About badblokebob

Aiming to watch at least 100 films in a year. Hence why I called my blog that. http://100films.co.uk

Archive 5, Vol.11

Posted on May 16, 2024 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 515 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2023 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, the main emergent theme is “films that weren’t so great” — although there are a couple of bright spots to be found, still.

This week’s Archive 5 are…

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

Mangrove (2020)

Out of Africa (1985)

Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

Dumb and Dumber

(1994)

The nicest thing I can say about Dumb and Dumber is that it does at least live up to its title: it starts dumb and gets dumber.

Despite the film’s later reputation in some circles as a modern comedy… if not “classic”, then certainly “success” — enough to eventually earn it both a prequel and sequel, at any rate — I’m clearly not alone in this view: apparently the original draft of the screenplay was so poor that it gained an enduringly negative reputation among investors; to the extent that, even once it had been rewritten, it had to be pitched under a fake title in order to get people to even read it. I feel like the final result only goes some way towards fixing that, with an oddly episodic structure and some bizarrely amateurish bits of filmmaking for a studio movie (the audio quality is relatively poor; there’s too much reliance on samey master shots).

There are a few genuinely funny bits between all the gurning, guffawing, and scatology. It’s a shame they’re not in an overall-better film.

Dumb and Dumber was #119 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021. It featured on my list of The Worst Films I Saw in 2021.

Bill & Ted Face the Music

(2020)

I wasn’t that big a fan of the original Bill & Ted films, so I didn’t have high hopes for this — after all, most decades-later revival/reunion movies are primarily about trying to please existing fans, not win round new ones; and it feels like a good number of them fail even in that regard. Face the Music is definitely full of the requisite nods and references, both explicit and subtle, major and minor; but they’re all in the right spirit and it kinda works (albeit a bit scrappily at times), bound together by a deceptively simple, pervasive niceness.

Alex Winter is particularly great as Bill. Given all the stories we hear about how awesome Keanu Reeves is in real life, it’s no surprise that — despite being the much (much) bigger movie star — he’s generous enough to be a co-lead and let Winter shine. Brigette Lundy-Paine is absolutely bang on as Ted’s daughter, aping Reeves’ performance in all sorts of ways. As the younger Bill, Samara Weaving is clearly game, but doesn’t carry it quite as naturally (apparently she was cast after Reeves discovered she was the niece of Hugo Weaving, who he’d of course worked with on the Matrix trilogy, so that might explain that).

“Be excellent to each other” is a message the world needs now more than ever, and that’s as true four years on as it was back in 2020. For me, that makes this third outing Bill and Ted’s most excellent adventure.

Bill & Ted Face the Music was #136 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Mangrove

(2020)

aka Small Axe: Mangrove

The line between film and TV continues to blur with Mangrove: a 127-minute episode of an anthology TV series, Small Axe, conceived and directed by Oscar winner Steve McQueen, that premiered as the opening night film of the London Film Festival. It was made for television, but in form and pedigree it’s a movie. Just another example in a “does it really matter?” debate that continues to rage — and is only likely to intensify with the increasing jeopardy faced by theatrical exhibition. (I wrote this intro almost four years ago, and while theatrical is fortunately still hanging in there post-pandemic, I do think the line remains malleable.)

I only ended up watching two episodes/films from Small Axe in the end. I did intend to go back and finish them, especially as they were heaped with critical praise, but the second (Lovers Rock) bored me to tears, which didn’t help. This first was better, but still not wholly to my taste. It tells an important true story about racially-motivated miscarriages of justice, but I found it overlong and with too much speechifying dialogue. That kind of thing works better in a courtroom setting, I find, so perhaps that’s why I felt the film was at its best once it (finally) got to the courtroom. When it’s good, it really is very good.

Mangrove was #246 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Out of Africa

(1985)

This is very much the kind of thing that was once considered a Great Movie, in an “Oscar winner” sense, but nowadays is sort of dated and attracts plenty of less favourable reviews. It’s long, historical, and white — not how we like our movies about Africa nowadays, for understandable reasons.

Certainly, there are inherent problems with its attitude to colonialism, but to a degree that’s tied to how much tolerance you have for “things were different in the past” as an argument for understanding. In this case, just because these white Europeans shouldn’t have taken African land and divvied it up among themselves and treated the inhabitants as little better than cattle, that doesn’t mean the individuals involved weren’t devoid of feeling or humanity. People like Karen, the film’s heroine, were trying to do what they thought was right within the limited scope of what society at the time allowed them to think. With the benefit of a more enlightened modern perspective, we can see that was still wrong and that they didn’t go far enough, but (whether you like it or not) there is an element of “things were different then”.

Morals aside, the story is a bit slow going, bordering on dull at times, but it’s mostly effective as a ‘prestige’ historical romance, which I think is what it primarily wants to be. It’s quite handsomely shot, although not as visually incredible as others make out, and John Barry’s score is nice — you can definitely hear it’s him: on several occasions it reminded me of the “love theme”-type pieces for his Bond work.

Out of Africa was #212 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Rambo: Last Blood

(2019)

Sylvester Stallone’s belated returns to the roles that made his name have worked out pretty well so far, I think, with Rocky Balboa and Rambo (i.e. Rambo 4) being among my favourites for both those franchises; not to mention Creed and its sequel. Unfortunately, here is where that streak runs out.

Running a brisk 89 minutes (in the US/Canada/UK cut — a longer version was released in other territories), the film is almost admirably to-the-point. We all know where it’s going, and more or less what plot beats it will hit along the way, so it doesn’t belabour anything, it just gets on with it. However, you eventually realise why other films ‘indulge’ in the kind of scenes this one has done away with: movies are about more than just plot, they’re about character and emotion and why things happen. Last Blood is so desperate to get to the action that it strips those things back to their bare minimum, thus undermining our investment. And then, weirdly, it hurries through the action scenes too. The climax packs in as many gruesome deaths in as short a time span as possible, meaning none but the most stomach-churning have any impact; and even those disgusting ones are mercifully fleeting. More, it feels rushed and of little consequence. Far from a grand send-off to the Rambo saga (which a slapped-on voiceover-and-montage finale attempts to evoke), it feels like a short-story interlude.

Did Rambo deserve better? Well, I wouldn’t necessarily go that far. But, on the evidence of this, it might be best if they don’t try again.

Rambo: Last Blood was #74 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

April’s Failures

Posted on May 2, 2024 by badblokebob

I was going to go to the cinema this month, I really was, but then… I didn’t. Top contender was already mentioned in last month’s failures, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Seems like a real Big Screen experience. So when they drop it to smaller screens, but don’t even have the courtesy to drop the ticket price, it begins to seem less appealing. I’m sure my local’s smallest screen is still bigger than my TV (I use “sure” quite loosely there, in its lesser known sense of “not sure”. I mean, I’m sure it is literally bigger, but does it feel bigger when you’re sat however-far away from it?), but when a single cinema ticket is over half the cost of buying the film on 4K disc (which I know I’ll do), it lessens the appeal. Also nearly tempting me out of the house were Dev Patel’s Monkey Man (that just straight up disappeared entirely before I had the chance) and Alex Garland’s Civil War (but if I want to watch an Alex Garland film I’ve not seen, there’s Men on Channel 4 for free).

