What’s the big story at the box office this month, then? Normally a new MCU film would walk it, but Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is reportedly struggling. Well, it’s still making a tonne of money, but not as much as usual for these affairs, and not compared to its staggeringly over-large budget. Has the much-heralded end of the superhero boom arrived? Or is this just a blip? Probably Guardians of the Galaxy 3 in May will be a better indicator.

Also playing this month was the new M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin, which seemed to be as divisive as Shyamalan movies always are nowadays. I’ll definitely catch it at some point, but I still haven’t got round to Old. Then there was Cocaine Bear which, based on the early reviews I saw, sounds to be as delightfully trashy as its premise promised. Again, though, not something that’s actually tempted me out to the cinema (we might have to wait until a certain Part Two in November for that; but we’ll see). There were belated UK bows for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, The Whale, and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (which I was going to watch and review, until it turned out I’d been sent a faulty disc. The replacement turned up too late to hit the release date). I should also mention Magic Mike’s Last Dance. I’ve never seen a Magic Mike film, though they remain on my list due to Steven Soderbergh’s involvement.

Originals of note were in even shorter supply from the streamers. All I have jotted down to mention are Amazon’s Somebody I Used to Know (which I’m not sure I saw any significant discussion of beyond its poster), Netflix’s We Have a Ghost, and Apple TV+’s Sharper (which I did hear some good things about, but not many, because who watches Apple TV+? Hardly anyone). In “fresh from the cinema” stakes, Disney+ offered Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, though personally I’ll wait until I can find a 3D copy (not to mention that I’m multiple MCU films behind, so it’s a few down the line for me anyway); and, on a more low-key note, Sky Cinema had British indie comedy Brian and Charles. (More noteworthy additions to the latter’s catalogue might be Top Gun: Maverick, but I’ve seen that, and Bullet Train, but I already bought that (cheaply), so they’re not really “failures”. Not for this month, anyway.)

In terms of older films popping up, as ever I added multiple titles to all my watchlists, but little seems particularly worthy of note. Maybe submarine flick Black Sea on Netflix, which I vaguely remember coming and going with little fanfare back in 2014, but I saw someone describe as an “underwater heist” movie, which tickled my interest. On MUBI, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul would merit a mention if I hadn’t already downloaded it for my Blindspot challenge; the same could be said for Wild Tales, which is one of the handful of films I haven’t seen from IMDb’s Top 250.

I did rent something for the first time in yonks, though: Confess, Fletch — partly because I’ve heard good things, partly because Amazon were having a sale for Prime members. If that isn’t part of my March viewing, I’ll have wasted £1.99.

Talking of spending money, of course I bought more discs this month — fewer than normal, based on the length of my list, but still a definite pile of stuff. My 4K collection was emboldened by two labels: A24, from whom I imported The Green Knight (I already own the regular 4K release, but this has a bunch of exclusive special features, not least a whole new short film) and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (which, as previously mentioned, it turned out was faulty and I had to wait for a replacement); and Arrow, who this month brought out The Last Emperor (one of those ’80s historical epics I’ve yet to see) and The Sisters Brothers (a film I’ve consistently not got round to watching while it was on Netflix and iPlayer and possibly other streaming services, and now I can not get round to watching it on disc).

Indeed, breaking this section down by label is probably the right way to go about it, because so many of my purchases these days are random films — sometimes things I’ve never even heard of — which I blind buy because I trust the label (though there’s no label I blindly buy everything from — there has to be something about each release that piques my interest). In that sense, Indicator dominated the month with five titles: Spaghetti Western The Big Gundown (which pairs nicely with Eureka’s Run, Man, Run from last month. Just need someone to bring Face to Face to Blu to complete the trilogy of Sergio Sollima’s work in the genre); Mexican wrestler action in a box set of the first two Santo films, Santo vs. Evil Brain and Santo vs. Infernal Men (this is a real “well, if Indicator are releasing it…” punt, combined with the enjoyment I got from Mystery Science Theater 3000’s recent Santo episode); and then, right at the end of the month, Death of a Gunfighter, The Night of the Following Day, and the only one of these six films I would’ve classed as a “want to see” before Indicator announced them, Sherlock Holmes riff They Might Be Giants. The latter comes with three cuts of the film, so I’m gonna have to choose one somehow…

The only other label to mention this month (I said it was a smaller one) is Eureka, who continued their recent output of classic “girls with guns” / Michelle Yeoh titles with Magnificent Warriors and expanded their Masters of Cinema line with yakuza thriller Violent Streets; plus I dove slightly into their back catalogue (all the way back to October) and bought the Maniacal Mayhem set of three Boris Karloff / Universal horrors (to go with the Universal Terror set I already had and in anticipation of the Creeping Horror set that’s coming in April, not to mention their other collections of classic Uni monster/horror flicks).

My final purchase of the month is an oddity: a DVD (the only format it’s available on) of a Christmas movie (seasonal!) — or, rather, a Christmas TV special. And its only DVD release (that I’m aware of) was a freebie with the Daily Mail years ago, and it was that that I picked up from an eBay seller (for a reasonable price, considering most copies of it are advertised for £16+. Seriously). I’m talking about The Greatest Store in the World, which I’ve always felt would be remembered as something of a Christmas classic if it had been released as a proper movie rather than a BBC special in 1999. Or maybe the memory cheats? It hasn’t been repeated often, so I haven’t seen it for years. Well, I’m not about to watch it anytime soon — it’s a Christmas movie, remember! It’ll have to wait ’til December.