Category Archives: Failures

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…

March’s Failures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February’s Failures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January’s Failures

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Let’s start this month with a double failure: having missed Poor Things at FilmBath back in October, I now haven’t seen it on its general release either. It’s still screening near me though, so there’s still a chance I’ll temporarily get over my laziness and head out to see it. Certainly, there’s not been much else on the big screen this month to tempt my out of the house. I’m certain that I’ll eventually watch the likes of Jason Statham actioner The Beekeeper, musical remake Mean Girls, and Christmas-themed The Holdovers (oh yeah, smart idea to release that in January), but they’re also the kind of thing I can wait til streaming for. I know, I know, I’m a bad movie fan. Whatevs. Also on the big screen this month — and more-or-less as likely to make my streaming watchlist someday — were Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, biopic One Life, British post-apocalyptic thriller The End We Start From, haunted swimming pool (I shit you not) horror Night Swim, romantic fantasy All of Us Strangers, and another musical remake, The Color Purple.

Shifting to the streamers, I feel like Amazon scored the most-talked-about film of the month with Saltburn. Proof once again that a theatrical release before a streaming debut helps generate views and chatter, because various other direct-to-streaming debuts — Netflix’s Lift; Amazon’s action comedy Role Play — don’t seem to have generated nearly as much buzz. Heck, Netflix debuted a British sci-fi thriller co-written and -directed by Daniel Kaluuya, and I first heard about it from my mum because she’d seen someone interviewed on The One Show. (That was The Kitchen.) When my mum knows about a film like that before me, I feel like the marketing has gone awry somewhere. On the flipside, Disney+ did such a good job of making me aware The Creator was available to stream, it stopped me buying the physical media release. I nearly did anyway (physical is best; support non-franchise movies; etc), but there’s so much other stuff to fork out for nowadays.

That aside, Sky Cinema still dominate for major new-to-streaming releases over here, this month including the likes of Fast X (a rare case of a Fast & Furious movie retaining its original title for the UK release), Jennifer Lawrence R-rated comedy No Hard Feelings, and, um, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Yeah, they’re still making live-action Transformers movies; though, after I wasn’t so enamoured with Bumblebee, I might finally be done with that franchise. Plus, having commented in my “Best of 2023” post that I should check out the old Fletch movies, both Fletch and Fletch Lives cropped up amongst a load of additions on New Year’s Day. Normally I’d get Sky’s ‘budget’ version, NOW, to watch the Oscars and thus intend to catch up on these films then, but the awards have now moved to ITV over here. Dilemma. I’ll probably just wait until NOW next offer me a discounted membership. That usually happens around Oscar time anyway.

Next, Netflix rustled up Marvel-adjacent vampire superhero Morbius (as with most superhero movies these days, the idea of watching it feels more like mandatory homework than pleasure; although it’s meant to be so bad, I’m curious), plus Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (I found the first surprisingly enjoyable, so I’m definitely down for the second now it’s ‘free’). Plus, thanks to the addition of Michael Bay’s Ambulance, I noticed they have the Danish original, Ambulancen. I imagine it’s quite different; the contrast could be interesting. And talking of world cinema, I really, really wanted to catch Hit the Road while it was streaming on Channel 4 throughout December and the start of January… but didn’t manage it. “Why didn’t you just watch it if you really, really want to?” Y’all heard of family commitments, and work, and… ugh, December (and early January) can be a right pain.

Talking of pains, Apple TV annoyed me — and many others, based on the social media reaction — back in early December by sending out an alert saying Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon was now available to stream, only for it to turn out they meant it was now available to rent; and at the pricey “still in cinemas” rate of £16, at that. Cheeky so-and-sos. They later did the same thing again with Napoleon, but at least I was wise to it second time round. Anyway, Killers of the Flower Moon is now available as expected — as part of an Apple TV+ subscription — but I still haven’t got round to watching it because it’s over 3½ hours long. That’s not the kind of film you just bung on, is it? You’ve got to find time for that sort of thing, haven’t you? Well, I haven’t yet. It’s a fairly high priority, for reasons that should be self-evident, but still, when have I got 3½ hours?

Back to Amazon for more low-key sci-fi with Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal in Foe, plus acclaimed in-depth (look at its length!) folk horror doc Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, which I’ve actually owned on disc for… far too long, considering it’s still sealed. That’s as nothing to Decision to Leave, though, which is now streaming on iPlayer, having been on MUBI, and which I’ve bought on disc… twice, because after I picked up the original Blu-ray (fortunately, on offer) they went and announced a 4K one. More fool me, I guess. iPlayer are almost making a thing of streaming movies I’ve recently bought-but-not-watched on 4K, with In the Heat of the Night, The Others, and Thelma & Louise all popping up recently. On the other hand, MUBI might save me some money, as they added “unique take on the neo-noir genre” Suzhou River shortly after Radiance announced a disc release for March. I like supporting boutique labels, but I’ve already blind-bought plenty of Radiance titles — my conscience can withstand one (legal) “try before you buy” (assuming I actually get round to it…)

All this talk of purchases inevitably brings us round to what I did buy this month. It’s felt quiet at times, but the final list looks pretty long. I think that’s in part because several are titles I was expecting in December that rolled over to the new year, for one reason or another (delays in either shipping or getting through the postal system, mainly). The most forgivable are those that had to come from overseas, including 4Ks of Dellamorte Dellamore (aka Cemetery Man) from the US and Possession from Australia (I probably would’ve held out for the forthcoming UK release from Second Sight, if they’d bothered to announce it before I ordered this one). Other 4Ks included Rio Bravo (for Blindspot), Sisu, and Vanilla Sky (which I haven’t seen since its DVD).

