Tag Archives: 100 Films in a Year Challenge

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

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 94th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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


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

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 93rd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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



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


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

The Late-Blooming Monthly Review of January 2023

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

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

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

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 92nd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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



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


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

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

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

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

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

Ace in the Hole

Ace in the Hole

The Asphalt Jungle

The Asphalt Jungle

Gun Crazy

Gun Crazy

In a Lonely Place

In a Lonely Place

The Killers

The Killers

Mildred Pierce

Night and the City

Night and the City

Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley

Out of the Past

Out of the Past

Scarlet Street

Scarlet Street

Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt

Sweet Smell of Success

Sweet Smell of Success

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blindspot 2023

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This is my 11th year doing a version of Blindspot (not to mention that various other bloggers do it too… or used to. Do other people still do this? Is there a whole world of it going on that I’m somehow cut off from? Or am I a lone proponent, still plugging ahead with a near-decade-old fad, because I really like it? I don’t know…)

Anyway, if you somehow still don’t know what it is or how it works, the premise is simple: choose 12 films you should have seen but haven’t, then watch one a month throughout the year. (My 12 also contribute to my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.)

Some people just choose their 12 films. I normally do it via an elaborate system of compiling “great movies” lists in various configurations to spit out some general consensus of which 12 well-regarded films I should watch next, rejigging which lists are included and how they’re factored in to provide new results each year. But 2023 is a bit different, thanks to a significant event last month: the publication of a new edition of Sight & Sound’s decennial 100 Greatest Movies poll, one of — nay, the most widely respected list of its kind among cinephiles. There were 27 films I hadn’t seen on the latest edition of the list — more than enough to fuel my Blindspot selections for this year.

I’ll explain how I whittled those 27 down (it wasn’t a long process, but it’s more than just “the top 12”) after listing the films themselves. In the order they ranked in Sight & Sound’s poll, this year I must watch…

Jeanne Dielman…

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Beau Travail

Beau Travail

Cléo from 5 to 7

Cléo from 5 to 7

Close-Up

Close-Up

Au hasard Balthazar

Au hasard Balthazar

Shoah

Shoah

Killer of Sheep

Killer of Sheep

Fear Eats the Soul

Fear Eats the Soul

A Brighter Summer Day

A Brighter Summer Day

Pierrot le Fou

Pierrot le Fou

Tropical Malady

Tropical Malady

Black Girl

Black Girl

With just 12 slots but 27 films I hadn’t seen, obviously I had to pare the list down somehow. One method would’ve been to just take the 12 highest ranked — they’re meant to be the best of the best, after all. But that didn’t allow for the fact that, to be blunt, there were films further down the list that I was more interested in seeing. Another method would’ve been to run the 27 films through one of my usual list-of-lists calculations and see which 12 emerged victorious. But in a year where I’d simplified the selection process, it seemed silly to overcomplicated it again.

So, here’s what happened: I already owned some of the films on disc; when the list came out, after I had a look at it, there were a couple of highly-ranked films that I’d already been considering purchasing, so I ordered them; and there were a few more that, for whatever reason, I felt compelled to, um, download. When I stopped to take stock of this flurry of activity, the number of films in my possession added up to 13. They weren’t necessarily the films I had envisioned being in my final 12 (for starters, two from the top 50 were missing), but there we were.

The only remaining question: which to ditch? It was nearly Au hasard Balthazar. I wasn’t sure I’m ready for the “a donkey’s miserable life” movie. I’m still not. But this seemed as good a time as any to bite the bullet and get it seen. What about approaching it from the other angle — which had to be included? Well, I don’t think I’m going to like Jeanne Dielman, but I’ve felt I should watch it for some time now… and, more importantly, it’s #1 — of course #1 had to go in! Then there’s the ones I already owned on disc: Shoah, A Brighter Summer Day, and Black Girl (also Yi Yi, but that was on last year’s list, so I ruled it out on the presumption I’d watch it in December. Oops). Then, the ones I’d freshly ordered: Beau Travail and Close-Up. Even if I hadn’t bought them, both are among the top four I hadn’t seen.

