My Most-Read Posts of 2020

Posted on January 2, 2021 by badblokebob

For the first time since I moved my blog to WordPress, my number of views went down this year. *sob* Partly that’s because 2019 had one exceptionally large month (when people flooded in from IMDb to read my thoughts on Game of Thrones’ final season), but it was more than that, because 2020 didn’t even reach the same level as 2018 — though it was close in the end, coming just 0.2% short.

As for individual posts, this may technically be a film blog, but since 2017 my most-read chart has been dominated by TV reviews. That was the case once again in 2020 — well, if it was going to happen any year, it would be one where we were mostly stuck at home. Despite that, a film review did break into my overall top five… although that was a direct-to-Netflix movie, so some would argue it’s TV anyway.

Nonetheless, here I once again present two top fives: one for TV, one for film. If you want to know my overall top five new posts, the #1 film slots between #2 and #3 on the TV list. Also of note: the image at the top of this post is accurate, so the top two TV posts were far out ahead of anything else. Why? Who ever knows.

My Top 5 Most-Viewed New TV Posts in 2020

5) The Past Month on TV #61
including Archer season 7, The Crown season 2, Derren Brown: 20 Years of Mind Control, The Great British Bake Off series 10, Hannah Gadsby: Nanette, Jonathan Creek series 3–4 + specials, Lucifer season 5 episodes 1–8 (aka season 5A), Red Dwarf: The First Three Million Years, The Rookie season 2 episodes 1–17, and the best of The Twilight Zone #9.

4) The Past Month on TV #59
including Daniel Sloss: X, Doctor Who: The Time Meddler, Elementary season 6 episodes 1–14, what passed for Eurovision 2020, The Great British Bake Off series 9, Jonathan Creek series 1, Lucifer season 4, the RSC’s Macbeth with Christopher Eccleston, The Rookie season 1 episodes 16–20, Star Trek: Picard season 1 episode 8, and the worst of The Twilight Zone #3.

3) The Past Month on TV #55
including Doctor Who series 12 episodes 3–5, The Goes Wrong Show series 1 episodes 3–5, The Great British Bake Off series 1 episodes 1–3, His Dark Materials series 1, a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Picard season 1 episode 1, the best of The Twilight Zone #6, and the Twin Peaks pilot and season 3 episode 8 in UHD.

2) The Past Christmas on TV 2019
including Criminal: United Kingdom season 1, Doctor Who series 12 episodes 1–2, Dracula, the Gavin & Stacey Christmas special, The Goes Wrong Show series 1 episodes 1–2, In Search of Dracula with Mark Gatiss, Miranda: My Such Fun Celebration, and Vienna Blood series 1.

1) The Past Month on TV #56
including the 92nd Academy Awards, the British Academy Film Awards 2020, Death in Paradise series 9 episodes 3–8, Doctor Who series 12 episodes 6–10, Flesh and Blood series 1, The Goes Wrong Show series 1 episode 6, Good Omens, The Good Place season 3, Lucifer season 3 episodes 16–24, McDonald & Dodds episode 1, My Dad Wrote a Porno, The Rookie season 1 episodes 1–6, Star Trek: Picard season 1 episodes 2–3, and the best of The Twilight Zone #7. Whew! No wonder it topped the list with all that variety.

My Top 5 Most-Viewed New Film Posts in 2020

Some might say this is also a list dominated by “TV”, because Netflix original movies make up three of this top five, and another was a Disney+ premiere. There’s just one theatrical release here — but then, 2020 was hardly a year in which theatrical releases were dominant anywhere.

5) Hamilton
The filmed version of the cultural phenomenon, performed by the original Broadway cast in its original staging. Is it a film? Is it a documentary? Is it just a filmed concert and so should we consider that its own form at this point? Whatever your opinion, this was a highly anticipated event — brought forward from its intended October 2021 theatrical release due to the pandemic — that helped cram even more subscribers onto Disney+.

4) The Old Guard
One of Netflix’s many attempts to kickstart an action franchise, this one starred and was directed by women, helping it tap into the general cultural zeitgeist and therefore generating conversation — and clicks.

3) 1917
An actual honest-to-God theatrical release! Remember those? A popular hit as well as an awards frontrunner, so no surprise it attracted plenty of clicks considering I posted my review while it was on the circuit.

2) Extraction
Another big Netflix franchise starter (this one already has a sequel in the works). It was reportedly Netflix’s biggest movie ever (back in July — I don’t know if that’s changed since), so it’s no surprise people wanted to read about it.

1) Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
Mixed reviews greeted this attempt to spoof the unspoofable, as some Americans attempted to take on the singular phenomenon that is the Eurovision Song Contest. It wasn’t a resounding success, but with some fab performances (the always wonderful Rachel McAdams and Dan Stevens), surprisingly good songs (there’s Oscar buzz for Husavik), and even a catchphrase or two (“SING JAJA DING DONG”), this was kind of a breakout hit.

The “Thank God That’s Over” Monthly Review of December 2020

Posted on January 1, 2021 by badblokebob

Yes, the rumours are true: 2020 is finally over! Though if you think 2021 is going to be significantly better, you haven’t been watching the news. But hey, there’s 12 whole months of it to come — maybe it’ll improve, like, halfway through?

Anyway, we’ll leave worries of the future for later. Right now, it’s time to kick off my annual look back at the year just gone. Yeah, I’m going to spend the next week or so reliving 2020 — but don’t worry, it’ll be limited to my film viewing (like, y’know, it always is).

The headline news is my final total: 264 feature films I’d never seen before, which sneaks past 2018’s tally of 261 to be my biggest year ever! Plus, as I wrote about earlier this month, if you combine that with my Rewatchathon total (46) then I’ve passed 300 features once again. Throw in my shorts too (a whopping 65 this year) and I can claim a final total of 375 films. Whew!

More lists and stats and whatnot about that in the days to come. First: focusing in on the last twelfth of the year, aka December.

#255 Klaus (2019)
#256 Agatha and the Midnight Murders (2020)
#257 Lovers Rock (2020), aka Small Axe: Lovers Rock
#258 The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two (2020)
#259 Soul (2020)
#260 Tenet (2020)
#261 Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2017)
#262 Under the Skin (2013)
#263 Minions 3D (2015)
#264 Death to 2020 (2020)

Tenet

I watched 10 new feature films in December.
On the downside, that makes it my smallest month of 2020. On the bright side, it means I’ve achieved my goal of watching at least ten new films every month (something I failed in 2019).
It’s below my December average, though (previously 11.2, now 11.1).
It means the monthly average for 2020 is finalised at exactly 22.0. That’s down from 23.1 at the end of last month, but is my highest yearly total ever (it has to be — I’ve watched more films than ever; that’s how it works).
But it does mean December remains the only month of the year never to have reached the 20-film mark. Maybe next year.
Talking of long-term goals, for a while now I’ve been tracking the dates on which I’ve never watched a film during the lifetime of this blog. You’d think after doing it for 14 days I’d’ve hit every date at least once, but that’s not the case: still missing were January 5th, May 23rd, and December 22nd. Despite knowing about those for a couple of years, I keep forgetting at the right time and so miss them; and this year I again forgot all about the December date until after the fact… but I’d happened to watch a film that evening anyway. Hurrah! Maybe I’ll finally hit the other two in 2021.
This month’s Blindspot film was arty sci-fi Under the Skin. That means I’ve completed the challenge, although I didn’t get through all my overflow films, sadly.
From last month’s “failures” I watched The Christmas Chronicles 2 and Lovers Rock.

The 67th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
A couple of very enjoyable films this month, not least the latest from Pixar and Christopher Nolan (yes, I’m in the “Tenet was good” camp), but, in a Christmassy spirit, I’m giving this to the gorgeously-animated Netflix original, Klaus.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
For some it was the film of the year (it topped Sight & Sound’s poll and placed in Empire’s top ten, among others), but I thought the second Small Axe film, Lovers Rock, was a dull slog.

