July’s Failures

Posted on August 2, 2024 by badblokebob

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

The current big news on the big screen is undoubtedly Deadpool & Wolverine, which I might have actually gone to see if I hadn’t been busy this past weekend. Social media reaction seems divided: the fanboys love it (of course they do), while more serious-minded critics are cautious bordering on negative. I might still make the effort this coming weekend, or it might join the long list of post-Endgame MCU titles I just haven’t got round to. The fact it’s something oaan capstone to the Fox era of superhero movies sways me more in its favour, but still, we’ll see.

Also filling multiplexes were routine animated sequel Despicable Me 4 and belated, nostalgia-fuelled blockbuster sequel Twisters. I’ll inevitably catch both eventually, but I still haven’t seen the last Minions film and it took me a couple of decades to get round to the first Twister — which is no more than a perfectly adequate film — so I’m hardly in a rush. Of more interest are Kill, an Indian action film that I’ve heard is very good (to the extent that John Wick’s Chad Stahelski is already working on a US remake), and I Saw the TV Glow, which feels like it’s been attracting praise on Letterboxd forever but has only now made it to UK screens. Nonetheless, I’ll wait for discs on both of those (not least my local isn’t screening them). And further down my future watchlist, a pair of horrors: Longlegs, which seems to have provoked a lot of chatter, mainly about Nic Cage’s performance, which makes it interesting to me; and MaXXXine, but I’ve not seen X or Pearl yet so that one’s a ways down the list.

In theatrical-adjacent news, Amazon Prime Video finally brought Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare to the UK. All of Ritchie’s films seem to go direct to Amazon here these days, for good or ill. It’s a bit of a coin-toss whether I’ll get round to it anytime soon or not, but it’s definitely on the watchlist. Amazon seemed to be leading the way with original premieres this month, also debuting sequel My Spy: The Eternal City (I never caved to watching the original, even during the pandemic, so this is hardly a priority for me) and Space Cadet (this sounds kinda like “Legally Blonde in space”, which mildly tempts me, but reviews are terrible). All I have noted down for Netflix, on the other hand, is original anime The Imaginary. Sky / NOW also got in on the action with a modern-day kid-friendly spin on the Robin Hood legend, Robin and the Hoods; while I do believe Disney’s Young Woman and the Sea had some kind of theatrical release, but it was so limited that its Disney+ debut is basically a premiere.

Other films making their way to streaming post-theatrical included Wicked Little Letters on Netflix, which looks fun; The Iron Claw on Amazon, which seemed to attract positive buzz when it was in US cinemas; and on Sky / NOW, box office surprise smash romcom Anyone But You, the musical remake of Mean Girls, and Chinese animation (that I saw recommended somewhere) Deep Sea. Also Jericho Ridge, which I’d not heard of before it popped up on NOW, but its Assault on Precinct 13-esque premise sounded neat. And I don’t imagine it had a theatrical release, but it’s out on disc, so Amazon saved me having to pay for Bruceploitation (i.e. Bruce Lee exploitation) documentary Enter the Clones of Bruce. I say “saved” — that’s relative to me actually watching it before it’s inevitably removed one day…

There were back catalogue comings and goings a-go-go, of course, though what caught my eye this month was a large vein of things I’ve upgraded to 4K on disc but not (re)watched yet. Those included (deep breath) The Babadook, Black Hawk Down, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Deep Impact, Dr Who and the Daleks and its sequel, Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 AD, Drive, Enter the Dragon, the original Ghost in the Shell, Gladiator (really should revisit that before its sequel lands), The Green Mile, The Revenant, RoboCop (more on that later), RoboCop 2 (that too), The Shawshank Redemption, Top Gun: Maverick (which I also should’ve reviewed by now), and Training Day. Not to mention all the stuff I’ve just straight up bought on 4K and not watched yet, like Elvis, Possessor, The Sisters Brothers, and The Batman (it’s absolutely ridiculous that I still haven’t watched that). I expect I could generate a similarly lengthy list of films I own on unwatched Blu-rays that are now ‘free’ on streaming — though one that did stand out to me was Gravity, because it’s currently on both Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer and it reminded me I’ve never watched it in 3D, despite owning a 3D TV for over seven years now. Same goes for Dredd (which was streaming on Channel 4 this month) and… well, plenty of other things (that aren’t currently streaming; and probably some that are).

