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About badblokebob

Aiming to watch at least 100 films in a year. Hence why I called my blog that. http://100films.co.uk

The All-New 100 Films in a Year Challenge

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As I said in my introduction to the blog’s new era, reports of 100 Films in a Year’s death may have been grossly exaggerated — because while 100 Films in a Year as it was is no more, in its place I have…

The All-New 100 Films in a Year Challenge!

Just like its title, this new version is similar but different. My original challenge was wholly straightforward: watch 100 films I’d never seen before every year. The only thing approaching complexity or contention was whether alternate cuts (e.g. director’s cuts) counted as a “film I’d never seen before” or not. But this brand-new version of the challenge… well, it’s going to require some explaining.

Before I do, let’s recap why this came about. As regular readers are likely aware by now, I’ve been thinking about modifying my eponymous goal for a few years, primarily because simply “watching 100 new films in a year” stopped being an actual challenge and became my de facto state. It’s almost a decade since I failed in that goal, and over the last few years my average has been closer to 200 films in a year. So, why not just double the target? Or pick another number? Maybe I would’ve just done that, were it not for a few slip-ups (i.e. months where I fell short of my minimum target) and lifestyle changes in recent years. Obviously a challenge should be challenging, not a guaranteed walk in the park, but “just watch more films” didn’t seem the right way to push myself.

That’s what ultimately led to this new challenge — or, you might argue, array of challenges. You see, rather than just watching any old 100 films, now there are a selection of categories, and films will need to fulfil criteria to qualify. Whereas the old challenge merely motivated me to watch more films, this new version is designed to encourage me to watch certain kinds of films. Plus, with some additional rules for each category, it will spread that viewing throughout the year, rather than seeing me engage in a headlong rush to #100 as quickly as I can (which has happened the past few years).

So, you could argue this is eight separate challenges that together add up to 100 films, rather than a ‘true’ 100 films challenge — whatever that might mean. And you can argue that, if you want — I don’t care. This is a personal project, not some athletic endeavour subject to outside scrutiny, and this is how I’m choosing to do it. Of course, if for some reason you wanted to join in, you’re more than welcome. Feel free to use my rules. Feel free to tweak them to suit your own goals. Feel free to ignore them entirely and come up with your own criteria. Feel free to think “you know what, I really need to play more video games” and set yourself 100 Games in a Year as a challenge. Heck, that’s how this all began: I ‘ripped off’ the Read 50 Books in a Year challenge.

As I said, there are now eight groups making up my 100-film challenge. I’ll outline them in a moment, but first there’s one general rule: a film can only count once. Sounds kinda obvious, I guess, but my categories are not so niche as to be mutually exclusive — I could watch a Blindspot pick from the 1970s on DVD and technically it could count across three categories. But if I did that, well, the final tally wouldn’t actually get to 100, which would be self defeating. When a film fulfils the criteria for multiple groups (as some surely will, especially early on), it’s up to me to allocate which category it counts towards — although there are some sub-rules that will help dictate that. (My challenge is watching films, but yours may be trying to understand why I make these things so unnecessarily complicated…)

Without further ado, the categories are…

New Films

Well, that immediately requires clarification, doesn’t it? Because in the old challenge all 100 films were “new”, as in “new to me”. Now, however, I mean “new” as in “new (to the UK)”. And the UK clarification is needed because we so often get foreign films ‘late’, especially awards-y films that play US dates the year before but aren’t released here until January, February, March… even as late as June or July sometimes. So, this category is 12 films that were released in the UK for the first time during 2022. To some people that might seem like no challenge whatsoever — and it’s not that much of a challenge to me, to be honest, because I normally far exceed it. But, on the whole, my viewing skews older (when there’s the whole of film history to explore, why just watch brand-new stuff?), so I feel it’s a worthwhile category to include. Plus, part of the point of this is to spread the challenge throughout the year. To ensure that, this category is limited to one qualifying film per month — so even if I watched two (or more) new films in a single month, only the first would count towards the challenge. However, it can rollover if necessary — for example, if I watched no new films in January, I could count two in February. That might seem to undermine the concept of spreading these throughout the year, but, without it, it would be possible for me to fail the entire year on January 31st, which would suck.

Rewatches

In arguably the biggest change of all, rewatches now count… but only 12 of them. Mirroring the “new films” requirement, this is also limited to one per month. I’m not intending to run my Rewatchathon anymore, primarily because of this, but I’d like to think I’ll still rewatch more than 12 films a year. We’ll see — maybe I’ll end up bringing it back.

Blindspot

This continues as-is: 12 specific films, chosen ‘scientifically’ from best-of lists and the like, designed to be paced one per month. Because they’re specific films, if I did decide to get ahead of myself then they could count ‘early’, but I don’t think I’ve ever done that and I don’t intend to start now. As usual, there’ll be a dedicated post sometime soon with my 12 picks.

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

After a couple of years ‘off’ (or, if you prefer, combined with Blindspot, because they’re essentially the same thing), WDYMYHS is back. The change is, whereas Blindspot is made up of “great movies” (according to other people), WDYMYHS will revolve around a theme of some kind. This year that link will be my birth year: 12 specific films from 1986 that I’m surprised I haven’t seen. Again, my 12 picks will be named in a dedicated post soon.

Decades

At least one film from every decade that feature films have existed, i.e. since the 1910s. That makes it another group of 12 — what are the odds?! It’s almost like I’m doing this deliberately… I can watch as many of these as I like within any given month, so we’ll see how long it takes me to tick them all off — recent decades will come quickly and easily, but some of the older ones might require a specific effort.

DVDs

I’ve spent years lamenting the fact that I don’t watch enough of my DVDs. Thanks to a couple of decades spent collecting, I own over 1,000 of the things, many never played, and they don’t often make it into my viewing nowadays, largely because they’re not HD. (I suspect that, statistically, I’m more likely to spend money upgrading a DVD to Blu-ray than I am to actually watch a DVD.) So, to force me to dig into that particular back catalogue, I’m making it a goal to watch at least one per month, as per the “new films” rules. And no ‘cheating’: if I don’t want to watch something from my DVD copy (because I want to get it in HD, or even UHD), that’s absolutely fine… but I can’t get it in HD and then still count that towards the DVD goal. I have to actually watch the DVD for it to count.

Genre

Like WDYMYHS, here I’m going to pick a specific genre or movement (preferably one that’s either highly specific or that I’m less au fait with, not something broad or well-worn like, say, “action”) and aim for at least one per month, i.e. 12 more films. However, this is a free-for-all: whereas WDYMYHS is 12 pre-chosen titles, this can be anything that falls within the genre; and I won’t limit myself to counting just one per month. Maybe I’ll have a marathon and complete it in one go! Maybe I’ll still spread it thin! At least having the choice provides an opportunity for some variety, right? This year’s genre will be that old favourite, film noir. I’ve had noir ‘viewing projects’ before, but there are plenty of key texts that still elude me, so maybe 2022 will right that. Or maybe I’ll just end up getting all 12 from Indicator’s 24-film Columbia Noir series. Frankly, either is good by me.

Series Progression

That’s perhaps the vaguest title of all, but let me explain (that’s the whole point of this post, after all). I have multiple different film series on the go at any one time — so many that, a couple of years ago, I started keeping a list, the Letterboxd version of which is here. Some of those series I continue to merrily work my way through; some I half-forget I have underway. So, the point of this category is to compel me to continue, across another 12 films. I could watch 12 from one series; I could watch one each from 12 different series. I could marathon them all across a weekend; I could watch them one a month throughout the year. Whatever — just so long as I keep going with series I’ve already started. (If I start a new series, either by accident or choice, the first film can’t count, but any future films can.)

I know I said there were eight categories, but if you’ve been doing the maths so far you’ll have realised we’re only at 96 films. So there must be a ninth category, right? Well, yes and no. Let me introduce you to…

Wildcards

The final four films are ‘wildcards’ that I can attach to any of the eight categories. They still have a couple of rules, though. Firstly, wildcards can only be used once the category’s own requirements are met. What that means is, I could use a wildcard to (for example) count a second new film in January, but I couldn’t use one for a film noir until I’ve watched 12 film noirs. Lastly, only one wildcard per category — so I couldn’t (for example) watch five new films in January and count them all. Make sense? If not, let me remind you that you don’t really need to worry about any of this — it’s only me who has to work it out.

