Monthly Archives: October 2025

September’s Failures

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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.

I’ve heard good things about a couple of last month’s theatrical releases: Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, One Battle After Another, which seems to be being hailed as a film of all-time-level greatness; and Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk, which maybe can’t equal that level of rapturousness, but I’ve nonetheless heard is good. I’ve heard not a word said about Downton Abbey finale Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which I guess means it hasn’t offended anyone, but also isn’t the cultural behemoth it was back when it was on TV, or even when the first movie landed. The same could perhaps be said for the belated theatrical release of Hamilton, massively undercut as it was by being on Disney+ for over five years now. It would be nice if a disc release were to follow. Talking of belated, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues arrived just 41 years after its predecessor, and seems to have gone down about as well as you’d predict — i.e. not very.

Also filling screens with various levels of noteworthiness this month were the latest from 50% of the Coen brothers, Honey Don’t!; the fourth (I think?) and final Conjuring, The Conjuring: Last Rites; and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which I don’t really know anything about except it has a starry-ish cast (Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and therefore probably merits a mention on some level.

Of more note, going direct to streaming (or maybe it had a theatrical release, I don’t know; I certainly didn’t register one) was Spike Lee’s latest, a modern-day remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, Highest 2 Lowest, which is on Apple TV+ and so I really should watch it to justify the fact I keep forgetting to cancel my subscription (that and the new season of Slow Horses that’s currently airing… if “airing” is the right word for a direct-to-streaming series). The only other streaming original I noted this month was Liam Neeson action sequel Ice Road: Vengeance on Amazon Prime Video, the most noteworthy aspect of which was that I guess Ice Road was successful enough to warrant a sequel. Remember Ice Road? Me neither.

As for films making their subscription streaming premieres, Sky Cinema almost have a monopoly this month, with a varied selection that encompassed one time Oscar frontrunner The Brutalist, horror reimagining Wolf Man, well-reviewed action-comedy Novocaine, and poorly-reviewed action-comedy Love Hurts. Also Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, but I bought that on disc a while back so it’s a different kind of failure on my part. In a less R-rated bracket, Disney+ offered up the live-action Lilo & Stitch. I tend more towards the “but why?” side of the debate on these live-action do-overs, and I didn’t much care for the original Lilo & Stitch anyway, so this one is a long, long way down my watchlist.

Some films reminded me they exist by flipping services, like popular romcom Anyone But You jumping from Sky Cinema to Netflix, or the Prime Original remake of Road House rocking up on iPlayer via a terrestrial TV screening. Back catalogue additions in general are just reminders of stuff I haven’t quite got round to, like Bones and All and Tár, both also on iPlayer; or Minari and Megalopolis on MUBI (ooh, alliterative). Heck, I’d include Selma on that list, and that premiered almost eleven years ago. A whole decade plus one year! Where does time go?!

In a similar vein, there were plenty of reminders of discs I’ve bought and not watched, the worst-feeling (at least for me) being stuff I’ve been meaning to revisit for ages, gleefully upgraded to 4K, and then still not got round to. There’s a double helping of Francis Ford Coppola in that bracket across The Godfather trilogy and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, while other titles alongside them include RoboCop, RoboCop 2, Schindler’s List, Training Day, and The Usual Suspects.

Nonetheless, I still fork over the cash for brand-new 4K upgrades; though I do feel I’ve slightly reined myself in recently. Maybe not compared to regular folks, but compared to past-me. That said, there are still titles I jump on eagerly at order time but don’t when they actually drop through the door… although, in fairness, that’s because placing an order takes mere minutes while carving out time for multiple hours isn’t what it used to be. Anyway, getting Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World into the 4K club was most welcome — I owned the old Blu-ray, but that was a slightly begrudging purchase because it wasn’t meant to be very good, I just figured it would never get an upgrade. Apparently the 4K disc is splendid. Well, my Challenge has four rewatch slots still to go this year, and that’s high on my list of films I intend to fill them.

Other UHD purchases included John Wick sidequel Ballerina, a pair of old Hammer non-horrors, Blood Orange and The Man in Black, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy, and an upgrade for martial arts minor classic Come Drink with Me. As for regular Blu-rays, it’s mostly boutique stuff that, for one (understandable) reason or another, doesn’t merit a 4K disc, like the latest silent-era addition to the Masters of Cinema line, Finis Terrae, or Radiance’s fourth volume of world noir, World Noir Vol. 4.

