I spent a lot of time thinking about work and politics in October, and not enough time watching movies. As a result, I only clocked in seven films. That’s the lowest count of the whole year. I only managed to see a few of them in theaters. One of them was “Storks,” which seemed strangely off kilter and bizarre for a mainstream kid’s film—until I saw that it was executive produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who are steadily creating one of the most distinctive bodies of work in movies.

More next month.

• “Prisoners” Kind of saw it as a warm up for director Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival.”
• “X-Men” I was shocked by how poorly the FX has aged, but the human core of it still works.
• “The General” I’d always heard good things about this one; it did not live up to the things I had heard.
• “13 Assassins” Bah.
• “Storks”
• “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” Huge letdown.
• “My Neighbor Totoro” Everyone loves it.

If you’re interested, here’s my list from September, August, July, June, May, April, March and my list for January and February. And you can follow along with my film diary on Letterboxd, too, where I sometimes write slightly longer (but not very long) reviews of these films.