Since I started seriously tracking the movies I watched in 2012, the actor I've seen the most is William Powell (33 times). That isn't an accident.

Powell is one of those "actors" who always turned the characters he played into some variation of himself. We usually call that class of actor — which includes the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise — "movie stars."

Powell's cool, confident, and sarcastic persona was perfect for playing con men, attorneys, and especially gumshoes. He's most famous as Nick Charles, the detective who caught the Thin Man in seven movies (the best of which is the first), but you may recognize him as Philo Vance who he played in five other films (beginning with the silent-turned-talky The Canary Murder Case).

I mention this because tomorrow, July 29, would be Mr. Powell's 107th birthday. TCM is celebrating with seven films between 6AM and 6PM. Manhattan Melodrama is in the middle (11:15AM). That's the movie that Public Enemy Number One John Dillinger was walking out of when he was gunned down by G-Men. It's also the first film to pair Powell with his on-screen soul mate Myrna Loy, the future Nora Charles (and not-coincidentally, the actress I've seen the most, 35 times). Oh, and Cary Grant is in it, too (14 times).

Happy Birthday, Mr. Powell.

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Where were we? Oh, yes. Movies!

88. (1527.) My Man Godfrey (1936)
William Powell plays William Powell as a down-on-his-luck fellow in the Depression who lands a job as butler to a family of rich cads. Very entertaining. (It's easy to see why William Powell was Cary Grant's mother's favorite actor.)

91. (1530.) Ruby Herring Mysteries: Silent Witness (2019)
Someone got the breakdown of a typical Hallmark Movies and Mystery channel movie... and shot it as-is. The result, as you might expect, is average.

90. (1529.) Moana (2016)
Catchy songs! Not much else to say. Are all Disney animated films so bland? I think the answer is yes. That's why you have to get kids watching while they're so young.

92. (1531.) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
Watches like a marketing exercise in "How to squeeze more blood out of the Harry Potter franchise." This is only the second movie I've ever seen in said franchise, and frankly, that's two too many.

94. (1533.) The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
I really think I watched this character study of an old woman coming to terms with living in the imaginary past in a civics class in 1989. It's not my usual cup of tea, but it's well done.

95. (1534.) The Chocolate War (1988)
I can best describe this as A Separate Peace done right. I've read that the ending differs from the book, but it's about as dark as "Hollywood" can manage. (I was the right age for this in 1988. Why hadn't I seen it before? Was I too busy watching old ladies visit Bountiful, Texas?)

96. (1535.) Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
This much maligned sci-fi Christmas film is much maligned for a reason (low budget, bad acting, bat-shit crazy story...). But it was clearly made to entertain children, like television's Batman of the same era. Watched through that prism, its flaws are forgivable (and its imagination, laudable). I chuckled at the intentionally camp sensibilities more than once, especially when Santa Claus escapes an air lock shaped like a chimney without further explanation.

More to come.

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Finishing up movies from June:

59. (997.) The Outfit (1973)
Robert Duvall stars in this, essentially the same story as Lee Marvin's Point Blank, although Marvin got to work with Keenan Wynn instead of Joe Don Baker. That may be a big part of why Point Blank is a better movie.

60. (998.) Mystery Team (2009)
As with all comedies, your mileage may vary, but I found this movie to be a hysterical satire of Encyclopedia Brown mysteries. Lots of fun.

61. (999.) The Ghost Goes West (1936)
Hollywood loves the ghost story/romance mash-up. I think watching a living person fall in love with a dead person to be kind of disturbing, but this movie keeps it light. I liked that.

That's only seven movies watched in June. Part of the reason for the low total was my vacation. The other part is that my next movie will be my 1,000th since starting to keep track in 2012, and I want it to be significant somehow. You'll find out what I picked in my next movie update.

In the meantime, this seems like a good place to mention that in the past 4-and-a-half years, I've seen 31 William Powell movies and 20 Myrna Loy movies. Micheal Caine comes in a distant third with 14.