From Warner Archive’s burgeoning UK range, I picked up early horrors Doctor X and Isle of the Dead (the latter mainly because I happened to see it reduced), plus Fritz Lang’s US debut, Fury. As is now almost customary, there was martial arts action from Eureka in the form of Kung Fu Cult Master, When Taekwondo Strikes, and Samurai Wolf I+II (the latter meriting inclusion in the Masters of Cinema range). Plus, from 88 Films, The Inspector Wears Skirts. I could more than fuel the Genre portion of my Challenge with new purchases, never mind the massive backlog I’ve got. Oh well.

The most-represented label this month was Radiance — the aforementioned postal/shipping delays meant I got two parcels from them this month, with both December and January releases, including titles from their partner labels. The latter included Palme d’Or-nominated Brazilian crime drama Black God, White Devil; giallo Murder Obsession; and an Italian crime drama that apparently sits at the intersection of gialli and poliziotteschi, Death Occurred Last Night. From the label’s own output there was even more Italian crime in Goodbye & Amen; “a ferocious satire on Japan’s post-war economic miracle”, Elegant Beast; “pitch black neo-noir” I, the Executioner; Cannes Grand Jury Prize-winning marital drama The Sting of Death; and a box set of World Noir, which is excitingly labelled “Vol.1”, and contains examples of the genre from Japan (I Am Waiting), France (Witness in the City), and, once again, Italy (The Facts of Murder). Now, I just need to actually watch some of those before World Noir joins Columbia Noir and Universal Noir as a pile of exciting but unplayed box sets…

December’s Failures

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I habitually begin this column with the theatrical releases I’ve missed in the past month, but this time the true biggest failures are of a more personal nature: all the films I should have watched to complete my 100 Films in a Year Challenge. Those were, in alphabetical order, A Brighter Summer Day, Pierrot le Fou, Shoah, and, er, any five gialli. The monthly “failures” category of my 100 Films Challenge will continue in 2024, so now those failures from last year have the possibility of helping me complete next year by being the “failure” I watch in January. It’s almost beautiful… though, to be honest, I suspect I’m more likely to watch one of the following…

Well, probably not any of this first batch either, seeing as many of them are still in cinemas and the others won’t hit disc or streaming for a while. The one that nearly tempted me out of the house this month was Godzilla Minus One — I was interested anyway, but then the glowing reviews sealed the deal. Unfortunately, its limited release coincided with a busy weekend of pre-Christmas family stuff and then a busy week of pre-Christmas work stuff, so I just didn’t have the opportunity. If it weren’t such a limited release, maybe it would still be showing and I could go in January; but it was limited, it isn’t still showing, and now I’ll have to wait for a disc release.

Also on the big screen… Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel Wonka — the first review I saw called it charmless, the second thought it was a magical delight, and now I don’t know what to think (I could look up the consensus, of course, but where’s the fun in that). Yet another end for one version or another of the DC cinematic universe in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom — I rather enjoyed the first one, so remain cautiously optimistic for the sequel. Talking of final (again) films, there was also Hayao Miyazaki’s latest last movie, The Boy and the Heron. Then there’s the latest from Michael Mann, Ferrari, and from Taika Waititi, Next Goal Wins. Closing things out, part two of French swashbuckling adaptation The Three Musketeers: Milady, which I’m hoping they’ll do a two-film 4K release when it reaches disc, as they skipped 4K for part one outside of France. Oh, and rom-com Anyone But You, which I might watch one day if it garners a good rep.

The concept of major end-of-year releases extended to the streamers, too. Netflix led with Zack Snyder’s latest, a rejected Star Wars pitch turned into an attempt to launch a standalone universe, Rebel Moon — or, rather, Rebel Moon: Part One, as apparently it was just too big to be contained to a single film. Or perhaps that should be Rebel Moon: Part One – The Neutered First Cut, as apparently this is a PG-13-friendly version ahead of an R-rated director’s cut due… in the future. This cynical viewership-grabbing idea (because why not just go straight to the uncut version?) seems to have backfired, with the film receiving poor reviews from all but the die-hard Snyder fans. It still sits on my watchlist, but then what doesn’t?

Trying to cover all bases, Netflix also released Bradley Cooper’s latest shot at an Oscar, Maestro; starry apocalyptic drama Leave the World Behind; and some family-friendly fare in the shape of belated sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. Amazon’s offering was comparatively paltry. Well, there was an Eddie Murphy Christmas comedy that I didn’t even bother to note down the title of, so little am I likely to watch it. Elsewise, there was odd-looking animation Merry Little Batman. Its visual style put me off, but then I thought I’d watch it anyway as it’s just a short, but it turned out to be a full-length feature, and now… well, now it’s January. Who wants to watch a Christmas film in January?

