Category Archives: Editorials

The Eurovisual Monthly Review of May 2023

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Last time, I finally managed my first 10+ month of 2023. (For the uninitiated, that’s a month where I watched 10 or more films I’d never seen before. Yeah, small fry compared to those people who watch 300 or 500 or 1,000 films a year, but that’s their problem.) Considering I used to manage 10+ months on the regular (from 2014 to 2019, I went five whole years — 60 straight months — without dropping below that goal), I was hoping April would mark a turn in fortunes for 2023.

That was not to be the case. If anything, the opposite has come true. Life has been busy of late — I haven’t posted a review since February for a reason — but I’d managed to keep it from impacting too much on my actual viewing. May was when that bastion fell. I watched my first film of the month, a rewatch (see #34 below) on the 1st. I watched my first new film on the 8th. And then I didn’t watch another until the 25th. I did give over an entire week to Eurovision — normally I only watch the final, but, as it was in the UK this year, I also watched both the semis and a bunch of related documentaries that were on — but that still leaves three-and-a-bit other weeks. Well, like I said: Life.

You can read about my final tallies below, but I’ll just say this: in terms of new films watched, it was my worst month in over 14 years; and it ties (with two others) for my second worst month in the 16-and-a-half-year history of this blog, beaten only by the infamous zero of July 2009.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#34 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King — Extended Edition (2003/2004) — Series Progression #6
#35 The Shiver of the Vampires (1971) — Failures #5
#36 The Thin Man (1934) — Rewatch #5
#37 After the Thin Man (1936) — Series Progression #7
#38 Another Thin Man (1939) — Series Progression #8


  • I watched just two feature films I’d never seen before in May.
  • I mentioned in my introduction that only two other months have ever had tallies so low. They were March 2008 and February 2009.
  • Only one of those films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, but I also managed four qualifying rewatches.
  • That means I reach #38 on my Challenge (as you can see above). That’s slightly behind where I should ideally be at the end of May. I’ve ended every previous month this year on target; compared to that, being three films behind doesn’t look so good. But it’s also only three behind — that’s not too many to catch up across the remaining seven months of the year.
  • It does terrible things to my averages, though: the average for 2023 to date drops from 9.0 to 7.6; the average for May drops from 15.8 to 14.9; and the rolling average for the last 12 months drops from 8.6 to 8.2. Okay, that last one isn’t so extreme, though it only goes to show my viewing has been low in general over the past year.
  • No Blindspot or WDYMYHS films this month, which leaves me two behind on each category. Oh dear. I’m clinging on to the fact there’s still seven months in which to catch up…
  • The one thing I did have success with this month was a rewatch of The Thin Man series, getting through half of them in one weekend. Not sure when I’ll finish the other three, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they turn up as part of my Challenge before 2023 is over.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Shiver of the Vampires.



The 96th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Just two films to choose from this month, and I rated them both 3.5 stars on Letterboxd. Oh dear. They were similar in other ways, too: both are about vampires; and I made an effort to watch them both to help me decide about future Blu-ray purchases. I’ll give the edge to Jean Rollin’s The Shiver of the Vampires, because it was enough to convince me to keep buying Indicator’s 4K issues of his work.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
By default, then, my least favourite film was the only other newbie I watched this month: Hong Kong action-comedy Mr. Vampire. Tonally very different to Shiver, but another vampire-related film I was so-so on that, ultimately, did about enough to convince me to spend more on a further release — in this case, Eureka’s box set of the sequels. That said, the set is out now and I haven’t actually ordered it yet, which was about the only factor deciding which way round the two film placed. Hardly seems fair.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Only two films, and only two posts in May, too. Not at all related, just a coincidence. And so, once again, this category is next to pointless. There wasn’t a tie, though, with April’s monthly review edging out the Failures by half-a-dozen hits. Neither were anywhere near troubling the top of the overall chart, mind.


More films watched, I hope. Getting back into the review groove would be nice too, but I’ll take things one step at a time.

April’s Failures

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April saw the first billion-dollar-grossing movie of the year in cinemas, animation The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Mixed reviews make it sound like your typical Illumination fare — slick, colourful, and vacuous — but I’m sure I’ll catch it someday. Elsewise, it seemed like horror was the order of the day, from the likes of The Pope’s Exorcist, Renfield, and Evil Dead Rise. The latter seemed to receive the strongest notices, but also looks terribly hardcore. I don’t know if it’ll be one for my stomach. Not that I’ve even watched the 2013 Evil Dead yet, nor the TV series; and I haven’t seen the original trilogy for so long that they’re well overdue a rewatch too. Maybe at some point I’ll do the whole shebang. Other big screen bows included a belated UK debut for Searching sequel Missing (already out on disc in the US; I’ve ordered it and had expected my copy to be here before the UK theatrical release, but the whole order got held up); the new Makoto Shinkai, Suzume; the new Ben Affleck, Air; and the first half of a two-film French adaptation of the classic swashbuckler The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan. I was pleased to see the latter getting good reviews, because I’ve been looking forward to it since it was first announced a couple of years ago; though I’m going to have to wait for a disc release to actually see it. The second half is apparently due before the end of the year.

The streamers couldn’t really equal such might, despite their best efforts. Apple TV+’s Ghosted was a wannabe blockbuster in every sense: two fairly big stars (Chris Evans and Ana de Armas), a hot director (Dexter “Rocketman” Fletcher), and an audience-friendly comedy-action-thriller-romance premise. Yet somehow it looked like one of those fake movies-within-movies you get when a character is an actor, and reviews suggest the final result isn’t much more convincing. Plus it’s on Apple TV+ — who has Apple TV+? (Besides me.) Disney+ could have fared better with their latest live-action remake, Peter Pan & Wendy, but reviews were middling. It’s helmed by David Lowery, who apparently did a bang-up job of reimagining Pete’s Dragon, alongside his excellent adult-facing features like The Green Knight, and, based on what I’ve read, that’s what saves it from being another mess of a Disney live-action remake. Definitely on my to-see list, but I’m hardly racing right for it. (I’ll probably end up watching it later this week now I’ve said that.) Meanwhile, the best Netflix could muster was TV series sequel/finale The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die; Sky Cinema snaffled up Zach Braff’s Florence Pugh-starring A Good Person as an “original”; while Amazon Prime’s biggest title was Florian Zeller’s followup to The Father, The Son, which I’ve heard is terrible. But then, they had a super-expensive new spy show to be promoting instead.