None of which stops me buying piles of new discs, of course, including several that could feature in the above list — indeed, two do: RoboCop, which I finally picked up in Arrow’s recent sale; and the recently-released RoboCop 2 (from the US, because I did one of my bulk orders again). Other upgrades thanks to the Arrow sale included Time Bandits (it would’ve been neat to watch that before the new TV version started, wouldn’t it?) and Videodrome; while other 4Ks in that US order included giallo The Case of the Bloody Iris, an upgrade all the way from DVD for The Departed, and Criterion editions of I Am Cuba, McCabe & Mrs Miller, and The Red Shoes.

Back in the UK, 4K new releases included both brand-new titles like Alex Garland’s Civil War and Dev Patel’s Monkey Man (both of which I’m keen to see, so it’s daft they’re having to be featured here), plus new releases for older titles, like Second Sight’s A Bittersweet Life, Indicator’s Bruiser (which means I now own all of George A Romero’s feature films in HD or 4K), Arrow’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Curzon’s Memories of Murder.

Comparatively, I have very few regular ol’ HD titles to note. From Radiance’s latest slate, I limited myself to just Tai Kato’s Eighteen Years in Prison (yes, this is me trying to cut back), plus their partner label Raro Video’s release of Michael “Witchfinder General” Reeves’s Revenge of the Blood Beast (more commonly known online as The She Beast). I also finally upgraded classic TV series The Prisoner to HD, importing the recent Imprint release from Australia — it surely cost more than Network’s release would have back in the day, but that’s out of print (RIP Network) and at least this one comes with more special features (overall — it is missing a couple). Along with that, I finally stumped for an HD copy of the 2003 Zatoichi (there have been various releases, none of which seem to have the quite right PQ, but most of which do look better than my old DVD) and my most ridiculous purchase of the month, David Lynch’s Dune — ridiculous because I already own Arrow’s 4K release, but I bought this version for feature-length behind-the-scenes documentary The Sleeper Must Awaken: Making Dune. Was that a reasonable purchase? I guess it depends how good the doc is. I’ll have to actually watch it to find out.

The Mysterious Monthly Review of July 2024

Posted on August 1, 2024 by badblokebob

I know why you’re really here, dear reader. Films? Pfft! It’s for the latest update on how many hours of Critical Role I’ve watched, isn’t it?

Well, even if it isn’t, totting that up sparked something of a mystery for me this month. I don’t feel like it’s been a particularly unusual 31 days, and yet my Critical Role-related viewing was less than half that of June, meaning it was even below what I watched in April and May (though not quite back down to where I started in March).

Did that mean I reverted my viewing time to films? Nope! I’ve still only made it to ten new films this month (plus one rewatch for the Challenge), and even getting there included a little bit of a deliberate push over the last week. Perhaps it was TV, then? Well, I did watch a few classic Doctor Who serials — but even they only add up to about 7½ hours of viewing.

So where did my time go instead of any obvious options? No idea! Probably wasted it on Twitter or something. This is why I continue to benefit from the existence of the Challenge: to motivate me to stop wasting my time.

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#50 Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) — New Film #7
#51 Like Stars on Earth (2007) — WDYMYHS #6
#52 Alice (1988) —Failure #7
#53 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) — 50 Unseen #10
#54 Moana 3D (2016) — Rewatch #7
#55 Kung Fu Hustle (2004) — Genre #5
#56 The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) — WDYMYHS #7
#57 The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) — Series Progression #8
#58 Army of Shadows (1969) — Blindspot #6

I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in July.
Eight of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
With Mutant Mayhem, 50 Unseen becomes my first completed category of this year’s challenge. In the end, 7 out of 10 films were from 2023’s list — which is fine. I mean, it’d be nice to watch more from older lists too, but it’s no surprise that the most recent list gets more focus. (Of course, more 50 Unseen films may still qualify (indeed, I hope they will) in the Wildcard category.)
Conversely, Genre has only just reached the halfway point. But at least that’s not too far behind where it should be. And there’s only been one Wildcard, but then that’s partly their point (i.e. to still be around towards the end for maximum flexibility).
This month’s Blindspot film was the first I’ve seen directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, namely his French Resistance thriller Army of Shadows.
That means I’m still behind with Blindspot (having missed it in May, I’ve still got one to catch up). But I’m currently kind of ok with that, because I realised that I have two horror films on the list (Possession and Rosemary’s Baby) so, consequently, October would be the best month for a double dose.
I did catch up on WDYMYHS this month, though. Those films were Bollywood dyslexia drama Like Stars on Earth and three-hour post-war romantic melodrama — and Best Picture winner — The Best Years of Our Lives.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Alice.