Talking of Christmas films, the other streamers were at it too: Disney+ served up kid-friendly heist comedy The Naughty Nine alongside aviation-themed “Christmas miracle”-style short The Shepherd; and Sky boasted as Originals the latest Richard Curtis effort, Genie, alongside John Woo’s much-anticipated Silent Night. They also had the UK debut of May December, but I don’t think that’s very Christmassy. Nor was MUBI’s How to Have Sex, or Apple TV+’s action-comedy The Family Plan. The latter is a Mark Wahlberg vehicle, so I’m prepared for it to be weak, but the trailer amused me nonetheless. As for more reliable action stars, Disney+ also debuted Timeless Heroes: Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford, a feature-length documentary directed by DVD special features producer extraordinaire Laurent Bouzereau (but sadly not included on the latest Indiana Jones disc release), which is billed as follows: “From his humble beginnings as TV bit-player to his era-defining turn as a blockbuster action movie star and onto his more introspective roles that followed, this new documentary tracks the storied career of Harrison Ford.” Ford’s great and Bouzereau’s work is typically fab, so that’s gotta be worth a look, right?

In terms of films making their streaming debut, Sky are back to dominance, with a December that also featured everything from hit blockbusters Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Super Mario Bros Movie to flop blockbuster Shazam! Fury of the Gods; British flicks from grey-pound plays Allelujah and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry to action-comedy Polite Society; plus foreign-language action in Sisu and The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan. The best the others could offer were warmed-over releases like the Extended Version of Spider-Man: No Way Home on Netflix (the never-released-on-disc cut with 12 minutes of extra stuff). As always, there was plenty of back catalogue stuff to fill out my watchlists, but as they all tend to come and go, and jump about from one service to the other now and then, I won’t be listing them all.

Instead, let’s jump on to the never-ending drain on my finances: disc purchases! (Ah, I love ’em really, otherwise I wouldn’t do it.) It’s a shorter list than normal this month, for whatever reason, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of exciting titles. For example, there’s The Warriors on 4K from Arrow — a release I’ve been hoping for for years, although was slightly less keen on after Australia’s Imprint put the film out a while back in a very good 1080p set. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), Arrow’s and Imprint’s releases have completely different special features, so I’ll be keeping both sets. Another one I’d been waiting for was The Exorcist — not in desperation for any kind of decent release, but because they’ve been putting out multiple different configurations of its 4K discs over the past couple of months, and in December they finally released the one I wanted. Finally on 4K, I updated and/or completed my Indiana Jones, Guillermo del Toro, and Christopher Nolan collections with, respectively, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and Oppenheimer.

Regular Blu-ray was a tale of two labels, with the latest releases from Eureka, HK gambling thriller Casino Raiders and samurai epic The Fall of Ako Castle; and the almost-latest-but-not-quite releases from Radiance (their actual December releases are currently somewhere in the postal system, having only dispatched to me this week), including French “noirish drama” Le combat dans l’ile, Umberto Lenzi’s poliziottesco Gang War in Milan, and a box set of Polish sci-fi / horror / “satirical, surrealistic apocalypse” fantasies directed by Piotr Szulkin, The End of Civilization. It sounds like the kind of stuff I have no idea if I’ll actually like or not, but it’s definitely worth a go (just don’t ask how much I spend on stuff that seems “worth a go”…)

November’s Failures

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Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was high on the list of titles I thought might tempt me out to the cinema in the closing months of the year, but it hasn’t managed it yet — and, with December being as December is, I doubt it will now. (The one remaining big “maybe” is Godzilla Minus One, which is out on the 15th over here. Come back next month to see if that happens…) A close second was wordily-titled prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, because I enjoyed the original “trilogy in four parts”, but, again, it couldn’t quite get me over the line (perhaps it’s no surprise, as I watched all of the rest on Blu-ray).

Noticeably less tempting were Disney’s latest flops, The Marvels (I’m so far behind on the MCU now) and Wish (can’t remember when I last saw a Disney animation at the cinema. Always feels a bit weird going alone as a 30-something bloke). Of smaller scale releases that go on my list to catch somewhere eventually, there was the likes of Emerald Fennel’s Saltburn, festival hit Anatomy of a Fall, horror Thanksgiving, much-discussed on Twitter this weekend May December (I believe it’s already on Netflix in the US, but has been condemned to Sky Cinema over here), and a belated UK release for Bottoms.

Streaming had a premiere of more interest to me than any of those, however, in the shape of David Fincher’s latest, The Killer, on Netflix. I was going to cancel my Netflix subscription at the end of October due to the imminent price rise, but kept it going to catch The Killer in early November, but then events conspired against me and I still haven’t got to it. Of course, mentioning it here now gives me extra motivation, as it now qualifies under an additional category in my Challenge. I wish I didn’t think like that about my film viewing, but when I find so little time for it and the Challenge requires so many films…

According to my notes, there was little else brand-new of note on the streamers this past month; just Adam Sandler animation Leo (also Netflix), romantic sci-fi Fingernails getting lost on Apple TV+, and an aged-up Pierce Brosnan as The Last Rifleman on Sky Cinema. The latter continue to dominate in terms of streaming debuts, this month boasting Beau is Afraid, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Renfield, and Violent Night. All of which said, I don’t currently subscribe to Sky/Now, so probably shouldn’t be noting them as “failures”. Normally I’d pick it up in late January or February for the Oscars, but as those have moved to ITV now, I have considerably less cause to. Sure, there’s all the films, but it’s not as if I don’t have enough to watch as it is.