Other subscription streaming debuts this month were mostly on Sky, with the likes of Jordan Peele’s Nope (though I already bought that on 4K), Idris Elba vs a lion in Beast, animation DC League of Super Pets, and The Forgiven, a thriller starring Ralph Fiennes, Jessica Chastain, and Matt Smith, which I don’t think got particularly good reviews, but I remember the trailer looked promising. Jumping higher up my watchlist than any of those, however, was Korean action-thriller Hunt. The directorial debut of actor Lee Jung-jae (best known as the lead in Squid Game), it’s about uncovering a North Korean mole in the ’80s. Reviews cite a dense and confusing plot, but that it’s absolutely stuffed with action. Sounds worth a go to me. As for recent-ish fare on other streamers, it was mostly documentaries: on Netflix, David Bowie retrospective Moonage Daydream; and on Channel 4, cinema analysis in Lynch/Oz.

The latter also had perhaps the most interesting catalogue title of the month in The Death of Dick Long. I think you’d be forgiven for not having heard of it, but it’s a film directed by one half of Daniels, i.e. the chaps behind Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Unfortunately, I missed my chance to see it. Other titles of note included a Michael Mann I’ve not seen, The Insider, on Disney+, and a Martin Scorsese I’ve not seen, Cape Fear, on Prime Video. The standout title on iPlayer was Blazing Saddles, because it reminds me I owe it a rewatch. It’s a beloved comedy classic, but I didn’t much care for it when I saw it the first time — which was sometime before this blog began, so probably 20 years ago. And talking of a couple of decades, sticking out to me amongst a handful of interesting titles on MUBI was The Warrior, the debut feature from Asif Kapadia (who’s gone on to make more of a name as a documentary director, with the likes of Senna and Amy). I remember buying it on DVD back around when it first came out — in the early 2000s, when I was first getting into Cinema — and, er, never watching it. But I’ve been meaning to get round to it… for over 20 years. Oi. Well, here it’s in HD, vs my crummy SD DVD, so maybe I’ll finally watc— oh, who am I kidding?

Recently I’ve been training a new starter at work, and she’s only 19, which means I own DVDs that “I haven’t quite got round to watching” for longer than she’s been alive. Insane. And yet, I keep buying those shiny round discs. Not so many DVDs anymore, of course, but the Blu-rays keep pouring in. April’s haul is headlined by a few 4K debuts: from Second Sight, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (I owned it on DVD, but at least I never bought it on BD, so that’s something of a saving); and from Arrow, David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch (first time I’ve ever bought that — hurrah!) And if that wasn’t obscure enough for you, how about a couple of Jean Rollin vampire features courtesy of Indicator, The Shiver of the Vampires and Two Orphan Vampires. Indicator have said there’s more Rollin to come, and those releases are numbered #402 and #417, so I guess by “more” they mean “at least 15”. Whew. I ought to get round to watching them, really, so I can decide if I want to buy the rest…

The 4K market is a funny place right now, with relatively obscure titles as likely to get a lavish box set as anything famous, and random shit making it to disc before highly-regarded classics — as one disc-related Twitter account observed the other day, we’re getting shit like Skyline on 4K before the likes of Aliens, The Terminator, The Abyss, A.I., Minority Report, Avatar, and The Fly. All of which is a long-winded segue into saying I do buy more “mainstream” stuff too, like Babylon, Collateral, and Saw (the Steelbook, but only because it was significantly cheaper than the regular release). Also The Trial, which is a Kafka adaptation by Orson Welles released by a major-ish studio, so kinda falls between the two stools.

Back in good ol’ 1080p land, most of my purchases seemed to come from Eureka, and in bulk: a quintet of silent works by director F.W. Murnau in the going-out-of-print Early Murnau set; a quartet of classic Universal horrors in Creeping Horror, their latest box set collecting sundries from the studio’s 1930s–’40s output; and a quartet of Westerns from the Masters of Cinema line, thanks to a random sale, the best known of which is easily Shane, but also Andre de Toth’s Day of the Outlaw, Anthony Mann’s The Man from Laramie, and John Ford’s Two Rode Together. Finally, a new release: The Bullet Train — not to be confused with the recent Brad Pitt vehicle, this is a ’70s Japanese disaster movie that inspired Speed (it’s about a train with a bomb that’ll go off if it slows down).

Finally, Arrow had a sale last month, in which I picked up a quintet of Sonny Chiba titles across two box sets — The Executioner Collection (the second one’s called Karate Inferno, which might be the greatest sequel subtitle ever) and The Street Fighter Trilogy — plus Lovecraft adaptation The Dunwich Horror. And, finally-finally, a Kickstarter reward came through: a new restoration of the 1911 adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, aka L’inferno; although apparently the “restoration” is pretty poor. Oh well.

The Elven Monthly Review of April 2023

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This month, I enjoyed Bilbo Baggins’s eleventy-first birthday in 4K for the first time, and had a little eleven-related cause for celebration of my own…

(No, the post title is not a typo — it was inspired by a combination of the German for “eleven”, and what I ended the month watching…)



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#25 Red Eye (2005) — Failures #4
#26 Clue of the Twisted Candle (1960) — Physical Media #5
#27 Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) — New Film #4
#28 West Side Story (2021) — Rewatch #4
#29 Clerks II (2006) — Series Progression #4
#30 Fear Eats the Soul (1974) — Blindspot #3
#31 Scarlet Street (1945) — WDYMYHS #3
#32 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Extended Edition (2001/2002) — Physical Media #6
#33 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — Extended Edition (2002/2003) — Series Progression #5


