The Final Posts | Thank You

 

I was originally trying to shoehorn this post into what was an immensely busy and stressful week. Work was compounding and currently feels high-stakes, while other life elements were draining my energy. But the mood is calmer now to close this thing out with a whiskey in hand on a Friday night, a baby asleep long enough for me to write this [hopefully], and a Hans Zimmer movie score playing subtly in the background...

It's time to end Rath's Reviews.

Ending Rath's Reviews has been a difficult decision, but one I'm glad I took the time to think about proactively. I got to choose an ending spot that felt right before life naturally caught up to me and forced me to end it more abruptly. It allowed me to savor and look back. It allowed me to reflect on this hobby that became an integral part of my life for over 13 years. Writing the other "Final Posts" were fun small steps toward closing it out with some ceremony:

• Genre Trending
• Favorite Theater Experiences
• The Final Rath Awards - 2024
• Bests of the Rest
• The Top 250+ Films

Each of these was a therapeutic exercise...ways for me to release all my thoughts of movies (and other media) throughout the years. I hope that you enjoyed them as much as I did making them. 

13 years represents over a third of my life. It approaches 40% actually. There's not many things I've done for 13 years. I've not known my wife for 13 years. I've not even been in the workforce for 13 years yet. Pretty much only school - all the way from Kindergarten to Freshman year of college - would represent 13 years of life. Suffice it to say that Rath's Reviews has been a cornerstone of my life and relationships.

It started when I was studying abroad in Australia as part of my "I Come From the Land Down Under!" blog which I'm linking for perhaps the first time in Rath's Reviews history HERE. Studying abroad, you have a decent amount of time on your hands and we would go the movies every so often during the months I lived down there. I liked the hobby so much that I decided to make Rath's Reviews official on November 23rd, 2011 with my review of Immortals. 

That December, I thought: "It would be fun to create my own awards" and thus, the first Rath Awards were born in 2011. 

For a couple years after that, I would experiment with the blog's design as I battled with Blogger's UI, as well as trying to build my following through Facebook and Blogger reading posts (and eventually Instagram). It was a fun time where I was able to interact with a lot of other awesome movie "critics" and I even got to join some massive Facebook groups such as Movie Magic Mesmerize Me (M4) which sits at just under 15,000 members as of the time of writing this. It's there I was promoted to "admin" (though I was awful at these duties) and was able to make some truly unique and lasting online friendships. 

In May of 2013, I expanded Rath's Reviews for the first time with a Retro Review of...what else?...Inception. By my 100th post in June of that same year, I decided to expand to videogame reviews with The Last of Us. Both of these evolutions were exciting and fulfilling. They often acted as helpful vehicles to remind me that I loved doing this when the crazy theater back-and-forth-and-writing-and-posting pattern of new movie reviews could turn into a chore. 

From there, Rath's Reviews grew around those three pillars. It was a time where life and work felt balanced (mostly) and fitting all of this in could be difficult, but possible. Eventually in June of 2018, I introduced my first "Rath Write-Up" around theories for the Avengers follow-up to Infinity War. Though rare, I had a TON of fun creating these "Write-Ups" throughout the years which included everything from scathing takedowns of Moviepass (still applicable), to outlining why the PS4 was such an epic gaming generation, to ranking the entirety of the Bond franchise, and to ranking Christopher Nolan's films. Eventually, one of these Write-Ups became an announcement in January of 2023 that I'd be shifting to a new form of Rapid Reviews. 

It saddened me to do this, but I knew I wasn't ready to give up Rath's Reviews yet, despite the stress it was causing on my schedule. This shift helped immensely personally, though I think it made readers less interested...perhaps that's just my perception. Either way, reviews were more to the point and I was able to get many hours back throughout the year. That lasted for 2 years through 2024 where I made the decision to end Rath's Reviews near the beginning of 2025 as my family grew.

Looking back on that history, the stats are staggering:

• 792 new films reviewed (with an average score of 7.58 all time)
• 107 Retro reviews
• 111 videogames reviewed
• 16 Rath Write-Ups
• 14 Rath Awards
• Just under 1,000,000 page views
• 1,040 blog posts overall (including this one)

With those numbers in mind, we get to the crux - the title - of this post: THANK YOU! Beyond my enjoyment, the reason this hobby stayed relevant as long as it did was because of those of you who read my reviews. Commented on them. Told me in person how often you used the site to find new movies to watch. Approached me to discuss movies, even if disagreeing with my take. Liked my posts on social media. And especially to those of you who joined me at the movies (you know who you are). 

While I may not be reviewing movies anymore, that certainly doesn't mean I'll be halting my participation in their magic. They will still be a place of entertainment and storytelling and thought-provocation and refuge. One of my greatest future joys in life will be sharing some of my favorite films with Graham, while discovering new ones with him too. 

And who knows? Maybe someday he'll be as thrilled about the cinema as I am, and Rath's Reviews will have a new, different author. 

Until then, thanks for the memories and the interactions. It has been one of the accomplishments I am most proud and fond of in my entire life. 

See you at the movies!