Of course the overarching plan is to watch all the films in the world, but there are quite a lot in existence already and then all these creative types just keep making more, so, you have to pick and choose. I’m sure you’re well aware by now that I love a structured challenge and I saw Stephen King tweeting recently about his ongoing project - to watch a movie from every year between 1961 and 2021. What a great idea!

I’m not going to pick up and copy this challenge myself, but it did immediately make me think of the Film Watch page I have on this site showing all the films I’ve watched by year - would there be any missing? At the time of writing, and based on Mr King’s starting and ending parameters, I’m only missing 1961 and 1972. That’s not a bad strike rate! Although I have to be honest, a lot of the 60s and 70s are driven by working through the Bond series. Thanks James!

That’s also not to say that I’ve watched the best films from each year, the only film from 1968 is The Love Bug… make of that what you will.

With those two things in mind, I wondered how best to choose a couple of films to make the decades complete, and stumbled on these Wikipedia pages that detail the best grossing movies (in US terms anyway) for every year - interesting and super useful! 1961 is all about West Side Story, whilst 1972 is headlined by The Godfather. Both of those are already on my list to watch, it’s just a matter of getting round to it.

Now I’m wondering how many of the top grossing films I’ve actually watched and whether there’s another project in there? Stephen, what have you started!