  • I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in April.
  • Finally, a 10+ month! It’s the first since November. Hopefully it’ll be the start of a new golden run — I would love to do better and be more consistent this year (last year, seven months failed to reach 10). Obviously 2023 hasn’t got off to the best start either, but perhaps this will be the turn of the tide.
  • It’s good news for 2023’s average to date, taking it from 8.3 to 9.0; although the rolling average for the last 12 months stays exactly the same, at 8.58, because I also watched 11 new films last April. Meanwhile, April’s own average slips slightly, from 14.9 to 14.7.
  • Five of the new films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with four rewatches.
  • With only one “Rewatch” allowed per month, how they so many count? I shall explain, especially as some were recategorised at the end of the month (I doubt anyone was watching my Challenge Tracker that closely, but in case you were…)
  • I originally counted Red Eye as a Rewatch, thinking I’d watch another March failure later in the month; and so I counted West Side Story as a Wildcard because the month’s Rewatch slot was taken. When it became clear I wasn’t going to have time for another March failure, I reclassified Red Eye to cover the Failures, which opened the Rewatch slot for West Side Story.
  • Then, I could’ve counted the two Lord of the Rings films as rewatches under Wildcards, but it seemed silly to use up those slots now when I didn’t have to (who knows what I might want wildcards for later?) So, Fellowship winds up in Physical Media (my first time watching it on 4K Blu-ray) and Two Towers is Series Progression (the series being the Lord of the Rings trilogy, obviously).
  • As you may have inferred, I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy in 4K for the first time over the Bank Holiday weekend. Unfortunately, because the third day of the weekend was May 1st, the trilogy gets split across two monthly reviews. Not a problem; it just means the viewing list misses out on having a neat run of all three back to back. Well, there’s always my Recently Watched page for that.
  • Talking of series, Clue of the Twisted Candle begins the Edgar Wallace Mysteries, a series of 50-odd B-movies that will surely help bulk out my Series Progression and Wildcard categories in the future.
  • Having missed both Blindspot and WDYMYHS in March, ideally I needed to watch two of each this month to catch up. I didn’t manage that, but I kept them ticking over the with the requisite one apiece, so at least I’m no further behind.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was my first experience of the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fear Eats the Soul.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Fritz Lang’s noir about misguided affection and misattributed painting, Scarlet Street.
  • From last month’s “failures” I rewatched Red Eye (in 4K).



The 95th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
To be honest, while I liked a lot of films well enough this month, nothing blew me away. The nearest was Scarlet Street, which has a few interesting riffs on the noir ‘formula’, particularly thanks to its bumbling villains.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It’s unfortunate to cite the initial instalment of a new series here, but Clue of the Twisted Candle was a pretty by-the-book kinda mystery. Not bad, just nothing that stood out. Well, it was a B-movie filler. It’d be nice if at least some of the future Edgar Wallace Mysteries were more impressive, though.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Only two posts to choose from again, which hardly makes this award seem fair; or, rather, hardly worth mentioning. Neither bothered the top echelons of the chart, either; and, indeed, it was a dead-heat draw between the two. I need to start posting reviews again…


Coronation, Eurovision, and Bank Holidays galore! What this will mean for my film viewing, I have no idea.

March’s Failures

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Box office-related chatter this month has mainly been asking, is the superhero boom over? With last month‘s Ant-Man 3 doing weaker business than expected, and now Shazam! Fury of the Gods underperforming, has given people cause to wonder if the near-monopoly the genre has exerted over the box office might finally be crumbling. I don’t wish for superhero movies to die off completely, but a little less dominance would be nice.

In their place, other films have flourished: Rocky spin-off sequel Creed III; horror franchise revival sequel Scream VI; fantasy reboot Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves; and, of course, the latest instalment in the popular gun-fu action series, John Wick: Chapter 4. The fact those are all still sequels or IP continuations might make some feel we’re just jumping out of the superhero frying pan into a different kind of IP fire, but at least there’s some variety of tone and style and content there.

Also reaching UK cinemas this month was the pulpy-looking Adam Drive vs dinosaurs adventure 65; a pair of Mia Goth-starring horrors, Pearl and Infinity Pool; a delayed bow for Warner Bros animation Mummies, a film I’ve heard so little chat about that I keep looking it up to check it’s real; and a bit of copyright exploitation (set to become a theme/genre unto itself over the next few years — it’s gonna need a catchy name, a la blaxploitation and sexploitation) in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Funny concept, maybe, but I heard it was not good.

Meanwhile, Marlowe — the new film by director Neil Jordan, starring Liam Neeson and a fairly name-y supporting cast (Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston, etc), adapting a story about Raymond Chandler’s famed detective — went straight to streaming as a Sky Original. Oh dear. I’ve heard it’s as weak as that situation suggests. Still goes on my watchlist, though. Netflix’s headline premiere of the month was a revival of another popular detective, albeit a more recent creation, in TV series continuation Luther: The Fallen Sun. They actually put it into cinemas last month, presumably in an attempt to head off greater-than-usual accusations of it just being a TV movie (I mean, a new instalment of a TV series being released in such a way that you can only watch it on your TV? Of course it would’ve been fair to call that “a TV movie”.) They had another animation that seems to have flown under the radar, The Magician’s Elephant. Maybe it’s just me, but a lot of Netflix’s original animations seem to pass me by, only to then turn up with an Oscar nomination or something (cf. The Mitchells and the Machines, The Sea Beast, and others), so maybe it’ll enter my sphere of awareness again at a later date. Finally, Apple TV+ just debuted Tetris, about the creation of the eponymous video game. Maybe they couldn’t make a Pixels-style adaptation work.

I didn’t see tell of any brand-new originals on Amazon Prime, but they did add Palme d’Or winner and Oscar nominee Triangle of Sadness; and, from the less auspicious end of the spectrum, belated threequel Clerks III. Disney+ did their usual thing of rushing everything to streaming lickety-split, this time with Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light; although MUBI also pull a similar trick nowadays (though it feels more understandable with their smaller-scale, indie-type releases), this month with Iranian serial killer thriller Holy Spider. Meanwhile, Netflix seemed to get plenty of eyeballs onto their debut of extreme climbing-related thriller Fall, as well as sci-fi-horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II. That moved over to them from Sky Cinema, which still seems to be home to the most subscription streaming debuts. This month they included The Black Phone, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Elvis, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Where the Crawdads Sing, and the film that generated a tonne of awards season chatter thanks to the campaign for Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie.

