Book selectors in public libraries often rely on tools known as core collection databases. These resources provide lists of material that will, under ideal circumstances, always be on the shelf. Think books like James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, or Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. There isn’t really a resource of this nature for maintaining library DVD collections. Instead of relying on publisher-provided collection lists, I compare which DVDs Mead owns against lists of films from around the internet. I look at the New York Times 1000 Essential Films, lists provided by the American Film Institute, as well as lists on Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd, IMDB, you name it. Basically, any list of movies I encounter gets compared against the catalog and I purchase what we’re missing and what might need replacing.
Lately, one of the best and most interesting lists I’ve been referring to is the Library of Congress National Film Registry. Each year since 1989, 15 films deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant are inducted into the registry. The films must be at least 10 years old at the time of their nomination. The registry was formed at the behest of filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Frank Capra in response to practices like pan & scan for television or videocassette release, and colorization of black and white film without creator input or approval.
Film has always been a particular area of interest for me, but the rate at which I watch has decreased significantly since about 2015. I blame my lapse mostly on the twin attention destroyers that are smart phones and COVID-19. The National Film Registry (NFR) was filled with dozens of movies I haven’t seen, and many that I had never even heard of. While comparing the list against our collection, I made a separate list of all those unseen (to me) films, and started checking them out based on which hadn’t circulated for the longest time. I’ve been enjoying myself a great deal and decided to record my progression through the watchlist, and challenge myself to watch one movie a day for an entire year. Below, I listed the films I’ve been watching starting on June 30, 2026. I hope to have watched roughly 365 movies by the time June 29, 2027 rolls around.
Gentle reader, please understand that I am going to spoil the shit out of some of these movies, so proceed at your own peril. Also please notice that not all films on this list have been inducted into the NFR. The National Film Registry list is merely my cata-list for this post, you know what I mean?
Date range I watched these movies in: June 29-August 11, 2026
Days elapsed: 42
Total movies watched: 30
Action:
The Equalizer 2 (2018) starring DENZEL
The Equalizer 3 (2023) starring DENZEL
Medium Cool (1969) starring Robert Forster and Verna Bloom
One Battle After Another (2025) starring Leonardi DiCaprio and Sean Penn
Tokyo Drifter (1966) starring Tetsuya Watari
While Glory (1989) and Philadelphia (1993) ARE in the NFR, none of Denzel’s three Equalizer films have been inducted, yet. Man, that guy hates it when things are not equal! He’ll equalize at night, or during a hurricane, or on a train. Man, you name it, and Denzel has equalized in and around it.
Medium Cool and One Battle were directed by the big-timers. Legendary cinematographer Haskal Wexler filmed the astonishing Medium Cool partially during the Chicago Democratic National Convention riots in 1968, blurring the line between storytelling and the 6 o’clock news. One Battle won Best Picture in 2025, and it’s worth a watch just to see Sean Penn’s face go through every facial expression known to man.
Tokyo Drifter is slick, stylish, and fascinated Quentin Tarantino. I don’t think Reservoir Dogs would exist without Tokyo Drifter.
Did Not Finish:
Lassie Come-Home (1943) starring Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor
Love Affair (1939) starring Irene Dunn and Charles Boyer
The Painted Veil (1934) starring Greta Garbo
This is Cinerama (1952) dir. Mike Todd Jr.
Give yourself permission to not finish what you started when it comes to leisure reading or viewing. It’s good to push through some discomfort, but it’s also good to give yourself grace. I DNFed the above movies all for various reasons.
Lassie Come-Home was filmed in the 1940s, so I was feeling a lot of distress for the wellbeing of the on-screen animals and once they killed off a fictional dog, I tapped out. Read the book and get the idea without the added animal cruelty. Elsa Lanchester spotted.
When Irene Dunn gets hit by a car and decides not to tell her love interest Charles Boyer in Love Affair, I practically threw the remote across the room and performed what I believe the kids call a “rage quit”. Fun fact: it is widely believed that Chuck Jones based Looney Tunes character Pepe Le Pew on the mannerisms of Charles Boyer.
Greta Garbo is so good and I love to watch her in most anything, but the depiction of Asian people in The Painted Veil and at this time in general is appalling and completely wrung out any possible enjoyment of the narrative. Racist depictions of non-white people is a big, greasy stain on the shimmer of Hollywood.
