Tag Archives: April

April’s Failures

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

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!

The Painful Monthly Review of April 2025

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Parts two and three of the Kizumonogatari trilogy are, allegedly, two of the 100 greatest animated films of all time. The third was, for a time, one of the 250 greatest films of all time. Having consequently watched them (no, I hadn’t heard of them before that either), I can say that, in my opinion, they most certainly are not. But hey, it’s always good to discover new things.

They’re part of a wider long-running anime franchise that fans call the “Monogatari series”. For those who don’t know, “monogatari” means “story” — hence much more famous films like Tokyo monogatari and Ugetsu monogatari and Zatoichi monogatari and Kaguya-hime no monogatari. Imagine calling your series the “Story series” and, like, it not being Toy Story.

Anyway, “kizu” means “scratch” or “wound” according to Google Translate, along with a bunch of variants about scars and hurt. Basically, it’s a painful story. Yeah, checks out. Seemed like a reasonable adjective for this review too, as I did sit through three of those things.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#34 A Real Pain (2024) — New Film #3
#35 The Black Watch (1929) — Failure #4
#36 Kizumonogatari Part 2: Nekketsu (2016) — Series Progression #5
#37 Kizumonogatari Part 3: Reiketsu (2017) — Series Progression #6
#38 Havoc (2025) — New Film #4
#39 Cat People (1942) — Blindspot #4
#40 Saboteur (1942) — WDYMYHS #4


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in April.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
  • Having ended March a full month ahead of schedule, in April that lead slipped slightly… but only by one film. And that’s still better than February, which was two films behind being a month ahead (you follow?) Being almost a month ahead might not be as good as being a whole month ahead, but it’s not too shabby.
  • I can pinpoint the specific category where I failed, because I didn’t manage any rewatches this month. It’s always a shame not to hit my monthly goals, but it also feels like a particularly easy one to catch up.
  • Of the ten films I did watch, half of their titles begin with the letter K. The last time I watched a film that’s title began with the letter K was July 2024, nine months ago. What does this signify? Absolutely nothing, I just happened to notice it.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Val Lewton’s first horror production for RKO, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was, for the second month in a row, a Hitchcock thriller, although one not as significant: wartime ‘wrong man’ adventure Saboteur.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Black Watch and Knight Chills.



The 119th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
While calling the whole month “painful” might be a bit of a stretch, nothing really stood out as incredible either. There’s some films I’ll comfortably give four stars, but nothing I loved. The nearest was probably Cecil B. DeMille’s silent epic about Jesus, The King of Kings — not my typical fare, what with not being religious, but if you ignore all the worship-y stuff, it’s a pretty good story, well-told here.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Anyone who read my introduction can make a reasonable guess at what’s coming here. The trilogy does improve as it goes on, to some degree, leaving Kizumonogatari Part 1: Tekketsu as the weak link to be overcome to reach the dubious highs to follow. (They’re not that high.)


Next month’s New Film is already locked in, because I’ve booked my ticket to see Tom Cruise once again take on his greatest enemy: his own mortality — possibly for the last time — in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

Final? Final?! Let’s hope not.

April’s Failures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Critical Monthly Review of April 2024

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 107th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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



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


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

April’s Failures

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April saw the first billion-dollar-grossing movie of the year in cinemas, animation The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Mixed reviews make it sound like your typical Illumination fare — slick, colourful, and vacuous — but I’m sure I’ll catch it someday. Elsewise, it seemed like horror was the order of the day, from the likes of The Pope’s Exorcist, Renfield, and Evil Dead Rise. The latter seemed to receive the strongest notices, but also looks terribly hardcore. I don’t know if it’ll be one for my stomach. Not that I’ve even watched the 2013 Evil Dead yet, nor the TV series; and I haven’t seen the original trilogy for so long that they’re well overdue a rewatch too. Maybe at some point I’ll do the whole shebang. Other big screen bows included a belated UK debut for Searching sequel Missing (already out on disc in the US; I’ve ordered it and had expected my copy to be here before the UK theatrical release, but the whole order got held up); the new Makoto Shinkai, Suzume; the new Ben Affleck, Air; and the first half of a two-film French adaptation of the classic swashbuckler The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan. I was pleased to see the latter getting good reviews, because I’ve been looking forward to it since it was first announced a couple of years ago; though I’m going to have to wait for a disc release to actually see it. The second half is apparently due before the end of the year.

The streamers couldn’t really equal such might, despite their best efforts. Apple TV+’s Ghosted was a wannabe blockbuster in every sense: two fairly big stars (Chris Evans and Ana de Armas), a hot director (Dexter “Rocketman” Fletcher), and an audience-friendly comedy-action-thriller-romance premise. Yet somehow it looked like one of those fake movies-within-movies you get when a character is an actor, and reviews suggest the final result isn’t much more convincing. Plus it’s on Apple TV+ — who has Apple TV+? (Besides me.) Disney+ could have fared better with their latest live-action remake, Peter Pan & Wendy, but reviews were middling. It’s helmed by David Lowery, who apparently did a bang-up job of reimagining Pete’s Dragon, alongside his excellent adult-facing features like The Green Knight, and, based on what I’ve read, that’s what saves it from being another mess of a Disney live-action remake. Definitely on my to-see list, but I’m hardly racing right for it. (I’ll probably end up watching it later this week now I’ve said that.) Meanwhile, the best Netflix could muster was TV series sequel/finale The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die; Sky Cinema snaffled up Zach Braff’s Florence Pugh-starring A Good Person as an “original”; while Amazon Prime’s biggest title was Florian Zeller’s followup to The Father, The Son, which I’ve heard is terrible. But then, they had a super-expensive new spy show to be promoting instead.