As ever, I could go on and on about deeper catalogue titles across all the aforementioned services — plus titles on BBC iPlayer and All 4; and ITVX has quite the film section, though it’s hard to browse for new additions — but then we’d be here forever. Instead, let’s move right along to all the stuff I bought on disc this past month.

Perhaps the most noteworthy new release this month was Second Sight’s long-awaited 4K release of George A. Romero’s Martin. I do actually own the Arrow DVD from many moons ago and, in typical fashion, have never got round to watching it, so I wasn’t quite as itching for the very chance to see the film, as some have been; but it’s always nice to have something in tip-top quality. It also means I now own the vast majority of Romero’s filmography on Blu-ray or 4K (the only one I’m missing is Bruiser, which has only had an HD release in Germany and France). I ought to get on with watching them, really… Also coming to 4K this month, another relatively-minor feature from an acclaimed horror director, Red Eye. I previously owned it on DVD, which I only bought, cheap, a whole decade ago, because a Blu-ray wasn’t forthcoming and I wanted to rewatch it. That disc never entered a player. So, that rewatch is long overdue, and hopefully the 4K disc will be spun soon. In a similar situation of continual neglect is The City of Lost Children, released on 4K tomorrow (my copy trend up early). I’ve previously owned it on DVD and Blu-ray, but never seen it. Yeah, I’m a fool for this kind of thing. Anyway, another one that goes on my “really should watch this very soon” pile.

Other upgrades this month included 88 Films’ 4K reissue of Jackie Chan / Sammo Hung / Yuen Biao actioner Dragons Forever (it’s been out a while, but I’ve been waiting to snag it on an offer as, again, I hadn’t actually watch my Blu-ray copy); their newly-restored reissue of Chan’s Snake & Crane Arts of Shaolin; and Criterion’s Infernal Affairs Trilogy set (again, benefitting from waiting for an offer price). As if that wasn’t enough action from Hong Kong, I also picked up Eureka’s new releases of In the Line of Duty III and IV (following on from the series’ first two films, Yes, Madam and Royal Warriors, in December and January respectively); and another Jackie Chan title from 88 Films, Gorgeous. It felt to me like these classic HK/Chinese actioners were hard to come by in the UK in recent years (the Hong Kong Legends label used to do sterling work, of course, but that’s been defunct for some time), but we’re definitely spoilt now, with multiple labels regularly releasing high-quality editions. I’m doing a pathetic job of getting round to watching them (ain’t that true of everything?), but I continue to lap them up to sit on my shelf.

Similarly, almost anything put out by Indicator finds its way onto my shelves, and this was true again this month with their bundle of moderately obscure titles from the 1930s (and one from the ’40s). Those included Ernst Lubitsch’s Broken Lullaby and Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (I enjoyed the box set of his silent work that Eureka put out many years ago, so I’ve always been interested in seeing more of his Hollywood productions, with the famed ‘Lubitsch touch’); James Whale’s The Kiss Before the Mirror; and Frank Capra’s State of the Union.

The rest of my purchases this month were similarly based on reputation alone, usually of the filmmaker rather than the film itself, although all slightly older releases I’d waited for discounts on. Therein are the likes of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s La Prisonnière; Criterion’s releases of Jim Jarmusch’s “acid western” Dead Man and Kasi Lemmons’s Southern Gothic drama Eve’s Bayou; and, finally, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz — technically a 14-episode miniseries, but there were at least some theatrical screenings of the entire 15-hour piece, so it’s not wholly egregious to mention it here. Though considering I struggle to find the time for those 90-minute-ish comedy-actioners, when I’m going to get round to a 15-hour series about “misery, lack of opportunities, crime and the imminent ascendency of Nazism” in Weimar Germany, I don’t know.

The (John) Wick-y Wicky Wild Wild Monthly Review of March 2023

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Yeah, I’m thinking he’s back. Keanu Reeves’s taciturn action man returned to the big screen this month — which I’m sure you know, because the praise has been hard to miss. I intended to get to see it, following a rewatch of the series so far (all of which qualified for this year’s Challenge — see below), but couldn’t quite make the timings work. Hopefully I’ll rectify that in the next couple of days.

It was a busy month overall for me, between various personal commitments, work, and a bout of illness (just a cold, but one that really knocked me out). That’s a big part of why there have been no reviews posted this month. My film viewing also primarily breaks down into a chunk at the start of the month and another chunk at the end, but it didn’t pan out so badly overall…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#17 Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) — Physical Media #2
#18 Police Story (1985) — Physical Media #3
#19 Confess, Fletch (2022) — Failures #3
#20 John Wick (2014) — Physical Media #4
#21 John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) — Series Progression #3
#22 John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) — Rewatch #3
#23 Blood and Black Lace (1964) — Genre #2
#24 Murder Mystery 2 (2023) — New Film #3


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in March.
  • Five of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with three rewatches.
  • That makes March arguably the best month of 2023 so far: the eight new films ties with January in second place (behind February’s nine), but three rewatches gives a total of 11, the highest overall total for a single month this year. Plus, I watched four shorts (though I watched five in February).
  • With the end of March being a quarter of the way through the year, you might think only having reached #24 means I’m behind target — but not so! Thanks to February being far shorter than any other month, the ‘deadline’ for #25 actually falls on April 1st.
  • That John Wick rewatch… I could’ve just counted all the films in the same category (more or less — Rewatch for the first, then Wildcard rewatches for the next two), but I decided to spread the love around a bit and put each in a different category, just because I could. Chapter 4 will surely be a New Film, whenever I see it.
  • Last month I said I hoped to watch more Best Picture nominees. In the end, I only saw Everything Everywhere All at Once. But as that turned out to be the winner, it wasn’t such a bad one to have caught up on.
  • No Blindspot or WDYMYHS films this month. I could maybe have squeezed one of them in at the end, but chose to skip both and keep their numbers equal — all the better for remembering that I’m now behind with them.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Confess, Fletch.