Best Double Entendre of the Month
Patting myself on the back for this one, but I was particularly pleased with my Letterboxd description of Under the Skin as Scarlett Johansson’s Twin Peaks — because it’s abstruse and meditative sci-fi like David Lynch’s TV series, and also boobies.

Best Re-use of Music of the Month
There are many reasons to look down on Minions, but the Minionisation of various classic pop and rock tunes is surprisingly entertaining.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
For the fifth and final time this year, my most-read post was my monthly TV column. (The highest film-related post was my Christmas review roundup.)

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs	Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero
Boy	A Christmas Carol
The Christmas Chronicles	Dad’s Army
Danger: Diabolik	Death to 2020
Hachi: A Dog’s Tale	Hitchcock/Truffaut
The Man Who Invented Christmas	Music in Darkness
The Other Side of the Wind	Paper Moon
Redline	The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
Torment

The Past Month on TV #64

I didn’t find as much time for film viewing in December as I would’ve liked; and so, as the month drew to an end, I decided to prioritise my goal of watching a minimum of ten new films a month over my Rewatchathon target. That means I’ve failed to reach 50 rewatches for a second year in a row — but last year I only made it to 29, so at least I got a lot closer this time…

#45 Die Hard (1988)
#46 Presto (2018)

I watched Die Hard on Christmas Eve Eve — because, y’know, it’s a Christmas movie. It’s still a great film, whatever time of year you choose to watch it.

As for Presto, it is, of course, a short film, so I probably shouldn’t count it as a whole number (I don’t on my main list). But, hey, I make the rules around here, and as my chances of making #50 by honest means didn’t look great, I wanted to count everything I could. Besides, the point of the Rewatchathon is to make me rewatch stuff, and I’ve been meaning to rewatch Presto for years.

If I’d found the time to watch more films this month, I would have loved to make space for David Fincher’s latest, Mank, on Netflix; and the new animation from Cartoon Saloon, Wolfwalkers, on Apple TV+. They’re top of my watchlist for January.

Other new releases for December included the surprisingly-controversial Wonder Woman 1984 (its UK digital release is in a couple of weeks, but I’ll probably just wait for the Blu-ray); and, all on Netflix, awards contender Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, George Clooney sci-fi The Midnight Sky, lambasted musical The Prom, and Robert Rodriguez’s surprise spinoff from The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, We Can Be Heroes. Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series finished up on the BBC and iPlayer, with the fourth and fifth episodes/films, Alex Wheatle and Education. Meanwhile, the best Amazon could manage was A Christmas Gift for Bob, an unexpected sequel to that movie about a cat or whatever (I dunno, I’m not a cat person).

In terms of not-new streaming additions, those catching my eye on Netflix included Jessica Chastain actioner Ava, Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie facing off in Mary Queen of Scots, Hugh Jackman political drama The Front Runner, and Robert Zemeckis’s Welcome to Marwen; plus Wild Rose, though that’s just jumped over from Amazon Prime. Netflix also added a bunch of stuff on December 31st, but I haven’t had time to go through that lot yet, so I’ll roll them into next month’s failures (or maybe I’ll even watch th— hahaha, no I won’t). Amazon added Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha, while iPlayer has a speedy debut for Monsoon starring Henry Golding.

Finally, I had another ridiculous haul of new Blu-rays this month. Highlights include Arrow’s 4K releases of Cinema Paradiso, Crash (both now contenders for 2021’s Blindspot list), and Tremors, plus their release of Japanese zombie actioner Versus; Indicator’s new edition of Roadgames (which I loved when I watched the Australian Blu-ray back in 2016), plus neo-noir Devil in a Blue Dress; a pair of Samuel Fuller titles from Eureka, Hell and High Water and House of Bamboo; and All The Anime’s 4K release of Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering With You, plus their new edition of his 5 Centimeters Per Second. If that wasn’t enough, there were 13 (yes, 13) more titles, mostly from sales — including the BFI’s 18-film Werner Herzog box set. Now I just need to get better at actually watching this stuff…

A new year begins. But first, there’s a lot more looking back at 2020 to be done. Stay tuned.

Death to 2020 (2020)

Posted on December 31, 2020 by badblokebob

As if the line between film and TV wasn’t becoming blurred enough already, 2020 has torn it to shreds. It’s now basically up to streamers whether they brand something as “a film” or a “special” or whatever (some individual websites might insist on labelling any Netflix original movie as “TV”, but I’m not sure anyone’s listening). This feature-length one-off from the makers of Black Mirror is, officially, “a Netflix Original Comedy Event” — so it’s a TV special, really, isn’t it? I probably shouldn’t be counting it as a film. Oh, but who cares?

Despite the lack of familiar title format, Death to 2020 very much follows in the footsteps of the Wipe series of year-in-reviews specials Charlie Brooker used to make for the BBC. It’s both documentary and mockumentary: it recaps the real-life events of the year, with minimal diversion into satirical fantasy, but archly commented on by an array of actors portraying fake experts. The Netflix budget means some properly big names are involved: Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, Lisa Kudrow… the list goes on. The prime absentee is Brooker himself, only piping up occasionally as an offscreen interviewer.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it focuses on the major events of the year from a UK/US perspective — other countries (like Australia, China, and… um… I think that’s it) only enter the equation when events there affect everyone else (like, y’know, starting a global pandemic). That makes sense given who made it, but maybe less so for Netflix as a global company. But then, not everything needs to appeal to everyone. I’m sure if they had a French satirist on the books, they’d be producing a Franco-centric special.

It’s to Death to 2020’s disadvantage that, this year, we’ve all been paying more attention to the news than ever. That might seem like a benefit — a knowledgeable, informed audience means you can cut straight to the jokes with minimal prompting — but I think instead it means we’ve already heard most of the humour. We’ve spent all year making these gags ourselves, trying to alleviate the doom-laden (inter)national mood. The other, related, problem lies in trying to appeal to an international audience. In trying to keep things accessible for both sides of the pond, Brooker and co avoid getting into the weeds of local politics. Brexit is briefly mentioned rather than deconstructed; US politics is limited to the election. Specificities of lockdown life are dodged almost entirely. Trying to stick to broad, globally-familiar topics seems to keep the humour similarly generalised.

Nonetheless, it starts out quite funny, even if they’re mostly riffs we’ve heard before. But around the time it hits the killing of George Floyd, the jokes dry up. If you’re not a racist dickhead, there’s little funny about the organisations that supposedly protect us instead arbitrarily murdering people. Death to 2020 knows this and picks its targets carefully, but it seems to kill the humour nonetheless — the jokes continue, but the humour in them dries up.

It turns out the biggest problem isn’t unoriginality or too broad a target audience, but rather that 2020 was such a shitshow that it’s just no fun to be reminded of it, even in an intentionally comedic context. It doesn’t help that we’re facing a 2021 that promises at least several months of being equally as bad. Maybe one day we’ll be able to look back on all this and laugh, but just as likely we’ll prefer to forget.

Happy New Year, dear readers! It can’t actually be any worse… right?

The Past Month on TV #64

Posted on December 22, 2020 by badblokebob

Christmas TV is already underway in the UK (I believe the first things that were explicitly a “Christmas special” aired over the weekend) — so, before my usual Christmassy roundup, here’s one final regular TV column for 2020.

