Tag Archives: 100 Films in a Year Challenge

The Thin Monthly Review of May 2024

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A year after I started a rewatch of the Thin Man films by bingeing half of them, I finally got round to the other half — hence the title of this monthly review; because, while it’s by no means a spectacular month, it’s not an especially thin one either.

That said, movie watching still continues to be sidelined by my current obsession: Critical Role. After last month’s solid 48 hours of viewing, my pace dipped slightly to 43½ hours — though that shortfall can be entirely explained by my time not being wholly my own for the last week of the month. The way things are going, maybe I should rechristen the blog “100 Episodes of Critical Role in a Year”. (And it was only after drafting that sentence in my mind and drafting it again on screen that I remembered this site isn’t actually called “100 Films in a Year” anymore. Ho hum.)



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#33 Strays (2023) — Failure #5
#34 The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979) — Genre #4
#35 Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (2023) — 50 Unseen #7
#36 The Menu (2022) — 50 Unseen #8
#37 And Life Goes On (1992) — Series Progression #4
#38 Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) — Rewatch #4
#39 The Thin Man Goes Home (1945) — Rewatch #5
#40 Song of the Thin Man (1947) — Series Progression #5
#41 October Moth (1960) — Series Progression #6
#42 Murder and Cocktails (2024) — New Film #5


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in May.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with three rewatches.
  • That means my Challenge is back on target, after being slightly behind for the last two months. In fact, it’s ever so slightly ahead (by a grand total of one film), which is nice.
  • It also means I’ve hit my ten new films minimum target for every month in 2024 so far, equalling my annual total for each of 2022 and 2023. I managed ten months in 2021 — hopefully it’ll be all twelve this year (which I last achieved in 2020).
  • And Life Goes On is the second film in Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker trilogy, after watching the first for Blindspot last month. It’s also known as Life and Nothing More…, which seems to be a more accurate translation of the original Persian title, but the Criterion BD uses And Life Goes On, and as that’s the film’s primary release method in the UK and US nowadays, I feel like that’s the title I should go with, whatever the rest of the internet wants to pretend.
  • As I mentioned in the introduction, I finally finished the Thin Man series again, the first half of which I watched at the end of last May — neat, but I didn’t realise it had been so long. This trio could qualify as either Rewatches or Series Progression; as I was behind on the former, that’s where I counted two of them, with the series’ final film getting the latter category to its halfway point.
  • It feels a little like cheating to count October Moth as “series progression” for the Edgar Wallace Mysteries, because it wasn’t really an Edgar Wallace Mystery: it was one of seven other films bundled with those films for TV sales. But it’s included in the DVD set (albeit as a special feature), and I watched it as “the next film in the Edgar Wallace Mysteries box set”, so I think that’s qualification enough. Just about.
  • Despite all those successes, I didn’t watch either a Blindspot or WDYMYHS film this month. Well, it wouldn’t truly feel like my 100 Films Challenge if I didn’t have something that needed catching up.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Strays.



The 108th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’d heard good things and so been looking forward to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves anyway, but obviously it particularly aligns with my other interests right now. It may not be the outright ‘best’ movie I watched this month, but it’s a massively fun action-adventure.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Almost like the antithesis of Honor Among Thieves, the ’80s TV movie Mazes and Monsters is notorious for two reasons: starring a pre-fame Tom Hanks, and being a ludicrous ‘Satanic Panic’-motivated riff on Dungeons & Dragons, which at the time was a fairly new game that reactionary oldies were, well, reactionary about. The film itself doesn’t manage to transcend that drawback — it starts out more-or-less alright, but ends up just silly.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
A random bunch of reviews of films I watched years ago clearly weren’t of particular interest to readers, because May’s winner was April’s failures.



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


2024’s halfway point approaches.

The Critical Monthly Review of April 2024

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In the introduction to last month’s review I mentioned that, among other things, I’d spent 26½ hours watching Critical Role (and related content… by which I just mean after-show Talks Machina). Well, my maths tells me that in April I watched another 48 hours. Two solid days’ worth! Sure, when you consider that in the context of 30 days it doesn’t sound a lot, but I’m not sure I spent that much time on one other single thing (excepting sleep). And I’m actually holding back a bit, forcing myself to do other things with my free time and not just stream, stream, stream. There’s certainly a lot to get through: I’m only 10% through Campaign 2 — just 630 hours to go.

