Somehow, Pixar returned. After it looked like Disney’s release strategy during the pandemic might have somehow killed off Pixar, this month they… proved it, with Inside Out 2 becoming the highest grossing film of the year so far. Will we ever see an original Pixar movie again, or just a never-ending parade of attempts to rehash former glories, aka sequels? The latter seems likely at present.

Also on the big screen this past month: the fourth Bad Boys movie, whose ideal title was already taken by the third Bad Boys movie, so had to settle for Bad Boys: Ride or Die; more franchise fare in prequel A Quiet Place: Day One; the first chapter of Kevin Costner’s multi-part Western Horizon: An American Saga; the feature debut of M Night Shyamalan’s daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan, horror The Watched (aka The Watchers in the US, for whatever reason); another Russell Crowe exorcist movie, simply titled The Exorcism; new work from Yorgos Lanthimos with Kinds of Kindness and Jeff Nichols with The Bikeriders; plus various other bits and pieces I was even less likely to go and see.

Almost getting my viewing time were Netflix and Amazon Prime’s main originals of the month, which share a titular theme — those being Hit Man and Poolman, respectively. Their reviews out of festivals couldn’t be more different (the former attracting so much praise that it was seen as a shame it was going direct to Netflix; the latter… less so), but both land relatively high on my watchlist (the former because it’s Richard Linklater; the latter because the trailer looked fun, actually). Also attracting positive word of mouth was animation Ultraman: Rising. I’ve never seen any Ultraman stuff — heck, I’ve paid so little attention to it as a franchise that I don’t even really know what it is — but apparently this new animated Netflix original is very good. Also premiering on that platform in the past few weeks was Under Paris (the film that should’ve been called Shark de Triomphe — not sure where I first saw that pun, but credit to everyone who thought of it) and, not an original, but given its truncated cinema run (at least in this country), it may as well have been: Godzilla Minus One. (Regular readers with strong memories may recall I already listed that last month, but it didn’t really belong there — and, more importantly, I still haven’t watched it — so here it is again). The most else Prime could muster was the delayed (it came out in the US back in March) debut of a thriller starring Russell Crowe and Karen Gillan, Sleeping Dogs, and home movie-based tennis doc Federer: Twelve Final Days.

Meanwhile, my notes say Disney+ offered absolutely nothing new. And moving on to back catalogue titles, Disney+ offered… nothing there, either. Good thing I don’t pay for it.

As for the others, the most recent releases went to Sky Cinema / NOW, as usual, with Meg 2: The Trench and Five Nights at Freddy’s, while Netflix provided the streaming debut for Jodie Comer-starring environmental disaster sci-fi The End We Start From, as well as picking up the likes of Beast (the “Idris Elba vs a lion” film) and Bodies Bodies Bodies from Sky. Other titles of particular note included, on iPlayer, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All and acclaimed animation Flee; on Channel 4, The Forever Purge reminded me I quite enjoyed the first two films in that franchise and still need to catch up with the rest; and MUBI proffered Jan Švankmajer’s Alice (as in “in Wonderland”), Bong Joon-ho’s short Incoherence (included on the Criterion release of Memories of Murder, but I’ve just plumped for the UK 4K instead), and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which would be more noteworthy if I hadn’t bought the new 4K release just last month.

For whatever reason, The Dreamers also popped up on Prime this month; indeed, more than usual, they seemed to specialise in films I own on disc but haven’t watched, both ones I’ve never and those I’ve upgraded but not rewatched yet. Other examples included Children of Men, A Few Good Men, JFK, Peter Jackson’s King Kong (I’ve owned multiple versions down the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the extended cut), Kwaidan, Ridley Scott’s Legend, The Long Good Friday, Requiem for a Dream, Schindler’s List… and more. Indeed, as always, there were far too many catalogue additions across all the streamers to get into listing here.

With so many old discs waiting to be watched, I should really try to slow down my acquisition of new ones. I can’t say that I have, though this month’s pile feels a little lighter than usual. Recent theatrical releases new to disc included Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (it may have been poorly reviewed but, eh, I liked the last one) and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (one I kinda regret not seeing on the big screen, but here we are). Both of those were in 4K UHD, of course, on which format I also picked up 88 Films’ releases of Jess Franco’s Count Dracula and Jet Li classic Fist of Legend (which I reviewed, dubbed, way back in 2008. I enjoyed it even in that bastardised form, so it will be nice to revisit it properly). On regular Blu-ray, more of my money went into 88’s pockets for action/horror The Holy Virgin Versus the Evil Dead and historical epic Hsi Shih: Beauty of Beauties, while Radiance claimed yet more of my cash with sale pickups The Dead Mother and Scream and Scream Again, and their new release of Kinji Fukasaku’s Sympathy for the Underdog.

And, um, that’s it! Said it was a light one.