2023 Statistics!

Posted on January 5, 2024 by badblokebob

Here we are again: the best bit of the year — the statistics!

As was the case last year (and will surely remain so going forward), these haven’t been fiddled with to fit with my new-format Challenge, but instead continue to encompass all of my first-time watches from the past year (as listed here). That’s just the way I like it (in part because it means I can compare across the years, whereas switching to a Challenge focus would basically be starting again).

Before the onslaught of numbers and graphs, I’ll just mention that, because I’m a Letterboxd Patron member, I get a yearly stats page over there too, which can be found here. In some places that’ll look a bit different to this one, because I also log whatever TV I’m allowed there; but it does have some interesting additional and alternative stats, like my most-watched and highest-rated stars and directors. So, if you love this stuff as much as I do, be sure to check out the extra goodies there at some point.

And with that said, it’s on to the main event…

I watched 103 feature films for the first time in 2023, which is my lowest final tally in over a decade (you have to go back to 2012’s 97 for less). It snuggles in between the handful of years in which I reached exactly 100 and 2013’s 110 as my all-time 5th lowest year (out of 17).

Of those 103 films, 67 counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge. Alongside 25 rewatches, that means I totalled 92 films for my Challenge — sadly falling short of the goal of 100 for the second year running.

Outside of the Challenge, I rewatched a further three films, for a total of 28 rewatches. That’s somewhere in the middle of the pack — my 7th best year ever for rewatches, which also makes it my 10th worst.

NB: I have no rewatch data for 2007 and only incomplete numbers for 2008.

Here’s how that viewing played out across the year, month by month. The dark blue line is my first-time watches and the pale blue is rewatches. As is usually the case, my viewing month to month is wildly unpredictable.

I also watched 15 short films in 2023. (Those don’t count in any statistics, with the sole exception of the version of the total running time that expressly mentions them.) That’s only the third time my shorts count has been in double figures, sitting behind 2019’s 20 and 2020’s festivals-driven whopper of 65.

The total running time of my first-watch features was 173 hours and 11 minutes. That’s my lowest since 2012, which makes sense when you remember the stat from the first paragraph. Add in the shorts and the figure rises almost 2½ hours to 175 hours and 33 minutes, though you still won’t find lower since 2012. (In the graph, I would also include any alternate cuts I watched for the first time in that “others” block, but there weren’t any this year.)

On to formats now, and the big news (if you can call it that) isn’t what’s #1, but what isn’t here: I didn’t watch a single film on TV in 2023, the first time that’s happened in the history of the blog. TV was once my dominant format, making up over half my viewing in 2010, and the largest portion in 2009, 2011, and 2012, but tailed off thanks to the rise in streaming. It’s also a personal thing: its number of films was still in the 20s as recently as 2019, but then I got rid of Virgin Media and its easy recordability, and the number went off a cliff. But I won’t lament it too much, because there’s always a chance it’ll return — unlike, say, VHS, which still accounted for five films back in 2007 and two in 2008 before disappearing entirely.

As for what is #1, that’s not really news at all: it’s digital again, with 60 films — though at 58.25% of my viewing, that’s its lowest percentage since 2019. My streaming viewing had been hovering around 50% from 2015 to 2019, but then suddenly darted up to almost 74% in 2020. I know most would blame the pandemic for that kind of thing, but during lockdown I still had all my many, many Blu-rays, so I don’t really know why that happened. It dropped marginally to 72.5% in 2021, then a little more to 69.4% last year, but a fall of over 10% is… well, I approve. Maybe it’s silly to look at it that way — I mean, this is my own viewing: I could ban myself from streaming anything if I wanted to — but I kind of just watch what I want to or feel like, then look at these numbers in retrospect. With that in mind, I continue to want to see Blu-ray do better, and this is a step in the right direction.

Of course, “digital” is actually made up of multiple streamers, plus downloads. This year was a tight one, with Netflix’s 16 films (26.7% of digital) narrowly claiming the crown from Amazon Prime on 15 (25%). Next were downloads on 13 (21.7%), before a small handful of other streamers filled out the rest: Disney+ with six (10%), MUBI with five (8.3%), Now on three (5%), and Apple TV+ on two (3.3%). That’s right, nothing in 2023 for iPlayer, nor ITVX, nor Channel 4, nor YouTube, nor any of the multitudinous other streamers that are available nowadays.

Overall second went, also as usual, to Blu-ray, with 31 films (30.1%). That’s up on last year, though doesn’t by itself totally cover the drop in digital.

So where else have those lost digital percentage points gone? Well, DVD held steady on eight films. With my overall viewing down, that means it accounts for a slightly higher percentage — 7.8% in 2023 vs 7.2% in 2022. Hardly making the world of difference, that, is it? DVD has theoretically enjoyed a boost these last couple of years thanks to the Physical Media category of my Challenge, although in fact it hasn’t made that much of a difference (looking at the graph, the two Challenge years aren’t notably different to pre-Challenge years like 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020). Spoilers: the Physical Media category is going away in 2024, so it’ll be interesting to see how DVD charts next year.