And yet, despite that, my movie watching is doing ok. So ok, in fact, that in April I watched the most films of any month so far this year. As the star of one of them might say: wahoo!



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#23 The Monuments Men (2014) — 50 Unseen #5
#24 American Fiction (2023) — Failure #4
#25 The Fourth Square (1961) — Series Progression #3
#26 The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) — Wildcard #1
#27 The Inspector Wears Skirts Part II (1989) — Genre #3
#28 Spawn: Director’s Cut (1997/1998) — Rewatch #3
#29 I.S.S. (2023) — New Film #4
#30 12th Fail (2023) — WDYMYHS #4
#31 No Hard Feelings (2023) — 50 Unseen #6
#32 Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987) — Blindspot #4


  • I watched 14 feature films I’d never seen before in April.
  • As I said at the start, that’s the best month of 2024 so far, meaning it raises the average for the year to date from 10.3 to 11.3, and the rolling average of the last 12 months from 9.1 to 9.3.
  • Nine of those counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • That’s more than the usual eight needed to keep things ticking over, but not quite enough to catch up to target pace. Still, I was two behind at the end of March, now I’m only one behind. Maybe one day I’ll get ahead again, like I used to in the old days…
  • Several of this month’s Challenge films presented a choice of which category to qualify them for. For example, American Fiction could have been April’s New Film, as it was only released in February here; but as I.S.S. was actually released this month over here, that seemed even more fitting for the category. Plus, American Fiction had been in the Failures two months in a row (from its theatrical release in February and its subscription streaming debut in March), so that felt even more fitting.
  • Meanwhile, The Super Mario Bros. Movie could have been another 50 Unseen; but as that category is already halfway complete, I decided to finally inaugurate the Wildcards, counting the film as an additional Failure from March.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was the first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker trilogy, Where Is the Friend’s House?, which I’ve wanted to see since learning about it in The Story of Film nine years ago (see the reference under my comments on Part Thirteen).
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was one of the newest entries into the IMDb Top 250, Indian exam drama 12th Fail.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched American Fiction, The Inspector Wears Skirts 2, No Hard Feelings, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.



The 107th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Quality-wise, this is one of those months that felt fine but, when I look back, there aren’t a huge number of contenders for films I really loved. That makes this winner an easy pick, though: it’s American Fiction.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
The flipside is that there aren’t too many terrible films, either. By a nose, the (dis)honour goes to The Inspector Wears Skirts Part II. On the bright side, watching it now did save me from spending £30+ on parts three and four…

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Not many posts in contention this month, My review of I.S.S. interested hardly anyone, so the winner almost by default (there’s also the “failures”, of course) was March’s monthly review.



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


I’ve got some time off work at the start of May, so it may be an absolute banger of a month… or I may spend all that time watching Critical Role. Find out in 31 days!

The Eggy Monthly Review of March 2024

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In case you somehow missed it, it’s Easter weekend. That’s the only reason for the title. There are no eggs involved anywhere else in this post.

In terms of observations actually related to the blog, I only managed to keep one of my two main viewing goals ticking over — that is to say, I hit my “ten new films per month” target, but fell short of keeping my 100 Films Challenge on track (more detail in Viewing Notes, as usual). That said, I’m pleased to have achieved even that much in March, when films have found themselves competing with an uncommon amount of other stuff for my entertainment time. To be specific, I’ve started a rewatch of the ’90s X-Men animated series (I’m ten episodes in, which adds up to 3½ hours); finally been playing point-and-click adventure classic Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (for about 11 hours); and, most consumingly of all, found myself somewhat obsessed with cult-phenomenon actual-play Dungeons & Dragons series Critical Role (I’ve watched 26½ hours, plus untold more spent reading around it, and barely made a start on it); and that’s without counting up sundry other bits and pieces, like reading books and comics, or slowly rewatching Blackadder.

