The Best of 2023

Posted on January 7, 2024 by badblokebob

My review of the year reaches its end in the way it always does: with the best films I watched for the first time in 2023, plus a few honourable mentions, and a list of notable new releases I missed.

For almost a decade now, my annual “top ten” has actually been my “top 10%”, the final total of entries taking its cue from how many first-time watches there were that year. Well, this year there were 103, and 10% of 103 is 10.3, which rounds down to 10 — so, for the first time since 2014, my top ten is actually a top ten. Huh.

The Ten Best Films I Watched for the First Time in 2023

As alluded to in the previous paragraph (but I’ll spell it out again), all the movies I watched for the first time in 2023 are eligible for this list, not just brand-new releases. In the past I’ve also provided a yearly rank for the films that were released during the previous year, but in 2023 I only saw 17 such films, and less than half of them were what you’d call “major” releases. More to the point, only one of them appears in my top ten, so there’s not much point providing a “2023 ranking”.

So, let’s crack on…

10 Confess, Fletch

Once played by Chevy Chase in a couple of ’80s films I’ve never seen, here Jon Hamm takes over the role of Fletch, a journalist who seems to have a habit of getting embroiled in mysteries. Hamm is one of those guys that Classic Hollywood loved but we don’t see enough of anymore: typically handsome fellas who can also be hilariously funny. That makes him perfect to lead this comedy thriller, which manages to be consistently bouncy fun while also unspooling a pretty decent mystery storyline. We deserve a whole pile of sequels, but I suspect we won’t get any. I guess I’ll have to see if those two earlier flicks measure up, or maybe even read the books.

9 Night and the City

The basic plot — small-time hustler with big ambitions gets in over his head — feels familiar from many a noir, but the devil’s in the details, which here include an absolutely superb performance from Richard Widmark as wannabe-somebody Fabian and first-rate direction by Jules Dassin, plus a post-war London setting that brings a different flavour than the genre’s usual LA/NY locales. Fabian may have only been “so close” to greatness, but Dassin certainly achieved it.

8 Elevator to the Gallows

Louis Malle’s debut tells a film noir narrative with a dose of French Nouvelle Vague style, which results in an unpredictable thriller with a kind of tragic beauty and casual existentialism you don’t often get from the genre’s hard-boiled American counterparts.

7 The Killers

The first screen adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s short story covers the original work in its opening sequence — and what a sequence it is — before spinning off into an entirely original narrative to explain the backstory to that opening. Following an insurance investigator as he pieces together one man’s life, it’s like noir’s answer to Citizen Kane; and, at its best, that’s a comparison it stands up to. Burt Lancaster’s swagger belies this being his screen debut; screenwriter Anthony Veiller juggles a nonlinear storyline to revealing effect; and director Robert Siodmak gets to show off with scenes like a single-take heist — and that opening, of course, which was so good, the two hitmen characters who briefly star in it earnt their own (radio) spin-off.

6 In a Lonely Place

One of the great things about film noir being a trend that was observed retrospectively, as opposed to a genre that had been codified and its makers were aware of, is that you can come across well-established and widely-agreed noir films that don’t feel much like anything you’d expect of the ‘genre’. That’s true of these next three entries in my top ten (yes, from #9 to #4 is a straight run of noir). In a Lonely Place starts out like a Hollywood-insider screwball comedy, with wry observations of the industry and amusing rat-a-tat dialogue. But then there’s a murder — suddenly, oh so noir. But kinda not really, because what follows is more of a character study. To say too much would be spoilersome, other than to add that Humphrey Bogart’s performance starts out as fairly standard fare for the star, but develops into something incredible.

5 Mildred Pierce

Even more so than In a Lonely Place, here’s a noir that’s almost (almost) one in technicality only. James M. Cain’s novel about a housewife struggling to make her way, while contending with a self-absorbed and demanding daughter, has been described as a psychological thriller, but plays on screen as a familial melodrama — except screenwriter Ranald MacDougall’s adaptation adds a murder investigation framing device, sliding it sideways into noir. The end result runs all three simultaneously, to magnificent effect.

4 Sweet Smell of Success

At first blush, this might not look like your typical noir: it’s centred on a grifting New York talent agent (Tony Curtis, in what feels like the role he was born to play) and an influential newspaper columnist (Burt Lancaster, also excellent), the former desperate for the attention of the latter to promote his clients. Hardly the world of private dicks and gangsters and femme fatales that you’d expect of the genre. But, really, noir is about the dark side of the American dream, and that can play out as well in the cutthroat world of Broadway as anywhere. Like every great dystopia, it’s made to seem so appealing you want to be part of it, even as we’re shown that to actually live it would be horrid.

3 Oppenheimer

There’s been a sense from some quarters that Oppenheimer represents writer-director Christopher Nolan finally realising his potential as a Serious Filmmaker, making this clearly his best film. I don’t know about that (I love Bond-type films at least as much as Nolan himself, so my taste still errs toward The Dark Knight and Inception and maybe even Tenet, and we can’t disregard The Prestige or Interstellar either), but there’s no doubting this is his most “mature” work to date. It is, to be clear, a stunning achievement — a three-hour partially-black-and-white character-driven drama, mostly told through scenes of men (and occasionally women) sitting in rooms talking, that is gripping throughout. But even that description is reductive, because there’s so much more going on in the way Nolan tells this story — the juggling of time; the use of montage. He’s always done that kind of thing to an extent (Memento, Inception, and Dunkirk foreground it), but here it feels less formalised, more intuitive, and that pays dividends.

2 Everything Everywhere All at Once

It took me a long time to get round to this, meaning it had been through multiple praise/backlash cycles, so I approached it with an odd mix of hype and trepidation. As it turned out, it’s very much My Kinda Thing: science fiction with big ideas; character drama with big emotions; action with a sense of fun; all cut with enough comedy and bizarreness to take the edge off any earnestness, but without undermining the heart. And when I say “bizarreness”, I truly mean it — it’s not just “ooh, a little quirky”, but tossed through with crazy, random concepts. I’m sure some people find that kind of thing off-putting, but for me, it just makes it all that much more fun.

1 Glass Onion

If Knives Out felt zeitgeisty in its pillorying of rich people, Glass Onion is full-on prophetic: the character the plot revolves around is a thinly-veiled spot-on parody of idiot-billionaire Elon Musk, but the film was only released as the depths of his stupidity were beginning to be publicly exposed. His disastrous reign at ~~Twitter~~ X has only further clarified the parallels. If Glass Onion has a problem, that may be it: its cast of influencers and wannabes are sometimes more caricatures than characters. Or maybe that’s just the fault of the vapidity of the modern world. Either way, it offers a murder mystery narrative full of clever reveals and reversals, rewarding both if you try to second-guess it (good luck) or just allow yourself to be swept along. [Full review.]

As usual, getting the 103 new films I watched in 2023 down to a top ten proved a challenge. Indeed, as the statistics ultimately revealed, this was a year of high quality, so it follows naturally that it would be hard to narrow it down to just a small number of favourites. Now, while I always include some “honourable mentions” at this point in my “best of” post, I don’t normally just list films that almost made it in to my top ten. I figure if I’m going to do that, I may as well just expand the list. But I’m making something of an exception this year, simply because the final list ended up so dominated by noir that I watched for WDYMYHS. Maybe that was inevitable when I put specific effort into watching a pile of highly-acclaimed movies from a genre I love, but it also feels kinda unfair.

So, other films that made it as far as my “top 20” list, but didn’t quite go all the way, included (in alphabetical order) The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Cléo from 5 to 7, John Wick: Chapter 4, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, The Pied Piper, Remember the Night, Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, and Shiva Baby. There were also a couple more noirs that didn’t quite make it: Nightmare Alley and Scarlet Street. All great films, but there’s only so much room.

Indeed, if my top ten was based on films’ best individual sequences rather than, y’know, the entire movie, there are some “almost made it”s that would actually top the chart — films like Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (for Revolting Children, a proper anthem of a song by Tim Minchin that Matthew Warchus directs the hell out of) and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (for the whole train climax… or the Rome car chase… or even just the absolutely perfect cut into the opening titles) and John Wick: Chapter Four (for… oh God, I can’t even decide: it’s wall-to-wall extravagantly fantastic action set pieces). Some films from the actual top ten would feature in such a list too, like the opening diner sequence from The Killers, or the finale of Oppenheimer (so good, even the Linkin Park meme version is a banger).

