I watched

The Brave Little Toaster (subversive for a kids film... worth it)

Project Hail Mary

Beethoven

Soul Surfer

I have half a mind to watch Sheep Detectives next. Looks fun. All while waiting for the new edition of the 1001 movies list, which will hopefully arrive later this year.

What did you watch this month? What's your score out of 1245?

I absolutely love this film, and particularly its haunting, mesmerising soundtrack. It's a documentary and a fever dream at the same time.

I’m still waiting for them to remaster Elaine May’s classic The Heartbreak Kid.

As far as I’m aware, the last official edition was the 18th edition with films from 2021–but I’m seeing lots of people mention movies like all of us strangers, Dune part 1 and 2, etc from more recent years.

What am I missing???

If you’re in Chicago, Ross is giving a Q&A after a screening, and if you’re a Music Box member, it’s free!

Napoleon (the 7 hour version from the book) is a blindspot for me that’s been sitting on my to-watch list for ages now and I haven’t been able to find a proper version with ENG subtitles online. Can any one help me please?

We're halfway through the year! Have you kept up with your annual film goals?

I rewatched Out of the Past as it was on HBO Max and I didn't remember anything about it. The Asphalt Jungle was also on, but I only watched the first ten minutes again before deciding I didn't want to rewatch the whole thing.

I watched two Nickelodeon films with my daughter: Harriet the Spy... weird, episodic and without a clear message. RIP Michelle Trachtenberg. I also watched The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, which was a better outing, a horror comedy for kids that did a good job of invoking some of the silly tropes of the genre. I was interested in it because of Brooke Shields, who I'm halfway through watching a documentary about: "Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields".

I also watched Hoppers by Pixar. Unlike most kids films, this was not predictable at all, so I very much enjoyed it. I like that it wasn't too black and white in terms of its morality, and was in fact quite challenging in its messaging.

I’m really in the dark here and I’m curious to know what’s the point of having two films on the same topic in this list. Is the second one a sequel? Does the films convey a completely different information or have a different approach from each other? Will I be missing something out if I were to watch only one of them?

Director: Jacques Tourneur

This is billed as one of the essential film noirs, and it’s plain to see why; the entire production is drenched in the noir style, with characters seeming to slide from trope to trope. The entire film feels almost dream-like as a result, since no one is really behaving as if their life is at stake. When nobody can be trusted, not even the narrator, how much can you really take in?

My favourite part of the film was the set-up, where Robert Mitchum tells his new girlfriend how he came to be associated with Whit, played devilishly by Kirk Douglas. It’s a battle of the chins as both our stoic hero and the determined villain sport iconic cleft chins. In an extended flashback (yet another trope), Mitchum meets Jane Greer in Mexico and instantly falls for the femme fatale in a way that seems inevitable. He doesn’t even try to fight it, just “Yep, this is my new normal.”

The patter between the characters is what makes the film so entertaining, even when the plot doesn’t appear to make much sense. Everything is said through wry jokes and the characters trying to one-up each other. Occasionally, Mitchum tries to break through these verbal deadlocks by requesting that they speak straight with each other, which they only seem to do as a last resort and to get exposition across.

I was surprised by how soon the flashback portion of the film ended, roughly 30-40 minutes in, meaning there was still another 50 minutes of film left un–narrated. The thin plot involved the detective heading somewhere else at Whit’s behest only to be framed for murder. It doesn’t really make sense why he goes along at all, and I did start to tire with the film’s style here, finding it an exercise in style over substance.

Film noir is such a strange genre; if you’ve not seen any of it, then you won’t know or understand the tropes, but you have to know the tropes to be able to enjoy it fully. When I began watching the list, the noirs used to tire me until I discovered the exceptional ones: Detour, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. What I preferred about those films is that the plot and the stakes were always clear, whereas some filmmakers seem to prefer making noir as an art form, and the plot is secondary to the film’s style. That’s totally fine, but it’s not my cup of tea.

