times. Is there anything else you want to know? Sound off in the comments! Maybe I should go back and try to figure out how many movies we’ve picked have been in black and white…