Of note on the rest of the streamers, Branagh’s latest Poirot, A Haunting in Venice, came to Disney+ in 4K — a format it’s been denied on disc, so I’ll be streaming it instead of buying it. They also had a real oddity: miniseries Faraway Downs, which is Baz Luhrmann’s film Australia extended and re-cut into a six-parter. Mainly, it’s reminded me I’ve never quite got round to watching the film… which is 15 years old. My perception of time is all kinds of messed up. No other streamer can boast anything quite so irritating as the third film in a series not getting a 4K release when the previous two did, nor so unusual as an old movie being recut into a TV series, but of particular note padding out my never-ending watchlist on other providers were Jackass Forever, Reminiscence, and Studio 666 on Netflix; unloved Oscar nominee Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which I only feel I need to see to tick that box) on Amazon Prime; 1970s Miyazaki shot Yuki’s Sun on MUBI; on Channel 4, a bunch of foreign titles I’ve heard good things about, like Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Riders of Justice, Hit the Road, and Petite Maman; and a French remake of One Cut of the Dead, Final Cut, on iPlayer, along with a load of Shakespeare stuff I’d like to watch thanks to BBC Four’s recent season about the Bard. I’m not going to get into listing all of that, though.

As for physical media purchases, the end of November brings with it Black Friday, and while I didn’t go actively hunting for deals, a few were too good to miss, like Curzon’s 4K box set of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy, plus their 4K release of his The Double Life of Veronique. Across general two-for-what-have-you offers and other such discount, I also upgraded Interstellar (from Blu-ray) and Event Horizon (from DVD), and picked up a couple of classics I feel I should have seen but that never seem to crop up on streaming anywhere, Rebel Without a Cause and Rosemary’s Baby. I also finally found a price I was happy with for the 4K set of The Godfather Trilogy, which I haven’t watched since the DVD era — which presents a big question for the next rewatch: Parts I and II are easy enough, but do I conclude with Part III or its recent recut, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone? The set now presents that as the definitive version, with the original cuts of Part III relegated to special features status. Maybe that answers the question for me.

There were a few new releases on 4K too, headlined by a pair I thought might never happen. The most egregious would’ve been the fourth and final film in the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy, Evangelion:3.0+1.11 Thrice Upon a Time. When Amazon snaffled up the streaming rights, I was concerned I’d never be able to complete my discs collection; but, a couple of years later, here it is. I’m less thorough about my Predator collection, but Prey is one of the best films in that series and so I’m thrilled to see Disney+ titles like that making it to disc now. There are a good few more I hope we’ll see at some point. Maybe they’ll even persuade Netflix to join in eventually (I want Glass Onion, goddammit!) Less startling, but obviously welcome, was Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (which is gonna look silly if they do retitle Part Two now), plus I took a punt on Arrow’s release of Tremors 2: Aftershocks (direct-to-video sequels obviously have a bad rep, but the very fact they’ve decided this was worth doing says something… hopefully…)

Finally for 4K, I imported Kino’s release of The Train, mainly because the film comes strongly recommended by Christopher “director of one of the greatest train sequences of all time” McQuarrie (which, as you may or may not remember, also merited a mention last month because it was on TV right after I placed the order for this disc copy). I rarely order one thing at a time from the States, and so along with that came ’50s sci-fi B-movie Robot Monster in 3D (probably not a great film, but the disc is packed with stereoscopic goodies), and a double bill of Douglas Fairbanks double bills, seeing the silent star swashbuckle his way through Robin Hood, The Black Pirate, The Three Musketeers, and The Iron Mask.

There were two other foursomes this month, too: Arrow’s second box set of sundry Spaghetti Westerns, Blood Money, and Eureka’s amusingly-titled collection of Mr. Vampire sequels, Hopping Mad. Yes, after watching the original back in May to decide whether I wanted to order the sequel set, I finally did. Will it be another six months before I actually watch any of them? Knowing me, no — it’ll be much, much longer.

October’s Failures

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Let’s start with what is easily this month’s biggest failure: Poor Things. No, it’s not out in the UK until January, but it was the highest-profile film screening at this year’s FilmBath Festival, and I had a ticket, but in the end I couldn’t make it, primarily thanks to lingering effects from when I had Covid. Damn. Other films of particular interest at the festival that I didn’t see for one reason or another included The Bikeriders (well received at other festivals and, just before its Bath screening, its general release was pushed back from December to sometime in 2024) and the new film by Carol Morley, Typist Artist Pirate King, which is now on general release. And… it’s not that there weren’t other interesting films screened at the festival this year, but nothing much major enough to warrant a mention.

On general release, the biggest news has to be the latest from Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon. Unless you’re of a certain age, that is, because apparently Five Nights at Freddy’s is a phenomenon-sized franchise to kids (so I’m told) and thus the (first) film did stonking business (in the US, at least — I’ve no idea if this is one of those genuine worldwide phenomenons or one of those US-centric ones that The Internet therefore portrays as global). Other big screen releases — of varying size, quality, and success — included legacy sequel The Exorcist: Believer, Michael Caine’s final role in The Great Escaper, kiddy franchise entries Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie and Trolls Band Together, emotional sci-fi Foe, and the latest attempt at reviving the Hammer brand, a modern reimagining of the sci-fi/horror classic, Doctor Jekyll. Allegedly there was also a theatrical release for David Fincher’s latest, but as that’s from Netflix it isn’t screening anywhere round me, so I shan’t deign to mention it by name. It’ll be in next month’s column, unless I actually watch it (I intend to, but my intentions often mean nowt).