Our search for those lost digital percentage points finds perhaps its biggest culprit in cinema. I went four times this year — less than I’d hoped, but tied with 2020. It’s only 3.9% of my viewing, but if we’re talking about how percentage points have moved around, I guess those are all nabbed from digital. (For those who want the full maths: add cinema’s 3.9% to DVD’s 0.6% increase for 4.5% of streaming’s lost 11.1%. That leaves 6.6%, and Blu-ray went up by 8.6%, so… um, wait, what? Oh, I’m just confused now. Let’s abandon the pretence I know what I’m talking about, have a graph, and then on to something else.)

In 2022 I only watched one new film in 3D. I’d hoped to improve on that in 2023 (the general public may think 3D is dead, but it still has its fans — like me — and I’ve still got a 3D TV and plenty of unwatched discs), but I didn’t — in fact, I watched no films in 3D. Oh. Well, at least that’s an easy figure to improve upon… (In overall terms, I did watch two 3D titles this year, both Doctor Who ones. That too is the same as 2022, when my one new 3D film was supplemented by a 3D rewatch.)

As for the new high PQ standard, 4K Ultra HD, that fared significantly better, with 27 films in 2023 — up from 24 in 2022, even though I watched fewer films overall. Indeed, at 26.2% of my viewing, you could argue it’s 4K’s strongest year yet. (I watched 40 back in 2020, but that was only 15.2%.) Still, 1080p HD remains the standard overall, accounting for 62.1% of my viewing. Of course, sometimes the only option is lower quality, and so I still watched 12 films in SD. That’s my lowest raw number yet, and even as a percentage — 11.65% — it’s down on the last two years.

In terms of the age of films watched, it’s normally the present decade that tops the chart, although it typically takes a couple of years to assert that position. The 2020s got there for the first time last year, matching the 2010s record of doing it in the decade’s third year. No surprise, then, to find the 2020s in first place again, with 38 films (36.9%). Normally you’d then find the preceding decade in second place, but — for the second time in a row, and only the fifth time ever — that’s not the case. In fact, two decades bested it: for no immediately obvious reason, the ’60s are second with 15 films (15.5%); and, boosted by my noir-focused WDYMYHS selection, the ’40s are third with 10 films (9.7%). That leaves the 2010s in fourth place with just eight films (7.8%).

Every decade since the 1920s cropped up in my feature film viewing this year. That means the 1910s miss out for the first time since 2019, but the 1900s & earlier were represented by shorts, as they have been every year since 2020. I specify “and earlier” because one even came from the 1890s. Counting down the remaining decades, in joint fifth place we have last year’s #2, the ’80s, tied with the ’50s on seven films (6.8%) apiece. From there we’ve got the ’70s with six (5.8%), the ’90s with four (3.9%), the ’30s and 2000s each with three (2.9%), and finally the 1920s with just one (0.97%).

As well as watching older films, I’ve also tried to watch more films from around the world — in a relatively “hands off” way, that is. By which I mean, it’s not like I’ve disqualified US/UK productions from my Challenge, nor anything else particularly radical or concerted; I’ve just tried to, y’know, vary things. That approach means that, while the USA remains clearly the dominant country of production, with 60 films this year, its percentage has dropped significantly, to 58.3% — down from almost 73% last year, and well below the previous low, 67.6% in 2021. Meanwhile, the UK has actually gone up, with 33 films equating to 32.04%, its highest ever, over 2013’s 29.3%.

In total, there were 23 production countries in 2023 — up from 17 in 2022, which is good considering I watched roughly the same number of films. It’s fewer than in any year from 2014 to 2021, but I did watch a lot more films in that period. France came third for the third year in a row with 12 films (11.7%), Germany were fourth with 10 films (9.7%), Italy were fifth with nine films (8.7%), and Mexico had an uncommonly strong showing to reach sixth place with five films (4.9%). There were three each for Canada and Hong Kong, and two apiece for China, Cuba, Ireland, and Sweden. That leaves eleven other countries with one film each, including Japan, who I mention because they built up to a huge spike a few years ago, culminating in third place in 2018, but have tailed off again since, for no readily discernible reason.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a similar story with languages — although the UK and US combine here (along with various other countries, including foreign films where it’s spoken a significant amount) to leave me with 77 films in English. It remains by far the highest single language, but features in less than three-quarters of films in 2023 — 74.8%, to be precise — which is far down on last year’s obscene 92.8%, and well below the previous low, 2020’s 84.5%. Nonetheless, it’s a long drop to second placed French, featured in nine films (8.7%), which is only just ahead of Italian in eight films (7.8%) and Spanish in seven films (6.8%). In all, 16 languages were spoken in 2023’s viewing, slightly up from last year, but you’d have to go back to 2014 to find lower again. But, as I’ve said, I watched far more films per year in those years, so of course the number of countries and languages represented was higher.

A total of 89 directors plus seven directing partnerships helmed the feature films I watched in 2023, with a further seven directors and one partnership added by my short film viewing (one feature director also directed a short, as we shall see in a moment). No director had more than two features to their name this year, but those with two were Allan Davis (both from the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series), Dario Argento (if things had gone as planned, he would’ve had at least four), Eric Appel, Joselito Rodríguez, Kenneth Branagh (if rewatches counted, he’d have more), Mario Bava, and Roger Michell. It was Danny Boyle who was behind one feature and one short, while Dean Fleischer Camp helmed three shorts (the original Marcel the Shell with Shoes On trio) and George Albert Smith is credited with two.

