100 latest films and plays I've watched

From December 2024 to October 2025 

In bold: films and plays I think are good 

1/ Až přijde kocour (When the Cat Comes/ The Cassandra Cat - Czechoslovakia - 1963) 

2/ Lekce Faust (Faust - Czech Republic, France, UK, US, Germany - 1994) 

3/ Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7 - France, Italy - 1962)

4/ To Be or Not to Be (1942)

5/ Kedi (Turkey - 2016) 

6/ A Midsummer Night's Dream (2024, Royal Shakespeare Company, dir. Eleanor Rhode, starring Mathew Baynton as Bottom) - onstage 

7/ I Slept with 100 Men in One Day (2024)

8/ The Wizard of Oz (1939) 

9/ Burning Sun: Exposing the Secret K-pop Chat Groups (2024) 

10/ The Ladykillers (1955) 

11/ Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude - Colombia - 2024) - Series 1, 8 episodes

12/ Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror - Germany - 1922) 

13/ Daughters of Darkness (Belgium, France, West Germany - 1971) 

14/ In Bruges (2008)

15/ PinkNews: Behind Closed Doors (2024) 

16/ The Man in the White Suit (1951)

17/ Nosferatu (2024) 

18/ Dispatches: Beneath the Veil (2001) 

19/ The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

20/ A Real Pain (2024) 

21/ Wonka (2023)

22/ It Happened One Night (1934) 

23/ The Palm Beach Story (1942)

24/ Midnight (1939) 

25/ Cleopatra (1934) 

26/ A Star Is Born (2018) 

27/ The Flame of New Orleans (1941)

28/ Coriolanus (2024, National Theatre, dir. Lyndsey Turner, with David Oyelowo as Coriolanus) 

29/ King Lear (2018, National Theatre, dir. Jonathan Munby, with Ian McKellen as Lear) 

30/ The Brutalist (2024) 

31/ Othello (2013, National Theatre, dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Adrian Lester as Othello) 

32/ Julius Caesar (2018, National Theatre. dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Ben Whishaw as Brutus) 

33/ Mahanagar, aka The Big City (India - 1963) 

34/ Anora (2024)

35/ L'Amour l'après-midi (Love in the Afternoon - France - 1972) 

36/ Hunting the Catfish Crime Gang (2023) 

37/ Panorama - My Online Stalker (2025) 

38/ Eye Investigations: Liked, Lured, Livestreamed (2025) 

39/ Moonstruck (1987)

40/ Le ballon rouge (The Red Balloon - France - 1956) 

41/ Heathers (1988) 

42/ Tom Jones (1963) 

43/ The Big Clock (1948) 

44/ Groomed: A National Scandal (2025) 

45/ Eye Investigations: Make Me Perfect: Manufacturing Beauty in China (2025) 

46/ 晩菊 (Late Chrysanthemums - Japan - 1954) 

47/ Macbeth (1971) 

48/ 龍門客棧 (Dragon Inn - Taiwan - 1967) 

49/ Cyrano de Bergerac (France, Hungary - 1990) 

50/ Hamlet (2009, RSC, ft. David Tennant) 

51/ Paper Moon (1973)

52/ タンポポ (Tampopo - Japan - 1985) 

53/ Diddy in Plain Sight: UNTOLD (2025) 

54/ Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) 

55/ Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) 

56/ Stacey Dooley: Meet the Shoplifters (2025) 

57/ Anna Karenina (1977) - 10 episodes 

58/ Mansfield Park (1983) - 6 episodes 

59/ Pride and Prejudice (2005) - again 

60/ North and South (2004) - 4 episodes 

61/ Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov - Soviet Union - 1969) 

62/ Straume (Flow - Latvia, France, Belgium - 2024)

62/ The Apartment (1960) - again

63/ The Servant (1963) 

64/ Some Like It Hot (1959) - again 

65/ Ball of Fire (1941) 

66/ The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) 

67/ Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) 

68/ Citizen Kane (1941) - again 

69/ Sound of Metal (2019)

70/ My Man Godfrey (1936) 

71/ The Naked Gun (2025) 

72/ Odd Man Out (1947) 

78/ 12 Angry Men (1957) - again 

79/ Ninotchka (1939)

80/ Frankenstein (1931) 

81/ Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

82/ 千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away - Japan - 2001)