Anyway, to get back to the films (though there’s always the comment section if you’d like to talk about the other stuff), here’s, um, the films…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#17 Dune: Part Two (2024) — New Film #3
#18 Maestro (2023) — 50 Unseen #4
#19 The Inspector Wears Skirts (1988) — Genre #2
#20 Black Tight Killers (1966) — Failures #3
#21 My Darling Clementine (1946) — Blindspot #3
#22 My Father and My Son (2005) — WDYMYHS #3


  • I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in March.
  • Just six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
  • That means (as I said at the start) that I exceeded my “ten films per month” minimum target — for the first time this year; also, that’s the fourth month in a row, which is the most consecutive ten-film months since a pandemic-aided run of 21 months in 2020/21. (The all-time record remains 60 months, aka five solid years.)
  • But (as also mentioned at the start) I fell short of where I should be in my Challenge — but only by two films. I’ve got the rest of the year to catch that up, so it’s far from a disaster. Yet.
  • This is also the first month of 2024 without any rewatches; although I did still manage two short films (I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I’m aiming to watch at least one of those each month too. That’s sort of an “unofficial” goal, though, in that I’m not exactly tracking it… except I am, because I keep records of all these things).
  • In terms of history and percentages and stuff, this is the best March since 2021, but because it’s still below March’s all-time average of 14.9, it brings it down to 14.6.
  • Conversely, being higher than last March means it does increase the rolling monthly average of the last 12 months, bringing it from 8.8 to 9.1. If I can continue my ten-films-per-month streak, eventually it’ll get above 10.0 again…
  • I posted my Dune: Part One review right at the end of February, fully intending to quickly follow it with my Dune: Part Two review in early March. That didn’t happen, obviously.
  • I’ve been buying Radiance releases since they sprung into existence back in mid-2022 (indeed, I’ve got 30 of the 37 titles they’ve released to date, plus several of their “partner label” releases too), but Black Tight Killers is the first one I’ve actually watched. I’m not one of those collectors who buys stuff just to keep on his self unopened… but I do have a bunch of stuff on my shelf unopened, because I am one of those collectors who’s interested in almost everything but can’t find the time to watch it all.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was John Ford’s version of the Wyatt Earp / gunfight at the O.K. Corral legend, My Darling Clementine.
  • Letterboxd informs me that My Darling Clementine was the first film I watched on a Tuesday this year. So there you go.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Turkish intergenerational family drama My Father and My Son.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Black Tight Killers.



The 106th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I confess, I didn’t have any particular expectations of John Ford Western My Darling Clementine. Not that I thought it would be bad, but — despite it clearly having enough acclaim to get onto my Blindspot list — I didn’t sit down expecting a masterpiece or something either. Perhaps that’s what allowed it to blow me away, first from a visual standpoint (this is a film where even the day-for-night photography looks good) and then by… well, everything else.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This has to be Alan Bennett adaptation Allelujah, which for much of its running time is an amiable-enough pro-NHS / anti-cutbacks polemic, before a final-reel twist threatens to undermine the whole thing. What a way to mangle your own point.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Now, technically — technically — the winner for this month was February’s Failures, which was way down the overall chart. I stress technically because I’m going to say the award actually goes to something I posted in February… but I posted it on February 29th, so it didn’t have much of a chance last month; and February 29th isn’t a real day anyway, so it’s sort of part of March. Very tenuously sort of. Anyway, that makes the winner my review of Dune: Part One, which actually cracked the overall top ten (at #8).



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


What balance will my entertainment choices level out at in April? Find out next month!

The Leaping Monthly Review of February 2024

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It’s coming up to nine years since I started naming these monthly progress reports, which means this is the third leap year they’ve existed in, and yet it’s the first time I’ve thought to reference that in the name of February’s update. I don’t know if I should be ashamed of that because I didn’t do it sooner, or because it suggests I’m running out of fresh ideas. Either way, clearly it’s not good. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter. (Yeah, that’s the one.)