There were other theatrical releases in April, of course, which broadly break down into two groups: ones that will go straight on my watchlist when they hit streaming, and there’s a reasonable chance I’ll actually watch them, too; and ones that will go on my watchlist but probably just sit there, possibly forever. In the former, there’s Luca Guadagnino’s much-discussed tennis-themed love triangle / threesome (blurbs kinda imply the former; images suggest the latter; I’ve not read enough to know which it is; maybe both), Challengers; British period comedy Seize Them! (I don’t think these screened anywhere near me, but the trailer was funny enough); high-concept vampire thriller Abigail; and one-man-army actioner Boy Kills World (John Wick has given rise to many such movies, and, frankly, I’m not complaining). On the second pile, there’s Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black; horror franchise prequel The First Omen (I’ve never seen any Omen films, so this was never going to top any lists for me); Ewan McGregor and his daughter on a road trip in Bleeding Love (not to be confused with Love Lies Bleeding (though search engines do), which is out tomorrow here); and Black comedies The Book of Clarence and The American Society of Magical Negroes (feels off to define a film by race like that, but they do seem to foreground it, so maybe it’s just fair).

In theory, Netflix rolled out some big guns to compete with all that. In reality, I’m not sure they represented much of a threat, or deterrent, or alternative, or whatever they’re meant to be in this half-arsed analogy I’m already wishing I hadn’t started. We’re talking primarily about the latest from totally non-controversial, never discourse-provoking, haver of a totally normal and sane fanbase, Mr Zack Snyder, and his Star Wars inspired / ripped off (depending how you want to think of it) Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver. I’ve not seen Part One. I’m still considering just waiting for his presumably-preferred Director’s Cut versions, which have been confirmed to be forthcoming since even before the first one came out, which feels like a bit of shoot-yourself-in-the-foot marketing from Netflix — I can’t be the only person who considered waiting, and then had whatever enthusiasm they had (mine: not high, but intending to watch with relative promptness) dampened by all the piss-poor reviews.

Also brand-new on Netflix: Prince Andrew interview drama Scoop (apparently decent but sort of pointless when the actual thing is out there); another Liam Neeson actioner to add to the pile, In the Land of Saints and Sinners (there are so many films from his action star era I’ve not seen that I’d probably choose over whatever the latest one is… if I ever chose any of them, which I don’t seem to any more); and live-action manga (re-)adaptation City Hunter, which I’ve heard is good and is definitely the most likely of these four to actually get watched.

Notable films on other streamers leant more towards previously-released titles making their subscription streaming debuts. Amazon Prime added The Zone of Interest, meaning all but one of this year’s Best Picture nominees is now on a subscription service; as well as horror… tenthquel(?) Saw X, and horror of a different sort (i.e. I’ve heard it’s terrible) in Expend4bles. Over on Disney+ there was an actual Disney film — their latest canon animation, Wish — while Apple TV+ added another reason for me to resubscribe in Matthew Vaughn’s latest, Argylle. I know the notices were terrible, but the trailer amused me and I’ve generally chimed with Vaughn’s work, so I remain cautiously optimistic. As for Sky Cinema / NOW, it was an unusually underwhelming month — adult-humoured talking-dogs comedy Strays seemed to be about the biggest get, although I’ve heard rumblings that BlackBerry is good. They’re also the UK home for the massively-belated sequel to Megamind — remember Megamind? It was the other superhero-themed animated kids’ movie the year Despicable Me came out, and for my money it was the better one. The idea of a sequel is, on paper, an immensely appealing one. Unfortunately, I’ve heard Megamind vs the Doom Syndicate is terrible in a “crime against cinema” kind of way. Even Sky — who are presumably trying to persuade you to watch the stuff they have to stream, especially when it’s a brand-new direct-to-them title — display it with a 0.5-out-of-5 star rating. Eesh.

Now, we’ve reached the part of the column where I say, “as always, there was loads of back catalogue stuff too”, because, yes, as always, there was loads of back catalogue stuff too. Ones that provoked a particularly “ooh, I have been meaning to watch that” reaction — before getting added to my watchlist and forgotten about again — included Assassination Nation on Netflix; The Prince of Egypt on Amazon Prime; Magic Mike and Mary Queen of Scots on iPlayer; and a whole host on Channel 4: Pig, Freaky, Riders of Justice, Monos, Eagle vs Shark, X, I’m Your Man, Hit the Road, Titane… It’s their ad breaks that put me off, really. Plus I never trust the TV-based streamers to show things in the highest quality. It’s all those years of both NOW and iPlayer maxing out at 720p, and ITV not seeming to move behind SD (have they now? I’m not sure).

Oh, and that’s all without mentioning the never-ending guilt trip of the streamers adding stuff I already own on disc and haven’t watched yet — Jurassic World: Dominion and Supernova on Netflix; Green Zone and Thelma & Louise on Amazon; Apocalypse Now: Final Cut and The Martian (I bought but never watched the extended cut) on iPlayer; and, again, a pile on Channel 4, including Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Censor, Desperado, Possessor, Weathering with You, The Long Good Friday, The Mist, Time Bandits… And MUBI were really rubbing it in by adding a movie I took a punt on preordering — two, technically, as Trenque Lauquen comes in two parts.

And that’s without even getting on to stuff I’d like to think about rewatching.

…instead of which, let’s jump on to purchases, because, good golly, there were plenty of them too. I can’t help myself! No, I really can’t, because this month I ended up placing two large-ish orders from the US; a mix of stuff my trigger-finger had been itching to get, and then somewhat-random other things (stuff I did want — I don’t literally buy anything, you know — but that I only bought now because if you get a Deep Discount order to a high enough value they stop charging VAT, somehow). I do sometimes get buyer’s remorse when I see the state of my bank balance, but actually receiving the parcels is like Christmas.

So, deep breath, those US parcels included a bunch of 4Ks: Criterion’s The Last Picture Show (imported to get sequel Texasville included, which has to be dropped from the UK release); both versions of The Manchurian Candidate; David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises; Oliver Stone’s JFK and Natural Born Killers (both films I’ve been meaning to revisit since before this blog began, which is insane if you stop to think about it); then ’80s sci-fi comedy The Man Who Wasn’t There, which is in 3D and, yeah, that’s why I bought it; and on regular Blu-ray, silent epic Foolish Wives; intriguing Dracula adaptation The Last Voyage of the Demeter (which hasn’t had UK release of any kind yet); a new restoration of The Lion in Winter; and a handful of Fritz Lang’s Hollywood work: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, While the City Sleeps, and You and Me. Heck, I even bought a DVD: Warner Archive’s Philo Vance Murder Case Collection of six ’30s and ’40s detective movies, starring the likes of Basil Rathbone and William Powell. The latter has no overlap with the Blu-ray set Kino are putting out later this month, which will surely make its way into a later order.

None of which means I dampened down my home territory purchasing. New 4Ks included a bunch of Indicator titles: their latest Jean Rollins, The Nude Vampire (subtle) and The Demoniacs, plus Ozploitation thriller Snapshot; plenty of martial arts action with Eureka’s release of China O’Brien 1&2 and a sale pickup of Enter the Dragon (to join the DVD and two Blu-ray copies I already have and won’t be getting rid of, either because of special features or because they’re part of a box set); and I finally caved on Arrow’s edition of Michael Mann’s Blackhat, although that’s more about the director’s cut exclusively included — but only in 1080p — on disc two. Talking of Michael Mann and caving, I also finally picked up 88 Films’ edition of Miami Vice — that would’ve been an instabuy last year if they’d managed to get it out in 4K, but, alas, no; so I tried to resist (it’s the first UK HD release of the director’s cut, but I imported the US edition donkey’s years ago), but new special features and including both cuts was always going sway me in the end. And that’s another film I’ve been meaning to revisit since before this blog even began. Jesus.

