Tag Archives: 100 Films in a Year Challenge

What a waste of a week

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Well, well, well — look who it is! Me, that’s who, with this rare-for-2023 mid-month post. Whatever’s going on?

Not much, actually — and that’s the problem. You see, as I mentioned in my August review, I’ve just left one job and am about to start another, with (to quote myself) “a small amount of time off in between”. That was 11 days, to be precise, which are now coming to an end. My plan for that time (as has been my plan for most of my times off in the past 17 years or so) had been to “cram a bunch of films in… I’ve certainly got plenty that I want to catch up on.”

Dear reader, I have not crammed. In fact, I have watched… just checking my notes, adding them all up… one (1) film.

Look, for once it’s not my fault. Yes, sure, I have been spending some time on Twitter X… no, let’s keep calling it Twitter. And yes, that site is often a drain on my time — but that’s not what happened here. Rather, I’ve had an eye infection. It’s actually been rolling on for months, waxing and waning, which is why I haven’t really had it treated (I got over-the-counter stuff, which didn’t work, which in itself is surely a factor in it being a longer-term problem). Now, I’ve battled through this affliction on other occasions — it was present to some extent when I made all those cinema trips in July, for instance. I say “battled” — it’s often been ‘not that bad’; a minor nuisance rather than a choice-limiting irritant. But last weekend it spread to the other eye, since when it’s been a right pain; and getting appointments and whatnot… well, anyone who’s had to deal with the NHS in recent times will know what a palaver that can be.

Consequently, I haven’t wanted to watch any films. Sure, I could’ve tried; but anything in 4K or 3D I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate fully, and anything with subtitles throughout would have been a headache; and while those were the most rule-out-able, anything else would’ve been compromised, and I don’t like that kind of compromise if I can help it. So, I’ve not watched anything this week. I’ve tried to put my time towards other forms of entertainment that I sometimes overlook in favour of films: reading books and comics; listening to audio dramas; playing games. (Of course, some of these are also vision-based, but I find them less bad than films at the moment — if my eyes begin to become a problem, I can take the time to clear or rest them before continuing. You can pause a film, obviously, but I find it less convenient to do so when it’s required frequently.)

And that’s how we come to this: a week wasted… although not completely wasted; but I still feel a bit wasted, because it’s meant I’ve fallen further behind on my Challenge when I had hoped to stay caught up, and possibly even get a bit ahead, before I start this new job, which itself may have a negative effect. Damn.

Plus, I’m going to further self-sabotage my film-watching efforts over the next couple of months, thanks to planning a personal celebration of Doctor Who for its 60th anniversary. In the run up to the venerable sci-fi series’ birthday (23rd November), which will bring the broadcast of three new episodes (probably throughout November, but the airdates haven’t been confirmed), I’ve plotted out my own series of viewings, readings, and listenings to mark the occasion — a collection of episodes, audios, books, comics, and the like that covers every canonical Doctor, and therefore is going to take some time to get through. All fun and exciting, and I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t want to (and maybe I’ll post some more about it here at some point, although there are no films involved so I ‘shouldn’t’ really), but it’s not conducive to catching up on a stalled Challenge. Oh dear. Well, maybe I’ll just cram ’em in throughout December instead…

Oh, and back to the eyes: I’ve got a hospital appointment on Tuesday. Hopefully they’ll give me some stronger antibiotics or something that’ll get it all cleared up, allowing my comfortable film viewing to resume before too long. Whether the whole of September becomes a washout or not, I’ll let you know on October 1st.

The Bicentennial Monthly Review of August 2023

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A couple of months ago, a new person joined my team at work. She’s 19 years old. Part of me still processed that as “just a few years younger than me, then”. Of course, that’s just my mind cheating me. When I started this blog — 200 months ago — I was 20 years old. She would’ve been about 3. Why is it that, as you get older, the world seems to conspire to make you feel it?

(For what it’s worth, because I didn’t do these monthly reviews from the very start, this is, to be accurate, the 160th monthly review; and the 99th in (more-or-less) its current format, as chronicled by the numbering of the Arbies. I still kind of think of these monthly columns as “something I started doing later”, when in fact I’ve now been publishing them for 80% of the blog’s lifetime.)