83/ Casablanca (1942) - again 

84/ The Plot Against Harry (1971)

85/ The Three Faces of Eve (1957) 

86/ Poor Things (2023) 

87/ Young Frankenstein (1974) 

88/ High Anxiety (1977) 

89/ Dark Waters (2019) 

90/ Dracula (1931, English-language version) 

91/ Son of Frankenstein (1939) 

92/ Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) 

93/ The Invisible Man (1933) 

94/ The Black Cat (1934) 

95/ The Return (2024)

96/ The Public Enemy (1931) 

97/ Steve Jobs (2015)

98/ パーフェクトブルー (Perfect Blue - Japan - 1997)

99/ ハウルの動く城 (Howl's Moving Castle - Japan - 2004) 

100/ となりのトトロ (My Neighbour Totoro - Japan - 1988) 

Some further thoughts on the Iliad and the Odyssey

1/ As I’m too ignorant—I don’t even read Greek—to wade into the debate over whether the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by the same person, I’m just going to treat them like they were, and compare them. The Iliad is thick with epic similes (especially in Book 11); the Odyssey has some extended similes but most of the similes are in single phrases. The Iliad has a straightforward narrative; the Odyssey has a much more interesting structure, with jumps, flashbacks, story-within-a-story, etc. The Iliad is more like War and Peace, having hundreds (or 1000?) of characters and focusing on several main characters; the Odyssey is more like Don Quixote, following the main character(s) and moving from one set of characters to another. Both are foundational works of Western literature; both are great; both are subtle and sophisticated. 

As for the main characters, Akhilleus (better known as Achilles) and Odysseus are both vividly alive, both complex characters (now that I’ve “met” them, Harold Bloom’s idea that Shakespeare “invented the human”—whatever that means—is even more absurd). I would even say that Akhilleus and Odysseus are two of the greatest characters I’ve come across in literature: Akhilleus, as he returns to battle because of Patroklos, turns himself into a killing machine, merciless and indifferent to human mortality, but regains his humanity in the final chapter, as he meets Priam and comes to understand the value of human lives and relationships; Odysseus is multi-faceted and full of contradictions, and more interestingly, he’s a storyteller and an actor, transforming himself like a Shakespearean character. 

The funny thing about reading classic literature and going back to the foundation is that once in a while some books feel old, but some feel astonishingly fresh. For instance, when I trace back to (some candidates for) the first English novels, Pamela and Joseph Andrews feel a bit crude (compared to the peaks in the 19th century) and Robinson Crusoe feels very much like a relic of the past, but the first modern novel, Don Quixote, is still sophisticated and dazzlingly inventive. The Iliad and the Odyssey are fresh, and it’s extraordinary that they’re about 2700 years old. 

2/ I recently watched The Return, a retelling of the Odyssey. 

In theory, I don’t mind filmmakers taking liberties with the source material (after all, lately I’ve been enjoying the 1930s loose adaptations of Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde). The Return has an interesting idea: if we strip the Odyssey of mythology and remove all the gods—and imagine “the real Odysseus”—then why did Odysseus wander for 10 years instead of going home? The answer of the film is that he’s haunted by war and unable to face everyone out of shame for returning alone. That is no Homer, but the idea is fine and Ralph Fiennes is magnificent in the role. 

However, as The Return emphasises the anti-war message, it consequently changes the nature of the relationship between Odysseus and Telemachus, and between Odysseus and Penelope. And the problem with the film is that it reduces Telemachus into a one-dimensional twat, unlikeable, extremely unpleasant to both his father and mother; it also reduces Penelope into a “bleeding heart” in the final scenes, which is even more disappointing because up till that point, Juliette Binoche was very good as Penelope. 

The more I think about it, the more I dislike it. 

Not particularly hopeful about the Christopher Nolan film that’s coming out next year either.  

3/ I’m currently reading An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn, a book about the author’s eighty-one-year-old father enrolling in his Odyssey seminar at university, and about their relationship. Daniel Mendelsohn also released his own translation of the Odyssey this year. 

It’s quite a good book to read after Homer, especially because I don’t know Greek and he explains some of the Greek in the poems. 

The Iliad: “two possible destinies carrying me toward death”

Painting by Jean Joseph Taillason: Akhilleus displaying Hektor’s body at the feet of Patroklos. 