Speaking of Netflix, I think their primary original this month was Pain Hustlers, which is almost notable for being director David Yates’s first non-blockbuster work in 18 years… except, after gradually eroding his talent/promise on seven Wizarding World movies, I’m not sure anyone particularly cares about Yates as a director anymore. Plus this new movie’s meant to be a bit shite, so that won’t help. Whatever happened to the guy who directed the original State of Play and Sex Traffic miniseries? Well, the Wizarding World / two decades of blockbuster work, I guess. Also new to Netflix were Fair Play, another attempt to revive the erotic thriller subgenre that apparently fails due to modern prudishness, and Ballerina — not the long-awaited John Wick spinoff, but another action movie; a Korean one, to be mildly more precise. The fact I’ve not seen anyone on Twitter going, “hey, you should check out this new Asian action movie on Netflix that you probably missed!” suggests it probably isn’t that great (because most new Asian action movies on Netflix seem to attract that kind of recommendation from someone).

I think Amazon were the only steamer to put any effort into providing a horror-themed original for Halloween, with time travel-themed ’80s throwback Totally Killer. Not that other streamers opted out entirely, mind, be it streaming premieres — the new Haunted Mansion on Disney+; the likes of Infinity Pool, Pearl, and The Pope’s Exorcist on Sky Cinema; Talk to Me on Netflix — or older fare… which, frankly, are too numerous to mention. As I said in my September review, I’ve never been one to spend all of October watching horror, but I’m sure I could’ve done, and one day maybe I will.

There were some other themes to this month’s streaming offerings, though, like original shorts: Disney’s official 100th anniversary celebration, Once Upon a Studio, and Pedro Almodóvar’s gay Western, Strange Way of Life, on MUBI. BBC Four have been having some kind of Shakespeare season, which then extends onto iPlayer. It’s largely been TV adaptations, but a few films have come through too, like the 1950s Julius Caesar with Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud, and Deborah Kerr; Laurence Olivier’s Richard III; and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (which I’ve seen but have long intended to revisit).

There also seemed to be an exceptional number of films I already own (or, erm, have downloaded) coming to streaming before I could watch them. As usual, that was mostly on Sky Cinema, with titles like of Cocaine Bear, The Fabelmans, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Searching sequel Missing. To be honest, I think this says more about my recent (as in, year-long) failure to keep up with newer releases/purchases than it has anything to say about an abundance of new stuff on streaming. That’s without even counting titles further into the back catalogue, or that have been around for long enough to leave streaming and come back, like Licorice Pizza (formerly of Amazon Prime, now on iPlayer), or the Candyman legacy sequel (also on iPlayer), or Another Round, Boiling Point, and Censor (all streaming on Channel 4). Heck, even purchases that haven’t arrived yet are getting in on the act: the day I placed an order for the US 4K release of The Train, it popped up on iPlayer. Well, at least I’ll get to watch it in 4K. One day (expect to see it in next month’s failures. Or maybe I’ll watch my 4K disc to cross off this month’s mention of it from streaming…)

Talking of things I’ve bought, no impairment can slow down my insane rate of disc purchases! Where to begin? Let’s sort them by label, starting with the large package that turned up this month from Australia’s Umbrella — large in part because of multiple titles, and in part because some of those titles are of the “lavish box set” variety. I mean, Razorback is not only a single film in a box roughly the depth of four regular Blu-rays, it also came with a T-shirt and an action figure. Although, the action figure — of the eponymous boar — doesn’t have any articulation, so maybe “in-action figure” would be more accurate. Not that it’ll ever leave its packaging. Also in that box from Oz, listed in order of decreasing thickness of edition: Peter Weir’s The Last Wave, Indiana Jones rip-off Sky Pirates, low-budget horror Undead, and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which at one time looked like the only disc release for that Roku-exclusive film, but now it’s coming in the US with new extras being worked on, so I may slightly regret that purchase. Oh well.

There was also a sizeable pile from Radiance, headlined by sold-out-on-preorder horror Messiah of Evil and accompanied by The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, The Hot Spot, The Iron Prefect, and Visible Secret, plus partner label title The Night of the Devils. I may not watch many horror movies in October, but clearly I do buy them (well, it’s what the labels choose to put out, isn’t it?) That continued with my latest acquisitions from Indicator, including the two new additions to their Jean Rollin collection, Fascination and Lips of Blood, plus pre-Code crime drama Thunderbolt, and the second six-film set in their Universal Noir range.

Another multi-film set was Criterion’s release of Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers, headlined by his famous Freaks but accompanied by lesser-known silents The Mystic and The Unknown. For some reason I assumed it wouldn’t get a UK release, so I was pleasantly surprised when it did. Even better, in some respects, was Martin Scorsese’s After Hours — Criterion’s first 4K release in the UK market. Hurrah!

A more recurring theme amongst my purchases is classic Asian action movies, thanks to several labels doing grand work in that field nowadays. The regulars are 88 Films — who this month delivered a fancier re-release of Jackie Chan’s Battle Creek Brawl; a similarly lavish edition of Chan’s Twin Dragons; a film labelled Hard Boiled II over here but that really has nothing to do with John Woo’s classic, The Last Blood; and, last but not least, The Postman Fights Back — and Eureka, with James Bond spoof From Beijing with Love and epic Beach of the War Gods.

But it was another title from Eureka, this time in their sporadic Masters of Cinema line, that was my most anticipated this month — indeed, it fills the “disc” slot on the post’s header image (has anyone noticed that the three images up top come from the same specific media each month? I doubt it). That’s silent era classic Pandora’s Box, making it’s long-awaited debut on a UK Blu-ray (it’s over 20 years since there was a DVD release here, and Criterion’s DVD is out of print and thus goes for silly prices). I’ve waited so long for that to come out, and now I can… proudly put it on a shelf and not get round to it, knowing me. I despair of myself.

