Category Archives: Failures

January’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.

As usual, the new year in UK cinemas kicks off with a bunch of stuff the distributors held back from last year, for whatever reason (I don’t know how it will pan out in 2025, but in the past I’ve observed some awards-season not getting a UK release until as late as June or July). Highlights in that sphere included Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu, awards season favourite The Brutalist, Robert Zemeckis graphic novel adaptation Here, nonlinear romcom We Live in Time, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain (*chuckle*), Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Callas biopic Maria, British-made Swiss-hero biopic William Tell, TV show, er, biopic Saturday Night, 18-rated sexy times for Nicole Kidman in Babygirl and Noémie Merlant in Emmanuelle, Mike Leigh’s BAFTA-but-not-Oscar-nominated Hard Truths, and Oscar Best Picture nominee Nickel Boys, which I confess I hadn’t even heard of before it’s nomination. Whew!

Despite all that, there were even some honest-to-God (if we ignore film festivals, which really we should) 2025 films released, including the latest Universal horror reimagining, Wolf Man; Steven Soderbergh’s latest attempt at making low-budget releases work, horror Presence; robot horror comedy Companion; and the horror of Mark Wahlberg’s hairline in Flight Risk. I guess horror really is the big screen’s perpetual friend.

Netflix attempted to cut through the noise by releasing Back in Action, an ironically-named (but probably deliberately so) spyfi comedy, because it featured Cameron Diaz’s return to the screen after a ten-year break. Yes, really. No, I don’t think anyone else had really noticed either. I’ve not heard anyone say a good thing about it. And I think that was it for streaming originals, sending us straight to streaming debuts of varying degrees of noteworthiness. I mean, for example, half of what Disney+ could muster was Nightbitch, which stars Amy Adams and I suspect was supposed to be some kind of big-ish deal, but has vanished without a trace. The other ‘half’, as it were, was Alien: Romulus. Plus TV series, which I think is where Disney+ focus their energy nowadays.

More promising titles were to be found elsewhere. NOW (and Sky Cinema) gave us Alice Lowe’s Timestalker, which I heard about when its theatrical release was up against something-or-other big and various outlets were pleading people to not ignore it. I imagine it stands a better chance on streaming; certainly, it’s high on my watchlist now. They also gave a belated UK bow to John Woo’s remake of his own Hong Kong action classic, The Killer, which I don’t think gained strong reviews but, hey, it’s John Woo, what do you expect? His Western work is regularly looked down upon, which I’ve always suspected shows the benefit of being subtitled when it comes to genre cinema… Which brings us to Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In — not a sequel, despite the coloned title making it sound like one but a well-received Hong Kong actioner; so well received, I only recently bought it on disc. Let’s hope it lives up to the hype whenever I watch it. Other things I’ve already bought but that also popped onto NOW this month included Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (plus The Fall Guy — something I’ve actually watched! Wonders will never cease).

More foreign action was to be found on Amazon Prime in Kill, the Bollywood actioner that got a burst of publicity when the remake rights were bought by the makers of John Wick three days before its US theatrical release. Sounds worth a look, right? Prime also had much-discussed Nic Cage-starring horror-thriller Longlegs, and the belated UK premiere (skipping theatrical this side of the pond) of Dave Bautista action-comedy The Killer’s Game. Well, they can’t all be winners. Similar could be said of MUBI’s debuting titles, which are awards season runners but not likely winners: Denmark’s Best International Feature nominee The Girl with the Needle and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, which has netted star Daniel Craig nominations at some ceremonies but, as it turned out, was shut out of the biggest ones (by which I mean BAFTA and Oscar).

On to back catalogue fare, and the one I’m going to flag as most unusual was the BBC airing all nine hours of Shoah and making it available on iPlayer afterwards. I’ve owned the Masters of Cinema DVD for yonks (and tried to make it part of Blindspot 2023, but failed to get round to it), and now here it is for free in HD. Will that mean I finally get round to it? I mean, it’s a nine-hour piece about the Holocaust — that’s the polar opposite of “easy viewing”. That’s not to say I don’t want to watch it, but it’s not something you just decide to bung on one day, y’know?

Aside from that, it was the usual reams of stuff across all the various streamers. I should probably focus on the ones I particularly want to see (and/or feel I should see) that I don’t have access to otherwise — like The Creator, Fruitvale Station, Gandhi, and Inside Llewyn Davis on Prime; The Conjuring and Pearl on Netflix; Cyrano, Defiance, and Roise & Frank on iPlayer; I’m Your Man, The Quiet Girl, Petite Maman, Pig, Sexy Beast on Channel 4 — but my attention can’t help but be drawn to all the ones I own on disc but haven’t watched yet — like the Wachowski’s Bound, Alex Garland’s Civil War, and Ridley Scott’s Legend on Prime; Elvis and Missing on Netflix; Enys Men, The Long Good Friday, The Northman, Old, Robin and Marian on Channel 4 — and that’s before I even start on the stuff I’ve bought on disc to rewatch and haven’t got to yet.

But (as I feel I use as a segue almost every month) that hasn’t stopped me buying even more stuff. The physically largest release of the month was Hammer’s lavish 4K Ultra HD set for Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter — noteworthy not just in itself, but also as an indication that Hammer are going to be handling at least some of their own Blu-ray releases going forward (rather than licensing them out), and at least some of those will get gorgeously lavish editions (only “some” because they’ve already promised not everything will come in such shelf-space-hogging sets). Other catalogue titles getting a fresh 4K lick of paint included Tarsem’s The Cell from Arrow, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure from Masters of Cinema, and a version of Se7en with controversial revisions by director David Fincher. It’s my favourite film of all time, so I’m both trepidatious and intrigued by the changes. Some seen borderline inconsequential; others look distractingly irritating (based on screencaps) — by which I mean: it’s not a recut or drastic reimagining, which could undermine the entire work; but things like replacing the sky during the finale have changed an entirely natural shot into something that looks like iffy green screen (again, based on screencaps. Maybe it looks okay in motion. If only there was a way I could find out…)

Other recent-ish releases that fall under this banner (but I had to import from the US, so they came out at the end of last year, but I’ve only ordered and received them now) included Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes, and John Ford’s The Searchers, which is Warner Archive’s first foray into 4K, and received copious praise (indeed, I wasn’t going to bother with it, but the praise I’ve read was so superlative, I felt like I was missing out. Damn you, FOMO!)

My US order was bulked out by more UHD titles in the shape of the third Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection. These aren’t individually named or numbered on the title, which has led to most people to just refer to them as volumes one, two, and three based on order of release; but each used a different colour for its title, and I’ve always thought it would be more fun if we referred to them by their colour — so this is the green one, containing Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Torn Curtain, Topaz, and Frenzy. It came out back in 2023, and I always intended to pick it up when it dropped in price (as I did with the first two), but something weird went on with the UK release — I’m sure it came out, but it’s rarely listed by retailers (look on HMV and you can still get the red / volume one and blue / volume two releases, but no sign of this one), and even when it is, the pricing can be bizarre (Amazon UK most recently listed it for £499.99). So, I finally caved and imported the US release. The minor discrepancy in packaging from the first two bugs me slightly, but as I got it for over £450 less than the UK version (apparently), I can live with it.

Back to new releases, but in 1080p, and just popping in at the end of the month were a trio of Asian thrillers from some of the UK’s most consistent boutique labels. Undoubtedly the one with the greatest name recognition is the BFI’s release of Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, while digging into more obscurities were Masters of Cinema for Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai’s Running on Karma and Radiance with Seijun Suzuki’s Underworld Beauty. Those are all still older works, of course. Indeed, the only brand-new title this month was The Wild Robot. I wouldn’t typically buy a Dreamworks animation (not sight unseen, anyway — I do own a few), but this one has been so highly praised. Someday I’ll actually watch it and find out for myself…

December’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.

On the big screen, Sony’s latest attempt at making a Spider-Man spin-off, Kraven the Hunter finally arrived almost two years after its first announced release date, and seemed to be received about as well as you’d expect for a Sony Spider-Man spin-off that had a two-year delay (i.e. poorly). In similar desperate franchise moves, animation The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim seemed to generate more column inches because they admitted it was rushed out to secure the ongoing Rings film rights, rather than anyone saying anything about the film itself. I feel like Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King, a “live-action” prequel that no one asked for, must fall into a similar bracket.

