Tag Archives: cinema

September’s Failures

Posted on by
Reply

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

I did actually make two trips to the cinema in September, but both were to see films that first came out back in August. I might have headed out for Korean monster flick Hope too, after seeing a trailer before one of my trips and thinking it looked fun, but it wasn’t actually playing at the cinema where it was trailed. Seems like a dumb idea to me, but there we go. It was the same story for the new Nicolas Winding Refn film, Her Private Hell, although the reviews didn’t look great and I’ve got several other Refns on disc I’ve not watched, so I doubt I’d’ve bothered anyway.

Other new releases that will end up on my streaming watchlist someday included The Death of Robin Hood (I’m always interested in Robin Hood movies, so maybe this one will even tempt me on disc), D-Day planning thriller Pressure, another reboot for the Resident Evil franchise, yet another adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Alan “Reacher” Ritchson / Owen Wilson action-comedy Runner (not to be confused with streaming original The Runner), another team-up for Fury director David Ayer and star Brad Pitt in Heart of the Beast, and, likely, the most fun of them all, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom. Also sequels where I’ve not seen the first film, like Fall 2 (although the original is currently on iPlayer) and Practical Magic 2, and a bunch of titles I’ve written down but can’t really remember what they are.

As for original releases on streaming, a new Guy Ritchie movie turned up out of nowhere, as they’re wont to do nowadays, even when they’re led by relatively starry names like Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill, who I guess counts as a Ritchie regular lead at this point. That’s called In the Grey and is on Amazon Prime Video, if it passed you by too. Also premiering on Prime was Gal Gadot-starring thriller The Runner (not to be confused with Alan “Reacher” Ritchson / Owen Wilson action-comedy Runner) and romantic drama The Love Hypothesis, which is mildly fascinating to me because, despite being about two scientists or something, it’s based on a novel that starts life as a Star Wars fanfic about Rey and Kylo Ren. How do you get from there to here? God knows, but I think I’d probably rather watch a film about that process.

Elsewhere, Apple TV+ premiered Mayday, “a genre-bending, action-packed buddy comedy that flips the spy thriller on its head”, apparently, starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh. It’s written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley of Game Night and the last D&D movie, so that makes it more appealing. It goes on the long list of stuff I keep meaning to watch on Apple — a list that means I keep not cancelling my subscription even as I keep not getting round to stuff. Goodness knows how much money I’ve given them for nothing…

One subscription I did cancel this month was Netflix, because it costs silly money these days if you want UHD (which I do) and I definitely don’t watch enough on it. I don’t even really care if they’re releasing new stuff or not because my backlog is long enough, but even still, they only debuted one new film in September, Unabomber. And that’s all I can tell you about that. They did add Spider-Man spinoff Kraven the Hunter, though, so that’s… good? I don’t know, I can’t remember what people thought of it. Probably not much, knowing Sony’s track record with Spider-Man spinoffs. The trailer looked like dumb fun, though. Of a different order of quality was Best Picture winner Anora, and I guess maybe sitting somewhere in between: Sonic the Hedgehog 3. (I am, of course, kidding.)

More superhero antics with a poor-to-middling reputation were to be found on Sky Cinema / NOW with the new Supergirl, alongside the fourth 28 Days Later film, aka the second 28 Years Later film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, plus Dev Patel in Welsh folk horror Rabbit Trap, and creature feature Hungry about a monstrous… hippo. Yep. I know they’re deadly dangerous in real life, but c’mon. Is it based on the board game or is the title just a cheeky reference? I have no idea and I don’t care enough to google it.

Another thing I don’t really care about is the latest Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, which came to Disney+ this month. I feel I kinda ought to see it just because it’s the only Star Wars theatrical release I’ve not seen, but descriptions of it being effectively a long episode of the TV show — a TV show I never got round to starting — don’t exactly inspire me. Unnecessary sequels really were the order of the month for Disney+, with Toy Story 5 also cropping up. I’m more likely to actually watch that, to be fair.

Looping back round to Prime, they also added comedy Fackham Hall (if you don’t get the joke, maybe try saying it out loud quickly), which I’ve had recommended to me so may well be the failure I actually get round to watching this month, and a rare-for-streaming silent film, Nanook of the North, which is so rarely available that it’s also a strong contender for actually getting watched.

What I won’t actually be streaming were the many films that I already own on disc, like sequels Creed III and Sicario 2 (both on iPlayer), a couple of titles I semi-randomly imported from Australia’s Imprint label, The Assassination Bureau and State of Grace (both on Prime), or the tonne of things I should rewatch — Gladiator, Miami Vice, Perfect Blue, The Silence of the Lambs, and Total Recall being some of the most egregious examples, considering how long it’s been since I last saw them and/or since I bought the disc. Or re-bought the disc, in some cases. Heck, re-re-bought for at least two of those.

