November’s Failures

Posted on December 2, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

It may not be summer anymore, but there were still plenty of blockbuster-sized releases at the multiplex. The biggest of them seems to be Disney’s latest animation, Zootropolis 2 (aka Zootopia 2), which has apparently broken records of some kind (I confess, I didn’t read the articles, just saw the headlines). I liked the first a lot (9½ years ago! Time flies), so I look forward to catching the sequel at some point. Other sequels included a third Predator flick (and second this year) from director Dan Trachtenberg, Predator: Badlands, which seemed to be as well-received as his previous two; belated magic/heist threequel Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, finally using the subtitle everyone said should’ve been on the second film; Nazi-killing followup Sisu: Road to Revenge; musical second act Wicked: For Good; and a limited release for the third Benoit Blanc murder mystery, Wake Up Dead Man, ahead of its Netflix release at the end of next week.

Not technically a sequel, but still very much in the IP space thanks to being both an adaptation of a Stephen King story and a remake of the previous Arnie-starring adaptation, was Edgar Wright’s latest, The Running Man. Other films with noteworthy pedigrees included Sky Original Nuremberg starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, among others, which received a rare wide release for a streamer-branded film; Richard Linklater’s latest (finished) film, Blue Moon; Sydney Sweeney-starring boxing biopic Christy; the debut feature directed by Ronan Day-Lewis, starring his dad, Anemone; and a whole host of recognisable British faces in The Choral, the fourth film from the writer/director pairing of Alan Bennett / Nicholas Hytner.

For those not keen in venturing out in these colder days, the streamers offered up a batch of brand-new titles as well, although their perceptible quality is as variable as ever. I mean, for every well-reviewed film like Netflix’s Train Dreams, there’s a pile of churn like Prime Video’s action-comedies Bride Hard (probably the worst wannabe-pun title I’ve ever heard) and Playdate, a vehicle for the star of their Jack Reacher show, Alan Ritchson. Apple TV+’s The Family Plan 2 appears to be in a similar vein. At least Netflix’s other original offering, Jingle Bell Heist, has the good grace to be festive-themed.

Plenty of new-to-streaming stuff here and there, too. The one that intrigues me the most, in its way, is After the Hunt. I didn’t see any fanfare for this when it was in cinemas, nor when it came to Prime in the middle of the month, despite a starry cast and being directed by Luca Guadagnino. Is that because it’s bad, or just not discourse-provoking? No idea. Could be it’s just me, because when I did spot it on Prime it was apparently in their top ten films, so someone noticed it. Also on Prime: actioner Boy Kills World and “dark fantasy comedy horror” (Wikipedia’s sting of genres, not mine) Death of a Unicorn. Over on NOW, a reminder that I bought but haven’t watched Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, plus the latest from Christopher “Happy Death Day” Langdon, Drop, and video game horror adaptation Until Dawn. The most I noted from Netflix was Trump biopic The Apprentice, but Disney+ actually had a couple of things worth mentioning in the shape of The Fantastic Four: First Steps (though I’m so many Marvel films behind I can’t remember the number anymore, so I don’t know how soon I’m likely to watch it) and Freakier Friday (though it’s decades since I saw its predecessor, and I wasn’t clamouring for a followup).

As ever, tonnes of back catalogue additions and service-hoppers made my long-list of stuff to mention, but a couple seemed worthy of particular note: The Perks of Being a Wallflower on Netflix, purely because it’s one of the most popular films on Letterboxd that I’ve never seen, but it also never seems to be streaming anywhere (and I hardly care about it enough to watch it any other way — in fact, I might not even get round to it now, who knows); and Fellini’s La Strada on Prime, which has a slightly more prestigious Letterboxd pedigree of being on the Top 250 there, but is another one that isn’t regularly readily available.

But, as usual, the most egregious older titles were all the reminders of stuff I own on disc but haven’t watched — like Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, the reboot of Candyman, Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, Neil Armstrong biopic First Man (all Amazon, though Candyman was also on iPlayer) — or titles I’ve bought because I thought they were great and want to rewatch them, but again haven’t — like Oliver Stone’s JFK and Natural Born Killers, John Frankenheimer’s Ronin, David Cronenberg’s Scanners (also all Amazon. Their offering is rather underrated, you know, and I think it’s their own fault because they make it harder to use than Netflix, burying the good stuff under piles of random crap. Though it’s also partly user error, as so many people can’t seem to get their head around the fact you can rent films in addition to those you get as a subscriber).

Nonetheless, I keep buying stuff that’s destined to end up on future iterations of that list. This month, it was Arrow’s 4K re-release of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (upgrading my existing Blu-ray copy of that same version), Criterion’s 4K re-release of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (also upgrading my Blu-ray copy of the same), the 4K release of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (a leap up from the old DVD, at least), and The Goonies, a purchase prompted by, of all things, the tie-in LEGO set (which I did not buy because, although it looks cool, it’s expensive and I don’t love the film that much).

Of course, I also shelled out for piles (literally) of things I’ve never seen. Chief among them was Arrow’s release of City on Fire, signalling the start of their deal to release Golden Princess films in the UK, which in the future will bring us solid-gold classics like The Killer, Hard Boiled, and… well, potentially 153 more, according to news of the original deal (Shout have the US rights and Arrow’s is a sublicense). Maybe we’ll see some box sets like their Shawscope series, which this month added a Volume 4 with 16 new films to supplement the 40 already released across the first three sets.

As usual, most of my purchases this month came courtesy of boutique labels, whether they be new releases or sale pickups. From Eureka, two additions to the Masters of Cinema series: Michaelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte in 4K, and Kinji “Battle Royale” Fukasaku Shogun’s Samurai. From Deaf Crocodile (via an eBay seller, as the label won’t ship to the UK), the second volume of Treasures of Soviet Animation and “a wildly surreal early 1970s Lithuanian rock opera” that’s further described as a blend of Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Wicker Man (how could you resist that?!), The Devil’s Bride. From Criterion’s UK sale, noir Night Moves in 4K and Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth on regular BD; and from Indicator’s sale, 4Ks of Ozploitation flicks Harlequin and Thirst, plus Love Affair-emulating melodrama When Tomorrow Comes and “British crime classic” (their words) The Shop at Sly Corner. Singleton purchases included a 4K upgrade for Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung’s Heart of Dragon, and the latest in Hammer’s line of collector’s editions, The Men of Sherwood Forest.

And that’s not even including all my recent Black Friday orders that haven’t arrived yet. They say the first step to solving a problem is recognising their is one… so I fully intend to carry on in self-denial for a while yet.

October’s Failures

Posted on November 2, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

With summer well and truly over, it seems like an unexceptional month at the multiplex. That’s not to say there are no good films, just few that truly felt like A Big Deal. The one being most written about, at least as far as I saw, was a low-budget indie horror… starring a dog: Good Boy. I’m assured the eponymous doggo doesn’t die, and therefore I shall be watching it when it hits one streamer or another. Other horrors gracing the big screen in ‘Halloween month’ included Him, Black Phone 2, and Shelby Oaks.

The anti-Good Boy in terms of buzz was After the Hunt — despite being a new film from director Luca Guadagnino starring names like Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edibiri, I had to check more than once that it had actually been released and not delayed or something. The era of the movie star may be over (allegedly), but there were still plenty of famous faces to be found: Emma Stone as a bald possible-alien in Bugonia; Dwayne Johnson making a bid for legitimacy in wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine; Channing Tatum headlining crime biopic comedy Roofman; and Jared Leto continuing to be box office poison as Disney tried once again to make Tron into A Thing with Tron: Ares. This year’s mandatory music biopic was Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. I believe David Mackenzie’s Relay was also released, over a year after its TIFF premiere, but that’s another one with so little chatter that I can’t be certain. (I guess I could confirm this by scouring film listings or whatever, but, believe it or not, I don’t actually put that much effort into these lists.)