Anyway, on to the films…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#10 The Kitchen (2023) — New Film #2
#11 Despicable Me 3 3D (2017) — Series Progression #2
#12 RRR (2022) — 50 Unseen #3
#13 Ambulancen (2005) — Failures #2
#14 Dune: Part One 3D (2021) — Rewatch #2
#15 The Innocents (1961) — Blindspot #2
#16 Wild Tales (2014) — WDYMYHS #2


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in February.
  • That makes this the third month in a row with ten new films. Compared to my history, it’s baby steps (the record is 60 months), but it’s two years since I last managed three consecutive months, so it is worth noting.
  • Six of the ten counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • The usual monthly average for the Challenge is eight, but February being short (even with the extra leap day) means it only needs seven, so I remain on target.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was classic British Gothic (in the true sense) horror The Innocents. Maybe I should have tried to save that for October, but any intentions I have to watch horror movies in October usually fail to pan out. To be honest, I chose it now because it’s the only film on this year’s Blindspot that I don’t own on disc, so I thought I’d free up some space on my TV hard drive for other stuff I’ve downloaded. Sometimes my viewing decisions are as pragmatic as that.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Argentinian revenge anthology Wild Tales. That’s another one deleted off the hard drive.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Ambulancen and The Kitchen.
  • Also this month, in aid of my Genre category, I compiled a list of all the martial arts titles I own that I haven’t seen (it’s on Letterboxd here) and it came to… 213 films! And I’ve got more on preorder, and even more that are coming out soon that I will order; and I even left some off that I wasn’t sure counted (although I also included some I wasn’t sure about, so maybe that part balances out). Anyway, my point is: setting a target of “ten” barely scratches the surface here — even less than it did last year with giallo, where my similar list featured just 50 titles. Maybe, rather than try to think of more genres for that Challenge category, I’ll just set it on a triennial loop of noir, giallo, martial arts…



The 105th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I enjoyed most of the films I watched this month, some very much, but nothing came close to the marvel that is RRR.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Proving that star ratings aren’t everything (or possibly that I need to rethink mine), I rated My Son two stars, but its three-star The Kitchen that I feel I enjoyed least from this month’s viewing. I’ve been assigning ratings to films solidly for over a decade-and-a-half now (the blog passed its 17th anniversary this week, by-the-by) and yet how many stars I should give a film, and how my ratings compare to one another, still regularly gives me pause for thought.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Now that I’m getting back into the swing of reviewing (touch wood), there’s more stuff to compete in this category — that makes a nice change from most of last year. And yet, despite that, it’s my monthly review of January that comes out on top here. It even cracked the overall top ten for the month, which is an uncommon achievement for a new post. (In second place, the highest charting film review was Barbie.)



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


Returning to the cinema* to return to Arrakis.

* shockingly, it’ll be my first visit since Oppenheimer last July.

The Welcome Monthly Review of January 2024

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Welcome to 2024 — almost a quarter of a century on from the millennium! Jesus. Think of all those bold predictions they had about how amazing life would be by the year 2000. Imagine what they would’ve thought another quarter-century would bring. And look at the shit we’ve actually got…

But anyway, let’s leave the depression of the wider world aside for a moment, because the new year is actually off to a pretty decent start here at 100 Films — including more film reviews in one month than I published in the whole of 2023. More of that later. First, as always, my Challenge progress…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#1 Lift (2024) — New Film #1
#2 Only Yesterday (1991) — Blindspot #1
#3 Jackass Forever (2022) — Series Progression #1
#4 Barbie (2023) — 50 Unseen #1
#5 Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023) — Failures #1
#6 The Best of the Martial Arts Films (1990) — Genre #1
#7 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 3D (2018) — Rewatch #1
#8 Bottoms (2023) — 50 Unseen #2
#9 In the Name of the Father (1993) — WDYMYHS #1