You’d think such antics would’ve taught me to buy less by now… or you would if this is your first time reading this column. Regular readers will know of my literally-insatiable Blu-ray habit, and of course it continued this month. Headlining for sheer cost were ludicrously-price editions of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (which cost me the best part of £90 imported, and that was the cheapest copy I could find with some discounts applied) and Hamilton (over £60, also after a discount). Is it worth paying that much for just two films? I mean, I’ve waited literally decades for the complete Kill Bill (and a UK release doesn’t seem to be forthcoming) and I love Hamilton, so… I guess? But I hope that’s not the future for everything. Or maybe it would finally make me cut back if it were — I don’t think I’d be prepared to drop that much on many complete unknowns, which make up the majority of my purchases nowadays.

To wit: a big pile from the recent Radiance sale, including Palme d’Or-nominated Euripidean tragedy Iphigenia; gothic psychosexual thriller Libido; satirical crime drama The Ogre of Athens; a romantic melodrama by director Johnnie To, better known for his crime/action movies, Romancing in Thin Air; an “almost Shakespearean” drama about a sex worker, Rosa la rose, fille publique; and three Takashi Miike-directed yakuza films bundled as Underworld Chronicles. And because Radiance titles seem to be particularly addictive to me, for some reason, new releases The Saragossa Manuscript and World Noir Vol. 5, to go with the first four volumes that I’ve also still not watched. I feel a new idea coming on for next year’s Challenge Genre category…

Almost everything else I bought this month was in UHD, be it catching up with some old(er) favourites I missed when they came out in 4K recently-ish — namely, Fight Club and Stardust — or jumping on some boutique box sets in series I collect — like the latest of Hammer’s lavish single-film extravaganzas, The Abominable Snowman, or Arrow’s latest offering from John Woo’s back catalogue, the A Better Tomorrow Trilogy — or some brand new releases that took my fancy — Disclosure Day (can’t overlook a new Spielberg) and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (on the recommendation of “kept seeing it pop up on Letterboxd”. Not great reasoning, I know). And I said “almost everything” because I also bought the new film from Bait’s Mark Jenkin, Rose of Nevada, which is dual format with DVD. Yes, DVD! They still make those! And long may they continue to.

The 20th Monthly Review of September 2026

Featured

Posted on by
2

I don’t know if I could say things went well enough in September to call it a turnaround, but they have improved. I’m currently only 11 films behind my Challenge target, which is back down to below the level of tardiness I was at in March and April.

Plus, this month alone I made the same number of trips to the cinema as in the whole of 2025, and more than in the whole of 2024! That number of trips was, um, two… but still, it’s a true fact.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#50 The Double (1971) — Failure #9
#51 Cocaine Bear (2023) — 50 Unseen #5
#52 Magnificent Bodyguards 3D (1978) — Genre #5
#53 Coyote vs. Acme (2026) — New Film #9
#54 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) — Series Progression #7
#55 Team America: World Police (2004) — Rewatch #4
#56 Belle de Jour (1967) — Blindspot #5
#57 Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 (2012) — WDYMYHS #5
#58 Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 2 (2012) — WDYMYHS #6
#59 Suspicion (1941) — Blindspot #6
#60 Topper (1937) — Wildcard #9
#61 The Set Up (1963) — Series Progression #8
#62 The Rescuers (1977) — Rewatch #5
#63 The Rescuers Down Under (1990) — Rewatch #6


  • I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • That makes September the best month of 2026 for new films — indeed, for film viewing fullstop — so I’m finally heading in the right direction.
  • It’s also my second consecutive month with at least ten first-time watches, which is the first time I’ve managed two such months back-to-back since October/November last year.
  • 11 of those first-timers counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with three rewatches.
  • The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under win spots by dint of being relatively short. Of course, I did want to rewatch them sometime: they’re Disney canon films I saw in childhood but have no strong memories of; but that’s hardly been a pressing project. Nonetheless, I had them ready to go, and they’re under 80 minutes apiece, so they were great for squeezing in on weeknights, especially when I’m so far behind my target.
  • This month’s Blindspot films were (to quote the original poster) “Luis Bunuel’s masterpiece of erotica” Belle de Jour, and the only Alfred Hitchcock movie to earn an acting Oscar, Suspicion.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS films were both parts of Indian gangster epic Gangs of Wasseypur. I’ve been planning to watch that double over a single weekend ever since I fell behind on my WDYMYHS goal (which has been for most of the year), so I’m glad to have finally pulled it off.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched films Coyote vs. Acme, The Double, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, plus TV short La cabina.



The 136th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
At one time destined to end up in the dustbin of history — literally, as Warner Bros planned to scrap it — the fact we can even see Coyote vs. Acme is something to be applauded. Heck, that’s a big reason why I went to see it at the cinema rather than just waiting for disc or streaming. Fortunately, as well as being a victory for the release and preservation of art, it’s also damn funny.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It seems almost churlish to pick on a ’60s programme-filling B-movie, but the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series are usually moderately solid but The Set Up (or, as it’s technically titled on screen, The Set up) was disappointingly weak. It’s adequately made on the surface, as the series always is, but the plot is predictable and hole-riddled literally to a fault. Or several faults, even.