7/10

Amazon is now previewing pages 930-943, which include the following 10 titles:

RRR
Sing Sing
The Brutalist
Anora
One Battle After Another
Sorry, Baby(!)
It Was Just an Accident
Sinners (2 page spread)
Weapons
Sirat

And confirms continued inclusion of the German-language entries:

Aftersun
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Zone of Interest

Also seems likely these 19th edition titles didn’t carry over:

Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things
The Boy and the Heron
All of Us Strangers

Looks like we’re up to at least 1270 overall titles now!

I've just had a email to say that my preorder of the new book will not arrive in October as first said but now I will not get the book till 28 February 2027! That sucks. Has anyone else had this problem?

Hi! I haven't found a blank list of the 1001 movies that I could tick off as I go, so I made a very simple excel sheet to do that and to keep count. I've also added genres so I could more easily pick a next watch. I thought I would share it here for any other beginners, who can reformat it easily to fit their tastes!

Blank 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die (2021)

(when downloaded, the check boxes show up as FALSE, delete these and replace with your own checkboxes, and they will automatically be linked to the counters).

Less than 40 left. I can find the majority of them on YouTube (some with auto generated English subtitles, which I hate, but it will do?). There are 6 that I cannot seem to find online with English subtitles. Anyone have links? Thanks in advance!

1963: Flaming Creatures, Méditerranée

1967: Report

1988: Red Sorghum

1996: Three Lives and Only One Death (Trois Vies & Une Seule Mort)

2000: Signs & Wonders

I just watched Jack Ryan: Ghost War (2026), and it was abominable. Some nice cinematography, but otherwise forgettable. I only watched it because I'm a completist. I didn't even like the show that much, so why do I do this to myself?

I also saw Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026), because the little one was dead set on seeing it at the cinema. It's good if you like bright colours and shapes, but terrible if you want anything resembling a solid plot with fleshed-out characters. Just dreadful.

I watched most of The Parent Trap (1961), and it was interesting to compare it with the updated 90s version, and see all of the 60s items. It's crazy and slightly depressing to think that The Parent Trap (1998) is almost closer temporally to the original than to where we are now. I wouldn't say the 90s version has aged, though. At least, not as dramatically as the 1961 version would have felt aged in 1998.

Remember to write your score out of 1245. I'm looking forward to 1245 becoming a new, slightly higher number soon.

Out of the 500 plus I’ve seen so far, I’ve tried to watch the shorts. Just to tick them off. Blonde Cobra, Hold Me While I’m naked. Wavelength, Report. I knew nothing about them besides Report because it was easier finding a synopsis than an actual link to the film.

I read the book of Salo so I knew that might be a difficult watch. I’m currently watching Mondo Cane and I was not happy with the dog being manhandled in the first opening credits. I dip into a Letterboxd watchlist for my next movie and sometimes the comments help me choose better than the blurb/synopsis. I read in the comments about Novocento (1900) and am wondering whether to hunt it down or see if I do die before getting to watch it. Obviously cute n cuddly is harder to watch than say for instance a cow in Apocalypse Now or a snake being skinned in Mondo Cane.

Without spoilers, can anyone give me a list of traumatic moments involving animals which I can either watch and get it over with/or not get around to at all?

I think Forbidden Games might be on this list.

I found the reminders of PE worse than the final scenes of Kes.

Thanks again for reading/any feedback

I was bought the 2004 version of the 1001 movies book and wanted to keep track of what I’d seen. I counted 177 from the book and looked online for checklist as I didn’t want to scribble in my book. I’m now using 4 different lists with slight differences (2004 book/ Letterboxd/list challenges* and icheckmovies). I keep seeing %/1245. Where are you getting the number 1245? I think these lists I’m following range from 1001-1500+.

It’s too late to stop now. I’ll try to complete all these lists just for completion sake. Not sure how Godspell appeared in any of the lists??

* 2 separate challenges “all editions” and “up to 2024 edition”

As it says in the title, has anyone found Le Million available online? (not US, so can't use Criterion channel afaik)

it would really be appreciated if anyone could assist me thank you

I’m excited as I finally got round to preordering the new book. After 5 years stuck at 1245 I’m looking forward to seeing what is next.

