The view from 3000

Though it’s been nearly a month – and several more movies under the bridge – since the blog hit the 3000 movie review mark, I’d still like to pause and share a little perspective (not to mention some fun stats).

Clearly 2009 was a banner year for movie reviews. I added 627 new reviews, not quite double the previous annual record of 380 (in 1999) but more than four times the total for 2002, with only 135 reviews. Indeed, we went through a “dry patch” from 2002 to 2005, during which only 594 reviews were added for the whole four years.

The longest movie month was July 2009 with 74 movies.

The shortest movie month was a tie between April 2002 and September 2004 with one review each (Phantasm and The Station Agent respectively).

The longest movie day was May 1, 2009 with nine movies (though one or two of these were pictures that I’d started the day before).

It’s hard to say what month was the all-time best for movie viewing. But the worst was most likely March 2004. I watched Cabin Fever, which was mediocre bad, but it was sandwiched by Gigli and The Cat in the Hat, two of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

Here are some other random stats from the first 3000:

Categories:
Horror 1154
Drama 676
Documentary 165
Comedy 424
Action 581

Ratings:
Buy the disc 73
Worth seeing 347
Mildly amusing 1438
See if desperate 899
Wish I’d skipped it 235
Avoid at all costs 8

And here’s a flaky stat, the eight most common words that begin the titles of movies reviewed on the blog:

Dark 20
House 20
Night 19 (32 if variations such as “nightmare” are included)
American 19
Day (and Days) 19
Death 19 (five of which are Death Wish movies)
Black 16
Blood 15