Moving away from the top ten itself, let’s recap the 12 films that won the Arbie for my Favourite Film of the Month — some of which have already been mentioned in this post, but some of which haven’t. In chronological order (with links to the relevant awards), they were Glass Onion, Ace in the Hole (another great noir!), Everything Everywhere All at Once, Scarlet Street, The Shiver of the Vampires, In a Lonely Place, Night and the City, All the Old Knives, The Pied Piper, Alien Love Triangle, The Killers, and Mildred Pierce.

Finally, as always, a mention for the 17 films that earned a 5-star rating this year. All ten of my top ten made the grade this year, but the other seven were (again, in alphabetical order) Ace in the Hole, The Banshees of Inisherin, Cléo from 5 to 7, John Wick: Chapter 4, The Pied Piper, Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, and Scarlet Street.

With the caveat that I’ve inevitably forgotten or misjudged something really noteworthy, here’s an alphabetical list of 50 films designated as being from 2023 that I haven’t yet seen. They’ve been chosen for a variety of reasons, from box office success to critical acclaim via simple notoriety, representing a spread of styles and genres, successes and failures.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Anatomy of a Fall
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Asteroid City
Barbie
Bottoms
The Boy and the Heron
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Cocaine Bear
The Creator
Creed III
Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
Elemental
Evil Dead Rise
The Exorcist: Believer
Expend4bles
Extraction 2
Fast X
Ferrari
Five Nights at Freddy’s
The Flash
Godzilla Minus One
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
The Killer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Knock at the Cabin
The Last Voyage of the Demeter
The Little Mermaid
Maestro
The Marvels
May December
Meg 2: The Trench
Napoleon
No Hard Feelings
Past Lives
Plane
Poor Things
Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire
Saltburn
Saw X
Scream VI
Silent Night
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan
Wish
Wonka

So, that’s it for 2023. All wrapped up within the first week, same as last year. I feel like I’ve got this down to some kind of science. (Oops — fate: tempted. Next year I’ll probably wind up having to post this stuff throughout the whole of January.)

And with a new week — the second of the year, already — beginning tomorrow, I feel like there’s no time to waste: onwards to 2024!

2023 Statistics!

Posted on January 5, 2024 by badblokebob

Here we are again: the best bit of the year — the statistics!

As was the case last year (and will surely remain so going forward), these haven’t been fiddled with to fit with my new-format Challenge, but instead continue to encompass all of my first-time watches from the past year (as listed here). That’s just the way I like it (in part because it means I can compare across the years, whereas switching to a Challenge focus would basically be starting again).

Before the onslaught of numbers and graphs, I’ll just mention that, because I’m a Letterboxd Patron member, I get a yearly stats page over there too, which can be found here. In some places that’ll look a bit different to this one, because I also log whatever TV I’m allowed there; but it does have some interesting additional and alternative stats, like my most-watched and highest-rated stars and directors. So, if you love this stuff as much as I do, be sure to check out the extra goodies there at some point.

And with that said, it’s on to the main event…

I watched 103 feature films for the first time in 2023, which is my lowest final tally in over a decade (you have to go back to 2012’s 97 for less). It snuggles in between the handful of years in which I reached exactly 100 and 2013’s 110 as my all-time 5th lowest year (out of 17).

Of those 103 films, 67 counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge. Alongside 25 rewatches, that means I totalled 92 films for my Challenge — sadly falling short of the goal of 100 for the second year running.

Outside of the Challenge, I rewatched a further three films, for a total of 28 rewatches. That’s somewhere in the middle of the pack — my 7th best year ever for rewatches, which also makes it my 10th worst.

NB: I have no rewatch data for 2007 and only incomplete numbers for 2008.

Here’s how that viewing played out across the year, month by month. The dark blue line is my first-time watches and the pale blue is rewatches. As is usually the case, my viewing month to month is wildly unpredictable.

I also watched 15 short films in 2023. (Those don’t count in any statistics, with the sole exception of the version of the total running time that expressly mentions them.) That’s only the third time my shorts count has been in double figures, sitting behind 2019’s 20 and 2020’s festivals-driven whopper of 65.

The total running time of my first-watch features was 173 hours and 11 minutes. That’s my lowest since 2012, which makes sense when you remember the stat from the first paragraph. Add in the shorts and the figure rises almost 2½ hours to 175 hours and 33 minutes, though you still won’t find lower since 2012. (In the graph, I would also include any alternate cuts I watched for the first time in that “others” block, but there weren’t any this year.)

On to formats now, and the big news (if you can call it that) isn’t what’s #1, but what isn’t here: I didn’t watch a single film on TV in 2023, the first time that’s happened in the history of the blog. TV was once my dominant format, making up over half my viewing in 2010, and the largest portion in 2009, 2011, and 2012, but tailed off thanks to the rise in streaming. It’s also a personal thing: its number of films was still in the 20s as recently as 2019, but then I got rid of Virgin Media and its easy recordability, and the number went off a cliff. But I won’t lament it too much, because there’s always a chance it’ll return — unlike, say, VHS, which still accounted for five films back in 2007 and two in 2008 before disappearing entirely.

As for what is #1, that’s not really news at all: it’s digital again, with 60 films — though at 58.25% of my viewing, that’s its lowest percentage since 2019. My streaming viewing had been hovering around 50% from 2015 to 2019, but then suddenly darted up to almost 74% in 2020. I know most would blame the pandemic for that kind of thing, but during lockdown I still had all my many, many Blu-rays, so I don’t really know why that happened. It dropped marginally to 72.5% in 2021, then a little more to 69.4% last year, but a fall of over 10% is… well, I approve. Maybe it’s silly to look at it that way — I mean, this is my own viewing: I could ban myself from streaming anything if I wanted to — but I kind of just watch what I want to or feel like, then look at these numbers in retrospect. With that in mind, I continue to want to see Blu-ray do better, and this is a step in the right direction.

Of course, “digital” is actually made up of multiple streamers, plus downloads. This year was a tight one, with Netflix’s 16 films (26.7% of digital) narrowly claiming the crown from Amazon Prime on 15 (25%). Next were downloads on 13 (21.7%), before a small handful of other streamers filled out the rest: Disney+ with six (10%), MUBI with five (8.3%), Now on three (5%), and Apple TV+ on two (3.3%). That’s right, nothing in 2023 for iPlayer, nor ITVX, nor Channel 4, nor YouTube, nor any of the multitudinous other streamers that are available nowadays.

Overall second went, also as usual, to Blu-ray, with 31 films (30.1%). That’s up on last year, though doesn’t by itself totally cover the drop in digital.

So where else have those lost digital percentage points gone? Well, DVD held steady on eight films. With my overall viewing down, that means it accounts for a slightly higher percentage — 7.8% in 2023 vs 7.2% in 2022. Hardly making the world of difference, that, is it? DVD has theoretically enjoyed a boost these last couple of years thanks to the Physical Media category of my Challenge, although in fact it hasn’t made that much of a difference (looking at the graph, the two Challenge years aren’t notably different to pre-Challenge years like 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020). Spoilers: the Physical Media category is going away in 2024, so it’ll be interesting to see how DVD charts next year.

Our search for those lost digital percentage points finds perhaps its biggest culprit in cinema. I went four times this year — less than I’d hoped, but tied with 2020. It’s only 3.9% of my viewing, but if we’re talking about how percentage points have moved around, I guess those are all nabbed from digital. (For those who want the full maths: add cinema’s 3.9% to DVD’s 0.6% increase for 4.5% of streaming’s lost 11.1%. That leaves 6.6%, and Blu-ray went up by 8.6%, so… um, wait, what? Oh, I’m just confused now. Let’s abandon the pretence I know what I’m talking about, have a graph, and then on to something else.)