September’s Failures

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I was nearly tempted out to the actual cinema again in September. Ever since I first started seeing trailers for Gareth Edwards’s The Creator, I thought it looked promising — especially as I’ve enjoyed all of his previous films — and the recent word of mouth, since it started screening for critics, has suggested it would live up to those expectations. But it’s only just come out, and I was busy this weekend, so hopefully I can now make time for it in the next week or two.

Elsewhere, a lot of cinema bows this month were new entries in series, most of them ones I follow. A Haunting in Venice is the third of Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot adaptations. If its box office is anything to go by, it might be the last. I hope not, because I’ve been enjoying them. The Saw series returned from the dead — again — with Saw X. It’s a franchise of variable quality, but one I actually enjoy overall, though I never rush to catch a new instalment. I’ll be sure to catch it eventually, probably once it’s available on a service I already subscribe to. The same goes for the belated fourth entry in the Expendables series, which is apparently officially titled Expend4bles. It’s meant to be pretty awful, but then people have said that about every other film in the series so far, and I’ve mostly thought they were… alright. So, yeah, another one I’ll catch eventually. And the same can be said again of The Equalizer 3. Quite how that’s legged out to a trilogy, I don’t know — again, I’d describe each of the previous films as “alright”, but nothing about them screams “more is required”. But — as with all the others in this paragraph — I like them enough to watch it eventually.

An even more unlikely threequel is My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. I remember the first one being a breakout hit back in 2002, and the first sequel — coming almost 15 years later — feeling like a desperate attempt to revive a once-popular-but-now-forgotten phenomenon. Quite how that non-event led to a third go-round, I don’t know. At almost the other end of the spectrum, Past Lives also hit UK screens last month. Well, I don’t know where it sits on that spectrum — I don’t really know what it’s about, other than people seem to like it because I’ve seen it ranked highly on Letterboxd. Very much the kind of film I’m not going to rush to the cinema to see, but if it’s that good, I’ll find out what it actually is — and watch it, no doubt — at some point in the future.

As for interesting premieres on streaming, there really only seemed to be two, both released right at the end of the month — and one of them isn’t even a film. That would be Wes Anderson’s collection of Roald Dahl-adapted shorts for Netflix, led by The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and continuing with The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison. I’ve seen some query why these weren’t bundled into a portmanteau feature, a la the Coen brothers’ Netflix film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; or at least lumped together as a ‘series’, rather than having their own separate listings. But I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that this is how Anderson wanted it; for them to be considered as four distinct shorts, not a de facto feature.

The other title of note was No One Will Save You on Disney+ (or Hulu if you’re in the States). I believe it’s some kind of sci-fi/horror movie that’s told without any dialogue, but I confess I don’t really know too much about it, because I hadn’t even heard of it before the day it came out, when I kept seeing critics pointing it out on Twitter, as if I would know what it was. Anyway, I’ve not read too much more for the sake of staying spoiler free, but it sounds intriguing. That said, there were a couple of other streaming debuts this month, but I find it hard to get excited for Robert Rodriguez rebooting Spy Kids again in Spy Kids: Armageddon, and Netflix don’t seem to have done much to push Reptile beyond “it stars Benicio del Toro” — if I couldn’t tell you much about No One Will Save You, I could tell you even less about that.

Of course, there were the usual array of theatrical releases making their streaming debuts. Disney continue to keep their theatrical releases as short as possible, with the live-action The Little Mermaid and Pixar’s Elemental already available to stream. Things take a little longer to reach Sky Cinema, where this month the most noteworthy additions were titles I own on disc but haven’t got round to: Knock at the Cabin, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and Scream VI; plus Tár, which I’ve now mentioned in this column three months on the trot. Really ought to get round to it…

In terms if back catalogue titles, MUBI proved the most interesting, with the likes of David Lynch’s obscure 1988 short The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and Nothing Sacred, a film I’d never heard of but which they bill as “an utterly charming, wisecrack-filled screwball comedy shot in the vibrantly weird palette of early Technicolor”. Sounds neat. Similarly niche is Róise & Frank, which I remember noting when it screened at FilmBath last year — because it’s about a widow who meets a dog she believes is her husband reincarnated, and regular readers will know how much I love a “cute dog” movie — and now it’s as accessible as can be on iPlayer.

Netflix’s offerings were, unsurprisingly, a bit more mainstream, including Wonder Woman 1984 (which I’ve had downloaded in 3D for yonks — I’m very behind on superhero movies), recent-ish reboots like Mortal Kombat and Tom & Jerry, Covid-era heist thriller Locked Down, plus both the 2013 Evil Dead remake/reboot/whatever and this year’s Evil Dead Rise. Now there’s a franchise I need to re-engage with the whole history of — I saw the original three when I was a bit too young to really ‘get it’, and have long meant to revisit them. Similar could be said of an otherwise very different film, The Usual Suspects, which popped up on Amazon — although I recently imported the US 4K release for that very reason. Still, it’s about the only noteworthy thing appearing on Prime this month.

Talking of stuff I’ve bought and not got round to… well, that’s the story of my Blu-ray collection, really. Now that I look at the list, a lot of it strikes me as horror or horror-adjacent, so perhaps it was best saved for October anywhere. I’m talking the likes of new 4K releases for Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, It Follows, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, and British folk horror classic The Wicker Man; the BFI releasing Ken Russell’s Gothic; and a package of sale purchases from Severin including 4K releases of Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre, plus regular Blu-rays of bizarre-sounding sequel Nosferatu in Venice, giallo The Fourth Victim, and giallo miniseries Private Crimes.