The 94th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
The three first-time watches that kicked off the month (#17–19 above) are all strong contenders for this gong. On balance, I guess I’ll declare myself a member of the Everything Everywhere All at Once fan club — with a side note that Confess, Fletch deserves a lot more love and I hope we get a sequel (or several).

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Conversely, there was nothing I really disliked. I guess Murder Mystery 2 was the most middle-of-the-road of the bunch, but even that I had fun with and was glad I watched.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Just two new posts compete here, so it’s not much of a contest. Even still, the winner only took it by a single hit. That was February’s Failures.


As we head out of “the beginning of the year” and into the long middle, I’d like to get my new film viewing up. My target is always at least ten a month, and I’ve been doing pretty poorly at that for a long time now — I missed it in seven months during 2022, and have yet to hit it in 2023. If I don’t do it next month, that’ll be the lowest sub-ten stretch since 2011. And yet, I’m also quite busy again for the next couple of weeks. Jeopardy!

February’s Failures

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What’s the big story at the box office this month, then? Normally a new MCU film would walk it, but Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is reportedly struggling. Well, it’s still making a tonne of money, but not as much as usual for these affairs, and not compared to its staggeringly over-large budget. Has the much-heralded end of the superhero boom arrived? Or is this just a blip? Probably Guardians of the Galaxy 3 in May will be a better indicator.

Also playing this month was the new M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin, which seemed to be as divisive as Shyamalan movies always are nowadays. I’ll definitely catch it at some point, but I still haven’t got round to Old. Then there was Cocaine Bear which, based on the early reviews I saw, sounds to be as delightfully trashy as its premise promised. Again, though, not something that’s actually tempted me out to the cinema (we might have to wait until a certain Part Two in November for that; but we’ll see). There were belated UK bows for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, The Whale, and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (which I was going to watch and review, until it turned out I’d been sent a faulty disc. The replacement turned up too late to hit the release date). I should also mention Magic Mike’s Last Dance. I’ve never seen a Magic Mike film, though they remain on my list due to Steven Soderbergh’s involvement.

Originals of note were in even shorter supply from the streamers. All I have jotted down to mention are Amazon’s Somebody I Used to Know (which I’m not sure I saw any significant discussion of beyond its poster), Netflix’s We Have a Ghost, and Apple TV+’s Sharper (which I did hear some good things about, but not many, because who watches Apple TV+? Hardly anyone). In “fresh from the cinema” stakes, Disney+ offered Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, though personally I’ll wait until I can find a 3D copy (not to mention that I’m multiple MCU films behind, so it’s a few down the line for me anyway); and, on a more low-key note, Sky Cinema had British indie comedy Brian and Charles. (More noteworthy additions to the latter’s catalogue might be Top Gun: Maverick, but I’ve seen that, and Bullet Train, but I already bought that (cheaply), so they’re not really “failures”. Not for this month, anyway.)

In terms of older films popping up, as ever I added multiple titles to all my watchlists, but little seems particularly worthy of note. Maybe submarine flick Black Sea on Netflix, which I vaguely remember coming and going with little fanfare back in 2014, but I saw someone describe as an “underwater heist” movie, which tickled my interest. On MUBI, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul would merit a mention if I hadn’t already downloaded it for my Blindspot challenge; the same could be said for Wild Tales, which is one of the handful of films I haven’t seen from IMDb’s Top 250.

I did rent something for the first time in yonks, though: Confess, Fletch — partly because I’ve heard good things, partly because Amazon were having a sale for Prime members. If that isn’t part of my March viewing, I’ll have wasted £1.99.

Talking of spending money, of course I bought more discs this month — fewer than normal, based on the length of my list, but still a definite pile of stuff. My 4K collection was emboldened by two labels: A24, from whom I imported The Green Knight (I already own the regular 4K release, but this has a bunch of exclusive special features, not least a whole new short film) and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (which, as previously mentioned, it turned out was faulty and I had to wait for a replacement); and Arrow, who this month brought out The Last Emperor (one of those ’80s historical epics I’ve yet to see) and The Sisters Brothers (a film I’ve consistently not got round to watching while it was on Netflix and iPlayer and possibly other streaming services, and now I can not get round to watching it on disc).

Indeed, breaking this section down by label is probably the right way to go about it, because so many of my purchases these days are random films — sometimes things I’ve never even heard of — which I blind buy because I trust the label (though there’s no label I blindly buy everything from — there has to be something about each release that piques my interest). In that sense, Indicator dominated the month with five titles: Spaghetti Western The Big Gundown (which pairs nicely with Eureka’s Run, Man, Run from last month. Just need someone to bring Face to Face to Blu to complete the trilogy of Sergio Sollima’s work in the genre); Mexican wrestler action in a box set of the first two Santo films, Santo vs. Evil Brain and Santo vs. Infernal Men (this is a real “well, if Indicator are releasing it…” punt, combined with the enjoyment I got from Mystery Science Theater 3000’s recent Santo episode); and then, right at the end of the month, Death of a Gunfighter, The Night of the Following Day, and the only one of these six films I would’ve classed as a “want to see” before Indicator announced them, Sherlock Holmes riff They Might Be Giants. The latter comes with three cuts of the film, so I’m gonna have to choose one somehow…

The only other label to mention this month (I said it was a smaller one) is Eureka, who continued their recent output of classic “girls with guns” / Michelle Yeoh titles with Magnificent Warriors and expanded their Masters of Cinema line with yakuza thriller Violent Streets; plus I dove slightly into their back catalogue (all the way back to October) and bought the Maniacal Mayhem set of three Boris Karloff / Universal horrors (to go with the Universal Terror set I already had and in anticipation of the Creeping Horror set that’s coming in April, not to mention their other collections of classic Uni monster/horror flicks).