1/ One thing I didn’t know about the Iliad was that a large part of the poem was about Akhilleus (or Achilles) not fighting: the conflict between him and Agamemnon begins in Book 1, and he doesn’t return to battle till Book 19 (out of 24). In a sense, the entire Iliad is about Akhilleus’s wrath: first at Agamemnon, then at Hektor and the Trojans (for killing his friend Patroklos). 

2/ A while ago, a woman tweeted that the Iliad was essentially about mortality—I’m paraphrasing—and the thread was swarmed with lots of men angrily saying that it’s about war and honour and glory, and women couldn’t possibly get it (?). Now that I’ve read the whole poem (after nearly 3 weeks), it’s hard to see how anyone could say it’s about glory—of course glory is a big thing in ancient Greek culture and the Iliad is not an anti-war poem—but what is glorious about the Akhaians’ destruction of Troy? What is glorious about Paris taking someone else’s wife and refusing to yield her up? What is glorious about all these brutal killings? What is glorious about Akhilleus throwing away his own humanity and degrading Hektor’s body after killing him? Homer has no illusions about what “heroic men” do in war. 

To name one thing that the Iliad is about would be reductive, but I do think that mortality—the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death—is one of the central themes of the poem. Over and over and over again, Homer depicts the deaths in the Trojan War and makes us think of youthful lives cut short, and families torn apart.  

“It was young Iphidamas, 

Antenor’s brawny and athletic son, 

who had been reared in Thrace, that fertile country, 

billowy grassland, nourisher of flocks. 

Kisses, father of Theano, his mother, 

brought up the child, and when he reached the stage 

of promising manhood tried to hold him there, 

betrothing to him a daughter. But he left 

his bridal chamber for the Akhaian war 

when the word came. […]

The Lord of the Great Plains now took hold and drew 

the weapon toward him, raging, lionlike, 

wrenching it from the Trojan’s hands; then struck him 

with a sword-cut across the neck and killed him. 

Down he dropped into the sleep of bronze. 

Sad that he fought for the townsmen of his bride 

and died abroad before he could enjoy her, 

lavish though he had been for her: he gave 

one hundred beeves, and promised a thousand head 

of sheep and goats, for myriads grazed his land.” 

(Book 11) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

Throughout the Iliad, Homer emphasises that each of these deaths is an individual, with a family and people who love them and would grieve their loss. 

When the emissaries come to Akhilleus to make peace and ask him to return to battle, he says: 

“Why must Argives 

fight the Trojans? Why did he raise an army 

and lead it here? For Helen, was it not?”

(Book 9) 

He does not care to fight. 

“Now I think 

No riches can compare with being alive 

[…] 

My mother, Thetis of the silvery feet, 

tells me of two possible destinies 

carrying me toward death: two ways: 

if on the one hand I remain to fight 

around Troy town, I lose all hope of home 

but gain unfading glory; on the other, 

if I sail back to my own land my glory 

fails-but a long life lies ahead for me…” 

(ibid.) 

It is one of the greatest scenes in the Iliad. Akhilleus does not care to fight not only because he has been humiliated by Agamemnon, but also because of the pointlessness of it all. When he returns to battle, it is not a choice of “unfading glory”—it is his sense of duty and revenge after the killing of Patroklos. And once he accepts his fate and re-enters the war, he becomes utterly ruthless. No mercy. No human feelings. And he becomes a terrifying killing machine until Book 24, when he meets Priam and thinks of his own father and regains his humanity. 

Akhilleus is one of the greatest characters in literature. 

3/ Another central theme of the Iliad, as in the Odyssey, is the caprices of the gods. Reminiscent of those lines from King Lear: 

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods 

They kill us for their sport.” 

4/ The killings became increasingly heavy and tiresome after a while; the greatest—most haunting—battle would be the one between Akhilleus and Hektor (after that scene, I could see why Shakespeare didn’t like Achilles). 

My favourite scenes in the Iliad are generally not battle scenes: I love the confrontation between Agamemnon and Akhilleus; the scene of Hektor with his wife and baby; the scene of Akhilleus and the emissaries (one of whom is Odysseus); the grief of Akhilleus after Patroklos’s death; the mourning for Hektor; the meeting between Akhilleus and Hektor’s father Priam, etc. 

It is such a vast, moving work of art.