On December 28th, 1895, the Lumiere Brothers held the first paid screenings of ten short films. It was to be the first ever film showing in world history.

In the early hours of February 14th, 1997, I was born in a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

A lot of shit happened between then.

From the Lumiere Brothers, to DW Griffith, to Cecil B DeMille, to Hitchcock, to Wilder, to Fellini, to De Palma, to Scorsese and beyond, there’s a lot of cinema that I probably SHOULD see but I HAVEN’T seen. And there’s even more that I WANT to see but I haven’t gotten around to. I’m only 21, I’ve been deeply into cinema for only a couple years, and I’ve held a full time job for nearly 2 years now. Time allotted for watching movies isn’t getting any larger, so I just need to do it.

At the same time, I’ve been dreaming about directing/writing for several years now. I don’t have the money for film school (I don’t even have the money to finish up my half-baked bachelor’s in politics) so I’ve decided to teach myself the ins and outs of what makes, in my view, good movies. What links all of my favorite films together? What elements do they all have that endears me to them so much? And how can I know THAT without watching some of the greats? And what better way to learn about movies than writing, for the permanent record for the world to see, about which classics I loved and which ones I didn’t?

This will be a blog as I try and watch as much revered and roundly praised movies that I wasn’t alive to see in the 102 years since that Lumiere Brothers screening. This will be my “film catch up” on all the shit that older film aficionados bragged about watching in theaters in 1993 or have stories about renting from Blockbuster at age 17. I can’t watch every movie in theater and Blockbuster is no longer around for my film awakening (RIP). But I can try my best to make sure I’m as well educated about the movies as I should be.

So come along on this journey as I share my thoughts on all the classics I’ve missed. I hope you have as good of a time as me.