I predicted at the end of last month’s update that August was going to be an inauspicious celebration of that landmark; and while the month wasn’t anything spectacular, it turned out mostly ok — as we shall see…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#59 The Imitation Game (2014) — Rewatch #8
#60 Santo vs. the Zombies (1962) — Series Progression #10
#61 Marriage of Convenience (1960) — Physical Media #7
#62 Murder on the Orient Express (2017) — Physical Media #8
#63 Greatest Days (2023) — New Film #8
#64 Urge to Kill (1960) — Physical Media #9
#65 65 (2023) — Failures #8


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in August.
  • That’s the second month in a row I’ve hit my minimum target of 10 new films. And it’s the first time I’ve managed to reach 10 in consecutive months since February 2022. You wouldn’t think it was so hard, but it seems — for me nowadays — it is.
  • Five of those films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
  • This is one place the month was less than ideal, because I should have reached #66. But being only one film behind target isn’t so bad, especially when you consider I thought this month might be a total disaster.
  • Though, to continue with the negatives, after spending two months triumphantly getting back on track, unfortunately I didn’t find time for either Blindspot or WDYMYHS during August. I’m hoping to get on top of them (again) in September.
  • In brighter news, I completed my first Challenge category, Series Progression. I’ve currently got over 30 film series on the go, so it’s not really a surprise that I found this category fairly easy. (Not to mention that five of the nine categories are consciously designed to not be finished until December; and Wildcards rely on other categories’ stipulations being completed; so really there are only three categories that are likely to wrap up first.)
  • Right behind is Physical Media, now only one film away from completion.
  • Meanwhile, Genre is still 80% incomplete. I’m gonna have to do some kind of giallo marathon at some point, I think.
  • From last month’s “failures” I only watched 65.
  • And yes, I did deliberately pace my viewing so that 65 was #65.



The 99th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Slim pickings this month, to be honest. Some of August’s ten new films have managed to make the long list for my end-of-year “best of”, but then I’m quite lax about what gets on the list so I have maximum options when I come to decide (in case of opinions changing on reflection). I won’t be surprised if they all get culled fairly easily, come the time. That said, I was a lot fonder of Amazon Prime spy thriller All the Old Knives than most reviewers. It’s not up to Le Carré standards, but it’s pretty good if you’re a fan of that kind of spy tale.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Conversely, this has to go to another spy flick. Despite a strong cast (Sirs Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier) and director (Terence Young, who helmed three Connery Bonds), and interesting real-life inspiration (the defection of Kim Philby), The Jigsaw Man is an undercooked disappointment, with almost no redeeming features whatsoever.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
August 22nd was the six-month anniversary of the last review posted to this blog, which even then was just a shorts roundup. I haven’t reviewed a feature since February 10th. 2023 is turning out to be something of a disaster in that regard. More pertinently, it means this month’s audience award has just two competitors once again — namely, July’s monthly review and its failures. Of the two, it was (as the bold link may’ve given away) the former that triumphed, meaning the review has beaten the failures four months in a row.


The centenary-related celebrations aren’t over because, by sheer coincidence (I certainly didn’t plan it this way back in 2015), next month is the 100th edition of my Monthly Arbitrary Awards, aka the Arbies! Do I have anything special planned to mark the occasion? No. Will I think of something in the next 30 days? Maybe.

Over in the real world, I’m leaving my current job to start a new one. Sounds time-consuming and antithetical to getting films watched, doesn’t it? Oh dear. On the bright side, I have a small amount of time off in between roles, so hopefully i can cram a bunch of films in then. I’ve certainly got plenty that I want to catch up on.

The Cinematic Monthly Review of July 2023

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For a self-avowed film fan and film blogger, I don’t get to the cinema all that much. From the 16 completed years of this blog (2007–2022), only three have a number of cinema visits in double figures, and only two of those exceed a once-per-month average. Long-time readers may remember that I didn’t go at all in 2013 or 2014.

In that respect, 2020 was shaping up nicely — I’d been four times by the end of February, and if I’d continued at that kind of rate it would’ve been a personal record-breaker — and then the pandemic happened. I was lured back late in 2021 for Bond and then Dune, but then another lull kicked in: for one reason or another, I didn’t make it out to anything else for almost two years, until this very month.

And then, a few days later, I went again.

And the week after that, I went again.

I didn’t do Barbenheimer, though.

So I’ve already beaten 2022 (zero) and 2021 (two), and just one more trip will equal 2020 (four). (Now, if only I’d done Barbenheimer…) I can’t see myself going often enough across the rest of the year to reach the giddy heights of 2019 (which holds the record for my blogging era, on 19. Somewhat ironically, I went to the cinema a lot more often in the early/mid ’00s, just before I started this blog. If I’d been doing this in 2005 and 2006, those years would likely be stuffed to the gills with cinema trips. Or maybe I didn’t go quite as often as I thought and having historical stats would reveal that? I guess we’ll never know… unless I went back through the films released in those years and I worked out how many I saw on the big screen. Sounds like a lot of effort. But now that I’ve thought of it…)

Anyway, hurrah for my return to the cinema! It’s quite good, isn’t it?