For a few years now I’ve been charting the number of female directors whose work I’ve watched each year. This had been steadily improving, but fell back considerably in 2022, unfortunately. In 2023, I watched 12 films with a female director (11 with a woman directing solo, one where she was part of a duo with a man). Counting the shared credit as half a film, that comes out as 11.17% of my viewing. That’s actually my second highest percentage since I started monitoring this, but remains shockingly low considering that women make up a little over 50% of the population. I say that’s an industry problem, primarily — if more women were allowed to direct movies as a matter of course, I’d see more movies directed by women.

At the time of writing, just one film from my 2023 viewing appears on the IMDb Top 250 — that would be Oppenheimer at 68th. However, because that list is ever-changing, the number I have left to see has actually gone up, from 18 at the end of 2022 to 19 now — the first time that’s happened since I started tracking this a decade ago. One of those 19 films has only just inserted itself into the list though, so I presume it will speedily drop off (that tends to be what happens to new entrants). Still, even that would leave me with a net change of zero. Maybe my 2024 viewing will have more of an impact…

Talking of minimal impact, let’s move on to the disaster zone that is my progress with my “50 Unseen” lists — you know, the list I publish at the end of every year of 50 notable new films I missed that year, which I’ve continued to track my progress watching down the years. I went through a period where they helped to decide a lot of my viewing, and consequently I was constantly chipping away at every old list. Not so much nowadays. In fact, “not at all” might be more accurate: in 2023, I only watched 10 films across all 16 lists. I haven’t even watched that few from just the previous year (i.e. in this case, 2022) since I only watched eight from 2009’s list in 2010. To be precise, I watched six from 2022’s 50. That’s my second-worst ‘first year’ ever, beating only the four from 2008’s list that I watched in 2009. Eesh. The only reasoning I can offer for such a drop off is that I’m watching far fewer films than I used to, and more of them are older.

In total, I’ve now seen 523 out of 800 ‘missed’ movies. That’s 65.4%, the lowest it’s been since 2017. I was pleased to get it above 70% for the first time in 2018 and my aim had been to keep it up there, which I managed for the next few years. I’d like to get back there, but it’s unlikely to happen in 2024: I’d have to watch 72 films (from across all 17 years), which would be a new record. Considering I watch at least 100 (ish) films every year, hitting 72 seems theoretically possible, but only if I were to devote most of my viewing to only films from these lists. I won’t be doing that. Maybe I can achieve 70% in 2025… or 2026… Of course, the goal posts keep moving because the list increases by 50 titles every year (speaking of which, 2023’s 50 will be listed in my forthcoming “best of” post).

And so we reach the finale of every review, and thus a fitting climax to these statistics: the scores.

For the avoidance of doubt, this stat factors in every new film I watched in 2023, even those for which I’ve yet to publish a review (this year, that’s a ludicrous 95% of them — it was just 27% last year, although it was 98% in 2021). That means there are some where I’m still flexible on my precise score; usually films I’ve awarded 3.5 or 4.5 on Letterboxd, but which I insist on rounding to a whole star here. For the sake of completing these stats, I’ve assigned a whole-star rating to every film, but it’s possible I’ll change my mind when I eventually post a review (it’s happened before). Still, hopefully this section will remain broadly accurate (because I’m not going to come back to modify it!)

At the top end of the spectrum, in 2023 I awarded 17 five-star ratings (16.5% of my viewing) — a massive increase on 2022’s six (5.4%). Having last year asserted that my marking has become harsher as I’ve got older / more experienced, this year suggests that, eh, maybe not; although, historically, 16.5% is slap bang in the middle of the board (by which I mean: eight years had a higher percentage and eight years had a lower percentage). I’ve always been a relatively lenient grader and, to be honest, I see no reason why that should change — I just like films, ok?

At the other end of the spectrum, though perhaps indicative of the same thing, I gave zero one-star ratings — only the second time that’s ever happened, after 2011. I’m always stingy with them, feeling that the lowest-of-the-low should be reserved for things that are truly execrable, so in many respects it’s nice to have gone a whole year without watching anything so meritless.

My most commonly awarded rating was, as usual, four stars, which I gave to 43 films (41.7%). That’s down from last year, although together the top two ratings add up to 60 films in both 2022 and 2023 (and, remember, I only watched slightly more films last year, so it’s broadly equal). Slightly behind were the 37 three-star films (35.9%), while only having six two-star films means their percentage — 5.8% — is the lowest since 2011 (a year you may remember for its similar lack of one-star films).

So, from all that we can calculate the final stat of the year: the average score for 2023. The short version is 3.7 out of 5 — the highest it’s been since 2018, which was the fourth year in a run of 3.7s. It bucks the trend, too, as 2019 and 2020 both averaged 3.6 before 2021 and 2022 hit 3.5. If we want to get more precise (and we do), we can add a few more decimal places and see the score comes out at 3.689. That makes 2023 the fifth highest scoring year ever — again, quite the turnaround from the last two years, which were both my second-lowest year ever at the time.

