Tag Archives: IMDb

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen All the Best* Sci-fi, Action, Adventure, Mystery, and Thriller Films?

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* According to IMDb Voters

What started out as my version of Blindspot (before someone else coined and popularised the term), I nowadays use as a secondary set of twelve films to watch in a year. Whereas Blindspot is focused on some version of quality and/or popularity, WDYMYHS (for short) has some kind of theme.

This year, I was rather coming up short for what that should be. Via some series of connections or other, I ended up at iCheckMovies, which, for those who don’t know it, was sort of like Letterboxd before Letterboxd came along and did a similar thing but better. iCM is still going, for whatever that’s worth, and I still look at it from time to time to see how I’m progressing on various lists. That’s where the inspiration for this year’s grab bag-type WDYMYHS selection came from: a few of my favourite IMDb genre lists that I haven’t yet completed. When combined, the number of films I haven’t seen on the lists for Sci-fi, Action, Adventure, Mystery, and Thriller (which is the order I looked at them in) comes out at exactly… eleven. But one of those is a two-part film that everyone else lists as two films, which brings us to exactly the number I need for WDYMYHS.

I’m happy to admit it’s not my best theme ever, but it’ll do.

So, in alphabetical order, this year’s films are…

The Cremator

The Cremator

Dersu Uzala

 Dersu Uzala
Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 1

Gangs of Wasseypur
Part 1

Gangs of Wasseypur
Part 2

 Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 2
The Great Escape

The Great Escape

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
The Handmaiden

The Handmaiden

Infernal Affairs

 Infernal Affairs
PK

PK

A Wednesday!

 A Wednesday!
White Heat

White Heat

Woman in the Dunes

 Woman in the Dunes

A couple of motes of trivia to end on. Both The Great Escape and The Handmaiden were possible films for WDYMYHS 2024, also thanks to IMDb user-voted lists (I was aiming to finish the Top 250, which meant I had 19 films for the 12 slots. I didn’t finish the Top 250, but I did watch 12 films — not including those two, obviously).

There’s also a WDYMYHS repeat in this year’s Blindspot selection: The Royal Tenenbaums was supposed to be watched in 2019, but I fell short that year. There were quite a few films I failed to watch from that set (I listed them in 2020’s Blindspot post), but this is the only one still outstanding. Hopefully, I won’t say the same in 2027…

2025 Statistics!

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Here we go, people! It’s happening! Iiiiiiit’s… the statistics! (People cheer, fireworks explode, dogs and cats live together, etc, etc.)

But… before the onslaught of numbers and graphs begin, a reminder that these stats cover my first-time feature film watches from 2025, as listed here. Shorts and rewatches are only factored in when expressly mentioned. Also, as a Letterboxd Patron member, I get a yearly stats page there too. The numbers will look different because I also log (some) TV, and it factors in shorts and rewatches more thoroughly — but that’s all part of what makes it worthwhile as an addition to this post. Plus, it includes some interesting things that I don’t, like my most-watched and highest-rated stars and directors. More stats are always good, right?

Speaking of which, for the first time since 2018, this post includes a new graph. Oooh! What could it be?! Well, it’s a special and unusual one — not necessarily one I’ll include every year going forward (though, hey, never say never), but something that speaks to this year in particular. It’s coming up relatively early on, so you won’t have to endure my crypticness for too long.

But I know you’re really champing at the bit to get started after that revelation, so let’s crack on…

I watched 116 feature films for the first time in 2025. That’s down on 131 from last year, but up on every other year since my relaunch in 2022 (and it’s massively down on the years before that, hence treating the relaunch as some kind of cutoff). Overall, for size it ranks 12th out of all 19 years.

Of those 116, 88 counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge. I did complete my Challenge this year (check out the Final Standing post and December review for more on that), with the remainder being 12 rewatches. That was all of my rewatches this year though, my lowest total in a decade — no wonder it was after that year (2016) that I started to make a conscious effort to rewatch stuff. Do I need to make even more of an effort, or is the 12 required by the Challenge an adequate amount? Something I’ll think on.


NB: I have no rewatch data for 2007 and incomplete numbers for 2008.

Here’s how that viewing played out across the year, month by month. The dark blue line is my first-time watches and the pale blue is rewatches. As you can see, things started out nice and flat, hitting my ten-films-per-month minimum goal consistently, but then it goes kinda crazy. I’m not sure there was a specific reason why. It would be nice to see no months dropping below that ten line, though, and more spiking above it wouldn’t hurt.

I also watched six short films. That’s thoroughly unexceptional: not my worst year; far from my best; down quite a lot (relatively) on the last two years. Of course, I don’t make a specific effort to watch shorts — if I did, I’m sure they’d be higher. Maybe I should? Maybe it’s not worth it?

The total running time of my first-watch features was 189 hours and 35 minutes. That places the year 13th overall. It’s unusual for the running time position to not match the film total position, which suggests I overall watched shorter films this year. Thinking back over the kind of films I chose to watch and how I made decisions (a lot of “what can I squeeze in?”), that doesn’t really surprise me. If anything, it surprises me that it doesn’t happen more often… although, if I do that every year, it wouldn’t change anything in comparison, so maybe it’s not surprising. Add in the shorts and that rises by just under an hour-and-a-half, to 191 hours and 3 minutes. (The additional bit is labelled as “other” on the graph because it used to include alternate cuts of features that I watched for the first time but didn’t count towards the main tally. It’s been many years now since there were any, but I’d have to go back and recalculate most a dozen or more recorded years to make this shorts-only.)

One thing I’ve noted in a couple of monthly reviews throughout 2025 is how much time I’ve spent on specific non-film things — primarily, watching Critical Role (although that began, and was even more prevalent, in 2024) and playing Skyrim. So, I thought it would be fun to throw in a new graph for comparison purposes: how much time I spent watching films (for this graph I’ve also added in the 12 rewatches), how much time I spent watching Critical Role content (main campaign episodes, miniseries, one-shots, and chat shows like Talks Machina and Cooldown), and how much time I spent playing Skyrim (which, importantly, is just for two months, because I only started it in early November).

But what if those two months of Skyrim had been the same for the whole year? Well…

Well, crikey. Is that what 2026 will look like? Will I really play another 660+ hours of Skyrim? I doubt it… but you never know: there are reported playtimes that surpass 725 hours, and that’s just people who’ve bothered to log it on HowLongToBeat. And even if it’s not Skyrim, I feel like I’ve caught the bug of playing big open-world RPGs, of which I already own several more. It might seem silly to call a games console “life changing” but, well, getting a Steam Deck has certainly changed what I spend large chunks of my life doing.

Alright, let’s shift the focus back to films, but sticking with technology: the ways in which I watched those films. For one brief, glorious moment I thought Blu-ray was finally the victor in this category (it last topped it in 2014)… then I counted streaming properly and it just had the edge. And then I remembered that nowadays I combine streams and downloads into digital, which wins easily with 60 films. I realise this is the end result of my own viewing choices, not some external fact I can’t control, but I watch what I want to watch where I can currently get it, and the convenience of streaming clearly wins out too often (not to mention streaming exclusives. I mean, if I waited for disc to watch Wake Up Dead Man, there’s a high chance I’d never ever see it). Anyway, digital sits at its lowest percentage (51.7%) since 2019, which was the last time it was below 50%, so maybe next year.

As noted, “digital” encompasses multiple different platforms and methods. The top one this year was Amazon Prime Video with 15 films (25% of digital), knocking downloads into a close second with 14 films (23.3%). That means the otherwise-ubiquitous Netflix charts third with 11 films (18.3% — or just 9.5% of all first-time watches), with NOW next on seven films (11.67%), and the numbers rounding out with Disney+ on four (6.67%), iPlayer and Tubi on 3 apiece (5%), YouTube on two (3.3%), and one from MUBI (1.67%).

In overall second place was Blu-ray, with its 45 films (38.8%) representing the format’s highest number since 2021 and best percentage share since 2013. I’d say that’s something to build on, but I know from experience that what happens one year rarely has any bearing on the next.

DVD saw a slight uptick this year, totalling nine films (7.8%), which is close to the figure from 2022 and 2023. It hasn’t been in double figures since 2018, and hasn’t been above 10% of my viewing since 2014, so the less I think about how many hundreds of them I have unwatched, the better.

After popping back into contention with one film last year, TV’s disappeared again. I hardly watch anything on live TV fullstop nowadays — even when something’s on the BBC, I’m more likely to catch up with it on my own schedule via iPlayer — so no surprise I don’t watch any films that way anymore. If you’d still like to see a graph, there’s one in last year’s stats.

Instead, let’s move on to the final format left with something to actually record: cinema. I doubled my cinema trips this year… to two. Those would be a theatrical-only release of the filmed version of the stage production of Macbeth starring David Tennant, and the final Mission: Impossible movie. And, to be honest, very little else even tempted me to consider heading out to the cinema. Am I a bad film fan? Was everything this year that uninspiring? I’m not sure. Either way, I’m certainly not going to attempt any kind of commitment to improve that going forward.

Sticking with formats for a minute, first the disappointing news that I only watched 2 films in 3D. We can debate the death and decline of the format all you want (no one’s trying to claim it’s not well past its zeitgeist, but a lot of big movies still seem to get 3D versions theatrically), but I have plenty of discs unwatched, so I ought to make an effort to pump those numbers up.

A different ‘future of home viewing’ format is having opposite fortunes: this year, 39 of the new films I watched were in 4K Ultra HD. At just over a third of my total viewing — 33.6% to be precise — it’s its strongest year yet. Still, 1080p HD remains the standard, at 61 films (52.6%), while SD somehow clings in there with 16 films (13.8%). As much as it might seem like “everything’s HD nowadays”, DVD was a far bigger and more diverse format than anything else (bigger than Blu-ray, certainly, and more diverse than streaming offerings, certainly), so — despite all the random stuff that gets 4K upgrades nowadays — of course there’s a lot out there stuck in SD quality, and perhaps always will be. Unless you exclusively watch new releases, SD’s going to be a fact of viewing for a long time yet; perhaps forever.

Moving on to time now, and in 2025 I watched something from every decade since 1900 for the first time since 2022. Okay, the 1900s were only represented by a single short film, but there weren’t any features that decade anyway. At the other end of the spectrum, the top decade was — as usual — the current one, i.e. the 2020s, with 33 films (28.45%). That’s actually the lowest percentage for the current decade since 2021, when they were still beaten by the 2010s (which also had a lower percentage — they kind of split the ‘recency’ that year).