Other subscription streaming debuts this month were mostly on Sky, with the likes of Jordan Peele’s Nope (though I already bought that on 4K), Idris Elba vs a lion in Beast, animation DC League of Super Pets, and The Forgiven, a thriller starring Ralph Fiennes, Jessica Chastain, and Matt Smith, which I don’t think got particularly good reviews, but I remember the trailer looked promising. Jumping higher up my watchlist than any of those, however, was Korean action-thriller Hunt. The directorial debut of actor Lee Jung-jae (best known as the lead in Squid Game), it’s about uncovering a North Korean mole in the ’80s. Reviews cite a dense and confusing plot, but that it’s absolutely stuffed with action. Sounds worth a go to me. As for recent-ish fare on other streamers, it was mostly documentaries: on Netflix, David Bowie retrospective Moonage Daydream; and on Channel 4, cinema analysis in Lynch/Oz.

The latter also had perhaps the most interesting catalogue title of the month in The Death of Dick Long. I think you’d be forgiven for not having heard of it, but it’s a film directed by one half of Daniels, i.e. the chaps behind Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Unfortunately, I missed my chance to see it. Other titles of note included a Michael Mann I’ve not seen, The Insider, on Disney+, and a Martin Scorsese I’ve not seen, Cape Fear, on Prime Video. The standout title on iPlayer was Blazing Saddles, because it reminds me I owe it a rewatch. It’s a beloved comedy classic, but I didn’t much care for it when I saw it the first time — which was sometime before this blog began, so probably 20 years ago. And talking of a couple of decades, sticking out to me amongst a handful of interesting titles on MUBI was The Warrior, the debut feature from Asif Kapadia (who’s gone on to make more of a name as a documentary director, with the likes of Senna and Amy). I remember buying it on DVD back around when it first came out — in the early 2000s, when I was first getting into Cinema — and, er, never watching it. But I’ve been meaning to get round to it… for over 20 years. Oi. Well, here it’s in HD, vs my crummy SD DVD, so maybe I’ll finally watc— oh, who am I kidding?

Recently I’ve been training a new starter at work, and she’s only 19, which means I own DVDs that “I haven’t quite got round to watching” for longer than she’s been alive. Insane. And yet, I keep buying those shiny round discs. Not so many DVDs anymore, of course, but the Blu-rays keep pouring in. April’s haul is headlined by a few 4K debuts: from Second Sight, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (I owned it on DVD, but at least I never bought it on BD, so that’s something of a saving); and from Arrow, David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch (first time I’ve ever bought that — hurrah!) And if that wasn’t obscure enough for you, how about a couple of Jean Rollin vampire features courtesy of Indicator, The Shiver of the Vampires and Two Orphan Vampires. Indicator have said there’s more Rollin to come, and those releases are numbered #402 and #417, so I guess by “more” they mean “at least 15”. Whew. I ought to get round to watching them, really, so I can decide if I want to buy the rest…

The 4K market is a funny place right now, with relatively obscure titles as likely to get a lavish box set as anything famous, and random shit making it to disc before highly-regarded classics — as one disc-related Twitter account observed the other day, we’re getting shit like Skyline on 4K before the likes of Aliens, The Terminator, The Abyss, A.I., Minority Report, Avatar, and The Fly. All of which is a long-winded segue into saying I do buy more “mainstream” stuff too, like Babylon, Collateral, and Saw (the Steelbook, but only because it was significantly cheaper than the regular release). Also The Trial, which is a Kafka adaptation by Orson Welles released by a major-ish studio, so kinda falls between the two stools.

Back in good ol’ 1080p land, most of my purchases seemed to come from Eureka, and in bulk: a quintet of silent works by director F.W. Murnau in the going-out-of-print Early Murnau set; a quartet of classic Universal horrors in Creeping Horror, their latest box set collecting sundries from the studio’s 1930s–’40s output; and a quartet of Westerns from the Masters of Cinema line, thanks to a random sale, the best known of which is easily Shane, but also Andre de Toth’s Day of the Outlaw, Anthony Mann’s The Man from Laramie, and John Ford’s Two Rode Together. Finally, a new release: The Bullet Train — not to be confused with the recent Brad Pitt vehicle, this is a ’70s Japanese disaster movie that inspired Speed (it’s about a train with a bomb that’ll go off if it slows down).

Finally, Arrow had a sale last month, in which I picked up a quintet of Sonny Chiba titles across two box sets — The Executioner Collection (the second one’s called Karate Inferno, which might be the greatest sequel subtitle ever) and The Street Fighter Trilogy — plus Lovecraft adaptation The Dunwich Horror. And, finally-finally, a Kickstarter reward came through: a new restoration of the 1911 adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, aka L’inferno; although apparently the “restoration” is pretty poor. Oh well.

The Elven Monthly Review of April 2023

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This month, I enjoyed Bilbo Baggins’s eleventy-first birthday in 4K for the first time, and had a little eleven-related cause for celebration of my own…

(No, the post title is not a typo — it was inspired by a combination of the German for “eleven”, and what I ended the month watching…)



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#25 Red Eye (2005) — Failures #4
#26 Clue of the Twisted Candle (1960) — Physical Media #5
#27 Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) — New Film #4
#28 West Side Story (2021) — Rewatch #4
#29 Clerks II (2006) — Series Progression #4
#30 Fear Eats the Soul (1974) — Blindspot #3
#31 Scarlet Street (1945) — WDYMYHS #3
#32 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Extended Edition (2001/2002) — Physical Media #6
#33 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — Extended Edition (2002/2003) — Series Progression #5