I’m still not done though, because Eureka also put out Blu-rays of Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary, which I’ve wanted to see for a while, and Jet Li superhero-ish actioner Black Mask; plus another poliziotteschi from Radiance-affiliated Raro Video, The Boss (part of a loose trilogy with Milano Calibro 9, which I have the 2015 Arrow release, and The Italian Connection, which someone now needs to release in the UK, please); and, for a bit of real culture, the new Ian McKellen Hamlet. It runs under two hours. For Hamlet! Remarkable. Maybe that will help persuade me to actually pop it in and watch it. I really should do that with discs more often…

The Critical Monthly Review of April 2024

Posted on May 1, 2024 by badblokebob

In the introduction to last month’s review I mentioned that, among other things, I’d spent 26½ hours watching Critical Role (and related content… by which I just mean after-show Talks Machina). Well, my maths tells me that in April I watched another 48 hours. Two solid days’ worth! Sure, when you consider that in the context of 30 days it doesn’t sound a lot, but I’m not sure I spent that much time on one other single thing (excepting sleep). And I’m actually holding back a bit, forcing myself to do other things with my free time and not just stream, stream, stream. There’s certainly a lot to get through: I’m only 10% through Campaign 2 — just 630 hours to go.

And yet, despite that, my movie watching is doing ok. So ok, in fact, that in April I watched the most films of any month so far this year. As the star of one of them might say: wahoo!

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#23 The Monuments Men (2014) — 50 Unseen #5
#24 American Fiction (2023) — Failure #4
#25 The Fourth Square (1961) — Series Progression #3
#26 The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) — Wildcard #1
#27 The Inspector Wears Skirts Part II (1989) — Genre #3
#28 Spawn: Director’s Cut (1997/1998) — Rewatch #3
#29 I.S.S. (2023) — New Film #4
#30 12th Fail (2023) — WDYMYHS #4
#31 No Hard Feelings (2023) — 50 Unseen #6
#32 Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987) — Blindspot #4

I watched 14 feature films I’d never seen before in April.
As I said at the start, that’s the best month of 2024 so far, meaning it raises the average for the year to date from 10.3 to 11.3, and the rolling average of the last 12 months from 9.1 to 9.3.
Nine of those counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
That’s more than the usual eight needed to keep things ticking over, but not quite enough to catch up to target pace. Still, I was two behind at the end of March, now I’m only one behind. Maybe one day I’ll get ahead again, like I used to in the old days…
Several of this month’s Challenge films presented a choice of which category to qualify them for. For example, American Fiction could have been April’s New Film, as it was only released in February here; but as I.S.S. was actually released this month over here, that seemed even more fitting for the category. Plus, American Fiction had been in the Failures two months in a row (from its theatrical release in February and its subscription streaming debut in March), so that felt even more fitting.
Meanwhile, The Super Mario Bros. Movie could have been another 50 Unseen; but as that category is already halfway complete, I decided to finally inaugurate the Wildcards, counting the film as an additional Failure from March.
This month’s Blindspot film was the first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker trilogy, Where Is the Friend’s House?, which I’ve wanted to see since learning about it in The Story of Film nine years ago (see the reference under my comments on Part Thirteen).
This month’s WDYMYHS film was one of the newest entries into the IMDb Top 250, Indian exam drama 12th Fail.
From last month’s “failures” I watched American Fiction, The Inspector Wears Skirts 2, No Hard Feelings, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

The 107th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Quality-wise, this is one of those months that felt fine but, when I look back, there aren’t a huge number of contenders for films I really loved. That makes this winner an easy pick, though: it’s American Fiction.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
The flipside is that there aren’t too many terrible films, either. By a nose, the (dis)honour goes to The Inspector Wears Skirts Part II. On the bright side, watching it now did save me from spending £30+ on parts three and four…

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Not many posts in contention this month, My review of I.S.S. interested hardly anyone, so the winner almost by default (there’s also the “failures”, of course) was March’s monthly review.

Every review posted this month, including new titles and the Archive 5

I.S.S.

I’ve got some time off work at the start of May, so it may be an absolute banger of a month… or I may spend all that time watching Critical Role. Find out in 31 days!

I.S.S. (2023)

Posted on April 25, 2024 by badblokebob

Here we have the kind of film that gets branded as “science-fiction”, simply because it’s set in space; but, as an opening title card is at pains to point out, the actual setting is the present day. Mankind has a permanent presence in space on the eponymous International Space Station — that’s not sci-fi, that’s reality. Any speculative elements here are no more implausible or futuristic than in, say, a Jack Ryan story. Heck, James Bond films have routinely featured more impossible, fictional gadgets than anything seen here, and no one’s seriously describing those as “sci-fi” — except maybe Moonraker, and that’s really only because it’s set in space. That said, if we take the genre at face value — fiction about science — well, space exploration is pretty sciencey, and the I.S.S.’s crew are scientists, so, yeah, I guess maybe it is science-fiction, in a literal sense.

Anyway, as I said, the film is set in the present day, with the I.S.S. currently crewed by three American and three Russian astronauts. Is that often the case? I think they’re the two primary countries to crew the station, but astronauts of various nationalities end up on there; I’m just not sure how regularly. It certainly simplifies the film’s plot to keep everyone distinctly on one of the two sides, because of what happens next: down on Earth, war breaks out between the US and Russia, and each trio’s commander is instructed by their respective ground control to secure the station as a key asset. (Why would a war on Earth care about a scientific research space station at a time when space is hardly a key battleground? The film does have an explanation for that.)

It is, in my view, an enticing setup; indeed, it’s what sold me on watching the film as soon as I heard about it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have any fresh ideas beyond that inciting incident. What unfurls over the next hour-or-so (after a bit of character establishment and plot setup — the film runs under 90 minutes before credits) is a moderately tense “who can be trusted?” thriller, with both sides dubious of the other’s intent, as well as degrees of distrust within their own camps. But it never manages to take that anywhere surprising, with every twist feeling first-idea obvious. It’s not that the film telegraphs these narrative turns, but if you’ve seen a thriller before, you’ll likely expect every one.

Perhaps if the sides hadn’t been so neatly divided — if there had been crew members from other countries, with conflicting loyalties — the film would’ve had more juice. Part of the problem is a limited cast size: the crew is just six people; teams of three are already quite limited for generating internal conflict, so if you cut that down to two with two floating (pun semi-intended) members… Well, now we’re perhaps getting into the territory of judging the film for what it isn’t than for what it is. Nonetheless, it feels like maybe those involved could or should have spent more time exploring those possibilities themselves.

Presumably this was a relatively low-budget endeavour, given the shortage of marketing push (its UK release, three whole months after its US bow, seems to be fairly limited) and lack of major star wattage — though there’s a fair chance you’ll recognise most of the cast, depending what else you consume. The lead is Ariana DeBose, of West Side Story and “Angela Bassett did the thing” fame. Her commander is the generally-recognisable Chris Messina, with the American side rounded out by John Gallagher Jr, who I always remember from The Newsroom, but has also been in the likes of Westworld and 10 Cloverfield Lane. The Russians are led by The Americans’ Costa Ronin, alongside the prolific Pilou Asbæk (Borgen, Game of Thrones, Ghost in the Shell, etc) and the only cast member I didn’t recognise, Masha Mashkova (maybe you’ll know her if you watched McMafia).

