Maximum respect for the writer who got the word ‘fuckwad’ said over and over in a children’s film.

Criterion Challenge 2025
6. John Turturro’s Adventures in Moviegoing
Spine #647

Honestly I was surprised by how well paced this felt. I actually wondered if it could have done with a little more scene setting rather than being quite so in media res, which isn't something I say lightly of a film from the 50s.

Interesting to see Marlon Brando as a young man in a gang, and the hard-ass workers rights priest was a legend.

Lots of derogatory talk of D&D (Deaf and Dumb), which was jarring. Also contained a corrective sexual assault, which loses half a star by default.

Watched at the Internet Archive for free, though with a couple of big annoying watermarks.

Criterion Challenge 2025
7. 1920s
Spine #996

I've only seen one Chaplain film before – The Great Dictator, a very different and specific satire.

This was an absolute treat, felt like I was watching some foundational text – so much slapstick has aped this over the last 100 years, let alone the references imbued in pop culture.

Chaplain is a fantastic physical comedian, I'm delighted to be discovering this for myself now. Give that man some more ketamine and see what he does.

Watched at the Internet Archive for free, take a look, there's loads of good stuff there – full feature films.

Criterion Challenge 2025
31. North American film
Spine #777

So David Cronenberg hates his ex-wife and thinks therapy is bullshit, huh?

Honestly, I think I could easily defeat one or two of these little freaks.

Canadian tax write-off nonsense at its finest.

The Warrens are back at it, and by 'it', I mean the grift.

In their next attempt to foist the Nuniverse onto an unsuspecting public, they rock up, after Forrest Gumping their way through Amityville, in Enfield.

By some s, in reality they turned up as the latest dog and pony show at the semi-detached, floated the prospect of making a bit of cash off the story, then were told to fuck off.

In this telling they were the last and only line of defence the family had against ghosts and demons etc.. Very much a rehash of The Conjuring but with fake cockney accents splashed about.

In fact the scariest thing about the movie was the insane liberties they took with the house itself. A three bed semi council house, expanded ludicrously out to American midwest farmhouse proportions. Two corridors upstairs, a wood burning cooking range. A basement!! Forget a demon, they've had the minotaur from House of Leaves round.

Anyway, it hit the beats, looked fine and was had a couple of predictable jump scares, but hardly the scariest thing to come out of 2016.

A film that could have been a TikTok sketch a year or so later.

Criterion Challenge 2025
4. Watch a film that would be your first choice in the Criterion Closet
Spine #1136

I'm empty. There's nothing inside me.

I don't know where to start with this film. I chose this as my theoretical closet pick and I'm glad I did.

From the 40 minute introduction to the main character's backstory, to the moments of pained silence, every moment is a carefully constructed, intricate interaction.

At the two hour mark, I was reflecting on how the lingering shots of life going by and of words unsaid exemplified 間 (ma), the Japanese concept of negative space enhancing the whole. At that moment we get the line 'I'm empty. There's nothing inside me.'. Stunning.

what the fuck is this?

I don't know how there isn't a memo going around universities about Cunk. Do they perhaps think they can reason their way around anecdotes about her ex, Sean? Time will never tell.

More of the same as usual, but longer. Like that big Snickers you can't buy any more.

Criterion Challenge 2025
36. AAPI Filmmakers
Spine #277

I'll be flipping through a KS3 copy of Henry IV in search of narcoleptic twink River Phoenix.

On the Ted > Johnny Mnemonic > Neo > John Wick > Johnny Silverhand Reeves timeline, I place this as the transition from Ted to Mnemonic.

I can see why this is a cult classic and enjoyed the dips from Fisher King to modern stage production of Shakespeare. Could have used more of the Dutch boy guy.

Criterion Challenge 2025
15. 1960s
Spine #140

This film has to be the most metatextual creation before or after it for quite some time. At some points I tried counting my way out of a given scene, surfacing from the Director's fantasy, through a memory, up into cinematic reality, through the screen and up to Fellini's lived experience. Like a complicated Italian Inception.

Guido is a style icon I will never match, but we do share a talent for almost competitive procrastination.

I know this one is going to be richer on the second watch.

Criterion Challenge 2025
5. Great Soundtracks
Spine #1227

The film that I like to think sank my 2024 challenge. I finished the last 40 minutes months after starting, through gritted teeth.

