The great cinematic experiment ends---but goes on

Wow. It's late June already, and I've been busy not seeing lots of movies. In fact, I've been really enjoying not seeing movies lately, after the expiration of the two-year project to see "as many movies as possible that are released in theaters in the U.S."

That last statement in quotes is what this thing evolved into. The two-year timeline is what it became when, as it approached this spring, I could started to get increasingly unenthusiastic about cinema-going, even to movies I wanted to see.

Since mid-May, when I decided I'd had enough and could call it quits (because I'd seen nearly every movie released since mid-May 2008), I suddenly felt as if I had lots more free time and energy. I was no longer a slave to the movie listings.

But we like our chains, don't we? So immediately I began to miss the weekly regimen of cinema strategizing that became combined with trips to the Denver suburbs to catch movies that had left Fort Collins already.

Since then I've seen about a movie a week, on average. All of a sudden, I like going to movies again. I can pick and choose. It is delightful.

Ironically I could pick up again with the "see-everything" plan and hardly have missed a beat, since most of the movies released since mid-May are still in theaters. But I've already decided to pass, for now, on many of them. Just as I left several 2008 and 2009 missed movies unseen, so too will these become future DVD watchings, perhaps, years down the road, when I want to see this time in cinema history with fresh eyes, to verify if my judgments back then (that is, now) were (are) on the mark.

What will I leave unseen for now? I think the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, released in early May, is where I decided to call a halt to this. Technically I could have invoked my "didn't see the others in series" rule, on which I have passed on the Saw sequels recently. But really it was because every time I thought about wasting an afternoon in the Carmike seeing it, I suddenly could think of better uses for the five dollar bill in my wallet.

I've also decided to pass for now on Shrek 4, Robin Hood (probably), Killers, Toy Story 3, among others.

My regrets are that I didn't act quickly enough to see Magruber, which came and went out of all theaters in Colorado/Wyoming within about three weeks. When a movie bombs that bad, something is compelling about seeing it, especially since it spent a week in the two dollar cinema. What a shame. It's not even playing anymore at the Elvis Arvada.

This still leaves me with a raft of movies I've never written up. I think I'll have to shotgun them with one-paragraph reviews if I can.