This is Cinerama was just sorta boring and very very very long. Don’t believe me? This film is available for checkout ONLY from Mead Public Library. Put it on hold and feast your eyes.
Gangster:
Little Caesar (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
The Public Enemy (1931) starring James Cagney and Jean Harlow
Scarface (1932) starring Paul Muni and George Raft
Little Caesar and Scarface were both on Kanopy at the same time so I watched them back-to-back. I loved Little Caesar with my whole heart. Edward G. Robinson really DID have that sneer and really DID say things like “Yeah, see? I’m gonna beat you up, ya mutt, see?” His 5’5” frame could not contain the charisma he bubbled over with.
By contrast, the Howard Hawks-directed Scarface landed a little flat for me. Lead actor Paul Muni, while physically intimidating in his portrayal, relied on silent film-style over-emoting and predictably negative Italian stereotypes.
1930s Chaos:
Footlight Parade (1933) starring James Cagney and Joan Blondell
Naughty Marietta (1935) starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddie
She Done Him Wrong (1933) starring Mae West and Cary Grant
The Emperor Jones (1933) starring Paul Robeson and Frank H. Wilson
James Cagney was well-known as a song and dance man until starring in The Public Enemy, which he was very good at, too. Modern audiences remember him more for being the little tough guy than Yankee Doodle Dandy, so it was a pleasure to watch his turn as an ambitious mile-a-minute stage musical producer in Footlight Parade. He delivered his dialogue in sharp staccato bursts and never stopped moving.
By contrast, I didn’t think much of Mae West or She Done Him Wrong. West’s character in the film, Lady Lou, was based on her vaudeville persona Diamond Lil. I love a bawdy lady, but I don’t think it translated well to the screen due to Hays Code interference. Also notable as having the shortest run time of any Best Picture nominated film at a brisk 66 minutes.
Nelson Eddie and Jeannette MacDonald teamed up for a bunch of romantic comedy musicals in the 1930s for a reason. These two corny charmers are so gorgeous on screen and together. They practically glowed in Naughty Marietta. Elsa Lanchester spotted.
I wish Paul Robeson had been in more pictures and I wish actors of color weren’t relegated to supporting or worse roles throughout much of the 20th century. I have no idea what to make of a movie based on a Eugene O’Neill play whose reliance on the n-word even managed to raise the eyebrows of contemporaneous audiences.
Noir:
The Lady From Shanghai (1947) starring Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth
The Long, Hot Summer (1958) starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward
The Maltese Falcon (1941) starring Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet
The Long, Hot Summer is actually considered a southern gothic as opposed to noir, but eh. This film has got it all. Paul Newman gleams like a prize in the southern heat and is unbelievably beautiful. Orson Welles plays a Big Daddy-type southern patriarch complete with absurd accent and community theater white hair. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was released the same year to wider acclaim, which may account for why this movie is largely unknown to modern audiences. The Long, Hot Summer takes cues from Faulkner short stories as well as Tennessee Williams, and both star the incandescent Newman, so there is some connective tissue between the two films.
Welles showed up in The Lady From Shanghai, too, which he also wrote, directed, and starred in. The film is sort of a mess, but I loved how messy & most of the mess was studio-interference-adjacent to begin with. Instead of a southern patriarch, here Welles portrays an Irish sailor. He might be a towering genius of the 20th century, but man that accent sure came and went. He was married to Hayworth at the time and insisted that she cut off her iconic long red hair into a shorter blonde bob for the role, which incensed audiences.
We’ve been discussing three Bogie films at my movie club over the summer and we started with The Maltese Falcon in June. It’s based on the Dashiel Hammett novel of the same name, so I gave it a re-read. Hammett was cranking out some of the greatest noir fiction in the 1940s and this might be his best. The film was of course subject to Hays Code restrictions, so reading the novel provides us with a much queerer Joel Cairo and a much seedier Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Book and movie five out of five stars.
Political:
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) starring Peter O’Toole and William Holden
The Day of the Jackal (1973) starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale
Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) starring Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) starring Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh
War movies tend to fall outside my comfort zone, so I was pleased to find my everloving mind blown apart by The Bridge on the River Kwai. It’s not a surprise that it cleaned up during awards season including but not limited to the Academy Award for Best Picture. The ending was so good I forgot to breathe.
The Day of the Jackal: serviceable spycraft movie, but would you believe the Book Was Better? Forsyth wrote the book over a feverish 35-day period in 1970, and I think the urgency is present in the prose in a way that can’t be translated to film.
