Tag Archives: Arbies

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.

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.

The Greatest Monthly Review of November 2022

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A slightly aggrandised title, and not necessarily an applicable one — I mean, what’s so great about this monthly review? That said, as I won’t review November 2022 again, it is my greatest review of this month.

Whatever — the adjective was actually prompted by my coverage of Sight & Sound’s 2012 Greatest Film of All Time poll (something I’ve been meaning to write up since the blog’s new era began in January) and their release today of the 2022 poll results (due at 7pm GMT).

Putting that aside for now, here’s the regular monthly business…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#71 See How They Run (2022) — New Film #11
#72 Come and See (1985) — Blindspot #9
#73 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) — Series Progression #7
#74 The Mindscape of Alan Moore (2003) — DVD #8
#75 Howard the Duck (1986) — WDYMYHS #9
#76 Killer’s Kiss (1955) — Genre #7
#77 The Killing (1956) — Genre #8
#78 The Blues Brothers (1980) — DVD #9
#79 Enola Holmes 2 (2022) — Rewatch #11
#80 Manhunter (1986) — WDYMYHS #10
#81 A Woman Under the Influence (1974) — Blindspot #10


  • I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in November.
  • Nine of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches — one of which I’d only watched for the first time earlier in the month. What larks!
  • The film in question was Enola Holmes 2, which wasn’t eligible for any category on my first viewing (the “new film” slot having already been taken by See How They Run), but when I came to rewatch it could count as November’s rewatch.
  • That said, arguably the rewatch slot should have gone to The Blues Brothers, but it was more useful to count it as a DVD. It’s not my disc, so breaks the intention of the DVD category, but as Walk the Line already did that (see last month) it seemed silly to start applying higher morals now. (But if the DVD category continues into 2023, it’s getting reworded. Only I can save me from myself.)
  • While we’re on specific films, this month’s Blindspot films were A Woman Under the Influence and Come and See. After failing to watch the latter for last year’s Blindspot list, I said I wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving it until December again — and I didn’t! That said, it was the shortest of the four films I had left in this category, so, in that sense, watching it first didn’t make my task any easier. Indeed, having also watched A Woman Under the Influence, I’ve left the two longest-of-all films — totalling over 6 hours combined — for December. Oops.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS films were polar opposites in terms of reputation: the notoriously bad Howard the Duck, and the notoriously “good but overshadowed by subsequent films in the same franchise” Manhunter. I loved one and quite enjoyed the other, but I’ll leave you to speculate which was which.
  • From last month’s “failures” I only watched The Lost City.

Now, a more statistical bent…

  • I reached #100!
  • …under the old system (i.e. counting all new films, but only new films), which isn’t my actual challenge anymore. Oh well.
  • But, for what it’s worth, that’s the latest I’ve done it since… the last time I failed to even get there, when I only reached #97 in 2012. The last time it took until November was 2013 (when I got there on the 13th; this year it was the 15th) — every year since has been earlier.
  • On the bright side, totalling 12 new films makes this the first time I’ve got above my target of 10 per month since June.
  • It also makes November the first month of 2022 to beat its equivalent from 2021. There has never been a year of 100 Films without at least one month that beat its own tally from from the year before, so I’m glad to have dodged that ignominious all-time first.
  • It also means I have good news to report in the averages stakes, for the first time in a while, with November beating all the averages I regularly mention: the average for 2022 to date (previously 9.1, now 9.4); the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 9.9, now 10.3); and the average for all Novembers (previously 10.8, now 10.9).
  • On a bit of a downer: I’d hoped to get to #85 in my challenge, because I had 30 left to go after October and that would’ve meant a neat 15 in November and 15 in December. Never mind.



The 90th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
There were several films I enjoyed a lot this month, and may even find it onto my end-of-year best list (partly because it’s been feeling like a pretty poor year, for whatever reason), but only one prompted me to write “where has this been all my life?!” on Letterboxd, and that was Manhunter. (The answer being “probably being overshadowed by Silence of the Lambs”.)

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Easily the biggest disappointment this month was belated-but-awaited sequel Disenchanted — a disappointingly fitting title for a film that lost the magic of its wonderful predecessor. Maybe “it’s such a shame they never made a sequel to Enchanted” would have been a better legacy.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
There was only a small handful of posts to choose from this month, but the clear victor was my summary of Sight & Sound’s The 100 Greatest Films of All Time (2012 edition). Is that because everyone loves a list? Or because it was a new feature for the blog? Or because the 2022 edition is imminent (the results are out later today, at 7pm GMT)? Who knows. Maybe time — and further entries in this sporadic series — will tell.