I don’t really like turning film viewing into a tickbox exercise… although I guess you could argue that’s inherent in the current structure of my Challenge, so maybe I shouldn’t be so snooty. Anyway, with three months of 2026 left, if I want to complete my goal then a typical month needs to contain 12 qualifying films, made up more-or-less as follows:

  • 1 New Film
  • 2 Rewatches
  • 2 Blindspot films
  • 2 WDYMYHS films
  • 1 Failure
  • 1–2 ‘50 Unseen’ films
  • 1–2 Genre films
  • 1 Series Progression

I was hoping that summary would be neater than having to assign “1 or 2” films to some categories, but my viewing hasn’t been so neat — because it’s not just a tickbox exercise, see! Even the Series Progression number isn’t quite right: I’ve only got two to go (plus one Wildcard, so that’s sort of covered off there, even though it’s a completely different category). Heck, even saying I need to watch 12 films a month isn’t quite accurate, because the average is actually 12.3.

But the overall point is: it’s still a challenging Challenge. Will I get it done? The number of films I watched in September renders the answer to that a definite “maybe”.

August’s Failures

Posted on by
1

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

We begin this month with an oddity, for two reasons. Coyote vs. Acme was, famously, to be ditched by Warner Bros as a tax write-off, meaning it would never seen the light of day — a fate that’s befallen several films under the studio’s current management. It was eventually sold to an indie distributor instead, which means it’s actually seen the light of day — a victory for art and common sense. It’s a release we should support. And I am! That’s the other unusual thing: yes, I failed to see it this month, but I’ve booked to see it on Sunday. I think that might be the first time I’ve been able to mention a film in this column when I’ve already booked a ticket for it.

Another film I would actually have gone to see if it wasn’t prohibitively expensive to travel to the nearest place it was showing — on top of the already extortionate cost of a cinema ticket — was Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which already looked interesting and then was well reviewed to boot. Also out this month and worth mentioning (because does it really count as a failure if I’ll probably never watch it anywhere at all?) were non-park-based dinosaur flick The End of Oak Street; Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars; “The Purge but with sex (except they cut all the sex scenes)”, One Night Only; and another erotic comedy that’s inherently superior because they left the sex in, I Want Your Sex. Not often I’ll write “sex” four times in one sentence, but there you go.

I don’t know if it’s an indicator of the time of year or if their release schedule is just kinda random, but Netflix popped out a few originals this month too. I heard mixed things about drama Don’t Say Good Luck, but nothing good about sci-fi/horror The Last House, a film which answers the question “whatever happened to director Louis Leterrier?” Also just out, crime thriller The Whisper Man, with a moderately starry cast (Robert De Niro!) and another set of mediocre reviews. Apparently it’s one of their top launches of the year though, which to me just shows how low the bar is. The only other streaming premiere I’ve noted is Lena Headey action thriller Ballistic on Amazon Prime Video, another effort barely of note. I guess you could also count Disney+’s release of a new director’s cut of the second X Files movie, which now goes by the ridiculous mouthful of a title The X Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn, but it’s not exactly “new”.

Subscription streaming debuts are a stronger bet, as usual, especially for Sky Cinema / NOW subscribers, where last month you’d find the likes of Hamnet and… um… I guess Song Sung Blue got some attention? Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 will appeal to certain people? Twinless and Love Me both sound interesting but I’m not sure how ‘new’ they actually are. Prime was also fairly strong in this film, in fact, with the new David Lowery film, Mother Mary, and one of this year’s Jason Statham flicks, Shelter, plus Return to Silent Hill, which is based on a video game highly acclaimed for its story, though apparently the film version is quite shit. Also Twisters, jumping there from Sky, while Hugh Grant-starring horror Heretic does an unusual jump in the other direction.

Then, from the usual mass of back catalogue additions, those particularly standing out to me this month with a sense of “oh yeah, I really should watch that sometime” included Monster’s Ball and The Tailor of Panama on Netflix; A Cure for Wellness, A Fish Called Wanda, and Freaky on Prime; and Inside Llewyn Davis, Lady Macbeth, Sing Sing, Tár, and Women Talking on iPlayer. Also now on iPlayer: Kill, an Indian action movie that made headlines when its US remake rights were bought before it was even released, and which has previously been a failure twice already (in July 2024 for its UK theatrical release and January 2025 when it was on Prime).

That’s not even mentioning films I already own on discs I’ve never played, mind, a category that this month includes Gladiator II, Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, The Third Man (which I have seen, but has been overdue a rewatch for decades), M Night Shyamalan’s Trap, and even obscure Hammer thriller 36 Hours, which I only hit 4K disc recently.

