UK man decides to watch all movies released in 2012 as he did in 2011

A man, who had decided to watch every single movie released in Britain in 2011 from start to finish with no exceptions, has decided to do the same even this year.

In the course of his year of movie-going, Neil White has seen films from Japan, Iran and Kyrgyzstan, and studied the subtitles on movies made in 50 different languages. He’s watched documentaries, kids’ movies and rom-coms.

“If a film is on for three days at a cinema anywhere in the country, I’ll go and watch it,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

White has driven from his Nottingham home to cinemas in London, Sheffield and Bradford just for the pleasure of knowing that he’s sat in a darkened room watching a strange film with a bunch of strangers.

Most of the time, of course, he’s watching something so obscure that even the professional film reviewers don’t bother with it.

“The average critic probably watches about five or six films a week.

“That’s only about 300 films. And bear in mind that’s his full-time job,” he said.

After he’s watched each film, he writes about it on his website, www.everyfilmin2012.com [1]. His last year’s blog was www.everyfilmin2011.com [2].

:It’s a bloke thing, isn’t it? I’m an absolute list fiend. Blokes do all sorts of things like climb mountains and buy motorbikes when they reach mid-life.

“Well, I don’t like motorbikes and I’m not fit enough to climb a mountain. This just seemed like quite a decent challenge – particularly when I did a bit of digging around and found that nobody else had done it,” White said.

His key ally is a 14.99 pounds monthly pass that lets him watch an unlimited number of movies at his local Cineworld multiplex. He reckons he mops up around 40 per centof his viewings with that one season ticket.

“I probably see about 20 films a month there, so that works out at less than 1 pound a time, doesn’t it?” he said.

The other new releases he watches either at other cinemas, some of them more than 100 miles away, or on DVD. The maximum number of films seen by him in a day is six.

Aside from this mad obsession, he’s rather trim and manages to squeeze in the odd game of golf with his chums and is happily married. He also holds down a respectable and stressful job, as deputy editor of the Derby Telegraph newspaper.

Despite his marathon sessions, White doesn’t consider himself a film aficionado. There are huge gaps in his knowledge, something he’s very happy to admit to.

“When our kids were young, we didn’t see anything. So ask me about cinema in the early 1990s and I know nothing. I have never seen Reservoir Dogs, never seen Pulp Fiction,” he said.

He also admitted that his favourite movie in 2011 was ‘Fighter’, a biopic about a boxer, starring Christian Bale, which he said is 'the greatest sporting film ever made'.

“At the start, a lot of people said I’d either end up evangelical about film or else I’d feel wounded by the process. But it’s definitely the former.

“I wouldn’t be doing this in 2012 if I hadn’t had a really good time in 2011. I am not into masochism,” he added.