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


I’ve got 19 films to go to complete my challenge. That’s bringing back memories of 2008, when I also had to get through 19 films in December to hit my target. I managed it, but only just: I watched three qualifying films on New Year’s Eve to get over the line. Hopefully this year will be less stressfully down to the wire…

The Screaming Monthly Review of October 2022

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Alright, Halloween’s over — but, later on, there are a few statistics about how far off-track I am in completing my 100 Films Challenge this year, and that gave me the heebie-jeebies, at least.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#61 The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Case (1932) — Series Progression #4
#62 The Two Faces of January (2014) — Rewatch #10
#63 Walk the Line (2005) — DVD #7
#64 The Thrill of It All (1963) — Wildcard #3
#65 Scream 3 (2000) — Series Progression #5
#66 Scre4m (2011) — Series Progression #6
#67 The Guilty (1947) — Genre #6
#68 The Mission (1986) — WDYMYHS #8
#69 Scream (2022) — New Film #10
#70 La Grande Illusion (1937) — Blindspot #8


  • I watched six feature films I’d never seen before in October.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with four rewatches.

The rest of this week’s observations fall into a few different categories. First, some thoughts on the films themselves and the Challenge categories they qualify under…

  • I had drafted a rather long bit here about the first of those rewatches, because originally I counted a rewatch of Encanto — but I’d already counted Encanto earlier this year, the first time I saw it. Technically my rules state that “a film can only count once”, but what I really meant was “a viewing can only count once”. I rarely watch the same film twice within a year, so it didn’t cross my mind to anticipate that in my rules. Nonetheless, I was torn about whether counting the same film twice, albeit on different viewings, was ‘legal’. Then I happened to rewatch The Two Faces of January, which didn’t qualify under any other category, so I thought I may as well count that instead. Quandary solved! But I might need to rethink and be more specific for 2023.
  • The next rewatch is also a little contentious for me. The point of the DVD category was to make me watch more of my DVDs, and I watched someone else’s copy of Walk the Line (because I was at their house; meaning my copy still sits unplayed, 15+ years after I bought it). But, referring to the rules again, I didn’t make it hard-and-fast that it had to be my DVD that was watched (it’s just heavily intimated). If I was closer to my target, I might let this go uncounted; but with things looking tight, I feel like I have to exploit my own unintended loophole.
  • The Thrill of It All was also a DVD, also owned by someone else, but I dodged the issue this time by counting it as the Wildcard for the Decades category. That’s a funny one, because basically any film can count — it’s just got to have been released in, er, a decade. Daft, maybe, but them’s the rules. And so, as the first new film I watched (that didn’t qualify for another category) since I completed Decades last month, The Thrill of It All just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be a Decades wildcard.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Jean Renoir’s anti-war prisoner-of-war classic, La Grande Illusion.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was The Mission. Arguably I should’ve left that until last, as it was a stand-in for another film, but eh, I fancied watching it, so I did.
  • I didn’t watch anything from last month’s “failures”.

Now, statistical stuff…

  • With just six new films watched, October ties with September for the weakest month of the year so far. But there were an uncommonly high number of rewatches, so in that respect it’s not so bad.
  • Indeed, thanks to those rewatches — and that all the new films I watched qualified for the challenge — this is actually the most successful month for 2022’s 100 Films Challenge since January!
  • I also watched three short films this month, which doesn’t get mentioned anywhere (until their reviews turn up, eventually), but is the most for a single month this year. So, despite how it looks at first glance, October wasn’t so bad after all.
  • That said, it doesn’t sit well statistically, lowering every average you care to mention: my average new films in October (from 13.2 to 12.7), the average new films for 2022 to date (from 9.4 to 9.1), and the rolling average of new films for the last 12 months (from 10.2 to 9.9).
  • It’s also the sixth month this year that’s failed to reach my minimum target of 10 new films, which makes 2022 the least successful year in this regard since 2013.
  • Such a poor run means that, with 83% of the year gone, I’ve only completed 70% of my 100 Films Challenge.
  • The only other occasions on which I’ve been in comparably poor shape heading into the final two months of the year were 2008 (when I ended October at #73) and 2009 (when I was at #66). In 2008, a last-minute push saw me just reach #100 after watching 11 films in six days. In 2009, if I’d pulled off the same feat again I could’ve made it… but I didn’t, and ended on #94.

There’s more about what all this means for the last two months of 2022’s 100 Films Challenge in the “Next Time” section at the end of this post.



