Let's Finally Watch This

Welcome to Season 4 of Let's Finally Watch This.

It's 1905. Movies are in their infancy, including Dutch film. This silent Dutch comedy, directed by Willy Mullens, begins with a man napping in a beach…

It's time to wrap up our third season of Let's Finally Watch This. We start by making a few observation about this season as a whole before diving into the heart of the episode--our Ranking of Essent…

It's 2014. Franchise movies abound, and American blockbusters are making bank around the world. But some directors, like Wes Anderson, are making movies that defy blockbuster conventions and that exp…

It's 2004. Teen movies exploded as a genre in the 1980s and have continued largely unabated since. With Mean Girls, comedian Tina Fey helps bring forth a teen movie that resonates with its viewers, b…

It's 1994. The top-grossing film is The Lion King, but right after that is Forrest Gump. Gump, played by Tom Hanks, wins audiences with his memorable phrases ("Life is like a box of chocolates"), his…

It's 1984. A glance at the year's top ten grossing movies shows we're deep into the blockbuster era. Director James Cameron makes his mark on science fiction with The Terminator, an action-thriller t…

It's 1974. It's the height of New Hollywood, and Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, is a quintessential example of the darker subject matter and bleak outlook often associated with the movement. …

It's 1964. The Golden Age of Hollywood is over, and New Hollywood is about to begin, an era known for anti-heroes, changing morality, and less traditional plots. At the same time, the spaghetti weste…

It's 1954. The American occupation of Japan had ended a few years before, and Japanese cinema is beginning to make an impression on the world scene. Released the same year as the original Godzilla, S…

It's 1944. The Second World War is still raging, and the two top grossing films are musicals. However, Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, is a different sort of film, a seminal example of fi…

It's 1934. It Happened One Night, a film nobody thought would do particularly well, sneaks in just before the Hays Code is enforced. The movie, directed by Frank Capra, follows pampered heiress Ellie…

It's 1924. Buster Keaton, one of the cinematic greats of this era, is at the height of his career. Called "The Great Stone Face" due to his distinctive stoical expression, Keaton's films include dang…

It's 1914. Out of Italy comes what many classify as the first film epic. In this silent film, the girl Cabiria survives an eruption from Etna, is kidnapped by pirates, nearly offered to the god Moloc…

It's 1904. French director Georges Méliès is at the height of his career, creating fantastic, creative movies in the early days of cinema. Like his earlier A Trip to the Moon, this film is about a fa…

It's time to wrap up another season of Let's Finally Watch This. We start by making a few corrections, filling in a few gaps in this season's discussion of film exhibition, and discussing how film co…

It's 2013. The top-grossing film of the year is Disney's Frozen, but that's not the only important fairy-tale based animated film released this year. In Japan, Studio Ghibli released The Tale of the …

It's 2003--and it's the holidays. Many of our standard Christmas movies were released in the 1940s, but since the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of Christmas movies, creating a number of new holi…

It's 1993. Multiplexes have arrived, and there are plenty of movies to show—Jurassic Park, Tombstone, Schindler's List, the original Super Mario Bros. movie.... Okay, not all are great, but it was a …

It's 1983. The blockbuster age has started, and the top-grossing movie of the year is The Return of the Jedi. However, another pivotal space movie is also released this year, The Right Stuff, a film …