Conversely, I’ve read Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is good; the crazy idea of making a Robbie Williams biopic starring a CG monkey seems to have actually paid off in Better Man; and I keep hearing how good Daniel Craig is in Queer. Various other films managed theatrical releases of various other sizes, of course, but the one that most intrigues me is Shakespeare / video game mashup documentary Grand Theft Hamlet, which I believe is coming to MUBI sometime early in 2025, so I’ll look out for it then.

Over on streaming, various attempts at creating a Christmas classic seem to have been overshadowed by Carry-On — not a modern revamp of the old British comedy series, but an airport-based thriller starring Taron Egerton. I’d probably have watched it if I had a Netflix subscription (there’s a few things on there I need to catch up on now, so maybe it’s time I signed up again). As for the aforementioned seasonal fare, Netflix had the Richard Curtis written and produced animation That Christmas, plus 15-rated “birth of Jesus” movie Mary starring Anthony Hopkins as Herod (that’s literally all I know about it. I’ve not seen anyone discuss or review it. Is it actually real?); Sky Cinema and their fateful Original brand tried public-domain-IP mashup The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland; and Amazon had the streaming debut of (briefly theatrically released) wannabe-blockbuster Red One — which apparently was a huge hit for them, even after it flopped on the big screen, thus proving once again that the best way to ensure a streaming success is to have a wide theatrical release first.

Meanwhile, Disney+ had… fuck all. You’d’ve expected them to trot out something seasonal, right? But I don’t think they even had a premiere that was, er, non-seasonal. Even Apple TV+ spat out Fly Me to the Moon, the Channing Tatum/Scarlett Johansson Nasa-during-the-space-race romcom with posters that made it look like a fake movie-in-a-movie. But Disney+ never have anything much new anymore in the way of original movies, it seems to me (just their high-profile theatrical releases making relatively-speedy debuts). Has the Mouse already got wise to the false promises of streaming originals? Let’s hope others follow suit.

In the second tier of films making their streaming debuts, basketball anime The First Slam Dunk came to Netflix. Sports movies aren’t normally my bag, but I’ve seen this on various “great films” lists (especially animated ones) for what feels like years, so here’s a chance to… be reminded to watch the other copy I, ahem, got hold of fairly recently. Indeed, Netflix seemed to specialise in things I already own but haven’t watched, which is always irritating. Other titles included Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Scream VI, and Knock at the Cabin, which has already been on NOW so I’m doubly miffed at myself. NOW themselves pulled the same trick with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, plus Abigail, Kung Fu Panda 4, and A Quiet Place: Day One. And at the more… esoteric end of the spectrum, MUBI had a new version of an old film in Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, and a film they self-described as Andrea Arnold’s “long-awaited return to fiction filmmaking”, Bird.

The ever-changing streaming back catalogue is a beast of greater size than even Santa’s bulging sack, but a selection of titles of particular interest included Killer Joe, Mississippi Grind, The Reader, Warm Bodies, and the return of streaming perennial The Notebook (all on Amazon); Bodies Bodies Bodies, I, Tonya, King Richard, and Stan & Ollie, and the original Point Break, which I’ve been meaning to rewatch (all on iPlayer); and Brian and Charles, I’m Your Man, Petite Maman, A Quiet Place Part II, Spencer, and The Worst Person in the World (all on Channel 4). There were also various other Christmas-related movies, like The Holiday (which has somehow transformed into a modern classic in recent years) and various versions of The Grinch, none of which I’m going to watch in January because it’s not Christmas anymore. Maybe next year.

The above paragraph doesn’t even touch on all the films that arrived on streamers this month but I already own on disc and haven’t watched, acting as a reminder of the slight ludicrousness of my physical media collection. A soupçon of particularly daft ones (read: I’ve owned them for so long, why haven’t I watched them?) includes on Howard’s The Missing, Guy Ritchie’s Revolver, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También on Netflix (I own all of those on DVD. Why would I watch a DVD when they’re streaming in HD? Besides, for all I know they could have disc rot or something by now); Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and Ben Affleck’s The Town on Prime; Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm, Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite, and Alex Cox’s Repo Man on NOW; Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, trilogy-completing How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, and John Frankenheimer’s The Train on iPlayer; and Brian De Palma’s Carlito’s Way, Robert Eggers’s The Northman, and M Night Shyamalan’s Old on Channel 4. And that’s without even starting on stuff to rewatch.

In the face of such overwhelming evidence that I don’t watch enough of what I buy, I naturally went ahead and bought even more. Now, of course I’m going to buy something like Alien: Romulus, because I own all the others and I’m a completist. I’m not sure the same logic really applies to Joker: Folie à Deux (I stopped buying all the DC movies a while ago), but there we go, I bought it anyway. And I couldn’t resist a classic like Galaxy Quest making its 4K debut, especially when it comes with all the correct aspect ratios for the first time on home media. As for most of the rest of my purchases…

You know what, they’re not the sort of thing that usually turns up on streaming, so I feel a lot less bad about those. I’m talking the kind of stuff put out by Radiance: their Luis Buñuel box set, Nothing Is Sacred, containing Viridiana, The Exterminating Angels, and Simon of the Desert; Swedish crime thriller The Man from Majorca; and Japanese neo-noir Yokohama BJ Blues. I’m talking various labels’ commitment to getting loads of classic Hong Kong action on disc, which this month was represented by Eureka’s wittily-titled four-film set of historical epics directed by the prolific Chang Cheh, Horrible History, containing Marco Polo, The Pirate, Boxer Rebellion, and Four Riders. I’m talking stuff you can only get if you import it from Australia, like the third volume in Imprint’s After Dark: Neo-Noir Cinema Collection, containing Homicide, White Sands, The Crossing Guard, Heaven’s Prisoners, Under Suspicion, and Dirty Pretty Things; plus a pre-Bond Roger Moore in Swinging Sixties thriller Crossplot, and sci-fi noir The Man in Half Moon Street.

I’m also talking about stuff like Studiocanal’s epic Hitchcock: The Beginning box set. Streamers infamously have very few movies from The Past (often only a small handful from before 1980, if any), so who’s going to offer ten Hitchcocks from the 1920s and ’30s? Especially when almost half of them are silent. (Studiocanal do have their own channel on Amazon Prime, but that doesn’t really count.) The set includes both silent and talkie versions of Blackmail, newly restored in 4K, supplemented by the brand-new feature-length documentary Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail. The set also contains UK HD debuts for The Ring, The Farmer’s Wife, Champagne, The Manxman, Juno and the Paycock (which was scarcely even available on DVD, if I remember correctly), Murder!, its German-language variant Mary, The Skin Game, Rich and Strange, and Number Seventeen; plus a wealth of special features — and you definitely don’t get those on streamers.

Okay, maybe the line gets a little blurrier elsewhere. Masters of Cinema recently released animation The Secret of NIMH, which is mainstream enough you might expect to find it streaming (though, currently, it’s not); but then they also released the Kinji Fukasaku-directed Japanese answer to Star Wars, Message from Space, and where else are you likely to find that but on disc? (Whether it’s worthy of being a Masters of Cinema release is another matter.) Of course, sometimes streamers will surprise you. Which one out of time-bending actioner Run Lola Run, East-meets-West Western Red Sun, and Ealing Comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets do you think is currently on a streamer? (It’s the Western.) You can rent the other two, but that’s not quite what I’m talking about. And I’ll add this: I got all of those on 4K UHD, and only one of them is streaming in that format. I may spend a disproportionate amount on physical media, but it’s still the best.

November’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.

Normally I start with what feels like the ‘biggest’ theatrical release of the month — usually (but not always) the one that’s also in my header image — but November has offered up a few of fairly equal standing. Depending on your personal proclivities, you may feel last month’s most noteworthy new release was (in alphabetical order) belated and somewhat unexpected sequel Gladiator II, or TV series turned sequel film Moana 2, or heartwarming threequel Paddington in Peru, or prequel musical adaptation Wicked.