Normally I’d transition to new disc purchases off the back of that, but one other streaming title of note to me is Atlas: The Animated Movie, a project I backed on Kickstarter four years ago (time flies!) off the back of a YouTube video, which last weekend finally saw the light of day for backers, and I believe is heading to YouTube for general audiences in the next couple of weeks. It nearly snuck in to August as 2026’s #50; it might still claim that number yet, just in September.

Another brand-new release entering my collection (the only one this month, in fact) was Project Hail Mary — which, yes, I only just watched last month on Prime, but I’d already preordered it. Just the regular 4K UHD release, unfortunately, not the Steelbook with extra extras, because I missed that said extra extras were included so didn’t preorder it and now it’s sold out everywhere. Grr. I’m hoping for a last-minute restock somewhere when it actually comes out, but I don’t have much hope.

As usual nowadays, most other purchases were also 4K releases from boutique labels of older films, to one degree of “old” or another — from a 10th anniversary edition of Hunt for the Wilderpeople back to Radiance’s edition of 1970s Polish surrealist horror The Hourglass Sanatorium. In between, in chronological order, sit Second Sight’s The Name of the Rose (1986), Jackie Chan’s Armour of God (also 1986) from 88 Films, Transmission’s Vampire’s Kiss (1988), John Woo’s Once a Thief (1991) and Troy (2004) from Arrow, The Descent (2005) from StudioCanal (do they count as a boutique? Eh), and Anime Ltd completing a trio of Mamoru Hosoda box sets with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006).

Back on regular ol’ 1080p Blu-ray, there was, of course, a Eureka a title — a quartet of Hong Kong action under the banner title Reap the Whirlwind: Four Films with Angela Mao — plus more from Radiance in the shape of gritty Japanese boxing drama The Boxer and “metaphysical giallo” The Double, plus a box set of Jean-Luc Godard works, led by his eight-part Histoire(s) du cinéma and also including the Blu-ray debut of his final short, Scénarios.

Finally, from Transmission again, some television. Yes, usually outside the purview of this column, but this blog has never made a huge distinction between theatrical movies and TV movies, and the two examples of the latter bundled in Two Boxes: Televised Terror in Franco’s Spain include Antonio Mercero’s short-film-length La cabina, which I’d previously heard about multiple times on social media down the years as an under-appreciated classic. Will that be enough to actually get the disc in my player this coming month? Never say never…

The 20th Monthly Review of August 2026

Posted on by
3

Back in May, I noted how far behind target I was — at the time, 15 films. Since then, it only got worse… but this month, it finally improves!

Although not even to as far behind as I was in May, unfortunately — I’m still 17 films off where I should be. That means I have to average 13 qualifying films every month for the rest of the year to make it to #100. The last time I managed that many films in a single month was December 2024, and the last time I managed it for four months on the trot was in early 2021… but there’s still hope! A fool’s hope, maybe, but that was good enough for Gandalf.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#39 Death Trap (1962) — Series Progression #5
#40 Flavia (2026) — New Film #8
#41 Thor: Love and Thunder 3D (2022) — 50 Unseen #4
#42 The Black Phone (2021) — Wildcard #8
#43 Woman in the Dunes (1964) — WDYMYHS #3
#44 The Singing Ringing Tree (1957) — Failure #8
#45 Robot Monster 3D (1953) — Genre #3
#46 Point Break (1991) — Rewatch #3
#47 Dersu Uzala (1975) — WDYMYHS #4
#48 Dragonfly Squadron 3D (1954) — Genre #4
#49 Quatermass and the Pit (1967) — Series Progression #6


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in August.
  • That makes it the first month to hit my minimum first-time watch goal since last November. Hooray!
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • I last saw that rewatch, Point Break, in 2007, the first year of this blog. The same was true of This Is Spinal Tap before I rewatched it in March. It feels fitting for the blog’s 20th year to be rewatching films from its first — maybe I should try to do that for all of this year’s rewatches? Except I’ve already messed up such a plan by not doing it for the first one (The Greatest Showman, which I previously watched in 2018), so maybe I won’t bother.
  • Quatermass and the Pit is the first Series Progression film this year that isn’t from the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series. Will they make up 50% of that category this year, or will it be more by the time I’m done? The next four months will, of course, tell.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS films were surreal Japanese drama/thriller/horror (it doesn’t often get branded a horror, but I thought it was one), Woman in the Dunes; and also kinda Japanese, but also Russian, in that it was directed by Akira Kurosawa but was funded by Russia and is in Russian and was made for Russians, Dersu Uzala.
  • No Blindspot film this month — I concentrated on getting WDYMYHS up to the same level instead.
  • From last month’s “failures” I only watched The Singing Ringing Tree.