As the days get cold, the nights draw in, and many people would rather stay home in front of the telly, so the streamers start wheeling out bigger name originals, too. Well, most of them: the most Disney+ bothered to put forward was a remake of 1992 thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Quite who decided that was necessary or worthwhile (it’s hardly a big-name IP, is it?), I don’t know. I guess they think that kind of thing is a better use of money than, say, another season of Doctor Who, but who am I to judge. (I mean, at least Who has a certain level of dedicated fans who’ll stick with it however bad it gets. But I digress… and I’m not exactly sad about the Disney partnership ending anyway, so…)

For me, Prime Video nailed the biggest release of the month right at the start, with Shane Black being let out of director jail post-The Predator for heist action thriller Play Dirty. I don’t think the notices were that strong, but Black hits often enough for me to at least give it a go. The film is the ninth theatrical outing for literary anti-hero Parker, but you’d probably have to be a dedicated fan to know that because each one of those was a standalone offering and they’re spread across the last 60 years. Other titles catching my eye on Prime included The Ritual, starring Al Pacino and Dan Stevens as an old priest and a young priest performing an exorcism — hmm, sounds familiar… Apparently it did have a theatrical release back in May, but it could have been branded an original for all the awareness I had of it. Another “may or may not be the UK premiere” drop was Rust, aka that Alec Baldwin film. David Ehrlich has written what I suspect will be the definitive review of it, and I don’t think we need to say anything more about it.

Over on Netflix, the big-name title was a new film from Katherine Bigelow — her first since Detroit, eight years ago. A House of Dynamite sounds like a do-over of Cold War thriller Fail-Safe, but maybe it isn’t because I’ve not seen that comparison made as often as I expected to (or maybe I’m just out of the loop on stuff. Entirely possible). Another under-the-radar title (again, as far as I’m concerned) was Ballad of a Small Player, staring Colin Farrell and directed by Edward Berger, who’s managed to win the Best Film BAFTA for his last two directorial efforts — All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave — so, you never know, maybe this will suddenly swoop into the awards season conversation too (I have absolutely no idea). One film I know was a surprise, because I have seen others say it was a surprise, is spin-off The Rats: A Witcher Tale. You could argue it’s a TV special, what with it only scraping feature-length at 82 minutes, and apparently serving as some kind of bridge between season three and four of its parent show, but I’m not sure that distinction really means anything anymore anyway (and I’ve long advocated for the blurring/removal of the line). Finally, there was a new animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book The Twits — or, per the film’s tagline, an adaptation of the characters rather than the book itself. Whatever.

If we turn to films making their post-theatrical subscription streaming debut, there’s really only one horse in the race: Sky Cinema. Headlined by romcom fourquel Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy at the start of the month, they ended it with sci-fi AI thriller Companion, and in between brought kid-friendly animation Dog Man, plus a pair of Steven Soderbergh flicks that were both in cinemas earlier this year: haunting horror Presence and period spy thriller Black Bag. Soderbergh makes films faster than I can watch them (remember when he retired? Ha!), but they always go on my list.

As always, I could go on forever if I started digging into stuff jumping services and back catalogue additions, but a few that particularly caught my attention were Inside Llewyn Davis on Netflix, Jiro Dreams of Sushi on Prime, and If Beale Street Could Talk on iPlayer — it’s on and off there all the time, but if I mention it there’s a chance that’ll prompt me to finally watch it. For that same reason, this month’s reminders of stuff I own on unwatched discs included All the President’s Men (the third time it’s been a failure this year), the Back to the Future trilogy (how long ago did those 4Ks first come out? I dread to think), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Heat (also a three-time failure in 2025), The Train, folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (all three-and-a-quarter hours of it), a whole bunch of actual horrors — Deep Red, Don’t Look Now, Halloween 2018, The Haunting, The Others, Lovecraft fan film The Whisperer in Darkness — plus Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise, and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood.

I could go on, but that feels like enough of that — let’s instead talk about all the new stuff I’ve bought. Mmm, shiny! Especially shiny were the abundance of new-release 4K UHD titles I’ve picked up recently, including both recent theatrical titles — Jurassic World Rebirth, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and James Gunn’s Superman — and new editions of catalogue titles. The latter include a couple of major studio releases — Dead of Night from StudioCanal; The Rocky Horror Picture Show from Disney (it still feels wrong that Disney own Rocky Horror now) — but mostly come from a variety of boutique labels: The Crimson Rivers from Curzon; The Curse of Frankenstein from Hammer; Daughters of Darkness from Radiance; In the Mouth of Madness and Outland from Arrow. Plus, not brand-new but picked up in their current sale, Jean Rollin titles Requiem for a Vampire and The Escapees from Indicator (I’ve ordered more, but they’ll arrive on Monday and thus into next month’s update. Unless I watch them, of course. Haha.)

Similarly, I snagged Eureka’s 4K edition of The Old Dark House just before their site sold out of copies; and, at the same time, grabbed literally the last copy of their three-film set Martial Law: Lo Wei’s Wuxia World. Also from Eureka, another expansive box set of martial arts action in Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors: The Heroic Cinema of Chang Cheh, containing ten films directed by the “one of the most prolific and accomplished directors ever to emerge from the Hong Kong film industry.” And on a slightly different tack, Larry Cohen’s The Ambulance, which I vaguely remember someone recommending for some reason many years ago — honestly, that kind of “some random person once said this was good” feels like my motivation for a surprisingly large number of my buying/viewing choices.

Those aforementioned Indicator sale 4Ks (remember, two paragraphs back) were joined by a couple of regular Blu-rays: Marlene Dietrich pre-Code melodrama The Song of Songs and Edward Dmytryk’s “dark and unsettling journey into the mind of a murderer”, Obsession (aka The Hidden Room). More of those next month, too. And that lone Radiance 4K (even further back in the paragraph mentioned in the brackets in the previous sentence) was accompanied by their other new releases this month: also from Harry Kümel (the director of Daughters of Darkness), Malpertuis; François Truffaut’s childhood summer drama Pocket Money; and a second box set of Japanese ghost stories in Daiei Gothic Vol. 2.

If you go back over the last three paragraphs of purchases, you’ll count quite a few horror and fantastical titles — makes sense to release those just in time for Halloween. Would’ve made sense to watch them around this time, too. What an innovative concept. Maybe next year. Or, knowing me, in three or four or ten years’ time. Or never, whatever.

August’s Failures

Posted on September 3, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

Flavour of the month at the cinema was definitely the Liam Neeson-starring reboot of The Naked Gun. There was every reason to be dubious of this as an undertaking, but most of what I’ve read regarded it as a triumph. It’s not the kind of film I’ll rush to buy on disc (not that that’s any guarantee I’ll watch something quickly, as this column attests to every month), but I’m looking forward to it landing on streaming.

I’ve also got a general impression (because I just don’t read much new criticism in depth these days) that Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck is rather good, while horror Weapons and Ari Aster’s latest, Eddington, seem to have been divisive. That might be better than the net zero I’ve heard about Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing, although that did only just come out and I’ve been busy lately. The consensus I garnered about Nobody 2 was it’s the kind of sequel that’s fundamentally more of the same, but the first one was pretty fun so that sounds alright to me. Certainly better than Materialists, which it felt like the whole internet was lambasting when it came out in the US the other month. Also out was belated (legacy?) sequel Freakier Friday, which I feel compelled to mention but not compelled to watch.

Meanwhile, breaking containment from the largely-online world of modern moviedom, I feel like I’ve seen The Roses all over the place in The Real World. It’s made me realise how weird that feels for a film nowadays; like they’ve given up on targeting Regular People and are just happy with the guaranteed crowd. Or maybe I just don’t look in the right places and The Roses has been ubiquitous. I mean, it does star Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, who are both mainstream darlings (not undeservedly) in the UK. If anything’s going to tempt out your not-a-regular-moviegoer, that’s a combo worth pushing.