There were also other movies released — ones that weren’t tied to existing properties, even! While none can claim to be as juggernaut-like in their current impact, they may yet be felt come awards season — Sean Baker’s Anora, for example; or maybe even papal thriller Conclave, which seems to have strong buzz. On the other hand, I’ve not heard anyone say a good word about Christmas fantasy-actioner Red One (it has such strong “direct to Netflix” vibes that I was surprised to discover it was a theatrical release). Also filling screens someplace were Hugh Grant horror Heretic (who thought it was a good idea to release that the day after Halloween?!), Clint Eastwood’s courtroom thriller Juror #2, LEGO-based Pharrell Williams biopic Piece by Piece, and documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.

Over on the streamers, we find more premieres with award season buzz, like Netflix’s Emilia Pérez (literally all I’ve heard about it is from Best Picture nominee prediction lists on social media); and more films with strong critical receptions, like Disney+ cerebral palsy drama Out of My Mind (literally hadn’t heard of it until I saw a news article about its 100% Rotten Tomatoes score), or anime Look Back on Amazon Prime (I noticed it when it catapulted into the upper echelons of the Letterboxd Top 250 a little while ago. Whenever anime do that, they’re usually still a ways off from getting a UK release, so it was a pleasant surprise to see it on Amazon so soon). Other films with varying claims of “newness” (by which I mean: I can’t be bothered to look up if they’re streaming originals or actually released somewhere else first with so little noise that their streaming debut is the first I’ve seen of them) included ‘birth of IVF’ drama Joy, animation Spellbound, and generational drama The Piano Lesson (all Netflix); on Prime, sort-of-time-travel comedy My Old Ass, and Jude Law as Henry VIII opposite Alicia Vikander as Katherine Parr in Firebrand (apparently it suffers in comparison to the currently-airing second series of Wolf Hall); Shackleton doc Endurance on Disney+; and the latest in the never-ending run of actioners starring an aged Liam Neeson, Absolution, this one relegated to the lowly status of a Sky Original.

Conversely, it’s Sky Cinema (and, by extension, NOW) that continue to get most of the biggest streaming premieres of films that had a theatrical run. This month, we were finally treated to The Holdovers. It’s somewhat amusing that they’ve made us wait until Christmas for a Christmas film that was originally released here in January. Other additions included Dev Patel’s directorial debut, Monkey Man (which also featured in this column back in July, when I bought the Blu-ray; and before that in April, when it was in cinemas); John Krasinski-directed Ryan Reynolds-starring children’s fantasy thing IF; quirky comedy Sasquatch Sunset; and also Dune: Part Two, but I’ve seen that so it’s not really a failure. And talking of “films that have had two previous mentions” (as I was four films back), Deadpool & Wolverine is on Disney+ already. I say “two previous mentions”: this is its second mention (after its theatrical release in July), because the disc copy I bought but failed to watch will be coming up later in this column, because that’s how much Disney have shrunk the disc/streaming window now.

Catalogue titles doing the streaming shuffle (i.e. they’ve already streamed somewhere before, but now they’re back, probably somewhere different) are headlined by Midsommar, because it’s not been available to stream for a while, which I’m acutely aware of because it’s the most popular film on Letterboxd that I’ve never seen. Now it’s on Amazon Prime, so I can keep intending to watch it but never actually get round to it until one day it suddenly disappears and I curse my ineptitude once again. Fun times. Others I find worthy of particular note (for whatever reason — and I’m saving us all time by not spelling out all those reasons) included Cold Pursuit, The Hunt, M3GAN, Mary Queen of Scots, and Tár on Netflix; Black Adam, Crazy Stupid Love, A Cure for Wellness, The Gentlemen, The Rover, Samurai Marathon, and Whip It on Prime, along with most of the Pink Panther films (I’ve never seen one and think I probably should); The Edge of Seventeen, Krampus, Stalag 17, and Three Days of the Condor on NOW; Bones and All, Dunkirk (the 1958 one), No Bears, and Women Talking on iPlayer, plus documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, part of a whole season about the Archers (although, of their films that were screened, I either have seen or own them); and C’mon C’mon, Freaky, In the Earth, Lucy in the Sky, The Worst Person in the World, and X on Channel 4.

Not enough? I haven’t even started on stuff I want to rewatch (Get Out, The Kid Detective, Paddington…), or stuff I already own on disc (Alita: Battle Angel, Basic Instinct, Event Horizon…), or stuff I already own on disc and want to rewatch (Collateral, Hero, Ronin…) One particularly worth mentioning that fits the latter camp is It’s a Wonderful Life, which would be a good one for December, obviously. And if we’re doing additional mentions, I’m also gonna chuck in a random discovery called Dragon Crusaders. It looks and sounds like low-budget direct-to-anywhere schlock (“anywhere” in this case being Prime, of course), so normally I’d ignore it, but for some reason I read the plot description: “a group of fugitive Knights Templar attacks a pirate ship… to save the world, they must defeat a wizard-dragon.” You just know it’s going to be disappointing, but it still sounds awesome enough to risk it, right?

Talking of risks, let’s turn to my always “blind buy”-filled list of new purchases from the past month. Case in point: out of 87 films I’m about to mention, I’d only seen eight of them before. Yeah, that’s a lot of films, mainly thanks to it being sale season: between latecomers from Halloween sales, November sales, and Black Friday offers that arrive promptly, I racked up multiple hefty box sets — yes, for the second month in a row. Plus there were some new releases, naturally. I went through them in size order last month, which was kinda fun; and while that won’t get us all the way this month (there’s a lot more regular single-film titles), let’s start off that way.

Biggest by far was Indicator’s Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J Murphy, 1967–2015, a 26-film (plus some alternate cuts) collection that I’d sat out on originally but caved at sale price. Honestly, I’m not sure how good any of it will be, but I’m intrigued. Next, a brand-new release that maybe I should have waited on — Arrow’s Shawscope: Volume Three — not because I’m concerned about the quality of the 14 martial arts movies it contains, but because both of their previous Shawscope sets have ended up on sale for up to 50% off. I couldn’t risk them having done a shorter print run and accidentally missing out, though. Next, we swing back to Indicator for another catchily-named horror set: The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments, 1935–1940. This eight-film set (clue’s in the subtitle) was one I came close to purchasing on its original release but, with so much coming out all the time nowadays, I had to prioritise my cash elsewhere that month.

Two three-film sets next, so I’ll continue to alternate new releases and sale pickups by first mentioning Eureka’s Super Spies and Secret Lies, a trio of Japanese Bondsploitation efforts; and second, altogether more worthy, Criterion’s Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène, which I’d also had my eye on when it came out, but snagged a 40% saving thanks to waiting for a UK sale (not as reliable as their regular-as-clockwork US ones, nor as lucrative (what with those being 50% off), but better than nothing). The multi-film sets come to an end with another pair of two-film sets, which continue the new release/sale pattern. The former: 88 Film’s 4K UHD The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk Collection, with two Jet Li actioners from 1993. The latter: Radiance’s Bandits of Orgosolo, which comes paired with a programme of ten of the director’s short films collectively titled The Lost World.

Next, let’s go back to some themes I’ve already touched on. Titles I tried to sit out but ended up caving for? Radiance’s Häxan (sort of another multi-film set, because it has four different cuts and multiple score options), which I’m actually very interested in… so much so I’d already imported the Criterion. The new special features swung me. Then there was Second Sight’s The Blair Witch Project, which you’ll notice isn’t in bold. That’s because my copy went missing in the post; and because I’d ordered it late, and had to wait until it was officially deemed lost, it had sold out. No limited edition for me, unless I’m willing to fork out silly money (last check: £175+) to a scalper on eBay. Another theme: Criterion sale pick-ups. I upgraded Le Samouraï to 4K, because I heard such good things about the transfer. The other two I got were also in 4K: Lone Star and The Roaring Twenties. One Criterion 4K I didn’t get was Seven Samurai… because I bought the BFI’s release instead. Keeping my old Criterion Blu-ray means I get all the special features from both labels, which is nice. Other extravagant 4K releases included The Third Man (when you open the box it plays the theme music!) and Godzilla Minus One (no music, just a thick and expensive box).