I had an absolutely miserable time watching this film. The pacing is weird and Cruise is painful to watch.

This bargain-basement Ferris Bueller's Day Off has three redeeming features that have earned it an extra half star:
- A really very good soundtrack
- I now get that bit in Love Actually with the Prime Minister dancing in his pants
- Rebecca De Mornay

Criterion Challenge 2025
3. Directed by Robert Altman
Spine #265

So what do you wanna be?
I wanna be nothing.

Quite the parade of irredeemable pieces of shit.

I guess they all sort of intersected but not really in an interesting way, sort of watchable though considering it's nearly 3 hour runtime.

Incredible piece of cinema front to back – unpredictable story, beautifully shot with a great soundtrack.

Certainly a millennial nostalgia kick – I sequestering myself away to watch Buffy, not having a mobile phone, and internalising bigotry for transgressing gender lines.

I think I'm just about the same age as the main character in the timeline, which was probably the most I can, thankfully, relate to.

While the life this man is absolutely dedicated to extending forever seems completely miserable, I can’t help but feel that given the cohort of divorced online multimillionaires turning into neo-Nazis, this guy is (probably!) harmless.

Deluded and not helpful to anyone else really, but if this is how he chooses to spend his functionally unlimited money: fine.

Documentary competently made if without any personality, viewpoint or flavour.

Everyone lives in room with interior design more expensive than my house while also looking like shit.

The film? Shakespearean.

Criterion Challenge 2025
2. Watch a film from the year you were born
Spine #977

Frank has the most fucked Spotify Wrapped of 1986.

A unique experience of neither being able to watch nor look away. A horror in the guise of a mystery crime thriller.

This film felt like synthesised psychosis. I loved it.

Criterion Challenge 2025
1. Watch a film from the CC40 Boxset
Spine #654

"Come on Duke, let's go do those crimes"
"Yeah. Yeah! Let's go get sushi and I'll pay"

The most Cronenberg non-Cronenberg in the Criterion Collection.

Features guy I love to see, Harry Dean Stanton, and some of the best bad script writing I've seen.

Should have been called Exposition Island.

Some funny lines, which like a dream are difficult to recall, only the way they made me feel remain.

Like someone clomped together every message board fan theory about Lost once some sort of copyright had expired.

I’ve learned so many old timey slurs.

They just made a million of these things after The Godfather, huh? I am not complaining.

Watched on Friday December 27, 2024.

Tiny Tim always loved watching the ducks on the river.

Miss Piggy you have slain me and I sit here, weeping and in shreds.

The only Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffer t that doesn't feel like it's going at a snail's (and a whale's?) pace.

Surprisingly good fun, Die Hard meets The Santa Clause.

There was one thing that stuck in my throat: The first time we meet our Father Christmas he's in Bristol, England. Nothing about this setting looks at all like Bristol. The bar is American style and populated with Londoners at best. The skyline is anonymous British city, could be London could be Cardiff.

Someone noticed they called a camera the Polaroid Spectra and just made a whole film about it.

A Christmas film Hollywood made about itself.

haha alien horse

Somehow with the less annoying of the two sisters, this is a worse film. It might be because it's more formulaic, literally the path of least resistance on the Hallmark flowchart: Female -> business owner -> from the big city comes home to -> take a break -> falls for high school flame -> who is a handyman -> they need to renovate -> the local cinema.

Actually I think it's because of the dogged obsession these women and by extension this town, have with Dead Uncle Dave. There are more scenes mentioning his death than there are acknowledging it's Christmas.

At least this one was a bit pacier, but I think I would have preferred to never have watched either.

A film so smooth and devoid of conflict, or really anything interesting happening it's a form of outsider art.

Without knowing if there was an order to watching these, I saw this one mostly first, stopping 30 mins before the end as I found myself slipping into a coma. I watched the next the next day and finished this one the day after that. Probably the strangest order.

Anyway, as bland a message as it is, it's the signal that interests me. Why were two near identical films produced at the same time? Were they perhaps one big film the producer realised could be split into two? Is there a secret third film we could piece together from the cutting room floor?

All these questions and more kept me distracted from the most annoying of the two sisters. She was a lot and being around these sorts of people is exhausting.

One solid complaint I have about this one in particular, is the role the food bank plays. We never see a single food bank . We never grapple with the fact that their necessity is a travesty. Fuck Frank's magnanimous donation of a publicly announced unspecified amount, tax the fucker.

