The Bat Cave

I started using Letterboxd early last year and one of the cool features on the app is that it tracks all sorts of stats about your movie watching. I’m a stat guy, so I love it and when I asked my Facebook friends to guess the 20 actors and 20 directors I’ve seen the most movies from, a ton of people participated and seemed to enjoy it.

2020 Stats

Films watched: 147
Average per month: 12.2
Average per week: 2.8
Most watched (twice): The Queen’s Gambit (limited series count, I guess) and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Theatrical version and Producer’s Cut)
Top 5 genres: Drama, Thriller, Comedy, Horror, Action
2020 movies: 26.5%
Older movies: 73.5%
First time watches: 67.3%
Re-watches: 32.7%

Most Watched Stars

1. Robert Englund (11 films)
2. Heather Langenkamp (6)
3. Harry Northup (6)
4. Robert Shaye (5)
5. Danielle Harris (5)
6. Robert De Niro (4)
7. Clu Gulager (4)
8. Wes Craven (4)
9. John Heard (4)
10. Margot Robbie (4)
11. Harvey Keitel (4)
12. Lisa Wilcox (4)
13. Victor Argo (4)
14. Parry Shen (4)
15. Murray Moston (4)
16. Kelvin Harrison Jr. (4)

Notes: Any guesses which franchises I revisited last year?

Most Watched Directors

1. Martin Scorsese (9 films)
2. Wes Craven (2)
3. John McTiernan (2)
4. Liz Garbus (2)
5. Daniel Farrands (2)
6. Adam Green (2)
7. Renny Harlin (2)
8. Chris Columbus (2)
9. Bong Joon-ho (2)
10. Taika Waititi (2)
11. Paul Verhoeven (2)

Lifetime Most Watched Stars

1. Samuel L. Jackson (40 films) [previously ranked 1]
2. Robert De Niro (33) [5]
3. Brad Pitt (33) [2]
4. John Goodman (32) [8]
5. Tom Hanks (31) [5]
6. Matt Damon (30) [5]
7. Bruce Willis (30) [4]
8. Morgan Freeman (29) [3]
9. Johnny Depp (27) [12]
10. Woody Harrelson (27) [12]
11. Jack Black (27) [12]
12. Jonah Hill (26) [8]
13. Bill Murray (25) [unranked]
14. Arnold Schwarzenegger (25) [20]
15. Ben Affleck (25) [unranked]
16. Tom Cruise (25) [10]
17. Robert Downey Jr. (25) [12]
18. J.K. Simmons (25) [12]
19. Laurence Fishburne (24) [unranked]
20. Jon Favreau (24) [unranked]

Dropped out: Scarlett Johansson (11), Brian Cox (12), Willem Dafoe (12), John Ratzenberger (12)

Notes: I posted my original list back in late March 2020 and since then I’ve gone through and realized I’ve seen some movies I hadn’t marked as watched, so most of the movement here is because of that. De Niro is the only actor on my 2020 list that is also on my all-time list and he moved all the way up to the #2. Also, there could be 15 actors tied with 24 movies watched, but we will never know how long that list extends because it only shows 20 names at a time.

Lifetime Most Watched Directors

1. Steven Spielberg (21 films) [previously ranked 1]
2. Martin Scorsese (19) [2]
3. Tim Burton (14) [3]
4. Ridley Scott (13) [4]
5. Sam Raimi (12) [5]
6. Ron Howard (12) [5]
7. Quentin Tarantino (12) [7]
8. Ivan Reitman (11) [9]
9. David Fincher (11) [9]
10. Christopher Nolan (11) [9]
11. Joel Coen (11) [7]
12. Michael Bay (10) [9]
13. Robert Rodriguez (10) [9]
14. Steven Soderbergh (10) [14]
15. Jon Turteltaub (9) [18]
16. Stephen Herek (9) [Unranked]
17. Wes Craven (9) [18]
18. Peter Farrelly (9) [Unranked]
19. Jay Roach (9) [Unranked]
20. James Mangold (9) [14]
21. Robert Zemeckis [14]
22. Richard Donner [14]

Dropped out: Richard Linklater, Lauren Montgomery, F. Gary Gray, Peter Jackson, Harold Ramis, Brian de Palma, Todd Phillips [all tied at 18th]

Note: No major movement here. Scorsese and Wes Craven were the only filmmakers I purposefully watched multiple films from in 2020.