All of which said, as you can see from the graph above, my average score has remained pretty consistent across the years. There are no truly bad years, just weaker ones — or, in 2023’s case, stronger ones. Hurrah.

All that remains now for my review of 2023: which of those 103 films were my favourites?

December’s Failures

Posted on January 4, 2024 by badblokebob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November’s Failures

Posted on December 4, 2023 by badblokebob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October’s Failures

Posted on November 2, 2023 by badblokebob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September’s Failures

Posted on October 2, 2023 by badblokebob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August’s Failures

Posted on September 2, 2023 by badblokebob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July’s Failures

Posted on August 2, 2023 by badblokebob

Typically this column begins with the month’s biggest cinema releases — and, this particular month, we’ve seen some of the biggest of the entire year. But, as any of my ~~Twitter~~ X followers may’ve seen — not to mention readers of yesterday’s monthly review — I actually went to the cinema this month, and so I’m going to begin with… some of the month’s biggest cinema releases, because I didn’t see all of them.

Indeed, I didn’t see the biggest of all, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. I considered doing the “Barbenheimer” double-bill — or even spreading it across a couple of days — but, honestly, the cinema ain’t cheap, and Barbie was pretty fully booked. I’m not forking out £12.50 for subpar seats. Also, going to see Barbie as a single mid-30s bloke… I dunno, thought it might look a bit weird… But of course I’ll catch it on streaming (or, if it lingers in cinemas, as it looks it might, maybe I’ll catch it at a quieter screening eventually).

Aside from that (and the films I did see), there’s been a surprisingly strong showing for Pixar’s latest, Elemental. A Pixar film being a box office hit wouldn’t have been a shocker not so long ago, but Disney have done such a good job of training audiences to just wait for the Disney+ debut, it has been a bit of a surprise; especially as the trailers made Elemental look a bit, well, rubbish. I’m afraid the training has worked on me, though, as this is one I’ll wait for. (In fairness, I think the only Pixar films I’ve ever seen on the big screen are three of the four Toy Storys and WALL-E.) I believe horror Insidious: The Red Door also did well, as horror movies are wont to do — they don’t cost much to make and always have a ready fanbase. I think that’s the fifth in the series, of which I’ve seen none, so I won’t be racing to catch the new one. Also debuting right at the end of the month was the seventh theatrical Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Apparently it’s rather good. I’m sure I’ll watch it someday.

With so many big-name titles tempting people out of their homes, it seems like streamers decided not to really bother this month. I mean, the best Amazon Prime Video had to offer was Prisoner’s Daughter, a film that premiered at TIFF almost a whole year ago, and — despite the relative star power of actors Brian Cox and Kate Beckinsale, and director Catherine Hardwicke — seems to have mostly poor reviews (43% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not that I like to rely on RT, but it’s an indicator, isn’t it?) I certainly didn’t bother adding it to my watchlist. Over on Netflix, there was the even-more-poorly-received crime comedy The Out-Laws (20% on RT), starring Pierce “I’ll agree to anything at this point” Brosnan and… some guy from Pitch Perfect, I think? Also They Cloned Tyrone, which has gone down considerably better (94% on RT, plus a 100% audience score), but has been overshadowed by debuting at the same time as so many headline-worthy theatrical bows. Oh, and Apple TV+ had The Beanie Bubble, which, for some reason, I just can’t muster any ounce of care about. I can’t even be bothered to look it up on Rotten Tomatoes. (Oh, alright, now I have — it’s got 51%.)

Noteworthy catalogue titles were thin on the ground, too. Netflix offered How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which looks interesting, and they tried to sell me on Hidden Strike, an actioner starring Jackie Chan and John Cena that I’d never heard of, despite it supposedly coming out back in 2021. Well, it’s certainly… something I might bung on some day if I’m feeling undemanding. Other than that, there was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, primarily of note to me because it reminded me I imported the 3D Blu-ray from Australia and never got round to watching it; and, relatedly, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which I also bought on disc (4K this time) and haven’t watched yet. Plus, Paycheck, the John Woo sci-fi-actioner starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman based on a Philip K Dick story, which I’ve ignored for 20 years because it was meant to be shit. But John Woo + Philip K Dick? Maybe the time has come to give it a chance…

The thing I found most noteworthy on Disney+ is that they’ve continued to remove titles, including kid-friendly sci-fi adventure Crater, something like only six weeks after it premiered. Naturally, I’ve now pirated it. Over on MUBI, there’s a rare chance to see one of the films that I’ve still not seen (because it’s rarely available) from my 2007 “50 Unseen” list, Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime added a bunch of stuff that has either filled out my watchlist or reminded me I own a disc I should’ve watched by now, but nothing that really merits particular comment… except perhaps The Condemned, the WWE-produced riff on Battle Royale, which I enjoyed so much when I first watched it (13 years ago) that I bought the Blu-ray; but I’ve never got round to revisiting it and, seeing it added to Prime, I realised I no longer feel any strong need to… other than that I paid for the disc so damn well ought to watch it. Well, maybe I really should — maybe it’ll surprise me as much on a rewatch as it did first time round.