The opposite of advertised has been KPop Demon Hunters. Yes, that’s how it’s spelt, despite K-pop being spelt, well, “K-pop” and the logo kinda having a hyphen in it too. (I get that most people don’t care about this kind of thing. I do, though.) It came out months ago but I didn’t mention it because it’s not my kind of thing; seemingly just another CG-animated kids’ movie dumped on Netflix, of which there seem to be dozens every year. Whether this one is actually good or just hit the right spot at the right time, I don’t know, but it’s become a bit of a phenomenon. Just this past weekend, it claimed the crown of the most-watched movie on Netflix ever, while the weekend before the limited theatrical release of a singalong version won the box office in the US, another first for a Netflix film. I’m tempted to watch it to see what all the fuss is about. Stranger films than this have turned out to actually be good.

Comparatively, August’s new streaming offers are underwhelming. On Netflix: thriller Night Always Comes starring Vanessa Kirby, which has all of 55% on Rotten Tomatoes; and a new original animation from Genndy Tartakovsky, who once attracted cult-following-ish levels of esteem for work like Samurai Jack and the 2D Star Wars: Clone Wars series, but has now made Fixed, an adult-orientated comedy about a dog about to be neutered. That’s amassed 58%, at least. Mind you, those are figures Prime Video might be glad of, considering their action-comedy The Pickup with Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson sits on 25%. (I don’t put much stock in Rotten Tomatoes generally, but these scores at least indicate the dismal state of things.) Sitting between the two is Disney+’s heist thriller starring Samara Weaving, Eenie Meanie, with 44%. Now, that’s not great, but also it’s a heist thriller starring Samara Weaving, so I’m prepared to overlook the fact it might not be very good.

Perhaps of more note were films that started a subscription streaming stretch — an emphasis on sibilance there because, for whatever reason, most of the ones joining Sky Cinema / NOW seemed to start with an S: Saturday Night, September 5, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and The Surfer. Also Heart Eyes, because I guess something had to buck the trend. And The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, but as I own that on disc I class it as a different type of failure. Prime Video also had a share of newcomers, including Babygirl, Mark Wahlberg vehicle Flight Risk, Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, Luc Besson’s Dogman, and the Ultimate Cut of Caligula. Several more films did the ol’ service shuffle, with Meg 2: The Trench leaving Sky for Prime, The Iron Claw leaving Prime for Netflix, and Five Nights at Freddy’s joining Netflix from Sky.

As usual, other back catalogue additions reminded me of all the stuff I’ve bought on disc but not watched yet, whether that be films I’ve never seen — like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hackers, In the Heat of the Night, The Northman, or Now, Voyager (quite a spread of types and eras, which is nice to see) — or films I’ve seen before but own in shiny newer editions I’ve not yet played — like Collateral, Ex Machina, Galaxy Quest, The Godfather trilogy, Psycho, or Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Both of those lists are just a sampling, because (as we know) I buy far too much stuff.

And, naturally, I bought even more this month. That said, the stack is looking a little shorter than usual. Whether that’s a result of less interesting stuff coming out, or I’ve finally demonstrated some restraint, I’m not sure. Either way, I definitely wasn’t going to miss out on shiny new 4K UHD releases of all-timers like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Sunset Boulevard, as well as films I feel there’s a strong chance I’m going to enjoy, like Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress and Michael Mann’s Thief. Rounding out the 4K selection was one of Radiance’s first forays into the format, French police noir The Inquisitor, which is paired with an HD copy of a similar work by the same director, Deadly Circuit, for extra value.

Also from the Radiance stable was a trio of ninja action in their second volume of Shinobi films. I also picked up a slightly-random threesome of titles in Indicator’s sale earlier in the month, namely their two-film El Vampiro set, plus Western Geronimo: An American Legend and WW2 epic Midway. Throw in a couple of Kickstarter rewards — silent documentary An Aleutian Adventure and Hal Hartley’s new film, Where to Land — and… that’s it. Yes, really. But lest you think I’m breaking my habit, know that I’ve already got stuff in the post that will surely feature here next month.

July’s Failures

Posted on August 2, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

Plenty of blockbusters hitting the good old summer release window this month, starting with Jurassic World Rebirth (I’d intended to use that as a prompt to finally get round to the previous Jurassic film, Dominion, but failed at that too), and continuing with outings from both major superhero houses: James Gunn’s Superman kicking off a new era for DC on the big screen, and Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps hoping to make people stop proclaiming the slow death of the MCU (as if the flood of news articles related to the next Avengers film still not having a screenplay, despite being deep into principal photography, hasn’t kept that up anyway. Maybe Marvel Studios should learn to make films properly).

Filling screens here and there between those big gun(n)s: a new David Cronenberg, The Shrouds; horror reboot I Know What You Did Last Summer; animated sequel The Bad Guys 2; and yet another attempt (goodness knows why) to turn the Smurfs into a viable franchise in the simply-titled Smurfs. The films in the first paragraph might’ve tempted me to actually get out to the cinema for once (if I hadn’t been so busy elsewhere), but this lot? Ha. (Okay, Cronenberg will make my to-see list eventually, but as a sometime scaredy-cat I prefer horror in the privacy of my own living room.)

One film that didn’t set the box office alight was belated Adam Sandler sequel Happy Gilmore 2 — because it went direct to Netflix, where it became their biggest opening ever (at least in the US), and thus proved they probably should’ve done a theatrical release instead of leaving all that money on the table. Will they ever learn? No, demonstrably not. I’m not a Sandler fan, and consequently I’ve never seen the first Happy Gilmore, so I’ve no plans to watch this new one. I hope his fans enjoyed it. I did watch the first The Old Guard however many years ago, though, and the not-as-belated-but-still-tardy sequel to that also turned up this month, imaginatively titled The Old Guard 2. I’m not sure I care enough to take the time, to be honest, especially as reviews have been less than stellar, and apparently it contains a bunch of setup for a third film that may never happen.

The only other direct-to-streaming premiere I noted in July was an even more bizarre choice: on Prime Video, a new version of War of the Worlds — yes, another one — but this time apparently crossed with Searching, because it’s all from the perspective of Ice Cube watching the alien invasion unfurl on his computer. I guess maybe they were trying to go for a modernised version of Orson Welles’s famous radio broadcast? I don’t know. I haven’t even got round to watching the BBC miniseries version from a few years ago, which at least was interesting for trying to do it properly as a Victorian period piece, so I very much doubt the Ice Cube version will be hitting my screen anytime soon.

While the other streamers didn’t bother to offer much brand-new, a few relatively big hitters made their subscription streaming bows, including the viral success (if not a box office one) that was Robbie Williams biopic Better Man (you know, the one where he’s played be a CGI monkey), which also came to Prime; Disney+ did their usual speedy cinema-to-streaming pipeline with spy thriller The Amateur; Netflix offered nonlinear rom-dram We Live in Time; and Sky Cinema / NOW fared best, as usual, magicking up Wicked (aka Wicked: Part I), Clint Eastwood’s well-reviewed courtroom thriller Juror #2, and, um, Kraven the Hunter. Hey, can’t win ’em all. And, heck, they also had even less noteworthy stuff than that, so it could be (indeed, was) worse. I mean, Rumours sounds kinda interesting, but its audience scores are terrible… though IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes voters are exceptionally dumb nowadays, so maybe that 75% critic score is worth bearing in mind.

Crappy recent superhero movies also feature in back catalogue changes. Well, where don’t they nowadays? Morbius — a Spider-verse spin-off even more poorly regarded than Kraven — popped onto Amazon; as did The Flash, reminding me that I have an itch to watch it even though it’s meant to be poor and everything I’ve seen from it looks shit. I was going to say that at least it would allow me to close out that era of DC’s cinematic universe, but I still haven’t watched Wonder Woman 1984 or Aquaman and the Forgettable Sequel Subtitle either. Other stuff of note on Prime included Trumbo, which never especially interested me before, but I’ve just been reading a book on the history of the Oscars which told some of his story so now I think maybe. It goes on the list, anyway. Same for Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which was So Good back when it first came out (I ranked it 4th for films I first saw in 2017, which was a hotly contested year), but after almost a further decade of Taika Waititi’s schtick, I wonder if it still plays as well? Talking of rewatches, Amazon also threw up Blade Runner: The Final Cut, a reminder that it was one of the earliest 4K discs I bought but I still haven’t watched that, and The Hobbit trilogy, a reminder that I own them in 3D but have never watched those copies, and it’s been a while since I watched them at all so maybe they deserve another look.