I’ll be tracking my progress with the Challenge in my monthly review posts, and on a dedicated page too.

Also, while it’s no longer the ‘official’ goal of the blog, I suspect I’ll end up still counting my overall viewing, and likely post year-end stats and whatnot about it next January. I’ve been doing that count for almost my entire adult life, so it’s a well-established habit at this point. Not to mention that, actually, I enjoy it — but now primarily for my own interest, rather than as the raison d’être of this blog.

A new era begins…

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100 Films in a Year is dead.
Long live 100Films.co.uk

Welcome to my new-look blog!

Don’t worry, you’re going to find a lot of it familiar — I haven’t changed the underlying template, and all the old posts are still there, looking like they always did. Well, almost like they always did: I’ve chosen a new font for headings, so that’ll change. But, primarily, it’s a new name and a new logo, which is showcased on the front page in dozens of randomly-changing header images. (The old header and logo endured for seven years, and that was only a tweak & rearrange of the one I’d had for several years before that, so I think a redesign was about due anyway.) There are 20 new banners in total — can you catch ’em all?

More substantively, along with the revised aesthetics comes an adjusted focus.

As regular readers will know, I’ve been pondering “what to do about the blog” for a few years now, but the need for change was really brought to a head in 2021, when I spent most of the year only posting my monthly summaries. There were a couple of things going on that needed addressing. One: what to do about reviews? I wasn’t posting them regularly even before they ground to a total halt, and my ever-increasing backlog of unreviewed films — allowed to mount up over the past couple of years — numbers almost 500. Two: what to do about my eponymous challenge? Reaching 100 films every year has become a relative doddle: the last time I fell short was almost a decade ago, and in four of the last seven years I’ve reached 200 films in a year. Was that unchallenging challenge really still a fitting thing to base my blog around?

The easiest answer to the latter: move the goalposts. But to what? Another easy answer: stop doing it. But I didn’t want to give up blogging entirely. So, a new blog? Nah: a blog is a ‘brand’ (for want of a better word), and I wasn’t in the mood to start from scratch.

Ultimately, the inspiration for change came from the easiest of places. I’ve always referred to this place as 100 Films for short, including using that handle on Twitter and registering the domain 100films.co.uk — previously that just referred you on to my WordPress URL, but last week I moved the site over to it properly. (All the old WordPress URLs should still work, which is handy because otherwise I’d have a lot of link-fixing to do…) So, I could ditch “in a Year” and just go with the shorter title. But why that name? Oh, who needs a why? Though, to justify it at least somewhat, I intend to start a new occasional series about various 100-film lists — you know, like the Sight & Sound poll, or all those AFI ones. Plus, the “coming soon” page is going, to be replaced by an ever-changing list of the last 100 films I watched.

Which brings us back round to the other issue: reviews, and/or what other kinds of posts will appear. In short, my plan is to go back to the blog’s roots, with roundup posts every week or couple of weeks that review what I’ve watched in short capsule-like form. If I have more to say about a film, and the time to write it, I’ll still post separate full-length reviews. How often that will happen, only time will tell. (This “review as I go” approach is part of why the “coming soon” page is being retired.)

There are a few other ideas I have up my sleeve, but I don’t want to overwhelm with too much forward planning right now. Over the coming days, weeks, and months, the new and revised features of this fresh era will become apparent. Plus, some changes have had to wait until the ‘new’ site was live, so only now am I going to begin rethinking the menus, for example. And, to be honest, I’m still unsure of some of the details myself, so there may be aspects of the ‘old site’ that hang around for a bit before being discarded, or change and develop over time. We’ll just see how things go.

Also, there’s the small matter of wrapping up the last year of the ‘old’ blog, because I still have to post the statistics and my best (and worst) films of 2021. All that will be coming — complete with familiar graphics and imagery — over the next few days (as usual, a specific timeframe is hard to nail down. I haven’t even chosen a lot of it yet, never mind written it).

But first, later today I’ll explain how reports of 100 Films in a Year’s death may have been grossly exaggerated…

My Most-Read Posts of 2021

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2021 was a relatively quiet year for me, review-wise — I made just 55 posts, vs. over 120 in each of 2019 and 2020, and over 200 in 2018 and 2017. Nonetheless, that’s still enough from which to draw a Top 5, right?

Normally I do a “TV Top 5” and “Film Top 5”, but, as I only posted three TV columns last year, that seems a little pointless. Instead, here’s an overall Top 8 — because of course all the TV posts made the very top of the list, and this means you can deduce the film-only Top 5 if you want to.

Also, the graph in the header image was made with accurate figures, if you want an idea of the posts’ success relative to one another. (A less balloon-obscured version is available here. If you think the two on the left, 7th and 8th, look the same height, they’re not — but they are very, very close: the difference between them has come out as just 1 pixel.)

My Top 8 Most-Viewed New Posts in 2021

8) Psycho Goreman
One of just four reviews I posted in 2021 of new films I watched in 2021. Two of the other three are also in this top eight, while the fourth (Muse: Simulation Theory) came 12th overall. Also worth mentioning (as much as any of this is): Psycho Goreman beat the post in 9th place by just one hit. That was the 100-Week Roundup XXII, for what it’s worth.

7) The Man Who Reviewed Some Films
A four-film compilation, including The Man Who Knew Infinity, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Man Who Sleeps. Was one of those responsible for its popularity? Or is it a unique combo of four fairly-popular films? Who can say. Maybe people were just intrigued by the title.

6) Nomadland
The 2020 Oscar Best Picture winner finally made it to a wide UK release in April 2021, occasioning my review. The mix of awards season success and “new release” status likely explains its success here.

5) The Past Christmas on TV
The 2020 edition of my Christmas TV overview, including Cinderella: A Comic Relief Pantomime for Christmas, Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks, Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse; a roundup of comedy specials, including Ghosts, The Goes Wrong Show, Not Going Out, and Upstart Crow; plus brief words on Blankety Blank and Have I Got 30 Years for You.

4) No Time to Die
A new James Bond film was too significant to miss — especially one as long-awaited as this — and so it broke my (inadvertent) long run of not posting reviews, and proved unsurprisingly popular with readers, too.

3) Death to 2020
Now, normally this wouldn’t count, because I posted it last year. But I posted it at 11pm on December 31st, and in that first hour it only gained 11 hits, so — under those unique circumstances — it seemed unfair to leave it out entirely. More than unfair, it would be inaccurate: a highly successful post, that could’ve been missed off both the 2020 and 2021 lists due to a technicality of posting time. Anyway, I expect it did well because reviews of Netflix content often do… and because it’s probably more a TV special than a true film, and, as we know, TV reviews usually do best of all. To wit:

2) The Past Month on TV #67
including Dial M for Middlesbrough, It’s a Sin, more of The Twilight Zone, WandaVision episodes 5–8, and A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote. I expect the combo of It’s a Sin (one of the best-received TV series of the year) and WandaVision (the much discussed debut Marvel Disney+ series) is responsible for this.

1) The Past Month on TV #66
including Cobra Kai season 2, Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema series 3, Staged series 2, more of The Twilight Zone, and WandaVision episodes 1–4. All very popular shows, so it figures they would add up to the #1 spot.

2021: The Full List

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As revealed in my December review, 2021 finished on a tally of 207 new films — my third highest ever. They’re all listed below, in alphabetical order, along with the small handfuls of titles I admitted to my “Guide To” series and the short films I watched. After last year’s “frankly extraordinary” high of 65, this year I only watched four shorts. Maybe I should set a shorts-watching target too…

Normally this post also serves to be a big pile of links to reviews I’ve posted in the past year. But those were thin on the ground in 2021: in the list of 207 new films, just four have a review to link to. Oh dear. But you can always (re-)enjoy my monthly reviews (filled with Fun Stuff like the Arbies), and the TV reviews I posted… before that column came up short too.

