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.

I often think I should make more of an effort to get to the cinema, but then I look at what’s out and think, “to see what?” Sure, I’ll inevitably watch things like video game sequel The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Jacko biopic Michael when they come to a streamer I’m subscribed to (or add them to my watchlist, at least), but I don’t feel compelled to go out of my way to see them. I should probably make an effort to support smaller titles, like Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada, but they don’t screen at my local, and once you add in the cost of travel and time to go further afield, the value proposition is even lower. It’s like this most months nowadays. Is it just me, or is it the state of modern cinema? I dunno.

Other big screen releases destined to end up on my watchlist someday included Zendaya / Robert Pattinson drama The Drama, Lee Cronin horror Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, Oliver Assayas’s political thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin, and David Lowery’s pop-music-based psychological thriller Mother Mary.

The original offerings from streamers weren’t much more edifying. World Cup adjacent comedy Balls Up? Sounds balls. Greenland sequel Greenland: Migration? I never bothered with the first one, never mind a followup. Shark movie Thrash is the kind of genre fare I probably would’ve bunged on once upon a time, but I doubt I’ll make time for it nowadays. Action-thriller Apex at least boasts Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, and Eric Bana among its cast, proving that recognisable names are still a factor in drawing a film to your attention. Literally all I know about Apple TV+’s Outcome is it stars Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz and was written and directed by actor Jonah Hill, but that was enough for me to notice it and bung it on this list. Mind you, the film I’m mostly likely to actually watch is Eat Pray Bark, because dogs.

There’s more interesting fare thanks to theatrical releases making their streaming debuts, like the revival of the Final Destination franchise, Final Destination: Bloodlines; or Zach Cregger’s Oscar-winning horror Weapons; or Richard Linklater’s Oscar-nominated Blue Moon; or Dwayne Johnson’s attempt at Oscar bait, The Smashing Machine; or Ari Aster’s Eddington; or Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing; or Crime 101, which I swear was only just in cinemas. (Those are spread around between NOW and Amazon Prime Video, if you’re interested. Don’t think there was any Netflix in there. There’s even less to say about the other streamers… so I won’t.)

A plethora of back catalogue stuff vies for a mention, as usual. Netflix seemed to mop up a bunch of Warner Bros films, possibly in anticipation of the acquisition that didn’t happen, including DC superhero flicks like Blue Beetle, The Flash, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, none of which are new and all of which have been on my watchlist since whatever streamer they used to be on; possibly across several. I can’t quite decide if I’ve finally ‘grown out’ of superhero movies or if the ones they’re churning out now are just uninteresting. But I didn’t dislike James Gunn’s Superman and enjoyed the first season of Daredevil: Born Again (I still need to start the second), so maybe it is them not me.

What else? John Woo’s remake of his own film, The Killer, jumped from NOW to Netflix. Meg 2: The Trench also moved there from… er, wherever it used to be… reminding me that I quite enjoyed the first one and did mean to watch the second. The Magic Mike trilogy also collated itself there (I feel like those three films are constantly popping on and off various services, but are rarely to be found in one place all at once). Over on Prime Video, the 2021 Mortal Kombat popped up ahead of the forthcoming sequel, while other recent-ish things I’ve been meaning to catch up with included The Bikeriders, Freaky, and King Richard; plus, looking back some way (as in “six decades”), the third Harry Palmer film, Billion Dollar Brain.

Even worse, the stuff goading me that I bought it and haven’t watched it still: Alita: Battle Angel, the new(er) Candyman, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire all on Prime. Even worse…er: on iPlayer, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. You know you’ve left stuff a long time when it’s been on free-to-air TV. And that’s just the recent-ish films — how’s about American Gangster, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and La La Land on Netflix (all titles I’ve owned on at least two formats, including 4K, but not watched the latter yet); on iPlayer, Don’t Look Now, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and The Wicker Man; on Amazon, But I’m a Cheerleader, Heat, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Thelma & Louise, Time Bandits, all the Spider-Man films, and a tonne of Gamera films. I didn’t bother to note exactly how many — the important point is, I’ve got Arrow’s complete series set from 2020 that I’ve not started.

No box sets quite that big in April’s selection of new purchases — just a trilogy of Japanese Godfather films from Radiance and the Wandering Ginza Butterfly duo from Arrow. Talking of John Woo’s The Killer (as I was two paragraphs back), the original made it to 4K this month courtesy of Arrow. (I was tempted to put them both in this post’s header image, but… I didn’t.) Other classics (how “classic” these “classics” are, I’ll leave up to you) making their way to 4K disc included Tsui Hark’s One Armed Swordsman remake The Blade from Criterion, neo-noir Cutter’s Way from Radiance; and a pair of Hammer titles from StudioCanal, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb and Demons of the Mind. Maybe I should stop buying everything that gets put out from Hammer’s back catalogue, but, well, I’ve started now. It would be less bad if I did something truly radical and actually watched more of them…

The 20th Monthly Review of April 2026

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We’re one-third of the way through 2026, but my film viewing hasn’t even reached the one-quarter mark of my Challenge. Oh dear.

Still, April was the strongest month of the year so far, and the goal isn’t out of reach yet. More about the exact numbers behind those observations in my viewing notes; first, the films I did watch:



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#13 Breakout (1959) — Series Progression #3
#14 Ordeal by Innocence (1984) — Wildcard #2
#15 One Battle After Another (2025) — Failure #4
#16 Nonnas (2025) — Wildcard #3
#17 3-D Rarities (2015) — Genre #1
#18 Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) — Blindspot #2
#19 Conclave (2024) — 50 Unseen #2
#20 Hope Gap (2019) — Wildcard #4
#21 A Wednesday (2008) — WDYMYHS #2


  • I watched nine feature films I’d never seen before in April.
  • That makes this the best month of 2026 to date by some margin, although it still falls short of my ten-film target.
  • All nine counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, but no rewatches this month.
  • The target for the end of April is #33, so I’m still 12 films behind.
  • With 79 films to go in the next eight months, that’s a required average of 9.88 Challenge films per month — slightly up from 9.78 after March. Still some work to be done to stand a chance of catching up, then.
  • 3-D Rarities is my first Genre film for 2026, making that the last category to get underway.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was French New Wave drama Hiroshima Mon Amour.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Indian antiterrorism thriller A Wednesday.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched only One Battle After Another.



The 131st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
It was the most recent Best Picture winner and a Paul Thomas Anderson film — two things that some people (not necessarily the same people) would take as an unimpeachable mark of quality, but which are very much “wait and see” indicators for me. But as it turns out, they were right, and I thought One Battle After Another was fantastic.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I imagine that, back when it was released in 2008, A Wednesday felt timely and relevant. Nowadays, it’s dated both stylistically (its camerawork and editing is heavily indebted to other early-21st-century works in the genre) and politically (its chosen antiterrorism angle feels ickily far right in light of the present-day landscape).


I’ve got a very busy May coming up — I wouldn’t be surprised if progress gets knocked back again. And I can state with a high degree of confidence that, if I’m ever going to turn things around and re-start publishing reviews, it won’t happen next month.

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…