Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

Star Wars returned to the big screen for the first time in seven years this month, with TV spin-off The Mandalorian and Grogu. It’s the first theatrically-released Star War I’ve not seen since the animated Clone Wars movie 18 years ago, and the first live-action Star War I won’t bother to see on the big screen… ever. (I didn’t exist when the original trilogy came out, but I saw them all during their 1997 re-releases.) I’m not even sure I’ll bother with it when it comes to streaming, because I’ve never seen the series it launches off from. Hey, Disney chose to drag the franchise towards being a niche fans-only affair, not me.

And it looks like general audiences may be feeling the same as me, because two low-budget horror films from Gen Z filmmakers — Backrooms and Obsession — knocked Mando back to the third place at the box office on just its second weekend. Ouch. And one of those was on its third week, too. Very ouch. Other theatrical bows that I might one day watch but wasn’t inspired to leave home for included belated sequel The Devil Wears Prada 2; video game sequel Mortal Kombat II; a new Steven Soderbergh, The Christophers; a new Ben Wheatley, starring Bob Odenkirk, Normal; ovine murder mystery The Sheep Detectives; John Carney making his film again (I suspect) in Power Ballad; crime thriller Tuner; and other stuff I’m even less likely to actually get round to ever.

Similarly, most of the streamers’ brand-new originals this month were things I’m never likely to watch, like alternate-world gender comedy Ladies First and kids’ body-swap animation Swapped on Netflix, or Mel Gibson-starrer Hunting Season on Amazon Prime Video. The latter had the most likely contender of the month in snappily-titled TV spin-off Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War, but the fact I never watched the show beyond season one (which I enjoyed, I just never kept up) gives me pause. Netflix’s best bet for my eyeballs was Martin Short documentary Marty, Life Is Short.

As is often the case, there were stronger options in the field of theatrical releases making their subscription streaming debut, like Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk on Prime Video, although Sky Cinema / NOW dominates as usual, including another Stephen King adaptation — Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man — plus Emerald Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights, legacy sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, Frankenstein variant The Bride!, 50% Coen Honey Don’t! (yes, both with exclamation marks), and a few other bits and pieces that I added to my watchlist but don’t really merit a mention.

Multitudinous back catalogue titles reminded me of their existence by shifting from one streamer to another or popping back after some time away, like “granny on a revenge mission” comedy Thelma (moving from NOW to Netflix) or the most recent (though already ten years old) iteration of Ben-Hur (only noteworthy to me for being one of the few 2016 ‘50 Unseen’s I’ve still not seen). Some films even finally made their way to broadcast TV (remember that?), with the likes of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Arthur the King, and The Iron Claw popping up on iPlayer. Plentiful reminders of stuff I bought on disc but haven’t watched, too, like 1932 Best Picture winner Grand Hotel or Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai; and that’s without starting on the shame of stuff I’ve re-bought on 4K but not watched, like Collateral (that one seems to come up fairly often), A History of Violence, The Nice Guys, and The Searchers (for just a semi-random selection — yeah, there were even more).

There were a couple of new purchases in that vein: the impossible-seeming full restoration of the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie for its 30th anniversary (I wanted to watch it on the anniversary itself, but was otherwise occupied) and Masters of Cinema’s new edition of Buster Keaton’s The General. Every other purchase this month was also from a boutique label: more from Masters of Cinema with Maigret adaptation Cécile is Dead and East German anti-socialist political drama Trace of Stones; French secret agent actioner Le professionnel from Radiance (yes, really), alongside New Wave yakuza thriller Aesthetics of a Bullet; Hammer’s latest title from their non-horror backlist, Brit-noir Mantrap, as well as a disc release for feature-length TV doc Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters; 88 Films’ latest contribution to getting Jackie Chan’s work released in 4K, The Protector; and, finally, the BFI’s latest Akira Kurosawa title, Red Beard, which finally escapes DVD to… regular Blu-ray. Can’t have everything in 4K, I guess.