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in January.
  • Meeting my “10 new films a month” minimum target has been problematic for the last couple of years, so it’s nice to see 2024 off to a good start.
  • Eight of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • I managed to spread those around enough that I’ve started all eight ‘proper’ categories (the exception being Wildcards, which is a category, obviously, but also… isn’t, in that the defining feature is they’re extra films for the other categories).
  • Talking of categories, Jackass Forever was the first film of the year where I had a choice: it could qualify as either 50 Unseen or Series Progression. I chose to watch it because it qualified for the former, but I decided to actually count it as the latter. That leaves an extra slot open to help encourage me to watch even more Unseens, and also helps ensure variety in Series Progression (I was worried it would end up full of Edgar Wallace Mysteries). Either way, it wraps up the Jackass film series (I’m not counting all the .5s and spinoffs), thus finally reducing the number of series I have on the go. I feel like I’m just constantly adding to that list, so it’s nice for something to come off it.
  • Just under five years since I imported the Blu-ray from Australia, I finally watched Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 3D. I’d say it was worth the wait, but there didn’t need to be a wait; but if the wait had been enforced, it would’ve been worth it, because the 3D is incredible. As is the movie, but I knew that.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Isao Takahata anime Only Yesterday.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was miscarriage-of-justice thriller In the Name of the Father.
  • As my WDYMYHS challenge this year is tied to the IMDb Top 250, it’s possible that qualifying films will shift throughout the year. I mention this now because it’s happened already: in the last month, Poor Things had entered the chart, and both Gangs of Wasseypur and the 2015 remake of Drishyam have dipped back in. When I conceived of doing this, I had 17 films to see; now, it’s up to 23. If it carries on at this rate, it’ll be two years’ worth of WDYMYHS…
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched just Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.



The 104th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
There may be multiple films that end up with a five-star rating this month (I haven’t quite settled on a couple), but only one film this month — heck, only one film in the past 18 years — has inspired me to watch it again immediately after my first viewing, and that was Bottoms.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Nothing outright bad this month, so I look to the gaggle of three-star-ish films. I expect such mediocrity from the likes of Lift or Jackass Forever, but Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget being no more than “fine” is disappointing from Aardman.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
For the first time in almost a year, this award is a reasonable competition — it’s not just a two-way face-off between the previous month’s review and “failures”, but includes all my year-in-review posts about 2023, as well as some actual film reviews. Indeed, it was the latter that won, with 2024 Week 2 — which contained reviews of Lift (as a new Netflix release, this is likely what did most of the, er, lifting), Only Yesterday, and Jackass Forever — not only being the top new post, but coming 2nd overall. Neat.



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


The shortest month of the year, for slightly longer than usual (because it’s a leap year).

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen All of the IMDb Top 250?

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Ever since I began my 100 Films in a Year Challenge all the way back in 2007, I’ve kept track of my progress in completing one of the best-known “best of” lists on the internet: the IMDb Top 250. At first, I just noted how many I’d seen from the list as it stood at the end of December (21 in my first year, for example). Later, I began to monitor how many that meant I had left (I first noted in 2012 that there were 119 to go — i.e. almost half). Ultimately, over the first 17 years of this blog, my annual statistics say I’ve watched 211 films from the Top 250 — but films come and go from the list, and many of those 211 won’t even be on there anymore. For example: since I had 119 films left to go, I’ve watched 145 more, but I still have 19 outstanding.

That’s why I’ve made the IMDb Top 250 the subject of 2024’s WDYMYHS: to push myself closer to completing the list. I’ve thought about doing this for several years, but WDYMYHS requires only 12 films and I’ve always had more than that left to go. But the chances of landing on exactly 12 at exactly the right time (i.e. in December/January) are moderately remote. It could probably be done, but it would require specific effort, and always carry the risk of a new film entering or one dropping out. Indeed, as if to prove my point, when I made the decision to do this in mid-December there were 17 films I’d not seen on the list and had been for many months. A couple of weeks later, almost out of nowhere, two more have popped on. If I’d managed to get my unseen count to exactly 12, it would now be 14 and I’d have to abandon the idea again. So that’s why I’ve decided to just go for it with 17 19 remaining.