His Dark Materials Series 2

In a world where innumerable film and TV productions have been affected by Covid and its associated lockdowns, His Dark Materials got lucky: by hurrying on to produce their second series before the young cast aged too much, they’d virtually wrapped filming before the first UK lockdown hit. The only casualty: a standalone episode detailing what one character was up to during the rest of the season. That’s frustrating for fans (as I understand it, the events intended for that episode aren’t actually in the original novel, but were dreamt up afresh by the show’s writers in collaboration with original author Philip Pullman), and if you know there’s an episode missing then you can spot its absence (there are some scenes and references in the season finale that I wager would make more sense had we seen the missing episode), but the series mostly survives without it.

So, picking up from series one’s massive cliffhanger, this second run adapts the trilogy’s second novel, The Subtle Knife — a mysterious item of arguably even greater value than the Golden Compass that (sort of) lends its name to (the US version of) book one. Despite tackling a whole novel, I’ve seen some describe this season as boring, with too little incident. I guess that’s the advantage of waiting until the end and watching it all in just six days: I was suitably engrossed, and it moved, if not at a fair old lick, then certainly at a reasonable pace. But it’s not a show that’s always big on action — instead, it’s big on ideas, with underpinning concepts on the boundaries of science and fantasy that have to be explained and understood by the viewer. Nonetheless, there’s still plenty of conflict between our heroes and villains; and while it may seem clear who’s on which side, there are enough shades of grey, and emerging uncertainties about who’s really got the right motives, to keep it pleasantly complicated, engrossing, and believable.

I’m sure I once read that the original plan was to adapt the trilogy of novels over five seasons — one for book one, two each for books two and three. Now, they’ve reached the point where book two has been done in a single season, and now book three is plotted out to be completed in one more run of eight episodes too. But, shockingly, it hasn’t been commissioned yet. I bloody hope the BBC (and HBO) do the right thing, because I think overall this is an excellent show, with still-timely issues of freedom and control, that merits completion on screen. And, simply, I’m excitedly looking forward to the next (final) series already.

Update: This afternoon, while I was too busy writing this post to notice the news, the BBC and HBO officially recommissioned His Dark Materials for its third and final series. Hurrah!

The Good Place Season 4
The Good Place ended forever ago, right? Well, the series finale originally aired back in January, so… this year, yeah, forever ago.

As with every previous season of the show, this one noodles around in a new setup for the first half-dozen-or-so episodes, before swinging into one long multi-part story through to the end of the season — and, in this case, the end of the series. In that respect, it’s always been kind of an odd show, structurally, and season four is no different. Most of the jeopardy and drama is resolved a couple of episodes before the end, leaving us to watch events play out for these characters we’ve come to love, rather than trying to keep us hooked primarily by plot, unlike pretty much every other programme ever. To be clear, this is not a criticism: it absolutely works. Rather than shooting for a series finale that has the big climax of the plot plus a bunch of rushed wrap-ups, here the more-than-double-length finale is like a coda to the entire show. It’s the series’ highest rated episode on IMDb, so I’m not alone in liking this approach.

The Good Place did, actually, start out as a show that seemed to be primarily about its plot — it’s name was mostly made off the back of one plot point in season one — but along the way it’s really developed a care for its ragtag gang of heroes, and taken us along for a once-in-an-afterlifetime ride with them, to the point where I’m actually kinda sad to see them go… but I loved watching them leave.

Baptiste Series 1
The breakout star of BBC drama The Missing here gets his own spinoff series. Julien Baptiste is a retired police detective who specialises in finding missing people, which is exactly what he did across two series of The Missing (I reviewed the second here). But instead of a third series, he gets a spinoff, in which he… has to search for a missing person. Hm. But that’s just the inciting incident: before long, Julien finds himself embroiled in the affairs of an Eastern European criminal empire, with his family under threat. Okay, fair enough. Unfortunately, although Baptiste shares the same main creatives as its parent show — sibling screenwriters Harry and Jack Williams — what they’ve cooked up here just isn’t as inventive or captivating as their two seasons of The Missing, both of which were fantastic. Sure, they still conjure up plenty of unexpected twists and developments, but it lacks the same spark that was there before. But let’s not get carried away: it’s not a bad serial, just not as high-quality as the two seasons that preceded it. It’s been recommissioned, so perhaps next time they’ll recapture the magic.

Smiley’s People
John le Carré’s spy mystery Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is one of the most acclaimed works of the genre, and the 1979 TV adaptation is justly fêted as one of the great miniseries. But Tinker Tailor is actually the first book in a loose trilogy, and in 1982 they also adapted the third book (they skipped the second because its overseas settings were deemed too expensive; as I understand it, the plot also doesn’t have that much bearing on the overall events — this isn’t “one story in three parts” like many a trilogy). Smiley’s People doesn’t enjoy quite the same reputation as its forebear, and I’m afraid I’m not going to challenge that position. Like Baptiste, it’s not bad, it just lacks that je ne sais quoi that makes its predecessor a solid-gold classic. One thing they do share is a damnably complicated plot — I struggled to follow the narrative watching it one episode per day back to back, so goodness knows how anyone kept up with it once a week over a month and a half back in the ’80s.

I watched it on the BBC’s recently-released Blu-ray, which is a tough one to recommend it. It’s clearly been mastered from the original film (where possible — some negatives were missing so they had to resort to less-good elements), but then it’s been slathered in digital noise reduction (DNR) as if in some misguided attempt to hide that it was actually shot on grainy film stock as opposed to weirdly-soft HD video. It’s so rare for things to be over-DNRed these days that you’d think we were finally past it, but obviously not. And yet, while the series never looks as good as it could, the fact it has been restored means it’s a lot better than the old DVDs, and the chances of anyone ever doing it again and getting it right are basically non-existent. Sometimes, we just have to settle for what we can get. That certainly sounds like a le Carré moral, doesn’t it?

Elementary Season 7 Episodes 9-13
The other “Sherlock Holmes in the modern day” show finally came to an end last year, though I suspect its finishing shall remain more final: whereas Sherlock always had a stop-start “we could make more anytime” production, accompanied with cast & crew chatter about wanting to sporadically do make new episodes forever, Elementary is much more traditional US network TV show — and the diminishing episode orders of the final couple of seasons and summertime broadcasts of the last couple of seasons don’t suggest an enduring hit poised for a revival.

Despite that, the finale itself left things open for more, imitating Sherlock’s “Holmes and Watson continue” final beat. This kind of open-ended ‘ending’ fits a show like Sherlock, where there’s a realistic chance it will return someday. For a show like Elementary, where the chance it might ever return is infinitesimally small, it just feels inconclusive. Like, if you want it to be a true finale, you need to give some closure; an actual ending. As it is, despite a narrative that condenses several years and major life events (Joan gets cancer then goes into remission across a single cut), the episode fails to truly answer why this is the point at which we stop following Sherlock and Joan’s adventures.

There are some people who’ll tell you Elementary is better than Sherlock. I’m not one of them. I’ve warmed to it down the years, but I’ve never thought it was a particularly good realisation of Holmes and Watson — whatever its faults, Sherlock feels like it’s an attempt to adapt Arthur Conan Doyle’s work, whereas Elementary has taken a few names and basic character points and then gone its own way. I’ll concede that there are some things Elementary has done better, although that’s an almost-inevitable side effect of having c.22 episodes a year to play with instead of Sherlock’s three TV movies every couple of years. But it’s also an almost-standard US network procedural — I can remember every single episode of Sherlock, for good or ill, whereas very few of Elementary’s 154 instalments stick in my memory.

Also watched…

Ghosts Series 2 — The second series of the supernatural sitcom digs more into the backstory of its various titular spooks, which seems to be a deep well for plot ideas and humour — one episode, for example, Rashomons it up by recounting one ghost’s death from the various perspectives of others who were already there to witness it. A Christmas special is imminent, and a third series is already commissioned.