Interstellar for mental illness.

I would hate my Manchurian activation phrase to be my name said three times like I'm Beetlejuice.

A lot more sci-fi than I was expecting!

Godfather: Power creep.

Watched Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone

More films’ second act should involve a French Warhammer dad.

I love the film Batman: Motorcycles (2022).

I really hope Joker 2 didn't fuck it for us to get some more films in this series.

All the films I’ve seen for the first time, during the year of 2025, ranked by how much I like them, not by how good I think they are.

1. Drive My Car
2. I Saw the TV Glow
3. Conclave
4. The Circus
5. Blue Velvet
6. Renfield
7. 8½
8. The Two Popes
9. Repo Man
10. The Pope's Exorcist

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films in which someone utters the unnatural line 'What is this place?'

• X-Men

  Logan takes a beat. He looks at Xavier, the other mutants, standing in this plush office.

  LOGAN
  What is this place?

• Time Trap
• A Cure for Wellness
• The Secret World of Arrietty
• Fractured

Films that I’ve started but haven’t yet finished. Sometimes because they’re bad and I can’t stand any more, more often because I got distracted, or had to stop and forgot to pick it back up.

Mostly added from memory for the above reason.

1. El Conde
2. Paddington
3. Earwig and the Witch
4. You Were Never Really Here
5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
6. 24 Hour Party People
7. Attack the Block
8. 10 Cloverfield Lane
9. Chicken Run
10. The Rocketeer

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films I've seen at the cinema (I think and in retrospect mostly).

• Fantasia

  Watched at The Odeon on Whiteladies Road in Bristol (before it was an Everyman, before it was a bingo hall) with my parents circa 1993.

• The Dark Knight
• Inception
• Stop Making Sense
• Drive
• Ghostbusters
• Joker
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
• The Batman
• Top Gun: Maverick

...plus 36 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Häxan
• Safety Last!
• The ion of Joan of Arc
• Vampyr
• The Most Dangerous Game
• The Lower Depths
• The Great Dictator
• Citizen Kane
• I Married a Witch
• Day of Wrath

...plus 173 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films in which someone utters something unnatural along the lines of 'you can do this' or 'don't do this'.

• X-Men

  ROGUE
  No. Please don't do this. Please.

  Magneto looks up as if suddenly realizing that she's there. He makes his decision.

• The Conjuring 2

  “I have to do this”

• Blue Velvet
• Arrival
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• I, Daniel Blake
• Under the Skin
• Spirited Away
• Do the Right Thing
• Antichrist
• Stop Making Sense
• Primer

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My list for the Criterion 2025 Challenge. 

All of these were be a first-time watch from The Criterion Collection.

My lists for 2024, 2023. and 2022.

• Repo Man

  1. Watch a film from the CC40 Boxset
  Spine #654
  ed

  Watched 2025-01-08

• Blue Velvet

  2. Watch a film from the year you were born
  Spine #977
  ed

  Watched 2025-01-14

• Short Cuts

  3. Directed by Robert Altman
  Spine #265
  ed

  Watched 2025-01-22

• Drive My Car

  4. Watch a film that would be your first choice in the Criterion Closet
  Spine #1136

• Risky Business

  5. Great Soundtracks
  Spine #1227
  ed

  Watched 2025-01-23

• On the Waterfront

  6. John Turturro’s Adventures in Moviegoing
  Spine #647

• The Circus

  7. 1920s
  Spine #996

• Godzilla vs. Biollante

  8. Watch a film that will be added to the physical collection in 2025
  Spine #1254

• M

  9. 1930s
  Spine #30

• Salesman

  10. Andrew Garfield’s Closet Picks
  Spine #122

...plus 39 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Primer
2. Spirited Away
3. Howl's Moving Castle
4. Antichrist
5. Lady Vengeance
6. The Dark Knight
7. Lost in Translation
8. Moon
9. Where the Wild Things Are
10. Punch-Drunk Love

1. Harakiri
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
4. Charade
5. Dragon Inn
6. Easy Rider
7. Night of the Living Dead
8. Cléo from 5 to 7
9. La Jetée
10. Oliver!