That just left narrowing the remaining seven downloads to six. I could talk you through my process, such as it was, on a film by film basis, but in the end it came down to a gut feeling. You can already see which films made it in — the loser, for what it’s worth, was Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life. I couldn’t really tell you why; it’s just what I decided.

One other thing: I can’t usually have wildcards from Blindspot — it’s a list of 12 films taking up 12 slots; there aren’t any to be wildcards. But this year is an exception in that respect, too: I figure that, as the entire list is chosen from Sight & Sound’s list, then the 15 unchosen films were the only other eligible options, and therefore they could be eligible for wildcard slots. Disagree? Tough, it’s my game. Will I actually watch any of them, when getting through the 12 actual picks can be challenge enough some years? Maybe not. But the possibility is there.

Before we leave Blindspot behind and head to “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” (or, if you’ve come to this post second, before you head back to your life), here’s a dash of additional info. You see, just because these 12 films were all taken from the Sight & Sound list, that doesn’t mean they don’t contribute towards my completion of other lists — unsurprisingly, there’s some degree of overlap between different “great films” lists. So, in case you were curious (because I was), other key lists that some of these films appear on (at time of writing) include…

TSPDT’s The 1,000 Greatest Films (16th edition) — all 12, ranging from 34th (Au hasard Balthazar) to 869th (Black Girl).

BBC’s The 100 Greatest Foreign-Language Films — Jeanne Dielman; Beau Travail; Cléo from 5 to 7; Close-Up; Au hasard Balthazar; Shoah; Fear Eats the Soul; A Brighter Summer Day; Pierrot le Fou.

BBC’s The 100 Greatest Films Directed by Women — Jeanne Dielman; Beau Travail; Cléo from 5 to 7.

iCheckMovies’s Most Favorited — Jeanne Dielman; Close-Up; A Brighter Summer Day.

Letterboxd’s Top 250 Narrative Feature Films — Jeanne Dielman; A Brighter Summer Day.

IMDb’s Top 250 — nothing (can’t say I’m surprised).

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

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Alright, here we go: after spending the first week of 2023 wrapping up 2022, it’s finally time to move on to the new year.

For the 17th year in a row, I’m going to attempt to watch 100 films in a year. But, for the second year in a row, that’s not just any old 100 films: following on from last year’s grand re-envisioning of the challenge, it’s 100 films that fulfil certain categories and criteria. Those categories and criteria have undergone some changes, however — hence Mk.II.

When I conceived of this new-style challenge, it was always my intention to vary the categories somewhat year by year (there was a reason last year’s goal of watching 12 film noirs came in a category called “Genre”, not “Film Noir”), but actually undertaking it for a year has thrown up a few pointers about how it could work better, or cases in which the rules needed to be clearer. Consequently, some of this year’s categories are mere refinements on what went before, while others are the same but with new contents, and a couple have been replaced wholesale for the sake of variety.

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 watch a DVD of a film in this year’s genre that’s also part of a series, and technically that could count in any one of three categories. Similarly, if I rewatch a film that I’ve already counted, the rewatch can’t count. As a separate viewing, it sort of still fulfils the criteria, but I feel it’s better to have 100 totally unique films. (It also means I can accurately track my progress in a list on Letterboxd, whereas I couldn’t if repeats were allowed.)

With that said, this year’s categories are…

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 2023 and 31st December 2023. 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 2023’s Challenge). Maximum one per month (with rollovers, as above).

Blindspot

x12. Films I feel I should have seen, or that “great movies” lists tell me I should have seen. Not just any old films, but 12 films specifically chosen and named in advance. Designed to be watched one per month, but doesn’t have to be. I’ll name this year’s 12 in their own post soon. Teaser: the recent publication of Sight & Sound’s once-a-decade poll has had a significant bearing on this year’s choices…

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

x12. Similar to Blindspot, in that they’re 12 specifically chosen films to be watched one per month, but these are all based around a theme. This year’s theme: film noir. “Hold up,” I hear you say, “wasn’t film noir a different category last year?” Why yes, it was 2022’s Genre. What’s different about it being 2023’s WDYMYHS theme? I’ll explain when I name the 12 specific films in their own post, soon.