In 2022 I only watched one new film in 3D. I’d hoped to improve on that in 2023 (the general public may think 3D is dead, but it still has its fans — like me — and I’ve still got a 3D TV and plenty of unwatched discs), but I didn’t — in fact, I watched no films in 3D. Oh. Well, at least that’s an easy figure to improve upon… (In overall terms, I did watch two 3D titles this year, both Doctor Who ones. That too is the same as 2022, when my one new 3D film was supplemented by a 3D rewatch.)

As for the new high PQ standard, 4K Ultra HD, that fared significantly better, with 27 films in 2023 — up from 24 in 2022, even though I watched fewer films overall. Indeed, at 26.2% of my viewing, you could argue it’s 4K’s strongest year yet. (I watched 40 back in 2020, but that was only 15.2%.) Still, 1080p HD remains the standard overall, accounting for 62.1% of my viewing. Of course, sometimes the only option is lower quality, and so I still watched 12 films in SD. That’s my lowest raw number yet, and even as a percentage — 11.65% — it’s down on the last two years.

In terms of the age of films watched, it’s normally the present decade that tops the chart, although it typically takes a couple of years to assert that position. The 2020s got there for the first time last year, matching the 2010s record of doing it in the decade’s third year. No surprise, then, to find the 2020s in first place again, with 38 films (36.9%). Normally you’d then find the preceding decade in second place, but — for the second time in a row, and only the fifth time ever — that’s not the case. In fact, two decades bested it: for no immediately obvious reason, the ’60s are second with 15 films (15.5%); and, boosted by my noir-focused WDYMYHS selection, the ’40s are third with 10 films (9.7%). That leaves the 2010s in fourth place with just eight films (7.8%).

Every decade since the 1920s cropped up in my feature film viewing this year. That means the 1910s miss out for the first time since 2019, but the 1900s & earlier were represented by shorts, as they have been every year since 2020. I specify “and earlier” because one even came from the 1890s. Counting down the remaining decades, in joint fifth place we have last year’s #2, the ’80s, tied with the ’50s on seven films (6.8%) apiece. From there we’ve got the ’70s with six (5.8%), the ’90s with four (3.9%), the ’30s and 2000s each with three (2.9%), and finally the 1920s with just one (0.97%).

As well as watching older films, I’ve also tried to watch more films from around the world — in a relatively “hands off” way, that is. By which I mean, it’s not like I’ve disqualified US/UK productions from my Challenge, nor anything else particularly radical or concerted; I’ve just tried to, y’know, vary things. That approach means that, while the USA remains clearly the dominant country of production, with 60 films this year, its percentage has dropped significantly, to 58.3% — down from almost 73% last year, and well below the previous low, 67.6% in 2021. Meanwhile, the UK has actually gone up, with 33 films equating to 32.04%, its highest ever, over 2013’s 29.3%.

In total, there were 23 production countries in 2023 — up from 17 in 2022, which is good considering I watched roughly the same number of films. It’s fewer than in any year from 2014 to 2021, but I did watch a lot more films in that period. France came third for the third year in a row with 12 films (11.7%), Germany were fourth with 10 films (9.7%), Italy were fifth with nine films (8.7%), and Mexico had an uncommonly strong showing to reach sixth place with five films (4.9%). There were three each for Canada and Hong Kong, and two apiece for China, Cuba, Ireland, and Sweden. That leaves eleven other countries with one film each, including Japan, who I mention because they built up to a huge spike a few years ago, culminating in third place in 2018, but have tailed off again since, for no readily discernible reason.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a similar story with languages — although the UK and US combine here (along with various other countries, including foreign films where it’s spoken a significant amount) to leave me with 77 films in English. It remains by far the highest single language, but features in less than three-quarters of films in 2023 — 74.8%, to be precise — which is far down on last year’s obscene 92.8%, and well below the previous low, 2020’s 84.5%. Nonetheless, it’s a long drop to second placed French, featured in nine films (8.7%), which is only just ahead of Italian in eight films (7.8%) and Spanish in seven films (6.8%). In all, 16 languages were spoken in 2023’s viewing, slightly up from last year, but you’d have to go back to 2014 to find lower again. But, as I’ve said, I watched far more films per year in those years, so of course the number of countries and languages represented was higher.

A total of 89 directors plus seven directing partnerships helmed the feature films I watched in 2023, with a further seven directors and one partnership added by my short film viewing (one feature director also directed a short, as we shall see in a moment). No director had more than two features to their name this year, but those with two were Allan Davis (both from the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series), Dario Argento (if things had gone as planned, he would’ve had at least four), Eric Appel, Joselito Rodríguez, Kenneth Branagh (if rewatches counted, he’d have more), Mario Bava, and Roger Michell. It was Danny Boyle who was behind one feature and one short, while Dean Fleischer Camp helmed three shorts (the original Marcel the Shell with Shoes On trio) and George Albert Smith is credited with two.

For a few years now I’ve been charting the number of female directors whose work I’ve watched each year. This had been steadily improving, but fell back considerably in 2022, unfortunately. In 2023, I watched 12 films with a female director (11 with a woman directing solo, one where she was part of a duo with a man). Counting the shared credit as half a film, that comes out as 11.17% of my viewing. That’s actually my second highest percentage since I started monitoring this, but remains shockingly low considering that women make up a little over 50% of the population. I say that’s an industry problem, primarily — if more women were allowed to direct movies as a matter of course, I’d see more movies directed by women.

At the time of writing, just one film from my 2023 viewing appears on the IMDb Top 250 — that would be Oppenheimer at 68th. However, because that list is ever-changing, the number I have left to see has actually gone up, from 18 at the end of 2022 to 19 now — the first time that’s happened since I started tracking this a decade ago. One of those 19 films has only just inserted itself into the list though, so I presume it will speedily drop off (that tends to be what happens to new entrants). Still, even that would leave me with a net change of zero. Maybe my 2024 viewing will have more of an impact…

Talking of minimal impact, let’s move on to the disaster zone that is my progress with my “50 Unseen” lists — you know, the list I publish at the end of every year of 50 notable new films I missed that year, which I’ve continued to track my progress watching down the years. I went through a period where they helped to decide a lot of my viewing, and consequently I was constantly chipping away at every old list. Not so much nowadays. In fact, “not at all” might be more accurate: in 2023, I only watched 10 films across all 16 lists. I haven’t even watched that few from just the previous year (i.e. in this case, 2022) since I only watched eight from 2009’s list in 2010. To be precise, I watched six from 2022’s 50. That’s my second-worst ‘first year’ ever, beating only the four from 2008’s list that I watched in 2009. Eesh. The only reasoning I can offer for such a drop off is that I’m watching far fewer films than I used to, and more of them are older.

In total, I’ve now seen 523 out of 800 ‘missed’ movies. That’s 65.4%, the lowest it’s been since 2017. I was pleased to get it above 70% for the first time in 2018 and my aim had been to keep it up there, which I managed for the next few years. I’d like to get back there, but it’s unlikely to happen in 2024: I’d have to watch 72 films (from across all 17 years), which would be a new record. Considering I watch at least 100 (ish) films every year, hitting 72 seems theoretically possible, but only if I were to devote most of my viewing to only films from these lists. I won’t be doing that. Maybe I can achieve 70% in 2025… or 2026… Of course, the goal posts keep moving because the list increases by 50 titles every year (speaking of which, 2023’s 50 will be listed in my forthcoming “best of” post).

And so we reach the finale of every review, and thus a fitting climax to these statistics: the scores.

For the avoidance of doubt, this stat factors in every new film I watched in 2023, even those for which I’ve yet to publish a review (this year, that’s a ludicrous 95% of them — it was just 27% last year, although it was 98% in 2021). That means there are some where I’m still flexible on my precise score; usually films I’ve awarded 3.5 or 4.5 on Letterboxd, but which I insist on rounding to a whole star here. For the sake of completing these stats, I’ve assigned a whole-star rating to every film, but it’s possible I’ll change my mind when I eventually post a review (it’s happened before). Still, hopefully this section will remain broadly accurate (because I’m not going to come back to modify it!)

