Wednesday, 30 April 2025

Films

I had to watch three films over the last three days to meet my monthly goals for 100 Films. I started today with... three still to go. Oops. How'd I get on?

Knight Chills (2001)

Saboteur (1942)
[#40 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
"What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...?" 2025 #4

Well, that's less than ideal. But the only one I missed was a rewatch, so it's not too bad — I can catch that up easily enough; especially as, overall, I'm ahead of target on my Challenge viewing.

Monday, 28 April 2025

Fiction

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Pages 55–83

Videos

Critical Role
2x100 Hunted at Sea
This was CR's first episode after their four-month Covid hiatus — for me, it's only been 17 days (and only that long because I watched a more recent one-shot in the interim and have been busy with other things). Hurrah for catching up years later. And hurrah for the internet achiving (almost) everything, because it means I can still watch the video announcing their return, and the one of them levelling up before this episode.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Sunday, 27 April 2025

Films

Cat People (1942)
[#39 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
Blindspot 2025 #4

Comics

Absolute Batman
#4 The Zoo Part Four by Scott Snyder & Gabriel Hernández Walta
Labelled as "part four", but a bit of an aside (with a new artist to boot) going back to the very beginnings of this iteration of Batman. Speaking of which, there's a nice interview with writer Scott Snyder that came out around the same time as this issue, talking about the thought behind and success of Absolute Batman, as well as this issue in particular.

The Uncanny X-Men
#9 Off the Leash by Gail Simone & Andrei Bressan
#10 Off the Leash Part 2 by Gail Simone & Andrei Bressan

Games

Storyteller
Another puzzle game free with Netflix — which I liked so much, I ended up finishing it today. It's not that long, but I still spent a fair bit of time with it to get through it all so quickly.

I say "all" — it says I'm 78% complete, but the remainder involves going back over completed levels to change the story and gain 'stamps'; but while there's a list of stamps to collect, it doesn't tell you which levels you can get them on, so it's a bit of a pain to second-guess and, frankly, I'm not sure I care that much.

The main game was fun, though. I'd've played more of that.

Saturday, 26 April 2025

TV

Doctor Who
41x03 The Well
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Wheel
5x10 Episode 10 [season finale; 2nd watch]
Nope, don't think I remembered a single answer.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Unusually, there's absolutely nothing to report this week! I did place some orders, but mostly pre-orders. HMV's recent changes to their officially-ended never-ending 20% discount (if you've still got codes, it still works; but not on pre-orders, and not immediately on new releases) means I didn't order any of this week's new releases until Friday. They should turn up in time for next week, at least.

Number of titles in collection: 3,521 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 985 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,536 [no change]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 464 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 8,503 [no change]
Number of films: 4,471 [no change]
Number of additional cuts: 442 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,101 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,227 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 25 April 2025

Films

Havoc (2025)
[#38 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Games

The Almost Gone

Netflix keeps pushing its "games on TV" beta at me, so I thought I'd give it a go. This seemed the best bet for both being my kinda thing and working with the controller, which is an app on your phone. I played through Act One (of five) and quite enjoyed it.

Firstly, I was right on both counts: this is a "puzzle game", but it's effectively a differently-presented point-and-click adventure game; and the phone-based controller is a little awkward to use, which is fine for a game like this, where you click around at your own pace, but would be a nightmare for something reliant on speed and precision, like a platformer or fighting game. Netflix does offer those too, but I don't think I'll be attempting them anytime soon. Heck, even with this, I'll likely play the rest on my computer (it's also available via browser) rather than have to deal with the controller app again.

Wednesday, 23 April 2025

Films

Kizumonogatari Part 2: Nekketsu (2016)
[#36 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Videos

Critical Role
Ménagerie a Trois [2nd half]
The end of the last Menagerie adventure so far, with at least one major plot thread left hanging. You'd think they might pick it back up for the actual release of Daggerheart (coming May 20th), but (as far as I'm aware) they've announced nothing of the sort. Instead, they'll be marking the release with an unconnected Daggerheart miniseries, which sounds fun in its own way, but it would be nice to close this one off.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Tuesday, 22 April 2025

Monday, 21 April 2025

TV

Doctor Who
41x02 Lux
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

The King of Kings (1927)
Streamed free by Flicker Alley for Easter Sunday (I actually started it last night and finished it this morning). Seasonally appropriate, but the first feature I've watched this year that doesn't count towards my challenge.

Kizumonogatari Part 1: Tekketsu (2016)
And another that doesn't count! But this sets up two more that will.

Videos

Critical Role
Ménagerie a Trois [1st hour]
Watch the Menagerie level up to L6 on YouTube or Beacon, which is where they start this third (and, so far, final) adventure, playing the Daggerheart open beta.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Saturday, 19 April 2025

Fiction

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Pages 38–54

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Another selection of new releases drop in, just in time for the monthly running time update.