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#47 Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022) — Failure #7
#48 John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) — New Film #6
#49 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) — New Film #7
#50 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) — Wildcard #4
#51 Santo vs. Infernal Men (1961) — Series Progression #9
#52 Oppenheimer (2023) — Wildcard #5
#53 Living (2022) — Wildcard #6
#54 Night and the City (1950) — WDYMYHS #5
#55 The Asphalt Jungle (1950) — WDYMYHS #6
#56 Sweet Smell of Success (1957) — WDYMYHS #7
#57 Beau Travail (1999) — Blindspot #7
#58 Black Dynamite (2009) — Rewatch #7


  • I watched 14 feature films I’d never seen before in July.
  • As regular readers will know, I aim to achieve at least 10 first time watches every month, so hurrah — especially as that’s just the second time I’ve managed it in 2023, and only the third time in the last 12 months.
  • 11 of those films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • If you check out my Recently Watched page, you’ll see three rewatches scatted amongst this month’s first-time watches. Why didn’t the other two count? The other two were stumbled upon on TV and, in one respect or another, only half watched; and yet, that half was enough to feel like I’d seen them again… sort of. Not like a full rewatch, really (hence why I didn’t allow them to count), but enough of a refresher that, if I ever watch either of them again, I don’t expect it to feel like a “second watch”. (For more philosophical musings along these lines, check out my reviews of the pair on Letterboxd.)
  • More importantly from my Challenge, reaching #58 means I’m back on target. That’s after ending the last two months behind. And it’s actually nearly three months that I’ve been lagging: the last time I was on target was 7th May.
  • Part of that was achieved via the use of three Wildcards. I didn’t necessarily want to burn through my Wildcards in the middle of the year; but, equally, I don’t have to save them for the end. And as I seemed to be struggling to watch other Challenge-qualifying films, I need the numbers where I can get ’em.
  • Under the Challenge rules, I should count one New Film a month. This month, there are four. I didn’t log one in May, so that needed catching up; then there’s the one for June; and then two more as Wildcards. I didn’t watch that many brand-new films in the first half of the year (just enough to keep the category ticking over), so it’s kind of nice to feel so inundated. Also, I’ve got loads to catch up on!
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Claire Denis’s Beau Travail, keeping that category on track too.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS films were archetypal heist thriller The Asphalt Jungle, London-set Night and the City, and battling newspapermen in Sweet Smell of Success. And watching three here means this category is back on track too, as per the catchup for Blindspot I wrote about last month.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, John Wick: Chapter 4, Living, and Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical.



The 98th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
If you’d asked me to predict this category before the month began, I’d’ve said M:I-7 was a strong frontrunner. But, while I did enjoy it a lot, I didn’t think it was good as the last two in the series (though I have a feeling I’m going to appreciate it more on a rewatch, divorced from all the expectation); plus, I happened to watch several other exceptionally great films this month, to the extent it was never really in contention here. Indeed, two other 2023 releases rose above it (namely, John Wick: Chapter 4 and Oppenheimer). In the end, I’m going to plump for an older film, because I greatly admired Jules Dassin’s British noir, Night and the City. (I have a sneaking suspicion those three films may end up getting rearranged somewhat by the time I get to my end-of-year best-of, but you never know. Only time will tell.)

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is a little easier. Really speaking, it should be one of the two Santo films I watched this month. I kinda enjoyed them, but they’re not good, especially compared to everything else. That said, I did enjoy them, which isn’t necessarily true of Beau Travail. Saying Denis’s film is worse than any Santo flick would sound ridiculous to most cinephiles — objectively (in as much as art can be judged objectively), it’s a better film. But, while I did like or admire parts of it, it’s not really to my taste; and even though they’re trashy and poorly made, I ultimately got more enjoyment from the Santo films.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Here’s a date for your diary: August 22nd. That’s the six-month anniversary of the last film review posted here. I had the best of intentions this month — having seen the likes of Indy 5, M:I-7 and Oppenheimer at the cinema, I wanted to review them promptly — but… well, it didn’t happen, did it? And so, for the fifth month in a row, this award has just two posts to choose from; and, once again, neither performed spectacularly on the chart. That said, one did do notably better than the other. When I turned my “failures” section into a series of standalone posts (back in February 2022), they were initially much more popular than the monthly reviews they’d spun out of. At this point, the tables have quite firmly turned. Yes, the victor here is my June monthly review.


It’s the 200th month of 100 Films!