At the top end of the spectrum, in 2023 I awarded 17 five-star ratings (16.5% of my viewing) — a massive increase on 2022’s six (5.4%). Having last year asserted that my marking has become harsher as I’ve got older / more experienced, this year suggests that, eh, maybe not; although, historically, 16.5% is slap bang in the middle of the board (by which I mean: eight years had a higher percentage and eight years had a lower percentage). I’ve always been a relatively lenient grader and, to be honest, I see no reason why that should change — I just like films, ok?

At the other end of the spectrum, though perhaps indicative of the same thing, I gave zero one-star ratings — only the second time that’s ever happened, after 2011. I’m always stingy with them, feeling that the lowest-of-the-low should be reserved for things that are truly execrable, so in many respects it’s nice to have gone a whole year without watching anything so meritless.

My most commonly awarded rating was, as usual, four stars, which I gave to 43 films (41.7%). That’s down from last year, although together the top two ratings add up to 60 films in both 2022 and 2023 (and, remember, I only watched slightly more films last year, so it’s broadly equal). Slightly behind were the 37 three-star films (35.9%), while only having six two-star films means their percentage — 5.8% — is the lowest since 2011 (a year you may remember for its similar lack of one-star films).

So, from all that we can calculate the final stat of the year: the average score for 2023. The short version is 3.7 out of 5 — the highest it’s been since 2018, which was the fourth year in a run of 3.7s. It bucks the trend, too, as 2019 and 2020 both averaged 3.6 before 2021 and 2022 hit 3.5. If we want to get more precise (and we do), we can add a few more decimal places and see the score comes out at 3.689. That makes 2023 the fifth highest scoring year ever — again, quite the turnaround from the last two years, which were both my second-lowest year ever at the time.

All of which said, as you can see from the graph above, my average score has remained pretty consistent across the years. There are no truly bad years, just weaker ones — or, in 2023’s case, stronger ones. Hurrah.

All that remains now for my review of 2023: which of those 103 films were my favourites?

December’s Failures

Posted on January 4, 2024 by badblokebob

I habitually begin this column with the theatrical releases I’ve missed in the past month, but this time the true biggest failures are of a more personal nature: all the films I should have watched to complete my 100 Films in a Year Challenge. Those were, in alphabetical order, A Brighter Summer Day, Pierrot le Fou, Shoah, and, er, any five gialli. The monthly “failures” category of my 100 Films Challenge will continue in 2024, so now those failures from last year have the possibility of helping me complete next year by being the “failure” I watch in January. It’s almost beautiful… though, to be honest, I suspect I’m more likely to watch one of the following…

Well, probably not any of this first batch either, seeing as many of them are still in cinemas and the others won’t hit disc or streaming for a while. The one that nearly tempted me out of the house this month was Godzilla Minus One — I was interested anyway, but then the glowing reviews sealed the deal. Unfortunately, its limited release coincided with a busy weekend of pre-Christmas family stuff and then a busy week of pre-Christmas work stuff, so I just didn’t have the opportunity. If it weren’t such a limited release, maybe it would still be showing and I could go in January; but it was limited, it isn’t still showing, and now I’ll have to wait for a disc release.

Also on the big screen… Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel Wonka — the first review I saw called it charmless, the second thought it was a magical delight, and now I don’t know what to think (I could look up the consensus, of course, but where’s the fun in that). Yet another end for one version or another of the DC cinematic universe in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom — I rather enjoyed the first one, so remain cautiously optimistic for the sequel. Talking of final (again) films, there was also Hayao Miyazaki’s latest last movie, The Boy and the Heron. Then there’s the latest from Michael Mann, Ferrari, and from Taika Waititi, Next Goal Wins. Closing things out, part two of French swashbuckling adaptation The Three Musketeers: Milady, which I’m hoping they’ll do a two-film 4K release when it reaches disc, as they skipped 4K for part one outside of France. Oh, and rom-com Anyone But You, which I might watch one day if it garners a good rep.

The concept of major end-of-year releases extended to the streamers, too. Netflix led with Zack Snyder’s latest, a rejected Star Wars pitch turned into an attempt to launch a standalone universe, Rebel Moon — or, rather, Rebel Moon: Part One, as apparently it was just too big to be contained to a single film. Or perhaps that should be Rebel Moon: Part One – The Neutered First Cut, as apparently this is a PG-13-friendly version ahead of an R-rated director’s cut due… in the future. This cynical viewership-grabbing idea (because why not just go straight to the uncut version?) seems to have backfired, with the film receiving poor reviews from all but the die-hard Snyder fans. It still sits on my watchlist, but then what doesn’t?

Trying to cover all bases, Netflix also released Bradley Cooper’s latest shot at an Oscar, Maestro; starry apocalyptic drama Leave the World Behind; and some family-friendly fare in the shape of belated sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. Amazon’s offering was comparatively paltry. Well, there was an Eddie Murphy Christmas comedy that I didn’t even bother to note down the title of, so little am I likely to watch it. Elsewise, there was odd-looking animation Merry Little Batman. Its visual style put me off, but then I thought I’d watch it anyway as it’s just a short, but it turned out to be a full-length feature, and now… well, now it’s January. Who wants to watch a Christmas film in January?

Talking of Christmas films, the other streamers were at it too: Disney+ served up kid-friendly heist comedy The Naughty Nine alongside aviation-themed “Christmas miracle”-style short The Shepherd; and Sky boasted as Originals the latest Richard Curtis effort, Genie, alongside John Woo’s much-anticipated Silent Night. They also had the UK debut of May December, but I don’t think that’s very Christmassy. Nor was MUBI’s How to Have Sex, or Apple TV+’s action-comedy The Family Plan. The latter is a Mark Wahlberg vehicle, so I’m prepared for it to be weak, but the trailer amused me nonetheless. As for more reliable action stars, Disney+ also debuted Timeless Heroes: Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford, a feature-length documentary directed by DVD special features producer extraordinaire Laurent Bouzereau (but sadly not included on the latest Indiana Jones disc release), which is billed as follows: “From his humble beginnings as TV bit-player to his era-defining turn as a blockbuster action movie star and onto his more introspective roles that followed, this new documentary tracks the storied career of Harrison Ford.” Ford’s great and Bouzereau’s work is typically fab, so that’s gotta be worth a look, right?

In terms of films making their streaming debut, Sky are back to dominance, with a December that also featured everything from hit blockbusters Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Super Mario Bros Movie to flop blockbuster Shazam! Fury of the Gods; British flicks from grey-pound plays Allelujah and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry to action-comedy Polite Society; plus foreign-language action in Sisu and The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan. The best the others could offer were warmed-over releases like the Extended Version of Spider-Man: No Way Home on Netflix (the never-released-on-disc cut with 12 minutes of extra stuff). As always, there was plenty of back catalogue stuff to fill out my watchlists, but as they all tend to come and go, and jump about from one service to the other now and then, I won’t be listing them all.

Instead, let’s jump on to the never-ending drain on my finances: disc purchases! (Ah, I love ’em really, otherwise I wouldn’t do it.) It’s a shorter list than normal this month, for whatever reason, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of exciting titles. For example, there’s The Warriors on 4K from Arrow — a release I’ve been hoping for for years, although was slightly less keen on after Australia’s Imprint put the film out a while back in a very good 1080p set. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), Arrow’s and Imprint’s releases have completely different special features, so I’ll be keeping both sets. Another one I’d been waiting for was The Exorcist — not in desperation for any kind of decent release, but because they’ve been putting out multiple different configurations of its 4K discs over the past couple of months, and in December they finally released the one I wanted. Finally on 4K, I updated and/or completed my Indiana Jones, Guillermo del Toro, and Christopher Nolan collections with, respectively, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and Oppenheimer.

Regular Blu-ray was a tale of two labels, with the latest releases from Eureka, HK gambling thriller Casino Raiders and samurai epic The Fall of Ako Castle; and the almost-latest-but-not-quite releases from Radiance (their actual December releases are currently somewhere in the postal system, having only dispatched to me this week), including French “noirish drama” Le combat dans l’ile, Umberto Lenzi’s poliziottesco Gang War in Milan, and a box set of Polish sci-fi / horror / “satirical, surrealistic apocalypse” fantasies directed by Piotr Szulkin, The End of Civilization. It sounds like the kind of stuff I have no idea if I’ll actually like or not, but it’s definitely worth a go (just don’t ask how much I spend on stuff that seems “worth a go”…)

2023: The List

Posted on January 3, 2024 by badblokebob

My December “failures” are still in the works, but, in the meantime, let’s continue with the overall review of 2023.