Number of titles in collection: 3,521 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 985 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,536 [up 4]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 464 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 8,503 [up 6]
Number of films: 4,471 [up 4]
Number of additional cuts: 442 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,101 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,227 [no change]

Total running time of collection (approx.):
597 days, 16 hours, and 53 minutes.
(Up 8 days, 11 hours, and 48 minutes from last month.)

That's a pretty insane increase for just one month. I wondered if I'd done the maths wrong at first. But, thinking back, it includes things like The Saint complete DVD set, which runs well over four days by itself. Just an exceptional month, is all

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 18 April 2025

TV

Daredevil: Born Again
1x08 Isle of Joy
1x09 Straight to Hell [season finale]
Glad I had the ending spoiled, otherwise I too might've been expecting a bigger reveal. In the end, this season did feel like what it was: something salvaged from an aborted version, plus the intial act / setup for what's coming next. It'll be worth it if season two pays off.
[Watch the whole series (again) on Disney+.]

Comics

Absolute Batman
#3 The Zoo Part Three by Scott Snyder & Nick Dragotta
Didn't mean to leave it four months between issues, but time seems to be flying this year.

X-Men
#10 Brinkmanship by Jed MacKay & Netho Diaz

Games

The Case of the Golden Idol
Chapter 4, Scenes 1–2
Epilogue


Finished the whole thing in under four hours of playtime. I did perhaps rush it slightly at the end, but I wasn't invested enough to take my time over it.

Thursday, 17 April 2025

Games

The Case of the Golden Idol
Chapter 2, Scene 3
Chapter 3, Scenes 1–3

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

Games

The Case of the Golden Idol
Chapter 1, Scenes 1–3
Chapter 2, Scenes 1–2


I've wanted to play this for a while, but even when it's on sale it's never that cheap (and I've got such a backlog of games to get through, paying a high price seems daft) and I'm aware it's free with a Netflix subscription (but I don't normally have a Netflix subscription). Also, the Netflix version is only on mobile, and I feel like this would be better played on a desktop. But I do currently have a Netflix sub, and it's free, so I thought I may as well give it a go — if it's really good, I can always pay for the desktop version.

Well, so far, it's... fine. It's not that hard to play on a mobile, despite what some people say (I can see why desktop would be even easier, because clicking around with a mouse is quicker than tapping around with a finger, at least for me, but it works just fine). As for the game itself, it feels more like a puzzle game with graphics than a true point-and-click adventure, which it was sort of sold to me as. I mean, fundamentally, it's Murdle but with pictures instead of just words, and a more complicated elimination grid (masked by putting it into sentences).

I'll keep playing it. I'll aim to finish it (possibly very quickly: I've played for about an hour and a half and I'm almost halfway through. Unless it gets a lot harder (which, in fairness, it might), it looks like I could get through it much quicker than the average playtime reports suggest). Unless I get sick of it, I'll probably even go on to the sequel (also free with Netflix). But it's no Monkey Island or Grim Fandango or Broken Sword or whatever.

Monday, 14 April 2025

TV

Friends
6x20 The One with Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E. [6th or so watch]

Leverage: Redemption
1x01 The Too Many Rembrandts Job
1x02 The Panamanian Monkey Job
Finally (as in: 16 months after I finished the original series) made a start on this Leverage sequel series. So far it's... admirably like good ol' fashioned TV. Y'know, kinda low-budget-looking and driven by stories of the week, rather than slick and over-budgeted and trying to be "a long movie". We need more TV that just behaves like TV.

Richard Osman's House of Games
8x06 Week 2: Monday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Saturday, 12 April 2025

TV

The Diplomat
2x03 The Ides of March
2x04 The Other Army

Doctor Who
41x01 The Robot Revolution
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Friends
6x17 The One with Unagi [6th or so watch]

Richard Osman's House of Games
8x03 Week 1: Wednesday
8x04 Week 1: Thursday
8x05 Week 1: Friday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rookie
6x06 Secrets and Lies
6x07 Crushed

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

A pretty low-key, straightforward update this week: just five new titles, mostly 4K, no upgrades or sidegrades or whatever. It should be like this more often.

Number of titles in collection: 3,517 [up 5]
Of which DVDs: 985 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,532 [up 5]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 462 [up 4]

Number of discs in collection: 8,497 [up 8]
Number of films: 4,467 [up 5]
Number of additional cuts: 442 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes: 10,101 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,227 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 11 April 2025

TV

The Diplomat
2x01 When a Stranger Calls
2x02 St. Paul's

Friends
6x16 The One That Could Have Been Part 2 [5th or so watch]

Richard Osman's House of Games
8x01 Week 1: Monday
8x02 Week 1: Tuesday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Videos