All of them are listed below, in the order they appeared on the Top 250 last Sunday, from highest to lowest ranked. (The films and their ranking may well still be the same on the day I post this, but it’s already changed since New Year’s Day so nothing is guaranteed.) “But WDYMYHS is a 12 film category!”, I hear you cry (um, maybe). “How can you do it with 19 films?!” More on that post-list.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across
the Spider-Verse

12th Fail

 12th Fail
Incendies

Incendies

To Kill a Mockingbird

 To Kill a Mockingbird
A Separation

A Separation

Like Stars on Earth

 Like Stars on Earth
The Great Escape

The Great Escape

Godzilla Minus One

 Godzilla Minus One
In the Name of the Father

In the Name
of the Father

Wild Tales

 Wild Tales
The Wages of Fear

The Wages of Fear

Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington

 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda

Jai Bhim

 Jai Bhim
The Best Years of Our Lives

The Best Years
of Our Lives

The Handmaiden

 The Handmaiden
My Father and My Son

My Father and My Son

The Grapes of Wrath

 The Grapes of Wrath
Amores Perros

Amores Perros

So, 19 films, eh?

Well, the rules of WDYMYHS haven’t changed — to complete the category, I still need to watch 12 films, preferably one per month — but this year it’s from a list of 19, not just a specific 12. I could have chosen 12 of those 19, but it seemed silly to specify them when any of the 19 contributes towards my ultimate aim of completing the Top 250. I don’t know if I’d bend the rules that much for Blindspot, but as WDYMYHS is my own thing (albeit created with the same intent (and, *ahem*, first)), well, I can do what I want (not that the Blindspot Police are going to come and arrest me if I did start messing with that too. But I digress…)

Plus, IMDb’s list is an ever-changing beast. It was quite stable for most of 2023, but there’s always the possibility an older film will suddenly gain enough votes to chart, or a new release will be so well-received it shoots right in — as we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks. So if I did specify 12 films, one or more of them could become outdated as the year went on.

Relatedly, therefore, even the 19 films listed above may not be the ones I watch to actually complete the category. Any film that is on the Top 250 at the time I watch it will count for WDYMYHS. So, it’ll probably be 12 of these 19, but possibly not. (If a film drops off after viewing, it will still count towards my challenge. Putting myself in the position of having to retrospectively rule out films that previously counted would be madness.)

And that’s that. Which of the 19 will make the final 12? Or maybe I’ll watch them all and finally finish that bloody list? Or could 2024 be a year of cinematic brilliance and upend the whole lot? We’ll see in (just under) a year’s time…

Blindspot 2024

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This is my 12th year doing a version of Blindspot, so I’m not sure my customary introduction to the concept is still necessary. But just in case: this is a challenge in which you pick 12 films you’ve never seen but should have (your blindspots) and watch them one per month over the next year. It’s a great way of ensuring you watch films that you might otherwise not get round to. Or intending to get round to them, anyway, as I’ve failed to complete the list on various occasions. Always a shame, but not the end of the world.

Anyway, below are my 12 picks for 2024, followed by an unnecessarily long-winded explanation of why I chose them. But to jump ahead of myself slightly: the picks all come from a ranked list, and so are presented here in their order from that list, highest to lowest.

Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary’s Baby

Yi Yi

 Yi Yi
Army of Shadows

Army of Shadows

Only Yesterday

 Only Yesterday
Le Trou

Le Trou

My Darling Clementine

 My Darling Clementine
Rio Bravo

Rio Bravo

The Innocents

 The Innocents
Where Is the Friend's House?

Where Is the
Friend’s House?

Scenes from a Marriage

 Scenes from a Marriage
The Cranes Are Flying

The Cranes Are Flying

Possession

 Possession

Traditionally, my methodology for choosing my 12 films has been some degree of complicated and thus merited explanation. (“Merited” in the sense that my procedures interest me, even if they don’t interest anyone else.) Last year, I simplified things greatly by basing it around Sight and Sound’s then-new list of greatest films. With this year’s WDYMYHS also being drawn from a list of highly-acclaimed all-timers, I was certain I’d need to return to making Blindspot’s selection process a complicated one.