Failures

x12. Every month, I list my “failures” — new releases or purchases that I failed to watch in the previous month. Sometimes, I catch up on some of them. Often, I don’t. Making it a Challenge category will hopefully force my hand. As with new films and rewatches, it’s a maximum of one per month, but rolls over if necessary.

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: giallo.

Series Progression

x10. Any instalment in a film series I’m already watching (there’s a Letterboxd list of them here). If I start a new series, either by accident or choice, the first film can’t count, but any further films can. I thought about replacing this category, but while I’ve still got so many series on the go, I wanted to keep the incentive to push on with them.

Physical Media

x10. Last year, I had a whole category dedicated to DVDs, because I’ve got so many of them that I’ve never watched. Frankly, it’s a category I thought I’d change — but I have so many unwatched discs, it needs to stick around if it’s to make any serious dent in its purpose. However, I’ve widened it this year, because I also have a massive pile of unwatched 3D and UHD Blu-rays. So, not any physical media counts, just those three formats. I know that makes the category title inaccurate, but “DVDs and 3D Blu-rays and 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays” seemed unwieldy. As with genre and series films, these can be watched at any time.

Wildcards

x10. Last year, every category had 12 films, leaving an awkward four spare. My solution was to make them ‘wildcards’ that could be added to any category, thus turning a bug into a feature. That feature had the potential to be so useful that I’ve expanded it.

You see, towards the end of 2022, the Challenge was dictating my viewing more than I would like. I wanted to catch up on recent releases, and also watch some Christmassy fare, but none of those films would have qualified for the Challenge, and I still had a couple of dozen films left to complete it, so I felt forced to watch DVDs and film noirs and so on instead. Okay, that’s partly my own fault for not getting on with them earlier in the year; but this new-style Challenge was always going to be a work in progress, so I thought that, for Year Two, I’d build in a potential fix. Hence: the revised wildcard category.

As you can see, I’ve more than doubled the quotient, and I’m removing the limit of one wildcard per category (as there are only eight other categories, that wouldn’t work anyway). These ‘new’ wildcards still need to be attached to an existing category, but it can happen as often per category as I want (provided the category’s requirements have already been met, e.g. no 11th Genre film until I’ve filled the original ten). I imagine, therefore, that these will mostly get used on additional new films, perhaps rewatches and failures, but who knows? We’ll see how it goes… and change it again for 2024, if needs be.

All that make sense? If not, let me remind you that you don’t really need to worry about any of this — it’s only me who has to work it out.

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.

2022: The List

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Things have been a bit different at 100 Films this year. Was it only a year ago that I relaunched the site? Somehow it feels like it’s always been this way… Well, that’s because the new style is quite well bedded in now, and I haven’t had to really think about it for ten or eleven months.

But now that the year is over, the fact things have changed reemerges, with the question: how does it affect my end-of-year roundup posts? I’m afraid I’ve been a little unimaginative, because the answer is “not very much”. The main change is a new addition: the Final Standing I posted the other day, showing the end position of my 100 Films in a Year Challenge. Other than that, anyone who’s been reading the blog for 13 months or more is going to find what follows pretty familiar.

In this post, there’s a list of all my first-time watches in 2022, as well as any rewatches that have received (or I’m intending to give) the “Guide To” treatment. There’s also links to my monthly progress reports, using their header images to present a kind of visual summation of the year — although that’s now a visual summation of my progress with the Challenge, rather than everything I watched.

Future posts will also continue as in previous years: first, a statistical breakdown of all my viewing; then, lists of my favourite and least-favourite films I saw for the first time this year.


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 2022. That’s followed by a list of rewatches that have had (or will have) ‘Guide To’ posts, then short films I watched for the first time. Where a title is a link, it goes to my review; when there’s no link, it’s because I haven’t reviewed it yet.