  • I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in April.
  • Finally, a 10+ month! It’s the first since November. Hopefully it’ll be the start of a new golden run — I would love to do better and be more consistent this year (last year, seven months failed to reach 10). Obviously 2023 hasn’t got off to the best start either, but perhaps this will be the turn of the tide.
  • It’s good news for 2023’s average to date, taking it from 8.3 to 9.0; although the rolling average for the last 12 months stays exactly the same, at 8.58, because I also watched 11 new films last April. Meanwhile, April’s own average slips slightly, from 14.9 to 14.7.
  • Five of the new films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with four rewatches.
  • With only one “Rewatch” allowed per month, how they so many count? I shall explain, especially as some were recategorised at the end of the month (I doubt anyone was watching my Challenge Tracker that closely, but in case you were…)
  • I originally counted Red Eye as a Rewatch, thinking I’d watch another March failure later in the month; and so I counted West Side Story as a Wildcard because the month’s Rewatch slot was taken. When it became clear I wasn’t going to have time for another March failure, I reclassified Red Eye to cover the Failures, which opened the Rewatch slot for West Side Story.
  • Then, I could’ve counted the two Lord of the Rings films as rewatches under Wildcards, but it seemed silly to use up those slots now when I didn’t have to (who knows what I might want wildcards for later?) So, Fellowship winds up in Physical Media (my first time watching it on 4K Blu-ray) and Two Towers is Series Progression (the series being the Lord of the Rings trilogy, obviously).
  • As you may have inferred, I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy in 4K for the first time over the Bank Holiday weekend. Unfortunately, because the third day of the weekend was May 1st, the trilogy gets split across two monthly reviews. Not a problem; it just means the viewing list misses out on having a neat run of all three back to back. Well, there’s always my Recently Watched page for that.
  • Talking of series, Clue of the Twisted Candle begins the Edgar Wallace Mysteries, a series of 50-odd B-movies that will surely help bulk out my Series Progression and Wildcard categories in the future.
  • Having missed both Blindspot and WDYMYHS in March, ideally I needed to watch two of each this month to catch up. I didn’t manage that, but I kept them ticking over the with the requisite one apiece, so at least I’m no further behind.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was my first experience of the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fear Eats the Soul.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Fritz Lang’s noir about misguided affection and misattributed painting, Scarlet Street.
  • From last month’s “failures” I rewatched Red Eye (in 4K).



The 95th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
To be honest, while I liked a lot of films well enough this month, nothing blew me away. The nearest was Scarlet Street, which has a few interesting riffs on the noir ‘formula’, particularly thanks to its bumbling villains.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It’s unfortunate to cite the initial instalment of a new series here, but Clue of the Twisted Candle was a pretty by-the-book kinda mystery. Not bad, just nothing that stood out. Well, it was a B-movie filler. It’d be nice if at least some of the future Edgar Wallace Mysteries were more impressive, though.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Only two posts to choose from again, which hardly makes this award seem fair; or, rather, hardly worth mentioning. Neither bothered the top echelons of the chart, either; and, indeed, it was a dead-heat draw between the two. I need to start posting reviews again…


Coronation, Eurovision, and Bank Holidays galore! What this will mean for my film viewing, I have no idea.

April’s Failures

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I guess I could begin this months’ failures with the same film as last time: The Batman. It was still in cinemas for most of the month, but I still didn’t work out my schedule to see it. It’s now on “home premiere”, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay £16 to watch it once when I’ve already preordered the 4K Blu-ray for £30-odd. So, that’s one that’ll be getting watched in June, then.

As for new releases at the cinema, there have been plenty worth a mention, but none that have actually dragged me out. Well, the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and The Bad Guys were never going to tempt me to spend cinema-level time and money, but I’m sure they’ll go on my watchlist once they hit a streamer I already pay for. Similar story with what looks like it’ll be the last of the Fantastic Beasts films (due to low box office), The Secrets of Dumbledore, although I’ll likely buy that one on disc to complete my collection. The nearest I’ve come to actually venturing out is Robert Eggers’ new one, The Northman, but obviously that didn’t happen either. There have also been strong notices for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which I was surprised to see screening at my local Odeon (I assumed it was an indie release that’d never make it near me). Other major releases that will go on the ‘some day’ watchlist included The Lost City (looks fun), Operation Mincemeat (should I watch The Man Who Never Was first?), and Downton Abbey: A New Era, I guess (I did watch the first movie, but haven’t seen the vast majority of the TV series, so how much do I care?)

Original movies premiering on Netflix included Judd Apatow’s COVID/making of Jurassic World 3 spoof The Bubble, which looked fun but didn’t review well so I’d forgotten about until now, and Richard Linklater’s autobiographical animation Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood. But it’s Amazon who have the one that’s most likely to actually find its way to the top of my viewing pile: All the Old Knives, a weirdly meaningless title that hides a grownup spy thriller starring Thandiwe Newton and Chris Pine, amongst others. On Disney+, kid-friendly musical Better Nate Than Ever caught my eye with some solid reviews, but the trailer looks like, well, a live-action Disney movie for kids. I think it might be a Bit Much for my taste.

MUBI again have the most noteworthy post-cinema streaming premiere, with Japanese Oscar winner Drive My Car. They had quite a bit to add to my watchlist this month, in fact, including The Souvenir: Part II (I’ve not seen Part I, but it’s coming back to MUBI tomorrow), Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, The Second Mother (a film that, frankly, I know nothing about, but is a staple of the middle of Letterboxd’s Top 250), The Turin Horse, and Showgirls. Yes, that Showgirls; though, based on its listed running time, I have concerns it might be cut. They’ve also got the documentary that delves into the film’s critical rehabilitation, You Don’t Nomi.

Comfortably in second for such things was Sky Cinema, whose headliners included Dune (which I’ve seen, of course, but still not reviewed) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (which I already own on disc). More pertinently for me, then, was Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark. I’ve not seen all of The Sopranos — not even close — so do I leave the movie until the theoretical future date when I’ve finally watched the TV series, or, as it’s a prequel, do I just go ahead and watch it anyway? (I don’t have an answer. Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to either, dear reader.) Also, The Boss Baby 2. I enjoyed the first more than I expected, so maybe I’ll watch the second.

I don’t think there was anything so new on iPlayer or All 4— I guess they’re hampered in such things by still essentially being TV catchup services — but that does make them more reliable for older stuff worth watching, some of which I’ve never otherwise heard of, like When Eight Bells Toll, a 1970s spy-fi action-thriller with Anthony Hopkins, which obviously sounds up my street. Also the documentary The Truffle Hunters, although reportedly the BBC version is cut for time. Shame.