Well, why make work for yourself when others have already done it? You see, the first step in my Blindspot process is to decide on and/or find lists that are going to contribute to the rankings that will decide this year’s 12. (I could just use the same list(s) year on year, but that would mean I just select the next 12 each time, which seems dull.) Normally one of the first to go in the mix is the IMDb Top 250, but that was ruled out thanks to WDYMYHS, so where else to start? I do have a couple of other go-tos, but then I remembered a list from Letterboxd: The 1001 Greatest Films, ranked as objectively as possible. I won’t regurgitate the whole rationale behind that list here (you can read the introduction at the link for that), but, suffice to say, it’s a list that has already combined multiple other lists with a view to creating a ‘definitive’ greatest films list. (The popular 1,000-film list curated by They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? has long had a similar aim, but that has certain baked-in biases that this one aims to correct.) Job done!

Well, not quite. I didn’t just take the list as final gospel — as well as ruling out films I’d already seen (obviously), I applied a few of my own rules to reach my final selection. Firstly, I limited it to things I already own or have near-permanent access to on streamers (I don’t normally trust them to keep content, but the Netflix Ghibli deal seems pretty solid). This was a common decider back when I first started WDYMYHS/Blindspot, but after a few years it seemed prudent to ignore it. I’ve brought it back again now because I’ve got a ludicrous number of films on disc I’ve never watched, so why not start with them rather than downloading even more? It’s not as if I was having to go to the dregs of the list just to include stuff in my collection, either.

Next, my most commonly enforced rule: one film per director. Normally that would have meant including A Brighter Summer Day at the expense of Yi Yi, but I decided to apply another rule I’ve used fairly regularly: no films that I’d failed to watch the year before. So out went A Brighter Summer Day, which I should’ve watched in 2023, and in goes Yi Yi (which I should’ve watched in 2022, but hey, can’t go excluding stuff forever). It also meant ditching Le Samouraï in favour of Army of Shadows. If I were ranking this in terms of my personal anticipation, Le Samouraï would’ve been higher; but the list is the list — if I wanted to make this “any 12 films I want to see”, I could’ve done that as my selection process.

Then, a few bits of housekeeping. Firstly, ruling out films that were also on the WDYMYHS list, as I’d settled on that one first. That took out three: The Wages of Fear, The Best Years of Our Lives, and A Separation. I suppose I could’ve left them on to help further complete the IMDb Top 250 (a ‘guaranteed’ 15 instead of only the 12 that WDYMYHS ‘guarantees’), but, eh. I also ruled out Apur Sansar because it’s the third film in a trilogy and I’ve only seen the first one. I’m not going to watch them out of order, and I didn’t want to commit myself to watching 13 films for a 12-film challenge. I also could have included Werckmeister Harmonies, because I do have a copy (one I went to the effort of bodging together myself from multiple DVD-era sources, to get in-sync subtitles), but there’s reportedly a 4K restoration on the way, so it seems prudent to wait for that to enjoy the film properly. I could’ve included it on the list anyway, as I did with The Hitcher, but look how that worked out. (For those who don’t remember, The Hitcher was on a 2022 list, assuming a promised release from Second Sight would definitely be out that year, but we’re now in 2024 and it’s still not been announced beyond “we’re working on it”.)

Finally, the list includes a couple of movie-adjacent TV series that fell within my catchment zone; specifically, Dekalog and Berlin Alexanderplatz. I’ve often discussed on this blog the blurred line between TV and film, so I didn’t remove them out of snobbery, more out of practicality. I mean, last year I failed to watch nine-hour Shoah, so having either one of ten-hour Dekalog or fifteen-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz on the list would likely be a failure in waiting, but having both? Maybe I could’ve attempted one, but it would’ve been inconsistent to only include one when they both qualified. The final decider was this: if I watched either of them under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t count them on the blog (because, y’know, they’re TV series, not films), so I shouldn’t really count them just because they happen to be on a list.

In the end, to get my final 12, I had to go through 36 films — ruling out twice as many as I included. Most of those (15) were simply because I didn’t own them. The remaining nine, I’ve already mentioned. As some kind of insight into those 36 films’ overall standings, the first one I rejected, A Brighter Summer Day, is in the list’s top ten (7th, to be precise), but only four of my final selection are in the top 100, and I had to go as deep as 193rd to finish my 12. Still, it’s always the way: the more acclaimed films you’ve seen, the further you have to go for your next ‘blindspot’.