Rather than a single other period coming close, it seems my viewing has been spread around, because second-place the 1970s had under half as many films, 16 (13.8%). Right on its tail is the ’60s with 15 (12.9%), and not far behind that is the ’80s on 13 (11.2%).

Only then, in fifth place, do we finally find the 2010s, with 10 films (8.62%), while sixth place is a three-way tie between the 1920s, 1990s, and 2000s, each with (appropriately enough) six films (5.2%). Rounding things out are the 1950s on five (4.3%), the 1940s on three (2.6%), the 1930s on two (1.7%), and the 1910s on one (0.9%).

Honestly, I’m almost surprised the 2020s remain so high, considering how few new films it feels like I’m watching; although, as it’s less than a third overall, I guess that still makes sense.

Unfortunately, such upending of norms (okay, maybe that wasn’t an “upending”, but tweaking) doesn’t extend to countries of production, where the USA dominates as always with 59 films, aka 50.9%, which sees it slip back above 50% after dropping below it for the first time last year. Still, that’s its second-lowest percentage since I began recording this, so that’s something… although, on the other hand, the total of 19 countries is down from 31 last year. You win some, you lose some.

Another for the former camp was good old Blighty, with the UK hitting its highest percentage yet at 37.1% from 43 films. All those poliziotteschi I watched for the Challenge helped Italy overleap France for third place, with a total of 15 films (12.9%), although our Gallic cousins still came fourth, with 11 films (9.5%). Continuing down the chart we find Japan on eight (6.9%), Germany on six (5.2%), Canada and Sweden each with three (2.6%), and Australia, Hong Kong, and Spain on two (1.7%) apiece, before eight further countries each have one film (0.9%), the sole total newcomer to my viewing history being Uganda.

Unsurprisingly, English remains unassailably dominant for languages, featuring significantly in 88 films (75.9%) — although, as it’s only ever dipped below three-quarters once before, getting almost that low isn’t a bad result. A distant second was Italian with 11 (9.5%), those poliziotteschi once again helping to rearrange the usual rankings. The only other languages represented in multiple films were Japanese in seven (6%) and French in six (5.2%). There were 10 other languages in one film each, with uncommon ones for my viewing including Finnish, Irish Gaelic, Luganda, Norse, and Welsh.

A total of 101 directors and seven directing partnerships helmed the feature films I watched in 2025, plus one film with no credited director of any kind. For the first time in three years, two of those directors helmed more than two films: top was Fernando Di Leo with four (all poliziotteschi), followed by Tatsuya Oishi with three (the Kizumonogatari trilogy). The other directors with multiples (two apiece) were Alfred Hitchcock and (for the second year in a row) Robert Tronson (both being entries in the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series, same as last year).

As for women, this year I watched 11 films with a female director, which, when you adjust for those co-directed with a man, comes to merely 8.2% of my viewing — up from last year, and a lot better than it was when I started tracking this in the mid-2010s, but still not great. Indeed, on a percentage basis, it’s my third best year (2020 and 2023 managed to nudge above 11%). I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating every year: I neither avoid nor seek out female directors; I just watch the films I watch and see what number comes out at the end. The industry, undoubtedly, still needs to do more. I hope this graph will continue to improve in the future; but you can’t change the past, so as someone who watches a lot of older films, I can’t imagine it will ever reach 50/50.

Last year, I made furthering my progress with the IMDb Top 250 part of my Challenge. I did make solid progress, but not enough to get it completed: by the beginning of January 2025, I still had ten films left. Sadly, I can’t say I kept up that momentum, as only one film from my 2025 viewing appears on the chart at time of writing — The Wild Robot at 181st. And because that list is ever-changing, the number I have left to see has actually gone up, and now sits at 15. It’s kind of frustrating, but also indicative of the fact that the list of ‘great movies’ is never truly set in stone.

Another mediocre effort at progressing lists comes as we turn our attention to the “50 Unseen”, the list I publish each year of 50 notable films I missed from that year’s new releases. I’ve continued to track my progress with all of those lists as the years have passed, and in 2025 I watched 14 films across all 18 lists. That’s up from 10 last year, but doesn’t match the 20 from the year before, which was already one of my weaker years (I didn’t have the heart to see how this year compared further back). Those 14 were quite spread around amongst the various years, with the single largest being six from 2024’s 50, i.e. last year’s list. That means 2025 ties with 2023 as the second-worst ‘first year’ ever, the one time I’ve done worse being the pitiful four I watched in 2009 from 2008’s list.

In total, I’ve now seen 557 out of 900 ‘missed’ movies. That’s 61.9%, continuing the decline this has been experiencing since 2022 — it’s one negative side effect of my new Challenge, because I used to pay a fair amount of attention to these, whereas now my focus is on Challenge-qualifying films, where “50 Unseen” titles make up only one ten-film category. The ability to switch around what’s included in the Challenge is within my power, of course, but to get these back above 70% (where it sat from 2018 to 2021) I’d have to watch 108 of them, so even if I wanted to let it take over my entire 100-film Challenge (which I don’t, really) it still wouldn’t do the job. Oh well. (As usual, the 50 for 2025 will be listed in my “best of” post.)

And, before you know it, we’ve reached the end! Well, the climax, at any rate — the final set of stats. I’m talking, of course, about the scores.

As you may have noticed, I didn’t post a single film review in 2025, but I scored every new film I watched nonetheless. That does mean my precise ratings are flexible until I lock them in by posting a review. Most will still say the same, but there are plenty of films I awarded a half-star on Letterboxd, and as I insist on rounding to a whole star for the blog, some of those have the potential to shift in the other direction (because a half-star doesn’t mean it should automatically round up. I mean, it might’ve already been rounded from, say, 3.3 to 3.5, right? But I really don’t want to start getting that granular with my ratings). Anyway, for the sake of completing these stats, I’ve assigned a whole-star rating to every film, and while it’s theoretically possible I’ll change my mind when I eventually post a review, I’m sure this section will remain broadly accurate.

Beginning with the cream of the crop, in 2025 I awarded just four five-star ratings (3.45% of my viewing), the lowest number ever. Raw numbers and percentages can paint very different pictures (four from 116 films is statistically pretty different than if it were from the 264 films I watched in 2020), but even then it’s well below where this figure sits on average, which is above 15%. Well, it is what it is — I don’t grade with the intention of hitting the same curve every year, so my 2025 viewing was simply lacking in this regard.

That said, other scores remain typically healthy. The most common score was four stars, which I handed out to 54 films (46.6%). That’s marginally above the historical average of 44.8%, but is also lower than seven previous years, so sits in the upper-middle overall. Not too far behind were the 45 three-star films (38.8%). Only once have the three-stars overtaken four-stars to be the dominant rating (in 2012), although they have been within a few percentage points of each other sometimes. This year, the difference of 7.8% is towards the closer end (five years were even closer), so while it’s not the greatest year, it’s not the most mediocre either.

As for the actually ‘bad’ ratings, there were 12 two-star films (10.34%) and only a single one-star film (0.9%). In fact, I almost didn’t give out any one-star ratings this year, which would have made 2025 just the third year where that happened; but then I decided Ice Age: Collision Course really was terrible enough that two stars would be too generous, so here we are.

That brings us the average score — a single figure to quantify 2025’s quality compared to other years. The short version is 3.4 out of 5. That might not sound terrible — it’s still above the halfway point of 2.5 or the notional average of 3.0 — but it’s actually only the second time my annual average has been below 3.5. Being one of the two weakest years of the past almost-two-decades is, well, not good. It’s not the lowest of all, though: if we add a few more decimal places, we see 2025 averaged 3.414, which is still notably high than 2012, which at 3.352 was a smidgen off rounding to 3.3. Still, it represents a further tick down for the line.

Honestly, I’m not surprised: it’s felt like a very “decent but not great” year throughout, a perception which is supported by the still-solid number of 4-star films but almost total absence of 5-stars. That’s the way it goes sometimes, although 2025 has demonstrably been worse for it than normal. It does make me wonder if next year I should put more energy into seeking out better-regarded films. Not that that’s a guarantee of success (I’ve bounced off plenty of highly-acclaimed classics and, conversely, loved my fair share of less-beloved cult classics and other people’s write-offs), but it improves the odds. Either way, we’ll see what 2026 brings this time next year.


More quantifying of quality as I distil those 116 first-time watches to my favourite 10%.

2024 Statistics!

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When Andy Williams sang “it’s the most wonderful time of the year”, he was on about Christmastime; but ’round these parts, the real most wonderful time of the year comes a little later: in early January, with the annual statistics post. And, friends, that time is here again.

Before the onslaught of numbers and graphs begin, a couple of quick reminders. Primarily: these stats cover my first-time feature film watches from 2024, as listed here. Shorts and rewatches are only factored in when expressly mentioned.

Secondly, and finally: as a Letterboxd Patron member, I get a yearly stats page there too, which can be found here. The numbers will look a bit different, because I also log whatever TV I can, plus it factors in shorts and rewatches more thoroughly, but that’s part of what makes it interesting as an addition/alternative to this post. It also breaks down some interesting things not covered here, like my most-watched and highest-rated stars and directors.

Now, without further ado, here’s what you came for…

I watched 131 feature films for the first time in 2024. That puts it right in the middle of the history of 100 Films: out of 18 years, it ranks ninth largest (or tenth smallest).

Of those 131 films, 85 counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge. Alongside 15 rewatches, that means I finally reached all 100 films for my Challenge for the first time in its new form. More thoughts about that in the Final Standing and December review posts.

Outside of the Challenge, I rewatched only two further films for a total of 17 rewatches. That’s my lowest number since 2016, which was the last year before I started to make a concerted effort to up my rewatches (first with the Rewatchathon from 2017 to 2020, then by including them as a category in my Challenge). Any number going down is a shame, but there are always going to be compromises somewhere — if I’d rewatched more, I likely would’ve watched fewer new films.


NB: I have no rewatch data for 2007 and only incomplete numbers for 2008.

Here’s how that viewing played out across the year, month by month. The dark blue line is my first-time watches and the pale blue is rewatches. Both lines are much flatter than normal (I mean, look at 2023’s), which is because I was consistently hitting my “ten films per month minimum” goal but rarely managing to exceed it (the spikes in April and December being notable exceptions).

I also watched 16 short films. That might not sound like a lot, but it’s actually my third highest total ever, behind only 2019’s 20 and 2020’s 65 (which was so high thanks to watching many for film festivals I was working on), and just ahead of last year’s 15. On the other hand, only 11 were ones I’d never seen before, down marginally from 12 last year. (For some reason I didn’t make that distinction in last year’s stats, but it does affect the total running time, because only the new ones count.)

