A belated ‘hello’ from me for this month’s look back at last month. Don’t take this post’s delayed appearance as a worrying sign of me slipping further away from the blog — I simply had a busy end to February, meaning I couldn’t get a head start on this, and then an occupied weekend (mainly Oscar-focused), which combined meant I was only able to crack on with this post today. Similarly, I wouldn’t bank on seeing the “failures” before Thursday.

(Related side note: across 116 adjective-led monthly reviews, can you believe I’ve never used “belated”? This certainly isn’t the first late edition! Maybe I previously thought it was too obvious. Well, I’ve burnt that usage now.)

A separate issue: no new film reviews yet this year. I now ‘owe’ at least three, to fulfil my commitment of reviewing the previous month’s favourite: The Good, the Bad, the Weird from December, Milano Calibro 9 from January, and whatever this month’s winner is (see below to find out!) I’m hoping to begin that catch-up in March, but we’ll see what else life throws my way.

#12 Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) — 50 Unseen #3
#13 Macbeth (2025) — New Film #2
#14 Vendetta for the Saint (1969) — Wildcard #3
#15 Silver Blaze (1937) — Series Progression #2
#16 Long Story Short (2021) — Wildcard #4
#17 Róise & Frank (2022) — Failure #2
#18 Snake Eyes (1998) — Rewatch #2
#19 Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) — WDYMYHS #2
#20 Freaks (1932) — Blindspot #2
#21 Grand Theft Hamlet (2024) — Wildcard #5
#22 Marty (1955) — Wildcard #6

• I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in February.
• All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
• #22 is the furthest I’ve reached by the end of February since my new-style Challenge began in 2022 — my target for this point is only #16, so I easily cleared that. (I would have had to get all the way to #24 to be a whole month ahead.)
• Watching Silver Blaze means I’ve finally finished the Arthur Wontner Sherlock Holmes films (what survives of them, anyway: there were five; one is lost), which is the first time in quite a while* I’ve been able to remove a series from my “in the middle of” list. (* The last was Song of the Thin Man, completing my Thin Man rewatch, back in May 2024 — nine months ago.)
• This month’s Blindspot film was Tod Browning’s enduringly-controversial carnival drama Freaks.
• This month’s WDYMYHS film was Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr — it’s the one where the house falls around him.
• From last month’s “failures” I watched Róise & Frank and rewatched Snake Eyes.

Favourite Film of the Month
I’m borderline on whether this even counts as a “a film”, because it’s a filmed stage production — that’s the kind of thing I’ve gone either way on in the past. The deciding factor, really, was that I saw it in a cinema — not only because “what you see in cinemas is films”, but because if I didn’t count it, I wouldn’t be able to count it towards my stats at the end of the year, which could potentially lead me to write something like “I made no trips to the cinema this year” when I had, in fact, made one. Also, the fact I’m now saying it’s the best feature-length filmed thing I watched this month is another reason it seems worthy of inclusion. Anyway, it’s the David Tennant and Cush Jumbo-starring version of Macbeth, which seems to have been so popular they’ve scheduled multiple encore screenings and even a proper re-release — so if you missed it and are interested, keep your eye on local listings.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
No disasters this month, which leaves me with the always-slightly-awkward task of lambasting something I fundamentally enjoyed, just not as much as everything else. If you were to look at my Letterboxd diary, you might think this an easy decision: there’s only one film there I’ve graded 3 stars, so it’s that one… right? But I don’t feel like Silver Blaze was that bad. But then, what was? So, any pick is a bit harsh, but I’ve still settled on <strongLong Story Short, which I think I may have slightly overrated because its concluding message hit me particularly hard, for whatever reason.

Reviews? Maybe! Films? Definitely. And, launching off the success of this month, there’s a very real chance I’ll be a whole month ahead of target on my Challenge by the end of March. No guarantees, though — you’ll just have to come back in 31 29 days to find out.