Over on Netflix, the “I should give that another look” theme continues with Forrest Gump, which I haven’t seen since I was a kid and should probably form an adult opinion on; plus more reminders of discs I bought with enthusiasm but still haven’t watched, like Heat and Minority Report (I don’t even want to look up how long ago the Blu-ray I haven’t watched came out. It’ll be on 4K before you know it). Similarly, though not actually a rewatch, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes — I really enjoyed the original ~~trilogy~~ quartet, and this prequel seemed to be well received (certainly successful enough that they’re immediately adapting the next book in the Hunger Games universe), so I ought to get on that too. In terms of stuff I don’t already own on disc, BlackBerry seems like it should be meritless attempt to engineer another Social Network / Steve Jobs kinda film, but I hear it’s actually good whenever it comes up.

iPlayer has a similar injection of quality with Cannes winner Fallen Leaves and Oscar nominee Women Talking, although most of my list of interest there are more reminders of unwatched discs: All the President’s Men, Don’t Look Now, and Spellbound for just three I’ve never seen; plus plenty to rewatch, like my 4K copies of the Back to the Future trilogy, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, The Searchers, and The Wicker Man. Heck, even MUBI — who seem to primarily deal in films I’ve not even heard of — reminded me I own Irreversible and Peeping Tom.

Okay, enough about discs I already own that I haven’t watched — what about all the new stuff I’ve bought to add to that never-ending kevyip? After receiving a large amount of praise and success at the box office earlier this year, and then seeing plenty of love for the quality of its 4K disc release online, of course I immediately blind-bought Sinners — it’s got variable IMAX aspect ratio, I was never not likely to miss it! That’s the only shiny new film on my list this month, although there were a good few back catalogue 4Ks: the latest in Hammer’s lavish collector’s edition range, Quatermass 2 (sadly, it sounds like rights issues mean we won’t be getting a matching version of Quatermass and the Pit anytime soon); a similarly extravagant reissue of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran; and, just arrived, a ludicrously chunky box set for a film previously relegated to the status of “special feature”, Apocalypse Now making-of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. Yes, I bought that, despite already owning in two copies in my two copies of Apocalypse Now. It wasn’t just for the 4K restoration: it also comes with a bunch of special features, and a physical copy of Eleanor Coppola’s behind-the-scenes book Notes, which I don’t already own. Whether that package was worth the asking price, I’m not sure, but I still paid it, so…

More UHD discs: from 88 Films, Lucio Fulci’s giallo Murder Rock (aka Murderock, aka Murder-Rock: Dancing Death), along with a regular 1080p reissue of vampire giallo Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye; from Arrow’s recent sale, Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Sam Raimi’s The Gift; and I imported a pile of Deaf Crocodile animation releases, led by “German adult animated psychological horror mystery” but starring cats (yes, really) Felidae and French post-apocalyptic adventure Gwen and the Book of Sand; plus, in good ol’ 1080p, Hungarian epic The Tragedy of Man and the sci-fi-focused Treasures of Soviet Animation Vol. 1 (apparently there are at least six volumes of that coming. I’m going to end up getting them all, aren’t I?)

In terms of home-grown boutique labels, I am actually trying to cut back a bit (a bit), so there was just one title from Eureka this time out: German-made Western The Sons of Great Bear. Immediately belying the idea I’m in any way cutting back, Radiance dominated the month with a selection of both new releases — The Beast to Die (which has an all-timer cover, as well as sounding like a good film) and World Noir Vol. 3 (I ought to make a start on those sets… but then, that’s true of so many box set series I own) — and a pile of pickups from their sale: Dogra Magra, Mississippi Mermaid, A Quiet Place in the Country, The Story of Adele H., Tchao Pantin, and What Happened Was….

What happened was… I spent way too much on discs again. Maybe one day I’ll stop doing that. But not this month. (Not next month either, as we shall see in 31 days’ time.)

June’s Failures

Posted on July 2, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

The award for “film that almost tempted me to the cinema” this month goes to F1 — or F1: The Movie, as it may or may not be known now (websites seem to keep changing their mind). I don’t expect it to be a Great Film, but I figure it probably benefits from being seen big ‘n’ loud. Maybe I’ll still go, who knows, but with July’s films already bearing down on us (the new Jurassic World is out already, and Superman is imminent) the “big” part of “big ‘n’ loud” already has its days numbered.

Close second goes to another film with a maybe-maybe-not title change, John Wick spinoff Ballerina, aka From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. I mean, seriously. Meanwhile, June’s major release that sounds like it has the most actual quality was 28 Years Later, but I never bother to see horror at the cinema, so that was never going to be a goer. Also released: live-action remake How to Train Your Dragon, which sounds as pointless as expected; horror sequel M3GAN 2.0, which generated headlines by apparently not being a horror movie at all, more action-sci-fi, which conversely has made me more interested in watching it; and the latest Pixar, Elio, on which the word of mouth has been muted. I’ve got plenty of other Pixar films still to catch up on, so that just joins the list.

I guess summer movie season still exists, because the streamers offered almost nothing original to counterbalance those big screen spectacles. The only thing I have in my notes is Deep Cover, a Prime Video action-comedy from the director of the first two series of Ghosts, starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, and Nick Mohammed. Given all that, I’m assuming it’s more comedy than action. Audience scores look expectedly middling. It’s the kind of thing I definitely would’ve bunged on a few years ago, but nowadays I’m not sure I have the time. Nonetheless, it goes on the list of “2025 films”, so you never know — I mean, that’s a choice of two Challenge categories it qualifies for (until August begins, anyway). If I don’t get round to it soon, I very much doubt it will be significant enough to make 2025’s “50 Unseen” list. But hey, you never know.

As some kind of a counterbalance to that, plenty of big-name theatrical releases made their subscription streaming debut this past month (I wonder if the streamers take those into consideration when plotting their originals’ release dates? Never thought of that before). As per usual, NOW led the way with a slate that included Best Picture winner Anora; sequels to previous Oscar winners in Gladiator II and Joker: Folie à Deux; LEGO-based biopic Piece by Piece; superhero trilogy-closer Venom: The Last Dance; and the remake of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Prime continued to keep the theatrical window snappy with The Accountant 2 just six weeks after its big screen bow, along with Alex Garland’s Warfare after a longer-but-still-brief 16 weeks; plus Hugh Grant-starring horror Heretic, which feels like it’s taken a more traditional time period, but I haven’t bothered to work out how long. Even Disney+ had a couple worth mentioning — “worth” being a relative term, with one being their high-profile flop live-action remake of Snow White, though the other was doc Ocean with David Attenborough, which I presume has some degree of quality control due to its titular presenter. Even MUBI got in on the act with Best Animated Feature winner Flow (also out on Blu-ray at the end of the month, but I didn’t buy it because the US edition from Criterion sounds better).

Netflix, meanwhile, just had other streamers’ dregs: Barbarian, which used to be on Disney+ a while back; The Equalizer 3, fresh from NOW; Infinite and My Spy, which were both Amazon Originals during the pandemic, if I remember rightly; and the recent Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which of course used to be on iPlayer here in the UK. Of greater interest, to me at least, were sequel The Wrath of Becky (though I’ve not seen the first, which is streaming somewhere else, so maybe I won’t care to see the sequel, who knows), and The Purge: Election Year and The First Purge — they don’t have any of the other Purge films, but those are the next two I need to watch, so it’s fine by me.

The other fairly-recent catalogue title of note was Past Lives, which has bounced around a bit already but is now on iPlayer (which means I can download it and let it just sit on my hard drive forever alongside the likes of I, Tonya and Licorice Pizza and Selma). Amongst the dozens of other additions, not much provoked a significant “I really should’ve watched that by now” from me. Maybe A Cure for Wellness on Prime, just because I think director Gore Verbinski’s work is usually worth a look. And I remember Personal Shopper (also Prime) was meant to be good.

