Has Tom Cruise reckoned his final impossible mission? Time will tell. I sort of hope not, even if it might be time to change up how they make those movies to bring a little more focus back to story and character instead of just extravagant stunt sequences.
They are really, really good stunt sequences, though…
This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge
#41 How to Train Your Dragon 3D (2010) — Rewatch #4
#42 Trancers (1984) — Failure #5
#43 I Saw the TV Glow (2024) — 50 Unseen #4
#44 Illustrious Corpses (1976) — Genre #3
#45 Spartacus (1960) — WDYMYHS #5
#46 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) — Rewatch #5
#47 Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) — New Film #5
#48 The Graduate (1967) — Blindspot #5
#49 Funeral in Berlin (1966) — Series Progression #7
#50 Backfire! (1962) — Series Progression #8
- I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in May.
- Eight of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
- I finished March a whole month ahead, April one film behind being a month ahead, and for May… I’m a month and one film ahead! The end of June might seem like it’s halfway through the year, but it isn’t in terms of days — so, the target date for #50 is actually a couple of days into July.
- This “month ahead” business will inevitably slow down at some point — not just because of my usual tardiness, but because some films are ‘locked’ to certain months. There are five categories limited in that way, which means the last point I can still be “a month ahead” is the end of September. But that’s something to aim for, eh?
- This month’s Blindspot film was only the third movie to take over $100 million at the US box office, The Graduate. (Surprising fact, huh?)
- This month’s WDYMYHS film was Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus.
- It’s not much of a Stanley Kubrick film (in the sense that, while he did direct it, he later disowned it), but Spartacus is the first Stanley Kubrick film I’ve watched since 2022. I went through a period (about a decade ago now) where I was watching an unseen Kubrick every year. Although that regularity has tailed off, I now have only two of his features left to see (Fear and Desire and Lolita). I own both, so perhaps I’ll try to complete the set sometime soon.
- From last month’s “failures” I watched The Graduate, Illustrious Corpses, and Trancers.
The 120th Monthly Arbitrary Awards
Favourite Film of the Month
I’m not coming across many five-star films this year (in fact, the total so far might be none), but a couple have come very close, and I Saw the TV Glow is one of those. It’s hard to describe what it is without seeing it, though I saw someone say it’s the 2020s answer to Donnie Darko and that feels very on point.
Least Favourite Film of the Month
There have been numerous screen adaptations of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and I’ve seen a few of them now. 1989’s Ten Little Indians is probably the worst, although I didn’t dislike it as much as its poor reputation would suggest. That said, it’s only worth watching for people who have exhausted other, better Christie adaptations.
Halfway through the year. I mean, not for me — I’ve already done that. But for, y’know, time.
The third English-language screen adaptation of Agatha Christie’s famed mystery, one of the best-selling novels of all time, relocates the action to the middle of a desert but is otherwise a word-for-word remake of 
As a précis of the storyline, with some nicely photographed locations (the Iranian hotel they filmed in looks fairly stunning), this isn’t half bad. However, there are at least two better screen adaptations of the novel, and if what I’ve heard of 
Adapted from one of Agatha Christie’s best-regarded novels (now commonly known by its US title, And Then There Were None), Ten Little Indians sees a group of ten people invited to a remote location (in the book, an island; here, an alpine hotel) by a mysterious host, who doesn’t appear but does accuse them all of murder via a recorded message. Then, stranded, they begin to die one by one.
voiceover informs us this is our chance to have a guess. Ah, the ’60s.
100Films.co.uk 