Leverage Season 1 Episodes 1-3 — Now that I’m done with Elementary, this is my new pick for a “bung it on anytime”, “easy to watch”, US procedural. So far, it’s filling that void nicely. It’s a minor-network production from the late ‘00s, so it already feels a bit dated (it doesn’t quite have the cinematic swagger we expect from top-drawer TV now; the score, in particular, sounds like it was dropped in from a royalty-free library CD), but if you can let the production values slide, it’s good fun in a “bit of a romp” way. That’s how I like my heist movies/shows, so it ticks the right boxes for me.

Neil Brand’s Sound of TV — The music maestro follows up his series on the sound of movies from a few years ago (shamefully, I never got round to it) with a trio of episodes covering TV themes, advertising jingles, and TV scores. Very informative and entertaining, but you feel like the topic is so big (particularly the last one) that it could’ve withstood a few more episodes.

Richard Osman’s House of Games Night Series 1 — This daytime quiz show has been running for a while, but apparently became quite the success during lockdown, leading to a primetime evening spin-off — which, as I understand it, is just the exact same show but in a different time slot. It’s quite fun: there’s a good “play along at home” quality, and having the same contestants compete across the series means you end up rooting for your favourites.

Staged Series 1 Extended — If you didn’t know, Netflix has an extended version of this BBC lockdown hit — there’s about 29 minutes of new material spread across the six episodes, which is a fair old chunk (equivalent to almost two whole extra episodes). And that’s why I rewatched it: because it was good and I’d like to see the extra stuff. Plus, there are new episodes coming in January, so it’s a good time to recap.

The Vicar of Dibley in Lockdown — The clergywoman returns for a trio of bitesize Zoom sermons, which together form a kind of comedic “review of the year” (and if you’re prepared to wait for the compilation version airing in a day or two, it’s apparently got some extra material). Many of Dibley’s supporting cast are sadly no longer with us, so I doubt we’ll ever get a proper return for the show, but this is a pleasant little sliver of nostalgia mixed with current events.

Things to Catch Up On
This month, I have mostly been missing The Mandalorian season 2. Well, as regular readers will know, I never even got round to season 1. Naturally, it’s been basically impossible to avoid spoilers — though as those amount to “look which legacy character has turned up this week” rather than actual plot stuff, perhaps it will be okay. Or maybe the series doesn’t really have any plot to spoil, it’s just endless fan service — that would certainly seem to tally with some people’s view of the show. Others love it though, so I’ll see for myself… someday…

Next month… will come after my regular Christmas TV roundup, which will likely include a bunch of seasonal sitcom specials, plus the New Year’s Day Doctor Who.

300 Films in a Year (sort of) (again)

Posted on December 13, 2020 by badblokebob

“I don’t really expect to ever again be in the position where I could whip out a natty ‘300 Films’ logo”

That’s me, writing in December 2018. I really ought to stop saying stuff like that because, well, here I am again!

To clarify, it’s the same as last time: I haven’t reached 300 films according to the rules of my main count (i.e. films I’ve never seen before), but when you bundle together my ‘main list’ of new films and my Rewatchathon, I’ve reached 300.

I actually got there on December 8th, but I didn’t twig at the time because I’ve been engulfed in FilmBath still (it had finished this time last year, but this year we’ve been delayed by lockdowns and what have you). The date matters because that’s actually one day earlier than I got there last time. It would’ve been more remarkable if it was the exact same date, but still, what’re the odds it would be so close?

At one point this year it looked conceivable that I’d reach a ‘true’ 300 Films in a Year. That’s not going to happen (I’d have to watch 44 new films in the next 18 days — an average of 2.4 per day, every single day, for the rest of the month. Some people watch that kind of volume, but for me it’s just not feasible; doubly so when some of those days include the enforced family time of Christmas). But if the history of this blog has taught me anything, it’s to never say never — perhaps someday I’ll be telling you that I’ve reached that elusive true #300…

The Amplified Monthly Review of November 2020

Posted on December 1, 2020 by badblokebob

Normally I avoid starting Christmas until at least December 1st. Shops and TV channels can begin to flood themselves with Christmas-related product throughout November (if not before), but I feel like “the day you open the first door of your advent calendar” is when Christmas can begin.

This year’s a bit different, though. Never mind the whole “2020 has been shit” of it all — despite that, I was still aiming for December 1st — but then family wanted to watch Netflix’s Jingle Jangle in the middle of November, and that opened the door a crack, until eventually Christmas fully barged in on the final weekend of the month. Presents bought! Decorations up! Built a festive LEGO set I didn’t get round to doing last year!

What I didn’t do is watch another Netflix original Christmas movie: Klaus. I didn’t get round to it last festive season, and as it’s (surprisingly) on the IMDb Top 250, I’ve been waiting impatiently all damn year for the time to roll around when I felt I could watch it. Well, it’s December now, so…

But before I get stuck into Christmas properly, let’s remember the month that just was.

#237 An American Werewolf in London (1981)
#238 Robolove (2019)
#239 Rose Plays Julie (2019)
#240 Showrunners (2014), aka Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show
#241 Falling (2020)
#242 An Impossible Project (2020)
#243 Coded Bias (2020)
#244 Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020)
#245 The Lie (2018)
#246 Mangrove (2020), aka Small Axe: Mangrove
#247 The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
#248 You Will Die at Twenty (2019)
#249 Influence (2020)
#250 My Mexican Bretzel (2019)
#251 Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)
#252 Ordet (1955), aka The Word
#253 Never Surrender (2019), aka Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary
#254 Millennium Actress (2001), aka Sennen joyû

An Impossible Project

Never Surrender

Normally I include any short films I’ve watched in amongst the list of features, but this month I watched 53 short films. No, that’s not a typo. In the almost-14-year history of this blog to October 2020, I’d watched 97 shorts; now, AMPLIFY! alone has increased my count by 55%. That seemed an overwhelming amount to include in the above list, so I’ve separated them off here.

A quick guide: #247a–e were the IMDb New Filmmaker nominees; #249a–k were in the Cornwall Film Festival South West Regional programme; #249l–s were in the Cornwall Film Festival International programme; #249t–z were in the New Voices programme; #250a–i were in the CINECITY Open programme; and #250j–v were in the FilmBath programme.

#247a Under the Full Moon (2020)
#247b Flush Lou (2020)
#247c The Monkeys on Our Backs (2020)
#247d Players (2020)
#247e Home (2020)
#249a Shuttlecock (2019)
#249b Stitch (2020)
#249c Nut Pops (2019)
#249d Swivel (2020)
#249e Anoraks (2020)
#249f Frayed Edges (2020)
#249g So Far (2020)
#249h Man-Spider (2019)
#249i Slow Burn (2020)
#249j Closed Until Further Notice (2020)
#249k Quiescent (2018), aka Anvew
#249l Clean (2020)
#249m Appreciation (2019)
#249n Adnan (2020)
#249o Sticker (2019)
#249p Interstice (2019), aka Mellanrum
#249q The Day of the Coyote (2020)
#249r Chumbak (2019)
#249s Guardians of Ua Huka (2020)
#249t Destructors (2020)
#249u Nelly (2020)
#249v Life in Brighton: An Artist’s Perspective (2020)
#249w My Life, My Voice (2020)
#249x Embedded (2020)
#249y One Piece of the Puzzle (2020)
#249z Time and Tide (2020)
#250a The Wick (2020)
#250b We Farmed a Lot of Acres (2020)
#250c A Spring in Endless Bloom (2020)
#250d Booklovers (2020)
#250e The Fruit Fix (2020)
#250f Keratin (2020)
#250g Blue Passport (2020)
#250h Siren (2020)
#250i Reconnected (2020)
#250j The Last Video Store (2020)
#250k Water Baby (2019)
#250l Window (2019)
#250m Alan, the Infinite (2020)
#250n Our Song (2020)
#250o Hold (2020)
#250p Befriend to Defend (2019)
#250q Fuel (2020)
#250r My Dad’s Name Was Huw. He Was an Alcoholic Poet. (2019)
#250s Quiet on Set (2020)
#250t A Map of the World (2020)
#250u Talia (2020)
#250v The Starey Bampire (2019)