Alfred Hitchcock (15) has been my most watched director, and MGM (142) has produced the most (fitting, given that I watch so much TCM). My list of writers has been a little better distributed. Neil Simon is in the lead with 6, though Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Richard Brooks, and Robert Riskin are only one back.

And without a doubt, I prefer comedies. More than a quarter of all the movies I've tracked have been classified as comedies, easily beating out dramas, crime stories, and action/adventure films (and 20 other categories) by a wide margin. What can I say? I like to laugh.

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Let's finish up movies watched in April. Don't worry. It's another short list. (I watched only 8 movies in April!)

39. (977.) Blood Simple (1984)
This was the first movie in the Coen Brothers' movie empire, and it's great! Chock full o' noir-ish suspense, the film recalls the black-and-white classics of yesteryear. Such is the stuff of which legends are made.

40. (978.) The Remains of the Day (1993)
This film came out when I was in high school, and I've spent most of the years since determined not to watch it for reasons that I don't even remember. So I watched it, and I have to say, I've been an idiot. This film is very, very good. Ah, nazis and impossible romance. Why couldn't The English Patient be more like this?

41. (979.) Cape Fear (1962)
While I'd never actually seen either version of Cape Fear, I was pretty sure I knew the story from the many, many homages I'd seen. I was mostly right — you could imply that you were going to rape and murder a child in 1960s movies? damn! — but knowing what was coming next didn't really subtract from the well crafted suspense. Robert Mitchum was, as usual, a terrifically menacing fellow. Extra bonus: seeing Savannah masquerade as North Carolina. Heh.

42. (980.) Crossroads (1942)
William Powell plays a French diplomat suffering from amnesia and the spectre of a criminal past. Need I say more? Of course I enjoyed it.

More to come.

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This is it, the final batch of movies I watched in 2015.

186. (933.) 2 Guns (2013)
I remember this movie getting some bad reviews when it was released, largely because it's a pretty by-the-numbers action/revenge flick. The charisma of the stars, plus some pretty entertaining action sequences, more than overcome the predictability. C'mon. let's face it: no one watches a Mark Wahlberg movie to be surprised.

187. (934.) Pale Rider (1985)
I was certain that I'd seen this movie, but catching the beginning on AMC revealed otherwise. I love High Plains Drifter, and I most certainly would have realized that this was a derivation of that formula if I'd seen this before. In High Plains Drifter, Eastwood is a devil. Here, he's an angel. Same story, different ethics. Frankly, High Plains Drifter is better.

198. (936.) Dick Tracy (1945)
I assumed I must have seen this in the early 90s when my brother was on a big Dick Tracy comic kick. However, like Pale Rider, I had no memory of the actors or the action when I actually put my eyes on it. Unlike Pale Rider, which has some memorable scenes, I doubt I'll remember much about this movie a few months from now.

190. (937.) Despicable Me 2 (2013)
As good as the first? No. But still cute and clever and entertaining. Note to future sequel writers: get the characters right, and everything else will write itself.

191. (938.) The Terrorists (1974)
To cap off the 2015 appropriately, I saved this Sean Connery film for last. Marketed like an action film, I think it was intended to be more of a suspense film. There's remarkably little of either. I recommend against this unless you're a Connery completist.

So there you go, 191 movies watched in 2015. (If you were paying attention, you might notice that the numbering got wonky here at the end. I screwed them up waaay back in July and only noticed it in December. I was busy watching movies, not numbers.)

As a quick recap, note that the actor I saw most often in 2015 was William Powell. Seven William Powell movies in 2015 brings my total count of William Powell films seen to thirty! Long live William Powell. IMDb.com says he was in 96 movies over the course of his career. Obviously, I have to step up my game.

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October movies, round 2 of 2.

169. (916.) The Heavenly Body (1944)
I'm generally ambivalent about the screwball romantic comedies of the '30s and '40s, but this one I hated. Just to get the script moving, the female lead, Heady Lamar, improbably behaves without a brain in her head so that there will be tension between her and her husband played by William Powell. William Powell should never be treated this poorly. Seriously, if any dame ever treated me that way, I wouldn't shed a single tear as the door hit her on the way out.