Well, hopefully things will be different soon…


  • As It Happened — 2021’s monthly updates, with a chronological list of my viewing.
  • The List — an alphabetical list of every new film I watched in 2021.
  • Television — an alphabetical list of the TV programmes I reviewed in 2021.
  • Next Time — more of 2021 still to come.

Below is a graphical representation of my 2021 viewing, month by month. Each of the images links to the relevant monthly review, which contain a chronological list of everything I watched this year. There’s also other exciting stuff in there, like my monthly Arbie awards and what I watched in my Rewatchathon.

And now, the main event…


An alphabetical list of all the films I watched for the first time in 2021, followed by other films I’ve covered (or intended to cover) this year — primarily, a couple of instalments in film series that I’ve given the “Guide To” treatment, and a trickle of short films. As I mentioned in my introduction, normally many of these titles would link to the appropriate review, but this year you’ll find just four links in the main list. Coincidentally, they’re all really close together.

  • 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
  • 23 Walks (2020)
  • 3 Idiots (2009)
  • The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), aka Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed
  • The Aeronauts (2019)
  • Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), aka Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes
  • An American Pickle (2020)
  • Appointment with Death (1988)
  • Appointment with Murder (1948)
  • The Awful Truth (1937)
  • Baby Done (2020)
  • Bachelor Knight (1947), aka The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
  • Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)
  • Beginners (2010)
  • The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
  • Bill (2015)
  • Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
  • The Birth of a Nation (1915)
  • The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
  • Black Widow [3D] (2021)
  • Blithe Spirit (2020)
  • Boss Level (2021)
  • The Broadway Melody (1929)
  • A Brief History of Time Travel (2018)
  • Bright Young Things (2003)
  • The ’Burbs (1989)
  • The Burning Buddha Man (2013), aka Moeru butsuzô ningen
  • A Boy Called Christmas (2021)
  • Calling Dr. Death (1943)
  • Capernaum (2018), aka Capharnaüm
  • Captain Phillips (2013)
  • Carefree (1938)
  • Carol (2015)
  • The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)
  • Cats (2019)
  • A Christmas Story (1983)
  • Cinema Paradiso (1988), aka Nuovo Cinema Paradiso
  • The Coldest Game (2019)
  • Coming to America (1988)
  • Con Air (1997)
  • Crank (2006)
  • Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001)
  • The Current War (2017)
  • A Damsel in Distress (1937)
  • The Danish Girl (2015)
  • Daughters of Darkness (1971), aka Les lèvres rouges
  • David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020)
  • David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)
  • Dead Man’s Eyes (1944)
  • Dead Man’s Folly (1986)
  • Defending Your Life (1991)
  • Detective Conan: The Phantom of Baker Street (2002), aka Meitantei Conan: Bekâ Sutorîto no bôrei
  • The Dig (2021)
  • La Dolce Vita (1960)
  • Dreamcatcher (2003)
  • Drop Zone (1994)
  • Dumb and Dumber (1994)
  • Dune: Part One (2021), aka Dune
  • Ernest & Celestine (2012), aka Ernest et Célestine
  • Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (2021), aka Shin Evangelion Gekijôban
  • Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2021)
  • Falling for Figaro (2020)
  • The Father (2020)
  • Festen (1998), aka The Celebration
  • The Final Countdown (1980)
  • The Fly (1986)
  • Frankenstein (1931)
  • The Frighteners: Director’s Cut (1996)
  • From Here to Eternity (1953)
  • The Frozen Ghost (1945)
  • Futureworld (1976)
  • Gambit (2012)
  • Godzilla Raids Again (1955), aka Gojira no gyakushû
  • Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
  • Going in Style (2017)
  • Going My Way (1944)
  • Good Boys (2019)
  • The Green Knight (2021)
  • Gremlins (1984)
  • The Guilty (2018), aka Den skyldige
  • La Haine (1995)
  • Happiest Season (2020)
  • Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
  • High Life (2018)
  • Holiday Affair (1949)
  • Home Sweet Home Alone (2021)
  • Hotel Reserve (1944)
  • Hotel Transylvania [3D] (2012)
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978)
  • The House of Fear (1939)
  • I Care a Lot (2020)
  • The Invisible Man (1933)
  • Isn’t It Romantic (2019)
  • Jerry Maguire (1996)
  • Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019)
  • Jingle All the Way (1996)
  • Joint Security Area (2000), aka Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok JSA
  • Jungle Cruise (2021)
  • The Kid Detective (2020)
  • Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
  • The King (2019)
  • King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), aka Kingu Kongu tai Gojira
  • King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)
  • The Last of Sheila (1973)
  • Last Train to Christmas (2021)
  • The Last Warning (1928)
  • The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
  • A Little Chaos (2014)
  • Love Affair (1939)
  • Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
  • The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
  • Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019)
  • Midnight in Paris (2011)
  • Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo (2017)
  • The Money Pit (1986)
  • Mortal Kombat (1995)
  • The Mummy (1932)
  • Murder by Decree (1979)
  • Murder in Three Acts (1986)
  • Muse: Simulation Theory (2020)
  • My Fair Lady (1964)
  • My Man Godfrey (1936)
  • The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (2012)
  • News of the World (2020)
  • No Time to Die (2021)
  • Nobody (2021)
  • Nomadland (2020)
  • Official Secrets (2019)
  • One Night in Miami… (2020)
  • Page Eight (2011)
  • Pather Panchali (1955)
  • Pillow of Death (1945)
  • The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (1975), aka Flåklypa Grand Prix
  • Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
  • Primary Colors (1998)
  • The Prom (2020)
  • Psycho Goreman (2020)
  • The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)
  • Radioactive (2019)
  • Raffles (1939)
  • Rain Man (1988)
  • Red Notice (2021)
  • Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
  • Rodan (1956), aka Sora no daikaijû Radon
  • Royal Wedding (1951), aka Wedding Bells
  • Salting the Battlefield (2014)
  • Sansho Dayu (1954), aka Sansho the Bailiff
  • Sátántangó (1994)
  • Search for Danger (1949)
  • The Secret Garden (2020)
  • Seven Chances (1925)
  • Shakespeare in Love (1998)
  • A Single Man (2009)
  • Six Minutes to Midnight (2020)
  • Sneakers (1992)
  • The Social Dilemma (2020)
  • The Son of Kong (1933)
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
  • Space Station [3D] (2002)
  • Spielberg (2017)
  • Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
  • Spontaneous (2020)
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
  • Stowaway (2021)
  • Strange Confession (1945)
  • Strictly Ballroom (1992)
  • Stuart Little (1999)
  • A Study in Scarlet (1933)
  • Superman and the Mole-Men (1951)
  • Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
  • Taken 2 (2012)
  • The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
  • Tangerines (2013), aka Mandariinid
  • Tea with Mussolini (1999)
  • Terje Vigen (1917), aka A Man There Was
  • Testament of Youth (2014)
  • Thirteen at Dinner (1985)
  • Three Identical Strangers (2018)
  • Time After Time (1979)
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)
  • Tokyo Godfathers (2003), aka Tôkyô goddofâzâzu
  • Tower Heist (2011)
  • Truly Madly Deeply (1990)
  • Turks & Caicos (2014)
  • Twister (1996)
  • Under Siege (1992)
  • Vampyr (1932)
  • Vivacious Lady (1938)
  • Warning from Space (1956)
  • We Bought a Zoo (2011)
  • Weird Woman (1944)
  • When the Wind Blows (1986)
  • The White Tiger (2021)
  • Who? (1974)
  • Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
  • Wild Target (2010)
  • Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
  • Wolf Warrior (2015), aka Zhan lang
  • WolfWalkers (2020)
  • Wuthering Heights (1939)
  • Xchange (2001)
  • You Only Live Once (1937)
  • Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
  • Zatoichi’s Conspiracy (1973), aka Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Kasama no chimatsuri
  • Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), aka Shu Shan – Xin Shu shan jian ke
The 100 Films Guide To…
Shorts
  • Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
  • Scenes with Beans (1976), aka Babfilm
  • Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900)
  • What! No Spinach? (1926)
10 Things I Hate About You

Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Black Widow

The Broadway Melody

Cats

Con Air

Daughters of Darkness

Drop Zone

Evangelion: 3.0+1.01

Frankenstein

Godzilla Raids Again

La Haine

Hotel Transylvania in 3D

Jerry Maguire

The Last of Sheila

Make Way for Tomorrow

Mortal Kombat

No Time to Die

Flåklypa Grand Prix

Rain Man

Sátántangó

Seven Chances

Space Station

Strange Confession

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Time After Time

Under Siege

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Zack Snyder’s Justice League

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Meshes of the Afternoon

.