More regular 4K titles included Deadpool & Wolverine (“callback to earlier this post” klaxon), recent acclaimed HK actioner Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, amateur filmmaking documentary American Movie, Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, M Night Shyamalan’s Trap, and horror anthology Trapped Ashes. The latter four I had to import from the US, and so along with them came more Criterions (Chimes at Midnight and The Tales of Hoffmann (talking of Powell & Pressburger…)), Russian sort-of-Sherlock Holmes adaptation In the Moscow Slums (it’s partially based on The Sign of Four), folk horror The Savage Hunt of King Stakh, and animation Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space (which won me over by being described as “inspired by both Hello Kitty and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49” — I have no strong feelings on Hello Kitty, but I love The Crying of Lot 49). And talking of imports, I went to buy the Turbine (a German label) release of Mission: Impossible – Fallout in 3D and decided to support their efforts to get 3D on disc by ordering the rest of their bundles too, so I’ve found myself with copies of Jurassic World Dominion (which I would’ve bought in 3D in the first place if it had been an option, but now I also own on 4K), the Robert Downey Jr Dolittle, plus animations The Bad Guys, Migration, and Minions: The Rise of Gru (mixed feelings about those four, to be honest).

Let’s wrap this up with a final little cache of new releases: 88 Films’ Black Cat 2; Radiance’s Japan Organised Crime Boss and Panic in Year Zero; and Eureka’s The Sword, which would’ve been a strong contender for my Genre category… if I had any spaces left. Now, it can just compete with every other thing I’ve mentioned in this 152-film column for the one “Failure” slot. (Crikey…)

October’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.

At one point, I had Joker: Folie à Deux marked down as something I should make an effort to see at the cinema — a relatively rare marker, considering recently I don’t even make it to most of the films I mark. With hindsight, I’m not sure why — I wasn’t even a huge fan of the first film, although I didn’t hate it — but the poor reception put paid to that, anyway. I have a needling suspicion I might actually like it (I’ve seen reviews/comments that imply it was made to deliberately piss off fans of the first one, and as fans of the first one are often among The Worst People, I’m optimistic), but I’ll have to wait ’til disc or streaming to find out. Conversely, The Wild Robot was a film I’d paid no mind to whatsoever, until suddenly everyone was calling it one of the best films of the year. I was tempted, but I’m always hesitant to see kids’ films by myself for “having to endure suspicious glares from parents before, during, and after the screening” reasons. (Whether that’s an imaginary fear or something that would actually happen, I don’t know.)

Other blockbuster-expectant films this month included animation Transformers One (it’s great according to fans, but flopped. I guess that’s what you get coming off the back of almost two decades of Michael Bay and Bay-adjacent live-action films) and trilogy-former Venom: The Last Dance (I still haven’t seen the second one, but quite liked the ’90s-throwback charms of the first). Your typical October horror choices included a sequel in Smile 2, a threequel in Terrifier 3, and a remake in Salem’s Lot. Modern cinema, eh? (He says, as if horror hasn’t been a genre famed for long-running franchises since at least the ’80s.) There was some other stuff too, like Trump biopic The Apprentice. I feel like the only one really worth mentioning is Alice Lowe’s new film, Timestalker, which I heard was good and deserving of support (as a small British film up against the usual Hollywood big guns), but I don’t think it screened at my local even if I was the kind of person who got out to the cinema regularly. I’ll happily support it on physical media and/or streaming later.

If you think that’s an unedifying theatrical lineup, just wait ’til we get to the streaming originals! Netflix premiered The Platform 2 to absolutely no fanfare. Remember when everyone made a fuss about the first one? It wasn’t even that good, which is perhaps why no one paid attention to the second. Amazon Prime debuted Kate Beckinsale actioner Canary Black, which I hadn’t heard of before it popped up on my front page while I was looking for something else, and haven’t heard anyone else mention at any point anywhere ever. I’m assuming, therefore, that it’s shit. It’s a similar story for horror Hold Your Breath on Disney+, while at least Sky’s offering — Matt Haig adaptation The Radleys — managed some column inches (at least in the UK press) thanks to stars Damien Lewis and Kelly MacDonald. Review and viewer scores are still low, though. Netflix did also have the new one from Timo Tjahjanto, The Shadow Strays, but as I thought Headshot and The Night Comes for Us were a little overrated, and I’d completely forgotten that I hadn’t got round to his last one in the two years since it came out, I figure this can also go on the slop pile.

There was greater success in the list of theatrical releases making their subscription streaming debut. MUBI arguably scored biggest with much-discussed recent release The Substance, although Amazon had a sizeable one on their books with Challengers. NOW’s best offerings included Drive-Away Dolls and Lisa Frankenstein — more niche titles, perhaps, but ones I’ve been looking forward to. A bigger-name premiere was undoubtedly Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, but I’ve got that on disc (unwatched on a shelf, natch) — I tend to overlook things that appear on streamers when I’ve already got the disc because, y’know, I’ve got it on disc. The same goes for Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron popping up on Netflix already.

Other titles I own physically but haven’t watched yet that (re)materialised on streaming this month (across all the various services) included Babylon, the new (or “new-ish” at this point) Candyman, Enys Men, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, the 2018 Halloween, Lips of Blood, The Long Good Friday, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, live-action Resident Evil #4–6, Time Bandits, the aforementioned Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and— oh dear God, so much else. I haven’t even started on stuff I want to rewatch (The Babadook, Byzantium, Drive, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, A Few Good Men… oh, stop, stop, stop! Heck, all 25 James Bond films are in 4K on Amazon, which is theoretically better quality than most are available in on disc. We’re living in the worst timeline.)

Because I’ve got so much unwatched on disc, this month I didn’t buy anything new.

Only kidding! I bought tonnes of stuff! Heck, it’s been box sets a-go-go for the past couple of weeks. Out of 14 new acquisitions in October, just five were single-film sets — and one of those included multiple different cuts. In total, my physical media to-watch pile swelled by 54 films this month. (Early suggestions are next month could get even crazier: yesterday I took delivery of an Indicator sale order that, across just four titles, included 37 feature films. With Arrow’s 14-film Shawscope: Volume Three due before the end of the month, that five-set tally almost tops this month already. I would joke that I have a problem, but maybe I actually do… Aaaanyway…)

Where to begin? As we’re talking size, let’s start with the largest and work our way down in that order. I’ve had my eye on Lars von Trier: A Curzon Collection for a while, and Amazon cut the price significantly as a Prime Day offer, justifying my wait for it. I ought to hold off like that more often, but so much stuff is “limited edition” nowadays, and it can be hard to predict which titles will sell out almost instantly and which will linger until they’re in deep-price-cut sales. It’s a 15-film set — although, as I already owned some of those, it means technically my to-watch pile didn’t actually grow by 54 films. Technically.

Next, Arrow’s Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe, which includes ten films starring Brazil’s cult horror icon, plus a feature-length documentary. Talking of sets selling out unpredictably: this seemed to sell out instantly on its release back in January, only to later pop back up on some retailers (Arrow’s own store; Amazon) but not others (HMV). I’m not sure what went on there, but I’m glad it didn’t come back too quickly because I probably would’ve got FOMO and bought it at near full price. Instead, I picked it up heavily discounted in Arrow’s latest Shocktober sale. (Incidentally, this is why I’ve got so many huge box sets this month and next: big sales discounts on things I was prepared to miss out on at full price.)

Two sets with a coincidentally similar theme tie for third place. The newer one, Indicator’s Columbia Horror, features two ways to watch one of those films (black & white or tinted), so maybe it has the edge. This six-film new release includes the second 1930s film called Behind the Mask in as many months (the other was in the BFI’s Michael Powell: Early Works collection), as well as Fay Wray in Black Moon (that’s the one watchable in two, er, colours), Air Hawks, Peter Lorre in Island of Doomed Men, Cry of the Werewolf, The Soul of a Monster. For the other, I finally picked up Eureka’s Karloff at Columbia, getting a mint-condition second-hand copy of the limited edition for about the same price as the non-limited version currently goes for. Yay. That set includes the “Mad Doctor” cycle, a parody of the “Mad Doctor” cycle, and one other random Karloff-Columbia flick, which I guess necessitated the super-generic set name. Still, an example of something I sat on and then missed out on… although the fact I ultimately got a perfect copy for a reasonable saving suggests that, yeah, I need some self restraint.