I watched 18 new feature films in November.
That’s the exact same tally as last month (and also February), so the same applies: it’s in the lower-middle for the year, coming =7th out of 11 months.
However, it’s below my average for 2020 to date (previously 23.6, now 23.1), and below the rolling average of the last 12 months — although, because I only watched 12 films last November, that still goes up slightly (from 21.1 to 21.6).
But it does pass the November average (previously 10.4, now 11.0).
Plus, #254 is the furthest I’ve ever reached by the end of November, beating #248 in 2018. It sets me up well to beat that year’s record for my highest ever final total — although victory is by no means guaranteed: I need eight more films to reach a new record, and last December I only watched five…
I’ve already noted above how the number of shorts I watched this month is measurable on an “entire history of the blog” scale, but, for what it’s worth, the next closest month came last November, also thanks to a film festival, when I watched… 9. Pales in comparison, doesn’t it?
This month’s Blindspot films: first, to catch-up for last month, a belated Halloween pick (that I therefore watched right at the start of the month), An American Werewolf in London; and second, Carl Th. Dreyer’s acclaimed meditation on religion, Ordet.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and The Lie.

The 66th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Not that this was a bad month by any means, but it started on a high that was never quite equalled: An American Werewolf in London is exactly the kind of film “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen?” was created for (honestly, I’m surprised it’s taken this many years for it to make it onto the list), and it didn’t disappoint.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Conversely, failing to live up to expectations was The Mask of Fu Manchu. I didn’t exactly expect great things of it (there’s the inherent racism, for one thing), but even as a pulpy ’30s pre-code adventure movie, it didn’t tick the right boxes for me.

Favourite Short Film of the Month
With so many short films watched this month, it seems only right to extend the Arbies to them; though I won’t do a “least favourite” (seems unfair when shorts struggle to gain attention enough as it is). There are lots of entertaining little numbers in the 53-strong field, but undoubtedly my personal favourite was The Last Video Store, a documentary about Bristol’s still-running independent video rental place, 20th Century Flicks. It’s all about the importance and brilliance of physical media — right up my street. It’s available free on Vimeo, so do check it out.

Best Documentary Where the Tagline Gets Listed as Part of the Title of the Month
I watched two behind-the-scenes-y documentaries this month, Showrunners and Never Surrender — those are the titles they use on screen, anyway, but look online and you’ll mostly find them listed as Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show and Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary. Regular readers will know how much this kind of imprecision / inconsistency annoys me. Anyway, they were both interesting, but Never Surrender was really warm-hearted and lovely as well as informative — if you love Galaxy Quest (and who doesn’t?) then you must see it. It’s on Amazon Prime, at least in the UK.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
A very deserving victor this month, in my opinion: my review of “missing hammer in a Belgian nudist camp” comedy-thriller (that should totally by a subgenre) Patrick.

The IMDb New Filmmaker Award	Jojo Rabbit
Luxor	The Mole Agent
Never Rarely Sometimes Always	Patrick
Rose Plays Julie	Some Beasts
Waxworks

The Past Month on TV #63

After being ahead of target most of the year, last month saw me slip behind slightly, and I haven’t caught it up… but I’m close enough that December could yet see me reach my goal of 50 rewatches.

#42 Hot Fuzz (2007)
#43 Fisherman’s Friends (2019)
#44 Knives Out (2019)

Considering how much I’ve always enjoyed Hot Fuzz (and how often it’s on ITV2), it’s a little remarkable that I’ve only watched it once since seeing it at the cinema in 2007; and, according to my records, that was around when it came out on DVD, in late ’07 or early ’08 — so I haven’t seen it in over 12 years. (Don’t ask me how long it’s been since Shaun of the Dead…) To think: all the mediocre movies I’ve watched in that time, and I could’ve just been rewatching this classic. Oh well.

At the other end of the time spectrum, I only first watched Fisherman’s Friends this May, and Knives Out this March. Both were family-appeasing viewing choices — not that I dislike either (indeed, I’d been specifically wanting to rewatch Knives Out). I’ve not got round to reviewing either in full yet, but I will someday (probably).

Cinemas may’ve been closed again thanks to Lockdown 2, but new releases continue to debut online — like Christmas lesbian romcom Happiest Season, which I’ve heard good things about; or Netflix’s The Christmas Chronicles 2, which hopefully is as likeable as the first one; or Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy, which I’ve not heard anything good about. It does star Amy Adams and Glenn Close, though, so I expect it’ll be part of the awards conversation nonetheless.

The same conditions that have kept theatrical releases to a minimum have seen the streamers all pile on new content, though little of it’s brand-new. Particularly drawing my attention on Netflix was Assassination Nation, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the latter because it’s reminded me I still haven’t watched the 3D Blu-ray I imported from Australia. On social media, they made a big fuss of having Spider-Verse in 4K — I believe it’s a 2K upscale, but its visual style seems made for HDR enhancement. So, basically, I need to rewatch it twice, once in 3D, once in 4K…

iPlayer is also offering original movies at the minute — kind of — with Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series. I watched the first, but need to catch up on Lovers Rock and Red, White and Blue. They also have a speedy TV premiere for recent UK release Monsoon. Over on Amazon, the best they could offer is Military Wives — the kind of thing I might watch with my mum over Christmas. They also added Parasite, but I (a) have seen it, and (b) own it on disc.

In fact, I own it on disc twice, thanks to picking up the US 4K release back in July (they’ve just released it on 4K here, but I think the import still cost me less), and buying the Criterion edition this month. I’m not one of those Criterion completists buying it for the sake of it being a Criterion — I want the special features, and also the black-and-white version (though that’s on Amazon Prime too, so…) It was one of many titles I imported thanks to Barnes & Noble’s biannual Criterion sale — although, as they still refuse to ship to the UK, I actually bought stuff price-matched from Amazon.com. Other titles I picked up included Ghost Dog (been waiting for that on Blu-ray for years), Christopher Nolan’s Following, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Marriage Story, and the Three Fantastic Journeys bu Karel Zeman box set — the UK editions were still slightly cheaper, but pop-up packaging? Yes please! While I was at it, I also imported a bunch of other US stuff I’ve wanted for a while: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (I’ve never heard great things about the film, but the US release is a 4K-HFR / 3D combo pack that entices me), Shout’s release of Creepshow (as the UK release is long out of print and it’s one of the few George Romero titles I didn’t own), the 4K restoration of Rian Johnson’s Brick, animation Long Way North, The Mask of Zorro in 4K, the 26th Zatoichi film (upgrading my Arrow DVD)… and a few others too (this list is getting plenty long enough, and I’ve not even started on my UK purchases).

Yes, various UK sales further decimated my bank account this month. There was a UK Criterion offer, too, in which I picked up The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Life of Oharu, and Metropolitan; Indicator had a Hammer sale, from which I nabbed two of their box sets (Volumes Three and Four, if anyone’s interested); from Arrow’s Noirvember offer I snagged Dark City, Hangmen Also Die, and (after many years of never quite buying them) both the 1946 and 1964 versions of The Killers; plus random discounts on the 4K box sets of Sicario 1 and 2, and the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy.