My monthly TV columns came to an accidental halt in February (crikey, I hadn’t realised it was so long ago), but that means I still got in reviews of the following…


Things are in a slightly different order this year, for one reason or another. Normally next up would be the statistics, but I think before that it’ll be my most-read posts of 2021.

It’s the Final Countdown: The Concluding Monthly Review of December 2021

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As mentioned last month, this post represents the end of 100 Films in a Year.

Er, except for all the end-of-year wrap-ups I need to do (did you think I’d leave you without an annual stats post? Perish the thought!)

But after that… the end? Really? Or is it…

Change, my dear. And it seems, not a moment too soon.

But let’s put that aside for, ooh, a couple of days, and instead look back at the final month of 2021…


#188 Home Sweet Home Alone (2021)
#189 Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
#190 Falling for Figaro (2020)
#191 Gremlins (1984)
#192 Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)
#193 Pather Panchali (1955)
#194 Black Widow 3D (2021)
#195 Tokyo Godfathers (2003), aka Tôkyô goddofâzâzu
#196 Happiest Season (2020)
#197 Zatoichi’s Conspiracy (1973), aka Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Kasama no chimatsuri
#198 Dreamcatcher (2003)
#199 Jingle All the Way (1996)
#200 The Final Countdown (1980)
#201 A Christmas Story (1983)
#202 The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
#203 A Boy Called Christmas (2021)
#204 Last Train to Christmas (2021)
#205 The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
#206 A Study in Scarlet (1933)
#207 23 Walks (2020)
Anna and the Apocalypse

Happiest Season

The Matrix Resurrections

.


  • I watched 20 feature films I’d never seen before in December.
  • And that’s the first 20-film December — the final month to hit that milestone! It’s funny it’s worked out that way, because there was a 19-film December all the way back in 2008, at which time it was the second highest ever month, a title it held for seven years, and yet it’s taken three years beyond every other month (the last to crack 20 for the first time was November in 2018). Well, I got there just in time.
  • In terms of monthly averages, it surpasses the lot: December’s (previously 11.1, now 11.7), the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 16.4, now 17.25), and the average for 2021 (previously 17.0, now finalised at 17.25).
  • As for the year, ending on #207 makes 2021 my fourth year ever to pass 200 films; and, as I did it in 2020 too, that’s the first time I’ve done it two years in a row.
  • Overall, it’s my third highest year ever. (I would’ve needed to make it to #261 for second place.)
  • See the Arbies for more on specific films, including #200 itself.
  • With Zatoichi’s Conspiracy, I’ve finally completed Criterion’s box set of the series. It’s taken longer than expected: I’ve gone from watching one Zatoichi a month (at my height of getting through them in 2018 and ’19) to more like one per year. Although that’s the end of the original film series, I’ve still got a few stragglers to go (a revival movie and three continuations/reboots). Hopefully they won’t take me until 2025…
  • I had two Blindspot films to watch this month to complete my challenge for 2021. I watched one, Satyajit Ray’s enduringly acclaimed depiction of a rural Indian childhood, Pather Panchali. The other was Come and See. I did plan to watch it — I set aside an evening and everything — but then… I just didn’t feel like it. I’ve been in a generally Christmassy mood this December, and it didn’t fit with that to spend two-and-a-half hours watching a film whose own blurb advertises it as “a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanising horrors of war.” I mean, what could sound less festive than “a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty”? So, yeah, the second greatest film ever made can wait ’til another day.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Black Widow, A Boy Called Christmas, and Home Sweet Home Alone.



The 79th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
It’s proven divisive with critics and audiences alike, but I’m firmly in the camp that loved The Matrix Resurrections. Expect it to feature highly on my forthcoming “best of year” list.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It was an enjoyable month overall (there’s a couple of likely 5s in the list), but duds crept in nonetheless, especially when trying to pack in the Christmas films. Perhaps the most disappointing was Home Sweet Home Alone. Some people would say predictably so, but I was open to the prospect of a remake. Unfortunately, this particular one fudges the fundamental conceit. Ho hum.

Most Christmassy Film of the Month
I don’t normally watch many Christmas films over the festive period. It’s not that I’m averse to them (far from it), I just don’t make a particular effort — and, as December is a time when I often am making a particular effort to round out some goal or other, other things can fall by the wayside. Well, this year I did put some effort into it, and — while I didn’t come close to completing the shortlist of 30 specific Christmas films I drew up — I did watch 10 festive films, which is a lot more than the two or three I usually manage. Of those, I reckon the most Christmassy of all was Happiest Season. I mean, what could be more Christmassy than a mix of festivities and familial awkwardness?

Most “I Only Chose to Watch It Because of the Title” Film of the Month
Regular readers will know I like to choose films that are somehow significant for my milestone numbers. My first-ever #100 was Citizen Kane, for example, and others have included Lawrence of Arabia, The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Stalker, Sholay, and, this year, Cinema Paradiso. So for 2021’s #200, I had to pick something befitting my last-ever (sort of) milestone movie. While not a particularly noteworthy film in itself, The Final Countdown seemed a thoroughly apt title.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
With just two new posts in December (and one of those only a brief Christmas message), let’s once again ignore their fate and see which was the most popular post overall. And this month it was… a tie! And a seasonal one at that, because the joint victors were The Past Christmas on TV and The Past Christmas on TV! Er, that’s the 2018 and 2019 editions, respectively. You might think the 2020 one was close behind… but you’d be wrong: for whatever reason, while those two topped the charts, last year’s Christmas TV post was way down at 25th. Not sure what’s going on there, but my referrals from IMDb suggest the elder posts’ victories may be due to a new series of Vienna Blood (I reviewed the first in the 2019 post) and Christmassy one-off Click & Collect, which I noticed popped up on Netflix this month (and I mentioned in the 2018 column).


To make my goal of 50 rewatches this year, I would’ve had to (re)watch 18 films this month. Considering my average for 2021 to the end of November was 2.9 rewatches a month, that didn’t seem particularly likely…

#33 Elf (2003)

Yeah, of course it didn’t happen. I didn’t even reach that average again (it ends up at 2.75 rewatches per month).

As for Elf, I enjoyed it more on this, my second viewing, when I was free from any hope of, say, well-executed character arcs (one of the main things I criticised it for in my above-linked review) and so just enjoyed the holiday hijinks.


Despite setting a new December record, my failures were as multitudinous as ever. My most noteworthy oversight from the big screen has to be Spider-Man: No Way Home, but there was also Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story and prequel The King’s Man, plus films with smaller releases that have nonetheless been much-discussed in cinephile circles, like C’mon C’mon, Lamb, and Titane. Also, Clifford the Big Red Dog. Hm.

There were similar big guns on the streamers, including forthcoming awards season contenders The Power of the Dog and The Lost Daughter on Netflix, plus other originals like Don’t Look Up, The Unforgivable, and Death to 2021 — though, after not much enjoying Death to 2020, I think I’ll skip its Charlie Brooker-less sequel. Over on Prime Video, there was a belated UK bow for Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man, plus Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos and sci-fi Encounter. And talking of Charlie Brooker and sci-fi, Apple TV+ offered the Black Mirror-esque Swan Song.

Sky Cinema’s originals were mostly Christmassy: as well as the ones I watched, they debuted the likes of 8-Bit Christmas and A Christmas Number One. Also this month, they’ve had Lin-Manuel Miranda musical In the Heights, plus a couple of things that I (annoyingly) bought on disc but haven’t watched yet, like Another Round and The Suicide Squad. Of course, Netflix and Amazon threw up a bunch of back catalogue stuff too, but, looking back over my long-lists, little jumps out at me as being worthy of particular note. That said, if you’ve not seen it, Netflix now has my #1 film of 2020, Never Rarely Sometimes Always. And, as well as meaning to catch Spielberg’s remake, I’d also like to make time to rewatch the original West Side Story, which is streaming on both Prime and iPlayer now.