Another Arrow sale purchase next, with the third volume in their series of four-film sets of minor Spaghetti Westerns, this one titled Savage Guns. It’s easier to know when it’s safe to wait for a set to be discounted when you’ve seen it happen to previous sets in the range (he says, having ordered Shawscope 3 at new-release price when Arrow have had to discount both previous sets eventually. But I’m always worried that will lead them to cut the edition size for future volumes, so when it’s something I really want, you’ve just got to bite the bullet). Despite all this sales talk, bargain of the month is arguably The Agitator: Three Provocations from the Wild World of Jean-Pierre Mocky, a Radiance set that was only released in July but Amazon and HMV randomly slashed to just £15. Presumably a misprice, but one Amazon honoured even after it went out of stock. Again, a title I’d decided to sit out, but was interested enough at just £5 per film (a price I wouldn’t guarantee it ever hitting again). On the other hand, I went straight in for Radiance’s newest three-film set, Daiei Gothic, featuring a trio of Japanese ghost stories (The Ghost of Yotsuya, The Snow Woman, and The Bride from Hades). If you’re noticing a distinct horror theme to this month’s purchases, well, that’s October sales for you.

And it’s another horror title for this month’s final multi-film release, Criterion’s 4K double-bill of Val Lewton productions, I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim. I’ve been resisting a lot of Criterion’s recent 4K releases because they’re pretty pricey and there’ll be a sale eventually (indeed, a 40%-off one is currently running at several retailers, and I’ve picked up several titles I’d been looking forward to — expect those to have been failed to be watched next month!), but someone somewhere relatively recently recommended The Seventh Victim (I forget where), and the only other copy I’d found was old and a bit ropey, so I decided to just dive straight in for this one.

Another horror title heads up the single film pile, with Radiance’s release of Italy’s first horror movie, I vampiri — which also includes the UK cut, Lust of the Vampire, and the US cut, The Devil’s Commandment, hence placing it first among equals in this size-based countdown. For the others, I randomly picked up an old Network title (oh, Network…! RIP), ’60s true-story spy thriller Ring of Spies, plus two new martial arts releases from 88 Films, Kid from Kwangtung and The Kung Fu Instructor. Last but not least, the film that would probably have led this roundup under normal circumstances (seeing as it’s a new release in 4K, albeit not a brand-new film), Guy Hamilton’s An Inspector Calls.

Oh, but there was one other box set! Originally announced for the end of September, then delayed until November, but arriving early for those of us who preordered direct, was Eureka’s Louis Feuillade: The Complete Crime Serials (1913–1918) collection. It contains the five-part six-hour Fantômas, ten-part eight-and-a-half-hour Les Vampires, 13-part six-and-a-half-hour Judex, and 12-part six-and-a-half-hour Tih-Minh. That’s over 27 hours of silent serial sensation! But… how many films is it? Four? That seems to undersell it. 40? But a lot of the ‘episodes’ couldn’t be considered features, running under 40 minutes each. So should it be counted as a mix of features and shorts? Now maybe you see why I didn’t mention it sooner in a size-based summary… although there’s a strong chance it’ll actually be the set I watch first, especially as I’m considering making it the focus of 2025’s Blindspot. How does that work when it isn’t easily countable as films? Yes, that’s what I’m struggling with…

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’m generally a fan of the work of Tim Burton (even his oft-derided later-career stuff), but I’ve never been particularly fond of Beetlejuice (as I wrote on Letterboxd last time I watched it, “I’d enjoy this a lot more if Betelgeuse wasn’t in it”), so I certainly wasn’t rushing out to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at the cinema, though I’ll inevitably catch it once it’s streaming somewhere. Elsewise, it felt like this month cinemas were mostly full of smaller or more unusual fare — some of it praised, some of it hated, some of it ignored, but none of it huge box office fodder. Of course, there’s Francis Ford Coppola’s new, possibly final, long-awaited work, Megalopolis, which certainly sounds like… an experience; and column inches have also been generated by The Substance. Speaking of horror, there was also Starve Acre, and Speak No Evil, and Strange Darling, and Never Let Go, and the latest attempt at Mike Mignola’s comic book creation, Hellboy: The Crooked Man. Apparently Saoirse Ronan is very good in The Outrun; and, talking of star names, The Critic boasts Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Ben Barnes, Alfred Enoch, Romola Garai, and Lesley Manville in a 1930s-set thriller, which sounds great, although the reviews seem to have been muted. Anyway, most of that will end up on future to-see lists, with varying degrees of importance.

The streamers also proffered more than their usual share of high-profile-ish originals — it must be that time of year. Leading the pack was Jeremy Saulnier’s Rambo-esque Rebel Ridge on Netflix, who also deployed Will Ferrell in road trip documentary Will & Harper, and seem to have sunk young adult dystopia adaptation Uglies before it even began by casting a bunch of pretty people. Plus ça change. Apple TV+ probably wins for star names thanks to George Clooney and Brad Pitt teaming up for Wolfs, though Prime Video also had plenty of recognisable faces to show off, albeit in films that seem to have mostly met with scorn: Samuel L Jackson and Vincent Cassel in Scotland-set serial killer thriller Damaged; tepid neo-noir Killer Heat with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Richard Madden, and Shailene Woodley; and what looks to be some kind of sci-fi actioner, Breathe (I’m going off the poster and logline here, because I’ve not seen anybody talk about it), which stars Jennifer Hudson and Milla Jovovich, along with Sam Worthington and Quvenzhané Wallis (remember her? The nine-year-old from Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I still haven’t quite got round to watching. She’s 21 now).

Talking of the surprising passage of time, I’ve got the Blu-ray of The Fall sat on a shelf somewhere waiting to be watched, and I think before I upgraded to that I owned the DVD, but MUBI have released a shiny new 4K restoration. For a film renowned for its visual splendour, I’m now divided about which way to watch it first… at least until someone releases it on UHD Blu-ray, I buy that, and leave it on my shelf for ‘sometime’. Meanwhile, the nearest thing Disney+ could muster to a premiere was the streaming debut of theatrical hit Inside Out 2. For a service that wants to compete with Netflix, they don’t seem to release a whole lot of content. Maybe they’ve realised their real value lies in permanent access to their extensive back catalogue (especially for kids who just want to watch their favourites on loop), so why invest too much in new stuff? Or maybe they’re just going through a fallow period, who knows.

Sky Cinema / NOW remain the go-to for most post-theatrical streaming debuts, although their slate this month possibly reflects the thinness of the big-screen docket in recent times. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was their only new blockbuster offering, alongside swashbuckling second part The Three Musketeers: Milady, Holocaust drama One Life, and a couple of comedies: Paint (with Owen Wilson as a Bob Ross-inspired TV artist) and I Used to Be Funny (with Rachel Sennott of Shiva Baby and Bottoms, both of which I loved; though the key to their success may be writer-director Emma Seligman). They had an original or two too, but Sky Originals tend to be of even lower worth than Netflix’s, so are rarely worth mentioning. That said, Frank Grillo-starring actioner Hounds of War is the kind of thing I’d’ve surely bunged on once upon a time… but I’ve got too much I really want to catch up on to spend time on stuff like that nowadays.