Despite the limited cost, the realisation of space and weightlessness is decent — don’t expect Gravity when one crew member sets off on a spacewalk, but the effects are more than serviceable. I’m even curious how they achieved weightlessness — I presume they didn’t have the budget for Apollo 13-style “vomit comet” flights, nor Interstellar’s complex rigs, and sometimes you do suspect the actors are just bobbing around a bit, but it mostly works. Sadly, the current Blu-ray release is entirely extras-free (not even a trailer), so it remains a mystery to me for now.

It’s a shame that I.S.S. doesn’t offer something exceptional enough to elevate it to the ranks of those other space films I just mentioned. Personally, however, I just fundamentally enjoy seeing films set in the present-day/near-future of real-world space exploration, so I’m still glad it exists.

I.S.S. is in UK and Irish cinemas from tomorrow, Friday 26th April 2024. It’s the 29th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

March’s Failures

Posted on April 2, 2024 by badblokebob

As I mentioned at the start of my March review, I’ve spent a lot of time this past month on things that aren’t films. Does that mean my pile of failures is even more shocking than normal? No, not really — I mean, it could scarcely get much bigger, could it? And I actually went to the cinema once this month too, so there’s even one less title in that paragraph than there’d normally be.

In fact, I’d hoped to make it to the cinema twice this month — Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire was my other targeted release — but family Easter weekend plans got in the way. I’m busy next weekend too, but maybe I’ll find a weeknight for it or something. I’m sure it’s the kind of film that would benefit from the big screen (I felt the same way about its predecessor, which I only saw at home, thanks in part to it coming out in The Covid Times). I nearly made it three trips, even, because I was tempted by Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. I knew the reviews would be poor to middling, but they were so bad it put me right off. I’ll definitely catch it on disc, though. Other silver screen releases this month that I’ll definitely catch on disc were Kung Fu Panda 4 (I enjoyed the first three, but not enough to make the effort for this one at the cinema) and the latest semi-Coen brothers film (in that it’s directed by just one of them), Drive-Away Dolls, which looked fun.

I thought the streamers’ premieres this month would fare better, but I didn’t make time for several of those either (maybe choosing to spend so much time on other stuff had more of an impact than I allowed in my opening paragraph). Top of my watchlist were Netflix’s fantasy actioner Damsel and thoughtful sci-fi Spaceman, plus Amazon Prime’s remake of Road House — not that I’ve ever seen the original, but this version boasts Doug Liman as director and Jake Gyllenhaal as star, both of which appeal to me. Well, now they’re here to count towards my Challenge in the Failures category next month, so that might improve their chances (for at least one of them, anyway).

Other films premiering on streaming included football (aka soccer) true story The Beautiful Game (not a sport I care about, but this boasts a cast led by Bill Nighy), a new all-action remake of The Wages of Fear, Pierce Brosnan in Fast Charlie (which I seem to remember seeing a trailer for and thinking it looked fun enough), and slushy romcom nonsense with a nigh-unsayable title, Irish Wish. I only mention that last one because everything about it seems like a total disaster. I won’t be watching (so it’s not really a “failure”, but I think we long ago passed that being a genuine litmus test for what I mention in this column).

Other big-name titles making their subscription streaming debuts included Ridley Scott’s Napoleon on Apple TV+; Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla on MUBI; three-and-a-half-hour concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour on Disney+, which also had Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins and six-time BAFTA nominee All of Us Strangers. Talking of awards nominees, Oscar winners abound, from Poor Things on Disney+ (much to the confusion of many Americans, based on social media), to American Fiction and Anatomy of a Fall on Amazon, to 20 Days in Mariupol on Channel 4, via all sorts of stuff on Netflix: acting nominees Nyad and Rustin; documentaries American Symphony and To Kill a Tiger; shorts The After and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar — the latter of which was one of four Wes Anderson Roald Dahl shorts that he apparently insisted were released as individual films so no one would judge them as a portmanteau feature, but which Netflix have now made available as a portmanteau feature, title The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More.

Talking of the Oscars, every February/March I get the offer of a cut-price Sky Cinema subscription from NOW, which used to be great for watching the Oscars on Sky. But, starting this year, here in the UK the ceremony is now broadcast free on ITV, so I don’t need to get Sky even at that budget price — hurrah! Except they’re still the streaming home to tonnes of recent movies, of course, so I took the offer anyway. That means my watchlist has been flooded with a mass of stuff that was previously locked away. We’re talking The Beekeeper (wasn’t that only in cinemas, like, the other week?), Michael Mann’s Ferrari (apparently a “Sky Original” — oh dear), Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City (eesh, I haven’t even watched The French Dispatch on Disney+ yet), Fast X, The Super Mario Bros Movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, No Hard Feelings, Polite Society, Gran Turismo, May December, Violent Night, The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan, Renfield, Beau Is Afraid, She Said; plus superhero movies I kinda want to see even though they’re meant to be awful, like The Flash and Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods; and more back catalogue stuff that I’ve added to my watchlist but don’t even care enough to list here, so I’m not likely to actually watch any of it, am I? (But you never know…)

As if that wasn’t enough, the other streamers are also always bolstering their back catalogue. Most noteworthy among these also-rans for me was RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop on Amazon Prime. This making-of documentary is meant to be so good that I nearly bought it on Blu-ray. It’s not even just “a documentary”, but a four-part series totalling almost five hours. As making-ofs go, that’s rather incredible. I mean, I remember when the Twelve Monkeys DVD was exalted for having an hour-long making-of. Obviously, things like the Lord of the Rings appendices reshaped expectations in that regard, but those remained a rarity, and similar extravagances have been cut back with time (nowadays, even huge popular blockbusters typically get no more than 45 to 60 minutes of behind-the-scenes material, often split across multiple sub-ten-minute featurettes). That said, when I’m likely to make time for such an undertaking, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never actually got round to watching those Rings appendices, and I’m a much bigger fan of those films than I am of RoboCop.

Though that was one title I avoided buying on disc, this month (as with most months, to be honest) the streamers have been flooded with stuff to remind me I haven’t yet watched my bought-and-paid-for copy —from things I’ve never seen, like Michael Mann’s Ali and The Last of the Mohicans, the new Candyman, Drive My Car, The Kid Who Would Be King, Legends of the Fall, The Long Good Friday, Mazes and Monsters, Out of Sight, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Weathering with You; to things I’ve upgraded but not watched my new copy, like Drive, The Godfather trilogy, The Guest, La La Land, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; to stuff I’ve simply been meaning to revisit, like Catch Me If You Can, The Martian, The Matrix Resurrections, and The Third Man. And those are just some edited highlights.

Then there’s all the new discs I’ve been buying to further enlarge my collection. Only a handful of them were 4K this month: Ozploitation sci-fi horror Patrick from Indicator; bodyswap sci-fi horror Possessor from Second Sight; and folk horror Witchfinder General from 88 Films. Horror always seems to be at the forefront of new formats… though I’m not sure we can still call 4K a new format at this point. But nonetheless, plenty of deeper-cut horror movies are finding their way onto 4K discs while studios still twiddle their thumbs about releasing major titles on the format, so my point stands. That said, some much-anticipated studio titles did make it to the disc this month, in the form of a trio of long-awaited James Cameron films… and they were pretty universally derided for their ‘restored’ (read: modernised) picture quality. I’ve wanted True Lies on disc for decades, but I’m skipping it based on what I’ve read and seen (for now — maybe I’ll cave when it’s cheap. I mean, it’s likely this is the only version we’ll ever get). The one I did pick up is apparently the least-bad, The Abyss. Frankly, the DVD is so ancient, almost anything will be an improvement.