And it looks set to be a challenge to my Challenge — having just got back on track, I’ve now got a busy work and personal calendar that’s liable to get in the way of film watching. Oh no! Can I nonetheless make it to my August target of #66? Join me in 31 days to find out. (Ooh, such drama!)

The Lonely Monthly Review of June 2023

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After a relatively disastrous May, June saw a slight turnaround in my fortunes — not a complete rehabilitation (I’m still behind target on my Challenge, and I didn’t watch ten new films either), but a definite improvement.

That hasn’t filtered through to reviews, though, as I didn’t post any for the fourth month in a row. I’m also doing a shocking job of reading other people’s work (I’ve got a browser window open with so many tabs of stuff I’ve been meaning to get round to), so sorry about that.

Anyway, here’s what I did achieve this past month…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#39 Air (2023) — New Film #5
#40 Moneyball (2011) — Rewatch #6
#41 Killer of Sheep (1978) — Blindspot #4
#42 Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021) — Failures #6
#43 In a Lonely Place (1950) — WDYMYHS #4
#44 Glass Onion (2022) — Wildcard #3
#45 Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) — Blindspot #5
#46 Au hasard Balthazar (1966) — Blindspot #6


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in June.
  • Six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
  • That’s a total of eight (obv). Perfectly respectable under normal circumstances (8.3 films a month is the necessary average for the Challenge), but I need to do more to catch up — as noted in the introduction, I’m still behind target: I should have reached #49 by now (not #50, as you might expect. February being so short distorts the ‘halves’ of the year enough that #50’s target date falls in early July).
  • Eight is also very much my current average, both for 2023 to date (to be precise, it was 7.6, now 7.7) and for the last 12 months (to be precise, it was 8.2, now 7.8, dropping because last June‘s total was 12). It’s below June’s average, though, pulling it down from 11.5 down to 11.3.
  • On a broader note, my total for the year to date is below par. Coincidentally, I’m at #46 on both my Challenge and my new film count, but my all-time average for the end of June is 84. The second half of the year is going to have to outpace the first (an uncommon, but not unheard of, occurrence) if I’m to successfully reach #100 in any sense.
  • I didn’t count Glass Onion towards my Challenge when I first watched it because it would’ve been a Wildcard and I was certain I’d rewatch it, so it seemed prudent to save it to count as a Rewatch. As it turns out, I rewatched it after I’d already logged a Rewatch for the month, so it goes down as a Wildcard nonetheless. Hey-ho.
  • With both Blindspot and WDYMYHS beginning to fall seriously behind schedule, I decided to focus my catchup efforts on the former this month. I could’ve tried to do them both equally, but here’s the thing: Blindspot has some pretty darn long entries to be watched sometime this year (one that’s almost three-and-a-half hours long; one that’s almost four hours; and one that’s over nine hours), whereas the noirs of WDYMYHS are much more consistent (there’s a range of just 15 minutes from the shortest to the longest running times across the remaining films). Those handful of ultra-long Blindspot films were always going to pose an additional challenge, so by getting my overall progress back on track I’ve at least reset the difficulty. Conversely, the WDYMYHS films being within the same ballpark (all under two hours, too) means I can more easily attempt a similar “multiple films in a month” catchup at any point later this year (hopefully next month).
  • And so, this month’s trio of Blindspot films were Charles Burnett’s key text about the Black American experience, Killer of Sheep; my first full exposure to the work of Agnès Varda, Cléo from 5 to 7; and Robert Bresson’s bleak biography of a donkey, Au hasard Balthazar.
  • And this month’s sole WDYMYHS film was one of the primary inspirations for this theme in the first place, Nicholas Ray’s exceptional In a Lonely Place.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Air and Escape Room: Tournament of Champions.



The 97th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’ve already touched on this one, so I’ll just repeat myself: In a Lonely Place is a great noir; the fact I hadn’t seen it was a driving force behind making noir the theme of WDYMYHS this year, and it lived up to expectations. I’m shockingly late to the party with this one, but if you too like noir and haven’t seen it, you must.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It’s not a bad film — and it certainly has historical significance — but Killer of Sheep wasn’t really to my taste.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
As I mentioned at the start, this is once again a two-horse race; and, as with the previous three months, there’s nothing much exciting about that. That said, the result was slightly unusual, in that the winner — my monthly review of May — attracted almost double the hits of the other new post (May’s failures). In the past they’ve been very close, or the failures have had a clear victory. Huh. Neither were anywhere near the top of the chart, mind, which this year is being dominated by my post on the 2022 Sight & Sound poll.


It’s time for another one of Tom Cruise’s impossible missions.

The Eurovisual Monthly Review of May 2023

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

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 96th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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


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

The Elven Monthly Review of April 2023

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 95th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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


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

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?