The 110th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
A tight race between two excellent films from the end of the month, here, but I’m going to give the edge to Army of Shadows because… I don’t know, probably because I watched it most recently. Maybe if they were the other way round, The Best Years of Our Lives would’ve snagged it. They’re both great, anyway.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
No outright duds this month — arguably The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes came closest, but it’s mostly fine with flaws inherited from the source novel. The reason it’s not my pick here is that it was about what I expected it to be, whereas I’d been somewhat looking forward to Kung Fu Hustle for some time, but found it to be a little disappointing. There’s some good kung fu sequences, but a lot of the humour didn’t land for me and the narrative felt like too much of a shaggy dog story.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Just two to choose from again this month (I really need to put some effort into reviews). The monthly review won last time; the time before was the failures; and the time before that was the monthly review again… This month, the pattern continues (or, you could argue, is properly established) thanks to a victory by June’s failures.

Disc releases of big films from earlier in the year are beginning to come through now, so hopefully I’ll finally start catching up on all those films I sort of intended to see at the cinema but couldn’t be bothered to.

June’s Failures

Posted on July 3, 2024 by badblokebob

Somehow, Pixar returned. After it looked like Disney’s release strategy during the pandemic might have somehow killed off Pixar, this month they… proved it, with Inside Out 2 becoming the highest grossing film of the year so far. Will we ever see an original Pixar movie again, or just a never-ending parade of attempts to rehash former glories, aka sequels? The latter seems likely at present.

Also on the big screen this past month: the fourth Bad Boys movie, whose ideal title was already taken by the third Bad Boys movie, so had to settle for Bad Boys: Ride or Die; more franchise fare in prequel A Quiet Place: Day One; the first chapter of Kevin Costner’s multi-part Western Horizon: An American Saga; the feature debut of M Night Shyamalan’s daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan, horror The Watched (aka The Watchers in the US, for whatever reason); another Russell Crowe exorcist movie, simply titled The Exorcism; new work from Yorgos Lanthimos with Kinds of Kindness and Jeff Nichols with The Bikeriders; plus various other bits and pieces I was even less likely to go and see.

Almost getting my viewing time were Netflix and Amazon Prime’s main originals of the month, which share a titular theme — those being Hit Man and Poolman, respectively. Their reviews out of festivals couldn’t be more different (the former attracting so much praise that it was seen as a shame it was going direct to Netflix; the latter… less so), but both land relatively high on my watchlist (the former because it’s Richard Linklater; the latter because the trailer looked fun, actually). Also attracting positive word of mouth was animation Ultraman: Rising. I’ve never seen any Ultraman stuff — heck, I’ve paid so little attention to it as a franchise that I don’t even really know what it is — but apparently this new animated Netflix original is very good. Also premiering on that platform in the past few weeks was Under Paris (the film that should’ve been called Shark de Triomphe — not sure where I first saw that pun, but credit to everyone who thought of it) and, not an original, but given its truncated cinema run (at least in this country), it may as well have been: Godzilla Minus One. (Regular readers with strong memories may recall I already listed that last month, but it didn’t really belong there — and, more importantly, I still haven’t watched it — so here it is again). The most else Prime could muster was the delayed (it came out in the US back in March) debut of a thriller starring Russell Crowe and Karen Gillan, Sleeping Dogs, and home movie-based tennis doc Federer: Twelve Final Days.

Meanwhile, my notes say Disney+ offered absolutely nothing new. And moving on to back catalogue titles, Disney+ offered… nothing there, either. Good thing I don’t pay for it.