The 89th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
This month’s viewing included a highly-acclaimed anti-war classic and a Palme d’Or-winning multi-Oscar- and BAFTA-nominee — very worthy films no doubt, but often they’d be usurped by something more populist that I just enjoyed more. Scream (2022 version) comes closest, but not quite close enough. As for the other two, I think I give the edge to The Mission.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I guess, on balance, this goes to B-league film noir The Guilty. I didn’t dislike it at all — it’s a perfectly respectable slightly-above-run-of-the-mill B-noir — but the other new films I watched were just that bit better, overall. (I was going to deliberately watch a bad film last night to stop this from happening, but I ran out of time.)

Best Scream of the Month
In typical me fashion, I started my rewatch of the Scream films back in June, aiming to space them out up until Halloween, but ended up not watching the second until the end of September and the rest this month. Oh well. But of the three I watched this month, which is the best? I say Scre4m. The 2022 one is good, but the 2011 film got to the “legacy sequel” thing first and did it near-perfectly. Still, whichever way you cut it, I think the good Scream films now outnumbered the bad (or, at least, lesser) ones, so that’s nice.

Best Early-Cinema Short Film of the Month
As I mentioned earlier, I watched a few short films this month, all from the early days of cinema — titles like The Sick Kitten, which is basically the world’s first cat video (it’s little more than a 30-second close-up of a kitten. I won’t be reviewing it). There was also Life of an American Fireman, which was once hailed as the first example of crosscutting (between action inside and outside a burning building), until it was discovered that was a re-edit decades later, and the original cut actually played the action in full twice. Oops. Of higher quality were two films by the great Georges Méliès: The Infernal Cauldron, in which some devilish business sees people thrown in a burning cauldron; and The One-Man Band, which uses trick photography to have multiple Méliès play in a band together. Maybe nowadays we can see the seams a bit in how it was done, but the filmmaker’s sense of fun and experimentation for the sake of it radiates off the screen.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
No posts particularly shone in October (y’all weren’t interested in my Scream coverage, huh?), with the victor being the monthly review of September. Previously it’s been a rarity for a monthly review to win here (this may be only the third time it’s happened), but that’s now two months in a row. On the one hand, weird. On the other, I do like my monthly reviews — to me, they’re the backbone of the blog, with their regularity and their neat little summaries of things. So, if y’all want to start treating them that way too, that’s cool by me.



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


As we head into the final two months of the year, the number of films I have left to watch for my 100 Films Challenge are, frankly, a lot higher than I’d like — they should average 8.3 per month, but for November and December it’ll need to be 15.0.

On the bright side, those numbers break down neatly across most of the remaining incomplete categories: each month should have three film noirs, three films that progress a series, two Blindspot films, two WDYMYHS films, one new film, and one rewatch; plus, there are five DVDs to split between them, and a single wildcard to go somewhere, which may well end up being a 13th DVD, or perhaps another film noir, or another series entry. I’m not sure things will pan out quite so neatly, but maybe they will — it’s something concrete to aim for in each category, after all.

More importantly, is that doable? My averages across 2022 so far suggest not. But I’ve pulled things out of the bag in December before now (see the last bullet point under “Viewing Notes”), so only time will tell…

The Funereal Monthly Review of September 2022

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I’m not, by nature, a royalist (although I’m not sure that I’d vote for their abolition, if it came to it — I’d rather the certainty of Charles III and William V than risk the whims of the UK public vote giving us something like President Boris), but I know history when I see it, and there’s no doubting that the death of the Queen — and all the ensuing pageantry — was history, on a scale we’ll probably never see again.

So that’s my excuse for this month’s relatively paltry film viewing: I watched a lot of news and TV coverage. Plus, a known quantity: the much-anticipated release of the long-hoped-for Return to Monkey Island, which I spent most of my free time on for the best part of a week. It was worth the wait. If I included non-film stuff in my “best of” lists and whatnot, it’d be a shoe-in.

Anyway, enough about other timefillers — let’s look at some films…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#55 Clerks (1994) — DVD #6
#56 Persuasion (2022) — New Film #9
#57 He Walked by Night (1948) — Genre #5
#58 Paddington 2 (2017) — Rewatch #9
#59 Broken Blossoms (1919) — Decades #12
#60 Scream 2 (1997) — Series Progression #3


