174-194. My Year at the Movies

December 2025:

A few weeks ago, I saw that “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” would receive a limited re-release in 70mm IMAX theaters—some of the biggest and best screens in the world.

Just for shits and giggles—isn’t that how all great adventures start?—I looked up where exactly my two favorite films of 2025 would be shown. I found no screenings an easy drive from my home in Portland, but I found plenty of screenings an easy flight from my home in Portland. So, drunk on adventure and cinephilia, I started comparing flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, and Phoenix.

When the initial buzz wore off, I had what I believed to be a sobering moment of clarity: “I’d love to see those movies again, especially on a screen that’s taller than my four-story apartment building, but it’d be crazy to fly somewhere just for two movies!”

That thought was followed, moments later, by the actual moment of clarity: “I’d love to see those movies again, especially on a screen that’s taller than my four-story apartment building, AND IT’D BE CRAZY TO FLY SOMEWHERE JUST FOR TWO MOVIES!”

When I looked at it that way, it felt as if the decision had been made for me; I booked a trip to Phoenix, bringing a year of relentless moviegoing to its undisputed zenith. A few weeks later, on December 16, 2025, I sat down for the double feature of my dreams. It was the 24th movie theater I’d visited in 2025—a year in which I spent 393 hours watching 193 full-length feature films.

And while this essay begins in front of an Arizona mall’s comically oversized screen, my year-long odyssey actually started months earlier in the darkened auditoriums of Portland’s finest art-house theaters.

Growing up, my parents never imbued me with a love of movies or movie theaters. Mom and Dad complained about high ticket prices and the outrageous cost of concessions often enough to dissuade my sister and I from asking all that often; we badgered them into seeing “Home Alone” and “Rookie of the Year”—both formative childhood experiences—but understood those were the exceptions, never the rule.

In high school, I befriended someone whose favorite hobby was watching seemingly every movie in theaters—often multiple times if possible. If we missed a movie on the big screen, we’d rent the DVD from Blockbuster or find it on sale at Best Buy. In college, a classmate introduced me to art-house fare that didn’t top the box office charts, showed me classics like “Do the Right Thing”, and clued me in on the Criterion Collection. What had started as a way to kill time each weekend had blossomed into a full-grown, honest-to-goodness love of film.

That enthusiasm eventually ebbed and flowed for all the usual “life” reasons. Soon after graduating from college, I was a broke journalist with student loans to repay—and in no position to patronize my neighborhood Regal. A few years later, I dated someone who routinely received free movie tickets from her employer; when that relationship ended, I turned to the theater to get out of my head for a few hours each week. As the years marched on, I’d bypass the theater for Timbers matches and Trail Blazers games, dragon boat races, outdoor adventures across Oregon, and late nights at craft breweries.

Eventually, I started dating another cinephile, and we’d spend a few nights each month at our favorite movie theater in the Portland suburbs.

It was on those date nights that I remembered how much I loved the pageantry of a night at the movies—and how much I missed out on a kid. No matter how many times I saw “Dune: Part Two” as a grown adult, I was never any less enthralled by the neon signs that could pierce the darkest, foggiest Portland nights. I unironically adored the lobby carpet whose clashing colors and blocky designs were almost as loud as the movies themselves. I loved the smell of buttery popcorn and the hiss of Diet Coke being poured into an ice-filled cup. My heart skipped a beat when the lights dimmed and the first trailer began.

When that relationship ended this spring, I did all I could to mourn, process, heal, grieve, and put my life back together. Even so, I knew I needed hobbies to stay sane and fill some of that newfound free time.

You can probably see where this is going.

By late April, I was heading back to the theater—this time, for the first time, largely on my own. I watched “Sinners” with a sold-out crowd at my neighborhood Cinemark. After having seen the trailer for “The Ballad of Wallis Island” a dozen or so times, I caved and caught a mid-afternoon screening at the Laurelhurst Theater. One Saturday, I watched “Secret Mall Apartment”—a documentary about a few friends who build a hidden apartment inside a Rhode Island shopping center—at Cinema 21.

Of course, I wasn’t alone for every last screening. Lewis is one of my best friends and a true cinephile whose movie collection may rival Blockbuster’s in its heyday—and who watches those films in a luxurious home theater. When I told him about all the great movies I was seeing, we shared our respective tastes and interests with each other at the palatial Hollywood Theatre. I talked Lewis into a handful of Oscar hopefuls he wouldn’t have otherwise watched on his own, and he educated me on Hong Kong’s kung-fu film history while waiting in line for some of John Woo’s most influential titles. Occasionally, we met in the middle of our cinematic Venn diagram—like on a sunny July Sunday in which we caught a mind-melting double-feature of “Interstellar” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

I figured my hobby would slow down as the first leaves fell in fall—but the city’s thoughtful programmers kept booking shows that sounded interesting, so I kept buying tickets to shows that sounded interesting.