The 135th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
My pick for film of the month came right at the end: Hammer’s third big-screen adaptation of a BBC TV Quatermass serial, Quatermass and the Pit, which is more driven by sci-fi ideas than you might expect of a ’60s flick from a studio renowned for their lurid horror.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Fitting more in the stereotypes of its era, Robot Monster is pulp ’50s SF in all the worst ways. I only watched it because it was shot in 3D, and that’s actually moderately successful — it resists the urge to poke stuff at the camera, as you’d expect from such a schlocky effort, but instead offers reasonable depth and dimensionality, and even a couple of sequences that play with ideas like showing different images to each eye.


September will need to be my most film-filled month of the year if I’m to even stand a chance of getting to #100 in December. But I’ve bought myself that extra time rather than it already feeling impossible, so that’s something.

July’s Failures

Posted on by
1

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

The biggest film on the big screen this month… was one I actually went to see, in my first cinema visit of the year. Next biggest, I guess, will end up being Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Remember the MCU? Yep, it’s still going. Less successful for Disney: the live-action remake of Moana. Oh dear what a shame. Also still going: Minions, in Minions & Monsters, plus the Evil Dead in Evil Dead Burn. Apparently quite good were The Invite and the punctuationally-baffling Nirvanna: The Band The Show The Movie, both of which I’ll definitely add to watchlists or something.

On streaming, last month’s theatrical release Masters of the Universe made it to Amazon Prime Video already, which I guess shows how well that did. Other theatrical releases from the tail end of last year / earlier this year made their streaming debuts too, with Marty Supreme and The Housemaid also on Prime, while Sky Cinema / NOW was positively flooded with them: in alphabetical order, Anaconda, Anemone (the latest film to tempt Daniel Day-Lewis out of retirement, this time because it was made by his son), Bugonia, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, Lurker, Mortal Kombat II, Normal, Redux Redux, and Wicked: For Good. Over on Disney+ (which I’m not subscribed to so I don’t know why I mention it) were The Devil Wears Prada 2, which I guess counts as a legacy sequel at this point, and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which I’d like to see but not enough to subscribe to a whole streamer for.

Meanwhile, Netflix had… um… back catalogue stuff? Of particular note, Gareth Edwards’ The Creator, which has moved a round a few different streamers now and I’ve still not seen, so maybe this time; one of the handful of Tony Scott films I’ve never seen, The Fan; that recent-ish animated Transformers movie that I think I heard was meant to be quite good or something, Transformers One; and, as ever, a bunch of stuff I own on disc and need to get round to (re)watching, like Monsters vs Aliens, the Paul W.S. Anderson The Three Musketeers (don’t judge me, I love the musketeers; also, it’s in my beloved 3D), and Training Day (what month doesn’t see Training Day appearing on a different streamer, it feels like). Widening the net, we find more examples on Prime — Blade Runner (which I’ve not seen since its 4K disc came out), The Prestige (same), and Unforgiven (same, but even longer) — and iPlayer — Elvis, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, North by Northwest, Vertigo, and all the Spider-Mans. Messing up my neat progression of formats, iPlayer is also the latest home for romcom Anyone But You, plus the TV premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster (Letterboxd user’s 108th greatest film of all time, currently), and repeat appearances for Paul Thomas Anderson’s’ Licorice Pizza and Past Lives (430th on that Letterboxd list).

Okay, back to discs for all the new stuff I threw my money away on… er, I mean, added to my most venerated collection. Yeah, that. This month’s list of titles isn’t excessive, but the lists of films kind of things, thanks to finally picking up All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, Volume Two in Severin’s most recent sale — that’s 24 feature films (plus 21 shorts), to go with the 22 features (and 14 shorts) from Volume One that I still haven’t watched. Oh dear. But at least my collection’s complete! From folk horror to folk tales, this month Masters of Cinema released one box set of five German examples of the latter, titled Into the Forest: Folktales at DEFA, including a staple of ’60s and ’70s British children’s TV, The Singing Ringing Tree; and announced a second set (Beneath the Trees: Folktales at DEFA 2) for release in October.

Elsewise, it was the usual case of 4K release from boutique labels, with a pair each from Arrow — an upgrade for William Friedkin’s neo-noir To Live and Die in L.A. and my first ever purchase of Soylent Green (of course, I already know the twist. Does anyone not?) — and Hammer — the latest of their big single-film box sets, X the Unknown, plus AIP’s 1971 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue. Finally, a trio for my extensive Radiance collection, covering Shohei Imamura’s “landmark satire of postwar affluence” about “a former buddhist monk turned erotic filmmaker” (sounds good, right?) The Pornographers in UHD, and in regular ol’ 1080p, more Imamura with the director’s final film, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, a “boldly sensuous and taboo-breaking love story”, plus Solo — not a Star Wars story, but Jean-Pierre Mocky writing, directing, and starring in a “profoundly satirical crime drama” that “captures the visceral feeling of disillusionment of a post-1968 French society brimming with rage at the sinister powers that be.” Fun times.