More worthy of note from Amazon was their Prime Day sale, which saw a bunch of recent (and older) movies offered for rental at cut prices — and so, I actually rented a movie for the first time in ages. I used to do it all the time, partly because Amazon used to hand out a steady stream of £1 vouchers that I could use on them; but also because it was a relatively cost-effective way to watch a new film between its disc release and subscription-streaming debut. Now, all those windows are shortened and streaming subscriptions cost more than ever, so paying to rent seems less pressing. Not to mention that I’m failing to keep up with stuff I’m prepared to buy on disc, so of course I’m not paying extra to spend time on stuff I’m not prepared to buy outright. Anyway, the films that tempted me to part with my hard-earned £1.99-each were Tár, Cocaine Bear, and 65. They all expire in the next couple of weeks, so should (hopefully) definitely feature in August’s viewing. Films also in the offer that I considered but ultimately didn’t go for included Plane, The Quiet Girl, Michael Flatley’s Blackbird (it’s meant to be 100% awful, but the temptation to see how bad is strong), How to Blow Up a Pipeline (fortunately I spotted its (at the time, forthcoming) Netflix availability), Magic Mike’s Last Dance (but I’ve still not seen the first two), and, of course, a bunch of stuff I already own on disc but haven’t watched yet. Tsk.

Talking of “stuff I already own on disc but haven’t watched yet”, we reach that inevitable stage of this column. My “most unwatched” thing this month was Arrow’s 4K UHD release of Bruce Lee at Golden Harvest. I say “most unwatched” because this is a collection of films I’ve owned on DVD (in a box set from Hong Kong Legends), Blu-ray (in the Criterion set released a couple of years ago), and now on 4K, and I’ve not actually seen any of them. More fool me, really, both for not having seen such renowned action classics, and for forking out for them so many times over. (In fairness, when I bought the Criterion set I had no idea such a release from Arrow would be forthcoming, and it’s far from the only thing I’ve upgraded from DVD to HD sight-unseen. That said, I could’ve just not bought the Arrow set… but it’s so thorough (in terms of alternate cuts and special features), and so nicely presented, that I couldn’t resist.)

Those weren’t the only 4K upgrades from Arrow, though, as I finally caved and bought their 4K editions of Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Cat o’ Nine Tails. Both have lingered in sales almost since they were released — I think Arrow put out the 4K editions too soon after the regular BDs, and didn’t add anything new beyond the higher-res film transfer; and as the 2K discs had used the same restorations (I believe), there was even less reason to upgrade. Indeed, I’d been planning not to myself, but the combination of sale pricing and having a full set of Arrow’s Argento releases in 4K swayed me.

My only other 4K acquisition this month was also my only brand-new title, Scream VI. Having enjoyed Scream (i.e. the one they should’ve called 5cream), I’m quite looking forward to that. I’m even more looking forward to Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (the trailer was fun and reviews & audience reactions sounded positive), and it came to disc here on the 31st, but as my copy only turned up today, it’s not really a failure for July. (What are the odds I don’t get round to it before September and so it is a failure next month? Time will tell.)

Of course, there were plenty of new releases of older titles to fill my ever-decreasing shelf space. (That’s a joke — my shelf space is long gone; newer purchases go on piles of piles.) Those really split down to two labels: Radiance, who released their first box set, Cosa Nostra, featuring a trio of Italian crime films directed by Damiano Damiani and starring Franco Nero; plus François Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black and Kinji Fukasaku’s Yakuza Graveyard. (The latter two actually came out back in May, but I’d ordered them with the box set for postage reasons so had to wait ’til June — which was fine, because obviously I don’t actually get round to watching this stuff.) The other label were Eureka (of course it was), who released live-action manga adaptation Golgo 13 and crime two-parter Rich and Famous / Tragic Hero.

These are all titles that sound great and exciting to me, as with most of my purchases every month, but will that actually translate into viewings? I think we all know the answer to that.

June’s Failures

Posted on July 3, 2023 by badblokebob

What do I lead with from this month at the cinema, then? There was the much-anticipated sequel to a beloved animated movie that shot straight to #1 on Letterboxd’s greatest films list, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. And there was the much-anticipated continuation-cum-reboot of the DC film universe, that got a lot of advance hype (Tom Cruise loved it!) — at least until critics actually saw it, and then audiences stayed away in droves too. That’s The Flash. Or there was the somewhat-anticipated rarity of a major movie star in an R-rated comedy, which (depending on who you listen to) is actually quite good — that’s Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings. Perhaps the always-anticipated occasion of a new Wes Anderson movie, here in the form of Asteroid City.

Nah — for all of that, for those of us of certain generation(s) there can be only one. The return of the return of the great adventure — the man in the hat is back again — in spite of the mixed reviews out of its Cannes premiere, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny remains an event. One I’d intended to see on opening day, or as close to it as possible, but other plans got in the way (again!) Hopefully I’ll make it out to the cinema (for the first time since Dune in October 2021!) before the new Mission: Impossible turns up to (a) takeover all the big screens, and (b) takeover my attention (as much as I love Indy, I feel like the new Mission is a better bet for a great movie).

