How many films have you seen in your life?
 

I have now reached 1,700 with IMDB's 'my movies' feature. I think I have a chance of making 10,000 by the time my life comes to an end. Who else keeps track, and if you do what's your total? If not, a rough estimate? Who's seen the most movies?

There is a few on my list that I walked out of, fell asleep during or fast-forwarded through but I still counted them. I haven't included any TV shows or TV movies.

Wow. Where to begin.. I'll get back to you when I have a rough estimate.

I'm only 27, If I watched a movie every day since my birth I'd only be at 10,000 movies. My family does own a movie rental store though. We have about 7k DVDs and probably had 2 or 3k VHS tapes. Weed out the duplicates and say 9,000 unique film titles have passed through our store. That's a very conservative estimate. I'd say watch a little more than half of the movies we get. That gives us 4.5k. Throw in another 1000+ movies from late night AMC/IFC/TCM/HBO along with imports and private collection stuff. 5.5k movies. That seems like a lot of movies, even for me. I'm going to have to take some random samplings and see what kind of % I've actually seen of our library. I can't imagine it's less than 50% but I could be pretty far off, never know. I'll get back to this thread when I do that.

You need some qualifiers.

What percent of a movie do you have to watch to qualify it as "seen"?

You say "TV movies" don't count. Is that "made for broadcast, and viewed on a non-cable network" only? Because I have watched "made for tv" movies on DVD. I've seen movies that were "made for tv" in other countries. Then there is the whole slew of "made for cable (HBO/SHO/TNT etc) movies. And what about major movies viewed on network TV?

Also, does porn count?

I could only give a best guesstimate. There are plenty of movies that I am sure I have completely forgotten. I'd say 12-1500. Probably closer to 1200.

I do watch a ton of movies. i would say definitely over 1000. probably closer to 2000.

I think you have to have consciously watched at least three quarters of the movie for it to count.

Any movie that was ever released to the public in a movie theatre counts, even if it was very limited or in another country. This rules out made for TV and direct to video/DVD films. The IMDB uses (V) to indicate straight to video, (TV) for TV movies/miniseries and double quotes for TV shows.

Porn cannot count unless you could have seen it in a movie theatre open to the public. Which surely rules out modern-day porn, I think?

Heh. This is a problem that is faced by those that vote in the Academy Awards; in order to be qualified to vote on a movie. you have to have "seen" it, and some specific definition of "seen" is provided, I think it is something like; "at least the first 50%", or something similar. I remember hearing Stephen Tobolowsky talk about watching screenings of movies being shown for this specific purpose. It was always a bad sign for the movie when at the exact halfway mark, down to the second, that dozens of people got up to leave. :)


As for the OP's question; I have absolutely no idea. I just checked on netflix and I have about 600 movies rated there, but I have not made much of an effort to make this list comprehensive.

A question for the OP: how long have you been keeping track of the movies that you watch? What was your motivation for doing so?

A bajillion.
Seriously, I have no clue... in my previous relationship we would sometimes watch two or three a night depending on what else was going on. IMDB has a movie tracker feature?

According to my Zip account on movies I've rated it says 165. Now Martin dose use my account and has rated some on his own. However I don't think I've found and rated every movie I've ever watched. So I would say it's a bit higher than that.

I've been keeping track for maybe for about eight or nine years. Up to recently I drew rings around them in a book - Halliwell's Film Video & DVD Guide - with over 23,000 entries. But they stopped updating this book every year and there was always ones I watched that were too new to be in it. Then I found out about IMDB's 'my movies' feature.

Effectively articulating my motivation for doing so is difficult. I think it has to do with being urgently advised by a lecturer in the first week at university: watch as many films as possible. Doesn't matter if they're good, bad, new, old, Hollywood, foreign, silent or sound: just consume as much as the hours and the days will allow. Otherwise you don't know shit and that will be apparent in what you write.

I think that just as one can never read too many books one can never watch too many movies.

Yes. Make an account at IMDB then click 'movies' then 'my movies'.

I'm guessing I've seen something at least in the high hundreds, but I can't say for sure. I own around 600ish and I've certainly seen more than I own.

A while back I was keeping count for about 3 years, but eventually decided it wasn't worth my time to do so. In that 3 years though, I racked up over 1,000 films. (not a single tv movie among them)

Of course, this was back when I had lots of disposable income and a handful of friends who shared my obsession.

I've been rating movies on Netflix for the last couple of days. I've rated 1100 movies so far. I'd like to keep going until I get a really good idea of how many movies I've actually seen.

Hey, that's a good way to keep track, Reese. Unfortunately I don't remember a lot of movies from my childhood well enough to rate them objectively, which means I have to re-watch them before I can make a decision. Hmmmm.

I tend to find long-running television shows, book series, and movie series more enjoyable than stand-alone movies. I get attached to characters and don't want to let them go...

I love watching long running TV shows back to back. It makes it so much easier to keep track. I always think its funny when a character takes a season break from the show and when he returns it's a big deal to everyone except me because they'd only be gone for like 3 days from my perspective.

It is hard to keep track of old movies. I just rate a lot of them 3 if I remember liking them and 2 when I don't want netflix recommending similar movies.

many many many films. it never occurred to me to keep track. i haven't any idea. many.