I have a Letterboxd list for said Radiance collection, which shows I own 150 features and shorts released by them… of which I’ve watched four. Well, it literally could be worse.

The 20th Monthly Review of July 2026

Posted on by
3

At one point this month, I really thought I was going to, finally, for the first time since November last year, hit my ten first-time watches minimum goal. And then life and stuff happened again and I didn’t.

The average number of Challenge-qualifying films I need to watch each month for the rest of the year now sits at 12.4. The average number I’ve watched each month so far this year is 5.4. Not promising… but 12.4 is not beyond the realms of what I’ve managed in the past… although the last time I had a month above 12 was December 2024, and the last five-month stretch that averaged above 12.4 was in 2021…

But you never know.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#31 Wuthering Heights (2026) — New Film #3
#32 Enola Holmes 3 (2026) — New Film #4
#33 Lawless (2012) — Wildcard #6
#34 The Sheep Detectives (2026) — New Film #5
#35 Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) — Failure #7
#36 Joyride (2022) — Wildcard #7
#37 The Odyssey (2026) — New Film #6
#38 Project Hail Mary (2026) — New Film #7


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in July.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
  • Five of them were films that had their UK release this year, taking my New Films category from “barely started” to “up-to-date” in one fell swoop.
  • Neither Blindspot nor WDYMYHS were progressed this month, unfortunately.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Bodies Bodies Bodies and The Sheep Detectives.



The 134th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Sometimes I feel like so much of what I watch these days is middling — as I’ve discussed before, I don’t know if I’ve just become a harsher critic as I’ve got older (I guess gaining experience will do that to you — fewer things feel unique) or if the quality of films I’m choosing to watch has declined — but every now and then something does come along and blows me away, and this month it was Project Hail Mary.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Certified (inter)national treasure Olivia Colman shows off / labours under (deleted as applicable; I have no idea if it was good or not) an Irish accent throughout dramedy Joyride, which is… kinda fine? Some of it was funny, which rubbed a little awkwardly against when it got a bit Serious.


I’m gonna call it now: if August is the month that brings about a turnaround in my film viewing fortunes, I will be very surprised. I’m not going to do a Werner Herzog and commit to eating a shoe or something, but I’m pretty damn certain that in a month’s time I’ll be writing about a new high average that I need to hit for the rest of the year. In fact, it might finally reach the point of feeling insurmountable. We’ll see in 31 days.

June’s Failures

Posted on by
1

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

Blockbuster season (if that even still exists) is in full swing now, with the likes of Masters of the Universe, Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, Toy Story 5 (apparently it’s good?!), and Supergirl filling up the multiplexes this month (or, in the case of the latter, not). None have been strong enough to tempt me out, which shouldn’t surprise any regular readers. The Odyssey ought to get me over the line (we’ll see).

As usual, this meant streaming originals were in shorter supply. Netflix managed to wheel out a few star names across “saucy rom-com” Office Romance and Julian “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante, although as the Rotten Tomatoes consensus pegs the latter as “a bloated, wildly overplayed literary fever dream whose attempts to merge past and present collapse into accidental farce”, I’m not sure I’ll be rushing to it in my queue. Prime Video’s dark comedy-thriller Over Your Dead Body seems like a better bet, even if it wasn’t spectacularly reviewed either.

But why stick to Originals when there’s better-reviewed streaming premieres fresh from the big screen? Also on Prime, comedy murder mystery The Sheep Detectives boasts 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (should anyone still care about that as a metric), there was under-seen spin-off Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is… well, it’s a good title, anyway. I liked the first two enough that I aim to watch it at some point. The same could be said about Sisu: Road to Revenge on NOW, although their other premieres this month were nothing to shout about, unusually. Meanwhile, Disney+ offered up the biggest box office successes in Pixar’s Hoppers and threequel Avatar: Fire and Ash. At the other end of the spectrum were Netflix, where I’ve not noted down anything so new, just stuff that’s already been well-played on other streamers (even though I’ve not seen them yet, obviously), like Aftersun, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Creed III, and Scoob! (which is simultaneously on Prime Video anyway). Most interesting to me was The Other Boleyn Girl, purely because it’s a leftover from 2008’s 50 Unseen that doesn’t seem to be available to stream all that often.

Further into the back catalogue, iPlayer has boasted a few titles recently that used to be exclusive to one streamer or another — things like The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Queer, the Road House remake, and Sound of Metal. It can flow the other way too, with Bodies Bodies Bodies (which has been on and off iPlayer for a while) cropping up on Prime Video this month. As usual, drawing a lot of my attention were reminders for things I’ve already paid for on disc but not watched, like The Dreamers, Event Horizon, First Man, How the West Was Won, The Town, and The Walk (though that last one I own in 3D, at least, so the streaming option would never satisfy me as much).