The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024

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They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Nonetheless, here I go for a third time with the new-style 100 Films in a Year Challenge, despite having failed to complete it the first two times. Hopefully, another hoary old saying will apply: third time lucky.

There are two reasons to be optimistic. First, it’s not exactly the same each year — it’s (mostly) new films, and I’ve also tweaked the categories… although not necessarily to make them easier, because of the second reason: I’ve almost got there both years so far. Okay, in 2022 I stopped pretty far short at #89, but that was because 100 became unattainable and so I didn’t keep trying to close the gap. In 2023, I stuck at it a bit longer, reaching #92. In both cases, better time management earlier in the year could have made a huge difference in terms of completing the challenge. Indeed, in both years I met my old-style challenge (“watch any 100 films I’ve never seen”) with relative ease.

I’m hoping that in 2024 I’ll finally learn from my mistakes and pull my finger out earlier in the year — though I did try to do that in 2023, with limited success, so we’ll have to see how it goes.

Now, this year’s categories and their rules.

First, the one rule that applies across all categories: a film can only count once. Sounds kinda obvious, but the categories are not mutually exclusive: I could rewatch a film from a series I’m halfway through that’s in this year’s genre, and thus it could qualify in three categories — but it can only be counted in one of them.

New Films

x12. Any film that’s general release date (i.e. not festival screenings, etc) in the UK (i.e. not in the US, nor any other country) is between 1st January 2024 and 31st December 2024. Maximum one per month (but rolls over if I fail to watch one).

Rewatches

x12. Any film I’ve seen before (unless it’s already been counted in 2024’s Challenge). Maximum one per month (with rollovers, as above).

Blindspot

x12. Unlike most other categories, these 12 films are specifically chosen and named in advance. They’re all films I feel I should have seen, or that “great movies” lists tell me I should have seen. Designed to be watched one per month, but doesn’t have to be. You can read about this year’s 12 in their own post here.

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

x12. Similar to Blindspot, in that these are 12 specifically chosen films to be watched one per month, but my selections here are based around a theme. This year’s theme: the IMDb Top 250. Wait — 250 films?! No, don’t be silly. But it’s not exactly 12, either. For a full explanation, look here.

Failures

x12. Every month, I list my “failures” — brand-new releases, additions to streamers, and disc purchases that I failed to watch in the previous month. Sometimes, I catch up on some of them the next month. Often, I don’t. Making them a Challenge category helps force my hand. A maximum of one per month counts, but rolls over if necessary.

50 Unseen

x10. This year’s only entirely-new category, although it’s broadly similar to “failures” in that it’s an incentive to watch films I missed — in this case, from previous years (my annual “50 Unseen” lists) rather than just the previous month.

50 Unseen replaces Physical Media. It was a nice idea to try to make me watch more DVDs that I’ve owned for decades, or 3D Blu-rays that I simply haven’t got round to, and I still support that as a goal; but, in reality, I foresaw that category in 2024 filling up with Edgar Wallace Mysteries and/or random freshly-purchased 4Ks. I wanted to find space here for my 50 Unseen, and Physical Media seemed the best category to lose for now. If I ever get my series watches in hand, hopefully I can replace Series Progression with a new version of Physical Media sometime in the future.

Genre

x10. Any films from within a specified genre. Unlike most of the above categories, these can be watched at any time — maybe I’ll spread them throughout the year; maybe I’ll binge them all back to back. Most likely it’ll be somewhere between the two. This year’s genre: martial arts.

Series Progression

x10. Any instalment in one of the many film series I’m already watching (there’s a Letterboxd list of them here). If I start a new series, the first film can’t count, but any further films can.

Wildcards

x10. Slots that can be used to add a film or films to any other category, provided the category’s own requirements have already been met (e.g. no 11th Genre film until I’ve filled the original ten, but I could use a wildcard for a second New Film in January).

As the year goes on, you can follow my progress on the Challenge Tracker page, and also via my monthly reviews; or there’s always my Letterboxd for the guaranteed most up-to-date status of my film logging.

2023: The List

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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)
65

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

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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.

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

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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.