Welcome to the third annual Anti-Criterion Challenge, a companion challenge to The Criterion Challenge 2023.

Like the real deal, this challenge features 52 categories, which you can watch in any order you want and at whatever speed best suits your viewing habits. (So long as you watch all 52 movies in 2023!)

The only rule is that you have to watch movies that are NOT in the Criterion Collection. The intention is to make these all first-time watches (with a pseudo-exception listed below) but that’s up to your discretion.

Link to your list in the comments below and I will add you to the participant's section of the description. When you complete your challenge I'll add a green check! And use the tags “acc2023” and “anti-criterion challenge 2023”! Happy anti-criterioning!

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Categories:

1. 100 Years of Greats! Use a random number generator to pick a year between 1923 and 2023, sort by most popular, and pick a film from the top 10. (You can expand to Top 20 if you’ve seen them all, or roll for a different year!)
2. 1920s
3. 1930s
4. 1940s
5. 1950s
6. 1960s
7. 1970s
8. 1980s
9. 1990s
10. 2000s
11. 2010s
12. 2020s
13. Creature Feature or Creature Documentary
14. Period Horror or Period Horror
15. Water Sports. Just Water Sports.
16. Directed by Hong Sang-Soo
17. Directed by Raj Kapoor
18. Directed by Ida Lupino
19. Directed by an Indigenous director whose work you haven’t seen before
20. A documentary parodied on Documentary Now!
21. Dark Feminist’s Dark Feminism
22. ningsterrr’s 🏳️‍🌈 Love is an act of defiance.
23. Nicole’s Deafness and Sign Language in Film
24. michelle grondine’s dear diary, my teen angst bs now has a body count
25. Katie Mitchell’s The 50 Greatest Films EVER MADE!
26. Frank Ocean’s 100 Favorite Films (List compiled by Jonathan Poritsky)
27. Made in Colombia by a Colombian director
28. Made in Pakistan by a Pakistani director
29. Made in an island nation by a director from that country
30. Adapted from a toy or board game
31. Revisit your childhood- A film that you remember having watched as a child, but haven’t seen since and haven’t logged
32. Directed by a Trans, Nonbinary, or GNC director whose work you haven’t seen before
33. Feature film originally released on YouTube (either in parts or as a whole)
34. TV Show Feature or Special (within the show cannon- no re-casted sequels or reboots)
35. Cinematography by Yu Lik-wai
36. Edited by Gloria Schoemann
37. Costumes designed by Ruth E. Carter
38. Production design by Jeannine Oppewall
39. Adapted from the writing of Haruki Murakami
40. The protagonist is a talking animal
41. The antagonist is a place, thing, or idea (i.e. NOT a person)
42. Pre-Code romantic comedy
43. Mexican Luchador film
44. Marāṭhī as the primary language
45. Latin listed as a spoken language
46. How low can you go? (Rated lower than a 2.5)
47. Can you go down low? (Rated lower than a 2)
48. All the way to the floor? (Rated lower than a 1.5)
49. Cha Cha Real Smooth (A film with a style of dance in the title.)
50. A film that inspired Goncharov (1973)
51. A film inspired by Goncharov (1973)
52. Any film from your watchlist!

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Participants:

Ponders ~ Sean Myers ~ michelle grondine ~ unmorality ~ Fritz Jangalang ~ Catherine ~ Wade McCormick ~ locoinacapulco ~ Kistan ~ amy ~ Niklas Habig ~ sulienyx ~ Zachary Ingle ~ Neeka B ~ noah S. ~ nidoss ~ nanda ~ noodlebug ~ Shane Barlow ~ John Ulysses Anderson ~ Julia ~ Alfie Amaya ~ lyvie ~ superRelax ~ Justin Gunterman ~ ike ~ Salad_eatoat ~ mary pat

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Thanks

Thanks to all the users whose lists have been featured in this year's challenge for their amazing curatorial work!

A thanks to Sprudelheinz, whose list All the Movies (Sorted by movie posters) helped me make the decades section of the template list.

A special thanks to Michelle Grondine, who I've been bouncing ideas off of for this year's categories, and who always makes me want to be the best steward of the medium I can be.

And finally, thanks to all you wonderful Letterboxians, who make this community such a fun place.