  • I watched six feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • That’s my worst month of the year so far. In fact, it’s my worst month since December 2019. Oh dear.
  • That means my average for 2022 drops further below my goal of 10 — last month it hit 9.88, now it’s 9.44. The rolling average of the last 12 months just keeps its head above water, though, dropping from 10.67 to 10.17.
  • Four of the seven counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches — one under my Rewatch category (natch), the other under Series Progression, as my Scream series rewatch finally moved forward.
  • Indeed, Scream 2 is the first Series Progression entry since April. I really thought I’d do better with that category. I’m gonna be progressing a lot of series in the last three months of the year if I want to reach #100…
  • In better news, Broken Blossoms completes the Decades portion of my challenge — the first category to be finished! It started off as the easiest to do (almost any film I watched counted; I completed 58% in January alone), but as it went on it became a bit harder. Turns out I don’t watch many films from the 1950s (that took until May), and even fewer from the 1910s — which I knew, and is the kind of reason the category exists.
  • Back on the downers now, because I managed no Blindspot or WDYMYHS films this month. Oops. As I was already one behind on each, that’s something else I need to up the number of in the year’s closing months.
  • In related news, Second Sight have confirmed that their 4K restoration of The Hitcher won’t be completed until next year. That means I need to choose a substitution for this year’s WDYMYHS. I’ve gone for that year’s Palme d’Or winner, which was also an Oscar and BAFTA Best Picture nominee, The Mission.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched absolutely nothing.



The 88th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I finally saw it and, just like almost everyone else, I loved it. It’s a small field this month, I know, but Top Gun: Maverick is both an easy victor and likely to find a place somewhere on my “best of year” list come December (well, January; it’d be a miracle if I got my list together in December).

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I enjoyed it more than I expected, but Persuasion was still the weakest link amongst this month’s viewing.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
My review of Love on a Leash made a resurgence in the chart this month. (It looks like it actually started last month, but was overshadowed by Prey doing so well.) No idea why that’s happened. As for what this award is actually about — i.e. new posts — the winner is a rarity: the monthly review of August. The last time that happened was May last year — and it might’ve been the first time, too (back then I couldn’t be bothered to dig through 71 previous awards, and I can’t be doing with that now, either).



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


Halloween — one night of the year that, if some people were to be believed, goes on an entire month (at least). Regular readers will know I don’t celebrate it too heavily, but this year I am intending to offer a series of “Guide To” posts covering the Scream series.

The Predatory Monthly Review of August 2022

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Last month I said I was going to refocus my free time on films in August.

Yeeeaaah, about that…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#49 Prey (2022) — New Film #8
#50 Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972) — DVD #5
#51 Batman: Dead End (2003) — Rewatch #8
#52 Repeat Performance (1947) — Genre #4
#53 Mona Lisa (1986) — WDYMYHS #7
#54 Mirror (1975) — Blindspot #7


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in August.
  • Another month where I failed to reach my minimum target of 10 new films — and that means my monthly average for the year falls below 10 as well, to 9.88. The rolling average for the last 12 months just about keeps its head above water, though, on 10.67.
  • Five of those films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch — which, this month, was a short film.
  • Wait — a short film? Yes, I’ve counted a short as part of my 100 Films Challenge. Should I be allowing shorts to qualify? Well, why not – I never specified that they were excluded. Plus, it’s in the Rewatch category, so it doesn’t count towards my previously-unseen film tally anyway. (To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have counted it if it only qualified under something like New Films. Maybe that’s a double standard, but then I make the rules — literally.)
  • If it really bothers you for some reason, then know that I also rewatched Love & Friendship this month, so you can count that instead.
  • Also of note: I passed the halfway point. Bit late getting there, considering we’re two-thirds of the way through the year, but milestones are milestones. (If I were still doing my old-style challenge: I’m currently at #79, which is considerably behind other recent years, but still ahead of schedule.)
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Andrei Tarkovsky’s poetic evocation of memory and mid-20th-century Soviet history, Mirror. (Also, I’m still one behind on these.)
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Neil Jordan’s neo-noir filtered through a British gangland love story, Mona Lisa. (I’m still one behind on these, also.)
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Repeat Performance.



The 87th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Three quite different films vie for the trophy this month, which is like a microcosm of the problem I always have ranking films: how do you truly compare a period-set sci-fi actioner, a lightly-fantastical film noir melodrama, and a gritty ’80s gangster love story? Such different films, such different aims — all very successful at what they’re doing, but none doing the same thing, or doing it in the same way, so how do you say which is ‘better’ or ‘best’? But ties are cheating, so I’m going to say Repeat Performance, because it’s the most generally overlooked of the trio.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Here’s a toughie: do I go for the acclaimed world cinema classic that I didn’t get on with, or the ‘classic’ musical that’s often looked down upon nowadays for its outdated social values, which I didn’t like anyway because the songs aren’t great and the plot’s a bit weird? Well, in spite of that, of the two, I’d rather watch Carousel again, so Mirror takes it.