Critical Role
2x99 High Seas, High Stakes [3rd hour]
When I started this episode, I mentioned it was their last regular live one. It was also the last appearance of this set, because when the show returned from hiatus it was in a new socially-distanced format that lasted until the end of Campaign 2, and they got a shiny new set for Campaign 3. Said hiatus, due to Covid, was announced the Tuesday after this episode aired. There's a Wiki article about it here, but in short: the show eventually returned almost four months later. I don't intend to emulate that with a lengthy pause of my own, although this does feel like it would be an appropriate juncture to go check out some other one-shots and/or miniseries...
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Wednesday, 9 April 2025

Videos

Critical Role
2x99 High Seas, High Stakes [1st hour]
Weird beginning to this episode: it's a big ol' party for their fifth anniversary, but they've also finally had to explicity acknowledge there's Something Going On In The World — i.e. Covid. Indeed, although they don't know it yet, this is the last-ever "broadcast live" regular edition of CR. After this they started pre-recording (because of the pandemic) and since have only returned to live broadcasts for one-shots and specials and that kinda thing. (More about their pandemic hiatus when I watch the second half / start the next episode.)
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Tuesday, 8 April 2025

Videos

Talks Machina
#145 'Dark Waters'
This is the last Talks for a while, thanks to a little ol' thing called the pandemic. They did get out one more episode of CR proper though, so more on their break when I watch that.
[Watch it (again) on Internet Archive.]

Monday, 7 April 2025

TV

Daredevil: Born Again
1x07 Art for Art's Sake
[Watch it (again) on Disney+.]

Comics

The Uncanny X-Men
#7 Raid on Graymalkin, Part Two: No Walls Can Hold Us! by Gail Simone, David Marquez & Edgar Salazar
#8 Raid on Graymalkin, Part Four: Finale by Gail Simone & Javier Garrón

X-Men
#8 Raid on Graymalkin Part 1 by Jed MacKay & Ryan Stegman
#9 Raid on Graymalkin Part 3 by Jed MacKay, Federico Vicentini & Ryan Stegman

Having made an effort to catch up for this crossover, I've now fallen a good few issues behind again. Ho hum, such are my reading habits. Anyway, obviously I read these in the appropriate order, I'm just logging them alphabetically.

Videos

Critical Role
2x98 Dark Waters [2nd half's 2nd half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Sunday, 6 April 2025

Films

The Black Watch (1929)
[#35 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
aka King of the Khyber Rifles

Fiction

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Pages 1–37
This epistolary novel is split into chapter-like sections (it alternates between the two characters, Red and Blue, finding letters they've left for each other, followed by said letter), but as they're not numbered or anything it's easier to track this with page numbers (never my favourite, because pages can differ between editions, but needs must).

this week on 100Films.co.uk

Another quiet month at 100Films.co.uk — oops. But this week did bring the one thing I have stuck at: a monthly review...





...as well as its accompanying list of failures...





More next Sunday? One day there will be...

Saturday, 5 April 2025

TV

The Wheel
5x09 Episode 9
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

A Real Pain (2024)
[#34 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Fiction

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
2 The Adventure of the Cardboard Box

Videos

Critical Role
2x98 Dark Waters [2nd half's 1st half]
I use "half" with CR episodes for convenient shorthand — what I mean, broadly, is either side of the ad break — but the "halves" are rarely equal. This is a particularly egregious example of that, in an unusual direction: normally the first 'half' is longer, but this time the first 'half' was about 90 minutes and the second is about 3 hours. I watched about half of that 'half' today, so... yeah...
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

I hadn't expected this week to be so jam-packed — just a few pre-orders — but then sales cropped up and, well, I got a little carried away. The fact many of these are box sets has just made it feel like an even bigger week, especially on the back of multiple other larger sets recently.

Of note amongst this batch: the DVD that was gained last week goes back down, and takes another with it for good measure; and look how many additions are 4K again! They may only account for 13% of my collection vs regular Blu-ray at almost 59%, but I feel like they're beginning to consistently outnumber regular BDs as new purchases. The artsier boutique labels continue to keep 1080p well fuelled, though.

Number of titles in collection: 3,512 [up 11]
Of which DVDs: 985 [down 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,527 [up 13]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 458 [up 8]

Number of discs in collection: 8,489 [up 23]
Number of films: 4,462 [up 20]
Number of additional cuts: 440 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes: 10,101 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,227 [up 2]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 4 April 2025

Videos

Critical Role
2x98 Dark Waters [1st half]
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Thursday, 3 April 2025

Wednesday, 2 April 2025

Videos

Critical Role
2x97 The Fancy and the Fooled [2nd half]
I don't know if Matt adjusts his plans to make sure something major happens at live shows, but good golly, it's a fantastic payoff when that does happen — the energy brought by playing in front of (and playing up to) a live audience is something else.
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]

Tuesday, 1 April 2025

Videos

Critical Role
2x97 The Fancy and the Fooled [1st half]
Live show! Yay!
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, Twitch, or Beacon.]