Used to be I was a movie watching fanatic.  Couldn’t wait until the weekend to see whatever new features were out there.  I envied the hell out of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel and their (*smirk*) “job” as movie critics…what in the world could be better than having a job that pays you to watch films?

Over time, work, family life, and general life obligations made it increasingly harder for me to find time to get out to the theaters and see the latest films.  Somewhere along the line I also realized the film critic’s job is not one to envy.  Quite the contrary, being a film critic was something I began to find terrifying.  A lesser known film critic noted that in one year s/he (sorry, don’t recall who it was exactly) watched something like five hundred films that year, both in theaters and in the film fest circuit.  That meant that in a year this individual saw approximately 1.4 films each day…and probably wrote about almost all of them.

Much as I love films -and I absolutely love them- I couldn’t bear the rigors of being a film critic.  Of being forced to see not just the films you want to but taking it upon yourself to see as many films as you can.  And if you’re an honest critic, you have to enter the theaters to see a film like Citizen Kane with the same neutrality as Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.  There are commercials for rom-coms that look absolutely dreadful and I have no desire at all to see.  A movie critic dedicated to his/her job willingly goes to see these films while I can ignore them completely.

So the 2014 Oscars came and went last night and CNN provided a great summary of the films, actors, directors, technicians, musicians, etc. etc. who won the prized statuette:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/02/showbiz/oscars-2014-winners-list/index.html

Looking over the list I’m surprised, yet not terribly shocked, by how few of the film winners and nominees I’ve seen over the past year.

For most of the “big” categories, such as Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, etc., I’ve seen a grand total of…one film: Gravity.

You trek down lower and lower on the list and get to the Visual Effects award and there you’ll find the most number of nominated films I’ve seen.  Of the five listed (including the winner, Gravity), I’ve seen four of them.  The one I have yet to see?  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  And therein lies the reason I’d make a terrible movie critic.

As much as I loved the first two films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I found myself really burnt out of all things Hobbity by the time the third movie in the series was released.  When I heard director Peter Jackson was working on The Hobbit, and then that it would be two film…then three!…I thought: No mas.  I didn’t catch the first Hobbit film and likewise ignored the second.  Take a wild guess as to whether I’ll catch the third.

So much for my dreams of being a film critic.