July’s Failures

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.

The biggest film on the big screen this month… was one I actually went to see, in my first cinema visit of the year. Next biggest, I guess, will end up being Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Remember the MCU? Yep, it’s still going. Less successful for Disney: the live-action remake of Moana. Oh dear what a shame. Also still going: Minions, in Minions & Monsters, plus the Evil Dead in Evil Dead Burn. Apparently quite good were The Invite and the punctuationally-baffling Nirvanna: The Band The Show The Movie, both of which I’ll definitely add to watchlists or something.

On streaming, last month’s theatrical release Masters of the Universe made it to Amazon Prime Video already, which I guess shows how well that did. Other theatrical releases from the tail end of last year / earlier this year made their streaming debuts too, with Marty Supreme and The Housemaid also on Prime, while Sky Cinema / NOW was positively flooded with them: in alphabetical order, Anaconda, Anemone (the latest film to tempt Daniel Day-Lewis out of retirement, this time because it was made by his son), Bugonia, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, Lurker, Mortal Kombat II, Normal, Redux Redux, and Wicked: For Good. Over on Disney+ (which I’m not subscribed to so I don’t know why I mention it) were The Devil Wears Prada 2, which I guess counts as a legacy sequel at this point, and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which I’d like to see but not enough to subscribe to a whole streamer for.

Meanwhile, Netflix had… um… back catalogue stuff? Of particular note, Gareth Edwards’ The Creator, which has moved a round a few different streamers now and I’ve still not seen, so maybe this time; one of the handful of Tony Scott films I’ve never seen, The Fan; that recent-ish animated Transformers movie that I think I heard was meant to be quite good or something, Transformers One; and, as ever, a bunch of stuff I own on disc and need to get round to (re)watching, like Monsters vs Aliens, the Paul W.S. Anderson The Three Musketeers (don’t judge me, I love the musketeers; also, it’s in my beloved 3D), and Training Day (what month doesn’t see Training Day appearing on a different streamer, it feels like). Widening the net, we find more examples on Prime — Blade Runner (which I’ve not seen since its 4K disc came out), The Prestige (same), and Unforgiven (same, but even longer) — and iPlayer — Elvis, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, North by Northwest, Vertigo, and all the Spider-Mans. Messing up my neat progression of formats, iPlayer is also the latest home for romcom Anyone But You, plus the TV premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster (Letterboxd user’s 108th greatest film of all time, currently), and repeat appearances for Paul Thomas Anderson’s’ Licorice Pizza and Past Lives (430th on that Letterboxd list).

Okay, back to discs for all the new stuff I threw my money away on… er, I mean, added to my most venerated collection. Yeah, that. This month’s list of titles isn’t excessive, but the lists of films kind of things, thanks to finally picking up All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, Volume Two in Severin’s most recent sale — that’s 24 feature films (plus 21 shorts), to go with the 22 features (and 14 shorts) from Volume One that I still haven’t watched. Oh dear. But at least my collection’s complete! From folk horror to folk tales, this month Masters of Cinema released one box set of five German examples of the latter, titled Into the Forest: Folktales at DEFA, including a staple of ’60s and ’70s British children’s TV, The Singing Ringing Tree; and announced a second set (Beneath the Trees: Folktales at DEFA 2) for release in October.

Elsewise, it was the usual case of 4K release from boutique labels, with a pair each from Arrow — an upgrade for William Friedkin’s neo-noir To Live and Die in L.A. and my first ever purchase of Soylent Green (of course, I already know the twist. Does anyone not?) — and Hammer — the latest of their big single-film box sets, X the Unknown, plus AIP’s 1971 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue. Finally, a trio for my extensive Radiance collection, covering Shohei Imamura’s “landmark satire of postwar affluence” about “a former buddhist monk turned erotic filmmaker” (sounds good, right?) The Pornographers in UHD, and in regular ol’ 1080p, more Imamura with the director’s final film, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, a “boldly sensuous and taboo-breaking love story”, plus Solo — not a Star Wars story, but Jean-Pierre Mocky writing, directing, and starring in a “profoundly satirical crime drama” that “captures the visceral feeling of disillusionment of a post-1968 French society brimming with rage at the sinister powers that be.” Fun times.

I have a Letterboxd list for said Radiance collection, which shows I own 150 features and shorts released by them… of which I’ve watched four. Well, it literally could be worse.

The 20th Monthly Review of July 2026

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At one point this month, I really thought I was going to, finally, for the first time since November last year, hit my ten first-time watches minimum goal. And then life and stuff happened again and I didn’t.

The average number of Challenge-qualifying films I need to watch each month for the rest of the year now sits at 12.4. The average number I’ve watched each month so far this year is 5.4. Not promising… but 12.4 is not beyond the realms of what I’ve managed in the past… although the last time I had a month above 12 was December 2024, and the last five-month stretch that averaged above 12.4 was in 2021…

But you never know.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#31 Wuthering Heights (2026) — New Film #3
#32 Enola Holmes 3 (2026) — New Film #4
#33 Lawless (2012) — Wildcard #6
#34 The Sheep Detectives (2026) — New Film #5
#35 Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) — Failure #7
#36 Joyride (2022) — Wildcard #7
#37 The Odyssey (2026) — New Film #6
#38 Project Hail Mary (2026) — New Film #7


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in July.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
  • Five of them were films that had their UK release this year, taking my New Films category from “barely started” to “up-to-date” in one fell swoop.
  • Neither Blindspot nor WDYMYHS were progressed this month, unfortunately.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Bodies Bodies Bodies and The Sheep Detectives.



The 134th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Sometimes I feel like so much of what I watch these days is middling — as I’ve discussed before, I don’t know if I’ve just become a harsher critic as I’ve got older (I guess gaining experience will do that to you — fewer things feel unique) or if the quality of films I’m choosing to watch has declined — but every now and then something does come along and blows me away, and this month it was Project Hail Mary.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Certified (inter)national treasure Olivia Colman shows off / labours under (deleted as applicable; I have no idea if it was good or not) an Irish accent throughout dramedy Joyride, which is… kinda fine? Some of it was funny, which rubbed a little awkwardly against when it got a bit Serious.


I’m gonna call it now: if August is the month that brings about a turnaround in my film viewing fortunes, I will be very surprised. I’m not going to do a Werner Herzog and commit to eating a shoe or something, but I’m pretty damn certain that in a month’s time I’ll be writing about a new high average that I need to hit for the rest of the year. In fact, it might finally reach the point of feeling insurmountable. We’ll see in 31 days.