As for the others, the most recent releases went to Sky Cinema / NOW, as usual, with Meg 2: The Trench and Five Nights at Freddy’s, while Netflix provided the streaming debut for Jodie Comer-starring environmental disaster sci-fi The End We Start From, as well as picking up the likes of Beast (the “Idris Elba vs a lion” film) and Bodies Bodies Bodies from Sky. Other titles of particular note included, on iPlayer, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All and acclaimed animation Flee; on Channel 4, The Forever Purge reminded me I quite enjoyed the first two films in that franchise and still need to catch up with the rest; and MUBI proffered Jan Švankmajer’s Alice (as in “in Wonderland”), Bong Joon-ho’s short Incoherence (included on the Criterion release of Memories of Murder, but I’ve just plumped for the UK 4K instead), and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which would be more noteworthy if I hadn’t bought the new 4K release just last month.

For whatever reason, The Dreamers also popped up on Prime this month; indeed, more than usual, they seemed to specialise in films I own on disc but haven’t watched, both ones I’ve never and those I’ve upgraded but not rewatched yet. Other examples included Children of Men, A Few Good Men, JFK, Peter Jackson’s King Kong (I’ve owned multiple versions down the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the extended cut), Kwaidan, Ridley Scott’s Legend, The Long Good Friday, Requiem for a Dream, Schindler’s List… and more. Indeed, as always, there were far too many catalogue additions across all the streamers to get into listing here.

With so many old discs waiting to be watched, I should really try to slow down my acquisition of new ones. I can’t say that I have, though this month’s pile feels a little lighter than usual. Recent theatrical releases new to disc included Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (it may have been poorly reviewed but, eh, I liked the last one) and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (one I kinda regret not seeing on the big screen, but here we are). Both of those were in 4K UHD, of course, on which format I also picked up 88 Films’ releases of Jess Franco’s Count Dracula and Jet Li classic Fist of Legend (which I reviewed, dubbed, way back in 2008. I enjoyed it even in that bastardised form, so it will be nice to revisit it properly). On regular Blu-ray, more of my money went into 88’s pockets for action/horror The Holy Virgin Versus the Evil Dead and historical epic Hsi Shih: Beauty of Beauties, while Radiance claimed yet more of my cash with sale pickups The Dead Mother and Scream and Scream Again, and their new release of Kinji Fukasaku’s Sympathy for the Underdog.

And, um, that’s it! Said it was a light one.

The Sunny Monthly Review of June 2024

Posted on July 1, 2024 by badblokebob

We’ve been experiencing a patch of seasonal weather for a change here in the UK, hence the adjective in the title of this month’s review. For some people, such weather might affect their film viewing — getting out while it’s nice and all that. Not me, though — I prefer the colder, winterier weather myself.

Not that staying inside in the cool has done anything to help my film viewing either, mind. It might have done, were it not for my Critical Role addiction continuing to get implausibly stronger: this month it ratcheted up to over 74 hours of my viewing time. During that, I crossed the quarter-way mark of Campaign 2, which made me realise just how long it’s going to take to catch up at my average pace so far (literally years), so that might explain why I watched quite so much this month — some futile attempt to speed that along. “Futile” because, even if I kept up 74 hours a month from now on, it would still take me roughly 16 months to get in pace with new episodes. So maybe I’ll ease off. Or, who knows, maybe I really will watch three solid days’ worth every month until the end of 2025…

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#43 Man at the Carlton Tower (1961) — Series Progression #7
#44 Sleepless in Seattle (1993) — Rewatch #6
#45 Argylle (2024) — New Film #6
#46 Fast X (2023) — 50 Unseen #9
#47 Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) — Failure #6
#48 A Separation (2011) — WDYMYHS #5
#49 Yi Yi (2000) — Blindspot #5

I watched ten feature films I’d never seen before in June.
Six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
The end of June is halfway through the year, of course, so only being on #49 makes it look like I’m behind; but the months are longer in the second half of the year, on average, so #50 isn’t actually ‘due’ until about July 2nd. I had hoped to get to #50 this month nonetheless, but things didn’t quite work out.
Also not working out as planned this month: Blindspot and WDYMYHS. After failing both last month, I should’ve watched two of each to catch up, but didn’t. On the bright side, I did get them both ticking over; coupled with the fact I’m still on target overall, that’s not too concerning — yet. I’ll try again next month.
So, this month’s Blindspot film was Edward Yang’s Yi Yi — I finally watched it after three years on the list (sort of: it was on 2022’s list and 2023’s allowed wildcards). It’s hard to say if it lived up to the hype when the hype is so large, but it’s certainly very good.
And this month’s WDYMYHS film was Iranian relationship drama (that turned out to not really be a relationship drama after all; at least not primarily) A Separation.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Four Flies on Grey Velvet (though via a UHD download I already had, rather than the Prime Video appearance that earnt its place on the failures list).

