Happy New Year, dear readers!

But before I start thinking too much about 2024, I’m going to do as I’ve done every year for the past decade-and-a-half(-and-a-bit) and spend a fair amount of time going back over the previous year. First up: the final monthly review of 2023, in which we find out if I managed to complete my 100 Films Challenge.

You may remember from last month that I had 17 films left to go — more than I’ve watched in any single month since 2021. Doesn’t bode well…

#84 You Hurt My Feelings (2023) — New Film #12
#85 Little Shop of Horrors (1986) — Rewatch #12
#86 From Beijing with Love (1994) — Failures #11
#87 A Haunting in Venice (2023) — Failures #12
#88 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) — Blindspot #9
#89 The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) — Genre #5
#90 Shadow of a Doubt (1943) — WDYMYHS #10
#91 Out of the Past (1947) — WDYMYHS #11
#92 Mildred Pierce (1945) — WDYMYHS #12

• I watched 14 feature films I’d never seen before in December.
• That means it ties with July for my best month of 2023.
• It also means I reached my ten-films-a-month target, but for only the fifth time this year. That’s equal to what I achieved in 2022 — although last year I watched 111 new films overall, for a monthly average of 9.25, whereas in 2023 it was just 103, for a monthly average of 8.58.
• However, I rewatched 28 films last year, up from 20 in 2022. Added to new viewings, that means I watched 131 films in 2023 — exactly the same number as in 2022. So that’s, you know, a coincidence.
• But 14 is not 17, is it? To be precise, eight of December’s new films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
• As I entered December, six of my nine categories still needed completing. That sounds like a lot, but it’s mostly part of the plan: five of them are designed to end in December.
• I watched films that qualified in all six of those outstanding categories. New Films and Rewatches were finished off early on; two more categories would follow, but two would wind up incomplete.
• One of the latter was Genre. It was only this month that I hit its halfway point — when you consider that, it’s no wonder I didn’t get to #100. After the first couple of months, when it became clear I wasn’t going to steadily watch gialli throughout the year, I thought I’d have a bit of a marathon at some point, racing through six or seven or eight titles in a moderately condensed period. But that never happened, and so it ends as this year’s most-failed category, just 50% complete.
• Talking of failures: having failed October’s “failures” again in November, this month I caught up by watching From Beijing with Love.
• And from last month’s “failures” I watched A Haunting in Venice, making Failures the sixth completed category.
• Meanwhile, the other failed category was Blindspot. The one film from that selection I did watch this month was The Greatest Film Of All Time™, at least according to Sight and Sound voters: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Unfortunately, that left three unseen for the year — aka 25% of my target. Shame.
• This month’s WDYMYHS films were Alfred Hitchcock’s favourite of his own works, Shadow of a Doubt; Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, formerly known in the UK as Build My Gallows High; and Michael Curtiz’s family melodrama Mildred Pierce. And that burst of activity made it 2023’s final completed category — hurrah!

Favourite Film of the Month
A few strong contenders this month, including two that didn’t qualify for the Challenge (anxiety-inducing comedy-drama Shiva Baby and classic Christmas rom-com Remember the Night), but on balance I have to give it to the very last film I watched this year, Mildred Pierce, which takes James M. Cain’s familial drama and restructures it into a nonlinear murder mystery noir, and then excels on both fronts.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Christmas cheese-fest A Castle for Christmas might seem a shoo-in here — not the kind of Christmas fare I normally watch, but it was… recommended, sort of. But it was also kind of just what I expected it to be (“daytime TV movie”-esque and, well, cheesy), whereas Mexican murder mystery A Deadly Invitation was billed as “for fans of Agatha Christie and Glass Onion” and did not live up to that. It’s like an AI version of a murder mystery: it sort of knew how to look the part, but was devoid of what genuinely makes it tick.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
In a rarity for 2023, there were more than two posts competing for this award in December. Gasp! That said, there wasn’t much interest in my quick post about a new directors page banner (can’t say I’m surprised), so it remained a two horse race between November’s failures — which finished far ahead of the directors banner, but equally far behind the winner — which was November’s monthly review. That means 2023 ends with a 7-2 victory for monthly reviews over failures (the exceptions were January’s gong, which went to my Best of 2022 list; February, which went to some actual reviews; and April, which was a draw).

2023 has been a quieter year than normal here on 100 Films — probably my quietest ever, with just the pair of monthly posts to keep things ticking over for most of the year. But that doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere. Whether 2024 turns out to be another 12 months of just summaries and failures, or sees my reviewing somehow rejuvenate into full swing, I intend to still be here.

Of course, before I get started on 2024, the next week or so will have my usual array of posts dissecting 2023.