The total running time of my first-watch features was 229 hours and 3 minutes. That’s my highest since I revamped the site for 2022, but only ninth overall. The same ranking as for the film count? It’s almost as if there’s a correlation! I jest, but what it does suggest is that I rarely, if ever, watch a disproportionate number of especially-short or especially-long films. Talking of short things, add in the (new) short films and that total rises by only just over an hour to 230 hours and 14 minutes. (The additional bit is labelled as “other” on the graph because it would also include any alternate cuts of features that I watched for the first time, but there weren’t any this year. In fact, it’s been five years since there were.)

Formats next, and after disappearing last year, TV is back! Okay, it’s only got one film to its name (thanks to the BBC for premiering a new Wallace & Gromit feature on Christmas Day), but it’s something, I guess. Unless there’s another similar must-watch-live event in 2025 (doubtful), I imagine it will drop off again next year.

It will come as no surprise that the year’s most prolific viewing format was digital with 85 films. At 64.9% of my viewing, it’s an increase on last year, though still below the peak of 2020–2022. It was below 50% in 2019, and I’d like to get it back down there in favour of Blu-rays.

“Digital” encompasses a multitude of different platforms and viewing methods, and this year it was downloads that topped them with 20 films (23.5% of digital). Of the streamers, it was actually NOW that emerged victorious for the first time, with 18 films (21.2%), knocking Netflix and Amazon Prime into shared third place with 16 films (18.8%) each. Surging slightly ahead of the “also ran”s, iPlayer accounted for eight films (9.4%), while bringing up the rear were Apple TV+ on three (3.5), Disney+ and MUBI each on two (2.4%), and newcomer Crunchyroll with one (1.2%). Crunchyroll is all about TV and has hardly any films (I think I found a grand total of four), so don’t expect to see them return (although it’s not an impossibility).

Back to the main ranking, Blu-ray did come second with 38 films (29.0%), a raise in number but drop in percentage from last year.

Last year I noted that the addition of a Physical Media category to my Challenge hadn’t actually done much to boost the number of DVDs I watched. This year I took that category away, and DVD did drop slightly, down to six (4.6%); but, considered over a longer timescale, it’s held pretty steady — just look at the graph:

Finally, I made just one trip to the cinema this year (for Dune: Part Two). Other things piqued my interest, but nothing else panned out. Will 2025 fare any better? Well, I’ll be sure to catch the next Mission: Impossible, at least. Hey, one is still better than I managed some years (2013, 2014, and 2022, I’m looking at you).

Looking at formats from a different angle, now. First: in 2024, I watched as many new films in 3D as I did in 2021–2023 combined. Okay, that was still only four, but it’s an improvement. Looking at my Blu-ray collection, I own 63 films in 3D that I’ve never seen (plus about the same again that I’ve seen but not in 3D), so this number should be significantly higher. Maybe I’ll finally boost it up in 2025. (The first number to beat is 2020’s 13. The best ever is 2018’s 18.)

Next, the format du jour, 4K Ultra HD (it still feels pretty new to me, though 4K discs are about to hit their 9th anniversary). I watched 32 films in UHD in 2024, which is a numerical increase from 2023’s 27, but a percentage drop: 24.4% vs last year’s 26.2%. Still, it’s my second best percentage ever, so that’s not nothing. 1080p HD remains the standard, of course, representing a sliver under two-thirds of my viewing at 66.4%. Meanwhile, SD lingers on with 12 films — a hold from last year, but a percentage drop to 9.2%, only the second year it’s been under 10%. Will it ever go away entirely? It would be nice, but there remain plenty of films without even a DVD-quality SD copy out there, never mind all the DVDs that have never received an HD release.

Some people would think that the fact I’m watching so many films in high quality means I’m mostly watching new stuff, but those people are misinformed. Okay, so the the 2020s remains my top decade with 51 films (38.9%), its highest total yet; but other recent decades fare less well, with the 2000s and the 2010s in joint fifth with just eight films (6.1%) each. That’s the third year in a row that my top two decades haven’t been the most recent two; before that, it only happened in 2010 (understandably) and 2019.

The decade that actually landed second place was the 1980s with 17 films (12.98%), closely followed by the ’60s on 16 (12.2%), while the ’90s took fourth with on nine (6.9%). After the first two decades of this century, we come to another tie: the ’40s and the ’50s on seven (5.3%) each. Things are rounded out by the ’70s on six (4.6%) and the ’30s on two (1.5%). No features from before 1932 this year, although I did watch two shorts from the 1920s, five from the 1900s, and even one from the 1890s.

You might think no films from before 1932 would mean no silent films, but there was actually one. At this point I think we’re all aware they still make technically-silent films sometimes, and this year the qualifier was Robot Dreams. I still need to watch more genuine silents from the actual era though, and (minor spoiler alert!) some are almost guaranteed to feature in 2025.

As for spoken languages, English dominated as always, with 102 films wholly or significantly in my mother tongue. At 77.9%, it’s a couple of points up on last year, but still below any previous year. Nonetheless, second place is a distant tie between French and Cantonese in seven films (5.3%) each. They’re closely followed by Japanese in six (4.6%), Italian in five (3.8%), Mandarin and Spanish each in four (3.1%) each, and German and Persian in three (2.3%) apiece. In total, 19 languages were spoken in 2024’s viewing, including Czech and Telugu for the first time on record, and Swedish for the first time since 2020. That tally is better than 2022 or 2023, but still below 2015–2021.

In terms of countries of production, the USA drops below 50% for the first time ever, its 64 films accounting for just 48.85%. Meanwhile, the UK reaches a new percentage high, with 43 films coming out at 32.8%. Lest you think I’m going to brag about being worldly, I’ll note that only 29.0% of films didn’t feature either the US or UK among their listed production countries. Still, there were 31 countries in total in 2024, which is among the better years since I started recording this stat (the highest is 2020’s 40). France were third for the fourth year in a row with 17 films (12.98%), followed by Japan with 11 (8.4%), Hong Kong with nine (6.9%), Italy with eight (6.1%), then a three-way tie between Australia, Canada, and Germany each with five (3.8%).

A total of 114 directors plus eight directing partnerships helmed the feature films I watched in 2024, with a further six directors and four partnerships behind my short film viewing. For the second year in a row, no one was responsible for more than two features, but those with a duo on the list were Abbas Kiarostami, Denis Villeneuve, Joseph Kuo, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Oliver Parker (not to be confused with Ol Parker, who also had one), Robert Tronson, Sammo Hung, W.S. Van Dyke, and Wellson Chin. Plus I watched three shorts credited to British cinema pioneer Cecil Hepworth.

This is my tenth year charting the number of female directors whose work I’ve watched each year. I’d love to say the number and percentage of women-directed films I watch has steadily grown in that time, but it’s actually fluctuated wildly. The low point was 2016, at just 1.66%; the high was 2020, at a still-measly 11.4%; last year, it was 11.2%. In 2024, I watched 10 films with a female director, though two of those were a shared credit (one as part of a duo, one a trio). Counting those shared credits as the appropriate fractions means those 10 films represent 6.74% of my viewing. As terrible as that sounds, it’s still my third best year — so, even worse, then. As I’ve said before, I neither avoid nor especially seek out female directors — arguably I should do more of the latter, but the fact I just watch what I watch and this is how low the percentage is suggests that it’s the industry who really need to do more. That said, as revealed earlier, I watch a relatively high percentage of older films, and you can’t change the past. I hope this graph will improve further in the future, but I doubt it will ever come close to 50/50.

Every year, I track my progress at completing the IMDb Top 250, but this year it’s a bit special because I made it a whole category in my 2024 Challenge. When I made that decision, it wasn’t guaranteed I’d finish the Top 250: the category only required 12 films to complete it and I had a few more than that left on the list. My thinking was: at the very least it will be significant progress; at best, maybe I’d watch a couple more than the prescribed 12 and get the list close to done. Well, I didn’t specifically watch any ‘extra’ films, but titles do come and go (Godzilla Minus One was on the list when I announced my plans in January, but was gone by the time I watched it in September) so maaaybe… but no, I’m still 10 films away from completing it. Goddammit. Comings and goings aside, at the time of writing this article there were 13 films from my 2024 viewing still on the Top 250 — the 12 I watched for the Challenge (listed here) plus Dune: Part Two. Their current positions range from 41st (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) to 237th (My Father and My Son). Well, there’s always next year…

As I’m sure you’re aware, at the end of every year I publish a list of 50 notable films I missed from that year’s new releases, which I call my “50 Unseen”. I’ve tracked my progress at watching those ‘misses’ down the years — progress that has been very variable: I didn’t watch too many of them at the start, then went through a period of several years where I made serious inroads, but recently I’ve dropped off again. Put in more practical terms: I hit a high of 68 watched from all previous lists during 2018, but only watched 10 during 2023. There’s a nice bounce in 2024, doubling to 20 films across all 17 lists, although it’s still one of my weaker years (only four were worse). That’s dominated by 12 from 2023’s 50 — a big improvement on the six from 2022 I watched last year, but still my fourth-worst ‘first year’ (historically, I’ve watched the most from any given list in its first year of existence).

In total, I’ve now seen 543 out of 850 ‘missed’ movies. That’s 63.9%, a further drop from last year, though still a little above 2017 (2018 was the first year I got it above 70%). I’d like to get it above 70% again, but to do it by the end of 2025 I’d have to watch 87 films, which is almost double the number I watched in 2022 to 2024 combined. To even hold the percentage steady I’d have to watch 32 films, which is still more than 2023 and 2024 combined, so it’s not looking great. (As usual, 2024’s 50 will be listed in my “best of” post.)

And so we reach the finale of every review; a fitting climax to these statistics: the scores.

For the avoidance of doubt, this stat factors in every new film I watched in 2024, including those I’ve not yet reviewed (this year, that’s 92% of them — an improvement on last year’s 95%, albeit not by much). That does mean there are some where I’m still flexible on my final score; usually films I’ve awarded 3.5 or 4.5 on Letterboxd, but which I insist on rounding to a whole star here. For the sake of completing these stats, I’ve assigned a whole-star rating to every film, but I reserve the right to change my mind when I eventually post a review (it’s happened before). It only applies to a small handful of films, so hopefully this section will remain broadly accurate.

