I watched 36 movies in June. 16 of them were made before I was born. 30 of them were new to me. There was no theme this month.
As I’m writing this and adding links to all the reviews I’ve written, I realize I haven’t written as much as I used to. A couple of months back, I made a decision that I wanted to write more about music on this site since this was a music-only site for many years, and some of you have told me you don’t have much interest in movies. Once that decision was made, it was like a little button was pushed in my brain, turning off that demand to write about movies.
Before that decision was made, I always felt like I needed to write something nearly every day. Movies were the easiest thing to write about since I watch a lot of them. Having a theme each month also demanded a certain amount of writing. But I clicked that switch, and that feeling of “needing” to write about movies died. I actually do want to write more than I have, but once that button was switched, I immediately found other things to distract me with. It’s weird.
And yet, the switch to write about music hasn’t quite been turned on either. I do my main music listening in my car, mostly when driving to and from work. I’ve been trying to write about concerts, but they last a couple of hours. My ride to work is about twenty minutes, so it takes me a couple of three days to get a full concert listened to. Then I want to listen to it a few times before I write anything. But also, I feel like I need to really listen, and sometimes I’ve got something on my mind. If I find I’m not really listening, I turn it off. Or sometimes I get a phone call while driving, or something else comes up. So, my music writing takes a lot longer than my movie writing. I’m working on a better system.
I am still writing about movies, just for Cinema Sentries. So that’s good.
I subscribe to a few different movie streaming services. We have Prime pretty much always, but we switch back and forth between various others. I usually subscribe to the Criterion Channel, and my wife loves BritBox. My daughter has recently gotten into anime, so now we have Crunchyroll. But sometimes we’ll cancel one service and get another one for a month or two. Earlier this year, my daughter really wanted to watch Hamilton, so we subscribed to Disney+ for a month.
Most streaming services offer up pretty good deals on the regular, and I’ve always got my eye out. This month, I got a good deal on the Kino channel and something called Midnight Pulp. Kino is connected to Kino Lorber, a company I get a lot of review Blu-rays from. They have a very nice selection of old movies, and a lot of foreign films. They are similar to Criterion, but whereas Criterion aims for the greatest films ever made, Kino tends to get slightly more obscure films. So I got to watch films like Picpus – a pretty good Maigret film – and A Pain in the Ass – a very funny French film.
Midnight Pulp is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. They offer up genre films. The time of movies you’d catch at some old midnight movie place, or at the back of your local video store (when there used to be video stores.) They have some terrible films, and a lot of goofy-looking erotica, but I managed to see a terrific Japanese film called Samurai Wolf and Night of the Juggler, which was just wonderful.
We are at the halfway point of 2026, so I’ll offer up some more statistics. I’ve watched 241 movies this year. I’ve seen 13 films from this year. Dramas are my biggest watched genre, followed by Thrillers, Crime, Action, and Horror. Movies made in the USA got the most views by me followed by the UK, France, Italy, and Japan. 187 or 77 percent of the films I watched were new to me.
The big news in the most-watched actors field is that Lino Ventura bounced up to a tie in first place with Tom Baker, Spencer Tracy, and James Stewart (who also moved up one film). Marcel Bozuffie also moved up one film to five. But pretty much everyone else stayed the same.
As for directors, Guy Hamilton bumped up a film to three watched, making him tied with a bunch of others for second place. Chloe Zhao is now on the leaderboard, making her the only woman director to place. I should do better about that.
It has been a good year so far. I’ve watched some great movies. Here’s to another six months.
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) ****1/2
Back to the Wall (1958) ****
Speaking of Murder (1957) ***1/2
Obsession (2025) ***1/2
Dead Heat (1988) ***1/2
Supergirl (1984) ***
Rings of Fear (1978) ***
Fright Night Part 2 (1988) ***1/2
Head Against the Wall (1959) ***
Suicide Club (2001) ***
A Pain in the Ass (1973) ****
Samurai Wolf (1966) ****1/2
Night of the Juggler (1980) ****1/2
Picpus (1943) ***1/2
Virtuosity (1995) ***
Doctor Who: The Awakening (1984) ***1/2
The Toxic Avenger (2023) ***
The Narrow Margin (1952) ****
The Mastermind (2025) ****
Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans (1987) **
Solo (1970) ****
Waves of Lust (1975) **
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) *****
The Long Arm (1956) ****
The Intruder (1953) ***1/2
Home at Seven (1952) ***
Fright Night (1985) ***1/2
Aesthetics of a Bullet (1973) **
Deathstalker (1983) **
The Roaring Twenties (1939) ****
A View to a Kill (1985) ***1/2
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) ****1/2
Project Hail Mary (2026) ****
Beyond the Door III (1989) ****
Witchboard (1986) *
Backrooms (2026) **1/2
themidnightcafe.org 