Another month, another title that doesn’t actually refer to my film viewing.

I point you in the direction of my September review, where I reported my good fortune in winning a Steam Deck. Well, in November I installed a little game called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I’d bought it on sale at some point due to its reputation, but actually started it up this month on a whim, half expecting to wander around a little bit, get said whim out of my system, and move on to something else.

Over 58 hours of playtime later — during which I’ve only progressed the main plot about as far as I have to* (i.e. getting out of the tutorial, plus a tiny bit more) — and, yeah, I think I’m in this for the long haul. For perspective: according to HowLongToBeat, if you do focus on the main story, the average completion time is about 27 hours; but there’s so much else to do in the game that there are recorded playtimes over 700 hours; and even the “all play styles” average is 130 hours. Even after 58 hours, I still feel like I’m very much just getting started.

* (Somewhat ironically, I haven’t actually got to the point where the adjective I’ve chosen for this post’s title comes into play; but I didn’t have any other decent ideas for references, so it is what it is.)

I certainly didn’t spend that many hours watching films this month, let me tell you. Although I didn’t shirk either, as you can learn in the viewing notes…

#88 Hedda (2025) — New Film #11
#89 Midsommar (2019) — Blindspot #11
#90 Superman (2025) — Failure #11
#91 Street Law (1974) — Genre #9
#92 Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) — Rewatch #10
#93 Le Samouraï (1967) — WDYMYHS #11
#94 Top Hat (1935) — Rewatch #11

• I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in November.
• Five of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
• The first-time-watches tally ties with June for the highest in 2025 (so far), but add in the rewatches and the total of 14 makes November the year’s largest month overall.
• And one of those 12 was my 100th first-time watch of the year — that may not be my ‘official’ challenge anymore, but it still feels nice to hit that marker.
• All the many Blu-rays and 4Ks I own and streamers I’m already subscribed to full of stuff I’ve been meaning to rewatch, sometimes for decades… and yet I signed back up to MUBI (albeit with a free trial) just to watch Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, a film I didn’t even like when I watched it 20-odd years ago. Big sigh. But that was the point of me rewatching it, of course — to reassess — and sometimes the itch you get is the one you’ve got to scratch, y’know?
• This month’s Blindspot film was Ari Aster’s folk horror Midsommar, watched right near the start of the month so it still kinda tied in with Halloween.
• This month’s WDYMYHS film was the one that inspired the category’s theme this year, Le Samouraï. For that reason, I’d been intending to save it ’til last; but, for various other reasons I shan’t bore you with, it felt like it made more sense to watch it now and leave the other outstanding film for December.
• From last month’s “failures” I watched Superman.

Favourite Film of the Month
Looking back over this month’s first-time watches — both the five listed above and the other seven (nowadays the best place to see my whole month-by-month viewing is Letterboxd) — and there’s a lot I liked, a lot I have down as 4 stars, but not a lot I loved. Perhaps the closest to nudging up an extra half-star was Le Samouraï, which had the misfortune of coming with high expectations. It didn’t completely fail to live up to them, but perhaps the burden was still unfairly great.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is, unfortunately, a little easier. Clocking in as the biggest disappointment of the month was the new Red Sonja. Now, given its production and release history (i.e. incredibly low-key and minor), I was expecting it to be poor. But I enjoyed the ’80s movie (even if, yeah, it’s not actually good either) and I’ve been vaguely following the existence of this remake/re-do for years (and it has been in the offing for years), hoping it would wind up with some talent behind it and manage to fill the gap between the previous version’s potential and its actual achievements. Even when it became clear that it didn’t have the backing for that to happen, I hoped it might at least be another flawed-but-fun run at the material. But no, it’s simply not very good, sadly. There are ways it could have been even worse, and there are ways it’s not bad, but that really is damning with faint praise, isn’t it?

Last year I entered December on #93 and went on to complete my Challenge for the first time since I rejigged it in 2022. This year, I go in on #94… but complacency breeds failure, so I’m still going to try and get those final six films crossed off with relative haste. In 2024 I got to #100 on the 21st, and while I’m not aiming to beat that just for the sake of beating it, getting there even earlier wouldn’t hurt.