My final purchase of the month is an oddity: a DVD (the only format it’s available on) of a Christmas movie (seasonal!) — or, rather, a Christmas TV special. And its only DVD release (that I’m aware of) was a freebie with the Daily Mail years ago, and it was that that I picked up from an eBay seller (for a reasonable price, considering most copies of it are advertised for £16+. Seriously). I’m talking about The Greatest Store in the World, which I’ve always felt would be remembered as something of a Christmas classic if it had been released as a proper movie rather than a BBC special in 1999. Or maybe the memory cheats? It hasn’t been repeated often, so I haven’t seen it for years. Well, I’m not about to watch it anytime soon — it’s a Christmas movie, remember! It’ll have to wait ’til December.

Not Quiet on the 100 Films Front: The Monthly Review of February 2023

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This post named in honour of the big winner at the BAFTAs, obviously. Of course, I haven’t seen it, so that’s where anything I have to say about it ends.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#10 A Night at the Opera (1935) — Failures #2
#11 Fantasia (1940) — Series Progression #1
#12 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) — Series Progression #2
#13 Tropical Malady (2004) — Blindspot #2
#14 Ace in the Hole (1951) — WDYMYHS #2
#15 The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Case (1932) — Rewatch #2
#16 Die Hart (2023) — New Film #2


  • I watched nine feature films I’d never seen before in February.
  • That means I again failed to hit my minimum target of ten new films a month, for the third month in a row.
  • Although, as I only watched eight last month, it also makes it the best month of 2023 so far.
  • On the bright side, six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch, which leaves me bang on target.
  • I also watched five short films, an uncommonly high number, so that’s something too.
  • After accidentally forgetting the category last month, I quickly caught up on Series Progression, watching two qualifying films at the start of the month. But then I didn’t watch any more films from any ‘non-compulsory’ categories (i.e. the ones where I don’t need to watch a film every month), so swings and roundabouts.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched A Night at the Opera.



The 93rd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Not a bad bunch of films this month, but fairly easily the best of them was Billy Wilder’s satirical portrait of journalism — its cynicism so dark that it’s commonly labelled a film noir — Ace in the Hole.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Not many outright bad films this month, so it’s easy to declare Die Hart the ‘winner’ here. I didn’t hate it, but it’s high on obvious gags and light on genuine laughs. On the bright side, it’s barely 80 minutes long.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
My first review roundup of the year included three Oscar nominees and a then-recent new-ish release, so I guess it should be no surprise that Weeks 3–4 topped this list with ease.



Every review posted this month, including new titles and the Archive 5


It’s time for the Oscars. I’ve only seen two of this year’s Best Picture nominees so far, but hopefully I’ll catch some more before the ceremony. Whatever happens, there’s a greater-than-zero chance that March’s monthly review title will somehow reference the winner.

January’s Failures

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I can’t speak for the whole country, but Avatar: The Way of Water seems to have still been the big title at the cinema here throughout January. By which I mean, my local still had it on their largest screen in most of the prime time-slots. But then, there’s been nothing else truly “blockbustery” to challenge its need for the grandest scale possible. There have been significant releases, sure; and there’s always the “every film should be seen on the biggest screen possible” argument; but nothing else came out in January that’s so expressly about visual spectacle. Any crowdpleasers that have turned up — horror M3GAN; Gerard Butler vehicle Plane; Tom Hanks comedy A Man Called Otto — hardly feel of the same scale.

I use the term “crowdpleasers” to differentiate those films from most of the UK’s January release slate, which is, as usual, dominated by awards season stuff that we’ve had to wait for: Babylon, Empire of Light, The Fabelmans, Tár, Till… Plus, limited releases that caught my eye included the new one from Mark “Bait” Jenkin, Enys Men (out on Blu-ray from the BFI in June), and Iranian thriller Holy Spider (which will be on MUBI in March and Blu-ray in April).

The streamers also seemed to be mainly trading in hangovers from last year, with Netflix releasing starry period mystery-thriller The Pale Blue Eye (reaction seems to have been mixed, but it looks really good), Amazon Prime offering Emma Thompson sex drama Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Disney+ generating plenty of discourse with The Menu, and even MUBI getting in on the act with awards contender Aftersun. Netflix did premiere a few brand-new things, though I’ve not come across a single mention of Bank of Dave, word has been poor about race/generation-based comedy You People, and the new sci-fi from Train to Busan writer-director Yeon Sang-Ho, JUNG_E, didn’t receive strong notices either. This is why I ended up watching Shotgun Wedding as my new film for January…

There was the usual mass of catalogue additions across all the streamers to bulk out my never-ending watchlists. Particular titles of note included, believe it or not, Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween, which I only note because it was on my first-ever list of 50 missed films but, in the intervening decade-and-a-half, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it on a streaming service before. Maybe it’s a sign I should give it a go. Maybe not. That’s on Netflix, along with The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (I liked the first one enough to put the second my watchlist, but not enough to rush to see it, clearly), Mars One (I’ve actually no idea what this is, but it keeps coming up on my Letterboxd under “popular films you’ve not seen”), and Vesper (a low-budget British young-adult sci-fi that I heard about somewhere and sounded quite good). Moving on to Amazon Prime were Judas and the Black Messiah and Mortal Kombat (the recent one), while I was surprised that Sky Cinema became home to David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. I think I’ll wait for Second Sight’s 4K disc release, thanks.

A couple of the streamers boasted themed seasons this month. MUBI had a run of debuts, featuring filmmakers as diverse as Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Love Is Colder Than Death, an awesome title) and Paul W.S. Anderson (Shopping). All 4 have had a run of Steven Spielberg’s major works, all of which I’ve seen, but it did remind me that I bought his brilliant The Adventures of Tintin in 3D yonks ago and still haven’t got round to watching it. Plus I loved it, so it’s long overdue a rewatch anyway.