That aside, I have no other ‘major’ titles to mention this month, only new releases of older films from boutique labels. As seems to be commonplace nowadays, lots of martial arts-related titles, with a duo of duos from Eureka — the two Bodyguard Kiba films, and a double-feature of influential titles, The Swordsman of All Swordsmen and The Mystery of Chess Boxing — plus a box set of the Bounty Hunter trilogy from Radiance and The Inspector Wears Skirts 2 from 88 Films. Indicator mix things up with a trio of lucha libre films: Santo vs. the Riders of Terror, The Panther Women, and The Bat Woman (which I’ve sort of seen thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000 taking it on last season). Rounding things out, some releases I can’t neatly combine in thematic bundles: the latest silent movie restoration from Redwood Creek Films, the 1928 version of The Fall of the House of Usher (at least the third screen adaptation of that story I own); River, another time loop film from the makers of Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (which I also haven’t watched); and Italian gangster actioner Tony Arzenta (aka Big Guns or No Way Out), which reportedly plays like a sequel to Le Samouraï (another film I’ve been intending to watch for decades).

The important thing to take away from all that is… I need more time to watch movies. But hey, at least there’s plenty of choice to fulfil the Failures category next month.

The Eggy Monthly Review of March 2024

Posted on April 1, 2024 by badblokebob

In case you somehow missed it, it’s Easter weekend. That’s the only reason for the title. There are no eggs involved anywhere else in this post.

In terms of observations actually related to the blog, I only managed to keep one of my two main viewing goals ticking over — that is to say, I hit my “ten new films per month” target, but fell short of keeping my 100 Films Challenge on track (more detail in Viewing Notes, as usual). That said, I’m pleased to have achieved even that much in March, when films have found themselves competing with an uncommon amount of other stuff for my entertainment time. To be specific, I’ve started a rewatch of the ’90s X-Men animated series (I’m ten episodes in, which adds up to 3½ hours); finally been playing point-and-click adventure classic Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (for about 11 hours); and, most consumingly of all, found myself somewhat obsessed with cult-phenomenon actual-play Dungeons & Dragons series Critical Role (I’ve watched 26½ hours, plus untold more spent reading around it, and barely made a start on it); and that’s without counting up sundry other bits and pieces, like reading books and comics, or slowly rewatching Blackadder.

Anyway, to get back to the films (though there’s always the comment section if you’d like to talk about the other stuff), here’s, um, the films…

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#17 Dune: Part Two (2024) — New Film #3
#18 Maestro (2023) — 50 Unseen #4
#19 The Inspector Wears Skirts (1988) — Genre #2
#20 Black Tight Killers (1966) — Failures #3
#21 My Darling Clementine (1946) — Blindspot #3
#22 My Father and My Son (2005) — WDYMYHS #3

I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in March.
Just six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
That means (as I said at the start) that I exceeded my “ten films per month” minimum target — for the first time this year; also, that’s the fourth month in a row, which is the most consecutive ten-film months since a pandemic-aided run of 21 months in 2020/21. (The all-time record remains 60 months, aka five solid years.)
But (as also mentioned at the start) I fell short of where I should be in my Challenge — but only by two films. I’ve got the rest of the year to catch that up, so it’s far from a disaster. Yet.
This is also the first month of 2024 without any rewatches; although I did still manage two short films (I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I’m aiming to watch at least one of those each month too. That’s sort of an “unofficial” goal, though, in that I’m not exactly tracking it… except I am, because I keep records of all these things).
In terms of history and percentages and stuff, this is the best March since 2021, but because it’s still below March’s all-time average of 14.9, it brings it down to 14.6.
Conversely, being higher than last March means it does increase the rolling monthly average of the last 12 months, bringing it from 8.8 to 9.1. If I can continue my ten-films-per-month streak, eventually it’ll get above 10.0 again…
I posted my Dune: Part One review right at the end of February, fully intending to quickly follow it with my Dune: Part Two review in early March. That didn’t happen, obviously.
I’ve been buying Radiance releases since they sprung into existence back in mid-2022 (indeed, I’ve got 30 of the 37 titles they’ve released to date, plus several of their “partner label” releases too), but Black Tight Killers is the first one I’ve actually watched. I’m not one of those collectors who buys stuff just to keep on his self unopened… but I do have a bunch of stuff on my shelf unopened, because I am one of those collectors who’s interested in almost everything but can’t find the time to watch it all.
This month’s Blindspot film was John Ford’s version of the Wyatt Earp / gunfight at the O.K. Corral legend, My Darling Clementine.
Letterboxd informs me that My Darling Clementine was the first film I watched on a Tuesday this year. So there you go.
This month’s WDYMYHS film was Turkish intergenerational family drama My Father and My Son.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Black Tight Killers.

The 106th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I confess, I didn’t have any particular expectations of John Ford Western My Darling Clementine. Not that I thought it would be bad, but — despite it clearly having enough acclaim to get onto my Blindspot list — I didn’t sit down expecting a masterpiece or something either. Perhaps that’s what allowed it to blow me away, first from a visual standpoint (this is a film where even the day-for-night photography looks good) and then by… well, everything else.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This has to be Alan Bennett adaptation Allelujah, which for much of its running time is an amiable-enough pro-NHS / anti-cutbacks polemic, before a final-reel twist threatens to undermine the whole thing. What a way to mangle your own point.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Now, technically — technically — the winner for this month was February’s Failures, which was way down the overall chart. I stress technically because I’m going to say the award actually goes to something I posted in February… but I posted it on February 29th, so it didn’t have much of a chance last month; and February 29th isn’t a real day anyway, so it’s sort of part of March. Very tenuously sort of. Anyway, that makes the winner my review of Dune: Part One, which actually cracked the overall top ten (at #8).

Every review posted this month, including new titles and the Archive 5

The Adventures of Prince Achmed	Boss Level
Coded Bias	Crooked House
Evil Under the Sun	In the Mood for Love
Shadow of a Doubt	Sneakers
A Star Is Born	Us

What balance will my entertainment choices level out at in April? Find out next month!

Archive 5, Vol.10

Posted on March 27, 2024 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 520 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2023 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, we’ve got quite the variety, from Oscar nominees to straightforward action entertainment; from super-timely recent documentaries to pioneering animation from almost a century ago. But they’re all connected by… the fact I wrote some notes after I watched them. Thank goodness, otherwise reviewing some of them years later would be bloomin’ impossible. (That’s not much of a connection, I know, but it was on my mind after In the Mood for Love last time.)

This week’s Archive 5 are…

A Star Is Born (2018)

Boss Level (2021)

Coded Bias (2020)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

A Star Is Born

(2018)

This is the fourth version of A Star is Born, for whatever reason, but I’ve not seen any of the others so I won’t be making comparisons. I’m sure the story has been modernised (the last version was made in the ’70s, with the previous two in the ’50s and ’30s) without losing its fundamental essence: successful musician (here, Bradley Cooper) uncovers a new talent (Lady Gaga) who comes to outshine him. I guess it’s a timeless tale in the age of celebrity.