I don’t think Netflix or Amazon had any catalogue titles in the same league as any of those. I noted down a bunch of stuff for each, but it’s mostly watchlist filler I won’t get round to, or stuff I already own on disc and really should’ve watched. The one exception is Snake Eyes — not the Brian De Palma / Nic Cage thriller, but the G.I. Joe prequel starring possible-next-Bond Henry Golding. It’s the kind of weightless action movie I’ll bung on of a lazy evening someday. Speaking of which, Amazon also (re)added White House Down, which I’d like to rewatch sometime purely because it was quite fun. Whenever I see it pop up on streaming, I add it to my list for a rewatch; yet I’ve never felt any compulsion whatsoever to buy it on disc, despite my huge disc collection being full of total blind buys. Weird.

And talking of blind buys, that’s what makes up the majority of my disc acquisitions this month. Well, I think it always does. Just one thing I bought this month is something I’ve watched before: the BFI’s 4K edition of The Proposition, a film I haven’t seen since the cinema but liked very much back then. That said, I did pick up Network’s bundle marking 50 years of The Persuaders, which included all eight of the films in HD — except the films were edited together from TV episodes, all of which I’ve seen, so… Also in the TV/film grey area (in that it was definitely a TV programme, but it was a one-off feature-length production, so do we count it as a TV movie nowadays or something?) is the BBC’s 1950s production of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which finally made it to disc from the BFI, years after they first tried to release it (I can’t remember when that was, but it was only scheduled for DVD back then).

In the realm of things that are 100% definitely movies, the new Scream (that’d be the fifth Scream movie, sadly missing the opportunity to be called 5cream) is the only brand-new film entering my collection this month. Other new releases were catalogue titles, like Kino’s 4K release of In the Heat of the Night, which comes bundled with its two sequels on regular Blu-ray (did you know it had two sequels? I didn’t); or classic martial arts action from Eureka in the form of Yuen Woo-ping’s Dreadnaught and Sammo Hung’s Knockabout; or the grab-bag release Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror, featuring a trio of lesser-known entries from Universal’s cycle of horror movies in the ’40s and ’50s. And speaking of horror, that may be what Arrow is best known for releasing, but the only titles I bought from them this month were Rogue Cops and Racketeers, a small box set featuring a duo of poliziotteschi (crime/action films made in Italy in the ’70s), and 1990 neo-noir crime thriller King of New York, on sale in 4K.

Finally for this month, Indicator had one of their rare sales, which I used to pick up a mixed bag of titles that were on offer and also recent releases I hadn’t yet bought. In the latter camp were early Mexican horror The Phantom of the Monastery and P.D. James adaptation An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, while the former included The Gorgon (originally from the first volume of their Hammer box set series), neo-noir erotic thriller Jagged Edge, and their lavish edition of a Peter Cushing flick I’d never heard of, Corruption. Based on the fact the limited edition hasn’t sold out, even after being subjected to massive price cuts (I paid just £10.99), I guess a lot of other people hadn’t heard of it either. What inspired Indicator to give it the box set treatment, I don’t know.

That’s the Second Biggest Monthly Review of April 2022 I’ve Ever Seen!

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If you’re unfamiliar with the work of the once-formidable computer game developer LucasArts, you might think the title of this month’s review is setting up an almost-but-not-quite record-breaking affair. Not so, dear reader.

As those au fait with the aforementioned studio’s venerable output are doubtless already aware, this month’s title is, rather, referencing a running gag from the Monkey Island games. That was prompted by the recent announcement that 2022 will see the release of a sixth game in the series. The Monkey Island games have been a big part of my life, ever since I played the original on our family’s first PC when I was about six years old, so I’m thrilled that we’re getting another. I’ve already begun replaying the preceding games in anticipation.

None of which has anything to do with films, of course (except for the trivia that Steven Spielberg and ILM did nearly make a Monkey Island film once), other than that it’s taken away some of my film-viewing time. Consequently, the following has occurred…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#26 Death on the Nile (2022) — New Film #4
#27 Munich: The Edge of War (2021) — Wildcard #1
#28 Encanto (2021) — Series Progression #2
#29 The Father (2020) — Rewatch #4
#30 High and Low (1963) — Blindspot #4


  • I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in April.
  • Just four of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • That means I’ve fallen behind schedule for the first time this year — I should’ve reached #33 to be on track to hit #100 in December at a steady pace.
  • I’m not too worried, though. This month, for example, I watched seven films that didn’t count towards the challenge, so there’s plenty of leeway to watch more challenge-compliant films in the future.
  • Nonetheless, I deployed my first ‘wildcard’ in April, counting Munich: The Edge of War as a second 2022-released film watched this month. It’s a nice category to be able to use a wildcard in… but now that I’ve done it once, I can’t do it again. Them’s the rules.
  • In case you weren’t sure, the series Encanto progresses is the Disney Animated Canon (or Animated Classics, or whatever else you want to call it — the official name has varied over time). It’s not the ‘next’ entry I need to see in that series, but that’s okay, because it’s one of the few I’m making my way through in any old order.
  • This month’s Blindspot film saw the great Akira Kurosawa in a Hitchcockian mode for kidnap thriller cum social drama High and Low.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film didn’t happen in the end, leaving me with one to catchup — next month, hopefully.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Death on the Nile and Fast & Furious 9.



The 83rd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Aside from the films listed above, my viewing this month included such acclaimed and/or popular recent releases as Spider-Man: No Way Home and Best Picture Oscar winner CODA. But, while they were good isn their own ways, probably the best film I saw was a classic: Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Nothing truly terrible this month, but Fast & Furious 9 finally burst that franchise’s bubble, for me. Those films have been ridiculous but fun for about half the series’ run now, but I thought F9 tipped the balance too far — it was more ridiculous than ever, but it was no longer fun.

Most Unfortunate Casting That Didn’t Happen of the Month
Withnail & I is one of those films I’ve been meaning to watch forever but never quite cared enough to make the effort to get round to, until this month. Then, entirely by coincidence, I later happened to see on Twitter this bit of trivia: apparently, early in the development of Sherlock, creator(s) Steven Moffat and/or Mark Gatiss mentioned to Paul McGann that they were considering casting him as Watson with Richard E. Grant as Holmes. Now, obviously they’re Withnail & I personas wouldn’t be right for those roles, but they’re both much more versatile actors than that. As great as I think Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman were, a film/series with Richard E. Grant as Sherlock Holmes and Paul McGann as Dr Watson is something I now feel we’ve been robbed of.