Talking of purchases, of course my habit continued unabated throughout January. It began with some hangovers from last year — orders from the US and Australia that took longer than expected to turn up, thanks to postal strikes and general season delays. From Oz, some new Imprint titles, including the second volume of their After Dark: Neo-Noir Cinema series, ’50s post-apocalyptic sci-fi On the Beach, and Akira Kurosawa’s Russian feature, Dersu Uzala. My order from the US was an even more ragtag bunch, starting with a few recent classic 3D releases: The Diamond Wizard and I, the Jury, the latter of which also comes with an apparently-underwhelming 4K copy. Also on 4K were George Miller’s latest, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Kino’s release of The Usual Suspects (which I never bought on Blu, so that’s a healthy upgrade), and, on something of a whim, Shout’s The Company of Wolves. Also in the box were a couple of titles I’ve had on standby for a while ready to bulk out a US order: Criterion’s edition of Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman and Warner Archive’s release of A Night at the Opera. Finally, the US-only “yellow” set from Arrow’s Giallo Essentials range, which includes Strip Nude for Your Killer, Torso, and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?

I was buying that anyway, but after deciding to make gialli a category in my 2023 Challenge, I also picked up a couple more titles that caught my eye while going through lists of the genre; namely, Death Laid an Egg and The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh. Those were both UK releases; I’ve got my eye on a couple more next time I do a US bulk order. I also upgraded my copy of Arrow’s Phenomena to the 4K version, having noticed that some of their Argento 4K sets are beginning to go out of print (replaced by standard editions, at least) and this one did look like a noticeable upgrade (I didn’t bother with Bird with a Crystal Plumage because it didn’t seem that big a jump from the existing Blu-ray).

There’s normally a trickle of 4K titles in these failure posts, and I’ve already mentioned six, but there were even more this month: Arrow’s recent-ish reissue of Silent Running; Jordan Peele’s Nope on offer; similarly, the Bad Boys trilogy and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood all in a 2-for-1 type deal; plus nice editions of The Green Mile and Reservoir Dogs (the Steelbook with the slipcover that makes his ear come off. Hilarity). Finally, the second volume of the Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection, which I’d intended to get at some point anyway, but was on a reasonable offer and includes Shadow of a Doubt, which I’ll be watching sometime this year for WDYMYHS.

All those titles — so, so many titles — and I don’t think I’ve mentioned a single brand-new release yet. Most notable there is my first batch of titles from new label Radiance, all of which are blind-buy punts (well, so is an awful lot of what I buy, to be fair, but I don’t think I’d even heard of any of these before I dived in). They include yakuza classic Big Time Gambling Boss, Palme d’Or-winning social drama The Working Class Goes to Heaven, ‘lost’ ’60s serial killer thriller A Woman Kills, and a crime comedy from the director of the brilliant Grosse Pointe Blank, Miami Blues. They’re all very handsome editions, so hopefully the content lives up to the thoughtful packaging. I’ve already got a few more of their releases on preorder.

Talking of preorders turning up, I spent far too much money in All the Anime’s pre-Christmas preorder announcements/sale, but its finally beginning to bear fruit, with Liz and the Blue Bird and The Deer King both turning up (weeks before their official dates) this month. I didn’t realise the former was a spinoff from the series Sound! Euphonium — I’ve heard of it (and decided to buy it) because it’s a staple of the mid-range on Letterboxd’s official list of the 100 highest-rated feature-length animated films. I was briefly worried (“will I need to have seen other stuff to ‘get’ it?”), until I remembered the Letterbox list explicitly excludes “sequels to shows or anime series […] that need greater context before watching are not included”. Phew!

Finally, in the new-new pile we can also find Eureka’s editions of Sergio Sollima Spaghetti Western Run, Man, Run and — last but not least, one of the film’s in this month’s header image — Michelle Yeoh actioner Royal Warriors.

The Late-Blooming Monthly Review of January 2023

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Ladies, gents, and everyone else, even in my 17th year, 100 Films continues to break records. I mean, they’re my own records — hardly anything that’s going to end up in that famous alcohol-branded tome of achievements — but you might think that, after a decade and a half of doing this, everything would be in some kind of rhythm, and/or that the extremes had already been explored and set. Not so!

So, what is January 2023’s claim to fame? It’s… my latest start ever! That is to say, the furthest into the year that I’ve watched my first film.

Okay, not a particularly auspicious accolade. Nor a “good” one, really. And certainly not a difficult one to beat, if I so choose — if there’s anything easier to do than “watching films”, it’s “not watching films”. But still, it’s something different to witter about in an introduction, so why not?

And it wasn’t one of those “technically a new record” where it goes just a little beyond the old one, either. My previous latest start was back in 2011, when I didn’t watch my first film of the year until January 10th. This year, it took all the way until the 19th. What happened? A mix of things. Focusing on getting 2022 wrapped up, first of all. Then planning out my 2023 Challenge and associated lists (Blindspot, WDYMYHS). The start of January turned out to be a busy period at my day job, too. And then my first few weekends of the year got eaten up by family commitments, to boot.

Anyway, all that’s behind me and I’m underway now — although the late start did hamper at least one of my viewing goals…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#1 The Magician (1926) — Failures #1
#2 Streets of Fire (1984) — Rewatch #1
#3 7500 (2019) — Wildcard #1
#4 The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) — Genre #1
#5 Shotgun Wedding (2022) — New Film #1
#6 The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) — Wildcard #2
#7 Black Girl (1966) — Blindspot #1
#8 The Goddess (1934) — Physical Media #1
#9 Gun Crazy (1950) — WDYMYHS #1


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in January.
  • For years now, I’ve aimed for at least ten first-time watches each month. 2022 was a failure in that respect (seven months didn’t make it), and now 2023 isn’t off to a great start either.
  • Seven of those counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches. That’s more positive, as it means I’m slightly ahead of target.
  • I also watched one short film: freshly Oscar-nominated My Year of Dicks. *schoolboygiggle*
  • This year’s Challenge is made up of nine categories, and I thought I’d got them all underway… until I released I’d forgotten Series Progression. Never mind.
  • The one new first-time-watch that didn’t count towards my Challenge was Glass Onion. I could’ve put it down as a Wildcard — an additional Failure — but I’m fairly certain I’m going to rewatch it before too long, so I’ve saved it for whenever that happens.
  • Instead, my first Wildcard of 2023 became a different rewatch: 7500. I wasn’t planning it, but I started the film to check something for my review (see the Reviews section) and ended up sucked in enough that I kept going. It’s a good film.
  • Updated rules mean I’ve also already logged my second Wildcard, and that was an additional Failure from December 2022: The Banshees of Inisherin.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was the first feature film made by an indigenous person from sub-Saharan Africa, Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Bonnie and Clyde-esque noir Gun Crazy.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Banshees of Inisherin, Glass Onion, and The Magician.