Once again taking advantage of not having to worry about licensing windows, Disney+ offered up early streaming debuts for their latest ‘animated classic’, Encanto, plus Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, which seemed a bit gruelling for Christmastime viewing. The latter is getting a belated, limited release on 4K Blu-ray in the UK at the end of January, which I’ve preordered, but I should probably find the time to watch it on D+ first — if I don’t like it, it’ll save me a few bob.

And talking of things I’ve bought, that certainly didn’t slow down in December. As is always the case at this time of year, there were multiple big box sets, like folk horror collection All the Haunts Be Ours (encompassing a whopping 22 feature films and 14 shorts), or Arrow’s kung fu collection, Shawscope: Volume One (another 12 features. Vol.2 is due in June), or Indicator’s Mae West box set (another 11 films, plus a TV movie biopic), or the limited edition of Cartoon Saloon’s Irish Folklore Trilogy (including the only disc release ever planned for Apple TV+ exclusive Wolfwalkers), or The Film Detective’s Sherlock Holmes Vault Collection (I actually watched one of those! See #206).

Also in a ludicrously oversized box was StudioCanal’s 4K release of Mulholland Drive. Considering said box was (a) a weird size and (b) mostly full of air, I think there must’ve been some crossed wires in manufacturing. Similarly joining my 4K rewatch pile were Breathless, My Fair Lady, No Time to Die (a popular Christmas present, based on it becoming a Twitter trending topic on the 25th), Criterion’s edition of Citizen Kane (with dodgy 1080p disc), and Vinegar Syndrome’s 4K/3D edition of Flesh for Frankenstein (with dodgy 4K disc). Also Millennium Actress, part of a frankly excessive haul I ordered from All the Anime’s Christmas sale. Said indulgence also included regular Blu-rays of Birthday Wonderland, The Dragon Dentist, Jin-Roh, Mind Game, Night is Short, Walk on Girl, Promare, and Ride Your Wave. Not heard of some of those? Me either, to be honest — I got one of their mystery boxes. Still, it all looks interesting.

That’s not even all (I could name another dozen things I bought), but, honestly, it’s more than enough. I’ve once again tried to keep this section brief and to the point, and it’s once again about as long as the entire rest of the monthly review combined. Is it worth giving it its own post each month in 2022? Something to consider…


…but the moment has been prepared for.

Merry Christmas from 100 Films in a Year

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It’s a little after midnight on 25th December here in the UK, so time for 100 Films in a Year to wish you a Merry Christmas — and if it can’t be merry, I hope it can be safe.

The New Year fast approaches too, and, with it, big changes round these parts. But I’ll leave such talk for another day. Suffice to say, this is — officially speaking — 100 Films in a Year’s last Christmas. I’ve been stuffing it with more Christmas films than I usually watch, but, ironically, not Last Christmas. Maybe tomorrow. (Maybe not, too.)

The Penultimate Monthly Review of November 2021

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Another month of 2021 falls short. Oh dear. But I’m getting ahead of myself — you’ll read all about that in the viewing and viewing notes in just a moment.

But to get really ahead of myself — at the risk of overshadowing everything else in this update — there’s a bit of, uh, news at the end…


#180 Royal Wedding (1951), aka Wedding Bells
#181 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
#182 Nobody (2021)
#183 Jungle Cruise (2021)
#184 La Haine (1995)
#185 Red Notice (2021)
#186 The Last of Sheila (1973)
#187 The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
Nobody
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  • I watched 8 feature films I’d never seen before in November.
  • That makes it the weakest month of 2021 so far, and the second in a row where I’ve fallen short of my ten-film minimum target. Oh dear.
  • Though, if I counted rewatches too, I did make it past ten in both October and November. So that’s something… kinda…
  • Unsurprisingly, that means it also falls short of every average going: the November all-time average (previously 11.0, now 10.8), the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 17.25, now 16.42), and the average for 2021 to date (previously 17.9, now 17.0).
  • On the bright side (sorta), it means I passed the milestone of 2,500 films listed on my reviews page. Let’s not talk about how many are still locked away in my backlog though, eh…
  • This month’s Blindspot film was French urban drama La Haine, which reminded me a lot of Do the Right Thing, although I didn’t like it quite as much. (I was supposed to watch two Blindspot films this month, to make up for October, but didn’t manage it. Hopefully I’ll succeed in December.)
  • I didn’t watch anything from last month’s “failures”, though I did watch a couple of things that would’ve been on this month’s failures if I hadn’t watched them… which isn’t really the point, is it?



The 78th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Fewer films watched means fewer films to choose from, and nothing this month was an out-and-out “loved it” experience — which is not to say there weren’t a couple of films that I thoroughly enjoyed. Foremost among these is probably Nobody, which suffers from riffing a bit too much on the John Wick formula, but still entertains with its blend of comedy and impressively-choreographed action.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Quite a few middling films this month, but the one sticking out the bottom was clear to me. Although a childhood favourite for many, I didn’t care for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. As a kid, we loved Roald Dahl’s books in our house, and my parents put us off watching this film adaptation — and now I can see why. It’s Americanised; the songs are awful; and, as the now-title character (it’s Charlie in the book), Gene Wilder… is really good — but it takes him almost half the movie to show up. Shame.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
With only one new review published this month, this one’s a bit of a no brainer. Although, of course, my monthly review could’ve beaten it — though that’s a rare, perhaps even unheard of, occurrence. And, indeed, The Fear of God won out — but only by a solitary hit.



Another underwhelming month for my Rewatchathon. Y’know, I don’t think I’m going to make it to 50 this year…

#31 Face/Off (1997)
#32 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

I didn’t set out to rewatch Face/Off — I happened to flick onto ITV just as it was about to start, didn’t have anything better to do so watched through the big opening action sequence, by the end of which I thought, “ah, fuck it, may as well watch the rest.” Yeah, I did the “watch it on TV with ad breaks even though I own it on Blu-ray” thing. But I feel like that’s somehow the perfect way to watch this movie.

As for Seven Brides, I mostly watched the “alternate widescreen version” on the Blu-ray’s second disc. I say “mostly” because we got about half-an-hour into the regular version on disc 1 before it froze up and wouldn’t play past a certain point. I’ve seen no one else complain about that, so hopefully it’s one bad disc and a replacement copy will be fine. Anyway, although I believe this alternate version is comprised of different takes (rather than just being the regular version cropped), it didn’t seem strikingly ‘wrong’ — not that I’m particularly familiar with the film, having only seen it once about 15 years ago; but any differences didn’t trouble my partner, who grew up watching it.


Every month, in preparation for this section I keep a running list of films to mention — all the new cinema releases; everything interesting that gets added to various streaming services; everything I buy on disc — and, whew, this month’s list was long. Maybe I should just publish that list, or a version of it, rather than trying to write it up. But, for now, I’ll do it the way I’ve been doing it. So, let’s see how brief I can keep this while still also mentioning everything of note…

At the cinema, the blockbuster releases this month were obviously the latest MCU entry, Eternals, and the latest attempt to revive a popular old IP, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Both seemed to meet with mixed reviews. On surer critical footing were the more awards-y films, like Spencer, King Richard, and Petite Maman. I’m not sure if any of those actually played at my local. Also of note this month: a new Disney, Encanto; Ridley Scott’s second release this year, House of Gucci; and Sly Stallone’s belated “ultimate director’s cut” of Rocky IV, now subtitled Rocky vs. Drago and (as was widely reported) shorn entirely of its comedic robot subplot. Looking forward to catching that via streaming at some point.