Oh, and there was also a new live-action Transformers movie — the seventh! — Transformers: Rise of the Beasts — but I couldn’t stretch my “anticipated” format to encompass that (surely no one still cares about those movies, do they? I mean, I’ll probably watch it at some point out of some kind of sense of duty, but I’ve not even bothered to watch the trailer).

Indeed, there were more-noteworthy movies than that from the streamers this month; at least one, anyway, with Netflix’s Extraction 2 attracting a lot of positive notices. I’d remembered liking the first one well enough, though I’d forgotten just how much until I re-read my review (I guess it didn’t stick in the memory), and it sounds like the sequel is even better. I’m looking forward to making time for it, I just haven’t yet. Also on the Netflix watchlist is just-released graphic novel adaptation Nimona; plus we’ve finally got the subscription streaming debut of Matilda the Musical (for those who don’t know, it went straight to Netflix in most of the world, but in the UK & Ireland has been through the traditional process of theatrical release, rental streaming, and even (shocker) a disc release).

Brand-new titles on the other streamers included another Amazon Prime debut for a Guy Ritchie flick, The Covenant; and, on Disney+, Eva Longoria’s directorial debut, Flamin’ Hot, which I think is the kind of story that has some cultural significance for Americans but is largely lost on the rest of us. Disney also had “the official documentary” about Stan Lee — imaginatively titled Stan Lee — and the streaming debut of Avatar: The Way of Water, three whole weeks before it hit disc (oh how physical media has been devalued. But you’ll all be longing for it soon when the streamers are forced to start ditching bigger and bigger titles). Meanwhile, Prime claimed Ikiru remake Living as an “Amazon Exclusive” — one of those relatively meaningless ad slogans, because it’ll be exclusive until it isn’t. Like, say, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which used to be an Amazon Exclusive but, as of this month, is on Netflix but no longer included with a Prime subscription.

Talking of stuff coming quickly to streaming, Creed III popped up on Prime just a week or two after its disc release (which I mentioned last month). It’s certainly not the only unspun disc sat in my collection that also popped onto streaming this month, although nothing else was so recent. I mean, The Chronicles of Riddick came out nearly 20 years ago, so it’s just daft I haven’t got round to it yet. Others in a similar situation — of varying vintages — included The African Queen, Bong Joon-ho’s Barking Dogs Never Bite, Cloud Atlas, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, The Long Good Friday, the original version of The Manchurian Candidate, and Ben Affleck’s The Town; not to mention stuff I own on disc with the intention of rewatching, like The Adventures of Robin Hood (you know, the Errol Flynn one), Blade (in the past few years I’ve bought it on Blu-ray, then Blu-ray again, then 4K, but haven’t watched it since DVD would’ve been the only option), The Lost Boys (one I’ve been meaning to rewatch for years, but even buying the 4K last September hasn’t got me there yet), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (dread to think how long I’ve owned that on Blu-ray without revisiting it), Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic, and… oh, God, so many others! This is why I so often comment in this column that I’m not going to list all the interesting catalogue additions to streaming, because, well, this happens.

…that said, stuff I don’t already own that particularly caught my eye this month included Becky on Netflix; Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Heaven’s Gate on Amazon Prime; also, Magic Mike and The Notebook, two films that seem to yo-yo on and off every streamers’ catalogue; on MUBi, The Earrings of Madame De… and God’s Own Country; The Eiger Sanction, Guys and Dolls and The Miseducation of Cameron Post on iPlayer; and, on Channel 4, Ridley Scott’s Black Rain, Dan Stevens in German robot rom-com I’m Your Man, and The Worst Person in the World. (I call this “failures”, but there’s no way I could watch all this in one month, is there?)

Oh, and we haven’t even got on to my disc purchases yet. But we’re going to now. Yep, there were plenty of those, as usual, including one film already mentioned this month. That’d be Avatar: The Way of Water, which got a rare 3D Blu-ray release, so I bought that over the 4K version. It’s a shame they didn’t do a double-pack of the two, because apparently the 4K version looks stunning, but maybe I’ll pick that up someday too.

Titles I did pick up on 4K included brand-new releases like The Fabelmans and John Wick: Chapter 4. After aiming and failing to get round to seeing the latter in the cinema, I’ve now owned it for weeks and failed to watch it at home, too. Tsk. There was also Indicator’s release of low-ranked giallo Cold Eyes of Fear and Vinegar Syndrome’s release of, er, Showgirls. Not a film I ever thought I’d watch before its recent-years reappraisal, and now here we are. Ordering almost anything from the US means ordering other stuff to spread p&p (at least when I do it), so arriving with the latter were 4Ks of Miami Connection and Thriller: A Cruel Picture, plus a regular ol’ Blu-ray of Santo vs Dr. Death. Damn you, boutique labels, for constantly selling me on lavish editions of films I’d never even heard of (possibly for good reason)!

UK boutiques provided most of my other purchases this past month, albeit with titles of primarily Japanese origin. New additions to the Masters of Cinema line included dramas Revenge and Samurai Reincarnation; action from Arrow in the Game Trilogy; and moviemaking anime in All the Anime’s release of Pompo: The Cinephile. And from broadly the same part of the world (i.e. Hong Kong), another martial arts actioner added to Eureka’s portfolio, Lady Reporter, aka The Blonde Fury.