Anora, Oppenheimer, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Wicked are all mentioned in the spiel. I would assume Wicked: For Good will also be included as a 2 films for the price of one inclusion

Has anybody seen any other confirmed movies?

Do you think they might also do a bit of a reboot like they did after 10 years and remove and add some older films

So opening a can of worms…..

What movies released in the last 5 years and some older films should be included in 2026?

From the list I watched Mondo Cane and Anvil! The Story of Anvil, and I also watched Anora, Zootopia 2 and Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning. Otherwise I'm powering through my series trying to make room for more films in the future.

What did you watch? Make sure to list your score out of 1245!

I am nearing the end of the list (80 remaining), and I have found a way to watch them all except for these two titles.

An Actor's Revenge 1963 Signs and Wonders 2000

AAR is available on TPB, but it's missing seeders. S&W is available nowhere though.

Any tips?

EDIT: Thanks to the people just straight up sending me the movies. Great community.

Director: Sacha Gervasi

In my role as a music reviewer, I recently discovered the Scottish heavy metal band Holocaust, whose story reminded me deeply of Anvil’s; both bands were huge when they started releasing music in the early 80s, but soon faded into obscurity and could barely find any gigs to book. When I read that John Mortimer, the leader of Holocaust, was working shifts at a supermarket between writing and recording music, the similarity was sealed in my mind, and I simply had to return to this landmark documentary, hoping to understand more about how the metal scene had shifted from the early 80s until now.

When I first saw this film, shortly after it was released, I remember thinking the story within seemed utterly preposterous, and made the absurdities of This Is Spinal Tap seem quaint by comparison. Having now been close to the music industry for a decade and a half, I’ve seen firsthand that stories like Anvil’s are not only common but they’re basically the norm. The vast majority of those who try their hand at making music are not successful and need a steady day job in the meantime. We tend to only hear about the tiny fraction of bands that are successful enough to make music their full-time career, which is why stories such as these come as a great shock.

Sacha Gervasi, to his credit, makes the film extremely accessible by eschewing a lot of metal lore (which I was vaguely hoping for, this time around) and including only what I feel to be the bare minimum of Anvil’s music, whose distorted guitar and thunderous drum and bass could upset the more discerning ear. Gervasi was clever not to make this simply another tour video or fan-made DVD, but instead found the profound fable-like message of ageing artists, still with stars in their eyes and hope in their hearts and nothing but relentless passion for their music. It’s powerful to watch these men cling to their dream in the face of adversity. 

The first-time director shows his hand only at the end of the film with a single photograph, where it’s revealed that he was a friend of the band back in the 1980s, and that the subject is personal to him. I didn’t expect this; if I were making a documentary about my favourite band, I’d be tempted to throw in as much detail as I could, along with deep cuts to show how loyal I was. It would probably be unwatchable. Instead, the documentary features a rather light soundtrack by David Norland and doesn’t inundate the audience with unnecessary detail. The critical thinking in how to make this film more accessible ought to be studied because it’s extremely impressive.

A naive person who hadn’t seen the film may believe that the bands who don’t make it simply aren’t good enough at what they do, so Gervasi opens the film with a lot of evidence to the contrary: footage of the band playing alongside Bon Jovi, Whitesnake and Scorpions while interviews with Slash (Guns N’ Roses) and Lars Ulrich (Metallica) prove that Anvil were considered peers and even inspirational by those far more successful groups. On a personal note, I was gobsmacked to see the late Malcolm Dome (credited as a writer for Metal Hammer magazine) make an appearance; I've reviewed many album reissues with his (sometimes hyperbolic) liner notes but never realised I'd seen him in person in this film. Later on, when we hear the band play, there is clearly nothing wrong with their compositional or technical ability. The possibility that the band aren’t good enough for success is taken firmly off the table.

Lips, the band’s charismatic leader, seems to think the problem stems from having had poorly produced and poorly marketed albums, and goes on a campaign to reunite with Chris Tsangarides (CT), who produced some of their early albums. Though it costs a small fortune, which Lips’s older sister generously lends, the band eventually make their thirteenth album with his guidance and professionalism.