The 100 Films Guide To…
Shorts
  • Absence (2015)
  • The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (2022)
  • The Infernal Cauldron (1903), aka Le chaudron infernal
  • Life of an American Fireman (1903)
  • Lupin the Third: Is Lupin Still Burning? (2018)
  • The One-Man Band (1900), aka L’Homme orchestre
Ambulance

Carry On Spying

Cobra

Disenchanted

Enola Holmes 2

The Flying Deuces

He Walked by Night

Jackass: The Movie

Manhunter

The Monolith Monsters

Ode to Joy

Prey

See How They Run

The Thrill of It All

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks

A Woman Under the Influence

Scream

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

.

The above list gets analysed to pieces in my annual statistics breakdown (hurrah!)

The Failed Monthly Review of December 2022

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The end of the first year of new-style 100 Films is here, and what has it brought? Failure, that’s what. But I’ve already talked about that (although I’ll mention it again before this post is done), so let’s move on to what I did watch last month…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#82 Doctor Who Am I (2022) — New Film #12
#83 Quatermass 2 (1957) — Series Progression #8
#84 Christmas Holiday (1944) — Genre #9
#85 Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) — Blindspot #11
#86 Avatar (2009) — Rewatch #12
#87 I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948) — Genre #10
#88 Jackass 3D (2010) — Series Progression #9
#89 Mr. Soft Touch (1949) — Genre #11


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in December.
  • That means I failed to reach my ten-film target for the seventh time this year.
  • That’s a very different story to last year, when December tallied 20+ films for the first time ever; the final month to do so. In 2022, no month reached 20 films — the first time that’s happened since 2014.
  • Back then, the best month was September with 17 films. This year, it’s February, with just 13. That makes it the lowest “best month” since 2012, when (coincidentally) it was also February on 13. They’re tied (along with February and March 2011) as the lowest “best month of a year”s ever.
  • Falling short for more than half the year is reflected in the monthly average for 2022, which ends up at 9.25.
  • Seven of the eight films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • It would’ve been more if I hadn’t decided to abandon the Challenge shortly before the end of the year. There’s an explanation about my reasons for doing so at that link, so I won’t rehash them here; but I will add that, with hindsight, I made the right decision. Rather than having a hectic last week or so where I rushed to cram in qualifying films, I’ve had a leisurely and relaxing Christmas. (And I’ve had a rotten cold, so I needed that rest.)
  • All of this month’s Genre (i.e. noir) films were Christmas-themed ones. They’re not a natural fit, the optimism of Christmas and the bleakness of noir, but some filmmakers tried nonetheless; not many, but a few. In fact, I did have a couple more lined up, but didn’t get round to them. Maybe this time next year.
  • I didn’t get to the cinema for Avatar: The Way of Water, but I did rewatch the original film, for the first time since I saw it in the cinema, 13 years ago. Despite owning four different versions of it on Blu-ray (three different cuts in 2D, plus the theatrical cut in 3D), I was at my parents’ so we watched it on Disney+. Typical. (Sadly, they haven’t yet put up the revised version that had a cinema release earlier this year (I believe it was re-rendered in 4K with some use of HFR). I guess that’ll arrive, possibly with some fanfare, at a later date.)
  • Despite its title, I watched Jackass 3D in 2D (which is still titled Jackass 3D — obviously, otherwise I’d’ve used a different title). I did try to find a true 3D copy, but failed (I don’t think it was ever released on 3D Blu-ray; I guess it never will be now).
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Les Enfants du Paradis, aka Children of Paradise. That means I failed to watch one film from this year’s list, Yi Yi.
  • There were no WDYMYHS films this month, unfortunately, meaning I failed to watch The Name of the Rose or The Transformers: The Movie. Even considering that I abandoned the Challenge, I should’ve really tried harder to get at least one of those in. Oh well.
  • From last month’s “failures” I only watched Doctor Who Am I.