Singers-turned-actors have a mixed history, though casting one in a story such as this is fitting, given how you need to believe they’re a top-drawer musical artist. Fortunately, Gaga actually can act as well as sing, so she’s an unqualified success here. The headline song, Shallow — a duet between the two leads, which attracted even more attention for how they performed it at the Oscars — is… perfectly fine. People went a little too crazy for it at the time, I feel. But it’s given weight by how well it’s used in the film, so I guess that could sway you.

Also pulling double duty (well, triple if you count the singing) is Cooper, directing for the first time. (With all the talk this past awards season about how desperate Cooper is for an Oscar, it’s easy to forget that Maestro was only his second time behind the camera.) I seem to remember there being some complaints when he wasn’t nominated for direction for this one, but I think that was a fair omission. It’s not bad, but his directorial choices are a little too wavering. Like, in the early scenes, when the camerawork is all a bit documentary-ish, is effective — it undercuts the “glamorous story”, the almost-inherent fakeness of Musical as a genre, by making it feel Real. But later he gives in to glossy stylings too often; and too many of the song performances are captured with a lazily floating camera, lacking focus or decisiveness. It’s how they often shoot musical performances on TV: just kind of nothingy, moving the camera back and forth and side to side for the sake of making it ‘dynamic’. But, when you remember this is his first film, that’s fine — there’s a lot more good than bad about his work behind the camera.

A Star Is Born was #18 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Boss Level

(2021)

For a long time, there was Groundhog Day. And then someone had the bright idea, “what if Groundhog Day but mixed with another genre?” So now we’ve had the sci-fi version (Edge of Tomorrow), and the horror version (Happy Death Day), and the YA version (The Map of Tiny Perfect Things), and the “what if there were two people” version (Palm Springs), and the TV series version (Russian Doll)… Here, we get the action movie version. And it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect and hope “Groundhog Day as an action movie” would be. That’s praise, not criticism.

Interestingly, considering the context I’ve chosen to place this in, the film itself acknowledges — you might even say relies on — the fact we’ve all seen time loop movies before. Rather than begin at the obvious beginning (i.e. the hero’s first loop), the story starts dozens of loops in, then fills in the backstory with flashbacks later on. It’s somewhere between a sensible choice (who hasn’t seen Groundhog Day?) and a bold move (what about people who haven’t seen Groundhog Day?) That said, I imagine people in the latter group can still follow it, it just might be what’s going on is mysterious for longer (most of us will instantly get “he’s in a day-long time loop”, they’ll just have to wait for that information to become clear).

In fact, it’s a pretty economical movie across the board, hitting the ground running and rarely letting up. There’s very little repetition of “the same stuff every day”, instead taking our hero off in different directions. It does lean on voiceover quite a lot to get through some of the exposition, which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it means it can hurry through the technicalities and get to what we came for — action and gags — so I can let it slide. On the basis of the kind of entertainment it’s designed to deliver, Boss Level succeeds admirably.

Boss Level was #160 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Coded Bias

(2020)

Given the precipitous rise of AI in the past couple of years, I don’t know how relevant this documentary from 2020 still is. Back then, it was ultra-timely, but tech evolves so fast, I have to wonder if it’s already dated. Well, if you want to find out for yourself, it’s on Netflix.

Not that it’s just about AI. It touches on a lot of interesting tech-related topics, like how facial recognition struggles with non-white people, or how algorithms were increasingly being allowed to control… pretty much everything. It makes a lot of broadly scary declarations about these things, but often lacks the detail to back them up. Not that it’s necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t prove its point; doesn’t clarify what’s scary beyond the gut reaction that this all sounds scary. This is partly because there’s so much to cover — it keeps jumping around between topics in short vignettes — which at least makes clear what a big field this is. There are also signs of hope, with the film offering some solutions (primarily: regulation in law) and highlighting fantastic people (almost all women, incidentally) doing great work to combat these things.

Ultimately, the areas the film explores are interesting and it’s sometimes informative about them, but it’s also unfocused and disorganised in its structure, which is a shame.

Coded Bias was #243 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Shadow of a Doubt

(1943)

I feel like Shadow of a Doubt sits in a certain tier of Hitchcock film; one where it’s not one of his very best known (Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, etc), but regarded well enough that it definitely has its fans, for some of whom it probably is Hitchcock’s best film. Hitch himself repeatedly said it was his favourite of his own work, chiefly because he enjoyed how it brought menace into the surface-level perfection of small-town America. One critic has even described it as Hitchcock’s “first indisputable masterpiece”, which I would certainly dispute considering its predated by the likes of The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and Rebecca. Well, taste is relative.

Personally, while Shadow of a Doubt definitely has a neat premise and strong moments, overall I felt it lacked any of the truly exceptional elements that mark out Hitch’s real classics. Sure, if most other filmmakers had made it, it’d probably be one of their best; but you’re competing with an incredibly strong body of work if you’re a Hitchcock film and, for me, this one is definitely second-tier. Of course, as I just intimated, being a second-tier Hitchcock film is still some achievement. It’s a shame the relative hype for this one is leading me to focus on the negative. Heck, maybe I’ll like it even more when I rewatch it someday. Until then, I feel it missed the mark of my expectations in places. I even thought it was the kind of movie someone could remake and possibly get something really great out of. (Blasphemy!)

Shadow of a Doubt was #90 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2023.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

(1926)

aka Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed

The earliest (surviving) animated feature film is an ‘Arabian Nights’ fairytale about… well, the short version is in the title.

But story schmory, because the real star here is the medium itself: Lotte Reiniger’s animation. There are so many wonderful little bits of work, it’s impossible to list. Consistent throughout, it’s remarkable how much character and personality Reiniger manages to convey through her ‘simple’ cutout silhouette puppets. Then there’s little naturalistic details, like boats bobbing on the water. Some of it even feels surprisingly modern. Not massively so, perhaps, but it doesn’t have that staid, stilted formality you might expect from a hundred-year-old rendition of a fairytale. And that’s not to mention the homosexual subplot. Plus, there’s so much more to the style than just silhouettes on plain backgrounds. There are shades and effects, to add depth or style: the wavy lines of a river; a mountain range fading into the distance; and subtler and clever things, too. It’s a visual feast.

The restoration could be better, mind. There are a lot of dirt and scratches, which I can live with (there are so many of these, it would have to be manually patched up frame by frame, which would cost a fortune), but more egregious are stability and alignment issues. For example, during one scene, the top part of the next frame keeps appearing at the bottom. Surely that could’ve been fixed?

Better is the soundtrack. The BFI Blu-ray offers a choice: the original 1926 score by Wolfgang Zeller (recorded in 1999) or an English narration (with effects), based on Reiniger’s own translation of her German text (recorded in 2013). Having watched the film with both, I’d say the narration adds nothing of value to the experience, especially as it sounds like narration from a preschool storybook. Just stick to the original music.

But however you watch it, minor technical issues can’t distract from the artistry on display. This is truly the work of a master of her craft. Magnificent.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed was #35 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Archive 5, Vol.9

Posted on March 15, 2024 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 525 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2023 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, a couple of Agatha Christie adaptations from very different eras; plus a heist, a horror, and a Hong Kong love story for the ages.

This week’s Archive 5 are…

Evil Under the Sun (1982)

Sneakers (1992)

Us (2019)

Crooked House (2017)

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Evil Under the Sun

(1982)

The third in the run of Poirot adaptations that began with Murder on the Orient Express and continued with Death on the Nile — no, not the recent Branagh ones: this is the first time they did exactly that. But, funnily enough, both third films in their respective series (i.e. this and Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice) take a UK-set Christie and relocate it somewhere more exotic, to fit with the style of the rest of the series. So, rather than a small island off the north Devon coast (which likely stretches the definition of “under the sun”, based on my experience of Devon), here the action is located to the Adriatic Sea, although actually filmed on Mallorca.