At the top end of the scale, in 2024 I awarded 13 five-star ratings (9.92% of my viewing). That’s down slightly from last year, though not close to as low as 2022. (I’d make comparisons to all other years, but that’s only down fairly as a percentage and I don’t have that to hand. I should compile a list of them, really.) At the scale’s other end, I gave two one-star ratings (1.53%), which is more or less normal for me — indeed, my all-time average is 1.94 per year. Even when I watch more films, it doesn’t change much, because I avoid giving it to all but the most terrible rubbish, and I try to avoid watching such things, on the whole.

The largest group this year was four-stars, given to 56 films (42.75%). Three-stars has only been the majority awarded once (in 2012), but it came pretty close this year, as there were 52 three-star films (39.69%). Finally, there were only eight two-star films (6.11%), which is roughly in-keeping with the last couple of years (before that there were a lot more, but then I watched a lot more in general. I really ought to get those percentages ready for comparison…)

And so to the big final number: the average score for 2024. Oo-ooh! The short version is 3.5 out of 5 — down from last year, but the same as the two years before that. To get more precise (for the sake of comparison, as all of my years fall within a spread of 0.4), at three decimal places the score is 3.534 — that’s above 2021 and 2022, then, but the only other year it bests is 2012 (a real outlier, as you can see on the below chart). As my fourth lowest-scoring year, it’s almost the antithesis to last year, which was fifth highest.

What can we conclude from all that? Nothing much, really. The fact that line is pretty flat (a few oddities aside) suggests both my film choosing and my scoring have remained consistent over the years, for good or ill. Should I choose better films? Should I score more leniently? Or more harshly? To be honest, I don’t really think about such questions. I take these stats as an indication of what’s happened, not as a learning exercise in what I should or shouldn’t change.


Talking of scores and finales, next up is the finale of the 2024 review: my pick of the best from my 131 first-time watches.

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

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

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

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

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Across
the Spider-Verse

12th Fail

 12th Fail
Incendies

Incendies

To Kill a Mockingbird

 To Kill a Mockingbird
A Separation

A Separation

Like Stars on Earth

 Like Stars on Earth
The Great Escape

The Great Escape

Godzilla Minus One

 Godzilla Minus One
In the Name of the Father

In the Name
of the Father

Wild Tales

 Wild Tales
The Wages of Fear

The Wages of Fear

Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington

 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda

Jai Bhim

 Jai Bhim
The Best Years of Our Lives

The Best Years
of Our Lives

The Handmaiden

 The Handmaiden
My Father and My Son

My Father and My Son

The Grapes of Wrath

 The Grapes of Wrath
Amores Perros

Amores Perros

So, 19 films, eh?

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

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

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

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

2023 Statistics!

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Here we are again: the best bit of the year — the statistics!

As was the case last year (and will surely remain so going forward), these haven’t been fiddled with to fit with my new-format Challenge, but instead continue to encompass all of my first-time watches from the past year (as listed here). That’s just the way I like it (in part because it means I can compare across the years, whereas switching to a Challenge focus would basically be starting again).

Before the onslaught of numbers and graphs, I’ll just mention that, because I’m a Letterboxd Patron member, I get a yearly stats page over there too, which can be found here. In some places that’ll look a bit different to this one, because I also log whatever TV I’m allowed there; but it does have some interesting additional and alternative stats, like my most-watched and highest-rated stars and directors. So, if you love this stuff as much as I do, be sure to check out the extra goodies there at some point.

And with that said, it’s on to the main event…

I watched 103 feature films for the first time in 2023, which is my lowest final tally in over a decade (you have to go back to 2012’s 97 for less). It snuggles in between the handful of years in which I reached exactly 100 and 2013’s 110 as my all-time 5th lowest year (out of 17).

Of those 103 films, 67 counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge. Alongside 25 rewatches, that means I totalled 92 films for my Challenge — sadly falling short of the goal of 100 for the second year running.

Outside of the Challenge, I rewatched a further three films, for a total of 28 rewatches. That’s somewhere in the middle of the pack — my 7th best year ever for rewatches, which also makes it my 10th worst.


NB: I have no rewatch data for 2007 and only incomplete numbers for 2008.

Here’s how that viewing played out across the year, month by month. The dark blue line is my first-time watches and the pale blue is rewatches. As is usually the case, my viewing month to month is wildly unpredictable.

I also watched 15 short films in 2023. (Those don’t count in any statistics, with the sole exception of the version of the total running time that expressly mentions them.) That’s only the third time my shorts count has been in double figures, sitting behind 2019’s 20 and 2020’s festivals-driven whopper of 65.

The total running time of my first-watch features was 173 hours and 11 minutes. That’s my lowest since 2012, which makes sense when you remember the stat from the first paragraph. Add in the shorts and the figure rises almost 2½ hours to 175 hours and 33 minutes, though you still won’t find lower since 2012. (In the graph, I would also include any alternate cuts I watched for the first time in that “others” block, but there weren’t any this year.)

On to formats now, and the big news (if you can call it that) isn’t what’s #1, but what isn’t here: I didn’t watch a single film on TV in 2023, the first time that’s happened in the history of the blog. TV was once my dominant format, making up over half my viewing in 2010, and the largest portion in 2009, 2011, and 2012, but tailed off thanks to the rise in streaming. It’s also a personal thing: its number of films was still in the 20s as recently as 2019, but then I got rid of Virgin Media and its easy recordability, and the number went off a cliff. But I won’t lament it too much, because there’s always a chance it’ll return — unlike, say, VHS, which still accounted for five films back in 2007 and two in 2008 before disappearing entirely.

As for what is #1, that’s not really news at all: it’s digital again, with 60 films — though at 58.25% of my viewing, that’s its lowest percentage since 2019. My streaming viewing had been hovering around 50% from 2015 to 2019, but then suddenly darted up to almost 74% in 2020. I know most would blame the pandemic for that kind of thing, but during lockdown I still had all my many, many Blu-rays, so I don’t really know why that happened. It dropped marginally to 72.5% in 2021, then a little more to 69.4% last year, but a fall of over 10% is… well, I approve. Maybe it’s silly to look at it that way — I mean, this is my own viewing: I could ban myself from streaming anything if I wanted to — but I kind of just watch what I want to or feel like, then look at these numbers in retrospect. With that in mind, I continue to want to see Blu-ray do better, and this is a step in the right direction.

Of course, “digital” is actually made up of multiple streamers, plus downloads. This year was a tight one, with Netflix’s 16 films (26.7% of digital) narrowly claiming the crown from Amazon Prime on 15 (25%). Next were downloads on 13 (21.7%), before a small handful of other streamers filled out the rest: Disney+ with six (10%), MUBI with five (8.3%), Now on three (5%), and Apple TV+ on two (3.3%). That’s right, nothing in 2023 for iPlayer, nor ITVX, nor Channel 4, nor YouTube, nor any of the multitudinous other streamers that are available nowadays.

Overall second went, also as usual, to Blu-ray, with 31 films (30.1%). That’s up on last year, though doesn’t by itself totally cover the drop in digital.

So where else have those lost digital percentage points gone? Well, DVD held steady on eight films. With my overall viewing down, that means it accounts for a slightly higher percentage — 7.8% in 2023 vs 7.2% in 2022. Hardly making the world of difference, that, is it? DVD has theoretically enjoyed a boost these last couple of years thanks to the Physical Media category of my Challenge, although in fact it hasn’t made that much of a difference (looking at the graph, the two Challenge years aren’t notably different to pre-Challenge years like 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020). Spoilers: the Physical Media category is going away in 2024, so it’ll be interesting to see how DVD charts next year.

Our search for those lost digital percentage points finds perhaps its biggest culprit in cinema. I went four times this year — less than I’d hoped, but tied with 2020. It’s only 3.9% of my viewing, but if we’re talking about how percentage points have moved around, I guess those are all nabbed from digital. (For those who want the full maths: add cinema’s 3.9% to DVD’s 0.6% increase for 4.5% of streaming’s lost 11.1%. That leaves 6.6%, and Blu-ray went up by 8.6%, so… um, wait, what? Oh, I’m just confused now. Let’s abandon the pretence I know what I’m talking about, have a graph, and then on to something else.)

In 2022 I only watched one new film in 3D. I’d hoped to improve on that in 2023 (the general public may think 3D is dead, but it still has its fans — like me — and I’ve still got a 3D TV and plenty of unwatched discs), but I didn’t — in fact, I watched no films in 3D. Oh. Well, at least that’s an easy figure to improve upon… (In overall terms, I did watch two 3D titles this year, both Doctor Who ones. That too is the same as 2022, when my one new 3D film was supplemented by a 3D rewatch.)

As for the new high PQ standard, 4K Ultra HD, that fared significantly better, with 27 films in 2023 — up from 24 in 2022, even though I watched fewer films overall. Indeed, at 26.2% of my viewing, you could argue it’s 4K’s strongest year yet. (I watched 40 back in 2020, but that was only 15.2%.) Still, 1080p HD remains the standard overall, accounting for 62.1% of my viewing. Of course, sometimes the only option is lower quality, and so I still watched 12 films in SD. That’s my lowest raw number yet, and even as a percentage — 11.65% — it’s down on the last two years.

In terms of the age of films watched, it’s normally the present decade that tops the chart, although it typically takes a couple of years to assert that position. The 2020s got there for the first time last year, matching the 2010s record of doing it in the decade’s third year. No surprise, then, to find the 2020s in first place again, with 38 films (36.9%). Normally you’d then find the preceding decade in second place, but — for the second time in a row, and only the fifth time ever — that’s not the case. In fact, two decades bested it: for no immediately obvious reason, the ’60s are second with 15 films (15.5%); and, boosted by my noir-focused WDYMYHS selection, the ’40s are third with 10 films (9.7%). That leaves the 2010s in fourth place with just eight films (7.8%).

Every decade since the 1920s cropped up in my feature film viewing this year. That means the 1910s miss out for the first time since 2019, but the 1900s & earlier were represented by shorts, as they have been every year since 2020. I specify “and earlier” because one even came from the 1890s. Counting down the remaining decades, in joint fifth place we have last year’s #2, the ’80s, tied with the ’50s on seven films (6.8%) apiece. From there we’ve got the ’70s with six (5.8%), the ’90s with four (3.9%), the ’30s and 2000s each with three (2.9%), and finally the 1920s with just one (0.97%).