Finally, last month I lamented the demise of Network, and this month I finally picked up a couple of their titles I’d had my eye on, before they disappear out of print forever. Namely, those were cops-and-robbers drama All Coppers Are…; medical ethics thriller Life for Ruth; and once-controversial homosexuality drama Victim — all the kinds of ’60s and ’70s British fare Network so excelled at. Oh, they will be missed.

May’s Failures

Posted on June 3, 2023 by badblokebob

Perhaps the main failure-related discussion point this month is the announcement that Disney+ would be removing dozens of films and series. Not stuff they’d licensed where the terms had run out, or old content that they felt wasn’t of interest to modern audiences or something, but stuff that had been made for Disney+; “originals” and “exclusives” that weren’t available anywhere else — not physical media; not on other streamers; not to buy or rent. (The exception, of course, is that you can pirate them. Or some of them, anyway — there’s bound to be something missing, because piracy, in my experience, is not 100% all-encompassing.) This is relevant to “failure”s for two reasons: one, because I haven’t seen most/all of this stuff, and there are some things in there that I did want to catch, so they’re pertinent to May’s failures. They include The Princess, Artemis Fowl, Rosaline, the series remake of The Right Stuff, and the Willow sequel series. (There are various articles reporting on the full list of removals. Here’s one, for example.)

Secondly, and more importantly, it’s a failure on Disney’s part. They’re risking these modern productions becoming “lost media”, a phenomenon we all thought had been left behind decades ago, and which streaming had promised to eradicate entirely. Instead, the business models of streaming have made it all the more possible again. Sure, maybe there’s stuff in there that isn’t “worth” saving — that no one’s watching; that the people who did watch it didn’t enjoy; that no one really wants to see again, or in future — but that’s almost beside the point, because it doesn’t apply to everything. And what about rediscoveries? People can’t “rediscover” stuff that isn’t available. Not everything that deserves to be a success is a hit right out of the box.

Anyway, mini-rant over. If you want more discussion and criticism, there’s plenty of it out there, because no one apart from Disney’s management and accountants thinks this is a good idea. (Indeed, some removal choices have been so criticised that Disney have already walked them back, like the documentary about Howard Ashman. I imagine that’s going to be an isolated incident, though. I mean, if Bryan Cranston speaking out about the removal of an Oscar-nominated movie can’t save it, what can?)

Back to my usual starting place, then: the big screen. Oh look, it’s Disney again, because two of this month’s releases were the latest instalment in the MCU, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and the latest live-action remake of an animated classic, The Little Mermaid. I’m quite looking forward to the former (I’ve heard good things, and I mostly enjoyed the previous two outings), but I feel like I’m under-equipped to actually watch it. The Guardians have always been off more in their own corner of the universe than other MCU properties, but I presume I need to see Thor: Love and Thunder to find out what happened regarding Thor joining the Guardians at the end of the last Avengers team-up; and there’s also the Holiday Special on Disney+ (well, I presume it’s still on Disney+ — I can’t imagine they’re going to start wiping MCU content), which, seeing as it’s also by the film trilogy’s writer-director, James Gunn, I’m assuming is relevant to Vol. 3 to at least some degree. So, that’s kicked down the road a little bit, then. As for The Little Mermaid, I expect I’ll catch it at some point, but then I haven’t even got round to the 2017 remake of Beauty and the Beast yet, so who knows when.

Other big screen bows in May included the first half (or possibly the first third) of the finale to the Fast & Furious series, Fast X; the latest works from directors Ari Aster (Beau Is Afraid) and Robert Rodriguez (Hypnotic); and well-reviewed fun-looking Scandi actioner Sisu. Nothing there to tempt me out of the house, even if several will be high on my “must make an effort to get round to” list when they eventually hit streaming/disc.

As for stuff that’s already available to stream, Netflix’s main premiere this month was J-Lo actioner The Mother, while Amazon Prime had Ben Affleck’s Air make a speedy transition from its cinema release (well, that depends how you look at it: as an Amazon Studios film, is it quick to streaming, or lucky to have had any theatrical release?) In terms of true direct-to-streaming titles, the best on offer at Disney+ was kid-friendly space adventure Crater, while Apple TV+ had documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. As someone who grew up watching and loving the Back to the Future films, I really must make time for the latter.

Arguably, the back catalogue additions were more significant across all the streamers this month. Netflix debuted all eight Harry Potter films, and they promptly flooded the streamer’s top ten movies. They also added the first two Fantastic Beasts movies, which did not factor. None of those really count as “failures” — I own them all on disc anyway, and whenever my most recent rewatch was is recent enough for now — but they were a noteworthy addition to the catalogue, nonetheless. Whole cinematic series were cropping up elsewhere, too, with the complete Fast Saga (so far) on Sky Cinema (that I do want to rewatch at some point, probably after it’s all done) and the Indiana Jones tetralogy on Disney+ (I only rewatched them recently (summer 2021, so two years ago, but that’s very recent in my perception of time vis-à-vis film viewing), but then I immediately bought the 4K set and haven’t watched that yet, so rewatching them again is definitely on my radar). There were individual films of significance, too, with Amazon claiming Oscar winner The Whale as an exclusive, and the latest-but-one Marvel movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, landing on Disney+ already (personally, I’ll wait ’til a 3D version pops up somewhere online). On a more niche scale, documentary Lynch/Oz is only now getting a theatrical release this weekend in the States, but has already been on TV here, and thus streamed on Channel 4 (as Channel 4’s streaming service — previously All 4, and before that 4oD — is now known).