170. (917.) Morning Glory (2010)
Rachel McAdams is, as always, a delight, but this movie has no depth. What, old people resent being sidelined by youth? Deep, man, deep.

171. (918.) Modern Problems (1981)
Have you ever seen Zapped? This film is like that, but with adults acting like teenagers instead of teenagers acting like teenagers. Not Chevy Chase's best movie. And Chevy Chase has had a lot of "not best" movies.

172. (919.) How to Steal a Million (1966)
Audrey Hepbrun and Peter O'Toole make a great couple in this heist/romance hybrid. One of my pet peeves in movies is when the plot seems to take a right turn sometime during act 2 for no good reason (Terminator 2 springs to mind), but I'll forgive it here. Because Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.

More to come.

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I spent too many hours watching old Veronica Mars episodes in October, and as a result, I watched only 8 new-to-me movies. Here's the first four.

165. (912.) Jewel Robbery (1932)
It seems William Powell always played a debauched lawyer or detective, or a debonair con man or thief. As you can probably tell by the title, in this romantic comedy, he's the latter. Light on plot, this film was the date movie of its day.

166. (913.) Rendevous (1935)
Here William Powell plays a reluctant spy (who's a kind of con man) during The Great War. I spent the entire film thinking that Rosalind Russell's scheming society girl should have been played by Myrna Loy. That might have provided the extra spark this rather dull thriller needed.

167. (914.) Man of Steel (2013)
No, I didn't watch all of this movie. I just couldn't take it. It was worse than I thought it would be. The Kryptonese are assholes. Pa Kent is an asshole. The other kids in Clark's school are assholes. The kids who bully the kids who bully Clark Kent are assholes. Their parents are assholes.... All the conflict in the entire movie comes from people being assholes to one another. The filmmakers seem to have thought that in order to make Superman "good," every other character in the entire movie has to be an asshole. That's such a fundamental understanding of what makes the character of Superman great that it killed any desire I had of seeing how the actual plot was resolved. I hope Superman flew away and went to some Universe that wasn't populated with just assholes.

168. (915.) The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
Steve McQueen plays Paul Newman in The Hustler! Whoo-hoo! I didn't love this film, but I didn't find it nearly as terrible as The Hustler. That's probably largely thanks to McQueen, whose typically mute style (see also: Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford) allowed his card sharp to be a far more sympathetic character than Paul Newman's pool shark.

More to come.

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Movie watching slowed to a crawl in September. I only watched 9 new-to-mew movies, although I did also re-watch Babe and Big Trouble in Little China among other favorites. It's hard to find time to watch new films when you're re-watching the classics.

156. (903.) Star of Midnight (1935)
I have yet to find an RKO movie starring William Powell that wasn't perfectly delightful. I still don't know what the title had to do with this murder mystery, but who cares. All you need to know are William Powell is being chased by Ginger Rogers.

157. (904.) Message from Space (1978)
Japan's answer to Star Wars is really, really terrible. Betrayal, space nuts, Vic Morrow . . . . none of it makes any sense in English. I'm not entirely sure that it could make any sense in any language. Do yourself a favor and just go watch Star Wars instead.

158. (905.) Special When Lit (2010)
If you couldn't guess, this was a documentary about the history of pinball machines. It made me want to own my own cabinet, so it must have done something right.

159. (906.) The Born Losers (1967)
This is the first "Billy Jack" movie. If you know what that means, I'm sorry. I was first exposed to Billy Jack by an art school professor who simply loved small budget, esoteric movies. Professor Marriott was serious about film. But no one takes Billy Jack more seriously than Billy Jack. It's weird that this, an action movie where all of the "action" takes place just out of frame, could inspire a franchise.

More to come.

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Final 8 of 16 movies watched in August:

148. (895.) The Baroness and the Butler (1938)
William Powell again in another romance! Here he plays the butler to a Prime Minister who is elected to parliament as a member of the opposition party — who keeps his job as a butler! That's not as improbable as the fact that the Hungarian Prime Minister's daughter speaks with a French accent.