Oh, and there were new releases too! The headliner has to be Second Sight’s incredible 4K box set of Dawn of the Dead, a behemoth packed with alternate cuts, special features, and books — not booklets, literal books. Amazing. Also available in multiple fancily-packaged editions was the 4K release of V for Vendetta, though I just went for the regular version in the end. There were also two new Jackie Chan titles from 88 Films (Shaolin Wooden Men and New Fist of Fury); plus another Eastern action classic from Eureka, The Bride with White Hair; and Japanese sci-fi from Eureka too, in the form of Mothra, The H-Man, and Battle in Outer Space. More noir, as well, in the form of Indicator’s Columbia Noir #1 box set — that number at the end promising I’ll be spending much money on this series in the years to come. And, finally, rounding out the month, a Train to Busan trilogy box set, meaning I finally picked up that zombie modern classic, along with the anime prequel (which I don’t much care for) and the new sequel, Peninsula.

Christ, look at that list — anyone’d think I’d just had a Christmas present haul! And I left half-a-dozen titles out just to speed things up. But no, Christmas is still to come…

Iiiiit’s Chriiiiiistmaaaaas! I have been waiting pretty much all year to be able to watch Klaus (can’t watch a Christmas film from January to November, no no no), so if I don’t get round to it I’ll be doing some serious self-chastising in my December review.

The Past Month on TV #63

Posted on November 29, 2020 by badblokebob

There’s all sorts of stuff I thought I’d’ve got round to for this TV column — Cobra Kai season 2; more of The Twilight Zone; Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit; finally starting The bloody Mandalorian — but I haven’t seen any of them. So, rather than keep pushing this post back and back, here’s what little I have watched that’s worth commenting on in the almost-two-months-now since my last TV review.

Young Wallander Season 1
I think that Swedish detective Kurt Wallander’s USP, if he has one, was that he wasn’t some young hotshot maverick genius, like so many fictional detectives, but rather a middle-aged, somewhat disillusioned, almost workaday cop who got the job done. So a series about his younger days already seems like it might be missing half the point. But it’s worked for other TV detectives (most notably Morse in the acclaimed Endeavour), so why not? After all, seeing what police work in 1970s Sweden was like might be interesting — it’s certainly a different setting, anyway.

Well, that’s Young Wallander‘s first misstep: this isn’t about the young life of canonical Wallander, it’s a modern-day reboot. So, you’ve removed the obvious character traits and you’ve changed when it’s set — what makes this Wallander as opposed to Generic Swedish Cop? That was the question I had after watching the trailer and, sadly, I still wondered it after watching the series in full. At least the storyline is Wallander-ish, all about nationalism and refugees and how they’re treated. That may sound very timely, given what’s been going on politically over the last five to ten years, and it is; but it’s also the kind of thing Wallander’s original creator, Henning Mankell, often wrote about before that. But that makes it a mixed blessing: yes, it’s the kind of story you can imagine a ‘real’ Wallander text tackling, but it’s also such a present-day issue that that doesn’t matter; it’s the kind of plot any drama might choose to take on right now.

The production itself is a strange international hybrid: made by Swedish production company Yellow Bird (though actually shot elsewhere in Europe, I believe), but with a British writer and mostly British cast speaking English, while thankfully not trying to emulate the accent. That’s except for Wallander himself, who’s played by a Swede, who has kind of retained his accent. In a story all about national identity, it’s kind of ironic that Wallander sounds like the only Swedish man in Sweden.

I can see why the Wallander rights-holders would want the brand to continue, because it’s been very popular in various incarnations, in particular the Swedish series starring Krister Henriksson and the British series starring Kenneth Branagh. But between those, and the previous series of Swedish TV movies starring Rolf Lassgård, every one of Mankell’s original novels has been adapted twice, plus the invention of about 30 original-for-TV stories — so, if you want to continue the character, a new direction does feel called for. Unfortunately, this isn’t it. It’s too generic, lacking any uniqueness that makes you feel this is a story that could only be told — or even should be told — using the Wallander brand. Even leaving that aside — if you had no previous attachment to the character and so just approached this as an original cop drama — the series is less than great. It’s not outright bad, just thoroughly middling, with an underwhelming finale that leaves plot threads dangling; and it’s not clear if it’s meant to be a realistic “not everything gets tied up” ending, or if they’re hoping to pick up on them in a second season.

The only good thing to come out of all this, for me, was that it’s reminded me I still have a bunch of adaptations starring Lassgård that I’ve never watched, so it’ll be nice to go visit those. And then revisit the Henriksson series at some point, because it was excellent; and maybe the Branagh one too, because that was also really good. But if Young Wallander manages to bag itself a recommission, I’m not sure I’ll bother with it.

Jonathan Creek Series 5 Episodes 2-3 + 2016 Christmas Special
I noted last time that Jonathan Creek seems to be ending with a whimper rather than a bang. It was a huge hit when it first aired in the ’90s, and a revival in 2009 was a big ratings success too, but the sporadic specials made since then have seen it drift further and further from the spark that once made it special. The nadir was the premiere episode of series 5, which didn’t even function properly as an episode of the show. The remaining two instalments of that short run are better, but still nowhere near the series’ early-day highs. The third one, The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, includes an array of terrible subplots that make you wish it was considerably shorter (it’s only an hour long but feels like two), but its mystery is still the nearest these latter-day Creeks have come to its heyday.

A saving grace comes in the last (for now) episode, 2016 Christmas special Daemons’ Roost. Is it the last-ever episode? Many online listings treat it as such, but the four years since it aired means if another episode popped up it wouldn’t be the longest gap in the series’ history. But if it is the last time we ever get to see the character, it’s actually not a bad one to go out on; in fact, thought it was a real return to form. As with many later episodes, it struggles to get Jonathan involved in the case — daft, really, because, after he had the same problem right back in series 1, writer David Renwick came up with a way to just throw Jonathan and Maddy into the case every episode… then undid that after series 4, since when we’ve once again been subjected to long-winded reasonings for Jonathan to get involved. So, once again, it takes a while to get going (Jonathan doesn’t get properly involved until 40 minutes in), but once it ramps up there are some neat mysteries and bags of Gothic atmosphere. I always feel Creek is at its best when it’s invoking that almost Hammer Horror vibe. There are also some nice nods to the series’ history, which is the main reason it feels like it could serve fittingly as a “finale” if needs must.

Though, personally, I’d love to see Jonathan reunited with Maddy for one final case; and I’m happy to wait for a one-off special when Renwick’s got a good idea, because we’ve seen how wrong it goes when he forces it.

Also watched…

Anthony Jeselnik: Thoughts and Prayers — After enjoying his Netflix special that I watched last time, I watched the other. This one starts dark… and gets darker. I loved that, but I can see he’s not for everyone.

Demetri Martin: The Overthinker — After enjoying his Netflix special that I watched last time, I watched the other. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy it as much — it was, ironically, overthought. Oh well, can’t win ’em all.

Small Axe Episode 1 — Just to note that I’ll be counting these as films, because that’s what they are, really, aren’t they? I suppose the counterargument is it’s an anthology miniseries because they’re premiering on TV, but nah — especially as several of them actually premiered at a film festival.

The Great British Bake Off Series 11 Episodes 2-4 — I’m even way behind on Bake Off! I’ve managed to avoid most spoilers, at least, so I’ll catch up soon.

Things to Catch Up On
This month, I have mostly been missing His Dark Materials, the second series of the BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s acclaimed trilogy. Of course, I’ve been missing lots of stuff (that was kind of the theme of my introduction, remember?), but that’s one of the most pressing to me personally. You might argue The Mandalorian, also on its second season, is even more pertinent, what with it regularly being thoroughly discussed online, but I’ve not even started that yet. His Dark Materials, on the other hand, I do expect to watch soon.

Next month… His Dark Materials season 2, probably. What else, only time will tell.

The IMDb New Filmmaker Award 2020

Posted on November 19, 2020 by badblokebob

Last night on AMPLIFY!, FilmBath presented the 9th annual IMDb New Filmmaker Award, in which a trio of industry judges choose the best short film by a new filmmaker (clue’s in the name). The winner gets £1,000 cash, £1,000 in gear hire for their next project, a natty trophy, and an IMDb pin badge (normally only given to IMDb employees). If you missed the evening, never fear: the whole 90-minute event is available to rewatch for free, worldwide, here.