All of which is incidental when the rest of the movie is, at best, fine. It doesn’t help that the storyline is ultimately very similar to Death on the Nile, making the whole affair feel like more of a rehash than it needs to. Guy Hamilton’s direction underwhelms, giving a TV movie-ish feel, which is only exacerbated by the less-starry cast — there are recognisable names and faces here (James Mason, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith), but, in totality, it’s not in the same league as the previous two films. It rather prefigures where Ustinov’s Poirot would appear next: literally, TV movies.

Evil Under the Sun was #2 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Sneakers

(1992)

I never paid Sneakers any attention (not that it came up often) — I think, because it’s an American movie called Sneakers, I assumed it was about shoes — until indie magazine Film Stories announced a Blu-ray release (long since sold out, I’m afraid). I’m always keen to support small/new labels doing interesting things. And thank goodness for that, because, turns out, it’s actually very much my kind of film and good fun.

So, turns out, in this context, “sneakers” are not an Americanism for trainers, but good-guy hackers who test security systems. When the team are hired to steal a code breaking device, they get suspicious about the setup and, of course, it turns out they’re right to be. Thus unfurls a tech-based heist thriller with a strong vein of humour, but without tipping over into being an outright comedy. Stylistically and tonally, that’s right up my street — I love a heist movie, and that kind of tone (funny without being silly; what I think of as a ‘real world’ awareness of humour) often works for me. It’s the kind of film that’s just a lot of fun to watch. I can imagine it being highly rewatchable; a go-to favourite for people who do that kind of thing.

Sneakers was #132 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Us

(2019)

Part of what made Jordan Peele’s debut feature, Get Out, such a success was the way it chimed perfectly with the cultural zeitgeist of 2017; indeed, of the whole decade (time may yet add “of the whole century”). This immediate followup doesn’t benefit from a similar boost, but it’s a strong work of horror cinema in its own right.

Us follows a family who are attacked by a group of doppelgängers. That’s the most basic version, anyway — Peele seems to have a lot of ideas he wants to mix in here; almost too many. It seems to operate on the level of a home invasion/slasher kind of movie much of the time, but having more on its mind means it’s a bit too slow to satisfy as something so viscerally straightforward. Thus, all the Meaningful stuff ends up crammed into the third act, which perhaps leaves it feeling back-heavy. There’s also a big twist, naturally. On one hand, it seems really obvious, pretty much from the beginning; but on the other, it does cast the rest of the movie in a different light, which is quite interesting.

If all that sounds rather negative… I blame my notes (I’m writing this review over four years later based solely on what little I wrote down at the time). Us is imperfect, but it’s also great in places, and is at least passably interesting to reflect on in light of the final reveal.

Us was #23 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Crooked House

(2017)

Despite a moderately starry cast (Glenn Close, Terence Stamp, Gillian Anderson, Christina Hendricks fresh from Mad Men; plus Brits of varying degrees of recognisableness) and a screenplay by Julian “Downton Abbey” Fellowes, this Agatha Christie adaptation was virtually dumped straight to TV here in the UK (apparently it did have a theatrical release, but the TV premiere was less than a month later — and on lowly Channel 5 at that). Of course, some of the best Christie adaptations have been made for TV; but when something’s designed for theatrical and ends up skipping it, it’s never a good sign.

Fortunately, Crooked House isn’t a disaster, though it’s far from a resounding success. Quite what attracted the big names I don’t know — it’s a reasonable setup (big dysfunctional family), but the screenplay isn’t exactly sparkling, aside from one or two moments or scenes. There is, at least, one helluva resolution. It also feels disjointed thanks to poor editing and/or direction. If the aim was to keep the pace up, it failed, because it begins to drag after a while. All of this is only partially masked by decent cinematography from Sebastian Winterø, which is the only thing that saves it from looking very TV-ish. Maybe it found its rightful home after all.

Crooked House was #1 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

In the Mood for Love

(2000)

aka Fa yeung nin wah

If my four-years-late review of Us was hampered by largely-negative notes, my four-years-late review of In the Mood for Love is in even worse shape: no notes at all. Some trivia? I can do that! An interesting quote from the director? Got it saved! But anything on my own thoughts beyond settling on a five-star rating? Nope. I would try to repurpose my Letterboxd review, but all I wrote was: “I mean nothing but respect when I pithily describe this as Brief Encounter in Hong Kong.” Accurate but, indeed, pithy.

On the bright side, this is a widely-acclaimed film, so if you’re after in-depth writing I’m certain you’ll find some somewhere else. Indeed, even if I did have more fulsome notes, I doubt I’d contribute anything more insightful. This is a subtle, almost delicate work, and that’s the kind of thing I feel I often struggle to properly get to grips with in my short, usually spoiler-averse reviews. Suffice to say, I concur that this is a very good film indeed; although, as with any understated work, some might prefer if the feelings and emotions were more overt. Each to their own.

In the Mood for Love was #200 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2020.

February’s Failures

Posted on March 2, 2024 by badblokebob

We begin this month with a vision of the future — the future being… erm, yesterday? Timelines get confusing when you’re writing about February in early March, but you’re also doing that writing before the post is posting… Anyway, what I’m getting at is, I went to see Dune: Part Two yesterday, which is a March release, but has a bearing on February’s failures insofar as it means this could be the last month of 2024 where I begin this column with a comprehensive(ish) overview of major UK cinema releases. (Do I really think I’ll make it to the cinema every month for the rest of the year? No. But do you have any idea how tough it is to find a broadly-interesting and/or fresh way into this column every month?)

So, what films did I miss in February? Well, there was Sony’s latest attempt at crashing the rep of the MCU by playing on the general public’s lack of awareness about the difference between a Marvel Studios movie and a movie based on a Marvel comic, Madame Web, which is reportedly at least as terrible as the trailers promised. Once upon a time this would be a definite “catch it later”, but I’ve still not seen Venom 2 or Morbius (fellow Sony Spider-Man-derived films), nor a whole bunch of actual MCU films, so… More likely to get a play as soon as it’s available at home (in this case, when it becomes part of an Apple TV+ subscription) is the latest from director Matthew Vaughn, Argylle. That also attracted much derision on social media, but, well, I actually liked the trailer, and I’ve enjoyed most of Vaughn’s films (even the maligned ones like Kingsman 2), so I’m still cautiously looking forward to it.

Elsewhere, there were alphabetically-opposed Oscar nominees American Fiction and The Zone of Interest; a belated UK release for The Iron Claw, and an even more belated theatrical bow for Pixar’s Turning Red; filthy-mouthed Britcom Wicked Little Letters (another I look forward to streaming eventually); and some other stuff that, frankly, I don’t even care to bother mentioning. There’s always a bunch of “other stuff” in cinemas, but if it’s not actually screening near me or I don’t have a strong compulsion to catch it eventually, is it really a “failure”?