As well as watching older films, I’ve also tried to watch more films from around the world — in a relatively “hands off” way, that is. By which I mean, it’s not like I’ve disqualified US/UK productions from my Challenge, nor anything else particularly radical or concerted; I’ve just tried to, y’know, vary things. That approach means that, while the USA remains clearly the dominant country of production, with 60 films this year, its percentage has dropped significantly, to 58.3% — down from almost 73% last year, and well below the previous low, 67.6% in 2021. Meanwhile, the UK has actually gone up, with 33 films equating to 32.04%, its highest ever, over 2013’s 29.3%.

In total, there were 23 production countries in 2023 — up from 17 in 2022, which is good considering I watched roughly the same number of films. It’s fewer than in any year from 2014 to 2021, but I did watch a lot more films in that period. France came third for the third year in a row with 12 films (11.7%), Germany were fourth with 10 films (9.7%), Italy were fifth with nine films (8.7%), and Mexico had an uncommonly strong showing to reach sixth place with five films (4.9%). There were three each for Canada and Hong Kong, and two apiece for China, Cuba, Ireland, and Sweden. That leaves eleven other countries with one film each, including Japan, who I mention because they built up to a huge spike a few years ago, culminating in third place in 2018, but have tailed off again since, for no readily discernible reason.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a similar story with languages — although the UK and US combine here (along with various other countries, including foreign films where it’s spoken a significant amount) to leave me with 77 films in English. It remains by far the highest single language, but features in less than three-quarters of films in 2023 — 74.8%, to be precise — which is far down on last year’s obscene 92.8%, and well below the previous low, 2020’s 84.5%. Nonetheless, it’s a long drop to second placed French, featured in nine films (8.7%), which is only just ahead of Italian in eight films (7.8%) and Spanish in seven films (6.8%). In all, 16 languages were spoken in 2023’s viewing, slightly up from last year, but you’d have to go back to 2014 to find lower again. But, as I’ve said, I watched far more films per year in those years, so of course the number of countries and languages represented was higher.

A total of 89 directors plus seven directing partnerships helmed the feature films I watched in 2023, with a further seven directors and one partnership added by my short film viewing (one feature director also directed a short, as we shall see in a moment). No director had more than two features to their name this year, but those with two were Allan Davis (both from the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series), Dario Argento (if things had gone as planned, he would’ve had at least four), Eric Appel, Joselito Rodríguez, Kenneth Branagh (if rewatches counted, he’d have more), Mario Bava, and Roger Michell. It was Danny Boyle who was behind one feature and one short, while Dean Fleischer Camp helmed three shorts (the original Marcel the Shell with Shoes On trio) and George Albert Smith is credited with two.

For a few years now I’ve been charting the number of female directors whose work I’ve watched each year. This had been steadily improving, but fell back considerably in 2022, unfortunately. In 2023, I watched 12 films with a female director (11 with a woman directing solo, one where she was part of a duo with a man). Counting the shared credit as half a film, that comes out as 11.17% of my viewing. That’s actually my second highest percentage since I started monitoring this, but remains shockingly low considering that women make up a little over 50% of the population. I say that’s an industry problem, primarily — if more women were allowed to direct movies as a matter of course, I’d see more movies directed by women.

At the time of writing, just one film from my 2023 viewing appears on the IMDb Top 250 — that would be Oppenheimer at 68th. However, because that list is ever-changing, the number I have left to see has actually gone up, from 18 at the end of 2022 to 19 now — the first time that’s happened since I started tracking this a decade ago. One of those 19 films has only just inserted itself into the list though, so I presume it will speedily drop off (that tends to be what happens to new entrants). Still, even that would leave me with a net change of zero. Maybe my 2024 viewing will have more of an impact…

Talking of minimal impact, let’s move on to the disaster zone that is my progress with my “50 Unseen” lists — you know, the list I publish at the end of every year of 50 notable new films I missed that year, which I’ve continued to track my progress watching down the years. I went through a period where they helped to decide a lot of my viewing, and consequently I was constantly chipping away at every old list. Not so much nowadays. In fact, “not at all” might be more accurate: in 2023, I only watched 10 films across all 16 lists. I haven’t even watched that few from just the previous year (i.e. in this case, 2022) since I only watched eight from 2009’s list in 2010. To be precise, I watched six from 2022’s 50. That’s my second-worst ‘first year’ ever, beating only the four from 2008’s list that I watched in 2009. Eesh. The only reasoning I can offer for such a drop off is that I’m watching far fewer films than I used to, and more of them are older.

In total, I’ve now seen 523 out of 800 ‘missed’ movies. That’s 65.4%, the lowest it’s been since 2017. I was pleased to get it above 70% for the first time in 2018 and my aim had been to keep it up there, which I managed for the next few years. I’d like to get back there, but it’s unlikely to happen in 2024: I’d have to watch 72 films (from across all 17 years), which would be a new record. Considering I watch at least 100 (ish) films every year, hitting 72 seems theoretically possible, but only if I were to devote most of my viewing to only films from these lists. I won’t be doing that. Maybe I can achieve 70% in 2025… or 2026… Of course, the goal posts keep moving because the list increases by 50 titles every year (speaking of which, 2023’s 50 will be listed in my forthcoming “best of” post).

And so we reach the finale of every review, and thus a fitting climax to these statistics: the scores.

For the avoidance of doubt, this stat factors in every new film I watched in 2023, even those for which I’ve yet to publish a review (this year, that’s a ludicrous 95% of them — it was just 27% last year, although it was 98% in 2021). That means there are some where I’m still flexible on my precise score; usually films I’ve awarded 3.5 or 4.5 on Letterboxd, but which I insist on rounding to a whole star here. For the sake of completing these stats, I’ve assigned a whole-star rating to every film, but it’s possible I’ll change my mind when I eventually post a review (it’s happened before). Still, hopefully this section will remain broadly accurate (because I’m not going to come back to modify it!)

At the top end of the spectrum, in 2023 I awarded 17 five-star ratings (16.5% of my viewing) — a massive increase on 2022’s six (5.4%). Having last year asserted that my marking has become harsher as I’ve got older / more experienced, this year suggests that, eh, maybe not; although, historically, 16.5% is slap bang in the middle of the board (by which I mean: eight years had a higher percentage and eight years had a lower percentage). I’ve always been a relatively lenient grader and, to be honest, I see no reason why that should change — I just like films, ok?

At the other end of the spectrum, though perhaps indicative of the same thing, I gave zero one-star ratings — only the second time that’s ever happened, after 2011. I’m always stingy with them, feeling that the lowest-of-the-low should be reserved for things that are truly execrable, so in many respects it’s nice to have gone a whole year without watching anything so meritless.

My most commonly awarded rating was, as usual, four stars, which I gave to 43 films (41.7%). That’s down from last year, although together the top two ratings add up to 60 films in both 2022 and 2023 (and, remember, I only watched slightly more films last year, so it’s broadly equal). Slightly behind were the 37 three-star films (35.9%), while only having six two-star films means their percentage — 5.8% — is the lowest since 2011 (a year you may remember for its similar lack of one-star films).

So, from all that we can calculate the final stat of the year: the average score for 2023. The short version is 3.7 out of 5 — the highest it’s been since 2018, which was the fourth year in a run of 3.7s. It bucks the trend, too, as 2019 and 2020 both averaged 3.6 before 2021 and 2022 hit 3.5. If we want to get more precise (and we do), we can add a few more decimal places and see the score comes out at 3.689. That makes 2023 the fifth highest scoring year ever — again, quite the turnaround from the last two years, which were both my second-lowest year ever at the time.

All of which said, as you can see from the graph above, my average score has remained pretty consistent across the years. There are no truly bad years, just weaker ones — or, in 2023’s case, stronger ones. Hurrah.


All that remains now for my review of 2023: which of those 103 films were my favourites?

2022 Statistics!

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It’s time once again for the highlight of the year (my highlight, at least) — the statistics! And because I love them so much, I’ve not really messed around with them. That’s to say, these are still based on my first-time watches from 2022 (as listed here), not only films I watched for the new-style Challenge.

Before the onslaught of numbers and graphs begin, I’ll just mention that, because I’m a Letterboxd Pro member, I get a yearly stats page over there too, which can be found here. In some places that’ll look a bit different to this one, because I also log whatever TV I’m allowed there; but it does have some interesting additional and alternative stats, like my most watched and highest rated stars and directors.

With that plugged, it’s time for the main event…

I watched 111 feature films for the first time in 2022. That’s my lowest total since 2013, when I watched 110, and my 6th lowest ever (out of 16 years).

Previously that still would’ve been “a success”, because my goal was to simply watch 100 new films. But this year I changed things up a bit. Unfortunately, as I’ve already discussed (a couple of times), I failed. Nonetheless, I watched 89 films towards my Challenge, including 71 of those new feature films, 17 rewatches, and one short film.

Outside of the strictures of the Challenge, I rewatched three further films, for a total of 20 rewatches. That, too, ranks as my 6th weakest year. Not ideal, but — in a very literal sense — it could be worse.


NB: I have no rewatch data for 2007 and only incomplete numbers for 2008.

I also watched seven short films, which may not sound like many but is still my 5th best year for the form. These won’t be counted in most of the stats that follow, except where they’re noted alongside the features’ running time.

The total running time of my first-watch features was 189 hours and 21 minutes. Add in the shorts and that rises by over an hour to 190 hours and 33 minutes. (I would also factor any alternate cuts I watched for the first time into that “others” block, but there weren’t any this year.) Unsurprisingly, that lines up with the lesser number of films watched to be one of my lowest totals ever.

Here’s how that viewing played out across the year, month by month. The dark blue line is my first-time watches and the pale blue is rewatches. This is the fifth year I’ve been including this particular graph, and when you look back over them all, the main thing you can learn is that I really have no consistency. The only common factor I can spot is a relative drop in the September/October region each year, often dragging August or November in with it.

Next, the ways in which I watched those films. Despite including a specific DVDs category in my Challenge, I couldn’t turn things round for physical media: digital is once again the year’s most prolific viewing format, with 77 films, or 69.37% of my viewing. That’s actually down on the last two years (both over 72%), but still up on every year before that. One day I’ll do the right thing and get this down below Blu-ray… or so I keep telling myself…

Digital does have a slight advantage in that several different formats and services contribute to it, though the reason I lump them together is that there’s fundamentally no difference quality-wise between downloading and streaming a film nowadays (most of the time). This year, downloads beat any of the individual streamers, accounting for 26 films (33.8% of the digital total). A number of factors contribute to my wanton piracy, primarily getting hold of specific films in a reliably-accessible format for the sake of my Challenge, as well as acquiring various obscurities. Following on, the top streamer was Netflix, unseating regular victor Amazon Prime, with 14 films (18.2%). Amazon was close behind, though, with 12 films (15.6%). Both are lower than last year, unsurprisingly, but Disney+ actually saw a slight gain in raw numbers, from seven to nine films, which more than doubled its percentage, from 4.7% to 11.7%. Not too far behind was Now on seven (9.1%), with the category rounded out by half-a-dozen others: iPlayer and All 4 each with three (3.9%), MUBI with two (2.6%), and one each (1.3%) for Apple TV+, Talking Pictures TV Encore, and YouTube.