The 109th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
The past few days I’ve been feeling like I haven’t seen a film I truly loved for ages and, looking back over June’s viewing for this category, I can see that feeling isn’t exactly wrong. There were some I admired this month though, most of all Yi Yi. I wouldn’t bank on anything from June making my year-end best-of list, mind. That said, it’s not been a stellar year all round, so if thing’s don’t pick up…

Least Favourite Film of the Month
On the other hand, it’s not exactly been bad — I have most of my viewing from this month down for a 3 (when I finally get round to posting reviews). Aside from a couple of 4s (and Yi Yi may yet nudge a 5 on reflection), the only outlier is Fast X — I may yet decide that only deserves a 2.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
No reviews this month (oops), so the contenders here are limited to just the two posts from the start of the month. Of those, May’s monthly review triumphed with 77% more views than May’s failures.

No predictions (other than “more Critical Role”), but I’m now beginning to amass movies I missed earlier in 2024 on disc, so I ought to pay attention to those, really. (More details on which movies those are exactly in the failures post, which would normally land tomorrow but might be a day or two late this month.)

May’s Failures

Posted on June 4, 2024 by badblokebob

It’s some kind of irony that this month I failed to get my failures post written in a timely fashion (not that I think anyone particularly cares about it being late), but I’ve been struggling with a nasty cold the past few days and so had neither the time nor energy to devote to it.

No such excuses for not making it to the cinema last month, just my general lackadaisical attitude to catching films on the big screen. That makes me a contributor to the underwhelming box office of The Fall Guy and Furiosa, as well as Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes — all films I’m very much looking forward to seeing, for one reason or another (mostly: the trailers look good; but also the franchise pedigree of the latter two). Other theatrical releases in the past month that I might watch at some point but, frankly, I was never going to go out of my way to see included The Garfield Movie, Love Lies Bleeding, Tarot, Young Woman and the Sea, and If (no connection to if…., but that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m liable to make a joke about if I ever review it — see my review of Frozen for similar).

Streaming original premieres looked even weaker than normal by comparison to that lot, with the most noteworthy probably being Jerry Seinfeld Pop-Tarts comedy Unfrosted (I saw a clip of the ‘surprise’ Mad Men cameos on Twitter. Thank goodness I didn’t watch the whole thing for that). Netflix also offered sci-fi Atlas, with a moderately name-y cast, but I’ve not seen a single person mention it, before or after release, which I figure doesn’t bode well for its quality. Over on Amazon, there was Harry Styles-inspired romcom The Idea of You and, um, the movie edit of Roku-premiering TV series Die Hart 2: Die Harter. (Implausibly, that’s been recommissioned for a third season, so I guess there’ll be a third “movie” as an “Amazon Original” at some point in the future, too.)

It was a relatively thin month for theatrical releases making their streaming debuts, too, with Disney+ only offering horror prequel The First Omen and Sky Cinema on the same “revived ’70s horror series” bandwagon with The Exorcist: Believer, plus minor-league DC superhero Blue Beetle (is it in continuity with that studio’s forthcoming films or not? I forget) and another “somewhat implausible it even got commissioned” action threequel, The Equalizer 3. More significantly, Amazon Prime debuted dystopian YA prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (which I already own on disc) and Netflix surprised everyone with Godzilla Minus One (technically on June 1st, but as that’s already a few days ago I thought I may as well include it). With any information about a Western home video release for that most recent Japanese Godzilla flick being kept as quiet as a state secret, I’d already joined the crowd in pirating the thing; and I cancelled my Netflix subscription at the end of May too, so I’ll still watch that downloaded copy at some point. (I can’t say I feel too guilty about that considering I’ll surely buy it on disc, when/if they ever announce one over here.)