So, on to the streamers. The only true new release there that I’ve noted this month is Orion and the Dark, a kids’ animation on Netflix from Charlie Kaufman. Wait, what? Am I sure it’s for kids? Well, it looked like it, but his last animated film certainly wasn’t, so maybe I’m mistaken. Not that I’m not interested, but you can tell my level of interest from the fact I’m not sure. Actually, of more interest to me on Netflix this month was 12th Fail, an Indian film that jumped high onto the IMDb Top 250 late last year, and thus is eligible — nay, should be a key objective for — this year’s WDYMYHS challenge. Just need Poor Things on subscription streaming and Godzilla Minus One to get some kind of home release, and I’ll have the full complement available to me again. Other notable Netflix newcomers included another 2024 Oscar nominee, Past Lives; Ken Loach’s latest, The Old Oak; Mark Rylance gangster thriller The Outfit; and tennis biopic King Richard.

Other recent films making their subscription streaming debuts included The Marvels on Disney+ (I’ll wait until I can pirate the Japanese 3D Blu-ray, thanks… then add it to my pile of MCU flicks I’ve not seen) and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City on Sky Cinema / NOW, who also had a few other bits and bobs I won’t watch for years, if ever, so why list them? Not a streaming debut (it’s already been on MUBI), but new for a wide audience, Aftersun aired on the BBC this month, and so was on iPlayer afterwards. Does that change how likely I am to get round to watching it? Well, I had access to MUBI the whole time it was on there, so…

Talking of MUBI, their big add this month (at least in terms of actually seeing it promoted) was La Antena — the first movie they ever streamed, apparently, making its return after… however long. I saw it 15 years ago on TV and enjoyed it a lot. I’d like a decent and accessible disc release, but failing that, I ought to take the opportunity to catch it while it’s streaming. Other films of note on the arthouse streamer this month were François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim and Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy — Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero — all of which are acclaimed to one degree or another, so I ought to watch them all.

Amazon Prime are conspicuous by their absence so far, considering they often rival (or attempt to) Netflix for splashy premieres or big streaming debuts. Maybe they were focused on launching a series or something instead, I don’t know. Even their back catalogue additions that caught my eye this month were deep, old cuts, like Images, the 1972 British psychological horror film written and directed by Robert Altman; or It Happened Tomorrow, a sci-fi fantasy film from 1944; or The Long Night, a noir starring Henry Fonda and Vincent Price; or Lured, a British serial killer thriller starring Boris Karloff, George Sanders, and… Lucille Ball? And directed by Douglas Sirk? You what? I really should watch some of this stuff… Well, that’s the whole point of this entire column, isn’t it?

But what I really should watch more of are all those Blu-rays I keep buying. Yes, there was another plentiful pile this month. Let’s start at the top end, i.e. 4K Ultra HD, with prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes — the only brand-new film I bought this month, actually, with everything else being catalogue titles. Sticking to 4K, those included Arrow’s box set of The Conan Chronicles (aka Conan the Barbarian, which I have seen before, and Conan the Destroyer, which I haven’t), StudioCanal’s remaster of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, and the Masters of Cinema edition of Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. Also from Eureka was a double-bill of Japanese gangster thrillers in Yakuza Wolf 1&2 (the film’s subtitles — I Perform Murder and Extend My Condolences — sound almost like Spaghetti Westerns or poliziotteschi, which feels promising). Talking of poliziotteschi, 88 Films returned to the genre with Street Law, while Radiance offered their typically eclectic stylistic spread with a bundle of releases that included historical drama Allonsanfàn, ’60s spy-fi adventure Black Tight Killers, and an “ambitious revision of the yakuza movie”, By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him.

Aside from new releases, pickups of older titles (thanks to various multibuys and offers) included Warner Archive’s release of noir Angel Face, Criterion’s edition of Häxan, Flicker Alley’s collection of Georges Méliès Fairy Tales in Colo[u]r, and a couple of multi-film releases of independent utlra-low-budget genre exercises via 101 Films: Wakaliwood Supa Action Vol.1 (including cult favourite and former Letterboxd Top 250er Who Killed Captain Alex, which I’ve seen and will happily revisit, and the director’s later Bad Black), and Treasure of the Ninja, which also includes several other works by director and martial artist William Lee, chiefly Dragon vs. Ninja. Some people say physical media is dead, but you’re not likely to find wonders as diverse and obscure as this on any streamer.

The Leaping Monthly Review of February 2024

Posted on March 1, 2024 by badblokebob

It’s coming up to nine years since I started naming these monthly progress reports, which means this is the third leap year they’ve existed in, and yet it’s the first time I’ve thought to reference that in the name of February’s update. I don’t know if I should be ashamed of that because I didn’t do it sooner, or because it suggests I’m running out of fresh ideas. Either way, clearly it’s not good. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter. (Yeah, that’s the one.)

Anyway, on to the films…

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#10 The Kitchen (2023) — New Film #2
#11 Despicable Me 3 3D (2017) — Series Progression #2
#12 RRR (2022) — 50 Unseen #3
#13 Ambulancen (2005) — Failures #2
#14 Dune: Part One 3D (2021) — Rewatch #2
#15 The Innocents (1961) — Blindspot #2
#16 Wild Tales (2014) — WDYMYHS #2

I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in February.
That makes this the third month in a row with ten new films. Compared to my history, it’s baby steps (the record is 60 months), but it’s two years since I last managed three consecutive months, so it is worth noting.
Six of the ten counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
The usual monthly average for the Challenge is eight, but February being short (even with the extra leap day) means it only needs seven, so I remain on target.
This month’s Blindspot film was classic British Gothic (in the true sense) horror The Innocents. Maybe I should have tried to save that for October, but any intentions I have to watch horror movies in October usually fail to pan out. To be honest, I chose it now because it’s the only film on this year’s Blindspot that I don’t own on disc, so I thought I’d free up some space on my TV hard drive for other stuff I’ve downloaded. Sometimes my viewing decisions are as pragmatic as that.
This month’s WDYMYHS film was Argentinian revenge anthology Wild Tales. That’s another one deleted off the hard drive.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Ambulancen and The Kitchen.
Also this month, in aid of my Genre category, I compiled a list of all the martial arts titles I own that I haven’t seen (it’s on Letterboxd here) and it came to… 213 films! And I’ve got more on preorder, and even more that are coming out soon that I will order; and I even left some off that I wasn’t sure counted (although I also included some I wasn’t sure about, so maybe that part balances out). Anyway, my point is: setting a target of “ten” barely scratches the surface here — even less than it did last year with giallo, where my similar list featured just 50 titles. Maybe, rather than try to think of more genres for that Challenge category, I’ll just set it on a triennial loop of noir, giallo, martial arts…

The 105th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I enjoyed most of the films I watched this month, some very much, but nothing came close to the marvel that is RRR.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Proving that star ratings aren’t everything (or possibly that I need to rethink mine), I rated My Son two stars, but its three-star The Kitchen that I feel I enjoyed least from this month’s viewing. I’ve been assigning ratings to films solidly for over a decade-and-a-half now (the blog passed its 17th anniversary this week, by-the-by) and yet how many stars I should give a film, and how my ratings compare to one another, still regularly gives me pause for thought.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Now that I’m getting back into the swing of reviewing (touch wood), there’s more stuff to compete in this category — that makes a nice change from most of last year. And yet, despite that, it’s my monthly review of January that comes out on top here. It even cracked the overall top ten for the month, which is an uncommon achievement for a new post. (In second place, the highest charting film review was Barbie.)

Every review posted this month, including new titles and the Archive 5

Barbie	The Best of the Martial Arts Films
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget	Dune: Part One
The Kid Detective

Returning to the cinema* to return to Arrakis.

* shockingly, it’ll be my first visit since Oppenheimer last July.