More conscious-pricking, as usual, were all the films I also own on disc and haven’t (re)watched yet, like Peter Jackson’s King Kong (I’m not sure I’ve seen that since the cinema, despite owning the extended cut on both DVD and Blu-ray), or Stargate (which I’ve owned with the intention of rewatching for literally decades), or Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (which, of course, I bought in Hammer’s recent lavish 4K edition), or Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (a general reminder that I own tonnes of 3D stuff I should get to before my TV dies or something), or Ridley Scott’s Legend (of which I bothered to import Arrow’s US-only release), or, heck, Se7en’s come around again, for the umpteenth time since I bought the 4K release. (All of those are streaming on Prime, by-the-way, who are the kings of making me think “should I have bothered to buy that or would waiting for it on streaming have sufficed?”)

Nonetheless, my addiction to buying more Blu-rays continues unabated. Plenty of upgrades to 4K this month, including a pair of early-’90s Jackie Chan outings from 88 Films, Crime Story and Armour of God II: Operation Condor; should-be-classic Dark City from Arrow; Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (a rare Steelbook buy because the regular edition’s cover was so fugly); the big box edition of The Nice Guys from Second Sight; and a selection of US imports (a bulk order, as always) including Darkman, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and the Rocky box set (I might not have bothered, but two new cuts swayed me). Plus another unwieldy big box from Hammer of The Quatermass Xperiment (not an upgrade, because I’ve never owned it before — how refreshing), and one actual new film on 4K, Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17.

The aforementioned US order also included my favourite first-time watch of last year, Bottoms; a rare 3D purchase (not because I don’t choose to buy them, but because they don’t release many nowadays) of ’50s noir The Glass Web; and more noir courtesy of Warner Archive in Mystery Street and Side Street, plus 1921 silent The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (which, I confess, I mainly bought to support the idea of Warner Archive releasing silent movies). Despite that trio, the most prominent label of the month has to be Eureka, with a stylistically wide spread of titles that included 1950s German fantasy Heart of Stone, wartime drama Hong Kong 1941, a double-bill of martial arts action under the surtitle Exact Revenge, and a sextet of ’60s crime thrillers in their Terror in the Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC box set.

Other labels only contributed a title or two, although there’s a distinct eastern throughline: fantasy-flavoured action from Arrow in The Invisible Swordsman; samurai horror from Radiance with The Tale of Oiwa’s Ghost; and John Woo’s original cut of Heroes Shed No Tears, titled Sunset Warriors, from 88 Films. Breaking the mould, Curzon put out one of the key titles not included in their comprehensive Lars von Trier box set in 2023, Palme d’Or winner Dancer in the Dark. I own that Von Trier set too, so I really ought to dig into his back catalogue more. But then, I’ve got a lot of back catalogue stuff I really ought to dig into.

May’s Failures

Posted on June 2, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

As is so often the case, Disney were the dominant box office force this month, bookending May with a pair of discussion-worthy films. At the start, apparently Marvel have finally made a good movie again with Thunderbolts* (aka The New Avengers). I’ve just got seven other MCU films to catch up on before I get there (we’ll just gloss over the nine seasons of TV (plus two specials) that I also haven’t seen). At the end of the month, their latest live-action remake, Lilo & Stitch — from what I’ve seen, not a critical success at all, but certainly a moneymaking one. I guess they won’t be stopping these do-overs anytime soon, then.

Other noteworthy big screen releases in May included (but were not necessarily limited to) a horror franchise return in Final Destination: Bloodlines (the franchise has a history of inconsistent quality (heck, what horror franchise doesn’t?), but I’m sure I’ll watch it eventually); a new Wes Anderson, The Phoenician Scheme (like the MCU, I’m a few behind with Anderson now); and another belated franchise continuation, Karate Kid: Legends (I intend to finish Cobra Kai before I watch this, so I won’t be catching it on the big screen, but hopefully by the time it hits streaming I’ll be ready for it).

We’re clearly heading into summer blockbuster season (does that even exist anymore, with studios releasing big-budget tentpoles basically year-round now?), and streaming was keen to get in on the game with Guy Ritchie’s latest heading direct to Apple TV+. Fountain of Youth looks like National Treasure with the serial numbers filed off, and I read one review which argued it was beat-for-beat Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade but tweaked enough at every stage to avoid plagiarism. Not ringing endorsements, then, but as it’s a genre of movie I mostly enjoy, it might make for easygoing entertainment one evening.

Other original premieres included Cleaner on Sky Cinema / NOW, an actioner directed by Martin Campbell, which apparently continues his streak of only doing mediocre work on films that don’t star James Bond or Zorro. Oh well. In a similar vein, they had another actioner from a once-promising ’90s action director — Simon “Con Air” West — that looks like it’s gone direct to streaming for a reason: Christoph Waltz hitman comedy Old Guy. Going straight to Prime Video was Paul Feig sequel Another Simple Favour (like the original, it challenges whether you’re committed to the sanctity of English spelling or tempting search engines with the American original). As for Netflix, they also continue the franchise game with Fear Street: Prom Queen, which I think is the fourth one, but more interesting was Lost in Starlight. All I could tell you about it is it’s a sci-fi animation, but hey, that’s better than “fourth (I think) instalment in a horror franchise I’ve never watched”.

Turning to theatrical releases making their subscription streaming debuts, I don’t think Netflix had anything to offer this month. Sky Cinema lead the way, as usual, with Oscar nominee The Wild Robot and Tim Burton legacy sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Back when the latter hit cinemas, I wrote that “I’ve never been particularly fond of Beetlejuice… so I certainly wasn’t rushing out to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at the cinema, though I’ll inevitably catch it once it’s streaming somewhere.” Well, now it’s on NOW. I still haven’t rushed to see it (it’s been on there over a fortnight already), but I do intend to at some point. Amazon offered up the latest Jason Statham vehicle, A Working Man, while Disney+ stayed relatively up-to-date with the MCU by adding Captain America: Brave New World — thought I’ll wait until I can source a 3D copy before properly adding it to my aforementioned MCU catch up list.

Digging into back catalogue expansions, I’d love to say Netflix had more to offer, but I’m not sure the likes of Dracula Untold and Gran Turismo are anything to celebrate. They did add Machete Kills, which I have a vague intention to see (it’s 12 years old now and I haven’t seen it yet, which shows you how invested I am), but at this point I’m really keeping my Netflix sub so I can finish catching up on Cobra Kai. Also because I still haven’t watched Paddington in Peru. Prime had a typically lengthy list of kinda-random new stuff — particularly catching my eye were Luc Besson’s The Big Blue, Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter, and fantasy romance classic Ghost (yeah, I’ve never seen Ghost); plus a bunch of reminders for stuff I’ve bought with intent to rewatch but haven’t yet: A Boy and His Dog, A Few Good Men, Natural Born Killers, Ronin, Training Day… I could go on, but instead I’ll switch service for more of the same, as iPlayer also jabbed me about the original Halloween, Highlander, La La Land in 4K, and Toy Story 4 in 3D; plus one I’ve bought and never seen, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future — but let’s not venture too far down that road, or it’ll be another long list. Instead, let’s close out streaming with something more obscure on MUBI (of course): Only the River Flows. All I know about it is what they had to say, but something described as a “moody neo-noir… a pungently atmospheric serial-killer procedural” sounds right up my street.

But, inevitably, we must flip back to “stuff I bought on disc and didn’t watch”, because there was plenty of that, as ever. Leading the pack in May were 4K upgrades for some absolute classics: from Arrow, the first two entries in Sergio Leone’s trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More (I have The Good, the Bad and the Ugly preordered, of course), plus Akira Kurosawa’s reimagining of Macbeth, Throne of Blood, courtesy of the BFI. Also in 4K, I imported a trio of hefty limited editions by Umbrella from Australia: Tarsem Singh’s The Fall (considering MUBI are responsible for the 4K restoration, I presume they’ll do a disc here at some point, but no sign of it yet); Richard Stanley’s debut, horror sci-fi Hardware; and (not in 4K) medieval folk horror Black Death, which I have wanted to revisit for a while after I rather enjoyed it more years ago than I care to think about.