As ever, there was piles and piles of other stuff added to all the streamers that bulked out my watchlists, but I’m ever-hesitant to list them all here. That said, some more recent releases included Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, Freaky, The Forever Purge, Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Old on Netflix; Malignant, Reminiscence, and The Suicide Squad on Amazon Prime; Rye Lane on Disney+; and Supernova on iPlayer. That’s no to mention even older titles that I want to see (like A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies on MUBI — although, at over three-and-a-half-hours long, I doubt I’m going to make time for it), nor all the stuff I’ve actually seen but have failed to review (like Confess, Fletch on Sky Cinema (highly recommend that, by-the-way), or Baby Done on iPlayer; or even my favourite film I saw for the first time in 2020, Do the Right Thing, also on iPlayer).

The only thing sadder than a film I’ve watched but not reviewed is a Blu-ray I’ve bought and not watched — and, as ever, there are masses of those to list this month. Where to begin? How about 4K discs of new titles, like Creed III, Knock at the Cabin, and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (imported from the US, because we’ve not been treated to a 4K disc over here). Then there’s the 4K bows of older titles — for once, all things I’ve already seen rather than semi-random blind buys: Dragonslayer (another import); the 1970s pair of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers; and a snazzy four-disc edition of Brotherhood of the Wolf, a film I haven’t seen for about 20 years and have been meaning to revisit for a while, finally (from a UK perspective) available in its Director’s Cut form and a good-looking 4K restoration.

Talking of 4K, David Lynch’s shot-on-video Inland Empire was remastered in 4K (using AI, I believe) for its latest releases, but I guess everyone decided the 4K version didn’t look all that, because it’s only made it to regular Blu-ray via Criterion in the US (the version I bought) and StudioCanal in the UK (a release announced after I’d ordered the Criterion disc, but each release has different special features and I think I have all the UK ones on the original DVD release, so I’m just hanging onto that). As usual, these US imports I’ve mentioned were part of a big bundle I ordered, which also included Criterion’s editions of Arsenic and Old Lace and Festen, aka The Celebration; a giallo, All the Colours of the Dark, and a giallo documentary, All the Colours of Giallo; the sequel to Searching, Missing; a drama about the creation of Orson Welles’s “Voodoo Macbeth”, Voodoo Macbeth; and the so-called “Authentic Cut” of Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt, now titled B’twixt Now and Sunrise (it’s not meant to be very good, I know, but it’s intriguing and was fairly cheap).

I say I only order US titles in bulk batches like that, but occasionally there are other ways. For example, I simply ordered Leda from Amazon. You’d be forgiven for not having heard of it — I only have because it’s been released in 3D (a rarity nowadays) and I spotted it while going through forthcoming 3D titles on Blu-ray.com. Then there was GoldenEra, the well-reviewed documentary about the GoldenEye N64 game, which I bought via eBay to get the sold-out slipcase (the regular cover looks like an N64 cartridge; the slipcase looks like an N64 box. Such neat packaging made it worth the extra expense to me). Finally, So This Is Paris is technically a US release, but I backed it on Kickstarter so got my copy that way.

Most of my UK purchases this month were new releases of older films. My second batch of titles from new label Radiance turned up, including French road trip movie Fill ’er Up with Super, Scandi thriller The Man on the Roof, psychological thriller She Dies Tomorrow, and Italian murder mystery The Sunday Woman. I finally got round to buying Arrow’s Four Film Noir Classics Vol. 2, which was released some five-and-a-half years after the unnumbered “Vol. 1”, just in time for them to announce a Vol. 3, so now I’ll need to set aside some cash for that too. Not that I’m really complaining — the more film noir the merrier.

Rounding out the month, more of my usual blind buys — basically, if Eureka or 88 Films put out a Hong Kong actioner, I’m there, and so I picked up the former’s Burning Paradise and the latter’s God of Gamblers. It’s the same with Eureka and silent cinema, though I’m not always on the ball — for example, I finally got round to buying their double-bill of early John Ford Westerns, Straight Shooting & Hell Bent, because it was going out of print. Nothing like scarcity to drive purchases.

Talking of scarcity, a quick concluding lament for Network. Rarely mentioned here because they primarily specialised in old TV — though they also released plenty of old movies, and have featured here thanks to that on several occasions — they were one of the all-time great physical media labels, filling a niche in the market with top-quality releases. They always seemed to be doing so well — releasing so many titles; their site crashing during sales periods; and so on — that it came as a shock to hear they’d gone into liquidation. But more than a shock, it was a sadness. It’s hard to imagine we’ll see their like again, and so that’s a whole area of media cut off from distribution on physical media — or probably at all, because who’s going to put that kind of stuff on streaming? They’ll be sorely missed.

April’s Failures

Posted on May 5, 2023 by badblokebob

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.

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