1. The Godfather
2. Daguerréotypes
3. Blazing Saddles
4. Alien
5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
6. Young Frankenstein
7. Life of Brian
8. A Clockwork Orange
9. Gates of Heaven
10. Robin Hood

1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
2. Interstellar
3. Whiplash
4. Arrival
5. Inception
6. The Death of Stalin
7. The Handmaiden
8. I, Daniel Blake
9. The Grand Budapest Hotel
10. Under the Skin

1. My Neighbor Totoro
2. Do the Right Thing
3. Labyrinth
4. Blade Runner
5. Akira
6. Stop Making Sense
7. Scanners
8. Aliens
9. A Room with a View
10. A Grand Day Out

• Night on Earth
• Repo Man

1. Good Will Hunting
2. Heat
3. Rushmore
4. The Muppet Christmas Carol
5. The Matrix
6. The Shawshank Redemption
7. GoodFellas
8. Schindler's List
9. Princess Mononoke
10. A Brighter Summer Day

Films about or take place around Christmas, added to when seen for the first time after starting this list around any Christmas time.

• Love Actually
• It's a Wonderful Life
• The Muppet Christmas Carol
• Die Hard
• Die Hard 2
• Operation Christmas Drop
• The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special
• Falling for Christmas
• El Camino Christmas
• Olaf's Frozen Adventure

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All the films I’ve seen for the first time, during the year of 2024, ranked by how much I like them, not by how good I think they are.

1. Dune: Part Two
2. Harakiri
3. The Godfather
4. Léon: The Professional
5. Moonrise Kingdom
6. Cure
7. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
8. Punch-Drunk Love
9. The Godfather Part II
10. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

...plus 57 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My list for the Criterion 2024 Challenge. 

All of these were be a first-time watch from The Criterion Collection.

Sad to say, I failed this challenge – I got stuck on Tom Cruise's Risky Business – a miserable, twisted Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

My lists for 2023 and 2022.

• Night on Earth

  1. Spine #351-450
  Spine #401
  Criterion Channel

  Watched on 2024-01-01

• A Brief History of Time

  2. Spine #601-700
  Spine #699
  Criterion Channel

  Watched on 2024-01-07

• Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

  3. Watch a film with a rating of 4.3 or higher
  Spine #432
  Criterion Channel

  Watched on 2024-01-31

• La Llorona

  4. First film in your watchlist
  Spine #1156
  Criterion Channel

  Watched on 2024-02-06

• And Everything Is Going Fine

  5. Most recently added film in your watchlist
  Spine #617
  YouTube

  Watched on 2024-02-07

• A Brighter Summer Day

  6. Longest runtime in your watchlist
  Spine #804
  Criterion Channel

  Watched on 2024-02-17

• Moonrise Kingdom

  7. Most popular film in your watchlist
  Spine #776
  Netflix (VPN via South Korea)

  Watched on 2024-03-24

• Pixote

  8. Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project
  Spine #1047
  Criterion Channel

• Police Story

  9. Criterion Staff Picks
  Spine #971
  Criterion Channel

  Watched on 2024-04-05

• Harakiri

  10. New York Film Festival Favorites
  Spine #302
  Criterion Channel

  Watched on 2024-09-19

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Rock
• The Railway Man
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch
• Jennifer's Body
• Dr. No
• The Raid
• The Foreigner
• A Few Good Men
• All About My Mother
• The Power of the Dog

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You’ve seen this list before

• Palm Springs
• Groundhog Day
• Source Code
• Edge of Tomorrow
• Happy Death Day
• Happy Death Day 2U
• The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
• The Endless

1. Blade Runner
2. The Road
3. Akira
4. Looper
5. Mad Max: Fury Road
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Battle Royale
8. Videodrome
9. Snowpiercer
10. A.I. Artificial Intelligence

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Aguirre, the Wrath of God
• Nosferatu the Vampyre
• Woyzeck
• Fitzcarraldo
• Cobra Verde
• My Best Fiend

1. Do the Right Thing

   Incredible film for its cast seemingly before many of them made it big, captures the feeling of a long hot summer in a city. I've seen a lot of thrillers but the twist on this just came absolutely out of nowhere.

2. Like Someone in Love

   I think about this film a lot. It made me feel more like a voyeur than anything else I've seen. The sort of culture shock Lost in Translation could only dream of.

3. Close-Up

   Explaining this tightly knotted film to anyone, as I have tried to do, is near impossible to do justice to it. Where film becomes reality becomes film.

4. Seven Samurai

   The best action film before the 80s, hands down.