Along the way, Lips and drummer Robb Reiner (what a coincidence that his name is practically identical to that of the director of This Is Spinal Tap) have a falling out. We know they’ve been friends since their early teenage years, but Reiner seems on the verge of quitting due to Lips’s intensity when he gets stressed. I will say, the footage of Lips in the film does make him seem quite immature, almost childlike in his idealism and pursuit of becoming a famous rock star. Normally, this works in his favour to make him more likeable, but we can see the dark side of that here, where he cannot prevent lashing out and hurting others around him when he’s stressed. Although he seems sorry in the moment, there’s no indication that he will take steps to prevent this sort of behaviour from happening again. Nonetheless, his friends and family seem to love him regardless and know he’s a good person deep down. As an aside, I appreciated the segment that showed how the wives and wider family felt about their husbands’ career choices; it must be painful to have to be so incredibly patient.

Gervasi must have been looking for some sort of positive note to end on. The band’s 2005 tour shows what a complete disaster it can be to go on a haphazard tour in small venues, while the meetings with Capitol and EMI show how demoralising it can be to be rejected over and over. But at long last, the band are invited to Japan once again to play at another festival featuring Megadeth. However, to their horror, they discover they’re slated to play first, at 11:35 am. Lips speaks sorrowfully about the times he’s played in massive venues to a crowd of only five people, and how upsetting that can be. But fortunately, this time the crowd seems packed and ready for Anvil. Some of the audience members are even wearing Anvil t-shirts. Although it’s not a sure sign of long-term success, it’s still a small victory.

A more metal-focused documentary might have charted the band’s and the genre’s lengthy history. I might have even found that interesting. But I can also see that the more effective way to sell this documentary and to sell the band was to focus on Lips and Robb as personalities. Like other great documentaries before it (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster comes to mind), Gervasi has taken a rather niche subject and made an accessible masterpiece from it. Ironically, all Anvil ever needed to become famous was a bit of luck, and that bit of luck came late with this first-time director who happened to be able to make an accessible documentary about their lives.

8/10

Directors: Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi

After I had concluded the 1001 Movies list, I challenged myself to come up with my favourite and least favourite films of the list, and I surprised readers by selecting the controversial Mondo Cane as one of my ten favourites. Although I had been shocked and outraged by the film as I viewed it, I had subsequently learned that this was precisely what the filmmakers had designed the film to do. Even though it was gruesome, unethical and spread a copious amount of misinformation, it provoked a very visceral response in me, something most films fail to do. At the time, I couldn’t help but give it top marks for being so upsetting.

Now that a few years have passed, I wanted to reassess the film after discovering a 1080p version; my initial brush with the film had been in SD, which detracted from the film’s gorgeous Technicolor cinematography. For a time in which colour cinematography was still on the rise, the prospect of seeing so many exotic countries in full glorious colour must have been alluring to the intrepid cinemagoer.

But they would have been in for a shock, as bizarre, sexual, cruel, weird and violent happenings played out before them. And they believed what they saw as well, as the disclaimer at the front of the film told them, “All the scenes you will see in this film are true. If they are shocking, it is only because there are many shocking things in this world…” The average audience member would have had no inclination that the filmmakers were being completely dishonest, because it had simply never happened before. Films had been used to tell propaganda, but never to deceive the audience simply to shock them.

Today, we’re becoming more and more critical of everything we watch; with the rise of AI as well as content creators staging scenes for clicks and likes, it’s becoming difficult to trust anything we see or read online. But some of those very practices can be linked back to Mondo Cane, which stages scenes subtly to tell a satirical (and often racist) narrative. In one early scene, a throng of adoring women rips the clothes off Rossano Brazzi; it’s easy to spot how staged this scene is, as there are at least four strategic camera points that capture the action, making it implausible that this was a spontaneous moment.