I’ve published an end-of-year list of all my first-time watches every year since this blog began. They used to be of dubious worth, considering I’d either reviewed everything throughout the year or listed it all in my monthly progress reports. But nowadays — with posting of the former being scattershot to nonexistent, and the latter focusing on my 100 Films in a Year Challenge — it feels like there’s a point to it again.

Nonetheless, as well as the aforementioned list of all my first-time watches from 2023, there’s also a full set of links to my monthly progress reports, which uses their header images to present a kind of visual summation of how my Challenge went.

Without further ado (aside from me reintroducing each list before itself), off we go back through 2023…

Below is a graphical representation of my viewing for the 100 Films in a Year Challenge, month by month. Each image links to the relevant monthly review, which contain a chronological list of my Challenge viewing, as well as other exciting stuff, like my monthly Arbie awards.

Leaving the Challenge behind, here is an alphabetical list of all my first-time watches during 2023. That’s followed by a list of short films I watched for the first time. (Normally there’d also be a list of rewatches that have ‘Guide To’ posts, but there weren’t any this year.) On the rare occasion that a title is a link, it goes to my review (no link, no review yet).

65 (2023)
7 Women and a Murder (2021), aka 7 donne e un mistero
Ace in the Hole (1951)
Air (2023)
All the Old Knives (2022)
Ammonite (2020)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
Austenland (2013)
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Beau Travail (1999)
Belfast (2021)
Benediction (2021)
Best Sellers (2021)
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), aka L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo
Black Girl (1966), aka La Noire de…
Blood and Black Lace (1964), aka 6 donne per l’assassino
The Book Thief (2013)
A Castle for Christmas (2021)
The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), aka Il gatto a nove code
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
Chopping Mall (1986)
Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), aka Cléo de 5 à 7
Clerks II (2006)
Close-Up (1990), aka Nema-ye Nazdik
Clue of the New Pin (1961)
Clue of the Twisted Candle (1960)
Confess, Fletch (2022)
A Deadly Invitation (2023), aka Invitación a un Asesinato
Die Hart (2023)
The Duke (2020)
Elevator to the Gallows (1958), aka Ascenseur pour l’échafaud
Engima (2001)
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Fantasia (1940)
Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Fear Eats the Soul (1974), aka Angst essen Seele auf
Fisherman’s Friends: One and All (2022)
Flora and Son (2023)
From Beijing with Love (1994), aka Gwok chaan Ling Ling Chat
Georgetown (2019)
The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), aka La ragazza che sapeva troppo
Glass Onion (2022)
The Goddess (1934), aka Shen nu
Greatest Days (2023)
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
Gun Crazy (1950)
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
In the Heights (2021)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
The Jigsaw Man (1983)
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
Killer of Sheep (1978)
The Killers (1946)
The Lady in the Van (2015)
A Life Less Ordinary (1997)
Living (2022)
The Magician (1926)
The Man Who Was Nobody (1960)
Marriage of Convenience (1960)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Mr. Vampire (1985), aka Geung see sin sang
Murder Mystery 2 (2023)
Night and the City (1950)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Nightmare Alley (1947)
Nothing Sacred (1937)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
Operation Mincemeat (2021)
Oppenheimer (2023)
Out of the Past (1947), aka Build My Gallows High
Partners in Crime (1961)
The Pied Piper (1986), aka Krysař
The Pigeon Tunnel (2023)
Police Story (1985), aka Ging chaat goo si
The Possessed (1965), aka La donna del lago
Quiz Lady (2023)
Remember the Night (1940)
Road to Utopia (1945)
Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022)
Santo vs. Evil Brain (1961), aka Santo contra Cerebro del Mal
Santo vs. Infernal Men (1961), aka Santo contra Hombres Infernales
Santo vs. the Zombies (1962), aka Santo contra los zombies
Scarlet Street (1945)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), aka Le frisson des vampires
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Shotgun Wedding (2022)
Song for Marion (2012)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Swallows and Amazons (2016)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Trading Places (1983)
Tropical Malady (2004), aka Sud pralad
Urge to Kill (1960)
Le Week-End (2013)
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)
You Hurt My Feelings (2023)

Shorts

Alien Love Triangle (2008)
The Calm (2023)
The Consequences of Feminism (1906), aka Les Résultats du féminisme
Grandma’s Reading Glass (1900)
Hammer A.D. 2023 (2023)
An Irish Goodbye (2022)
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2010)
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Two (2011)
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Three (2014)
My Year of Dicks (2022)
Oak Thorn & the Old Rose of Love (2022)

Austenland

The Cat o’ Nine Tails

Clue of the New Pin

Elevator to the Gallows

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Greatest Days

Gun Crazy

A Life Less Ordinary

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Out of the Past

Road to Utopia

Santo vs the Zombies

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

An Irish Goodbye

My Year of Dicks

The above list gets cut up every which way in my annual statistics breakdown — genuinely, my favourite part of the year.

My Most-Read Posts of 2023

Posted on January 2, 2024 by badblokebob

Normally I’d post my December “failures” today, but they’re not ready yet (it takes a surprisingly long time to write that column, you know), so I thought I’d crack on with my 2023 reviews instead.

According to my WordPress stats page, I published just 38 posts during 2023. In some respects, I’m surprised it’s so many, considering for most of the year each month consisted of just my monthly review and my list of failures.

Because I knew there were so few posts to work with, I considered not bothering with this post this year. I only started it (seven years ago) because 2016’s #1 baffled me so much. It’s part of the furniture now, but I’m always trying to question ‘the furniture’ so things don’t become staid for the sake of it (becoming staid because of the quality of my writing or whatever, that’s fiiiine).

In the end, I decided to stick with it (you probably guessed that, given that you’re reading it). Not because the results are anything special or interesting, but because… well, they’re not terribly uninteresting, as these things go. If nothing else, I had the idea to add the year’s most-read post overall to the below graph (in purple), for a sense of scale. That post is from just last year, my summation of the 2022 edition of Sight & Sound’s The 100 Greatest Films of All Time. It’s followed in the chart by a bunch of old TV columns, plus my post on the 2012 Sight & Sound list, before you finally find 2023’s #1 post at #14 overall. The other four are so far down the list, I couldn’t be bothered to count that far.

As for what those posts actually were…

My Top 5 Most-Viewed New Posts in 2023

5) Blindspot 2023

In the absence of actual film reviews, other posts have been able to sneak into this list — an unusual occurrence. Although, there were reviews published in 2023 that didn’t make this list, so… Perhaps it’s because of name recognition, perhaps it’s just a random fluke, but Blindspot beats out the similarly-themed “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” by two spots (i.e. WDYMYHS came 7th).

4) Silent Shorts Summary

Shorts don’t normally get a look in here either, but reviews are reviews, I guess. This roundup covered eight shorts made between 1900 and 1926, including the first-ever Sherlock Holmes “film”, the first adaptation of Frankenstein, some Georges Méliès trick photography, and a dancing pig. A really, really freaky dancing pig.

3) Archive 5, Vol.6

Remember Archive 5? It was supposed to be a regular feature, but in the last two years I’ve only managed six of them. This one — 2023’s only addition to the strand — featured reviews of 7500, Carefree, The Lie, Paris When It Sizzles, and The Rhythm Section.

2) The All-New 100 Films in a Year Challenge, Mk.II

The post in which I outlined the categories and rules of my Challenge for 2023. Considering this is linked to in all my monthly updates, plus on my Challenge Tracker page, it feels like it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see it being much visited. Well, “much” is a relative term: it came 84th overall, below even the same post about 2022 (who was so interested in 2022 during 2023?! He says, as he begins 2024 with a bunch of posts about 2023…)

1) 2023 | Weeks 3–4

Far and away my most-viewed new post of the year (something I could also say last year — is there always one “break out hit”? I can’t be bothered to go back to find out, to be honest). Feel free to guess which of the five included reviews was the culprit: 1926’s The Magician, 2022’s Glass Onion, Oscar-nominated short My Year of Dicks, then-recent release Shotgun Wedding, or The Banshees of Inisherin, another Oscar nominee. Maybe it was just that particular combination.