Why would you watch an awards show after it’s happened? Well, in this case, you get to hear the judges’ musings on what makes a good film — and when those judges are BAFTA-nominated director Coky Giedroyc (The Virgin Queen, How to Build a Girl), Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning producer Amanda Posey (An Education, Brooklyn), and the CEO of IMDb, Col Needham, those are opinions worth listening to. Even better, you get to watch the five nominated shorts in full, and they’re good a bunch.

But don’t just take my word for it: take my, er, word for it, in the form of these reviews…

If you do intend to watch the awards, fair warning: I’m going to ‘spoil’ who won.

Taking the films in the order they were shown, first up is Under the Full Moon (2020, Ziyang Liu, UK, English, 9 mins, ★★★★☆), about a guy who has his phone pickpocketed and decides to confront the mugger. The most noteworthy aspect here is the whole short is achieved in a single unbroken eight-minute take. I love stuff done in single long takes; at this point it’s a bit of a cliché to enjoy such things — a real film nerd kind of obsession — but, sod it, it’s still cool. To do a thriller storyline like that — something which requires management of tension and suspense, and of information being revealed at the right time in the right way — is even more impressive. You might say, “well, that’s what theatre is — a drama performed in ‘one take’”, but theatre doesn’t have to factor in camerawork; making sure we’re seeing the right stuff at the right time, framed in the right ways. Under the Full Moon manages every different element almost perfectly, the only real flaw coming right near the end, when the camera fails to clearly capture a phone screen with an incoming call, so the director resorts to a subtitle to make sure we get this final ironic twist. And that’s the other thing: this isn’t just a technical stunt, or an exercise in escalating suspense, but a dramatic work with some neatly-drawn character parts and a sense of dramatic irony. Really strong work.

The winner (told you I’d spoil it) was Flush Lou (2020, Madison Leonard, USA, English, 9 mins, ★★★★★), and I entirely agree. It’s a black comedy about the reaction of three women to the death of a man: his daughter (who narrates), his wife, and his mother. It’s got a quirkiness that could be inappropriate, but the tone is juggled just right that it remains hilarious rather than at all distasteful. It’s there in the performances, the shot choices, the editing — the piece really works as a whole to hit precisely the right note. It might call to mind the work of someone like Wes Anderson, but it’s far from a rip-off; it also reminded me of certain just-off-reality American-suburbia-skewering TV shows, like The Riches or Suburgatory (I’m sure there are some more mainstream examples that are eluding my reach right now). Also, it manages to pack eight chapters into its eight minutes, without ever feeling like that’s an unnecessary affectation; if anything, it helps clarify the structure, which is exactly the kind of thing chapters are good for. A huge success all round.

At the other end of the seriousness spectrum was the winner of the audience vote, The Monkeys on Our Backs (2020, Hunter Williams, New Zealand, English, 8 mins, ★★★★★), a documentary about the mental health of farmers in New Zealand. I think we often have a very positive view of New Zealand — they seem like nice people; their government is doing awesomely well; they make great movies; they’re good at rugby; and so on. But the country has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, and mental health problems disproportionately affect those living and working in isolated rural communities. This is not only a succinct explanation of the problems, with real-life examples as well as expert opinions, but also talks about the solutions, what help is out there and how it’s working. Plus it’s a beautifully shot film (some outtakes in black & white at the beginning show the fundamental quality underlying the colour photography in the rest of the film), with lovely views of countryside life, as if to help remind you that the world is a wonderful place. A wholly different film to Flush Lou, but an equally deserving winner.

The shortest of this year’s five is Players (2020, Ava Bounds, UK, English, 3 mins, ★★★★☆), but that’s not the most noteworthy thing about it. This is: it was made by a 14-year-old. But you’d never guess, because it has a competency and, more strikingly, a surrealism that belies someone much more experienced. Heck, the sound design most reminded me of David Lynch! And the comparison goes beyond the sound work, with an ending that calls to mind some of Lynch’s work where nature and technology clash. Subtitled “a clearly confused film”, I think that was somewhat how the judges felt about its mix of retro costumes and music, computer-generated vocals, and a sci-fi sting in the tail. It’s the kind of film that clearly doesn’t work for everyone — just another way it’s a natural successor to Lynch, then. A 14-year-old making a competition-worthy short film is incredible in itself, but that it also merits so many comparisons to David fucking Lynch? Remarkable.

The final film was Home (2020, Hsieh Meng Han, UK, English, 10 mins, ★★★☆☆), in which a girl living with her mother in a single room in a dingy apartment block finds the communal toilet locked, but then hears music coming from a nearby ventilation grill. Climbing through, she finds herself in a brightly-lit world of opulence, with people in elegant clothes dancing to genteel music, and an array of luscious food on offer. She even makes a friend. But then uptight officiousness arrives in the form of a stuffy manager, who refuses to let her use the toilet. It’s like a modern socially-conscious take on Alice in Wonderland, though I’m not sure what point it was ultimately making — kindness is nice and everyone deserves to be allowed to use the toilet?

If any of that tickles your fancy, don’t forget you can still watch the whole event, free, here.

Disclosure: I’m working for AMPLIFY! as part of FilmBath. However, all opinions are my own, and I benefit in no way (financial or otherwise) from you following the links in this post or making purchases.

The Horrific Monthly Review of October 2020

Posted on November 1, 2020 by badblokebob

Don’t be fooled by the title, dear reader: I’m not one of those people who spends all of October watching horror movies. But the world we live in is horrifying enough for that adjective to apply to pretty much any month this year, isn’t it?

So as England prepares — not for No Time to Die, as we’d hoped for from November — but for Time to Try Not to Die in Lockdown 2, let’s look back at the month that was the tenth in the seemingly-never-ending year that is 2020…

#219 Lancelot du Lac (1974), aka Lancelot of the Lake
#220 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
#221 Patrick (2019), aka De Patrick
#222 Dick Johnson is Dead (2020)
#223 The Good Liar (2019)
#224 Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
#225 Some Beasts (2019), aka Algunas Bestias
#226 Luxor (2020)
#227 The American President (1995)
#228 Down with Love (2003)
#229 Puzzle (2018)
#230 Misery (1990)
#231 The Mole Agent (2020)
#232 Waxworks (1924), aka Das Wachsfigurenkabinett
#233 Vampires Suck (2010)
#234 The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)
#235 Tim’s Vermeer (2013)
#236 Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Tim's Vermeer

Crazy Rich Asians

I watched 18 new feature films in October.
That’s in the lower-middle for 2020 so far — 7th out of 10 months, to be precise.
Unsurprisingly, then, it fails to equal my 2020 average (previously 24.2, now 23.6).
It also fails to equal my rolling average for the last 12 months, but as last October was so poor (just four films), it still increases the average, from 19.9 to 21.1.
Continuing on the bright side, it surpasses the October average (previously 13.2, now 13.5).
#236 is also the furthest I’ve ever reached by the end of October, besting #222 in 2018.
You might think that makes 2020 a lock for my #1 year ever, but it’s not so simple (as my previous overviews of predictions have shown). There are 26 films to go to a new record — 13 per month for November and December, which sounds very doable (my worst month this year totalled 12), but it’s worth noting that the November average is 10.4 and for December it’s 11.2, so never say never.
As for the once-seemingly-possible target of #300, that would mean 32 per month in November and December. Literally, not impossible (I’ve managed over 30 in two consecutive months twice before), but also not likely (I’ve only managed over 30 in two consecutive months twice before). Time will tell…
This month’s Blindspot film was supposed to be An American Werewolf in London. For most of the year I’d had that singled out to be October’s pick, for obvious reasons. I considered watching it earlier in the month, but decided to leave it for nearer Halloween. Then as Halloween neared I thought, “why not save it for the day itself?” Because Halloween is the last day of the month and the best-laid plans are apt to be upended, that’s why not! So, yeah — oops. I’m aiming to watch it today to catch up quickly.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Crazy Rich Asians and The Good Liar.