As usual, it was a distant second place for Blu-ray with 25 films (22.5%) — half of last year’s total in raw numbers, and a slight drop in percentage too.

That’s slightly tempered by an increase in my DVD viewing, the result of forcing my hand by making it a category in my Challenge. It should’ve resulted in at least 12 DVDs watched, but I ended up bending the rules and counting some rewatches. Anyway, the format still rallied to eight films — four times as many as last year, and increasing its representation from 0.97% to 7.2%. I imagine the DVD category will remain for 2023’s Challenge.

There was just one other format represented in 2022’s viewing: TV, with only one film (0.9%). The bigger news there is that, in the end, I didn’t make it to the cinema in the whole of 2022, the first time that’s happened since 2014. Funny kind of film fan I am, eh? I imagine it’ll be back in 2023: I’m still hoping to make time to see Avatar 2, and there are multiple big-screen-benefitting films out later in the year (not least a new Mission: Impossible). For now, here’s TV’s graph, showing how the once-mighty (look at it in 2010) have fallen…

Looking at formats from a different angle, I only watched one film in 3D in the whole of 2022. That might sound natural — 3D TVs have been phased out; disc releases in the format are almost nonexistent — but I’ve still got my 3D TV, and the releases are still coming, and I’ve got a large backlog of them to get through, anyway. So, I really should’ve watched more than one! Well, it would’ve been two, if I’d been able to find a genuine copy of Jackass 3D. I’ve managed to source most of the recent Marvel films in 3D (even though they only get a disc release in Japan nowadays), so if I finally catch up on those in 2023, the figure might be healthier next year.

As for the cutting-edge format du jour, 4K Ultra HD, that fared better, with 24 films — the exact same figure as last year, which in percentage terms is almost a doubling, from 11.6% to 21.6%. At the other end of the spectrum, the increase in DVDs, plus some harder-to-find SD downloads and streams, meant I watched 20 films in SD — the lowest raw number since 2017, but the highest percentage (18.0%) since 2015. Watching a lot in SD is nothing to be proud of (HD is usually so much nicer), but some stuff is simply only available in that format. Better than not being viewable at all. Meanwhile, ‘regular’ HD has been decreasing as a share of my viewing since UHD came along in 2017, but this year it tumbles to its lowest figure yet, just 60.4%

Unsurprisingly, it’s mostly older films that are only available in SD, and so an increase in one reflects an increase in the other. To wit, when it comes to the age of films I watched, the two most recent decades are not my two most-watched, for only the second time ever. Number 1 belies this fact: the 2020s top the chart for the first time, with 34 films (30.6%). But where you’d expect to find the 2010s in second place (having been the #1 decade from 2012 to 2021), it was actually the 1980s with 16 films (14.4%). That’s another side effect of my Challenge, where one category required me to watch 12 films from 1986 (even though I only got through ten of them in the end). It’s in joint third that we find the 2010s, sharing a place with the the 1940s (no doubt boosted by my Challenge’s noir category), each with 11 films (9.9%).

Every decade since the 1900s was represented in my viewing this year, as they were in 2020 and 2021; although, as with those years, the 1900s themselves only feature via shorts, so don’t ‘count’ here. Counting down the years in size order, in fifth place was the 1950s with nine films (8.1%), followed by the 2000s on seven (6.3%), the ’30s and ’60s both on six (5.4%), the ’90s on five (4.5%), the ’70s on four (3.6%), and one (0.9%) each for the 1910s and 1920s.

In recent years, I’ve been pleased to see an increasing variety in the production countries and languages of the films I’ve been watching. Unfortunately, watching so many fewer this year has wiped out some of those gains. So, while the USA has always been the dominant country of production, the 81 films it had a hand in this year represent 72.97% of my viewing, up from the sub-70% figures of the last two years. That said, I’ve been counting this figure since 2012, and that percentage is still the fourth lowest ever, so things could certainly be worse.

On the other hand, there were only 17 production countries this year, half of last year’s 35, and the lowest number since 2012. As ever, second place went to the UK with 26 films (23.4%). France was third for the second year in a row (and the seventh time in eleven years), with 11 films (9.9%). Tied for fourth were Canada and Japan with four apiece (3.6%), while Germany had three (2.7%), and on two (1.8%) each were Australia, Belgium, Israel, Italy, and Russia (provided the latter also includes the Soviet Union). That leaves six other countries with one film apiece. Countries that often feature but didn’t this year included China, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, and Sweden.

It’s a similar story with languages, naturally: there were only 12 spoken languages (plus American Sign Language and some silent films), my lowest total since 2013. Top of the pile by an obscene amount was English, featuring in 103 films (92.8%). For context, in second place was French, spoken in just five films (4.5%). Normally I’d list more uncommonly-heard languages here, but there weren’t really any this year… except, for the second year in a row, Klingon.

A total of 99 directors plus eight directing partnerships helmed the feature films I watched in 2022, with a further three directors and two partnerships making my short film viewing. Only three directors were behind multiple features, the lowest number of repeat offenders ever (tied with 2012). The most came from Jeff Tremaine with three (the first three Jackass movies), while the other two were Stanley Kubrick (his pair of early-career noirs) and Alfred Werker (another couple of noirs). Additionally, two of the shorts I watched were masterminded by the great Georges Méliès.

For a while now I’ve been specifically charting the number of female directors whose work I’ve watched each year. This was steadily improving, but 2022 has seen an about-face in fortunes, dropping to my lowest level since 2017. My viewing this year included four films with a female director — three credited solo (Siân Heder’s CODA, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, and Carrie Cracknell’s Persuasion), and one as part of a duo with a chap (Vanessa Yuille co-directing Doctor Who Am I). Counting the latter as half a film, that works out as just 3.15% of my viewing, which is sandwiched between 2017’s 2.84% and 2018’s 3.26%, but a long way off 2020’s high of 11.44%. As I’ve said before, I neither avoid nor seek out female directors — maybe I should do more of the latter, but I generally just watch the films I watch and see what comes out in the wash. The industry, undoubtedly, still needs to do more. As ever, I hope this graph will improve again in the future, though I doubt it will ever reach 50/50.

Before I dig into 2022’s star ratings, let’s take a look at a couple of viewing projects I always have on the go. First, the IMDb Top 250, which I’ve been vaguely working on since before this blog even began. At the time of writing, five films from my 2022 viewing appear on the list. However, because it’s ever-changing, the number I have left to see has actually gone down this year by 10, to 18 films. I’m so close to the end now, before long I may end up making it part of my Challenge to help finish it off. The current positions of the ones I saw this year range from 87th (High and Low) to 227th (To Be or Not to Be).

Next, my “50 Unseen” — the list I publish at the end of every year of 50 notable new films I missed that year. I’ve continued to track those ‘misses’ down the years, and went through a period where they helped decide a lot of my viewing. Recently, though, not so much. Last year was weak for continuing to complete these, and 2022 has been even weaker: in 2021, I watched a measly 21 films across all 14 lists; in 2022, I watched just 16 films across all 15 lists. Nearly all of those — 14 — were from 2021’s 50. That’s a better ‘first year’ than last year (when I only watched 12 from 2020’s 50), but is otherwise poor. Randomly, the other two both came from 2010’s list.

In total, I’ve now seen 513 out of 750 ‘missed’ movies. That’s 68.4%, a big drop from recent years — the last time my completion rate was below 70% was back in 2017. It’s not as if there aren’t still plenty of movies I want to see on those lists (and there’ll be 50 more from 2022 added soon), so I need to pull my finger out there.

And so, we reach the finale of every review, and thus the climax of 2022’s statistics: the scores.

Before we begin, I’m going to repeat the caveat I gave last year: this stat factors in every new film I watched in 2022, even those for which I’ve yet to publish a review (this year, that’s 27% of them — it was 98% last year). That means there are some where I’m still flexible on my precise score — usually films I’ve awarded 3.5 or 4.5 on Letterboxd, but which I insist on rounding to a whole star here. For the sake of completing these stats, I’ve assigned a whole-star rating to every film, but it’s possible I’ll change my mind when I eventually post a review (it’s happened before). Still, this section should remain broadly accurate.

The headline fact here is that I award a mere six five-star ratings in 2022. At just 5.4% of my first-time watches, that’s by far my lowest ever — the next worst was 2012, when I gave more than double (14 films, 13%). Was it that bad a year? Well, yes and no — I do feel like I didn’t watch many great films this year, but I did watch a lot of very good ones. Has my marking got harsher as I’ve got older / more experienced? I think it has, which is probably only right. But I’m still a relatively lenient grader overall.

For example, the most prolific rating I handed out remained four stars, which in 2022 I gave to 54 films (48.7%). That’s the highest percentage of four-star ratings I’ve given since 2016. Maybe a couple more would’ve found their way up into the five-star bracket in the past, but — as I said — I think I generally watched films that were good-but-not-great in 2022.

Continuing down the chart, there were 42 three-star films (37.8%). These three “good” ratings therefore make up 91.9% of my first-time watches in 2022, showing it certainly wasn’t a bad year. Well, it never is, really — but more on that in a minute, when I get to the overall average score.

In the negative pile, then, we find eight two-star films (7.2%) and just one one-star film (0.9%). As I said, I’m still a lenient marker overall — films have to be truly bad to receive a negative rating from me, and absolutely dreadful to sink to the depths of a single-star rating — in the entire history of 100 Films, just 1.32% of films have received that ignominy.

So, finally, the average score for 2022. The short version is 3.5 out of 5 — the same as last year, and only the third time the average has been below 3.6. I refer you to my earlier comments about how, if 2022 is “not a bad year”, then no year has ever really been bad. To get a few decimal places deeper (and thus provide a more accurate comparison), 2022 scored 3.505. That’s slightly down on 2021’s 3.507, meaning 2022 takes its place as my second-lowest scoring year ever, ahead of 2012’s egregiously poor 3.352. They’re all clearly above 3.0, though, so — I reiterate — no truly bad years, just weaker ones.