Most Pointless Extra-Textual Question of the Month
When the trailer for Death in the Nile came out, one line from it went semi-viral: “we have enough champagne to fill the Nile!” Of course, the character is being metaphorical: no one thinks they actually have that much champagne; she just means they have a lot. But, as I said, the line went viral, and therefor you can find multiple articles that tried to answer the question, how much champagne would it take to fill the Nile? The answer? It’s complicated. And, really, for such a fundamentally pointless question (no one’s going to try to do it for real), does any answer closer than that matter?

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Just three posts compete for this honour, once again (hopefully May will be when I finally get back on top of that), and the winner is the one with actual reviews to read: 2022 Weeks 9–11.



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


I’m going to try to get both my challenge viewing and my general reviewing back on track. We’ll see how that goes…

The Nomadic Monthly Review of April 2021

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We’re on a road to nowhere… Or, maybe, the road to recovery. Hopefully. Certainly, I’m still on the road to 100 films this year, at least.


#74 Sátántangó (1994)
#75 The Son of Kong (1933)
#76 Godzilla Raids Again (1955), aka Gojira no gyakushû
#77 King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), aka Kingu Kongu tai Gojira
#78 King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)
#79 Captain Phillips (2013)
#80 The Frozen Ghost (1945)
#81 The Fly (1986)
#82 The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
#83 Nomadland (2020)
#84 The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978)
#85 Detective Conan: The Phantom of Baker Street (2002), aka Meitantei Conan: Bekâ Sutorîto no bôrei
#86 Taken 2 (2012)
#87 Warning from Space (1956)
#88 Spielberg (2017)
#89 Primary Colors (1998)
#90 Stowaway (2021)
#91 Beginners (2010)
#92 The Coldest Game (2019)
#93 Going My Way (1944)
#94 A Single Man (2009)
Captain Phillips

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Nomadland

.


  • I watched 21 new feature films in March.
  • That makes 2021 the first year since 2016 that the first four months have all passed the 20-film threshold. If I continue that into May, it’ll be the first year ever.
  • On the other hand, this is the first month in 2021 not to set a new record for the furthest I’ve reached by this point — I’d got to #96 by the end of April last year. Close, but no cigar.
  • I had hoped this might be the first year I got to #100 in April, but no dice. Last year I did it on May 5th, which is another record I don’t think I’ll be beating after all. Ah well — not everything can be a record-breaker.
  • Nonetheless, this was the earliest I’d ever reached the three-quarters mark, in terms of both my eponymous challenge (getting to #75 on the 3rd, beating the 8th from 2016) and my new 120-film challenge (getting to #90 on the 22nd, beating the 26th last year).
  • In terms of averages, it beats the April average (previously 14.8, now 15.2), but falls a little short of the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 23.3, now 21.8) and the average for 2021 to date (previously 24.3, now 23.5).
  • Oops, I started another film series! I’d loosely intended to dive into the classic Godzilla films once I finally finished Zatoichi, but enjoying Godzilla vs Kong last month prompted me to want to see the ‘original’, 1962’s King Kong vs Godzilla. To do that ‘properly’, I had to watch the movies preceding it too — you can find the original Godzilla and original King Kong down in the Rewatchathon section, plus Son of Kong and Godzilla Raids Again at #75 and #76 (I watched them in and around spending four days trudging through Sátántangó). So, technically, I’m now three films deep into Big G’s 15-film Showa era.
  • Relatedly: no, that’s not a mistake at #77 and #78 — one’s the original Japanese version, the other is the US rejig (with much footage deleted, new stuff added, and all dubbed into English).
  • This month’s Blindspot film: as mentioned in brackets a moment ago, this was the insanely long (seven hours!) Sátántangó. It’s based on a novel and apparently adapts every single incident from the book, so this is what happens when you don’t bother to abridge an adaptation.
  • I didn’t watch anything from last month’s “failures”. Hey-ho.



The 71st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I originally had a different winner down for this category, until a last-minute change of mind. You see, I expected to like Captain Phillips, because I’d heard good things and I generally like the work of director Paul Greengrass and star Tom Hanks, but it rather blew me away how good it was — a tense, dramatic, unpredictable thriller, with a final scene that by itself should’ve earnt Hanks an Oscar nomination, if not even a win. He was robbed!

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I know it’s acclaimed as one of the greatest films ever made, but, sorry, I found Sátántangó to be an unrelenting bore. It may not be the truly worst film I saw this month — it has some great filmmaking, and I do think there’s a very good movie buried inside it, if it were edited down considerably — but this is “least favourite”, not “worst”, and nothing else this month entertained me less for such a long period of time.

Best Hound of the Baskervilles of the Month — Possibly Ever
I’ll forgive you if you’re not up on your release years for every adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles — there are quite a few, for one thing. So, the two I watched this month were the Hammer version starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (that’s the 1959 one), and the comedy version starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (that’s the 1978 one). The latter is famously awful, and… yeah, it is. But the former is a stunner. Not the most strictly-faithful adaptation, but bursting with atmosphere, whip-crack paced (it doesn’t even hit the 90-minute mark), and with a top-flight cast (Cushing deserves to come up more often in discussions of the best screen Sherlocks).

Most Pleasant Surprise of the Month
We’re so used to berating Oscar voters for their terrible Best Picture choices, it’s weird that recently they seem to have hit a good streak (Green Book excepted). And it continues this year, because I thought Nomadland was a legitimately fantastic movie. (Admittedly, it’s the only Best Picture contender I’ve yet seen, but still.)

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
I’m terribly behind on my TV reviews, which at least means they can’t dominate this category. And so a film wins again — not the all-awards-winning Nomadland, though, but the belated UK release of Palm Springs carries it to victory here.