The 65th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I watched a lot of films I liked this month — indeed, there was only really one choice for the “least favourite” category. But in terms of favourites, it was quite easy to single one out, too, because one film really blew me away: Tim’s Vermeer, a documentary about the point where art, technology, and obsession meet. It’s fascinating and genuinely awe-inspiring.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I was able to watch a few screeners this month for films showing as part of AMPLIFY! Maybe it’s wrong for me to pick one of those here (shh, don’t tell anyone!), but, well, Some Beasts was easily the worst film I watched this month. Not because it’s badly made, but a final-act plot swerve struck me as wholly distasteful and poorly handled. More on that whenever I get round to reviewing it.

Most Layers in a Title of the Month
Before viewing, I wondered if Crazy Rich Asians was about Asians who were crazy-rich or rich Asians who were crazy. Turns out, it’s both! So many layers! (Two. That’s two layers.)

Most Penises of the Month
One of Borat’s most famous scenes may be a nude wrestling/chase scene between two men, but that’s got nothing on Patrick, a whole film set in a nudist camp. (Don’t let that turn you off / switch you on, mind — there’s a lot of good stuff in Patrick, and the nudity is fairly incidental.)

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
…goes to my latest TV column again, for the fourth time this year. I’ve gotta say, this one did have one of my favourite header collages I’ve put together (the entire thing uses mirroring! Me so clever). (The highest film-related post was a distant second, Bloodshot.)

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood	Bloodshot
Going for Golden Eye	It’s Such a Beautiful Day
Jennifer’s Body	The Lives of Others
Matinee	The Producers
Suspiria	TiMER
Vampire Suck

The Past Month on TV #62

At one point I was over a month ahead on my Rewatchathon goal for the year. That lead has been slowly eroded, and now I’m officially one film behind. Still, with just two months to go, it’s certainly not impossible that I’ll get there.

#40 Live and Let Die (1973)
#41 Mystery Men (1999)

As a Bond film, Live and Let Die will get my ‘Guide To’ treatment at some point. For now, I put some thoughts on Letterboxd.

Superhero comedy Mystery Men was included in my 100 Favourites series back in 2016, but I hadn’t actually watched it in a decade or more. I’m happy to report that I did still enjoy it. It takes a while to warm up — basically until the whole team has been introduced, which takes longer than you might think — but, once it gets there, it’s frequently gold. Will it make the next iteration of my 100 Favourites list? It’s more borderline than I might’ve expected. It’s not a perfect movie, but it is very enjoyable overall.

Big titles have continued to flee, and with a new lockdown cinemas will be closing again, but a few releases did sneak out in the meantime, like acclaimed horror Saint Maud, and… um… Cats & Dogs 3? Eesh. London Film Festival organised outreach screenings across the UK, but the only one that made it into the schedule at my local was closing-night film Ammonite. And in the sort-of-cinema column, Robert Zemeckis’s re-adaptation of The Witches went straight to premium streaming. I wouldn’t pay £16 for a rental of that anyway, so the mixed-to-poor reviews certainly didn’t sway me.

Another re-adaptation, The Secret Garden, finally had a cinema release, but having been sold off to Sky as a Sky Cinema Original, it was more readily accessible at home. This month the streamer also offered up Underwater, Seberg, and films not starring Kristen Stewart, like Waves. But Now TV finally stopped giving me good cut-price offers to resubscribe, so I likely won’t be able to consider watching any of those until next Oscar season, when I resubscribe to watch the ceremony.

The other two big streamers had some significant originals too. Netflix offered yet another re-adaptation of classic English literature, Rebecca, plus Aaron Sorkin’s latest, The Trial of the Chicago 7; plus David Attenborough bio/polemic, A Life on Our Planet, and another Adam Sandler thing, Hubie Halloween. Over on Amazon, the headline grabber was Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (as you might’ve noticed in my viewing list, I finally watched the original in preparation, but haven’t watched the sequel yet), and a quartet of original chillers from Blumhouse — Black Box, The Lie, Evil Eye, and Nocturne — which I don’t think have garnered great reviews, but which look interesting nonetheless. Amazon also boasted another quartet this month: the Indiana Jones series. I’ve been meaning to rewatch them forever — indeed, I’ve owned the Blu-ray set since 2012 and never watched it. I ought to get round to that before they turn up on 4K and I buy them again…

And talking of purchases, I’m still failing to stop myself buying tonnes more stuff. Indy may not be on 4K yet, but that other Spielberg-related ’80s geek trilogy, Back to the Future, did make its bow on the format this month. Of course I bought it. I nabbed an even bigger box set in Amazon’s Prime Day sale: the Universal Classic Monsters complete 30-film Blu-ray set, which includes 38 films (because, thanks to Universal’s lazy bundling of existing sets, there are seven duplicate movies in the set (whole discs could’ve just been taken out), and one film they only count as an extra, the Spanish version of Dracula). Other horror-ish pickups included Indicator’s new Fu Manchu set (officially out tomorrow; I’ve already watched the first (#234 above)); Japanese classic House; and another Universal / James Whale / Boris Karloff effort, The Old Dark House (which I watched on streaming back in June and loved). New releases included interactive DC animation Batman: Death in the Family, 88 Films’ latest Jackie Chan classic, Spiritual Kung Fu, and an import of Requiem for a Dream in 4K (it’s out in the UK later this month, but the import was cheaper). Finally, a few more to rewatch in 4K, thanks to a 3-for-2 offer: Bad Times at the El Royale, Die Hard, and Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Whew!

Lockdown 2: Covid Boogaloo.

FilmBath + AMPLIFY!

Posted on October 23, 2020 by badblokebob

In a mirror of this post from last year, I’m here again to blame my recent blogging quietness on FilmBath Festival. Yes, even in these Covid-struck days, we are putting on a film festival. It’s different — smaller, for one thing, with just nine films over five days (last year we screened dozens of features over 11 days). But, as if to make up for that, we have a New Thing…

AMPLIFY! is an online virtual film festival — which, in short, means you can enjoy it if you live anywhere in the UK. I won’t go into the full marketing spiel, but instead point you in the direction of the website. Here’s a fun bonus, though: if you want to order tickets (or, for best value, a festival pass), use the code “LoveBath” and you’ll get 10% off. (So we’re clear: I don’t get any bonus or benefit of kickback for plugging either festival. I’m just letting you know what I’m up to, and clueing you in to a cool thing.)

AMPLIFY!’s lineup features a bunch of UK premieres (including Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut, Falling); previews (like thriller Rose Plays Julie, which screened at last year’s LFF but hasn’t yet had a wide release); timely documentaries (including The Mole Agent, about an octogenarian spy — yes, I said documentary); other special treats (including the new restoration of silent classic Waxworks ahead of its Masters of Cinema Blu-ray release); and stuff that you might not get a chance to see otherwise (like a strand of Catalan films). I’ve had a chance to see a couple of the films, and I’d recommend Patrick — a dark comedy mystery about a nudist camp handyman who’s lost his hammer. I rather loved it.

And if you are in the Bath region, the FilmBath schedule is online here (top tip: Nomadland is close to selling out already). It’s going to be a bit different to normal, so there’s information about all that in the FAQs.

Putting on two festivals has meant more work, of course, and the fact that AMPLIFY! is a collaboration between four festivals has introduced new challenges –– primarily to do with it being online, which none of us have done before (who had, before this year?) But we’re getting there. And when we do, normal blogging service will resume.

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