And that’s a good thing. Who wants to deliberately watch more bad films to get a ‘truer’ average? Or you could start hating on films to adjust your ratings curve down, but that’s self-defeating — just accept that, if you like films, you will like more films. I get annoyed with people who claim to be “film fans” but give most of their viewing low scores — are you sure you actually like films? At the other end of the scale, maybe it would be nice to watch even more even better films and pull my average up. It certainly wouldn’t hurt. But I think it’s simply the luck of the draw — I’ve seen many an acclaimed film that didn’t work for me, as well as plenty of stuff that’s been widely dismissed that I love. As long as the majority of my viewing is at least “good”, that’s good enough for me.


Talking of good and great films, next I’ll be finishing off my review of the year with my pick of the top 10% of films I watched for the first time in 2022.

American Animals (2018)

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Bart Layton | 117 mins | digital (HD) | 2.39:1 | UK & USA / English | 15 / R

American Animals

I don’t want this to turn into a rant about IMDb — there’s a time and a place for those, certainly, but what’s meant to be a short review of one film is not one of them — but the way they’ve devalued the documentary in recent years is not also depressing but also inaccurate. Because anything that has the genre Documentary is now marked as “(documentary)” on someone’s filmography, and therefore IMDb, and/or its contributors, are reluctant to use it about anything that isn’t 100% a documentary. Something like, say, American Animals.

To be clear: American Animals is unquestionably a documentary. It tells a true story, about some students who plan to rob a library of its rare books. It features interviews with the real people involved, both the students and others. But it’s mostly told via reenactments starring actors, several of them fairly recognisable faces. The real people appear as talking heads scattered throughout, particularly at key moments. So, it’s also unquestionably a hybrid of documentary and fiction. On the surface, it can look a lot like any fictionalised adaptation of a true story; but it’s hidebound to be more accurate than those often are, because it’s also got all these interviews. IMDb isn’t built for nuance such as this.

Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance... possibly

The film’s director, Bart Layton, previously made widely-praised definitely-a-documentary The Imposter. In my review of that, I described his style as “flashy” and “over-eager”, wondering if “perhaps he better belongs in fiction filmmaking? Perhaps that’s where he wants to go in future”. Here, I guess he’s moving to bridge that divide; but the blurred line means that, when the film says “here’s the real [person X]”, you kind of question it. Especially as, if a crime was committed, how come they’re interviewing the criminals?

That latter thought contributes to a genuine tension and suspense throughout the film. How far will this plot go? Do they even actually attempt it? One of the guys keeps saying, “I expected there to be something to stop us”, and you think maybe something will stop them… but the fact this film exists, and there’s all the chat about how the boys let their parents down and whatever, shows something happened. (No spoilers!) Yet it’s also surprisingly funny, like a bit where we’re shown the “Ocean’s Eleven version” of the robbery, complete with Elvis song on the soundtrack.

Some have criticised these kinds of flights of fancy, or the whole hybrid form, for inviting us to sympathise with these guys rather than condemn their actions. I think there’s room for both. The film seeks to explore what led these pretty normal guys to do such a thing, and (to an extent) how it has affected them since. I think you can both disapprove of what they did and seek to sympathise with them — to understand how it happened is not to condone it.

4 out of 5

American Animals was #107 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.
It is streaming on All 4 until 10th February.

Blindspot 2022

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There may be numerous changes around here for 2022 & onwards, but one thing that remains the same is the Blindspot challenge, which I’m undertaking for the tenth year running (though I called it “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” back at the start. Now, WDYMYHS is a whole additional thing — details of the 2022 version are here).

For those still unfamiliar with it, Blindspot’s premise is simple: choose 12 films you should have seen but haven’t, then watch one a month throughout the year. (Those 12 also contribute to my All-New 100 Films in a Year Challenge.) Below, I’ve listed my selection for this year, and afterwards I’ll talk a bit about how I chose them.

The films are listed alphabetically, using the titles they’ve most recently been released under in the UK. Some of those are different to those used by, say, the Criterion Collection (we don’t automatically translate titles into English over here, what with us being more sophisticated ‘n’ all), but if you have to Google them, hey, at least you’ll have learnt something new.

L’avventura

L'avventura

Come and See

Come and See

Les enfants du paradis

Les enfants du paradis

La grande illusion

La grande illusion

High and Low

High and Low

A Man Escaped

A Man Escaped

Mirror

Mirror

Los olvidados

Los olvidados

Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas

To Be or Not to Be

To Be or Not to Be

A Woman Under
the Influence

A Woman Under the Influence

Yi Yi

Yi Yi

Some people just pull their 12 films out of who-knows-where. Personally, I’ve largely taken a more ‘scientific’ approach, using lists of great and/or popular films to try to shape some or all of my choices each year. This year is no different. But although I’ve made the process fairly complex some years — with lots of different contributing lists, sometimes weighted in different ways, or with additional rules — this year, I’ve kept it pared back.

Just three lists were used: the IMDb Top 250 Movies (they’ve finally put “250” back in its official name, hurrah!); the Letterboxd equivalent, the Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films; and the mother of all great movie lists, TSPDT’s The 1,000 Greatest Films. I limited the last one to its top 250, for equality. All lists were weighted equally, with a film gaining points inverse to its position on a list — i.e. #1 would get 250 points, #250 would get 1 point, etc. I also factored in how many different lists the films appeared on at iCheckMovies (10 points per list), and gave a little nudge (of 11 points) to anything I already owned. That last one didn’t actually have much impact, merely serving to change the final film that made the cut. Still, it means I already have copies of seven of the films, rather than only half of them.

In fact, ensuring I could reasonably get hold of the films was something I checked before finalising the list, especially as Los olvidados doesn’t have an English-language Blu-ray release (in fact, according to Blu-ray.com, it’s only been released on BD in Japan). The only other factor I implemented was my longstanding “no repeat directors” rule. That took out Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (in favour of Yi Yi), as you can see in the list below. One previous rule I didn’t enforce this year was that, if I fail to watch a film one year, it’s locked out the next. I failed with Come and See in 2021, but it also topped the chart this year, so I’ve let it back in immediately. I won’t make the mistake of leaving it ’til December this time, though.

So, as promised a moment ago, here are the final 13 films with their points tallies…

  • Come and See — 777 points
  • High and Low — 573 points
  • Yi Yi — 571 points
  • A Brighter Summer Day — 566 points
  • To Be or Not to Be — 533 points
  • Mirror — 524 points
  • Les enfants du paradis — 509 points
  • La grande illusion — 509 points
  • A Man Escaped — 491 points
  • A Woman Under the Influence — 488 points
  • Los olvidados — 450 points
  • L’avventura — 444 points
  • Paris, Texas — 423 points

    Finally, a couple more stats about the films. Last year, many of the films were exceptionally long — the average running time came out at 2 hours 36 minutes, with only three of the films running under 2 hours; but with the shortest being just 1 hour 10 minutes and the longest 7 hours 19 minutes, there was quite a range. Compared to that, 2022’s extremes don’t seem so, well, extreme: the shortest film is Los olvidados at 1 hour 21 minutes, while the longest is Les enfants du paradis at 3 hours 9 minutes, and five films (almost half) are under 2 hours… although there is a half-hour jump between the longest film under 2 hours (La grande illusion, 1 hour 53 minutes) and the shortest over 2 hours (a three-way tie between L’avventura, Come and See, and High and Low, each running 2 hours 23 minutes). Nonetheless, the average is down from last year, to a slightly more reasonable 2 hours 13 minutes.

    Although it wasn’t a conscious decision, the films are quite well spread around this year, both temporally and geographically. For the former, there’s one from the 1930s, two each from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and then one from the 2000s. For the latter, France comes out on top with three titles, followed by two each for Russia and the USA, and one apiece from Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Taiwan. In the latter case, I’m taking (what I believe to be) the primary country of production — several of the films can lay claim to multiples.

    Finally, half of the films are by directors whose work I’ve never seen before. They are Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buñuel, Marcel Carné, Elem Klimov, Wim Wenders, and Edward Yang. And with the other films’ directors including the likes of Robert Bresson, John Cassavetes, Akira Kurosawa, Ernst Lubitsch, Jean Renoir, and Andrei Tarkovsky — a real mix of artists whose work that I’ve seen has either struck me as fantastic or… well… — it should be an interesting year.

    • Blindspot 2021: What do you mean you haven’t seen…?

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    Now that all my “looking back at 2020” posts are done, it’s time to start the first full week of 2021 wi— sorry, what? Second week? Where did the first one go?! Alright, well, it’ll have to do. So, dragging myself belatedly into the same year as everyone else, it’s time to present my Blindspot picks for 2021.

    The Blindspot challenge (for the benefit of those still unfamiliar with it) involves choosing 12 films you should have seen but haven’t, then watching one a month throughout the year. I started doing this eight years ago, calling it “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” (WDYMYHS for short), but then someone else came up with the same idea independently and gave it a much snappier moniker, and that caught on.

    My 12 films for this year are below in alphabetical order. After that there’s a few stats, and then I’ll explain how and why I chose them.


    Aguirre,
    Wrath of God
    Aguirre, Wrath of God


    The Birth of a Nation
    The Birth of a Nation


    Cinema Paradiso
    Cinema Paradiso


    Come and See
    Come and See


    La Dolce Vita
    La Dolce Vita


    Frankenstein
    Frankenstein


    La Haine
    La Haine


    The Life and Death
    of Colonel Blimp
    The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp


    Pather Panchali
    Pather Panchali


    Rain Man
    Rain Man


    Sansho Dayu
    Sansho Dayu


    Sátántangó
    Sátántangó

    Here’s a few stats about this year’s list…

  • The average running time of the films is 2 hours 36 minutes. Yes, that’s the average. While the shortest film, Frankenstein, runs a measly 1 hour 10 minutes, there are only two others below the two-hour mark, and four that run over 2½ hours. And the longest, Sátántangó, is a whopping 7 hours 19 minutes — that’s longer than six Frankensteins.
  • There’s a spread of exactly 80 years between the oldest film (1915’s The Birth of a Nation) and the newest (1995’s La Haine). Of course, that means the most recent film here is over a quarter of a century old…
  • Exactly eight decades are represented, too. The most prolific is, amusingly enough, the ’80s, with three films. The ’50s and ’90s have two each, and there’s one apiece from the 1910s, ’30s, ’40s, ’60s, and ’70s.
  • The films come from nine countries: three from the USA, two from Italy, with the rest being from France, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the UK.
  • There are eight different main languages spoken, plus one silent film. English is the most common with three films, two are in Italian, and the rest encompass Bengali, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Russian.
  • Six of the films are from directors who I’ve never seen a feature from before. They are D.W. Griffith, Werner Herzog, Elem Klimov, Satyajit Ray, Béla Tarr, and Giuseppe Tornatore. (I have seen a short by Griffith before, but this is his first feature for me.)