There was, of course, the usual glut of back catalogue titles hopping from one service to another or just plain popping up again, with particularly notable ones including The Black Phone, Brian and Charles, Bullet Train, and Minions: The Rise of Gru on Netflix (as I say, I’ve cancelled my sub, but I do have access to the latter two films in other ways); Amores Perros, Bone Tomahawk, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Natural Born Killers, The Others, and Studio 666 on Prime Video, along with a bunch of Gamera films (I confess, I’ve still not even opened the Arrow box set I bought back when it first came out, so long ago I dread to even look up when that was); on Channel 4, Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Presidents, Moonfall, and multiple titles I’ve bought on 4K disc but not got round to (re)watching, including Carlito’s Way, Collateral, Fanny Lye Deliver’d, M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, and George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing; and the BBC seem to have been having a bit of a Christopher Nolan season, with the TV premiere of Tenet, plus Dunkirk, Memento, and the one I particularly want to note, The Prestige — I haven’t seen it since a DVD rewatch 16 years ago, and I bought the 4K disc a while back, so there are multiple reasons it’s long overdue a revisit.

You might think facts and lists like those in the last paragraph would stop me buying more films on disc — but if you thought that, it would show you don’t know me very well at all. The wild and wonderful additions to my ever-expanding, storage-space-challenging collection this past month include multiple new-to-4K titles like The Dreamers, Dune: Part Two, The Valiant Ones, and, despite the controversy surrounding its presentation, Once Upon a Time in the West. Talking of controversy, I also bought some bootleg releases this month — not something I normally do, but I happened to discover eBay sales for the Hong Kong Rescue editions of Hard Boiled, The Killer, and Peking Opera Blues. If official releases seemed imminent, or even likely, I’d have happily waited (other films released by HKR have since had genuine releases, and I’ve bought those instead), but the rights for at least two of these titles are apparently-impossibly entangled (and people keep requesting Peking Opera Blues and it keeps not coming out, so I presume there’s some problem there as well), so I caved.

There was more Hong Kong action in 88 Films’ release of Jackie Chan-starring Fearless Hyena Part II, plus their release of British-produced Western Hannie Caulder. The BFI released Stephen Poliakoff’s film debut, thriller Hidden City, while Indicator returned to their Columbia Noir series for a sixth volume, this time encompassing eight-film crime series the Whistler. Finally (although I think it must’ve been more-or-less the first thing to arrive, because it doesn’t feel like it was only this month), another pile of titles from the US, this time from Vinegar Syndrome partner labels. I think there was an offer on, though my interest was initially piqued by a forthcoming local screening of Russian sci-fi Kin-Dza-Dza!, which led me to discover the Deaf Crocodile Blu-ray release, which led me to a mix of other stuff I’d had an eye on (animations Cat City and Heroic Times) and stuff that captured my attention while browsing: sometime Letterboxd fave All About Lily Chou-Chou; video store documentary Mom n’ Pop; and “rotoscoped time travel Western” Quantum Cowboys. This is really the “wild and wonderful” stuff I was referring to earlier. Whether or not they’re also “good”, I’ll find out whenever I finally get round to watching any of them…

The Thin Monthly Review of May 2024

Posted on June 1, 2024 by badblokebob

A year after I started a rewatch of the Thin Man films by bingeing half of them, I finally got round to the other half — hence the title of this monthly review; because, while it’s by no means a spectacular month, it’s not an especially thin one either.

That said, movie watching still continues to be sidelined by my current obsession: Critical Role. After last month’s solid 48 hours of viewing, my pace dipped slightly to 43½ hours — though that shortfall can be entirely explained by my time not being wholly my own for the last week of the month. The way things are going, maybe I should rechristen the blog “100 Episodes of Critical Role in a Year”. (And it was only after drafting that sentence in my mind and drafting it again on screen that I remembered this site isn’t actually called “100 Films in a Year” anymore. Ho hum.)