No mainstream releases to report this month (I intend to pick up Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, but haven’t yet), but all the usual boutique labels feature, albeit in smaller quantities than sometimes. Leading the pack by volume is Eureka, thanks to four-film Masters of Cinema box set Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA, featuring a quartet of sci-fi flicks from mid-20th-century East Germany; plus their latest Shaw Brothers release, The Bells of Death, which I hope lives up to its billing as “a standout wuxia film heavily influenced by both the longstanding Japanese samurai tradition and the emergent Spaghetti Western”. Next we find 88 Films with another giallo, Nine Guests for a Crime, and a pair of Japanese superhero comedies from insanely prolific director Takashi Miike, Zebraman and Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City. Finally, just one from Radiance this month: Japanese prison break thriller The Rapacious Jailbreaker; and one from their partner label, Raro Video: Shoot First, Die Later, a poliziottesco — and as I still need to watch seven of those for this year’s Genre category, it gets to immediately sit pretty high on my to-watch list. Imagine that: actually watching stuff I buy!

April’s Failures

Posted on May 2, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

Quite often this column seems to start on a negative note when it comes to new theatrical releases, usually because something has underperformed. Not so this month, with A Minecraft Movie being a box office juggernaut at the start of the month, and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners a huge hit towards the end, too. Is the cinema “back”? Or are these just fortunate exceptions? Or maybe they prove that, if you make the right stuff, people will go out to see it. Working out what “the right stuff” is has always been Hollywood’s game, of course; I think they just became so obsessed with shared universes and familiar franchises in the wake of the success of the MCU and The Force Awakens that they forgot they could do anything else if — or, as it’s turned out, when — the general audience began to finally turn their back on ‘reliable’ cash cows.

Also on the big screen this past month, unexpected sequel The Accountant 2 (the first one was nine years ago and it’s not like people have been clamouring for a followup, have they?); Rami Malek-starring spy thriller The Amateur; fantasy comedy Death of a Unicorn; a new thriller from the director of Happy Death Day (which I’m rather fond of), Drop; another Alex Garland war movie, this time shorn of the ‘alternate history’ element, simply titled Warfare; and a handful of other things with varying degrees of impact that aren’t as on my personal radar.

The most noteworthy streaming premiere this month was the long-delayed new actioner from Gareth “The Raid” Evans… but I actually watched that (miracles do happen), so instead I guess the next-biggest was Amazon Prime’s actioner G20, which looks like it should star Gerard Butler but doesn’t. He also turned up on Prime this month though, in direct-to-streaming sequel Den of Thieves: Pantera, in case you missed him. That said, the film that most excited me on Prime this month was Superboys of Malegaon, which I also wrote about when it had a limited theatrical release in February. “If it so excited you, why didn’t you watch it?” A reasonable question. It only arrived near the end of the month, so it’s a top contender to be watched as May’s Failure.

There were plenty of other big-name and/or acclaimed theatrical titles also making their streaming debuts this month. Sticking with Prime, BAFTA Best Picture winner Conclave also dropped right at the end of the month, plus they offered awards also-ran September 5. Netflix had arguably the most populist newcomer with Paddington in Peru (I was surprised it was streaming “already”, then realised just how far through 2025 we are already), along with less well-known but well-regarded How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies. NOW was no shirk either, with Despicable Me 4, Twisters, Transformers One, and M Night Shyamalan’s Trap. Even Disney+ and MUBI got in on the game, with the former dropping Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, also right at the end of the month, and the latter offering Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl.

Recent-ish releases that also grabbed attention by moving around exactly where they were streaming included Anatomy of a Fall, Asteroid City, Black Adam, Don’t Worry Darling, Expend4bles, and Saw X (all now on Netflix), and… oh, I think that’s it. Does everything gravitate towards Netflix in the end? I’m sure they’d like you to think it does. My list of “stuff I could mention in this column” is far longer for Prime every month, I’ll tell you that. Amazon’s offering certainly includes more variety, with a greater number of older and more obscure titles. I mean, I’d never expect to find well-regarded poliziotteschi Illustrious Corpses or Neil “brother of Sean” Connery-starring James Bond spoof Operation Kid Brother on Netflix, yet they’re both on Prime now. Heck, even something like American Graffiti would be a surprise — sure, it’s directed by George Lucas, but it’s old! Yuck! Plus, they’ve also recently added a bunch of stuff that’s been released on disc by Radiance — ones I spied (because I own them, of course) included Big Time Gambling Boss, Messiah of Evil, We Still Kill the Old Way, and Yakuza Graveyard.

The list of other back catalogue stuff I could mention is, as ever, long. For a little insight, even six paragraphs into the column, my list of still-unmentioned streaming additions is 123 films long. Exactly half of those are reminders of stuff I own on disc that I either haven’t watched or would like to revisit. (Obviously exactly half would be 61.5, but you can’t have 0.5 films, so it rounds to 62, which is exactly how many there are. Ha-ha!) Any of particular note? Well, a handful of titles I need to watch for Blindspot that left streaming earlier in the year are now back — Midsommar and The Notebook on Prime; The Graduate on iPlayer — but I already, uh, acquired other copies, so it doesn’t really matter. Reminders for films I’ve upgraded to 4K on disc but still haven’t rewatched were, as ever, abundant, with headliners including Schindler’s List on Netflix; The Departed, Heat, and The Lost Boys on Prime; Vanilla Sky and The Warriors on NOW; The Abyss on Disney+; and the first four Indiana Joneses pulling a double whammy by turning up on both Netflix and NOW.

There were also additions to almost every streamer that remind me how poorly I’ve done with reviews over the last few years — i.e. stuff I’ve already seen but haven’t written up, like Fast X on Netflix, Judgment at Nuremberg on Prime, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm on NOW, and Dumbo (the live-action one) on iPlayer. They’re not failures in the sense this column means, because I’m not imminently intending to watch them again (heck, half of them I don’t ever intend to watch again), but they’re certainly failures of a different kind.

And if we’re talking about failures on multiple levels, well, what are my disc purchases but failures of self-control? Especially considering how few of them I actually watch. But let’s dodge that existential crisis (as I do every month) by just diving into a list of what I’ve bought recently. Brand-new films are limited to Nosferatu on 4K, but other 4K new releases included ’80s sci-fi actioner Trancers from 101 Films, ’90s action thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight from Arrow, and giallo Short Night of Glass Dolls from 88 Films, who also released Jackie Chan’s Miracles. Those latter two labels feature prominently in a bunch of sale pickups this month, too: from Arrow, vampire horror The Addiction, horror thriller Mute Witness, and horror sequel three-pack Psycho: The Story Continues, plus another horror sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic, on regular Blu-ray; and from 88, giallo Eyeball and Lovecraftian horror From Beyond, That’s a whole lot of horror, especially considering I’d never say it’s a favourite genre. Possibly that’s why I have so much to catch up on. Other 4K titles I’ve waited to appear in sales included Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead, Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, and James Cameron’s The Terminator (I avoided it initially because of Cameron’s love for AI upscaling, but apparently it’s not that bad here).

In terms of non-4K releases, 88 feature heavily again, though here with Japanese and Hong Kong movies of various stripes: Kinji Fukasaku’s Jakoman & Tetsu, Shaw Brothers’ Lady with a Sword, and gangster drama Yakuza Wives. More recently from Japan is fantasy comedy A Samurai in Time, the first-ever independent film to win Best Picture at the Japanese Academy Awards. Also “recent” in the sense of “from this century”, the BFI release of Takeshi Kitano’s Brother. A few more titles in the same general milieu came from Eureka, with ’90s Hong Kong actioner The Adventurers and a pair from director Chang Cheh, The Magnificent Trio and Magnificent Wanderers. Eureka also released a box set of six Dr Mabuse films from the ’60s in their Mabuse Lives! box set, which also prompted me to finally pick up their 2012 Blu-ray of Fritz Lang’s classic Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse.