The Hollywood Theatre routinely screened awards-minded, first-run films on its large-format, 70mm screen; it’s where Lewis, his partner, and I dreamed big with “Marty Supreme” and marveled at the visual spectacle of Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”. The one-screen Cinemagic introduced me to old-school classics like “Halloween” and “Dr. Strangelove.” October felt like a good time to brush up on classic noir, so I caught “Maltese Falcon” and “Chinatown” at the Academy Theater. I spent Halloween night watching “It Was Just an Accident”, a heart-stopping examination of justice and revenge from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, with a roomful of Iranian immigrants at the Living Room Theater in downtown Portland. By the end of 2025, I’d watched movies in 15 theaters around Portland—and 20 across Oregon.

Before I knew it, I started a Letterboxd account to keep track of everything I saw—and set a goal to eventually watch every selection from the American Film Institute’s “100 Years… 100 Movies” list. (I’m up to 24 films as of this writing!) I took a one-night class on cinematography from Portland’s Movie Madness, and I spent my birthday not with friends—but by doing a solo double-feature; “Honey, Don’t!” was a disappointment, but “Splitsville” was a screwball laugh riot.

As the virtual ticket stubs piled up and my love of cinema deepened, I found myself at a strange kind of crossroads: Was I seeing too many movies?

On one hand, I felt bashful about embracing film so openly and excitedly—like maybe I should skip the occasional movie to do some volunteering or develop a second hobby. Maybe I’d taken it a little too far, you know? I wasn’t seeing movies at the expense of friendships or self-care, but when I’d talk about my hobby with friends, I’d temper my excitement, anticipate their judgements, and preface my comments with some variation of, “I know it’s pretty silly, but …”

On the other hand, I don’t actually think that any of it is pretty silly! Seeing—and enjoying—so many movies brought me profound joy in 2025. Several moved me to tears, some told powerful stories, and others inspired me to think differently about life on my way out of the theater. (Many, like “Train Dreams,” did all three.) Truly, a great movie could make me believe that 1+1=3.

Not once did I buy a ticket thinking, “I guess I’ll see this or whatever”; moviegoing was never a way to pass the time. Rather, I entered every auditorium with the same giddy excitement as when I first saw “Home Alone” more than 30 years ago. Even when I couldn’t stand a certain movie, I was never mad that I’d bought a ticket. (Okay, I was a little mad that I sat through “Emilia Pérez”.)

Looking at it one way, that full-throated embrace of film came from a bottomless well of curiosity, a sizable capacity for wonder, and a lifelong love of storytelling in all its forms.

But just as important is the garden in which that particular flower was allowed to bloom. For a city of its size, Portland is steeped in a remarkably rich film culture; one of our theaters celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2025 and another will do the same in 2026, our passionate programmers embrace everything from silent-film classics to obscure kung-fu flicks, and enthusiastic crowds fill auditoriums for limited runs of Netflix films like "Nouvelle Vague" and "Jay Kelly" before they ever hit Netflix.

That only happens because loving film geeks run those theaters, book the films, change the marquee, scan tickets, pop popcorn, and sweep the floors. When those film geeks dim the lights, they open doors to whole new worlds—worlds that invite us to empathize with characters from all walks of life, think critically about the choices they make, laugh uncontrollably at how it all plays out, wonder what happens next, widen our eyes at inventive action scenes or surreal special effects, and sob violently at just the right moments—basically, anytime “On the Nature of Daylight” plays.

If I’d spent the past year in another city with fewer screens, I might have read more books or lost a few more pounds at the gym. But I didn’t spend the past year in another city with fewer screens; I spent it in Portland, where my favorite film geeks make it possible to literally see a different film every night of the year. If you think I’m exaggerating, I saw eight different movies at seven different theaters in just one week this past October.

When I reached the end of that stretch, I didn’t leave the last theater regretting my choices or wishing I’d spent less time in darkened auditoriums. Rather, I wondered what other soul-stirring experiences awaited—which is how I wound up inside a massive movie theater in Tempe, Arizona, earlier this month.

The movies were worth the flight alone, but there was a moment during “Sinners” that will stay with me forever.

Most of “Sinners” was filmed in a format that kept those black bars above and below the movie for most of its runtime. But on occasion, during its most pivotal scenes, the film grew to fill every inch of the four-story screen—as if director Ryan Coogler needed every pocket of real estate to tell his story in his way.

During that scene—if you’ve seen “Sinners,” you know the one—centuries of Black culture came to life in the most bombastic way possible. Music throbbed deep within my chest, the visuals seemed clear and bright enough to touch, and the dizzying size of the screen brought me into the juke joint with Smoke, Stack, Annie, and the rest of the crew. When a fire burned on screen, a bead of sweat rolled down my cheek.

I might not have been in Portland for that moment, but I never would have experienced that moment without Portland.

Once the credits rolled and the lights came up, I took a deep breath—my first in more than two hours—and did what came naturally: I bought another ticket so I could see “Sinners” again.

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