Best New Direction for a Franchise of the Month
I’m not the first person to say this, but if the Predator movies just want to copy the Prey formula, I reckon that would be good for a few more movies. Just drop a Predator into any time and place in history with a warrior culture. Predator vs samurai? Yes please! Predator vs vikings? Sounds fun! Predator vs medieval knights? Yes, yes, yes — gimme ’em all!

Most Underwhelming Film That Made Me Want to Watch the Original of the Month
Did yo know that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s very Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-y musical Carousel is based on a play, Liliom? I didn’t (until it said it quite prominently in the opening credits). I assumed this was one of those situations where “based on” meant “lightly inspired by”, but it sounds like it’s actually quite faithful — albeit with added lengthy song-and-dance numbers. The original was so popular that it was filmed twice before: in 1930 in the US by Frank Borzage, and in 1934 in France by no less than Fritz Lang. Even though I didn’t care for the musical version, I’m intrigued enough that both of those have gone on my watchlist.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Long-time readers will surely remember that reviews of new-to-streaming titles often do well for hits, and so it was again this month, with Hulu / Disney+ Original Prey easily winning this category. Indeed, it was my second most-viewed post for the month overall, which is the first time this year that a new post has placed higher than 9th on the monthly chart.



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


Avast, me hearties! The long-awaited treasure of Return to Monkey Island is finally released on 19th September — aka Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arr!

Okay, so that’s not a film, but me devoting a load of time to playing it is going to explain why my film viewing will be lower than it should be next month. (At least there’ll be a concrete reason for once…)

The Melting Monthly Review of July 2022

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Hello, dear readers! No, this month’s heatwave didn’t melt me away to nothing (though it tried its damnedest), but this is a rare sighting of a post on this blog nowadays. I hadn’t intended to be so quiet this month (well, I never do), but, you know, life. Nothing serious, just a mixture of work and personal commitments.

It’s been the same story with my film viewing, which once again fell short of my ongoing aim of watching at least ten new films a month. And as for my 100 Films Challenge, well, that’s way behind where it should be. To reach #100 in December at a steady pace, I should be at #58 by the end of July. As you’ll soon see, I’m not even close.

What I did spend a fair amount of time on this month was catching up with TV — things like Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, which I seemed to enjoy more than most, and Apple TV+ spy thriller Slow Horses, which is as good as the reviews say — so I intend to refocus on films in August. We’ll see how that pans out.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#44 Ambulance (2022) — New Film #7
#45 Johnny Gunman (1957) — Genre #3
#46 A Better Tomorrow (1986) — WDYMYHS #6
#47 Mifune: The Last Samurai (2015) — DVD #4
#48 Calamity Jane (1953) — Rewatch #7


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in July.
  • Four of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • Those are the kinds of numbers there’s not much to say about: they’re nothing special, but they’re not spectacularly bad, either.
  • That said, I’ve slipped further behind in my 100 Films Challenge — as I noted at the start, I should be at #58 by now. I now need to watch, on average, more than 10 qualifying films each month for the rest of the year to complete the challenge.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was John Woo’s classic action-thriller that defined the ‘heroic bloodshed’ subgenre, A Better Tomorrow.
  • I remain a film behind in my WDYMYHS challenge, and now the same is true of Blindspot too, as I didn’t watch one of those this month. At least there’s still five months left for me to catch up.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Ambulance.



The 86th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
When Michael Bay is on form, there’s no action director quite like him — and, for my money, Ambulance is Michael Bay very much on form.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Nothing absolutely terrible this month, which leads me to name Johnny Gunman for this category. It suffers for being a low-budget independent film in an era when low-budget independent films weren’t really yet a thing — it’s solid enough for the forgiving viewer, but does suffer from some weak acting and novice-like filmmaking choices. I didn’t dislike it, but, in the context of the rest of this month’s viewing, it doesn’t quite measure up.

Bickering Old People of the Month
45 Years depicts a couple’s sudden relationship difficulties after four-and-a-half decades of marriage with such scathing realism that I have to give this to The Bucket List for being fun bickering. But I think we all know which is the better film, really. Only one of them is in the Criterion Collection, after all.

Best Weather of the Month
A scathingly realistic drama about a couple having sudden relationship difficulties after four-and-a-half decades of marriage, in part because their emotional communication is inadequate, set in grey, misty, wintry countryside? 45 Years is British through and through, not least that weather. Oh, it looked so beautiful, especially watching it on a hot summer day — personally, I long for our winter to come again.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
After a couple of months where this category has been dominated by my ‘failures’ posts, they dipped to second place in July. Instead, the victor was something of a surprise, but a pleasant one: my review of undeservedly forgotten 1930s melodrama Bank Holiday.



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


More films, hopefully.