I held off on that last one because I own it on DVD as part of Eureka’s nicely-presented Lang/Mabuse set, and somehow 13 years has passed. 13 years! Gives you some perspective on how long Blu-ray has been around now, and how much the industry fucked up driving a transition away from DVD. All those people who’ve proudly bought 4K TVs and probably just watch DVDs and low-tier-subscription low-quality streaming on them, thinking they’re getting a UHD experience… Well, that’s not my problem!

March’s Failures

Posted on April 2, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

Pick your poison for what was the most noteworthy theatrical release in March: Bong Joon-ho’s first film since the all-conquering Parasite, Mickey 17; or Disney’s latest live-action remake and PR mess, Snow White. I know which I’ll be watching first when they make their way to disc and/or streaming. Elsewise, it was quite a strong month for animation, with Oscar winner Flow finally making it to UK screens, alongside the highest grossing animated movie of all time (thanks China), Ne Zha 2, and the latest entry in the long-running Gundam anime franchise, this time pairing up with the creatives behind Neon Genesis Evangelion for the barely-pronounceable Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: The Beginning, released theatrically ahead of its TV series (on Prime Video worldwide from next week. I presume the movie, or an episodic version of it, will form part of that offering). Also occupying screen space were Steven Soderbergh’s second film this year already, spy thriller Black Bag, and a new Jason Statham actioner directed by David “Suicide Squad” Ayer, A Working Man, plus other films I know even less about but had big names in them or just enough of a marketing push that they entered my consciousness, like Last Breath, Opus, The Alto Knights, Novocaine, and The Woman in the Yard. I look forward to next hearing of them when they’re on free/subscription streaming and I automatically add them to my never-ending watchlist.

Talking of streaming, Netflix had an original this month that managed to attract chatter on a theatrical level — albeit for all the wrong reasons, because The Electric State is supposedly slop of the lowest order. I’ll say this for it: it prompted me to buy the book it’s based on, which I hear is excellent. Conversely, attracting no attention whatsoever (as far as I saw) was Prime Video Original Holland, which appears to be some kind of mystery thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Macfadyen, and Gael García Bernal. That interests me on the surface, but dropping it with no fanfare hardly instills confidence. Similar could be said for O’Dessa on Disney+ — yes, Disney+ has some original feature-length content to report this month! It’s a rock musical of some sort, apparently, starring Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink, who the industry seems to be desperately trying to make happen and I have no idea if it’s working or not (nothing she’s led seems to have broken out, but who knows what’s going on with Young People on the TikToks and whatnot).

Otherwise it was business as usual, in the sense that theatrically-released films of various sizes made their subscription streaming debuts. Disney+ de facto leads the way with big-hit animated sequel Moana 2 and unwanted live-action sequel Mufasa: The Lion King. Prime Video was on a slightly smaller scale with Brit flick The Critic and second Hellboy reboot Hellboy: The Crooked Man, though I bet I watch at least one of those before I watch either of those Disney offerings. The best Netflix could muster was Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which may or may not have already been on NOW, I can’t remember, thus showing how much I care for that franchise at this point. And as for NOW, their slate included litigation-provoking adaptation It Ends With Us, one-quarter of an epic Western in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (has Chapter 2 come out yet? I forget), and AI horror Afraid (aka AfrAId, geddit?)

Back catalogue additions that particularly caught my eye included two titles on Prime I’d never heard of before: The Black Watch, aka King of the Khyber Rifles, a 1929 John Ford movie co-starring Mrs Thin Man, Myrna Loy, which doesn’t have a great score on IMDb but, hey, what do they know; and Knight Chills, a TTRPG-related slasher movie, which looks low-rent but perhaps fun. Hey, it can’t be worse than Mazes and Monsters… probably. iPlayer filled a gap by offering the first Harry Palmer sequel, Funeral in Berlin. The others are on Prime, so now I can watch them all, for good or ill (I figure there’s a reason most people have only heard of The Ipcress File). MUBI are encouraging me to give the work of Jacques Tati another go by adding a bunch of his films. I saw M. Hulot’s Holiday and Playtime at uni (and reviewed the latter) and didn’t care for either, but my taste has broadened since then, so who knows now?

As ever, I could spend many paragraphs rattling through all the other streaming additions, but (as has become my habit recently) let’s focus on ones I already own on disc. For example, Se7en cropped up on Netflix, thus giving me an excuse to mention it for the third month in a row and hopefully push me to watch the 4K disc I bought. It could be worse: How the West Was Won is on iPlayer, and that was one of the first Blu-rays I bought, so it’s been sat on my shelf for 15 or so years. Could be worse: I own Orson Welles’s Confidential Report on Criterion DVD, and look, there it is in HD on Prime. At the other end of the scale, a recent ‘mistake’: I imported the US Blu-ray of The Last Voyage of the Demeter because there was no sign of a UK release, then didn’t rush to watch it and now there’s been a UK release, a 4K release, and it’s streaming ‘free’, and in 4K to boot. Dammit.

I could go on in this vein, but let’s instead to transition to future stars of my “regrets” section: all the new stuff I’ve bought on disc! Lots of 4K titles this week, from brand-new releases like Gladiator II, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, and Megalopolis, to lavish new editions of older titles, like a pair of David Cronenbergs from Second Sight, The Brood (which I’ve never seen) and Scanners (which I have and rather loved); a pair of Akira Kurosawas from the BFI, Yojimbo and Sanjuro (both great, though most praise tends to be aimed at the first whereas I have a soft spot for the second); the first in Hammer’s attempt to highlight some of their lesser-known titles, Four Sided Triangle; and, though I am usually loathe to pay full price for a Criterion, I wanted to support them releasing films like Godzilla vs. Biollante.

(If you’ll indulge an aside into some semi-informed analysis: Godzilla vs. Biollante strikes me as a telling release, in that Criterion putting it out by itself at this point suggests there’s no chance of the hoped-for Heisei Era set coming as a companion / followup to the Showa Era one they released as #1000 back in 2019. Sure, they released the original Godzilla as a standalone title before the Showa set, but that’s a different kettle of fish: the original will interest some people who don’t care for the franchise as a whole, whereas Biollante is nothing so iconic. The fact it’s only the second Heisei film leaves me hopeful the ones that followed will also get the Criterion treatment; at least the next two would be nice, as their previous double-bill Blu-ray release is currently $195+. Or maybe I’m looking at it all wrong — maybe they’ve got access to all these films in 4K and think a 4K box set would be prohibitive. But I think the fact they haven’t started with the era’s first film, The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1984), doesn’t bode well for that presumption. As always, time will tell.)

Also, I begrudgingly bought the Steelbook release of Panic Room. I’m not a huge fan of Steelbooks (unless they’re doing something clever or have exceptionally nice art, which they so rarely do), especially as nowadays it just seems to be an excuse to gouge an extra £10+ from the customer; but you can no longer guarantee that the Steelbook won’t be the only 4K release of a title (look at all those Disney+ series, and I guess that model works because Warner recently copied it for The Penguin), and, like many people, I’ve been waiting on Panic Room in HD (never mind 4K) for what feels like forever, so I didn’t want to miss out. It’s a particularly ugly Steelbook too, so I can’t even console myself with “at least it looks pretty”. If they do put out a regular edition soon, I’ll be miffed; but while there’s no sign of one, hey, at least I finally own it in HD.

Slipping down to regular ol’ 1080p Blu-ray, the boutique labels continue to dominate my spending. This month’s inevitable Radiance haul included new releases Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau (containing Police Python 357, Série noire, and Choice of Arms); French sci-fi romance Je T’aime, Je T’aime; a pickup from a previous wave, Italian newspaper-based thriller Slap the Monster on Page One; and, from their partner label Raro Video, poliziotteschi Rulers of the City. How am I meant to resist when they’re putting out stuff in some of my pet favourite subgenres? The same goes for Eureka releasing a double-bill of Venom Mob films, The Daredevils and Ode to Gallantry. I’m not even a fan of the Venom Mob films I have seen, but I see something classic from Shaw Brothers Studio and I struggle to resist. Maybe these will be the ones where I understand what makes the group so popular.