It wasn’t all October-appropriate fare dropping through my letterbox last month, though. There were animated superheroes thanks to 4K releases of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (which I need to precede with a long-overdue play of my imported 3D copy of the first film); film noir, both widely acclaimed (Eureka’s 4K release of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil) and deep cuts (Arrow’s third volume of Four Film Noir Classics, featuring Calcutta, Ride the Pink Horse, Outside the Law, and The Female Animal). There were sundry others, too: I finally picked up Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings in 3D (I quite liked it when I first watched it, and it was actually shot in 3D, so has long been on my “one day” list), and the BFI were finally able to release Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (I seem to remember they had it on the schedule years ago and had to cancel it?) And as if that wasn’t enough, my replacement disc for Vinegar Syndrome’s Showgirls 4K finally arrived as well.

So, which of these delights will end up qualifying for my Challenge as September’s Failure? Your guess is as good as mine. But despite all the money sunk on discs, I wouldn’t be surprised if the streaming cute dog film won out…

August’s Failures

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If you thought my three cinema trips in July meant a change in my habits, well, you were wrong — they were very much the exception rather than a new rule; three “special occasion”-type releases that just happened to come along on the back of each other. I mean, no one thinks the likes of shark sequel Meg 2: The Trench, racing video game adaptation Gran Turismo, Disney ride adaptation Haunted Mansion, or D-tier superhero Blue Beetle measure up to a new Indiana Jones, a new Mission: Impossible, or a new Christopher Nolan, do they? Not that I’m averse to watching any of those films, but I can wait for them on streaming.

There was actually quite the proliferation of theatrical releases this month, but the rest — The Blackening, The First Slam Dunk, Joy Ride, Strays, Theater Camp — fall broadly into the same camp (I haven’t been keeping up with reviews, so maybe some of them are terrible and I’ll never bother). One release we weren’t treated to here in the UK was new Dracula adaptation The Last Voyage of the Demeter, because apparently the local distributor went bust the other month. I believe it’s released by Universal Stateside, so why their UK operation didn’t pick it up, I don’t know (possibly some administration-related thing, I dunno). Not that I’d’ve gone to see that either, but it looks neat and I’ll watch it someday (of all the films listed in these first two paragraphs, it’s the one I feel I’m most likely to blind-buy on disc).

New offerings from the streamers weren’t up to much either (including the only one I did watch, Take That musical Greatest Day, which only missed out on being my least favourite at August’s Arbies due to something even worse). Indeed, I don’t think there was anything brand-new on either Amazon Prime or Disney+ (if there was, it didn’t even make my long list), while the best Netflix could muster was Gal Gadot action vehicle Heart of Stone (it’s on my watchlist, but so are a bunch of other high-profile Netflix actioners I haven’t got round to) and Chinese legend-inspired animation The Monkey King (I’m interested in the underlying story, but the trailer for this particular telling wasn’t appealing to me). Of more interest (though apparently it’s not a Netflix Original; though I don’t think it’s been released anywhere else) was T.I.M., about an AI robot. It seems to have low scores online, but it’s a timely-sounding British-made sci-fi, so that’s something.

The most noteworthy thing in the world of streaming this month, as far as I’m concerned, was that arthouse outfit MUBI have decided to drop one of their original USPs, that of adding a new curated film every day. They’d already moved away from that “ever-changing selection of 30 films” concept when they introduced their library a few years ago, but now they’ve abandoned it to be… just like every other streamer, only with artier titles. There are pros and cons, I guess; one of which is, I’m not sure how easy it will now be to keep track of new additions. From their final regular lineup, the standout to me was Medusa Deluxe, which they described as an “audacious and extravagant one-shot whodunnit”. Sounds up my street. Whether I’ll remember to get round to it is a whole other matter.

Even new-to-streaming and back catalogue picks were a bit slim this month. I jotted down a few things new to Amazon Prime, but ultimately don’t feel any are interesting enough to call out. The possible exception is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, but for the wrong reasons: it’s now left Prime (after a year of availability — time flies!) and, obviously, I didn’t get round to it. Dammit. The same thing happened with Ip Man 4 on Netflix, although in that case it had been on there for three years. Three years! That’s the problem with streamers: unless you watch something quickly, you tend to just forget it’s there, until it isn’t. At least The Power of the Dog only left Netflix because it was headed to the BBC; although, after having it available in 4K, I can’t imagine I’ll watch it in iPlayer’s impression of HD. And over on Channel 4, things are only around for a month at a time, so it’s more understandable that I didn’t get round to German “Dan Stevens as a robot” romcom I’m Your Man or Daniel Scheinert’s pre-Daniels effort The Death of Dick Long. That said, they’ve both been streamed by C4 before, so I’ve consistently failed them. Maybe next time…

Disney+ offered up Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but I’ll wait until it comes out on 3D Blu-ray in Japan and I can, uh, get hold of that version. Then I probably won’t watch it, because I’m way behind on Marvel, and feel like there’s a small pile of stuff (Thor 4, the Guardians Holiday Special, maybe other things) I need to watch first. (It really feels like they’re killing off casual audience interest in the MCU just as quickly as they can.) Meanwhile, Netflix’s catalogue additions were the kind of thing I pop on my watchlist and maybe get round to, maybe never do. I’m talking about the likes of Dear Evan Hansen (meant to be so bad that it piques my curiosity) and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (a franchise reboot that went nowhere, so presumably is also poor).