149. (896.) Expo: Magic of the White City (2005)
Documentaries are easier to watch while coding, especially when they are just a narrator talking about a subject I'm already familiar with, in this case Gene Wilder reading a historical account of the Chicago Colombian Exposition of 1893. (I'm a man of varied interests.)

150. (897.) Winnebago Man (2009)
Another documentary, this time about the search for a man who had become an Internet celebrity as a side-effect of an ill-spirited prank. He reminded me of my dad.

151. (898.) Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (2011)
This film just followed Conan O'Brien around during the tour he undertook after his unceremonious departure from The Tonight Show. I like Conan, but I thought this made him look petty and compulsive. It wasn't very entertaining, and I'm not really sure what the point was.

152. (899.) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Watched because Myrna Loy was in this, but she's not in it nearly enough. This is NOT my kind of film. Life sucks enough without watching others discovering how much it sucks.

Did you murder people for a country that doesn't love you? Wash that bitterness down with Coke!

153. (900.) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
The sequel to this movie will be released on June 3, 2016. If this film is any indication of what to expect, DO NOT GO SEE IT. I wish I could un-see this one.

154. (901.) Katy Perry: Part of Me (2012)
This was similar to the Conan documentary in that very little is learned about its star. Whereas Conan is a cypher because he moves at a breakneck pace and never stops for introspection, this film felt like it was a piece of stagecraft and not a real peek into Katy's life. It's funny that she feels like a more genuine person on Entertainment Tonight than she does in her own rockumentary.

155. (902.) Hungry (2014)
A documentary about the sport of competitive eating. Apparently, the Nathan's Hot Dog contest is a fraud. I'm so disappointed. If the NFL is as self-interested, corrupt, and focused on profit as Major League Eating.... Oh, shit.

More to come.

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I have no idea how I managed to watch 16 movies in August. I feel like I spent all my time in front of my computer. But my database doesn't lie. Here are the first 8:

140. (887.) Point Blank (1967)
Say, I've seen this before! This is the movie that Payback was based on. Lee Marvin is always bad ass, but I still prefer Payback. It's my favorite Mel Gibson movie.

141. (888.) Miss Firecracker (1989)
This tale of disappointment in the last remnants of the Old South is part Tennessee Williams, part William Faulkner. It's billed as a comedy, but that's using the Shakespearean definition where "comedy" means a play in which not everyone dies in the end. It has its moments, but they were too few and far between.

142. (889.) Ant-Man (2015)
This was better than any movie remaking Iron Man has any right to be, but it's still not great. Hint to filmmakers: don't use fake science to explain your hero's powers if you're just going to contradict your own explanation at your movie's climax.

143. (890.) The Beginning or the End (1947)
The Amazing True Story of the Birth of the Atomic Bomb! Except that a lot of liberties have been taken with the story, including the addition of a character who dies from radiation poisoning after tinkering with the very same bomb that would go on to level Hiroshima.

144. (891.) One Way Passage (1932)
William Powell falls in love on his way to the gallows. Don't worry about his girlfriend, though. She has an incurable, fatal disease. Ah, romance movies.

145. (892.) The Racket (1951)
Robert Mitchum plays an honest cop hunting the head of a local criminal organization. It's good, but I kept expecting this movie to have a twist ending, like the Adventures of Superman episode "Crime Wave." (Turns out that episode came out 2 years after this movie. Coincidence?)

146. (893.) Ladies They Talk About (1933)
I think I have a crush on Barbara Stanwyck. Even playing the most lowly bitch &hdash; for 90% of this movie, she's truly a bad person who deserves her jail time — she's always tough, resourceful, and beautiful.

147. (894.) The Expendables 3 (2014)
When they say "a cast of thousands," they don't usually mean that's the sum of the ages of the lead actors. I didn't hate it, but Payback is still my favorite Mel Gibson film.

More to come.

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