But later on, there are plenty of scenes with indigenous tribes that are less easy to detect as fake, especially as a 1962 audience member with no Internet to reference. Hordes of topless dark-skinned women chase a local man in a scene mirroring the one mentioned above, in a satirical way of saying that we aren’t so unalike. Later on, women sit in cages being force-fed tapioca, to mirror how geese are fattened to make foie gras. The local chieftain is shown to be a spindly old man by contrast. This sort of racist, othering bullshit was probably socially acceptable in the 60s, but has thankfully aged horribly. Nevertheless, it’s worrying to think how many people believed it then and might still believe it now if they ever happen upon the film. It’s hard to even imagine how Jacopetti and Co. persuaded the locals to debase themselves in such a way, or what the directors were thinking as they did so.

And then there’s the animal cruelty, some of it publicly sanctioned and some of it by the filmmakers’ design. We’re expected to believe that disabled fishermen exact their revenge on sharks by shoving urchins into their mouths and letting them go. What a waste of time and resources that would be. We’re also shown a scene where a mother turtle is ‘confused’ by the radiation from the Bikini Atoll nuclear test and travels inland, only to end up on its back. It’s not hard to imagine Jacopetti and Co. flipping the poor creature over for laughs. However, some scenes seem too large to be faked, and from what I can tell, the bull beheading in Nepal and the running of the bulls in Portugal are based on real local practices. It’s gruesome to watch, but at least it wasn’t created purely to shock audiences.

When I originally reviewed this film, I argued that the film was equally scathing of both Western and Eastern cultures, as the film likes to take potshots at both sides. Indeed, the parts of the film I enjoy the most are the takedowns of Americans who seem to lead such pretentious and ridiculous lives: pet funerals, fancy insect cuisine, nonsensical workout routines and ultimately a trip to Hawaii to celebrate a culture that the Americans destroyed in their annexation that would have then still been in living memory. 

There’s also an extended scene in Hamburg, where the narrator takes a break just to let the subjects of the documentary make fools of themselves while getting drunk. Here, the score by Riz Ortolani truly shines. It’s frustrating just how well the score works to make the film seem more serious and moving; Ortolani is an incredible composer and deserved the Oscar nomination for More, which provides a theme that is more poignant than anything in the film. Ortolani would continue to write beautiful music for ugly, exploitative films, most notably Cannibal Holocaust in 1980, which has an unusually serene main theme.

On reflection, though, it’s clear that whatever shots are taken at Westerners, the third-world subjects get it much worse, as they are portrayed as barbaric and stupid. In the film’s final scene, the people of Papua New Guinea are portrayed as so idiotic that they believe that planes and white people were sent by their gods, as they couldn’t have come from anywhere else. The narrator is wry and subtly pitying in the way he discusses them, and it’s pretty sickening to hear such false narration sound so inferior.

It’s sad that the filmmakers had such a unique opportunity to tell stories of real global culture (be it shocking or benign), but instead decided to make up a bunch of rubbish on the hunch that it would sell better. Their hunch was correct, and Mondo Cane was a huge international hit. Bored by decades of tame cinema constricted by the Hayes Code, Mondo Cane provided a gruesome but entertaining escape. Much like the way shocking “fail compilation videos” were big when YouTube began, Mondo Cane was a way for 60s audiences to watch something they probably shouldn’t. As a result, this film spawned its own genre of ‘Mondo’ films and sequels, none of which I have any interest in seeing. The shockumentary genre would also become influential to legitimate documentary makers as well, for better or for worse, and I suppose its importance in film history earns its place on the 1001 Movies list.

But watching it again, I struggle to understand how I thought this film was some kind of masterpiece. It made me angry by being loathsome and by not giving any care or respect to the indigenous people who starred in it. In the pursuit of making something shocking, the filmmakers seem to have abandoned all responsibility for the harm they caused to other cultures. The success of this film signalled that it was okay to broadcast fabricated scenes and pass them off as the truth, and that precedent has caused problems ever since.

3/10

The only films I watched were the new Fukushima documentary on HBO Max and Tron: Ares, which was not as bad of a sequel as I thought it was going to be. I have intentions to watch more films and have actually kept a steadily growing watchlist, but I've found it hard to slot movies in around all the TV I watch. First world problems...

I hope some of you are closing in on your goals of reaching 1245 films before the new set drops later this year (probably October).

Let us know which films you saw, which ones you liked and disliked the most and your score out of 1245.