    I tend to mix up my method for choosing films each year, but for 2021 I’ve retained one thing from last year — itself a legacy of the couple of years where I did two 12-film lists — and that’s to have six films ‘chosen for me’ via a consensus ranking of various “greatest movie” lists, and then to choose the other six myself from my massive unwatched disc pile. Inevitably, the latter seems to get influenced by films that piqued my interest in the former, but, eh, why not? (If you fancy a challenge, feel free to guess which six films belong to which selection process. Answers coming up.)

    The lists that contribute to the “poll of polls” selection can only be varied so much. I mean, there are probably thousands of such lists out there, but there are only a handful that are well known and respected (to one degree or another), and so I tend to use a lot of the same ones every year. You might think that makes which films appear a foregone conclusion — surely they’re the ones that narrowly missed out last year? — but things do change on some of these lists. For example, when I chose last year’s selection, Come and See was ranked 7th on Letterboxd; this year, it’s 2nd. That’s not an insignificant change: when I’m combining multiple lists, a jump like that at the top of a list could be the difference between inclusion and not quite making it. Besides, I do vary my lists and how I count them every year, precisely so as to keep things slightly unknowable.

    This year’s contributing lists were:

  • Letterboxd’s Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films
  • IMDb’s Top Rated Movies (aka the IMDb Top 250)
  • the Reddit Top 250
  • Empire’s The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time (aka the Empire 500)
  • Empire’s The 100 Best Films of World Cinema
  • Sight & Sound’s 2012 poll, using the 250-film version listed on Letterboxd (the official list only goes to 100)

    A notable absentee this year is They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s The 1,000 Greatest Films, itself a “poll of polls” that is therefore one of, if not the, definitive lists of greatest movies. That’s why I normally include it, and that normality is why I didn’t this year: it’s gone just for the sake of a change. In its place (sort of) is the Empire World Cinema list. It’s shorter than the others, so under my scoring system (which I’ll explain in a moment) it contributed somewhat less than the other lists. That means it served to tweak which foreign films got in, rather than acting to wipe out US/UK films — although, as it turns out, no US films made it through that way.

    So, each poll was scored out of 250 (250 points for 1st place, 249 for 2nd, etc), except the Empire World Cinema one, which was out of 100. Any film beyond 251st place on the Empire 500 earnt one point; and there were 10 additional points for each list a film appeared on (i.e. every film got 10 bonus points, because every film had to be on one list; but if it was on two it got 20, etc.) The full chart ended up including 230 films — that’s everything I hadn’t seen from the Letterboxd, IMDb, Reddit, and Empire World Cinema lists, plus those from the top 150 on Sight & Sound and the Empire 500 (by the time I got to those, I figured any films further down that weren’t on another list didn’t stand a chance; of course, I did include their rankings for all films that were on another list). Further to the plain scores, I also applied other rules — “no repeat directors” is the main one. I used to limit myself to films I already own, but not anymore; and I try to ensure variety in the kinds of films included, to get a spread of ages, countries, genres, etc.

    With all that considered, I think this is the first year I’ve simply accepted the films at the top of the chart without having to eliminate any. The only film to appear on all six lists was Come and See, so perhaps it’s no surprise that it came first with 810 points. Mind you, only one film appeared on five lists (Paris, Texas) and that came 17th, so being on fewer lists with higher ranks could beat merely appearing on many lists. In second place was La Dolce Vita with 647 points; third was Cinema Paradiso with 510; fourth was Pather Panchali with 502; fifth was Sátántangó with 461; and in sixth, just behind it with 460, was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Regular readers (or those who’ve clicked and read some of the links in this article) may remember that Come and See and Sátántangó both qualified for the 2020 list, but were removed because new restorations were on the way. Those have now materialised: Come and See on a Criterion disc that I imported, and Sátántangó on very different UK and US discs (it’s also available to rent digitally, which is how I intend to view it).

    As for my ‘free choice’ films, three have a spot on that consensus ranking. They were La Haine (13th, 413 points), Sansho Dayu (16th, 398 points), and Aguirre, Wrath of God (38th, 262 points). You’ll note that none of those films are American, and so my only three picks that are not on the consensus ranking (The Birth of a Nation, Frankenstein, and Rain Man) are also my only three US films. Make of that what you will.

    I’ve spent most of 2021 so far working towards one self-imposed deadline after another, to get all of these end of year/new year posts done, so now I’m looking forward to catching up on other blogs — and actually watching some films!

    • The IMDb New Filmmaker Award 2020

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    Last night on AMPLIFY!, FilmBath presented the 9th annual IMDb New Filmmaker Award, in which a trio of industry judges choose the best short film by a new filmmaker (clue’s in the name). The winner gets £1,000 cash, £1,000 in gear hire for their next project, a natty trophy, and an IMDb pin badge (normally only given to IMDb employees). If you missed the evening, never fear: the whole 90-minute event is available to rewatch for free, worldwide, here.

    Why would you watch an awards show after it’s happened? Well, in this case, you get to hear the judges’ musings on what makes a good film — and when those judges are BAFTA-nominated director Coky Giedroyc (The Virgin Queen, How to Build a Girl), Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning producer Amanda Posey (An Education, Brooklyn), and the CEO of IMDb, Col Needham, those are opinions worth listening to. Even better, you get to watch the five nominated shorts in full, and they’re good a bunch.

    But don’t just take my word for it: take my, er, word for it, in the form of these reviews…

    If you do intend to watch the awards, fair warning: I’m going to ‘spoil’ who won.

    Under the Full Moon

    Taking the films in the order they were shown, first up is Under the Full Moon (2020, Ziyang Liu, UK, English, 9 mins, ★★★★☆), about a guy who has his phone pickpocketed and decides to confront the mugger. The most noteworthy aspect here is the whole short is achieved in a single unbroken eight-minute take. I love stuff done in single long takes; at this point it’s a bit of a cliché to enjoy such things — a real film nerd kind of obsession — but, sod it, it’s still cool. To do a thriller storyline like that — something which requires management of tension and suspense, and of information being revealed at the right time in the right way — is even more impressive. You might say, “well, that’s what theatre is — a drama performed in ‘one take’”, but theatre doesn’t have to factor in camerawork; making sure we’re seeing the right stuff at the right time, framed in the right ways. Under the Full Moon manages every different element almost perfectly, the only real flaw coming right near the end, when the camera fails to clearly capture a phone screen with an incoming call, so the director resorts to a subtitle to make sure we get this final ironic twist. And that’s the other thing: this isn’t just a technical stunt, or an exercise in escalating suspense, but a dramatic work with some neatly-drawn character parts and a sense of dramatic irony. Really strong work.

    The winner (told you I’d spoil it) was Flush Lou (2020, Madison Leonard, USA, English, 9 mins, ★★★★★), and I entirely agree. It’s a black comedy about the reaction of three women to the death of a man: his daughter (who narrates), his wife, and his mother. It’s got a quirkiness that could be inappropriate, but the tone is juggled just right that it remains hilarious rather than at all distasteful. It’s there in the performances, the shot choices, the editing — the piece really works as a whole to hit precisely the right note. It might call to mind the work of someone like Wes Anderson, but it’s far from a rip-off; it also reminded me of certain just-off-reality American-suburbia-skewering TV shows, like The Riches or Suburgatory (I’m sure there are some more mainstream examples that are eluding my reach right now). Also, it manages to pack eight chapters into its eight minutes, without ever feeling like that’s an unnecessary affectation; if anything, it helps clarify the structure, which is exactly the kind of thing chapters are good for. A huge success all round.

    Flush Lou

    At the other end of the seriousness spectrum was the winner of the audience vote, The Monkeys on Our Backs (2020, Hunter Williams, New Zealand, English, 8 mins, ★★★★★), a documentary about the mental health of farmers in New Zealand. I think we often have a very positive view of New Zealand — they seem like nice people; their government is doing awesomely well; they make great movies; they’re good at rugby; and so on. But the country has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, and mental health problems disproportionately affect those living and working in isolated rural communities. This is not only a succinct explanation of the problems, with real-life examples as well as expert opinions, but also talks about the solutions, what help is out there and how it’s working. Plus it’s a beautifully shot film (some outtakes in black & white at the beginning show the fundamental quality underlying the colour photography in the rest of the film), with lovely views of countryside life, as if to help remind you that the world is a wonderful place. A wholly different film to Flush Lou, but an equally deserving winner.

    The shortest of this year’s five is Players (2020, Ava Bounds, UK, English, 3 mins, ★★★★☆), but that’s not the most noteworthy thing about it. This is: it was made by a 14-year-old. But you’d never guess, because it has a competency and, more strikingly, a surrealism that belies someone much more experienced. Heck, the sound design most reminded me of David Lynch! And the comparison goes beyond the sound work, with an ending that calls to mind some of Lynch’s work where nature and technology clash. Subtitled “a clearly confused film”, I think that was somewhat how the judges felt about its mix of retro costumes and music, computer-generated vocals, and a sci-fi sting in the tail. It’s the kind of film that clearly doesn’t work for everyone — just another way it’s a natural successor to Lynch, then. A 14-year-old making a competition-worthy short film is incredible in itself, but that it also merits so many comparisons to David fucking Lynch? Remarkable.

    The Monkeys on Our Backs

    The final film was Home (2020, Hsieh Meng Han, UK, English, 10 mins, ★★★☆☆), in which a girl living with her mother in a single room in a dingy apartment block finds the communal toilet locked, but then hears music coming from a nearby ventilation grill. Climbing through, she finds herself in a brightly-lit world of opulence, with people in elegant clothes dancing to genteel music, and an array of luscious food on offer. She even makes a friend. But then uptight officiousness arrives in the form of a stuffy manager, who refuses to let her use the toilet. It’s like a modern socially-conscious take on Alice in Wonderland, though I’m not sure what point it was ultimately making — kindness is nice and everyone deserves to be allowed to use the toilet?

    If any of that tickles your fancy, don’t forget you can still watch the whole event, free, here.

    Disclosure: I’m working for AMPLIFY! as part of FilmBath. However, all opinions are my own, and I benefit in no way (financial or otherwise) from you following the links in this post or making purchases.