Talking of which, catching my eye among back catalogue additions this month were Watcher on Netflix, which Mike Flanagan describes as “the closest a modern film has come to earning the word ‘Hitchcockian’ […] Highly recommended for fans of razor sharp thrillers”. Other reviews and scores are distinctly lower, but hey, people en masse can definitely be wrong. Also of note on Netflix is a film added back in April, Laapataa Ladies, but which has now entered the IMDb Top 250 — albeit hovering around #249 and #250, so it likely won’t last. Plus another one of those Liam Neeson old-man actioners, Memory, which (ironically) I don’t remember ever hearing of before, but it’s directed by Martin Campbell and co-stars Guy Peace and Monica Bellucci, so maybe it’s worth a look. Further catalogue additions worthy of bunging on my watchlists were ten-a-penny, as usual, but ones I’m going to specifically mention just so they’re an option for my Challenge in October included The Purge: Election Year (the whole series seems to be available on multiple platforms right now); 8 Mile, Hope and Glory, Magic Mike, and, to rewatch, the original Point Break (all Amazon Prime); on Disney+, Macross Plus (either in movie or series form, and considerably cheaper than Anime Ltd’s £150 version); Host and The Outfit on iPlayer; Morbius and Pig on Channel 4, plus a bunch of stuff I own on 4K disc and really should have got round to, like Event Horizon, The Northman, Old, Sleepy Hollow, and Three Thousand Years of Longing.

Stuff on disc I haven’t got round to watching, you say? Oh yes, there’s plenty of new stuff in that category, too. Quite a few headline-worthy 4Ks this past month, but top of the bunch is probably Second Sight’s long-awaited release of The Hitcher. Regular readers may recall I included the film in my 2022 WDYMYHS selection, on the assumption Second Sight’s release would be out before the end of that year. Well, seems it took a whole two years longer than expected. Is it worth the wait? I dunno, I haven’t watched it, have I! In fairness, it turned up right at the end of the month. A top contender for October viewing, then. As is Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, purely because I’ve been looking forward to it (the trilogy that precedes it having been so good) and have been holding off since its appearance on Disney+ landed it in August’s failures. Also brand-new on 4K was Hayao Miyazaki’s latest last film, The Boy and the Heron, while catalogue titles included Arrow’s edition of The Chronicles of Riddick (I’d intended to hold off on that, but then it seemed to be selling out already) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur from Kino.

The single label taking most of my dough this month was probably 88 Films, starting with more 4K martial acts action starring Jet Li in The Bodyguard from Beijing and The Tai-Chi Master, and Jackie Chan in Project A and Project A: Part II (a US-only collection that they, shh, helpfully sold on their UK site). Then, in regular ol’ 1080p, they also put out Island of Fire and “rediscovered classic” (we’ll see) To Kill a Mastermind; plus a New York-set drama starring Chow Yun-Fat, An Autumn’s Tale, and another addition to their Tigon horror range, The Sorcerers (I can’t say I’m picking up every title they’re putting out in that collection, but some appeal). Another label who always try to hoover up the contents of my bank account are Radiance, this month with a trio of gangster-related flicks: A Man on His Knees, Tattooed Life, and We Still Kill the Old Way (a ’70s Italian thriller, not that trashy-looking Brit flick of the same title from the mid 2010s). More crime drama courtesy of Arrow in early Kinji Fukasaku effort The Threat, while some welcome variety comes courtesy of the BFI’s genre-hopping five-film collection of Michael Powell’s early works, titled Michael Powell: Early Works.

I should certainly get started on all of that, right? Except I’m away from home this week, so I definitely won’t be watching any of it imminently. And then there’s bound to be something new coming out…

August’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.

It’s that slightly-odd tail-end of summer time in cinemas at the moment (though, does the summer blockbuster season really exist anymore? Ever since Marvel started putting out major movies in the spring, and we’ve had major winter releases for even longer (at least since the 2001 double whammy of the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films), it feels like the idea of the year’s biggest movies being routinely limited to the summer months has evaporated. Regardless, August’s lot have that post-summer feel of movies aimed at a wide audience but that aren’t surefire major hits. We’re talking the latest M Night Shyamalan thriller, Trap; a new attempt to fresh the Alien franchise, Alien: Romulus; a reboot of The Crow; horrors Cuckoo and Afraid; psychological thriller Blink Twice; and apparently there was a new movie from Neil Marshall, Duchess, and video game adaptation Borderlands finally came out, though I don’t think I saw any actual talk about either, so they could’ve been bumped for all I know. And that’s without mentioning high-profile-ish rereleases like Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, a restored 3D version of Coraline (quite what needs restoring about such a recent film, I don’t know; maybe they just slap that label on any new rerelease now), and a 4K do-over of The Terminator (which I believe I heard James Cameron was involved with, so probably looks like shit).

The end of summer also means the streamers attempt to get back in on the action, with blockbuster-esque new releases in the form of Amazon Prime’s action-comedy from Paul Feig starring Awkwafina and John Cena, Jackpot!, and Netflix’s action-comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, The Union. Indeed, Wahlberg was pulling double duty for streamers this month, also appearing on Prime in true-story sports/dog movie Arthur the King. Even Apple TV+ got in on the action, tapping Matt Damon and Casey Affleck to star in director Doug Liman’s latest, action-comedy The Instigators. I guess the algorithm says people like action-comedies with stars in… There was also John Woo’s modern remake of his own action classic The Killer on Peacock in the US, but there’s no sign of a UK releaser or date yet. (Naturally, I’ve acquired a copy anyway.) They even got in on the “modified re-release” game, with Apple TV+ surprise dropping Ridley Scott’s Napoleon: The Director’s Cut earlier in the week, which adds 48 minutes to the already-lengthy movie. It also gives me the dilemma about which cut to watch, as I never got round to the original version. And speaking of director’s cuts, Netflix released Zack Snyder’s preferred versions of Rebel Moon Parts One and Two… or Chapters One and Two, I think they are now… with different subtitles, too. I don’t think anyone except Snyder diehards actually cared. (I appreciate this is tempting their vengeance, but I genuinely didn’t see anyone talking about those films after release day, and even on the day there was little more than an acknowledgment of their existence.)

Really, the most exciting thing from the streamers this month wasn’t any one film, but the fact NOW have finally added UHD quality. They used to lag so far behind in this — after all the others had introduced UHD, their version of HD was still only 720 — but now it seems they’ve caught up; and in one fell swoop too, because as soon as I noticed they had anything in UHD, it seemed almost everything was. So that’s nice. It makes me more inclined to actually watch stuff on there, whereas before it was a bit of a “stuff I’m not that fussed about but kinda want to see at some point”. And in terms of actual new additions, they had exciting recent releases like, er, Madame Web. Yeah. Of more interest, a couple of films I’d not heard of but I saw recommended in Radio Times: Irish noir thriller Barber and sci-fi romantic drama If You Were the Last. Also musical biopic All That Jazz, which crops up on “greatest films of all time” lists but never seems to be streaming anywhere.

On the more frustrating end of new-to-streaming titles, Disney+ debuted Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes almost two months before its disc release. I really want to see it, but I’m also inevitably going to buy it on physical media, so I want to wait for that… but there it is, on Disney+, tempting me. At least I don’t actually pay for Disney+ myself, so it’s a bit easier to resist. But I guess this is still their strategy to try to drive streaming over physical: “yeah, sure, we’ll release it physically eventually… but you can watch it on streaming right noooow…” Also Kinds of Kindness, the Yorgos Lanthimos film that arrived surprisingly quickly after his last one; but I haven’t watched that last one yet (i.e. Oscar winner Poor Things, also on Disney+), so his latest doesn’t exactly jump to the top of my viewing list.

What else was happening on the streamers? Netflix added Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color — I’ve still not got round to the colour version, so the black-and-white alternate is hardly a top priority for me. They also brought back The Power of the Dog in the UK, after its disappearance to be on iPlayer a couple of months ago; and the Criterion 4K release made it to the UK this month too, so now we’re spoilt for choice. Definitely the kind of film I feel I should see, and maybe I’ll like, but it also it feels like it’ll be heavy-going and I’ve got to be in the right frame of mind for that kind of thing. Maybe I’m wrong, who knows. I’ll find out someday. Just to rattle off a few other attention-grabbers from across the board: on Netflix, the film that provoked so much controversy with Andrea Riseborough’s Oscar acting nomination, To Leslie; on Amazon, a superhero movie I keep forgetting even exists, DC League of Super-Pets, but I remain kinda curious every time I remember it because it’s kind of an odd concept, really; also Scent of a Woman, which briefly, seemingly out of nowhere, popped into the IMDb Top 250 the other month, thus elevating it from “a film I’m vaguely aware exists” to “a film I should maybe watch”); and, oh, just so much other stuff.