Regardless, new purchases continue, including one I’ve already mentioned on streaming: Avatar: Fire and Ash; although, like The Walk, I own it on 3D. I could double-bill it with the previous film, The Way of Water, which I’ve still not seen either, although together they’re the length of a miniseries. Also in 3D this month, 88 Films’ long-awaited release of Jackie Chan’s Magnificent Bodyguards, from a brand-new restoration by the 3-D Film Archive. There was a lot of Chan this month, in fact, thanks also to Arrow’s Jackie Chan’s Breakout Hits! set, containing six films from the early days of his Hollywood career in UHD (along with a total of eight additional alternate cuts! Thorough, but am I ever likely to watch all of those? No.)

As is regularly the case now, the vast majority of my purchases were 4K titles from boutique labels, including a bulk order from Australian label Imprint — headlined by a regular Blu-ray box set, After Dark: Neo-Noir Cinema, Collection Four, although even that includes one film (Unlawful Entry) in UHD. Along with it was more ’90s neo-noir in the form of Dark Blue, Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (looks like horror to me, but they label it noir), and State of Grace; plus William Friedkin’s erotic thriller Jade and Hammer Horror Vampire Circus. Hammer themselves, meanwhile, stuck to the more niche side of their output with Brit-noir 36 Hours. Even more niche was The House of Hammer: Volume 1 — effectively a kind of “Blu-ray magazine”, containing two whole discs of special features and a “booklet” the length of a short book, but no feature film content. Like a sucker, I bought it anyway, thus committing myself to future releases (not literally “committed”, but I’m a completist). Rounding things out, Arrow’s latest John Woo title, Bullet in the Head; catching up with StudioCanal’s recent release of Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone; and even one title from a major studio, the Wachowskis’ blockbuster-turned-cult-classic adaptation of Speed Racer. I’ve been meaning to revisit that for years, so seeing its vibrant colours in HDR should be the push I need, right?

Right?

The 20th Monthly Review of June 2026

Posted on by
1

And we’re halfway through the year! But my Challenge? That’s not even a third completed…

To be honest, without wanting to go into too much detail, this year has been a struggle on a personal level, so it’s no wonder my film viewing has slipped so drastically. My current plan is to continue just picking away at it and I’ll see what happens. I’m not going to outright abandon it, but I’m not going to stress about it too much either, because I have other things to do that about.

In that spirit, onwards with the usual bits and pieces…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#27 Is This Thing On? (2025) — New Film #2
#28 The Choral (2025) — Wildcard #5
#29 Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025) — Failure #6
#30 The Prince of Egypt (1998) — Blindspot #4


  • I watched four feature films I’d never seen before in June.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, but no rewatches.
  • That’s more-or-less on-brand for 2026: my monthly average thus far has been just 5.0, when it needs to be 8.3 to reach 100 on schedule.
  • It has left me 19 films behind target, though. Yes, I should be at #49 by the end of June — you can thank the uncommon shortness of February for slightly unbalancing that target.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Disney-esque Dreamworks musical animation The Prince of Egypt.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film… wasn’t.
  • From last month’s “failures” I only watched Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.



The 133rd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Nothing I really loved this month, to be honest. I guess Is This Thing On? was the one with the most high-quality moments, even if overall it felt too long-winded and could’ve done with being tighter.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I don’t remember The Prince of Egypt making much of a splash back when it came out (almost 30 years ago!), but it seems to have amassed a strong reputation since. Personally, I didn’t much care for it and don’t really understand its renaissance, but there you go.


Keep on keeping on.

May’s Failures

Posted on by
1

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

Star Wars returned to the big screen for the first time in seven years this month, with TV spin-off The Mandalorian and Grogu. It’s the first theatrically-released Star War I’ve not seen since the animated Clone Wars movie 18 years ago, and the first live-action Star War I won’t bother to see on the big screen… ever. (I didn’t exist when the original trilogy came out, but I saw them all during their 1997 re-releases.) I’m not even sure I’ll bother with it when it comes to streaming, because I’ve never seen the series it launches off from. Hey, Disney chose to drag the franchise towards being a niche fans-only affair, not me.

And it looks like general audiences may be feeling the same as me, because two low-budget horror films from Gen Z filmmakers — Backrooms and Obsession — knocked Mando back to the third place at the box office on just its second weekend. Ouch. And one of those was on its third week, too. Very ouch. Other theatrical bows that I might one day watch but wasn’t inspired to leave home for included belated sequel The Devil Wears Prada 2; video game sequel Mortal Kombat II; a new Steven Soderbergh, The Christophers; a new Ben Wheatley, starring Bob Odenkirk, Normal; ovine murder mystery The Sheep Detectives; John Carney making his film again (I suspect) in Power Ballad; crime thriller Tuner; and other stuff I’m even less likely to actually get round to ever.