The “An Attempt Was Made” Monthly Review of December 2023

Posted on January 1, 2024 by badblokebob

Happy New Year, dear readers!

But before I start thinking too much about 2024, I’m going to do as I’ve done every year for the past decade-and-a-half(-and-a-bit) and spend a fair amount of time going back over the previous year. First up: the final monthly review of 2023, in which we find out if I managed to complete my 100 Films Challenge.

You may remember from last month that I had 17 films left to go — more than I’ve watched in any single month since 2021. Doesn’t bode well…

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#84 You Hurt My Feelings (2023) — New Film #12
#85 Little Shop of Horrors (1986) — Rewatch #12
#86 From Beijing with Love (1994) — Failures #11
#87 A Haunting in Venice (2023) — Failures #12
#88 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) — Blindspot #9
#89 The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) — Genre #5
#90 Shadow of a Doubt (1943) — WDYMYHS #10
#91 Out of the Past (1947) — WDYMYHS #11
#92 Mildred Pierce (1945) — WDYMYHS #12

I watched 14 feature films I’d never seen before in December.
That means it ties with July for my best month of 2023.
It also means I reached my ten-films-a-month target, but for only the fifth time this year. That’s equal to what I achieved in 2022 — although last year I watched 111 new films overall, for a monthly average of 9.25, whereas in 2023 it was just 103, for a monthly average of 8.58.
However, I rewatched 28 films last year, up from 20 in 2022. Added to new viewings, that means I watched 131 films in 2023 — exactly the same number as in 2022. So that’s, you know, a coincidence.
But 14 is not 17, is it? To be precise, eight of December’s new films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
As I entered December, six of my nine categories still needed completing. That sounds like a lot, but it’s mostly part of the plan: five of them are designed to end in December.
I watched films that qualified in all six of those outstanding categories. New Films and Rewatches were finished off early on; two more categories would follow, but two would wind up incomplete.
One of the latter was Genre. It was only this month that I hit its halfway point — when you consider that, it’s no wonder I didn’t get to #100. After the first couple of months, when it became clear I wasn’t going to steadily watch gialli throughout the year, I thought I’d have a bit of a marathon at some point, racing through six or seven or eight titles in a moderately condensed period. But that never happened, and so it ends as this year’s most-failed category, just 50% complete.
Talking of failures: having failed October’s “failures” again in November, this month I caught up by watching From Beijing with Love.
And from last month’s “failures” I watched A Haunting in Venice, making Failures the sixth completed category.
Meanwhile, the other failed category was Blindspot. The one film from that selection I did watch this month was The Greatest Film Of All Time™, at least according to Sight and Sound voters: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Unfortunately, that left three unseen for the year — aka 25% of my target. Shame.
This month’s WDYMYHS films were Alfred Hitchcock’s favourite of his own works, Shadow of a Doubt; Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, formerly known in the UK as Build My Gallows High; and Michael Curtiz’s family melodrama Mildred Pierce. And that burst of activity made it 2023’s final completed category — hurrah!

The 103rd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
A few strong contenders this month, including two that didn’t qualify for the Challenge (anxiety-inducing comedy-drama Shiva Baby and classic Christmas rom-com Remember the Night), but on balance I have to give it to the very last film I watched this year, Mildred Pierce, which takes James M. Cain’s familial drama and restructures it into a nonlinear murder mystery noir, and then excels on both fronts.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Christmas cheese-fest A Castle for Christmas might seem a shoo-in here — not the kind of Christmas fare I normally watch, but it was… recommended, sort of. But it was also kind of just what I expected it to be (“daytime TV movie”-esque and, well, cheesy), whereas Mexican murder mystery A Deadly Invitation was billed as “for fans of Agatha Christie and Glass Onion” and did not live up to that. It’s like an AI version of a murder mystery: it sort of knew how to look the part, but was devoid of what genuinely makes it tick.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
In a rarity for 2023, there were more than two posts competing for this award in December. Gasp! That said, there wasn’t much interest in my quick post about a new directors page banner (can’t say I’m surprised), so it remained a two horse race between November’s failures — which finished far ahead of the directors banner, but equally far behind the winner — which was November’s monthly review. That means 2023 ends with a 7-2 victory for monthly reviews over failures (the exceptions were January’s gong, which went to my Best of 2022 list; February, which went to some actual reviews; and April, which was a draw).

2023 has been a quieter year than normal here on 100 Films — probably my quietest ever, with just the pair of monthly posts to keep things ticking over for most of the year. But that doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere. Whether 2024 turns out to be another 12 months of just summaries and failures, or sees my reviewing somehow rejuvenate into full swing, I intend to still be here.

Of course, before I get started on 2024, the next week or so will have my usual array of posts dissecting 2023.

100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023: Final Standing

Posted on December 31, 2023 by badblokebob

As the challenge tracker page will soon be replaced with a version keeping tabs on 2024’s effort, here’s an archive of how it looked at the very end of 2023.

Sadly, it’s incomplete, for the second year running — you can see where I fell short in red below. Some of those lengthy Blindspot films were always going to prove a challenge, and in the end they were one I didn’t surmount in time; and I kept thinking I’d do some kind of giallo marathon, but never quite got round to it.

Oh well. Maybe I’ll finally get all the way to 100 in 2024…

On this page, I’ll track my progress with The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023. Learn more about the challenge here.

New Films

Shotgun Wedding (2022)
Die Hart (2023)
Murder Mystery 2 (2023)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
Air (2023)
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Greatest Days (2023)
Flora and Son (2023)
The Pigeon Tunnel (2023)
Quiz Lady (2023)
You Hurt My Feelings (2023)

Rewatches

Streets of Fire (1984)
The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Case (1932)
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)
West Side Story (2021)
The Thin Man (1934)
Moneyball (2011)
Black Dynamite (2009)
The Imitation Game (2014)
Spy (2015)
Sing Street (2016)
Doctor Who (1996)
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Blindspot

Black Girl (1966)
Tropical Malady (2004)
Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
Killer of Sheep (1978)
Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
Beau Travail (1999)
Close-Up (1990)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
Shoah
A Brighter Summer Day
Pierrot le Fou

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

Gun Crazy (1950)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
Scarlet Street (1945)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Night and the City (1950)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Nightmare Alley (1947)
The Killers (1946)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Out of the Past (1947)
Mildred Pierce (1945)

Failures

The Magician (1926)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Confess, Fletch (2022)
Red Eye (2005)
The Shiver of the Vampires (1971)
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)
Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022)
65 (2023)
The Pied Piper (1986)
Nothing Sacred (1937)
From Beijing with Love (1994)
A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Genre: Giallo

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)
The Possessed (1965)
The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971)
5 to go…
4 to go…
3 to go…
2 to go…
1 to go…

Series Progression

Fantasia (1940)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Clerks II (2006)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — Extended Edition (2002/2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King — Extended Edition (2003/2004)
After the Thin Man (1936)
Another Thin Man (1939)
Santo vs. Infernal Men (1961)
Santo vs. the Zombies (1962)

Physical Media

The Goddess (1934)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Police Story (1985)
John Wick (2014)
Clue of the Twisted Candle (1960)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Extended Edition (2001/2002)
Marriage of Convenience (1960)
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Urge to Kill (1960)
Death on the Nile (2022)

Wildcards

7500 (2019) — additional January rewatch
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) — additional Failure from December 2022
Glass Onion (2022) — additional June rewatch
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) — additional July new film
Oppenheimer (2023) — another July new film
Living (2022) — additional Failure from June
Fisherman’s Friends: One and All (2022) — additional September rewatch
The Man Who Was Nobody (1960) — Series Progression #11
Road to Utopia (1945) — Series Progression #12
Partners in Crime (1961) — Physical Media #11

936 days late, it’s a new Directors banner!

Posted on December 23, 2023 by badblokebob

So, for the benefit of those who don’t know, the header image at the top of my Reviews by Director listings page features the top 20 directors featured on this blog — not my 20 favourites, but the 20 with the most films I’ve reviewed — pictured in alphabetical order. Obviously, sometimes the lineup changes; but rather than modify the image every time it does, I’ve always intended to update it about once a year. The last time I did was May 2020, so a new one has been overdue for about two-and-a-half years — or 936 days (as I expect you’d already realised).