And speaking of streaming, I think every service had a blockbuster-esque new release of some sort this month. I actually watched Netflix’s (Red Notice), although black Western The Harder They Fall, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut Tick, Tick… Boom!, and Aardman’s latest short Robin Robin were hardly small fry either. Over on Amazon, meanwhile, there was another generic-looking Liam Neeson actioner, The Marksman. It feels like all of Neeson’s films go direct to Amazon these days — I don’t know if they’ve got him on retainer or if his films just play really well for them so they’re sure to snap them up. They also had Tamil drama Jai Bhim. I think most Western viewers can be excused for not spotting that one, but it’s catapulted itself onto the IMDb Top 250, sitting at #126 at time of writing. Google it and you’ll see reports that it has IMDb’s highest rating ever. It currently says 9.5 on its own page, which their algorithm drags down to 8.2 for the Top 250. Read into that what you will…

As I said, everyone was in on the big releases this month: Disney+ attempted to review the Home Alone franchise with Home Sweet Home Alone (to very poor reviews); Sky Cinema nabbed starry Matt Haig adaptation A Boy Called Christmas; MUBI offered Leos Carax’s latest, Annette; and even Apple TV+ tried to get in on the game, with Tom Hanks post-apocalyptic adventure Finch. It’s about him building a robot to care for his dog after he’s gone, so of course it’s gone straight on my watch list, even if the dog appears to be mostly/entirely CGI.

I don’t normally mention Disney+ in this column because I’m not normally subscribed to it, but they offered a month for £1.99 recently and that was too good to resist. Before it runs out, I really need to catch up on their latest films that I’ve missed — in particular, Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, and Cruella. Also the Marvel TV series; less so the films, because I bought Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on disc; and discovered that Japan are still getting Marvel films on 3D disc, so I, um, acquired a 3D copy of Black Widow, and will now probably wait to do the same for Shang-Chi. Nonetheless, knowing me I’ll probably semi-accidentally let me Disney+ subscription keep rolling — that’s what I’ve done with MUBI, where the prospect of watching the likes of The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy stop me from cancelling; and also Sky Cinema (via NOW), whose (far less arty) additions this month include the new Mortal Kombat, lockdown heist thriller Locked Down (imaginative title), and, um, Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. Classy.

Just to underline how badly behind I am with reviews, several streamers also offered films I’ve already seen and really should’ve covered by now. Top of the pile has to be Parasite, which had its UK TV premiere on Channel 4 recently and so is now streaming on All 4. Close behind is Denis Villeneuve’s Maelström, which I watched via a fairly crummy DVD-rip but is now in full HD on MUBI. That’s in addition to all the stuff I have seen and have reviewed but want to rewatch, and usually have already bought on disc, that the streamers waggled in my face this month — the likes of L.A. Confidential, Love & Friendship, and The Piano on Netflix; Interview with the Vampire, Mean Girls, and Vanilla Sky on Amazon; and I think iPlayer were the ‘worst’, reminding me I’ve not yet watched my 4K disc of Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, plus that I’m long overdue revisits to Let the Right One In and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

So much for keeping this short: I could list dozens more films across the streamers, and I haven’t even started on my disc purchases, which in November totted up to 44 films — even more if you were to count a few alternate cuts, like Ridley Scott’s Legend (I imported Arrow’s US-only release, which comes with the theatrical and director’s cuts) or Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders (the new UK box set of which includes the original cut and extended The Complete Novel version, both in 4K). The number is bolstered by a couple of eight-film box sets: Eureka’s Cinematic Vengeance, containing eight classic kung fu films directed by Joseph Kuo, and Australian label Imprint’s Collaborations, which has eight films directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li, including the likes of Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, and Curse of the Golden Flower.

New films earning an instant purchase on their disc debuts included the confusingly-titled sequels/reboots Candyman and The Suicide Squad (“confusingly” because their titles are so similar / identical to the previous films they’re sequelising/rebooting). Older films with new releases coming straight into my collection include acclaimed Spaghetti Western The Great Silence (I only recently bought the US release, but Eureka’s UK version includes more special features and an improved transfer), Arrow’s Sailor Suit & Machine Gun (another one with two cuts to choose from), 88 Films’ The Chinese Boxer (starring and directed by Jimmy Wang Yu, whose other films I’ve enjoyed), Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes spinoff The Spider Woman Strikes Back (at only 59 minutes, it barely seems to warrant a standalone release, but here we are), and a long-awaited Blu-ray debut for Josie and the Pussycats (the best movie ever).

If you’re keeping count, you’ll know we’re nowhere near 44 yet. A lot of the rest can be bundled together as filling out import orders to make the P&P charge worthwhile — from Australia, Imprint editions of The Assassination Bureau and superb film noir Sorry, Wrong Number, plus Umbrella releases of Possession, Ozploitation classic Turkey Shoot, and director Alex Proyas’s debut, Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds; and from the US… oh, I’ve listed most of those already, or the order’s been split and more are to follow. But also, I picked up Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia on Blu-ray. I’ve not seen it since 2009, so (as with some titles I mentioned earlier) it’s long overdue another look. (I bet someone announces it in 4K soon now.) I also caved to sales (well, it was the month of Black Friday) from Indicator — picking up Cash on Demand, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, I, Monster, Light Sleeper, The Valachi Papers, and The Valdez Horses — and Eureka — with if…., Michael, and Tabu — and Criterion, too — just Deep Cover and La Vérité.

You may be thinking “how does he have the space to buy so much stuff?!”, and the answer is… I don’t, really. It’s getting silly now. And as for the time to actually watch them… don’t get me started on that…


The final month of 100 Films in a Year.

…wait, what?!

Yes, it’s the end — but the moment has been prepared for…

The Fear of God: 25 Years of “The Exorcist” (1998)

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2019 #134
Nick Freand Jones | 81 mins | digital (SD) | 16:9 | UK / English | 15

The Fear of God: 25 Years of The Exorcist

There have been some great made-for-TV documentaries down the years, but that status as “TV programmes” means it’s kind potluck if they’re still readily available to us years later. Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: An Odyssey? So acclaimed it got a DVD release and, recently, a Blu-ray upgrade. Mark Gatiss’s horror series? Too full of clips to be licensable. The Complete Citizen Kane? I don’t think this was available anywhere besides bootlegs, but will soon be included on Criterion’s 4K release of the film.

I could go on, but let’s stick to the one at hand. This feature-length Mark Kermode-fronted doc was screened at festivals in 1998 before being shown on the BBC in an edited form. Down the years it’s been available on some of the film’s DVD and Blu-ray releases, but only in that shortened version. Finally, 20 years after its first release, the unedited original cut popped onto the BBC iPlayer for Halloween 2019, and tonight it will be broadcast for the first time ever, on BBC Four at 11:55pm.

For those unfamiliar with him, Kermode is sort of the UK’s answer to Roger Ebert: a long-standing, widely-respected film critic across print, TV, and radio. The Exorcist is his favourite film, and (as he explains in a recently-shot introduction to this documentary) he’d written a book on it that its makers had liked, which led to him making The Fear of God.

Mark Kermode and The Exorcist

As with almost any documentary about a specific film, your interest in it is likely to depend on your interest in the original film. So, assuming you care to know the behind-the-scenes story of The Exorcist, this is definitely a good film. I get the impression it’s the original source for a lot of interviews and stories that have been repeated around the place; ones that I’ve personally picked up through osmosis down the years. Despite that, I still learnt new stuff, and there are some nice moments to witness, like when novelist and screenwriter William Peter Blatty suddenly realises, on camera, how he should’ve written a scene all along.

If you’ve seen The Fear of God before (say, on one of The Exorcist’s physical media releases), how much this so-called “festival cut” is worth your time is a matter for your personal level of interest. Some DVD releases cut as much as 25 minutes out of the documentary, so if you’ve only seen that version then obviously there’s a lot of new material here. If you’re watching this version, you can be assured you’re seeing everything Kermode wanted to include as well as everything producer Nick Freand Jones wanted in. For example, there’s an interview with the woman who voiced the demon, who insisted her contribution was only in the BBC broadcast. Well, I guess this still conforms to that wish.

4 out of 5

The Fear of God: 25 Years of “The Exorcist” is on BBC Four tonight at 11:55pm, or on iPlayer now.