I’m not even going to begin listing the stuff I own on disc that its appearance on streaming reminded me I really should’ve got round to watching — except I am going to “begin” that, because some highlights (if you can call anything about my constant failure a “highlight”) include Shaun of the Dead (which I’ve not seen in almost 20 years); Ben Affleck’s The Town (one of those films that’s hardly a ‘major’ movie but also feels daft I’ve never got round to); Tremors (a film I thought was merely fine when I first saw it, whereas now I think I might better appreciate the B-ish charms that made it a cult favourite, so I bought the Arrow 4K back whenever that came out); and the trilogy of Piotr Szulkin sci-fi movies that I blind bought the Radiance box set of — The War of the Worlds: Next Century, O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization, and Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes — but which are now also on MUBI, along with a fourth film (Golem) that was included in the US equivalent of the set but for which a different distributor was supposedly working on a UK release (which hasn’t yet materialised, as far as I know).

That’s only scratching the surface… and, naturally, I bought even more stuff that’s destined to be a similar failure in the future. Let’s begin with another box set of Eastern European genre titles: Deaf Crocodile’s Aleksandr Ptushko Fantastika Box, which includes the fantasy epics Ilya Muromets (released in the West — and riffed over on Mystery Science Theater 3000 — as The Sword and the Dragon), Sampo (similarly released and spoofed as The Day the Earth Froze), The Tale of Tsar Saltan, and Ruslan and Ludmila. Hopefully they’re as good as they look, because they look gorgeous; like classical fantasy art brought to life. Another box set making its way from the US into my hands this month was Severin’s Cushing Curiosities (featuring the films Cone of Silence, Suspect, The Man Who Finally Died, Blood Suckers, and Tender Dracula, plus the surviving episodes of Cushing’s BBC Sherlock Holmes series), which I picked up in their sale alongside a trio of Dario Argento titles: 4K UHD releases of The Five Days and Opera (aka Terror at the Opera in the UK), and the rarities collection Dario Argento’s Deep Cuts (which possibly doesn’t merit listing here as a lot of it is made-for-TV content, but I’ve mentioned it now, so there we go).

Back at home, this month’s only brand-new released was The Fall Guy in 4K, but the boutiques drained my bank account as thoroughly as ever: from Arrow, Robert Rodriguez’s Mexico Trilogy, including a 4K disc for Desperado (probably the best-regarded of the three, and also the only one I’ve never seen, having caught Once Upon a Time in Mexico in the cinema back in 2003 and El Mariachi on a previous DVD version of this trilogy set); from Eureka in the Masters of Cinema range, Kinji Fukasaku’s yakuza classic Wolves, Pigs & Men; and from Radiance, more gangsters in Tai Kato’s Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza, plus their second World Noir box set (encompassing Germany’s Black Gravel, France’s Symphony for a Massacre, and Japan’s Cruel Gun Story); plus, excitingly, from partner label Raro Video, The Italian Connection, which completes Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu Trilogy (alongside a Raro release from earlier this year, The Boss, and a title Arrow put out nine years ago, Milano Calibro 9). Finally (literally, because it’s officially out today but my copy turned up on the last day of August), 101 Films’ UHD upgrade for Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, which I intended to watch back when I was watching all of Villeneuve’s earlier films in the run up to Dune, but didn’t and so is a possibility for this year’s WDYMYHS list.

I say “finally” — I bought a further 16 titles in sales of one kind or another. From the US, A*P*E in 3D; George A. Romero’s Creepshow in 4K plus Just Desserts: The Making of Creepshow; Flicker Alley’s Argentinian noir Never Open That Door; a couple of US-exclusive titles from UK labels: Arrow’s release of John Wayne’s final film, The Shootist, and Indicator release Untouched (which, somewhat aptly given its title, is a US-only release because the BBFC insisted on cuts); and Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell and Walker. And from the UK, a quartet of StudioCanal Cult Classics: Blazing Magnum, Devil Girl from Mars, The Final Programme, and Horrors of the Black Museum; the BFI’s 4K of Full Circle (aka The Haunting of Julia) and volume 3 of their Short Sharp Shocks series; classic ghost story The Queen of Spades; and Lisa Joy’s Hugh Jackman-starring sci-fi noir Reminiscence. When you lay it out like that, it kinda sounds like I have a problem. But shh, don’t tell anyone, because then I might have to deal with it.

July’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.

The current big news on the big screen is undoubtedly Deadpool & Wolverine, which I might have actually gone to see if I hadn’t been busy this past weekend. Social media reaction seems divided: the fanboys love it (of course they do), while more serious-minded critics are cautious bordering on negative. I might still make the effort this coming weekend, or it might join the long list of post-Endgame MCU titles I just haven’t got round to. The fact it’s something oaan capstone to the Fox era of superhero movies sways me more in its favour, but still, we’ll see.

Also filling multiplexes were routine animated sequel Despicable Me 4 and belated, nostalgia-fuelled blockbuster sequel Twisters. I’ll inevitably catch both eventually, but I still haven’t seen the last Minions film and it took me a couple of decades to get round to the first Twister — which is no more than a perfectly adequate film — so I’m hardly in a rush. Of more interest are Kill, an Indian action film that I’ve heard is very good (to the extent that John Wick’s Chad Stahelski is already working on a US remake), and I Saw the TV Glow, which feels like it’s been attracting praise on Letterboxd forever but has only now made it to UK screens. Nonetheless, I’ll wait for discs on both of those (not least my local isn’t screening them). And further down my future watchlist, a pair of horrors: Longlegs, which seems to have provoked a lot of chatter, mainly about Nic Cage’s performance, which makes it interesting to me; and MaXXXine, but I’ve not seen X or Pearl yet so that one’s a ways down the list.

In theatrical-adjacent news, Amazon Prime Video finally brought Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare to the UK. All of Ritchie’s films seem to go direct to Amazon here these days, for good or ill. It’s a bit of a coin-toss whether I’ll get round to it anytime soon or not, but it’s definitely on the watchlist. Amazon seemed to be leading the way with original premieres this month, also debuting sequel My Spy: The Eternal City (I never caved to watching the original, even during the pandemic, so this is hardly a priority for me) and Space Cadet (this sounds kinda like “Legally Blonde in space”, which mildly tempts me, but reviews are terrible). All I have noted down for Netflix, on the other hand, is original anime The Imaginary. Sky / NOW also got in on the action with a modern-day kid-friendly spin on the Robin Hood legend, Robin and the Hoods; while I do believe Disney’s Young Woman and the Sea had some kind of theatrical release, but it was so limited that its Disney+ debut is basically a premiere.

Other films making their way to streaming post-theatrical included Wicked Little Letters on Netflix, which looks fun; The Iron Claw on Amazon, which seemed to attract positive buzz when it was in US cinemas; and on Sky / NOW, box office surprise smash romcom Anyone But You, the musical remake of Mean Girls, and Chinese animation (that I saw recommended somewhere) Deep Sea. Also Jericho Ridge, which I’d not heard of before it popped up on NOW, but its Assault on Precinct 13-esque premise sounded neat. And I don’t imagine it had a theatrical release, but it’s out on disc, so Amazon saved me having to pay for Bruceploitation (i.e. Bruce Lee exploitation) documentary Enter the Clones of Bruce. I say “saved” — that’s relative to me actually watching it before it’s inevitably removed one day…

There were back catalogue comings and goings a-go-go, of course, though what caught my eye this month was a large vein of things I’ve upgraded to 4K on disc but not (re)watched yet. Those included (deep breath) The Babadook, Black Hawk Down, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Deep Impact, Dr Who and the Daleks and its sequel, Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 AD, Drive, Enter the Dragon, the original Ghost in the Shell, Gladiator (really should revisit that before its sequel lands), The Green Mile, The Revenant, RoboCop (more on that later), RoboCop 2 (that too), The Shawshank Redemption, Top Gun: Maverick (which I also should’ve reviewed by now), and Training Day. Not to mention all the stuff I’ve just straight up bought on 4K and not watched yet, like Elvis, Possessor, The Sisters Brothers, and The Batman (it’s absolutely ridiculous that I still haven’t watched that). I expect I could generate a similarly lengthy list of films I own on unwatched Blu-rays that are now ‘free’ on streaming — though one that did stand out to me was Gravity, because it’s currently on both Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer and it reminded me I’ve never watched it in 3D, despite owning a 3D TV for over seven years now. Same goes for Dredd (which was streaming on Channel 4 this month) and… well, plenty of other things (that aren’t currently streaming; and probably some that are).