Although I rewatched four films this month, coming into April I had gradually slipped far enough behind that I’m still four films off target. But I’m always intending to rewatch some whole series (high on the list: to finally watch my Indiana Jones Blu-rays before the 4K set comes out), so if I pull my finger out and do something like that, the number could easily jump up.

#10 Wonder Woman 3D (2017)
#11 King Kong (1933)
#12 Godzilla (1954)
#13 Palm Springs (2020)

I found Palm Springs more easily enjoyable on a second watch, freed of all the hype and expectation it came burdened with first time round. Seems only appropriate… Wonder Woman was also a second watch, and my original review still mostly stands (despite the comments section implying I might’ve missed something). As for the quality of its 3D, it’s the kind of post-conversion job that isn’t bad, but also mostly makes you wonder why they bothered.

King Kong was the subject of a ‘Guide To’, so find that linked above for my latest thoughts on the monster movie classic. I last saw it many, many years ago, and my increased film literacy and appreciation for classic movies led me to enjoy it a lot more this time round. Similar could be said for Godzilla: knowing what to expect pace- and content-wise, I enjoyed it a bit more; certainly enough to shore up the 4-star rating on my review (linked above, natch).


The reopening of cinemas may be imminent(ish) in the UK, but that hasn’t stopped distributors sending releases straight to overpriced “home premieres” — in April, those included young adult adaptation Chaos Walking and Oscar Best Picture nominee Minari, while fellow Best Picture nominee Promising Young Woman was relegated to being a Sky Original. And if you thought we had to wait quite a while for those, or Palm Springs and Nomadland (which were also both this month), check out Chloé Zhao’s debut feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me: MUBI was responsible for its UK wide release this month, a full six years after its initial release elsewhere.

There were Oscar contenders to be found among the streamers’ new releases too, with Amazon offering Sound of Metal to subscribers, alongside premieres of Guantanamo Bay drama The Mauritanian and Tom Clancy adaptation Without Remorse. Netflix’s awards flicks already came out last year, although they had the international premiere of Love and Monsters this month, which was at least up for effects nods. Less well received was Melissa McCarthy superhero comedy Thunder Force, though I have heard positive things about some of their other original titles, like Run (the new film from Aneesh Chaganty, director of Searching) and animation The Mitchells vs. the Machines. In terms of catalogue titles, Netflix brought back sometime-IMDb-Top-250-ers In the Name of the Father, Lagaan, and Taare Zameen Par (aka Like Stars on Earth); the subscription streaming debut of Shirley; plus a few things I haven’t seen for years and would like to rewatch, like Cast Away, The Quick and the Dead, and perhaps Jarhead (I saw it at the cinema 16 years ago and didn’t particularly like it, but maybe it’s worth another look, considering the talent involved).

Once again, my new disc purchases know no bounds. I passed 100 titles on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray this month, thanks to new releases of Batman v Superman (remastered with IMAX scenes), the 2014 Godzilla (in a spiffy limited edition from HMV), and Arrow’s Battle Royale (even though I haven’t watched their Blu-ray release that I bought over a decade ago). I also finally got Léon in 4K. I imported the US edition (because it looks so much better than the European one) from Amazon.com last year, but they kept sending me what looked like bootleg copies that I kept returning until they said they’d look into the matter. This time, I picked it up somewhere else, and it’s clearly a genuine copy — so I was right about Amazon flogging bootlegs.

While I was importing that, I also snaffled up a bunch of classic 3D titles (The Maze, September Storm, and Wings of the Hawk) and finally managed to find a copy of the Olive Signature Edition of Orson Welles’s Macbeth for a reasonable price. Talking of sales, I picked up Black Rainbow, Black Test Car, and The Black Report from Arrow’s recent offering (their related titles being coincidence rather than design). On the full price side of things, I couldn’t resist a bunch of new and recent Indicator releases: The Beast Must Die, Crimewave, Irreversible, and Twentieth Century.

And talking of failures to resist, I really, really tried not to buy Curzon Artificial Eye’s Bong Joon-ho box set. They used very pretty art design (the box art went down a storm with a certain kind of collector on Twitter) to bundle together almost-special-feature-less versions of a bunch of Bong’s films — and not even a complete collection, because Netflix have a stranglehold on Okja, and I guess Curzon couldn’t be arsed to license his short films (unlike a similar set recently released in Australia). I already own regular extras-filled editions of The Host and Snowpiercer, and I’ve caved to two copies of Parasite (both the 4K and Criterion’s extras-packed release), plus I have my eye on Criterion’s extras-loaded edition of Memories of Murder. All that left in the AE set’s favour was Barking Dogs Never Bite and Mother, the latter of which used to be available in a decent standalone edition (it’s out of print, but used copies aren’t hard to come by). So why the hell did I buy it in the end? Well, that’s still three films I don’t own — I could’ve got Mother by itself, but Barking Dogs Never Bite doesn’t have a standalone edition; and the Criterion release of Memories of Murder has rather controversial, ugly colour grading, while the UK edition is considerably less egregious in that department. The deal was sweetened by Parasite having some special features not present on my other copies (primarily, deleted scenes) and, yes, the attractive box design — it will look nice on my shelf. It’s definitely not the most sound purchasing decision I’ve ever made, but sometimes it’s just nice to have nice things.


There’s only one date left on my “never seen a film on” list: May 23rd. Will I finally complete the year, or will I forget and miss it? (You’d think it’d be an easy achievement to guarantee, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve simply forgotten to do it.)

The Locked Down Monthly Review of April 2020

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In 2002, Blue got the city on lockdown.
In 2020, Boris Johnson got the country on lockdown.
Your move, noughties boy bands.

