As I celebrated my 30th birthday this weekend, I was curious how many more pieces of media and literature I can consume in a lifetime, considering all goes well.

“Rough math: at 30, you’ve got something like 50 more years, and maybe 45 of them are solid movie-watching years. From there it’s just a rate question.

One a month → about 550
One a week → about 2,300
Two a week → about 4,700
One a day → about 16,400”

I now know two things:

1. I need to hit at least two movies a week to feel okay about myself
2. Claude thinks I’m going to die around 80

Years ago, I was scouring the streaming sites to find the movie called Girl on the Motorcycle, starring Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon. An image of her in a leather jumpsuit was burned into my brain, and it was time to see what it was all about. The completely 60s, overtly sexy film with bad special effects was love at first sight. Prior to clicking play, I noticed the one sentence synopsis and liked that each word was accounted for. I thought of all the copywriting interns, marketing monkeys, public relations wizards, and the in house entertainment people who strung together this series of words in an attempt to sell the hell out of the movie. And I wondered what the screenwriter, who I imagine had no part in this side of production, thought of it. Condensing a two hour story into two sentences is surely no easy task. I’d bet that many movie synopses are left to the agency of AI today.

It felt important to jot down the stories I carry with me. Here are the synopses from some of my favorite films and series.

This list will be continuously updated.

Movie Descriptions

A successful writer and his wife face the meaninglessness of their relationship during a night of wild partying.

The true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers a stroke and has to live with an almost totally paralyzed body; only his left eye isn’t paralyzed.

After her beloved boyfriend’s suicide, a mourning supermarket worker and her best friend hit the road in Scotland, but find that grief is something that you can’t run away from forever.

A frigid young housewife decides to spend her midweek afternoons as a prostitute.

A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.

A violent East London gangster undergoes a transformation of identity while hiding from his former colleagues in the home of a jaded Bohemian rock star and his two girlfriends.

Unhappy with her marriage, a leather-clad woman hops on a motorcycle to meet her lover.

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.

Ordinary people face uncanny and impossible events in standalone tales of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and suspense.

A drama about one of New York’s most prestigious ad agencies at the beginning of the 1960s, focusing on one of the firm’s most mysterious but extremely talented ad executives, Donald Draper.

During a rural summer picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls’ school vanish without a trace. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind.

The loving wife of a blue-collar boss somehow crosses the line from quirkiness to madness.

A French writer’s marriage deteriorates while working on Fritz Lang’s version of The Odyssey, as his wife accuses him of using her to court favor with the film’s brash American producer.

A fashion photographer unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park.

A bounty-hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery.

In the mid-19th century a mute woman is sent to New Zealand along with her young daughter and prized piano for an arranged marriage to a farmer, but is soon lusted after by a farm worker.

A mysterious Hollywood action film stuntman gets in trouble with gangsters when he tries to help his neighbor’s husband rob a pawn shop while serving as his getaway driver.

In a future where humans have temporarily abandoned Earth, a trash-compacting robot falls in love with a flying droid and helps her on her quest to restore hope to mankind.

After a car wreck on Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesiac, she and a Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.

A young and parentless girl adopts a ‘dog’ from the local pound, completely unaware that it’s supposedly a dangerous scientific experiment that’s taken refuge on Earth and is now hiding from its creator and those who see it as a menace.

A private detective hired to expose an adulterer in 1930s Los Angeles finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.

Set in 1950s London, Reynolds Woodcock is a renowned dressmaker whose fastidious life is disrupted by a young, strong-willed woman, Alma, who becomes his muse and lover.

On the way to the biggest race of his life, a hotshot rookie race car gets stranded in a rundown town and learns that winning isn’t everything in life.

A timid young woman starts working for a demanding lawyer and finds a new way to deal with her self-harming urges.

An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband’s aristocratic position in 18th-century England.

A secretary on the run for embezzlement takes refuge at a secluded California motel owned by a repressed man and his overbearing mother.

An insecure ballerina finally gets the role she has always dreamed of, but as the pressures mount her line between reality and illusion starts to blur.

A documentary on how Los Angeles has been used and depicted in the movies.

Jack Skellington, king of Halloween Town, discovers Christmas Town, but his attempts to bring Christmas to his home causes confusion.

An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman see the value of his own life.

A self-indulgent and vain publishing magnate finds his privileged life upended after a vehicular accident with a resentful lover.