The 92nd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
The one film that didn’t count towards my Challenge was also my favourite of the month: the second Benoit Blanc mystery, Glass Onion. Note how I’m not using its “subtitle”. That’s because it’s not used in the film itself (only in the marketing), so doesn’t really count as part of the title. Some sites are coming round to this. Others… well, it’s provoked the usual kind of circular arguments in the Talk section of Wiki-bloody-pedia.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
No outright duds this month, in my opinion (others would disagree about Shotgun Wedding, but I thought it was fun lightweight Friday night fare). By a pip I give this to The Magician — as I say, not a bad film, and interesting for its influence on films that followed (James Whale was a fan and drew on parts of it for Frankenstein), but simply not as entertaining as everything else I watched.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Although by no means a big hit in itself (taking all posts into account, it came 46th), the most successful new post this month was my Best of 2022 list.



Every review posted this month, including new titles and the Archive 5


The shortest month of the year, and therefore the de facto most challenging to hit all my targets.

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen These Films Noirs?

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My name for Blindspot before someone else created Blindspot, “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” (WDYMYHS for short) works in the same way: 12 films I should have seen but haven’t, watched one a month throughout the year. (And these, too, contribute to my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.) To differentiate the pair, I now use Blindspot to focus on Great Movies™ I should have seen, whereas WDYMYHS takes a particular ‘theme’ each year. Last year, it was 1986. This year, it’s film noir.

If you’re getting déjà vu, it’s because in 2022 film noir was the theme of my Challenge’s ‘Genre’ category. Why the jump from Genre to WDYMYHS? What makes that different? Well, when it was just a genre I was free to watch any noirs, and so I tended towards ones that were short or to hand, to facilitate easy viewing. That meant I didn’t make significant headway into the many highly-acclaimed noirs I’ve not seen. So, this year’s selection redresses the balance by being a list of some of the most important noirs I’ve never seen.

First, the 12 films I’ve chosen, in alphabetical order. Afterwards, I’ll write a little about how and why I decided these are “important” noirs.

Ace in the Hole

Ace in the Hole

The Asphalt Jungle

The Asphalt Jungle

Gun Crazy

Gun Crazy

In a Lonely Place

In a Lonely Place

The Killers

The Killers

Mildred Pierce

Night and the City

Night and the City

Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley

Out of the Past

Out of the Past

Scarlet Street

Scarlet Street

Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt

Sweet Smell of Success

Sweet Smell of Success

Normally it’s Blindspot’s selection process that gets very technical while WDYMYHS is a bit more intuitive, but this year it’s the latter that has used various lists in an attempt to define its 12 films. Not that I got insanely technical with it — no need for Excel spreadsheets and formulae here. Instead, I cross-referenced a handful of key lists, and that got me results I was happy enough with.

First, long-time readers of this blog may remember me referencing the book Pocket Essentials: Film Noir at one time or another in the past. It was the first book I bought after my interest in noir was piqued; a small, slim volume that’s mostly made up of a massive list of noir films. It’s still my go-to reference after watching a noir — to see if it’s in there, and see if there’s a rating (you can’t blame the book’s sole author for not having seen them all). Indeed, even though I now own some large and beautiful noir-related books (Taschen’s Film Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites immediately comes to mind, a book I really should spend more time with), Pocket Essentials is the only book I’ve referred to in forming this list. Before beginning that exhaustive list of every noir they could manage, the book highlights seven key titles for analysis. I’ve seen six of them, meaning the seventh — Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt — went straight into my WDYMYHS selection.

For the remaining 11, I looked to four lists. First up was TSPDT’s 100 Essential Noirs. (On TSPDT’s site, these 100 have been subsumed into the ongoing 1,000 Noir Films project. You can find lists of just the initial 100 on iCheckMovies and Letterboxd.) With a whopping 72 films I’d never seen (thus proving my point that there are many “essential” noirs I still need to see), I made it a requirement that a film had to be on this list to be included.

The next two lists, which I considered equally, were IMDb’s Film-Noir Top 50 and the top 25 noirs of the ‘Czar of Noir’, Eddie Muller. Although both those lists are ranked, I ignored that in favour of which films were on both lists. Despite not having seen 30 films on the IMDb list and 20 on Muller’s, there were, as it turned out, just nine overlaps. They included the #1 film on Muller’s list, In a Lonely Place, but not my highest-ranked unseen film on IMDb’s, 6th placed White Heat; nor, indeed, the film ranked 2nd by Muller, Criss Cross. Funny stuff like that happens when you use multiple lists, which is part of why I do it so often.

Anyway, adding those nine got me to ten. This is where the fourth and final list came in — though it wasn’t a list as such, more using other opinions as a decider. Going back to the 100 Essential Noirs, I sorted it by the ratings of Letterboxd users, and included the top two that weren’t already in. Those were Ace in the Hole (the 2nd highest that I hadn’t seen on both IMDb’s list and by Letterboxd ratings, but not on Muller’s list) and Mildred Pierce. The aforementioned White Heat missed out by one place.

Or maybe it didn’t. Well, I mean, it did; but I also mean, maybe it will still end up included. I say that because, while normally Blindspot and WDYMYHS wouldn’t qualify for wildcards in my 100 Films Challenge (they’re lists of 12 films taking up 12 slots — there aren’t any to be wildcards), this year there sort of are spare films. In the case of Blindspot 2023, because it’s entirely based around the Sight & Sound poll, films from the rest of the list are allowed as wildcards. For WDYMYHS, as being on the 100 Essential Noirs was an entry requirement, I think the rest of that list should be eligible for wildcards. That’s quite a lot of possibilities (60, to be precise), but I probably won’t actually get round to any of them, so hey, why not?