One thing this stressful time has been good for is my film viewing. After a 2019 that saw some of my lowest months in years — indeed, ever — I’m pleased to say that April 2020 is a record breaker:

100 Films has a new Best. Month. Ever!


#59 Rang De Basanti (2006)
#60 The Kid (1921/1971)
#61 The Three Caballeros (1944)
#62 Stop Making Sense (1984)
#63 Burning (2018), aka Beoning
#64 The Karate Kid Part III (1989)
#65 Aniara (2018)
#66 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
#67 The Diamond Arm (1969), aka Brilliantovaya ruka
#68 I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
#68a The Devil’s Harmony (2019)
#69 The Next Karate Kid (1994)
#70 Never Too Young to Die (1986)
#71 It Chapter Two (2019)
#72 Andrei Rublev (1966)
#73 Dune: The Alternative Edition Redux (1984/2012)
#74 Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
#75 K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
#76 Near Dark (1987)
#77 The Thin Red Line (1998)
#78 Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
#79 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)
#80 6 Underground (2019)
#81 The Secret Life of Pets 2 3D (2019)
#82 Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman (2006)
#83 Long Day’s Journey into Night 3D (2018), aka Di Qiu Zui Hou De Ye Wan
#84 End of the Century (2019), aka Fin de siglo
#85 Men in Black: International (2019)
#86 The Sheik (1921)
#87 The Son of the Sheik (1926)
#88 Extraction (2020)
#89 The Wedding Guest (2018)
#89a The Escape (2016)
#90 Ready or Not (2019)
#91 Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
#92 The Two Popes (2019)
#93 Ice Age: Continental Drift 3D (2012)
#94 The Lunchbox (2013)
#95 Zatoichi in Desperation (1972), aka Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Oreta tsue
#96 Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
Aniara

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

Dune: The Alternative Edition Redux

Jumanji: The Next Level

Ready or Not

The Lunchbox

.


  • I watched 38 new feature films in April.
  • As I said at the start, that’s my most ever in a single month, beating the previous record holder (May 2018) by four films. That’s noteworthy because May 2018 is only one film ahead of the month that’s now in 3rd, which is only two films ahead of the month now in 4th, which is only three films ahead of the months now in =5th. So, four is a pretty healthy margin.
  • Obviously, as my best month ever, April is going to smash any comparisons I care to make. So let’s start with the only thing it wasn’t guaranteed to do, but it has done nonetheless: #96 is the furthest I’ve reached by the end of April (next best is #90 in 2018).
  • Averages: it increases April’s average by two whole films, from 12.8 to 14.8; increases the rolling average of the last 12 months from 13.3 to 14.8; and increases the average for 2020 to date from 19.3 to 24.0. If I maintained that average until December, 2020 would become my biggest year ever (but things never work out like that).
  • It’s my 21st month with 20+ films, and my 4th month with 30+ films.

Alright, now some notes on the films within those 38…

  • Back in February, I noted that I’d somehow never seen a film from 1932. That’s now changed, thanks to I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Now, since the year of the first feature films being produced in the UK and USA (1912), there are only four years from which I’ve not seen at least one feature-length film: 1912, 1914, 1915, and 1923. I have at least one title picked out from each of those years that I could use to settle this matter, so I ought to get on with them…
  • I’ve seen David Lynch’s Dune before, but it was over 20 years ago and it was the theatrical cut. The fan edit I watched adds material from a longer TV cut and deleted scenes, plus generally rearranges and rejigs stuff, so I figure it must be substantially different enough to count as new.
  • Having watched 92% of the alphabet in January, February, and March, only X and Z remained — with the latter now claimed by Zatoichi in Desperation. X will go whenever I get round to watching Dark Phoenix — I think that’s literally the only X film I have in my collection or on Netflix/Amazon/etc.
  • This month’s Blindspot films: Andrei Tarkovsky’s biopic of 15th century religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. I found it as dry as that sounds. Also, from my ‘overflow’ list, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, which I was also underwhelmed by. I knew it would be more Malickian than your typical war movie, but still, something about it didn’t connect with me.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Aniara, End of the Century, It Chapter Two, Rambo: Last Blood, Ready or Not, and The Secret Life of Pets 2, plus The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (see Rewatchathon). That’s a record haul, besting the five failures I watched last April. It was driven by most of those being time-limited Amazon rentals.



The 59th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
How to define “favourite”? On the one hand you’ve got something like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which is a weighty and still-pertinent condemnation of the American justice system. On the other, something such as Jumanji: The Next Level, which is just a whole lot of fun. More tickling my fancy in the former camp is Aniara, about the psychological strain of being stranded in space with little hope of ever returning home, some of which feels very pertinent to our current world situation (I know we’re all at home rather than far from it, but the cooped up with no hope of escape… yeah). And in the latter camp, Ready or Not is a deliciously gonzo horror-comedy, which didn’t quite push as many buttons as I’d hoped but is still massively entertaining. On balance, bearing in mind its unexpected timeliness, Aniara takes it.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is a more straightforward category… although, personally, I included Andrei Rublev on my shortlist, which is a Highly Acclaimed Movie (just check out how many Greatest Ever lists it’s on), but it bored me senseless. Still, it did have some parts I admired — I’m not sure I can say the same about Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Actually, that’s not strictly true: Christopher Reeve was always perfect as Superman; but the film definitely lets him down.

Best Musical Discovery of the Month
I’d never consciously listened to Talking Heads before I watched Stop Making Sense. I recognised exactly two of the songs during that concert movie, and one of those I know best from a cover version. While I wouldn’t exactly call myself a convert to their music, I liked most of it well enough, with opening number Psycho Killer my favourite. In fact, I preferred the live version in the film to the original recording. Maybe it’s just because I heard that take first, I dunno.

Best Audition to Be James Bond of the Month
It never even crossed my mind that the skinny kid from Slumdog Millionaire could ever be considered for Bond, and I bet it didn’t yours either. It was David Ehrlich’s Letterboxd review of The Wedding Guest that first flagged up the idea for me, and, having seen the film, I can see what he means. Dev Patel as James Bond… it’d certainly be different.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
The second half of last month’s TV review sat pretty atop the chart for most of the month (the Doctor Who half, meanwhile, wasn’t even close), but then Extraction came barrelling through my stats like Tyler Rake through an overcrowded Indian apartment block. Five older TV posts topped it overall, but it was by far my most-viewed new post.



The name’s Connery, Sean Connery.

Yes, there’s a distinct theme to this month’s rewatches. It wasn’t deliberate… well, not at first. Once I noticed it, obviously I had to maintain it.