None of which stops me buying piles of new discs, of course, including several that could feature in the above list — indeed, two do: RoboCop, which I finally picked up in Arrow’s recent sale; and the recently-released RoboCop 2 (from the US, because I did one of my bulk orders again). Other upgrades thanks to the Arrow sale included Time Bandits (it would’ve been neat to watch that before the new TV version started, wouldn’t it?) and Videodrome; while other 4Ks in that US order included giallo The Case of the Bloody Iris, an upgrade all the way from DVD for The Departed, and Criterion editions of I Am Cuba, McCabe & Mrs Miller, and The Red Shoes.

Back in the UK, 4K new releases included both brand-new titles like Alex Garland’s Civil War and Dev Patel’s Monkey Man (both of which I’m keen to see, so it’s daft they’re having to be featured here), plus new releases for older titles, like Second Sight’s A Bittersweet Life, Indicator’s Bruiser (which means I now own all of George A Romero’s feature films in HD or 4K), Arrow’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Curzon’s Memories of Murder.

Comparatively, I have very few regular ol’ HD titles to note. From Radiance’s latest slate, I limited myself to just Tai Kato’s Eighteen Years in Prison (yes, this is me trying to cut back), plus their partner label Raro Video’s release of Michael “Witchfinder General” Reeves’s Revenge of the Blood Beast (more commonly known online as The She Beast). I also finally upgraded classic TV series The Prisoner to HD, importing the recent Imprint release from Australia — it surely cost more than Network’s release would have back in the day, but that’s out of print (RIP Network) and at least this one comes with more special features (overall — it is missing a couple). Along with that, I finally stumped for an HD copy of the 2003 Zatoichi (there have been various releases, none of which seem to have the quite right PQ, but most of which do look better than my old DVD) and my most ridiculous purchase of the month, David Lynch’s Dune — ridiculous because I already own Arrow’s 4K release, but I bought this version for feature-length behind-the-scenes documentary The Sleeper Must Awaken: Making Dune. Was that a reasonable purchase? I guess it depends how good the doc is. I’ll have to actually watch it to find out.

June’s Failures

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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.

May’s Failures

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It’s some kind of irony that this month I failed to get my failures post written in a timely fashion (not that I think anyone particularly cares about it being late), but I’ve been struggling with a nasty cold the past few days and so had neither the time nor energy to devote to it.

No such excuses for not making it to the cinema last month, just my general lackadaisical attitude to catching films on the big screen. That makes me a contributor to the underwhelming box office of The Fall Guy and Furiosa, as well as Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes — all films I’m very much looking forward to seeing, for one reason or another (mostly: the trailers look good; but also the franchise pedigree of the latter two). Other theatrical releases in the past month that I might watch at some point but, frankly, I was never going to go out of my way to see included The Garfield Movie, Love Lies Bleeding, Tarot, Young Woman and the Sea, and If (no connection to if…., but that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m liable to make a joke about if I ever review it — see my review of Frozen for similar).

Streaming original premieres looked even weaker than normal by comparison to that lot, with the most noteworthy probably being Jerry Seinfeld Pop-Tarts comedy Unfrosted (I saw a clip of the ‘surprise’ Mad Men cameos on Twitter. Thank goodness I didn’t watch the whole thing for that). Netflix also offered sci-fi Atlas, with a moderately name-y cast, but I’ve not seen a single person mention it, before or after release, which I figure doesn’t bode well for its quality. Over on Amazon, there was Harry Styles-inspired romcom The Idea of You and, um, the movie edit of Roku-premiering TV series Die Hart 2: Die Harter. (Implausibly, that’s been recommissioned for a third season, so I guess there’ll be a third “movie” as an “Amazon Original” at some point in the future, too.)

It was a relatively thin month for theatrical releases making their streaming debuts, too, with Disney+ only offering horror prequel The First Omen and Sky Cinema on the same “revived ’70s horror series” bandwagon with The Exorcist: Believer, plus minor-league DC superhero Blue Beetle (is it in continuity with that studio’s forthcoming films or not? I forget) and another “somewhat implausible it even got commissioned” action threequel, The Equalizer 3. More significantly, Amazon Prime debuted dystopian YA prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (which I already own on disc) and Netflix surprised everyone with Godzilla Minus One (technically on June 1st, but as that’s already a few days ago I thought I may as well include it). With any information about a Western home video release for that most recent Japanese Godzilla flick being kept as quiet as a state secret, I’d already joined the crowd in pirating the thing; and I cancelled my Netflix subscription at the end of May too, so I’ll still watch that downloaded copy at some point. (I can’t say I feel too guilty about that considering I’ll surely buy it on disc, when/if they ever announce one over here.)

There was, of course, the usual glut of back catalogue titles hopping from one service to another or just plain popping up again, with particularly notable ones including The Black Phone, Brian and Charles, Bullet Train, and Minions: The Rise of Gru on Netflix (as I say, I’ve cancelled my sub, but I do have access to the latter two films in other ways); Amores Perros, Bone Tomahawk, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Natural Born Killers, The Others, and Studio 666 on Prime Video, along with a bunch of Gamera films (I confess, I’ve still not even opened the Arrow box set I bought back when it first came out, so long ago I dread to even look up when that was); on Channel 4, Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Presidents, Moonfall, and multiple titles I’ve bought on 4K disc but not got round to (re)watching, including Carlito’s Way, Collateral, Fanny Lye Deliver’d, M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, and George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing; and the BBC seem to have been having a bit of a Christopher Nolan season, with the TV premiere of Tenet, plus Dunkirk, Memento, and the one I particularly want to note, The Prestige — I haven’t seen it since a DVD rewatch 16 years ago, and I bought the 4K disc a while back, so there are multiple reasons it’s long overdue a revisit.

You might think facts and lists like those in the last paragraph would stop me buying more films on disc — but if you thought that, it would show you don’t know me very well at all. The wild and wonderful additions to my ever-expanding, storage-space-challenging collection this past month include multiple new-to-4K titles like The Dreamers, Dune: Part Two, The Valiant Ones, and, despite the controversy surrounding its presentation, Once Upon a Time in the West. Talking of controversy, I also bought some bootleg releases this month — not something I normally do, but I happened to discover eBay sales for the Hong Kong Rescue editions of Hard Boiled, The Killer, and Peking Opera Blues. If official releases seemed imminent, or even likely, I’d have happily waited (other films released by HKR have since had genuine releases, and I’ve bought those instead), but the rights for at least two of these titles are apparently-impossibly entangled (and people keep requesting Peking Opera Blues and it keeps not coming out, so I presume there’s some problem there as well), so I caved.

There was more Hong Kong action in 88 Films’ release of Jackie Chan-starring Fearless Hyena Part II, plus their release of British-produced Western Hannie Caulder. The BFI released Stephen Poliakoff’s film debut, thriller Hidden City, while Indicator returned to their Columbia Noir series for a sixth volume, this time encompassing eight-film crime series the Whistler. Finally (although I think it must’ve been more-or-less the first thing to arrive, because it doesn’t feel like it was only this month), another pile of titles from the US, this time from Vinegar Syndrome partner labels. I think there was an offer on, though my interest was initially piqued by a forthcoming local screening of Russian sci-fi Kin-Dza-Dza!, which led me to discover the Deaf Crocodile Blu-ray release, which led me to a mix of other stuff I’d had an eye on (animations Cat City and Heroic Times) and stuff that captured my attention while browsing: sometime Letterboxd fave All About Lily Chou-Chou; video store documentary Mom n’ Pop; and “rotoscoped time travel Western” Quantum Cowboys. This is really the “wild and wonderful” stuff I was referring to earlier. Whether or not they’re also “good”, I’ll find out whenever I finally get round to watching any of them…

April’s Failures

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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…