Finally, a trio of box sets added a total of 18 films to my watch list; more if you count alternate versions. Two of those were from Anderson Entertainment, whose Super Space Theatre volumes collect the compilation films produced from episodes of Gerry Anderson TV shows; three Thunderbirds films in Volume One, and six Space: 1999 films in Volume Two, including one newly-created for this set, as well as Spazio: 1999, which was how Italian audiences first encountered the series, with a score by Ennio Morricone, no less. The remainder came from a belated pickup of Arrow’s V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal set, collecting nine features from Japanese studio Toei’s ’80s/’90s line of direct-to-video genre flicks. How “essential” is such a collection? I dunno, but it does sound kinda fun. Maybe some day I’ll actually get round to watching them and find out if they indeed are.

The Steamy Monthly Review of September 2025

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Ooh, saucy…

Nah, actually. The title was inspired by this turn of events: I recently won a Steam Deck (yep, won — lucky me!), and have consequently spent a disproportionate amount of my free time playing around with it, and generally getting back into gaming along with it. I imagine at some point the shine of newness will wear off, though hopefully not entirely because I’ve gone a bit crazy with buying stuff to play. Brand-new high-profile titles are insanely expensive nowadays, as the gaming media will often harp on about, but older games and indie titles regularly go for insanely low prices — which is great if you’re catching up on the past 20-ish years of the medium… though it does lead to your library bulging pretty quickly. Or it does if you’re me.

Anyway, naturally there was a knock-on effect on my film viewing. Not disastrous, but it does mean I failed to achieve ten first-time watches for the second time this year. Well, next month is always a fresh chance to start a new run.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#73 7 Women and a Murder (2021) — Rewatch #8
#74 KPop Demon Hunters (2025) — New Film #9
#75 An Aleutian Adventure (1920s) — Failure #9
#76 The Italian Connection (1972) — Genre #6
#77 Rebel Without a Cause (1977) — Blindspot #9
#78 9 (2009) — 50 Unseen #9
#79 The City of Lost Children (1995) — WDYMYHS #9
#80 Drive-Away Dolls (2025) — 50 Unseen #10


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • I remain ahead of pace for the year (to be at pace, September would end on #74), though the “whole month ahead” lead I had back in March, May and June is definitively over for the year (I would’ve needed to get to #83 to achieve it this month).
  • I say “definitively” because of the limitations on certain categories: there are five that should feature every month, meaning the highest point I could end October is #90, and pace for the end of November is #91.
  • Of course, as I mentioned in the intro, I didn’t hit my monthly target of ten first-time watches, so it’s not all sunshine and roses.
  • The Italian Connection is the second film in director Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu trilogy. Its predecessor, Milano Calibro 9, was the first film I watched for this year’s Genre category. I’ll give you one guess which film I’ve got earmarked to include among the remaining four Genre films…
  • I’d owned 9 on Blu-ray for 15 years, never played, before I finally watched it this month. I’m ridiculous like that — 9 is far from alone in suffering such a fate. And it might have stayed unplayed and mostly forgotten (as I’m sure many other things are, especially titles on DVD), were it not for it being on one of my 50 Unseen lists, which means it gets brought to mind every now and then, whenever I peruse that catalogue of failures for something to belatedly watch. I don’t watch as many of those as I’d like nowadays, but they’re still a useful reminder.
  • Talking of 50 Unseen, I finished that category this month. The final tally sees half of the films coming from last year and half from years before that. Seems like a pretty good balance to me.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was ’50s teen classic Rebel Without a Cause.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was dark steampunk fairytale The City of Lost Children.
  • When I decided to watch The City of Lost Children, I thought how it was nice that for once I was watching a disc I’d only bought relatively recently. Then I looked it up and discovered I purchased it 2½ years ago. Oh well.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched An Aleutian Adventure and KPop Demon Hunters.



The 124th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Last weekend came in swinging here: September had been an above-adequate (no bad films) but unexceptional month (like much of 2025 has been — my 5-star list is looking very thin), but then I watched a trio of films that impressed me mightily. Of those, my pick is probably Rebel Without a Cause. I thought I knew what it was going to be, and it wasn’t; not exactly. Also, James Dean really was very good.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This feels harsh — as this category sometimes does by its very nature (I’m not going to go out of my way to watch one certified-awful film every month just to guarantee a ‘winner’) — because 9 actually has some very strong points… it just drops the ball on some of the fundamentals underpinning those, and thus is the least-good film I watched this month.


It’s creepy and it’s kooky, mysterious and spooky, it’s all together ooky… and yet it’s all just because of one day right at the end. Any excuse, I guess. Certainly, I’ve got a few horror and horror-adjacent films lined up to try to watch in October, and maybe I’ll focus on finding some more too.