Personally, the most major thing I took from the streamers this month was reminders of stuff I really ought to rewatch, and that I own on disc for that very purpose. Sky Cinema led the way with Goodfellas, which I feel is massively overdue a second look. That’s been delayed somewhat by my own humming and harring: I would’ve bought it on 4K, but I’d only recently got the remastered BD when that came out. As both were now years ago, I kinda regret it, but here we are. Is it worth spending more money, or just “live with” the BD? Either way, I should make a decision and bloody watch it. A title in a similar position — except I did upgrade to 4K in spite of only relatively recently buying (and not watching) the remastered BD — is Heat. Thanks to both MUBi and BBC iPlayer for that reminder. In fact, the Beeb really dominate the market in this category, also reminding me I’ve long been meaning to go back to Point Break, The Third Man, This is Spinal Tap, and yet another film I’ve gone through multiple formats without actually watching, Highlander.

Five paragraphs ago I implied the streamers didn’t have much to offer, yet here we are. And I haven’t even listed all the other additions that have bulked out my various watchlists, or reminded me I ought to get round to playing the copy I actually bought. But then, as I say most months, if I got into that we’d be here forever. One thing I should mention, though, is the three titles I rented from Amazon back in July — because I didn’t actually get round to any of them during the rental window. Oops. I did manage to watch 65 in the end, by… other means; but that leaves Tár and Cocaine Bear outstanding. Naturally, the aforementioned “means” have also been used to keep those available to me — which might just be the worst fate of all, because making something perpetually available is just about the worst may to make me get round to watching it. Ho hum.

Talking of perpetual availability, let’s dig into all the stuff I bought on disc this month. I’d say it was a bumper month, but every month is a bumper month round here. No wonder I never seem to have any money. We’ll kick off where we kinda left off last month, with Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves — as you may remember, it came out here on July 31st, but my copy hadn’t arrived. It turned up soon after, of course, and I’ve spent the next four weeks not watching it, even though I really want to. It’s high on my list to make time for. My only other brand-new acquisition this month was even newer, because it was a direct-to-disc release: Babylon 5: The Road Home. I’ve never even seen all of the original Babylon 5 series and movies, but, y’know, one day. I also intended to watch this fairly quickly — maybe I still will (using my definition of “fairly quickly”, which roughly means “any time within the first year of release”), and maybe that’ll provoke me to get on with the series (perhaps when it too comes to Blu-ray later in the year, leaving my DVD box sets forever unplayed).

Of course, those weren’t the only new releases I bought this month — far from it — just that the others were new editions of catalogue titles (a distinction that perhaps doesn’t really matter nowadays, especially when the boutique labels are often releasing titles that have been otherwise unavailable for some time). My thorough-but-not-complete (I’m trying to show some restraint here!) collection of Radiance’s releases continued to expand with their three-film Commedia all’italiana box set, plus Hong Kong action-romance A Moment of Romance. Often there’s plenty of HK action to report here, with multiple labels releasing in that space nowadays, but the only other release this month was Eureka’s The Skyhawk. That arrived alongside their latest Buster Keaton Blu-ray, Three Ages; and they also released a three-film set of the work of Polish auteur Andrzej Żuławski under their Masters of Cinema label. Are Eureka one of the most diverse labels in the stuff they choose to put out? Probably. And yet nearly everything they do appeals to me, something I can’t completely say about any other label.

Perhaps the next closest in that regard are Indicator, who continue to release the erotic horrors of Jean Rollin in 4K with The Rape of the Vampire and The Night of the Hunted; plus, in a similar space, Italian horror Black Magic Rites; and, for something completely different, I also belatedly (it came out in July) grabbed their release of classic-Hollywood supernatural noir Night Has a Thousand Eyes. That’s still not everything they put out, but I’m trying to be a little more circumspect there (leaving some titles for potential sale purchases, or to tip just-short orders over the £50 free postage barrier; though I’ve missed a couple of their “bundle” offers in waiting for that, which is less than ideal when trying to save money).

Rounding out this month’s stack were a few titles on 4K that I’ve seen before and had been waiting to come down in price: Deep Impact, The Maltese Falcon, and Training Day. Also, I finally managed to import Criterion’s release of Thelma & Louise for a reasonable (enough) price. With the recent announcement that Criterion’s new UK distribution partner will be bringing some of their 4K titles to the UK, hopefully waiting for a US bargain will be a thing of the past… though their UK titles aren’t coming cheap, so the savings won’t be massive; not to mention the stuff they won’t have the UK rights for, of course. That said, as fêted as Criterion are by some, there are UK labels who do 4K better; so, as long as the rights are with someone, there’s a fair chance we’ll be well catered to.

Finally for this month, a large box from the sale Vinegar Syndrome held a while back, including 4Ks of the British answer to Godzilla, Gorgo (whoever thought we’d be seeing films like that in 4K? And before some titles from iconic, popular filmmakers like James Cameron and David Fincher have even had regular Blu-ray releases. The physical media market is crazy nowadays), German single location thriller Out of Order, indie sci-fi Prospect, and a cult flick I’d never heard of before but looks so fun I’m worried it won’t live up to the hype I’ve generated in myself for it, Six String Samurai. Filling out that box further were gialli Delirium (not the video nasty one) and Trauma (a minor work from arguably the subgenre’s most famous proponent, Dario Argento), plus Gothic stop-motion animation The Pied Piper.

All exciting stuff! Now I just need to actually watch some of it…