The Below Par Monthly Review of October 2021

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As you attentive readers will no doubt already be aware, during October I posted my first new review for almost five months — whoop whoop! Only the one, though. Indeed, if you wanted to read new writing by me, you’d be better off attending FilmBath Festival and trying to guess which of the Film Notes handouts I completely rewrote (if they appear online this year, I’ll let you know and you can indulge in this fun game).

Yes, despite having a day job, I also served as Copy Editor for FilmBath once again — so at least this month I have an excuse for not writing anything here. It’s also the reason why this month’s viewing is way down, as you will now see…


#171 Appointment with Death (1988)
#172 Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2021)
#173 Raffles (1939)
#174 A Little Chaos (2014)
#174a Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900)
#175 Capernaum (2018), aka Capharnaüm
#176 Dune: Part One (2021), aka Dune
#177 Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
#178 Going in Style (2017)
#179 Search for Danger (1949)
Dune: Part One
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  • I watched 9 feature films I’d never seen before in October.
  • It’s the first month in which I’ve fallen short of 10 films since December 2019.
  • That means last month concluded a 21-month 10+ streak — not even close to the longest (60 months, from June 2014 to May 2019), but well beyond the previous second best (just seven, from September 2009 to March 2010).
  • As for averages, obviously it brings everything down. The worst affected is the average for 2021 to date, which falls a whole film from 18.9 to 17.9. The rolling average of the last 12 months drops from 18.00 to 17.25, while October’s average shifts slightly from 13.21 to 13.54.
  • I should’ve saved Frankenstein to be this month’s Blindspot film (for hopefully-obvious reasons). As it was, I didn’t watch any of the remaining three, meaning I need to watch two next month. That’s okay: I also missed one in August and managed to catch it up in September, so I’ve got form.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Everybody’s Talking About Jamie… twice (see Rewatchathon).



The 77th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I liked a few films this month, but there’s no real debate that this belongs to Dune: Part One (as I was insisting on calling it even before the sequel was greenlit, a piece of good news that has only made me more insistent).

Least Favourite Film of the Month
The pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant should be a great one — it gave us the likes of Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, after all — but their first film together, Sylvia Scarlett, just doesn’t work, on the whole.

Worst Accent of the Month
Dick Van Dyke gets a lot of stick for his Cockney in Mary Poppins, but perhaps he just watched Cary Grant in Sylvia Scarlett for research. Yes, it is comparably poor… but that also means it has the same kind of perverse entertainment value.

Completed Film Series of the Month
Just over nine years since I watched the first one, I finally finished off The Falcon series of ’40s detective mysteries with Search for Danger. Well, it depends how you count it. Really, I think there are 13 films, ending with 1946’s The Falcon’s Adventure; but some say there are 16 films, bundling in the three made a few years later by a different studio with a different star. I’d argue those are more of a ‘reboot’ series than a true continuation. They’re also trickier to track down — while I saw the first 13 thanks to the BBC airing them, the later three most assuredly weren’t included — but I finally bothered to find them, and so now, whichever way you cut it, I’m done.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
For the first time in a while there were actually two new posts this month, although it wasn’t much of a battle — No Time to Die romped away with the victory, besting even my ever-popular old TV reviews to be the month’s most-viewed post overall. It’s already in the top five new posts for the entire year, too, although its chances of overtaking the most popular TV posts are slim.



So, I think it’s now pretty clear I’m not going to make my goal of 50 rewatches in 2021 — I’d need to watch ten a month to get there, which isn’t impossible (I normally watch more new films than that… though not this month, obviously), but I know I just won’t do that (I’ll focus on the unseen stuff). Ah well, it’s only a target. Maybe next year… or maybe next year I’ll have a new goal…

Anyway, this month’s sole rewatch was…

#30 Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2021)

…which I’d only first seen earlier in the month! When I rewatched it I knew I’d only recently seen it, but I didn’t realise it was within the same month until afterwards. That had more to do with watching it with different people than rushing to rewatch it quickly. I do like it quite a bit, though.


Anyone would think the pandemic was over, the way cinemas are back in full flow (and doing fairly good business, based on my personal experience on the two trips I’ve made so far). Films hitting the big screen this past month that I’ve skipped ‘til disc or streaming include Ridley Scott’s acclaimed The Last Duel, Edgar Wright’s divisive Last Night in Soho, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, plus franchise sequels Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Halloween Kills, and The Addams Family 2. Also the sequel to The Boss Baby (I enjoyed the first one a surprising amount, so maybe I’ll make time for the sequel one day) and Dear Evan Hansen, which I’ll have to watch just to see how much of a train wreck it actually is.

Talking of the big screen, FilmBath Festival is currently mid-flow. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make any screenings this year, unfortunately, and films I’ve already missed include Mothering Sunday, Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman, Lamb, and Palme d’Or winner and French Oscar contender Titane.

The streamers continued to premiere new movies too, of course. Sky Cinema got UK exclusivity for sci-fi Voyagers (which suggests it’s not very good); Netflix had the English-language remake of thriller The Guilty (I watched the original back in February and it’s currently on All 4 again, FYI); MUBI had a Halloween premiere for BBFC-themed horror movie Censor (which I’ve heard good things about); and earlier in the month Amazon offered Bingo Hell (I like the sound of the concept, but I don’t think it’s been well reviewed). I guess Amazon’s big film was meant to be Infinite starring Mark Wahlberg, though I heard nothing about it until a big promo image popped up on Prime Video’s front page. Low marks on Letterboxd suggest it isn’t worth investigating.

Elsewhere on streaming, if I ever decide to embark on the Conjuring franchise, they’ve got me covered: the first two are on BBC iPlayer, while the third has arrived on Sky Cinema already (I’ve no idea about the spinoffs). Older titles bulking out my various watchlists included period lesbian drama Ammonite, Amsterdamned, David Cronenberg’s Fast Company, anime Mirai, and the 1990 Witches on Amazon Prime; Judas and the Black Messiah, The Little Things, Billie Piper’s Rare Beasts, and Nic Cage in Willy’s Wonderland on Sky Cinema; Halloween I to V (in particular, I want to see III), Honey Boy, Kung Fu Hustle, and Last Christmas on Netflix; The Arbor, The Love Witch, intriguing new animation Cryptozoo, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist on MUBI; and, on iPlayer, Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, Daniel Craig and Anne Reid in The Mother, Horrible Histories: The Movie, and one I’d never heard of before: A Woman’s Secret, which is apparently a noir-style melodrama starring Gloria Grahame. Whew.

Of course, that’s as nothing to my ever-growing pile of new purchases. Where to begin? How about my latest 4K acquisitions: M. Night Shyamalan’s newest, Old, and his best, Unbreakable; Second Sight’s luxurious new edition of The Guest (which you may remember was my sort-of-joint-first favourite film of 2015); StudioCanal’s latest swish 4K box set, for Joe Dante’s The Howling; plus Arrow’s edition of Oldboy, and The Shining, which features the longer US cut that I’ve not seen. New or recent releases in good ol’ 1080p included Another Round, Masters of Cinema’s second volume of Early Universal silents, Eureka’s release of the Sabata trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns, and Edgar Wright’s documentary The Sparks Brothers. I also finally got hold of Shout’s release of David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, and another Eureka release of a Spaghetti Western, Sergio Corbucci’s The Specialists.

And to round things off, I tried to limit my purchases in Arrow’s Shocktober sale… and failed spectacularly. Some of them were recent-ish titles (Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee, still available as a multi-disc special edition, and Japanese corporate thriller Giants and Toys), and some they released so long ago they’re dual-format editions with DVDs (remember those?), like 52 Pick-Up and Howling II (which for some reason doesn’t feature its fab subtitle on the cover: Your Sister is a Werewolf). Rounding things out: more Japanese crime in Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!; another Spaghetti Western, The Grand Duel; a couple of gialli (The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion and The Pyjama Girl Case); and, released by Second Run but in Arrow’s sale, one of Letterboxd’s 250 greatest films of all time, The Shop on the High Street. Whew, again.