Americans were aware of Jewish persecution by the Third Reich long before the liberation of death camps, but nothing could have prepared the world for the film and photos coming out of those camps. Judgement at Nuremberg was the first American film to incorporate actual Allied footage of camp liberations into the movie plot. I had to pause and walk away after that segment of the movie. It’s important to bear witness to the atrocities of the holocaust, but it’s hard work to not look away. This is a challenging, thought-provoking, complex film. Prestige cast before that was a thing. Just go watch it already.
Frank Sinatra is a better actor than a singer. Fight me. While The Manchurian Candidate is bleak as hell, it’s filled with towering performances. Angela Lansbury delivered the greatest role of her career depicting one of the all-time worst villains I have ever seen, and was nominated for a Supporting Actress Academy Award for it. I loved watching the plot unravel and feeling as uncertain as some of the brainwashed characters. Reminder: super bleak.
Romance:
Ball of Fire (1941) starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck
Casablanca (1942) starring Humphrey Bogart and Claude Raines
The Quiet Man (1952) starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara
The Worst Person in the World (2021) starring Renata Reinsve and Herbert Nordrum
Barbara Stanwyck is best known for her icy femme fatale role in Double Indemnity. But in Ball of Fire, she is the heat to Gary Cooper’s academic coolness (and cluelessness). It’s a bit screwball, and a bit Snow White. Who doesn’t dream of rooming with a household of tweedy bachelors single-mindedly focused on writing an encyclopedia? It’s every girl’s dream. Stanwyck is so funny and beautiful. I don’t understand why this movie isn’t more well-known.
Casablanca was the July pick at my movie club. There are a few films I still haven’t seen that most people have seen, and this was one of them. I knew the dialogue by heart just from living in the world, but how fun to see it in context. Has anyone ever looked as beautiful on-screen as Ingrid Bergman in this film? Not only is this a romance, it’s a war protest picture and could be viewed through a queer lense, as well. Also, what the everloving hell does “Here’s looking at you, kid” mean????
John Ford and The Duke team up again for The Quiet Man. It’s a funny, charming, and affecting romance set in the Irish countryside. In my favorite scene John Wayne finds Maureen O’Hara in the abandoned farmhouse he just purchased. She’s getting things tidy, like a good neighbor. The door flies open from the wind, blowing her skirts and red hair around violently. She makes to leave, and John Wayne catches her around the waist and pulls her close for their first kiss. I never found John Wayne to be terribly compelling as a romantic lead, but MAN DID I SWOON. Plus ten points for nigh-indecipherable drunken Irish patois.
The Worst Person in the World is a gorgeous meditation on intimacy, milestones, work, and rest. Renata Reinsve is a STAR.
Westerns:
High Noon (1952) starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly
Stagecoach (1939) starring John Wayne
Westward the Women (1951) starring Robert Taylor and Denise Darcel
High Noon was so FRUSTRATING. Poor ol’ Gary Cooper is out there grinding away to raise a posse to face the no-goodnicks he and the local judge sent up on murder charges years earlier. The townspeople are reluctant to risk their lives, his underling is a drunk manchild, and his Quaker bride is leaving town because violence is against her principles. The film takes place in real time, and that ticking clock is never far from our minds. This is one tense film.
Did you know John Ford was Orson Welles’ favorite director and that he watched Stagecoach 40 times in preparation of filming Citizen Kane? Watch the film that made John Wayne a star to see why.
I wrote a little about Westward the Women in an earlier blog post, but it overlapped with my big ol’ watchlist and I don’t mind mentioning it again. This is an unconventional and gritty film that any western fan will love.
All of the above movies are available in the Monarch catalog on DVD, BluRay, or streaming on Kanopy. People living in the City of Sheboygan with an active Mead Library card have access to this streaming service. If you’re unfamiliar, take a look HERE and get an account set up. The platform is filled with a staggering array of film from home and abroad.
If none of the films I mentioned above seem compelling, consider using Mead’s Your Next Five Movies tool. Tell us your favorite movies, actors, or directors, and we’ll send you a list of five movies you might love.
In the meantime, I’ll be at home doing my best to look at the bigger screen instead of the tiny screen. Know of a great film list I might like to look at? Please write to me at publicservices@meadpl.org. And stop saying “lists” in there!
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