Similarly, most of the streamers’ brand-new originals this month were things I’m never likely to watch, like alternate-world gender comedy Ladies First and kids’ body-swap animation Swapped on Netflix, or Mel Gibson-starrer Hunting Season on Amazon Prime Video. The latter had the most likely contender of the month in snappily-titled TV spin-off Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War, but the fact I never watched the show beyond season one (which I enjoyed, I just never kept up) gives me pause. Netflix’s best bet for my eyeballs was Martin Short documentary Marty, Life Is Short.

As is often the case, there were stronger options in the field of theatrical releases making their subscription streaming debut, like Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk on Prime Video, although Sky Cinema / NOW dominates as usual, including another Stephen King adaptation — Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man — plus Emerald Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights, legacy sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, Frankenstein variant The Bride!, 50% Coen Honey Don’t! (yes, both with exclamation marks), and a few other bits and pieces that I added to my watchlist but don’t really merit a mention.

Multitudinous back catalogue titles reminded me of their existence by shifting from one streamer to another or popping back after some time away, like “granny on a revenge mission” comedy Thelma (moving from NOW to Netflix) or the most recent (though already ten years old) iteration of Ben-Hur (only noteworthy to me for being one of the few 2016 ‘50 Unseen’s I’ve still not seen). Some films even finally made their way to broadcast TV (remember that?), with the likes of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Arthur the King, and The Iron Claw popping up on iPlayer. Plentiful reminders of stuff I bought on disc but haven’t watched, too, like 1932 Best Picture winner Grand Hotel or Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai; and that’s without starting on the shame of stuff I’ve re-bought on 4K but not watched, like Collateral (that one seems to come up fairly often), A History of Violence, The Nice Guys, and The Searchers (for just a semi-random selection — yeah, there were even more).

There were a couple of new purchases in that vein: the impossible-seeming full restoration of the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie for its 30th anniversary (I wanted to watch it on the anniversary itself, but was otherwise occupied) and Masters of Cinema’s new edition of Buster Keaton’s The General. Every other purchase this month was also from a boutique label: more from Masters of Cinema with Maigret adaptation Cécile is Dead and East German anti-socialist political drama Trace of Stones; French secret agent actioner Le professionnel from Radiance (yes, really), alongside New Wave yakuza thriller Aesthetics of a Bullet; Hammer’s latest title from their non-horror backlist, Brit-noir Mantrap, as well as a disc release for feature-length TV doc Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters; 88 Films’ latest contribution to getting Jackie Chan’s work released in 4K, The Protector; and, finally, the BFI’s latest Akira Kurosawa title, Red Beard, which finally escapes DVD to… regular Blu-ray. Can’t have everything in 4K, I guess.

The 20th Monthly Review of May 2026

Posted on by
3

Here’s the latest update on the slowly-unfolding disaster that is my 2026 Challenge…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#22 Locker Sixty-Nine (1962) — Series Progression #4
#23 Jaws 3-D (1983) — Genre #2
#24 The Blade (1995) — Failure #5
#25 The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) — Blindspot #3
#26 Puss in Boots 3D (2011) — 50 Unseen #3


  • I watched five feature films I’d never seen before in May.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
  • Unfortunately, that’s a slip back from last month‘s nine. May started well, but life got in the way later on and I couldn’t capitalise on that good start.
  • It also means I’ve slipped further behind my target pace: I was five films behind by the end of January, nine by the end of February, and 12 by the end of March, which I at least held steady in April. I’m now 15 films behind.
  • Every ‘Series Progression’ film so far in 2026 has been an Edgar Wallace Mystery, which was not the plan! Though it was, perhaps, inevitable that this would happen someday. I’ve been watching them since April 2023 and still have almost 30 to go, so it may well continue.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. It was supposed to be part of WDYMYHS 2019, but I didn’t complete my list that year — it’s only taken me another seven years to rectify that.
  • I had a plan in mind for this month’s WDYMYHS film(s), but didn’t manage to execute it and ended up not watching any.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched only The Blade.



The 132nd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Two 3D movies this month! On the positive end of the spectrum, one where the typical swooping camerawork of CG animation really helps the depth and dimensionality to sing. I love a good swashbuckler and Shrek spin-off Puss in Boots definitely fits the bill.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
After finding Jaws 2 surprisingly enjoyable despite its reputation, I was somewhat looking forward to Jaws 3-D — I wasn’t foolish enough to expect a masterpiece, but maybe it would be fun, especially in 3D? Oh, no. No, no, no. It’s a terrible movie with mostly unremarkable 3D. I’ll still watch Jaws: The Revenge someday to be completist, but I hope it goes even further and actually reaches “so bad it’s good” territory.


As 2026 nudges towards its halfway point, I’ll once again reassess if there’s any hope of turning around my Challenge for this year.

Before that, this month’s “failures” column is likely to be another delayed one, because I’ve got a busy week and I’m not sure I’ll even have a chance to consider writing it before Thursday.