Okay, so, yeah, I should probably cut back on purchases like that. Will I ever learn? Well, news came at the end of the month that may help: HMV have ended their 20% “first order” discount, which has long been usable on as many orders as you like if you knew what you were doing. The scheme had been running for a couple of years, meaning big purchasers racked up hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of savings. I dread to think exactly how much I saved (because it would mean I spent four times more), but it was a significant factor in my purchasing decisions. Now, I guess I’ll end up spending about the same but get less for it, and spread my purchases around other stores too. We can’t exactly complain (we got far more out of it than we were ever meant to), but I can’t help but think that if HMV are expecting their gross sales to increase by 25%, they’ve got a nasty surprise coming.

February’s Failures

Posted on March 6, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

Normally theatrical releases feel like the right place to start this column, but I’m going to pivot slightly this week and look through the prism of the Oscars. I stayed up to watch the ceremony this past weekend, as I have every year for the past twenty-something years. I’m not even a great believer in the quality of the awards, but there’s something about the occasion and pomp of it all that I enjoy nonetheless. It’s certainly not about backing my favourite film(s), because this year I’d only seen one of the Best Picture nominees (Dune: Part Two) — and so that’s some kind of failure in itself, even though they’re not all necessarily readily available here in the UK right now.

Well, that depends how you define “readily available” — just because a few of them were only released here last month doesn’t guarantee they’re playing widely; and while you can rent The Brutalist for £16, I’m never going to pay that for a rental. Not everything’s so pricey: you can rent the night’s big winner, Anora, for a fiver in UHD, and the same for BAFTA victor Conclave. That said, you can’t rent Wicked for any price now, which is usually a sign that it’s coming to a streamer soon. It won’t be the first: Emilia Pérez is a Netflix film, so has been on there since it came out, of course; The Substance has been on MUBI for a little while; and, with no fanfare whatsoever, Amazon Prime dropped Nickel Boys last Friday. That just leaves A Complete Unknown and I’m Still Here as theatrical-only propositions — and the latter would’ve been mentioned at the top of this column anyway, because it only came out on February 21st.

Most of February’s other theatrical releases are unlikely to trouble next year’s awards season. They’re led by a couple of ‘fourquels’, Captain America: Brave New World and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, which are both the kind of film I’ll catch one day in no hurry (indeed, for the former, I have plenty of ‘homework’ viewing to do first). The year-round horror parade this month offered Stephen King adaptation The Monkey and emoji-inspired Heart Eyes, while school half-term fare was led by Captain Underpants spinoff Dog Man (my six-year-old nephew enjoyed that, I’m told). There was also poorly-reviewed actioner Love Hurts, and a couple more films from the 2024 awards cycle that didn’t trouble the big prizes in the end: The Last Showgirl, Memoir of a Snail, and September 5.

Of greatest interest to me, debuting right at the end of the month, was Superboys of Malegaon — an adaptation of the documentary Supermen of Malegaon, which was one of my top films in 2015. It’s a limited release, and not screening anywhere conveniently near me, so I hope it comes to a streamer sooner rather than later.

As for said streamers, the only totally original title I noted this month was Apple TV+’s romance/action mashup The Gorge, which I might have been tempted to watch if I hadn’t finally cancelled my subscription because I don’t watch it enough. Elsewhere, Amazon Prime gave relatively strong promo pushes to the likes of Anthony Mackie-starring sci-fi Elevation, Justin Kurzel-directed thriller The Order, and video game adaptation Borderlands, and yet snuck out the likes of Sing Sing (another Oscar nominee) and Here, the Robert Zemeckis films starring Tom Hanks, alongside the aforementioned Nickel Boys. Pick your depressing truth: Amazon either have no clue what the heck they’re doing, or they know streaming audiences are more likely to watch one of the former three.

Acclaimed films debuting on other streamers included two-time BAFTA nominee (including Saoirse Ronan for Best Actress) The Outrun on Netflix, and Letterboxd favourite I Saw the TV Glow on NOW. Also on the latter: motorcycle crime drama The Bikeriders and geriatric revenge comedy Thelma, plus the third theatrical Garfield movie, The Garfield Movie (bit of an abuse of the definite article, there), and the feature directorial debut of Ishana “daughter of M.” Night Shyamalan, The Watched (known as The Watchers in the US — apparently it was retitled here to avoid confusion with a Netflix show, which (a) I’ve never heard of, and (b) is, like this movie, American).

Amongst the many other comings-and-goings in the streaming space, my attention was caught by Magic Mike’s Last Dance on Prime, meaning that whole trilogy is now on there — not my kind of film on the surface, but the involvement of Steven Soderbergh means they’ve long been on my watchlist. Also now on Prime: the most recent Charlie’s Angels reboot, Monty Python-adjacent comedy A Fish Called Wanda, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s first Oscar-nominated performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Highlights* (* mileage may vary) on other streamers included Beau Is Afraid, Polite Society, and Renfield on Netflix; Doctor Zhivago, Godland, and The Outfit on iPlayer; Moonfall, Pig, and Sexy Beast on Channel 4; and a 4K restoration of Tsui Hark’s romantic comedy Shanghai Blues on MUBI.

Notice I’ve not mentioned Disney+ at all yet. There were literally no films of note on there all month, again. Not even something for the ever-lengthy list of “stuff I already own on disc to (re)watch”, which this month, across all the other streamers, included All the President’s Men, Another Round, Chinatown, the Dark Knight trilogy, Ex Machina, Hugo, The Long Good Friday Puss in Boots, Requiem for a Dream, Se7en, Stargate, the Three Colours trilogy, and To Live and Die in L.A.. And to think I always tell myself one of the main reasons to stay engaged with physical media is because you can get films you just wouldn’t see on streaming.

Well, in fairness, that’s often still the case, as many of my newest acquisitions demonstrate. I mean, who’s going to stream the kind of stuff Radiance put out? February’s releases included a double bill from Hong Kong New Wave icon Patrick Tam, Nomad and My Heart Is That Eternal Rose; Kinji Fukasaku’s final yakuza film, Hokuriku Proxy War; and ’80s German heist thriller The Cat. The same can be asked of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema line, which recently added an altogether different kind of Fukasaku film, fantasy actioner Legend of the Eight Samurai, alongside box set Sirk in Germany 1934–1935, containing three features and three shorts directed by melodrama auteur Douglas Sirk during his earlier days in Germany. Heck, even though the kind of things 88 Films release might be more accessible — HK actioners like the Jackie Chan-starring Dragon Fist, now in 4K, or The Lady Assassin — which streamer is going to dig into that catalogue? None of the major ones. And that’s before we get into all the other benefits of actually owning physical copies, of course.

Certainly, it’s not as if I don’t buy streaming-friendly titles too. I’ve definitely spotted Lifeforce on Prime Video and/or Netflix in the past, but I still bought Arrow’s new UHD disc, for all the reasons that make physical media superior (I’ll give you a list if you want, but there’s no real reason to rehash those arguments in full here unless someone literally asks for it). The same could be said for other new-to-4K titles like The Lion in Winter and Constantine, and I paid extra for North by Northwest when the tat-filled collector’s edition unexpectedly came back in stock at Amazon. Why save money with a regular edition when you can pay tens of pounds more for a hard box and some paper bits & pieces you’ll only look at once or twice? Haha… ha… hmm.

Oh, but it also has a booklet. I love a booklet. You definitely don’t get booklets on streaming.

January’s Failures

Posted on February 2, 2025 by badblokebob

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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November’s Failures

October’s Failures

August’s Failures

July’s Failures

June’s Failures

May’s Failures

April’s Failures

March’s Failures

February’s Failures

January’s Failures