For what it’s worth, this is now the 8th version of the image — which, when you add in the skipped years, makes it the 10th anniversary of the first. How exciting. This time, there are five changes — or ten, depending how you count it. What I mean is, five directors have been removed, replaced by five different ones.

There were 21 directors who qualified for the 20 slots, with a four-way tie for the last three places. For such occasions, I have an informal rule that I should make as many changes as possible, so out went the only one of the four who was already on there, Bryan Singer. Also dropping out of qualification were the Coen brothers, Ron Howard, George Miller, and Robert Zemeckis.

Joining in their place, we have three filmmakers who were on the list sometime before, but dropped off, and have now returned: Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, and Fritz Lang. They’re joined by two first-timers who seem likely to stick around, Kenneth Branagh and Denis Villeneuve.

And that’s that for… well, I would say “another year”, but we’ll see.

November’s Failures

Posted on December 4, 2023 by badblokebob

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was high on the list of titles I thought might tempt me out to the cinema in the closing months of the year, but it hasn’t managed it yet — and, with December being as December is, I doubt it will now. (The one remaining big “maybe” is Godzilla Minus One, which is out on the 15th over here. Come back next month to see if that happens…) A close second was wordily-titled prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, because I enjoyed the original “trilogy in four parts”, but, again, it couldn’t quite get me over the line (perhaps it’s no surprise, as I watched all of the rest on Blu-ray).

Noticeably less tempting were Disney’s latest flops, The Marvels (I’m so far behind on the MCU now) and Wish (can’t remember when I last saw a Disney animation at the cinema. Always feels a bit weird going alone as a 30-something bloke). Of smaller scale releases that go on my list to catch somewhere eventually, there was the likes of Emerald Fennel’s Saltburn, festival hit Anatomy of a Fall, horror Thanksgiving, much-discussed on Twitter this weekend May December (I believe it’s already on Netflix in the US, but has been condemned to Sky Cinema over here), and a belated UK release for Bottoms.

Streaming had a premiere of more interest to me than any of those, however, in the shape of David Fincher’s latest, The Killer, on Netflix. I was going to cancel my Netflix subscription at the end of October due to the imminent price rise, but kept it going to catch The Killer in early November, but then events conspired against me and I still haven’t got to it. Of course, mentioning it here now gives me extra motivation, as it now qualifies under an additional category in my Challenge. I wish I didn’t think like that about my film viewing, but when I find so little time for it and the Challenge requires so many films…

According to my notes, there was little else brand-new of note on the streamers this past month; just Adam Sandler animation Leo (also Netflix), romantic sci-fi Fingernails getting lost on Apple TV+, and an aged-up Pierce Brosnan as The Last Rifleman on Sky Cinema. The latter continue to dominate in terms of streaming debuts, this month boasting Beau is Afraid, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Renfield, and Violent Night. All of which said, I don’t currently subscribe to Sky/Now, so probably shouldn’t be noting them as “failures”. Normally I’d pick it up in late January or February for the Oscars, but as those have moved to ITV now, I have considerably less cause to. Sure, there’s all the films, but it’s not as if I don’t have enough to watch as it is.

Of note on the rest of the streamers, Branagh’s latest Poirot, A Haunting in Venice, came to Disney+ in 4K — a format it’s been denied on disc, so I’ll be streaming it instead of buying it. They also had a real oddity: miniseries Faraway Downs, which is Baz Luhrmann’s film Australia extended and re-cut into a six-parter. Mainly, it’s reminded me I’ve never quite got round to watching the film… which is 15 years old. My perception of time is all kinds of messed up. No other streamer can boast anything quite so irritating as the third film in a series not getting a 4K release when the previous two did, nor so unusual as an old movie being recut into a TV series, but of particular note padding out my never-ending watchlist on other providers were Jackass Forever, Reminiscence, and Studio 666 on Netflix; unloved Oscar nominee Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which I only feel I need to see to tick that box) on Amazon Prime; 1970s Miyazaki shot Yuki’s Sun on MUBI; on Channel 4, a bunch of foreign titles I’ve heard good things about, like Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Riders of Justice, Hit the Road, and Petite Maman; and a French remake of One Cut of the Dead, Final Cut, on iPlayer, along with a load of Shakespeare stuff I’d like to watch thanks to BBC Four’s recent season about the Bard. I’m not going to get into listing all of that, though.

As for physical media purchases, the end of November brings with it Black Friday, and while I didn’t go actively hunting for deals, a few were too good to miss, like Curzon’s 4K box set of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy, plus their 4K release of his The Double Life of Veronique. Across general two-for-what-have-you offers and other such discount, I also upgraded Interstellar (from Blu-ray) and Event Horizon (from DVD), and picked up a couple of classics I feel I should have seen but that never seem to crop up on streaming anywhere, Rebel Without a Cause and Rosemary’s Baby. I also finally found a price I was happy with for the 4K set of The Godfather Trilogy, which I haven’t watched since the DVD era — which presents a big question for the next rewatch: Parts I and II are easy enough, but do I conclude with Part III or its recent recut, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone? The set now presents that as the definitive version, with the original cuts of Part III relegated to special features status. Maybe that answers the question for me.

There were a few new releases on 4K too, headlined by a pair I thought might never happen. The most egregious would’ve been the fourth and final film in the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy, Evangelion:3.0+1.11 Thrice Upon a Time. When Amazon snaffled up the streaming rights, I was concerned I’d never be able to complete my discs collection; but, a couple of years later, here it is. I’m less thorough about my Predator collection, but Prey is one of the best films in that series and so I’m thrilled to see Disney+ titles like that making it to disc now. There are a good few more I hope we’ll see at some point. Maybe they’ll even persuade Netflix to join in eventually (I want Glass Onion, goddammit!) Less startling, but obviously welcome, was Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (which is gonna look silly if they do retitle Part Two now), plus I took a punt on Arrow’s release of Tremors 2: Aftershocks (direct-to-video sequels obviously have a bad rep, but the very fact they’ve decided this was worth doing says something… hopefully…)

Finally for 4K, I imported Kino’s release of The Train, mainly because the film comes strongly recommended by Christopher “director of one of the greatest train sequences of all time” McQuarrie (which, as you may or may not remember, also merited a mention last month because it was on TV right after I placed the order for this disc copy). I rarely order one thing at a time from the States, and so along with that came ’50s sci-fi B-movie Robot Monster in 3D (probably not a great film, but the disc is packed with stereoscopic goodies), and a double bill of Douglas Fairbanks double bills, seeing the silent star swashbuckle his way through Robin Hood, The Black Pirate, The Three Musketeers, and The Iron Mask.

There were two other foursomes this month, too: Arrow’s second box set of sundry Spaghetti Westerns, Blood Money, and Eureka’s amusingly-titled collection of Mr. Vampire sequels, Hopping Mad. Yes, after watching the original back in May to decide whether I wanted to order the sequel set, I finally did. Will it be another six months before I actually watch any of them? Knowing me, no — it’ll be much, much longer.

The Timey-Wimey Monthly Review of November 2023

Posted on December 1, 2023 by badblokebob

♫ Diddly-dum diddly-dum diddly-dum ooo-wee-ooo… ♫

If you somehow missed the news, Doctor Who hit the big six-oh this month. (It feels like only a couple of years since I was reviewing the 50th anniversary special. You don’t need a TARDIS to reach the future at astonishing speed — life will just do it for you.) As a lifelong Whovian, naturally I’ve devoted a fair amount of time to celebrating that milestone — something I’ve mentioned before in these monthly reviews, because it’s surely had an effect on my film viewing, simply by dint of eating up so much of my free time. (Were my time my own, I would’ve been able to syphon off a smaller amount for my Who celebrations; but gotta put bread on the table ‘n’ all that.) To give you an idea of just how much more Doctor Who-ing I’ve been doing than film watching, this month I’ve included a section all about it, and it’s taken over the header image too.