2021’s on the home stretch now — perhaps it’s time to start thinking about where my final tally will end up…

No Time to Die (2021)

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2021 #170
Cary Joji Fukunaga | 163 mins | cinema | 2.39:1 | UK & USA / English, French, Italian & Russian | 12A / PG-13

No Time to Die

Britain’s most famous secret agent is Craig, Daniel Craig for the final time in the 25th James Bond film. It’s also the fifth and (presumably) final instalment in an ongoing narrative within the series; the kind of internal continuity never before attempted in the franchise’s 59-year history. Sure, there have been some hints at continuity in the past — Connery’s Bond was almost always up against some agent of SPECTRE, and Diamonds Are Forever is technically a sequel to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service — but never to this degree, and never with such keenly-felt emotional effects on our hero.

Much fuss has been made in some quarters of Quantum of Solace being the first true sequel in the Bond canon, because it very much continues storylines from Casino Royale. If that’s the case, No Time to Die may be classed as the second such sequel, because it picks up on various hints and threads left dangling in Spectre and weaves them into its narrative. (You could also argue Spectre is a “true sequel” for the way it tries to tie together the entire Daniel Craig era, but I think No Time to Die is even more directly connected to its immediate predecessor.) All of this is primarily of note to fans of the series, mind, because it marks a change of form for this particular series. In the wider world of film franchises, that kind of continuity is nothing new. For all that it’s been a massively-popular trailblazer over the past six decades, the Bond films can be surprisingly reactive, often seeking to incorporate things that are successful in the wider filmmaking space — witness Moonraker coming on the heels of Star Wars, or Casino Royale and (especially) Quantum incorporating styles and techniques from the Jason Bourne films. All of which is really just to say that Bond is not some monolithic island unto himself — these films exist in context, just like any other.

Bond's in the spotlight

Perhaps the single most influential trend on No Time to Die is one for closure. Once upon a time, heroes carried on having adventures forever — whatever challenges they faced in one tale, they overcame and ‘rode off into the sunset’ ready to go again. Not nowadays. When Christopher Nolan decided to give Batman an ending to complete his trilogy in The Dark Knight Rises, it was seen as a radical move; an exception to the rule, just for this special case. Now, it’s de rigueur — look at Marvel bothering to wrap-up the stories of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in Avengers: Endgame, for example. They could have had these guys toddle off only to come back with an unexplained new face, just as has happened throughout movie franchise history, but instead they pay off the audience’s investment by giving them an ending. Spectre sort of did this, giving Craig’s Bond an ambiguous conclusion where he sort of seemed to retire and drive off with the girl. But that kind of ambiguity doesn’t cut it nowadays, and so No Time to Die finds that, yes, Bond did retire, but now he’s pressed back into service so we can get a more definitive fullstop on his story.

To discuss the specifics of that ending would be to get into spoiler territory, of course, which I’m not going to do here (the film is out in most regions now, but won’t hit some markets until much later in the year; and I can understand if some people are still reticent to return to cinemas and so will wait for a home release. It’s fine — there’ll be plenty of time to talk about the ending in month and years to come, because it is, again, no spoiler to say this is an ending that will be discussed for a long time, one way or another). What I will say is that I, personally, wasn’t wholly convinced by it. I don’t know if it was the right move. I’m not entirely sure how it makes me feel. Others may have a more definitive reaction — I haven’t sought out other people’s specific thoughts, and they’re hard to stumble upon because everyone is (rightly) avoiding spoilers. That said, the mostly positive reception, from both critics and regular viewers, suggests that it’s not an outright problem — maybe people mostly love the finale, but even if they don’t, they’re like me in thinking it doesn’t undermine the quality of the rest of the film.

The new 007

And quality is in abundance throughout No Time to Die. When it emerged that it ran nearly two-and-three-quarter hours, some were concerned that was far too long for a Bond film, especially after Spectre’s two-and-a-half hours was deemed a slog by many. Such concerns prove unfounded, because No Time to Die moves at a solid lick throughout, never feeling its length — like all the best movies, whether they be 80 minutes or four hours, it’s just as long as it needs to be. In many ways it’s your standard Bond fare: there’s a nefarious villain out there planning to do something evil on a massive scale, and Bond is roped in to stop them. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And yet, the Craig era has tried to ‘fix it’. Casino Royale consciously dismantled the Bond formula, riffing on some of its famous tropes rather than including them properly (cf. his response to “shaken or stirred?”), but the subsequent films have sought to rebuild the style we knew and loved. It’s arguable whether they truly have returned Bond to his previous ways — every one of these movies subverts ‘the Bond formula’ in some way, large or small — but I think No Time to Die might be the closest. That’s not a criticism.

Certainly, it has enough new going on to not feel like a throwback. Some of that is surface level, like the new 00 being a Black woman, played perfectly by Lashana Lynch. It’s an important bit of progressiveness, for sure, but in plot terms, replace her with a white man and everything still functions the same. Again, I don’t feel like that’s a criticism — sometimes the devil is in the details, and details matter. “Making that character a Black woman instead of a white man doesn’t affect the plot” is a reason to make such a change, not an argument against it. Conversely, Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann somewhat upends the traditional Bond girl role by having a secret past that has significant bearing on both the plot and Bond’s emotional state. The former may not be so new (there have been Bond girls with secrets in the past), but allowing Bond to actually have emotions, and be challenged by them, is very much a Craig-era phenomenon. Again, you can find specific examples of this throughout the series — OHMSS is the biggest example, but you could argue Brosnan’s Bond is affected by Elektra in The World Is Not Enough — but it’s never been done with such consistency, such centrality, as in the Craig era.

Can anybody find him somebody to love?

Aside from all this borderline-groundbreaking stuff, No Time to Die serves up a load of traditional Bond thrills. There are exotic locales, beautifully lensed by Linus Sandgren — he may not be as big a name as Roger Deakins, but his work makes this rival Skyfall for prettiest Bond film. There are epic action sequences — the series may have lost its rep for outrageous done-for-real stunts to Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible-funded death wish, but it can still pull together an outstanding car chase or shoot-out. The pre-titles in Italy; a party in Cuba; a chase through Norwegian woods — all could be franchise highs in the set piece department. And the production design, by series newcomer Mark Tildesley, harks back to Bond of old too, not least in the villain’s island lair. Oh yes, the villain has his own island — proper old-school Bond.

Said villain is Safin, played by Oscar-winner Rami Malek. He’s not bad by any means, but he’s weirdly miscast (it’s not obvious until you think about it, but the character is meant to be 20+ years older than the actor) and he has little to do: Bond’s on his trail for most of the film, only confronting him in the final act. Maybe that’s not so different to many older Bond films either, but it’s out of place in the Craig era, where most of the villains have directly challenged Bond throughout the movie. Still, while he may not hit the highs of Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre or Javier Bardem’s Silva, he’s slightly less “villain by numbers” than Christoph Waltz’s disappointingly underwhelming turn as Blofeld, and more memorable than Mathieu Amalric’s Dominic Greene (not the actor’s fault, I don’t think — Quantum tried so hard to keep Bond grounded and he suffers for that). In fact, he’s such a Macguffin of a villain that I’m not even sure of his motivation — I get how he intends to do A Very Bad Thing (the mechanics of it are very important, for several reasons), but I don’t recall the film ever bothering to tell me why.

Old school Bond

It’s this kind of little niggle that loses No Time to Die its edge. Make no mistake: this is an immensely entertaining Bond film. I haven’t even mentioned some of its other highs, like all-too-brief supporting turns from Jeffrey Wright, returning as Bond’s CIA chum Felix Leiter, or Ana de Armas as a rookie agent who, it turns out, is as skilled as she is gorgeous, but is most memorable for being the most amusing part of the film — you’ll wish she was in it more. For all that, I foresee the film settling in as a well-liked entry in the series, and I’m sure it will cement a reputation as the greatest last-Bond-film for any actor (its only real rival in those stakes being Licence to Kill, which barely counts as it was only Dalton’s second). But, on the flipside, it doesn’t quite hit the dizzying heights of Casino Royale or Skyfall. Is that a problem? Nah. Not everything has to be “the greatest ever” to have merit.

4 out of 5

No Time to Die is in cinemas everywhere (except Australia and China) now.