I don’t know if I could say things went well enough in September to call it a turnaround, but they have improved. I’m currently only 11 films behind my Challenge target, which is back down to below the level of tardiness I was at in March and April.

Plus, this month alone I made the same number of trips to the cinema as in the whole of 2025, and more than in the whole of 2024! That number of trips was, um, two… but still, it’s a true fact.

#50 The Double (1971) — Failure #9
#51 Cocaine Bear (2023) — 50 Unseen #5
#52 Magnificent Bodyguards 3D (1978) — Genre #5
#53 Coyote vs. Acme (2026) — New Film #9
#54 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) — Series Progression #7
#55 Team America: World Police (2004) — Rewatch #4
#56 Belle de Jour (1967) — Blindspot #5
#57 Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 (2012) — WDYMYHS #5
#58 Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 2 (2012) — WDYMYHS #6
#59 Suspicion (1941) — Blindspot #6
#60 Topper (1937) — Wildcard #9
#61 The Set Up (1963) — Series Progression #8
#62 The Rescuers (1977) — Rewatch #5
#63 The Rescuers Down Under (1990) — Rewatch #6

• I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in September.
• That makes September the best month of 2026 for new films — indeed, for film viewing fullstop — so I’m finally heading in the right direction.
• It’s also my second consecutive month with at least ten first-time watches, which is the first time I’ve managed two such months back-to-back since October/November last year.
• 11 of those first-timers counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with three rewatches.
• The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under win spots by dint of being relatively short. Of course, I did want to rewatch them sometime: they’re Disney canon films I saw in childhood but have no strong memories of; but that’s hardly been a pressing project. Nonetheless, I had them ready to go, and they’re under 80 minutes apiece, so they were great for squeezing in on weeknights, especially when I’m so far behind my target.
• This month’s Blindspot films were (to quote the original poster) “Luis Bunuel’s masterpiece of erotica” Belle de Jour, and the only Alfred Hitchcock movie to earn an acting Oscar, Suspicion.
• This month’s WDYMYHS films were both parts of Indian gangster epic Gangs of Wasseypur. I’ve been planning to watch that double over a single weekend ever since I fell behind on my WDYMYHS goal (which has been for most of the year), so I’m glad to have finally pulled it off.
• From last month’s “failures” I watched films Coyote vs. Acme, The Double, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, plus TV short La cabina.

Favourite Film of the Month
At one time destined to end up in the dustbin of history — literally, as Warner Bros planned to scrap it — the fact we can even see Coyote vs. Acme is something to be applauded. Heck, that’s a big reason why I went to see it at the cinema rather than just waiting for disc or streaming. Fortunately, as well as being a victory for the release and preservation of art, it’s also damn funny.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It seems almost churlish to pick on a ’60s programme-filling B-movie, but the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series are usually moderately solid but The Set Up (or, as it’s technically titled on screen, The Set up) was disappointingly weak. It’s adequately made on the surface, as the series always is, but the plot is predictable and hole-riddled literally to a fault. Or several faults, even.

I don’t really like turning film viewing into a tickbox exercise… although I guess you could argue that’s inherent in the current structure of my Challenge, so maybe I shouldn’t be so snooty. Anyway, with three months of 2026 left, if I want to complete my goal then a typical month needs to contain 12 qualifying films, made up more-or-less as follows:

• 1 New Film
• 2 Rewatches
• 2 Blindspot films
• 2 WDYMYHS films
• 1 Failure
• 1–2 ‘50 Unseen’ films
• 1–2 Genre films
• 1 Series Progression

I was hoping that summary would be neater than having to assign “1 or 2” films to some categories, but my viewing hasn’t been so neat — because it’s not just a tickbox exercise, see! Even the Series Progression number isn’t quite right: I’ve only got two to go (plus one Wildcard, so that’s sort of covered off there, even though it’s a completely different category). Heck, even saying I need to watch 12 films a month isn’t quite accurate, because the average is actually 12.3.

But the overall point is: it’s still a challenging Challenge. Will I get it done? The number of films I watched in September renders the answer to that a definite “maybe”.