Before I come to that, it’s business as usual. I did still manage to watch some films; and with this having been the penultimate month of the year, obviously my Challenge is getting towards the pointy end. Am I within sight of completing it this year? Well, let’s take a look…

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#81 Quiz Lady (2023) — New Film #11
#82 Doctor Who (1996) — Rewatch #11
#83 The Killers (1946) — WDYMYHS #9

I watched three feature films I’d never seen before in November.
Two of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
And that rewatch was how Doctor Who even managed to invade my Challenge viewing! #82 is perhaps better known by one of its official subtitles: The Movie (on DVD and Blu-ray releases) or The TV Movie (on novelisations and its iPlayer listing) — but, of course, the onscreen title is simply Doctor Who. Does a TV movie count as a movie? Especially as it was produced as a “backdoor pilot”, i.e. although officially a one-off, the intention was it would lead to a series. Well, back in 2008, I counted the 24 TV movie (which they made between seasons 6 and 7, and whose story leads directly into season 7), so if that counts, this one has no problem, right? Well, I make the rules (literally), so I say it does (especially as it’s ‘only’ a rewatch, a designation I feel a little more lax around).
If you really object, maybe just imagine I counted my rewatch of The Day of the Doctor instead — another feature-length TV special really, but one that actually had a theatrical release, so is arguably even more of a film (certainly, I counted it as one back in 2013).
This month’s WDYMYHS film was Robert Siodmak’s film of Ernest Hemingway’s short story The Killers. It’s been filmed at least twice more since this, but it’s hard to see why they bothered when the original is so good.
Nothing from Blindspot, though, which leaves me with a helluva lot to catchup next month — not least because three of the four outstanding films run over three hours each.
From last month’s “failures”, I failed to watch anything. Oh dear.
All told, that means I go into December with 17 films left to complete my Challenge. The most films I’ve watched in a month fullstop this year was 17 (hurrah!), but my monthly average is closer to 10½ (boo!), and all the inevitable Christmassy family stuff to come means I won’t really have a full month left to finish it off. Oh dear…
Last year I abandoned the Challenge at #89, so I’m hoping to at least surpass that. Six films is certainly a more feasible goal than 17.

The 102nd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
My WDYMYHS film noirs have been doing very well in this category so far in 2023, and that continues this month, with The Killers being a pretty easy pick. With three WDYMYHS films left to hopefully squeeze in next month, the category might have another victory yet to come.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Well, this feels harsh. I only have three films to choose from this month, and I liked them all. I guess the loser, almost by default, is the 2015 version of Far from the Madding Crowd. It’s a good film, but not as exceptional as The Killers, and not as entertaining as Quiz Lady.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
As has been the case almost all year now, just two posts battle it out for this award this month: my October review and my October ‘failures’. Neither challenge the upper echelons of the overall chart, either (still dominated by old TV reviews, the first two Harry Potters, and — bizarrely — a little-seen Chilean film that I only saw because we were screening it at a festival I worked on). Anyway, of the two posts in contention, it was the overall October review that narrowly, but definitively, came out on top this time.

As I mentioned at the start, I thought I’d just include a rundown of all the watching, reading, and listening I’ve been doing to mark Doctor Who‘s 60th birthday, as an indication of just how much time I gave over to this — time I’d often (though, in fairness, not always) have spent watching films. These are more-or-less in the order I progressed through them, which is more-or-less in chronological order within the Whoniverse (as it’s now officially called).

To briefly outline what was going on here: I wanted to choose one piece of media I’d never experienced for each official TV Doctor. That sounds kinda highfalutin’ written down, but it’s because I was keeping it broad. Doctor Who may primarily be a TV show, but it’s also existed in books, comics, audio drama, and more down the decades. I wanted to include as much of that as possible; and because there’s so much of it I’ve never seen/read/heard, I wanted to keep it all-new (to me). With that in mind, this is what I ended up with…

Who?	What?	Why?
First Doctor	Marco Polo novelisation by John Lucarotti	Target novelisation of the oldest missing TV story.
Second Doctor	Fury from the Deep animation	97 episodes of Doctor Who are missing apart from their soundtracks. Some have been animated to fill in the visuals. This is one of them.
Third Doctor	Inferno	TV story, recently voted by readers of Doctor Who Magazine as the best starring the Third Doctor.
Fourth Doctor	Doctor Who and the Star Beast	1980 comic book story, originally published in DWM, by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons, which inspired the first episode of the forthcoming 60th anniversary episodes.
Fifth Doctor	The Five Doctors 40th Anniversary Edition	Recently-released enhanced edition of the 20th anniversary special, with new special effects and surround sound mix.
Sixth Doctor	Timelash	The only Sixth Doctor TV story I’d never seen. Also considered one of the worst stories in the programme’s history, so that’s fun.
Seventh Doctor	Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel	First of the New Adventures, the series of original novels that helped keep the series alive during the Wildness Years.
Eighth Doctor	The Scent of Blood by Andy Lane	A BBC Audio original audiobook, read by Dan Starkey.
War Doctor	The Day of the Doctor in 3D	The 50th anniversary special, which introduced us to the War Doctor. Obviously I’d seen it before, but never in true 3D.
Ninth Doctor	Ravagers	Debut box set of audio adventures for the Ninth Doctor, produced by Big Finish, who’ve been making new Who on audio for almost 25 years.
Tenth Doctor	Revenge of the Judoon by Terrance Dicks	Novel from the Quick Read initiative, written by Terrance Dicks, the godfather of Who fiction thanks to the mass of Target novelisations he penned.
Eleventh Doctor	minisodes from series 6 and 7	13 short episodes/scenes included as extras on the Series 6 and 7 Blu-ray releases.
Eleventh & Twelfth Doctors	Regeneration Impossible	As well as full-cast audio dramas, Big Finish also do short stories as audiobooks. This is one.
Twelfth Doctor	Dark Water / Death in Heaven in 3D	This was a bit of a bonus: the Series 8 finale (so I’d seen it before), but converted into 3D for cinema screenings (and released on Blu-ray in the US).
Thirteenth Doctor	The Wonderful Doctor of Oz by Jacqueline Rayner	First in a series of novels from Puffin in which various Doctors encounter classics of children’s literature.
Fugitive Doctor	Origins	Comic book series — not from DWM, but Titan Comics — exploring the origins of the mysterious Fugitive Doctor.
Spin-offs	K9 and Company	Representing the wide world of Doctor Who spinoffs, the original: a one-off special from Christmas 1981.
“No sir, all thirteen…”	13 Doctors, 13 Stories anthology	Short stories / novellas that marked the show’s 50th anniversary, written by a raft of celebrity authors including Eoin Colfer, Patrick Ness, Malorie Blackman, Charlie Higson, and Neil Gaiman.

And that doesn’t even include the stuff that’s been on TV and radio during this period — like series two of podcast drama Doctor Who: Redacted; Radio 2’s Doctor Who @ 60: A Musical Celebration concert (on both radio and TV); the archive-diving Talking Doctor Who documentary; multiple radio documentaries, covering topics like the Wilderness Years and the A-Z of fandom; the Children in Need sketch; classic serial The Daleks re-edited and colourised; the (revised) repeat of An Adventure in Space and Time; Channel 5’s cash-in documentary on the programmes’ “secrets and scandals”; and — of course — the first of the brand-new episodes starring David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor… and the three-and-a-half hours (yes, really, that much) of official behind-the-scenes content released in its wake.

Crikey.

There’s still more Doctor Who on the telly (two more specials with David Tennant, then Fifteenth Doctor Ncuti Gatwa debuts in a Christmas special), but it’s going to be less all-consuming going forward.

But its damage may already be done. As I mentioned at the end of my Viewing Notes, with 17 films still to go to hit 100 — and most of them very specific ones, constraining me either by type (giallo) or to a set shortlist (Blindspot and WDYMYHS) — and not even a full month to watch them in — I’m not sure it’s even physically possible to complete my Challenge for 2023.

Well, within the entire realm of physics, yes, of course it is. But within the realm of physical reality (where I also have to spend time with family, and doing my day job, and eating, and sleeping, and so on and so forth)… yeah, I’d err on the side of “it’s probably not happening, is it?”