The 91st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
A couple of enjoyable flicks this month, but the artistic standout is French epic Les Enfants du Paradis. Once voted the greatest French film of all time — and, by implication (because you know the French), the greatest film of all time — it’s the kind of standing it deserves to be re-elevated to.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Nothing truly terrible this month, which always makes it a bit hard to judge this category. I mean, it feels kinda cruel picking, say, Doctor Who Am I, because it wasn’t bad — it’s been widely praised, even — but it didn’t deliver all I might’ve hoped for. Alternatively, there’s Jackass 3D, which, again, isn’t bad — assuming you don’t just fundamentally object to the premise, that is — but does feel a bit like it’s a franchise running on fumes. And it bugged the hell out of me that I couldn’t watch it in 3D.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Far and away my most popular post this month — not just of new posts, but all-time; and with ten times as many hits as the post in second place — was my summation of Sight & Sound’s The 100 Greatest Films of All Time (2022 edition). I guess it was timely and newsworthy (even if I posted my piece about 24 hours after the news broke), and people love a list.



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


Although the new-style 100 Films Challenge has reshaped things somewhat this year, this is the last post that will focus on it. Over the coming days there’ll be my usual array of look-backs at the year just gone, with a list of all the new films I watched this year, plus statistics and my Best and Worst lists drawn from that pool.

And then it will be on into 2023, with a slightly rejigged Challenge that I’ll hopefully find more completable.

100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022: Final Standing

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As the challenge tracker page will soon be replaced with a version keeping tabs on 2023’s effort, here’s an archive of how it looked at the very end of 2022 — sadly incomplete, after I chose to abandon it. Hopefully I’ll fare better in 2023.

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

New Films

  1. Mass (2021)
  2. The Misfits (2021)
  3. Django & Django (2021)
  4. Death on the Nile (2022)
  5. Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)
  6. Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)
  7. Ambulance (2022)
  8. Prey (2022)
  9. Persuasion (2022)
  10. Scream (2022)
  11. See How They Run (2022)
  12. Doctor Who Am I (2022)

Rewatches

  1. Gosford Park (2001)
  2. A Room with a View (1985)
  3. West Side Story (1961)
  4. The Father (2020)
  5. On the Town (1949)
  6. Top Gun (1986)
  7. Calamity Jane (1953)
  8. Batman: Dead End (2003)
  9. Paddington 2 (2017)
  10. The Two Faces of January (2014)
  11. Enola Holmes 2 (2022)
  12. Avatar (2009)

Blindspot

  1. L’avventura (1960)
  2. Los Olvidados (1950)
  3. A Man Escaped (1956)
  4. High and Low (1963)
  5. To Be or Not to Be (1942)
  6. Paris, Texas (1984)
  7. Mirror (1975)
  8. La Grande Illusion (1937)
  9. Come and See (1985)
  10. A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
  11. Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)
  12. Yi Yi

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

  1. Flight of the Navigator (1986)
  2. She’s Gotta Have It (1986)
  3. Cobra (1986)
  4. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
  5. Pretty in Pink (1986)
  6. A Better Tomorrow (1986)
  7. Mona Lisa (1986)
  8. The Mission (1986)
  9. Howard the Duck (1986)
  10. Manhunter (1986)
  11. The Name of the Rose
  12. The Transformers: The Movie

Decades

  1. Broken Blossoms (1919)
  2. The Navigator (1924)
  3. Shot in the Dark (1933)
  4. Penny Serenade (1941)
  5. The Monolith Monsters (1957)
  6. Carry On Spying (1964)
  7. The Hobbit (1977)
  8. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
  9. In the Line of Fire (1993)
  10. Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper (2004)
  11. Voyage of Time: An IMAX Documentary (2016)
  12. Free Guy (2021)

DVDs

  1. Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise (2007)
  2. Tintin and the Temple of the Sun (1969)
  3. The Flying Deuces (1939)
  4. Mifune: The Last Samurai (2015)
  5. Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972)
  6. Clerks (1994)
  7. Walk the Line (2005)
  8. The Mindscape of Alan Moore (2003)
  9. The Blues Brothers (1980)
  10. 3 to go…
  11. 2 to go…
  12. 1 to go…