5. Daguerréotypes

   Agnès Varda became a hero to me about 10 minutes into this film. I felt like a fly on a wall transported to a time and a place I could never have expected to love so much.

6. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
7. 12 Angry Men
8. I, Daniel Blake
9. Chungking Express
10. A Room with a View

All the films I’ve watched for the first time, in order of how much I liked them.

• 12 Angry Men
• This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
• Thief
• Three Thousand Years of Longing
• Great Expectations
• Dragon Inn
• Triangle of Sadness
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
• Memories of Murder

...plus 105 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

First time taking part in a Letterboxd challenge! All of these were a first-time watch from The Criterion Collection.

Completed 2022-12-31.

Criterion 2022 Challenge

• Betty Blue

  1. Watch a movie from the year you were born.

• Safety Last!

  2. 1920s

• The Most Dangerous Game

  3. 1930s

• Citizen Kane

  4. 1940s

• Some Like It Hot

  5. 1950s

• Onibaba

  6. 1960s

• Fist of Fury

  7. 1970s

• Do the Right Thing

  8. 1980s

• The Rock

  9. 1990s

• Old Joy

  10. 2000s

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My list for the Criterion 2023 Challenge.

All of these were a first-time watch from The Criterion Collection.

I took part last year too.

Started: 2023-01-02
Completed: 2023-12-28

• Thief

  1. Random Number Generator (691)

• Man Bites Dog

  2. Made in Belgium

• Dragon Inn

  3. Made in Taiwan

• Crash

  4. Made in Canada

• Colossal Youth

  5. Made in Portugal

• Okja

  6. Animals in the Collection

• The Double Life of Véronique

  7. Films To Fall Asleep To

• Space Is the Place

  8. Black Music Films

• Shaft

  9. Black Lives Collection

• Before Sunrise

  10. Heartbreak Heaven: Films to Watch When You’re Questioning Love

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Spree
• Sorry to Bother You
• Brazil
• Joker
• Watermelon Man
• I, Daniel Blake

These are all films that I’ve yet to see, but am saving to watch with my son. I expect that he’ll want to watch them all many, many times.

• Shaun the Sheep Movie
• My Life as a Zucchini
• The Aristocats
• Lilo & Stitch
• Finding Dory
• The Jungle Book
• Astro Boy
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
• The Secret Life of Pets
• Coco

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All the films I’ve watched for the first time, in order of how much I liked them.

1. Arrival
2. Everything Everywhere All at Once
3. Do the Right Thing
4. Ex Machina
5. I, Daniel Blake
6. Citizen Kane
7. Alien
8. Dead Poets Society
9. Antichrist
10. GoodFellas

...plus 153 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Face/Off
• Fantastic Four
• The Net

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
2. The French Dispatch
3. Isle of Dogs
4. Rushmore
5. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. Fantastic Mr. Fox
7. The Royal Tenenbaums

Films watched for the first time, ranked.

1. Whiplash
2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
3. Feels Good Man
4. The Handmaiden
5. Bo Burnham: Inside
6. Dune
7. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
8. Heat
9. Rushmore
10. Dave Made a Maze

...plus 145 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Sometimes I read books and those books get turned into films.

• The Shining
• Night Watch
• The Hunger Games
• The Da Vinci Code
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Everyone has a different rank, this one is mine.

1. Spirited Away
2. Howl's Moving Castle
3. Castle in the Sky
4. Princess Mononoke
5. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
6. My Neighbor Totoro
7. Ponyo
8. When Marnie Was There
9. Porco Rosso
10. Pom Poko

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

One of the least prominent features of Letterboxd is the world map showing you the distribution of production across the world for the films you’ve watched. 

Embarrassingly there are nearly 1,000 of my films produced in the US and none in say, Cambodia – which is why I have Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider in my watchlist now.

Films picked generally for their availability to stream on services I already subscribe to, so British Netflix or Mubi. 

My map won’t be filled in with at least one film per country any time soon, but in the meantime I’ve found a cool looking Mongolian film about a young girl who hunts with eagles.

• Dukhtar
• Komola Rocket
• Godard Mon Amour
• Matangi / Maya / M.I.A.
• The Wounded Angel
• The Night Comes for Us
• The Eagle Huntress
• The Boss: Anatomy of a Crime
• Journey to Greenland
• Import/Export

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.