A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey (Paperback)

Am I glad I did. This is a fantastic book. The interesting concept is that Kevin spent the entirety of 2001 going to a movie. Every day. Without fail (though he did almost miss a couple). Home rentals didn't count. One emergency in Italy necessitated watching a movie on TV, but that was the only time. Airline movies counted only because otherwise he wouldn't be able to travel anywhere. Instead, he traveled all over the world to fulfill his promise to his readers. He visited the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Finnish Lapland, where the sun never sets and everybody gets funky from weird sleep patterns. He went to Australia and visited the smallest movie theater in the world (around 25 seats). At home or abroad, he paid for at least one movie every day of the year. It's a project that I found impossible to resist, and I even envied him a little bit. Here was a guy who was going to write a book from the audience's perspective. He is one of us, just wanting to see movies.

The wonderful thing about this book is that it's not just a list of movies, or even a critique of them. He does judge some of the movies and tells us what he thinks of them. No, this book is a love letter. Murphy's passion for film shines through in every essay, and you can really tell that he loves the cinema. Every chapter covers a week in his journey, but he never mentions all of the movies he watched that week (though they are conveniently listed at the top of the chapter heading, with location included). Each essay, thus every week, has a theme. One week, it was the Sundance Film Festival. Another, it was Cannes. Another, it was Quebec City and the hotel and theater made completely of snow and ice. Sometimes, he just uses the week's films to talk about a cinema subject dear to his heart, like silent movies, or classic comedy shorts. The chapter for November 19-25, he details how he smuggled an entire Thanksgiving Dinner into a movie theater. The topics go all over, but in every one of them, you can see Murphy's love shining through.

Passion is not the only thing Murphy has, though. He has wit as well, and each essay has its share of it. Murphy doesn't constantly tell jokes and hope the reader laughs (which didn't work for Nelson but Joe Queenan does so well). Instead, the wit comes out of his personality and is a little more subtle. I found this book amusing, but not laugh out loud funny (with the exception of a couple of instances that would take too long to explain). The thing is, amusing is fine when the book is well-written and you enjoy reading it like I did this one. I expected a retrospective of bad movies similar to Nelson's book, but I guess he figured that had already been done. Not only had it been done, but it goes against everything Murphy wanted to get out of this project. After ten years of being on the show, watching cheesy movies and creating jokes for Joel and Mike (and himself as well) to tell, he wanted to spark his love for the cinema again. He wanted to become an audience member again and revisit exactly why he loves movies. Thus, this was the perfect thing to do.

I was especially interested in (and envious of) the travel he did. He went to France, Italy, Finland, Australia, Mexico, and the Cook Islands, which is where he was on September 11. He tells this in a very poignant essay, saying how he felt when he heard the news, the reactions of the other islanders, and how he almost gave up his odyssey because it felt very insignificant. But then he went to see Waking Ned Devine, shared a few laughs with friends even through their tears, and realized the human togetherness that movies bring, and that feeling of closeness that you get in a good movie crowd, even if you don't know any of them. You still share this one bond, this one movie, and you feel better. This essay actually brought a tear to my eye, something I really didn't expect in a book I thought would be a comedy.

A Year at the Movies contains 52 essays about the entire cinema experience. Kevin even worked for a theater for two nights and got to see exactly what a theater employee gets to see. He finds out that American movie-goers are pretty much slobs. Sure, there are a couple of clunkers in there. But you know, I wouldn't even call them clunkers. They were all interesting in their own right, just a few that were less so than the rest. Through his journey, he regains his love of film, his affection for that flashing light and flickering screen, and he brings us along with him. He's not the most wonderful writer in the world, but he makes up for it with an intensity about his subject that's contagious. I've never been a huge movie person, but he almost made me become one.

I think I'll go watch a Buster Keaton short film.

David Roy

Sadly, the show was cancelled recently, and Kevin Murphy found another movie-related project to occupy his evenings - actually, three hundred and sixty-five of them. He has been to a movie every night of the year for a year, and this book is the result. It's a very funny and insightful look at the films we make and particularly the way we watch them, whether it's at the Gargantuplex, the Prince Charles or an igloo just north of Rejkyavik.
Murphy is an entertaining and always witty guide, and this book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the cinema. Great stuff.

Murphy's mission is to spend every day of one whole year at the cinema or watching a film in public, say a park, a plane or on his own projector. As part of this venture Murphy travelled the world to experience the cinema of far flung lands, test movie buffets, go a full week only eating cinema food, 'Super Size Me ain't that original, a week only sittin in the front row, a week watching the same date movie with different dates, a week working in a cinema, sneaking into Cannes, and meeting a skinny, naked guy claiming to be the real Santa in Iceland.

There's so much more, as well as a heapload of bad movies, although Murphy does see some gems, and his writing is impassioned when it comes to the subject of film. Numerous chapters are dedicated to different aspects of film and the world that surrounds it, and Murphy could make a believer in the magic of cinema out of even the coldest heart. If you love film buy this book, it just may reignite your belief in the cinema going experience. It did for me.