100 Reviews Later!

Confessions of a Film Junkie: 100 Reviews Later!

By: Brian Cotnoir

     Wow.  That’s all I can really say about the milestone we’ve just reached. Just wow.  We have officially eclipsed 100 Film reviews on “Confessions of a Film Junkie”, and there’s just so many people I want to thank for helping us reach this amazing milestone, but before I get to that, I would just like to share a some background behind the this blog and the totally amazing journey that has led to this moment.  

The Three Musketeers in Black in
Sleepy Hollow, New York
It was my 22nd Birthday :)

    Back when I was a freshman at Lasell College, I met two totally awesome people; my friends Zee & Amanda, and the three of us for all four years of college were practically inseparable.  The three of us were the biggest nerds you had ever seen and if it was geek related we were into it: Video games, comic books, TV Shows, RPG’s, and Cos-Play, etc.  However the best thing we ever bonded over was movies.  Every day of my first two years of college was practically the same routine; get up, go to class, eat lunch, do homework, meet up for dinner, and then have a movie marathon at one of our dorms.  If had to make a rough estimate I say the three of us easily watched over 250 different films in college.                                  

    During our a freshman year there was a new website that launched called thatguywiththeglasses.com, and the star of the site was this guy named Doug Walker, who everyone called “The Nostalgia Critic”, and each week on this site he would review an old nostalgic movie or TV show and would just tear it to shreds and make the three of us laugh so hard.  We wanted to badly to be on this site and to be like Doug Walker, unfortunately for us, none of us had a camera (or a computer) that was good enough to make videos like Doug Walker, but we still watched his videos and admired them with awe.        

Our Hero Ladies & Gentlemen

The 1st Film I ever reviewed

During my sophomore year at college I received probably the greatest Christmas gift ever: A Netflix subscription.  With my subscription to Netflix, my friends and I now had an endless library of movies and TV shows to watch, so if somebody on thatguywiththeglasses, did a film review you could guarantee we would find a copy of it on-line and watch it, and we would laugh.  Films I never thought I’d ever get to see or find a copy of, were now just a click away and it was awesome. Shortly after getting my Netflix account, I began to write reviews of every movie I watched, and that’s when one of my Aunt’s suggested that I start my own film blog on line.  She helped me build a site (and even designed a logo for my blog) which I called “Confessions of a Film Junkie”.  On December 28, 2010, I posted my first official film review on-line.  The name of the film I reviewed was “Lo”.  I loved writing reviews for my blog.  I would ask my friends for suggestions of films to review and they would tell me what they wanted me to review and I’d write one.  The other thing I really enjoyed about my blog was I was able to expose my friends and family to dozens of new and awesome films that they never had heard of, let alone would ever see.              

     Every week, I would post a new film review: Sometimes a positive one and other times a negative one, and then one day my blog got dated. My hope for when I started this blog was to become like Doug Walker, but instead of making videos, I would just be a straight film blogger.  The site I launched my blog on had a tally counter to let you know how many people read my reviews, and for the most part it was the same 3 friends every week who were the only people who read my blog, and after a while I felt like I was practically only writing for myself, and I felt like a failure.  So after 40 reviews I decided to put an end to my weekly blog.  I would do occasional reviews for special occasions, but I never had any intention of starting my blog back up.         

My earliest attempts to try to be like Doug Walker (can you say FAIL!)

                                             

This is what motivated my return to glory!

    Then in the Summer of 2012, something changed, and it got me thinking again.  One night at work, a co-worker and I were reminiscing about the time we watched “Cannibal Holocaust”, and then he asked me “I wonder if there will ever be a film worst than that?”  To which I replied “Yeah, I think ‘A Serbian Film’ might be worse than that”.  Back when I first started this blog “A Serbian Film” was the most popular request I got to a write a film review for, and I swore that I would never ever see that film or write a review for it.  After trying to convince each other that we did want to see it for the next two weeks, I eventually broke down and bought a copy of “A Serbian Film” and watched it with two of my co-workers.  After making it through that film with them, I went home, and thought to myself; “You know, everyone wanted me to review that film, and I said no.  Maybe I should just write this one review just for the hell of it” and I did, and my post got some moderate popularity on Facebook, and became one of my more popular reviews.  Writing that post was so much fun, that I decided I wanted to write another one the following week and it got twice as many views as my review of “A Serbian Film”, so after a few more weeks of debate I decided to bring my weekly film blog.  It took a few months to garner some popularity, and trying new types of films and adding new things like pictures and film clips to my weekly reviews, but thanks to some friends and few loyal followers I have to say that as of right now I am pleased with the present success of my weekly film blog.   

    So I would like to thank my friends Zee & Amanda for spending so many nights watching movies with me, and for just being the two GREATEST friends ever.  My friend Lauren for being one of my biggest supporters of the blog and for being a contributing film critic.  My parents for first getting me my Netflix Subscription, my Auntie Patty for designing my blogs logo, and my friends and co-workers Bobby & Tyler for sitting through “A Serbian Film” with me in just one sitting and helping provide the first spark to get me writing for my blog again.  I have a lot of readers abroad in the UK, Germany, Russia, and Urkaine; I’ve never been to any of those countries and only know one person who lives in any of them, and I would like to thank the readers of those fine nations for helping build up support of the blog.  Thank you all so much for your help and support and I look forward to see what’s in store for this blog another hundred posts from now!

What I've learned after 100 Film Reviews

STATS ABOUT THE SITE (As of June 2013)

·        

THE FILM JUNKIE (Reviews mostly straight-to-DVD Horrors made between 2001-Present)

The Film Junkie in all his awesome glory

o   MOST POPULAR POST: 5 Scariest Moments in Children’s Films that you probably never realized were too scary for kids

o   LEAST POPULAR POST: “Glen or Glenda” & “Lo”

o   FAVORITE POSTS: “Sleeping Beauty”, “The Moth Diaries” (Joint Review), “Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hachet”

o   FAVORITE ACTORS: Malcolm McDowell, Edward Norton, Jason Statham

o   FAVORITE FILMS: “Crank: High Voltage”, “Gangster No. 1”, “Hobo with a Shotgun”

·         MISS- E (Reviews Film Noirs and "Classics")

Our Newest Reviewer Miss-E (Pictured Far Left)

o   MOST POPULAR POST: “Pandora’s Box”

o   LEAST POPULAR POST: “The Third Man”

o   FAVORITE POSTS: “Ninotchka”, “Pandroa’s Box”, “5 Reasons why you should give a damn about Scarlett O’ Hara”

o   FAVORITE ACTORS: Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, James Cagney

o   FAVORITE FILMS: “Gone With the Wind”, “Ninotchka”, “Casablanca”