#15 Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
#16 The Avengers (1998)
#17 The Rock (1996)
#18 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

…and, if you want to take it further, you could argue they’re all movies where Connery returned to the role of James Bond. Sure, Diamonds Are Forever is the only one where that’s literally true, but there’s long been a fan theory that Connery’s character in The Rock is Bond under a pseudonym, and in The Avengers he plays an innuendo-spewing former British secret agent turned villain. As for LXG… yeah, okay, the idea runs out there.

When I included The Rock in my 100 Favourites, I only rated it 4 stars. Now I feel like a fool — it’s easily a 5. Some thoughts as to why on Letterboxd. Mind you, that kind of thing cuts both ways: when I finally got round to rewatching Face/Off 18 months ago, I discovered I didn’t enjoy it as much as I used to, and if I’d done that before publishing 100 Favourites then I might’ve dropped it from the list entirely. I intend to update my favourites list someday, but I think I need to do a good deal more rewatching before then.

My rewatch of LXG was prompted by this defence of the film. While I wouldn’t call the movie a masterpiece, I do generally agree with that article — the film has its moments (many of them thanks to Dorian Gray), and it’s certainly no worse than many other ’90s/’00s Hollywood blockbusters. Quite why it provokes such vitriol from anyone but fans of the book is beyond me. (Book fans have every right to be disappointed, because the film sanitises and Hollywoodises the concept. That said, as a fan of the books myself, I’m happy to take both forms as differing executions of the same idea.)


This may be the biggest month in 100 Films history, but there was still plenty of stuff I failed to watch. Nothing in cinemas, obviously (though Trolls World Tour did get released direct to premium streaming, and consequently looks like it might change the world), but the other avenues for film viewing offered more than enough alternatives.

For starters, Netflix completed their Studio Ghibli lineup with Howl’s Moving Castle (the only one I’d seen), From Up on Poppy Hill (which I own on Blu-ray), Ponyo (also on Blu-ray), When Marnie Was There (also on Blu-ray, jeez!), Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, and The Wind Rises. On the new films front there was CG animation The Willoughbys, which looks vaguely interesting, and for (relatively) recent releases they mustered the remake of Child’s Play. They also added the second Maze Runner film, The Scorch Trials. One day the whole trilogy will be available somewhere and I’ll give them a shot.

Amazon actually had more to offer in terms of recent acquisitions, though the quality level is dubious — I’m talking of films like Angel Has Fallen (the second sequel to the less-good “Die Hard in the White House” movie), Playmobil: The Movie (a rip-off of The LEGO Movie that wasn’t as well received), 21 Bridges (which received middling notices), and The Current War (presumably in its director’s cut form, for which the most positive comment Rotten Tomatoes can muster is “a significant improvement over previous versions”). Additions from the archive include a handful of Hong Kong actioners, led by the appropriately-titled Police Story: Lockdown (the sixth film, and second reboot, in the Jackie Chan action franchise), plus unofficial prequel The Legend is Born: Ip Man (I believe Ip Man 4 is also now available to rent over here), and Donnie Yen in Legend of the Fist (a version of the story from Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury and Jet Li’s Fist of Legend).

Also new to Amazon was medical disaster movie Outbreak, which was already on Netflix; and they both added Contagion, after everyone was talking about it last month. I noticed it still made it into Netflix’s UK top ten, though.

Over on Now TV, sequel-cum-reimagining Four Kids and It caught my eye because I remember enjoying the BBC’s 1991 adaptation of the original book when I was a kid, but this new one didn’t seem to go down terribly well (though the British critics collated by Rotten Tomatoes have got it to 61%, which counts as ‘fresh’). Other recent films now on Sky include Ma and Tolkien.

Finally, I went a bit potty in Blu-ray sales again, this time mostly at Arrow, picking up a couple of Vincent Price horrors, Tales of Terror and Tower of London; a couple of artier titles from Second Run, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and Ikarie XB 1; Third Window’s double-bill of The Whispering Star and The Sion Sono; and some Westerns and noirs and noir-Westerns that include The Ox-Bow Incident, My Name is Julia Ross, and Terror in a Texas Town. The latter pair were directed by Joseph H. Lewis, whose So Dark the Night I enjoyed last month, so I also bought his Gun Crazy in its HMV-exclusive edition, paired with their edition of Out of the Past in their 2-for-£25 offer. Meanwhile, Eureka tempted me with new releases, namely Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Masters of Cinema titles Rio Grande, Kwaidan, and their second box set of Buster Keaton features, which includes The Navigator, Seven Chances, and Battling Butler. International travel may be closed to humans, but it isn’t to Blu-rays, as evidenced by my imports of 3-D Rarities Volume II (which includes Mexico’s only 3D film, swashbuckler El Corazón y la Espada) and A Boy and His Dog (which I look forward to rewatching in good quality, unlike the print I saw on Prime Video a few years ago). I tried to resist the UHD upgrade of The Elephant Man, but then I saw the PQ comparisons and the limited-edition pop-up packaging (damn my love of a cardboard gimmick!) and caved.

And, inevitably, I did purchase The Rise of Skywalker, in 3D. You know, I’ve never got round to rewatching The Last Jedi. The idea of pairing them up as a double bill should be the most natural thing in the world, but instead it feels like a bold experiment in combining chalk and cheese. Still, I might try it sometime.


Barring any unforeseen circumstances (though, at the minute, who can accurately foresee anything?), I should definitely pass #100 early next month. As for my new-goal-I-keep-half-forgetting of #120, well, that’s within reach too. And then…

In my final monthly review of 2019, I mentioned that “it’s entirely possible [2020 will] be the year I reach #2000”. Now, it’s all but certain that it will (unforeseen circumstances, remember). If May gets to 35 films (which, before this month, would’ve been a record for biggest month ever), that’ll be 100 Films’ #2000! Is it likely I’ll achieve two such huge months in a row? Funnily enough, the last couple of times I’ve set a new “best month ever” it’s been immediately beaten by the very next month: September then October in 2015; April then May in 2018.

No pressure, May 2020…