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#33 Strays (2023) — Failure #5
#34 The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979) — Genre #4
#35 Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (2023) — 50 Unseen #7
#36 The Menu (2022) — 50 Unseen #8
#37 And Life Goes On (1992) — Series Progression #4
#38 Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) — Rewatch #4
#39 The Thin Man Goes Home (1945) — Rewatch #5
#40 Song of the Thin Man (1947) — Series Progression #5
#41 October Moth (1960) — Series Progression #6
#42 Murder and Cocktails (2024) — New Film #5

I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in May.
Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with three rewatches.
That means my Challenge is back on target, after being slightly behind for the last two months. In fact, it’s ever so slightly ahead (by a grand total of one film), which is nice.
It also means I’ve hit my ten new films minimum target for every month in 2024 so far, equalling my annual total for each of 2022 and 2023. I managed ten months in 2021 — hopefully it’ll be all twelve this year (which I last achieved in 2020).
And Life Goes On is the second film in Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker trilogy, after watching the first for Blindspot last month. It’s also known as Life and Nothing More…, which seems to be a more accurate translation of the original Persian title, but the Criterion BD uses And Life Goes On, and as that’s the film’s primary release method in the UK and US nowadays, I feel like that’s the title I should go with, whatever the rest of the internet wants to pretend.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I finally finished the Thin Man series again, the first half of which I watched at the end of last May — neat, but I didn’t realise it had been so long. This trio could qualify as either Rewatches or Series Progression; as I was behind on the former, that’s where I counted two of them, with the series’ final film getting the latter category to its halfway point.
It feels a little like cheating to count October Moth as “series progression” for the Edgar Wallace Mysteries, because it wasn’t really an Edgar Wallace Mystery: it was one of seven other films bundled with those films for TV sales. But it’s included in the DVD set (albeit as a special feature), and I watched it as “the next film in the Edgar Wallace Mysteries box set”, so I think that’s qualification enough. Just about.
Despite all those successes, I didn’t watch either a Blindspot or WDYMYHS film this month. Well, it wouldn’t truly feel like my 100 Films Challenge if I didn’t have something that needed catching up.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Strays.

The 108th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’d heard good things and so been looking forward to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves anyway, but obviously it particularly aligns with my other interests right now. It may not be the outright ‘best’ movie I watched this month, but it’s a massively fun action-adventure.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Almost like the antithesis of Honor Among Thieves, the ’80s TV movie Mazes and Monsters is notorious for two reasons: starring a pre-fame Tom Hanks, and being a ludicrous ‘Satanic Panic’-motivated riff on Dungeons & Dragons, which at the time was a fairly new game that reactionary oldies were, well, reactionary about. The film itself doesn’t manage to transcend that drawback — it starts out more-or-less alright, but ends up just silly.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
A random bunch of reviews of films I watched years ago clearly weren’t of particular interest to readers, because May’s winner was April’s failures.

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

Bill & Ted Face the Music	Dumb and Dumber
Mangrove	Out of Africa
Rambo: Last Blood

2024’s halfway point approaches.

April’s Failures

Posted on May 2, 2024 by badblokebob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Critical Monthly Review of April 2024

Posted on May 1, 2024 by badblokebob

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

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

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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

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

The 107th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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

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

I.S.S.

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

March’s Failures

Posted on April 2, 2024 by badblokebob

As I mentioned at the start of my March review, I’ve spent a lot of time this past month on things that aren’t films. Does that mean my pile of failures is even more shocking than normal? No, not really — I mean, it could scarcely get much bigger, could it? And I actually went to the cinema once this month too, so there’s even one less title in that paragraph than there’d normally be.

In fact, I’d hoped to make it to the cinema twice this month — Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire was my other targeted release — but family Easter weekend plans got in the way. I’m busy next weekend too, but maybe I’ll find a weeknight for it or something. I’m sure it’s the kind of film that would benefit from the big screen (I felt the same way about its predecessor, which I only saw at home, thanks in part to it coming out in The Covid Times). I nearly made it three trips, even, because I was tempted by Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. I knew the reviews would be poor to middling, but they were so bad it put me right off. I’ll definitely catch it on disc, though. Other silver screen releases this month that I’ll definitely catch on disc were Kung Fu Panda 4 (I enjoyed the first three, but not enough to make the effort for this one at the cinema) and the latest semi-Coen brothers film (in that it’s directed by just one of them), Drive-Away Dolls, which looked fun.