Genre: Film Noir

  1. Escape in the Fog (1945)
  2. My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)
  3. Johnny Gunman (1957)
  4. Repeat Performance (1947)
  5. He Walked by Night (1948)
  6. The Guilty (1947)
  7. Killer’s Kiss (1955)
  8. The Killing (1956)
  9. Christmas Holiday (1944)
  10. I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948)
  11. Mr. Soft Touch (1949)
  12. 1 to go…

Series Progression

  1. Jackass Number Two (2006)
  2. Encanto (2021)
  3. Scream 2 (1997)
  4. The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Case (1932)
  5. Scream 3 (2000)
  6. Scre4m (2011)
  7. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
  8. Quatermass 2 (1957)
  9. Jackass 3D (2010)
  10. 3 to go…
  11. 2 to go…
  12. 1 to go…

Wildcards

  1. Munich: The Edge of War (2021) — additional ‘New Film’ in April
  2. Scream (1996) — additional ‘Rewatch’ in June
  3. The Thrill of It All (1963) — additional ‘Decade’ for the 1960s
  4. Where will it go?

Abandoning the 100 Films Challenge 2022

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There are 10 days of the year left — 11 if you include this evening — and I have 11 films left to complete my 100 Films Challenge (you can see the state of things on the tracker, here). It seems almost like a match made in heaven. But it isn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact. Which is why I’ve decided to abandon the challenge at this point.

Why? When I’m so close and it seems so possible, why?

Well, it may look doable on paper, but it isn’t in real life. Not this particular real life, for me, here in 2022. Not for any grand or scary reason; just simple scheduling.

Here’s the problem: having to watch specific films. The old-style “any 100 films in a year”? Easy peasy. Done it already, in fact (I mentioned it in November’s review). That’s why I created the new system: to make the Challenge more of a challenge. But it’s turned out to be too challenging this year. It’s my own fault — I was too laissez-faire earlier in the year. “There’s plenty of time to catch up.” Reader, there was not plenty of time. Or if there was, I still let it run out.

With the days of the year that are left, and knowing my personal schedule (of family get togethers and whatnot), some of it is still possible. Three DVDs? Not too hard. Three ‘series’ films? Yep, could do. One more film noir? A doddle. A wildcard attached to one of those three categories? Hardly a wildly difficult task.

Here’s the rub: Yi Yi for Blindspot, and The Name of the Rose and The Transformers: The Movie for WDYMYHS. One of them? Plausible. Two of them? At a stretch, possibly. All three? Nah. And with the aforementioned categories as well? Not on your nelly. I’ve just run out of time to make them all work with the other stuff I have going on for the rest of the year.

Also: even if I could get it done, it’d be pretty unrelenting, with little or no room for ‘free viewing’. Catching up on some 2022 misses? Forget it! Christmas films? Not bloody likely! A relaxing something-and-nothing flick on a lazy holiday afternoon? Get back to it, Challenger!

By choosing to abandon the uncompleteable challenge, I give myself permission to (perhaps) watch some of those things. Might I still tick off a few more films — watch some DVDs; progress some series; maybe even allow a little more noir into the white of Christmas? Perhaps. Perhaps not. That I don’t have to doesn’t mean I won’t. But choosing to declare the completion of the Challenge dead at this point means I can just enjoy the last week-and-a-half of the year, without the constant background nagging of how many films I still have to try to squeeze in.

So, was this new experiment a failure? Well, technically, yes — obviously, because I failed it. But that’s my own damn fault. It’ll be back in 2023, in a revised form. It was always my intention to revise it year by year (there’s a reason the film noir category is called “Genre”, not “Film Noir”, for example), and hopefully 2023’s version will be a little more completable.

Plus, I must try to remember that leaving such a big chunk ’til the last minute is not a very workable plan.

Anyway, hopefully this won’t be the last you see of me in 2022 (I’d like to get a bit more caught up on reviews); and then it’ll be the start of 2023 — time to look back at 2022 (I’ve got my usual suite of year-end posts planned (yep, there are gonna be statistics!)), and to begin afresh (for my 17th year).