I thought the streamers’ premieres this month would fare better, but I didn’t make time for several of those either (maybe choosing to spend so much time on other stuff had more of an impact than I allowed in my opening paragraph). Top of my watchlist were Netflix’s fantasy actioner Damsel and thoughtful sci-fi Spaceman, plus Amazon Prime’s remake of Road House — not that I’ve ever seen the original, but this version boasts Doug Liman as director and Jake Gyllenhaal as star, both of which appeal to me. Well, now they’re here to count towards my Challenge in the Failures category next month, so that might improve their chances (for at least one of them, anyway).

Other films premiering on streaming included football (aka soccer) true story The Beautiful Game (not a sport I care about, but this boasts a cast led by Bill Nighy), a new all-action remake of The Wages of Fear, Pierce Brosnan in Fast Charlie (which I seem to remember seeing a trailer for and thinking it looked fun enough), and slushy romcom nonsense with a nigh-unsayable title, Irish Wish. I only mention that last one because everything about it seems like a total disaster. I won’t be watching (so it’s not really a “failure”, but I think we long ago passed that being a genuine litmus test for what I mention in this column).

Other big-name titles making their subscription streaming debuts included Ridley Scott’s Napoleon on Apple TV+; Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla on MUBI; three-and-a-half-hour concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour on Disney+, which also had Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins and six-time BAFTA nominee All of Us Strangers. Talking of awards nominees, Oscar winners abound, from Poor Things on Disney+ (much to the confusion of many Americans, based on social media), to American Fiction and Anatomy of a Fall on Amazon, to 20 Days in Mariupol on Channel 4, via all sorts of stuff on Netflix: acting nominees Nyad and Rustin; documentaries American Symphony and To Kill a Tiger; shorts The After and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar — the latter of which was one of four Wes Anderson Roald Dahl shorts that he apparently insisted were released as individual films so no one would judge them as a portmanteau feature, but which Netflix have now made available as a portmanteau feature, title The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More.

Talking of the Oscars, every February/March I get the offer of a cut-price Sky Cinema subscription from NOW, which used to be great for watching the Oscars on Sky. But, starting this year, here in the UK the ceremony is now broadcast free on ITV, so I don’t need to get Sky even at that budget price — hurrah! Except they’re still the streaming home to tonnes of recent movies, of course, so I took the offer anyway. That means my watchlist has been flooded with a mass of stuff that was previously locked away. We’re talking The Beekeeper (wasn’t that only in cinemas, like, the other week?), Michael Mann’s Ferrari (apparently a “Sky Original” — oh dear), Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City (eesh, I haven’t even watched The French Dispatch on Disney+ yet), Fast X, The Super Mario Bros Movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, No Hard Feelings, Polite Society, Gran Turismo, May December, Violent Night, The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan, Renfield, Beau Is Afraid, She Said; plus superhero movies I kinda want to see even though they’re meant to be awful, like The Flash and Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods; and more back catalogue stuff that I’ve added to my watchlist but don’t even care enough to list here, so I’m not likely to actually watch any of it, am I? (But you never know…)

As if that wasn’t enough, the other streamers are also always bolstering their back catalogue. Most noteworthy among these also-rans for me was RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop on Amazon Prime. This making-of documentary is meant to be so good that I nearly bought it on Blu-ray. It’s not even just “a documentary”, but a four-part series totalling almost five hours. As making-ofs go, that’s rather incredible. I mean, I remember when the Twelve Monkeys DVD was exalted for having an hour-long making-of. Obviously, things like the Lord of the Rings appendices reshaped expectations in that regard, but those remained a rarity, and similar extravagances have been cut back with time (nowadays, even huge popular blockbusters typically get no more than 45 to 60 minutes of behind-the-scenes material, often split across multiple sub-ten-minute featurettes). That said, when I’m likely to make time for such an undertaking, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never actually got round to watching those Rings appendices, and I’m a much bigger fan of those films than I am of RoboCop.

Though that was one title I avoided buying on disc, this month (as with most months, to be honest) the streamers have been flooded with stuff to remind me I haven’t yet watched my bought-and-paid-for copy —from things I’ve never seen, like Michael Mann’s Ali and The Last of the Mohicans, the new Candyman, Drive My Car, The Kid Who Would Be King, Legends of the Fall, The Long Good Friday, Mazes and Monsters, Out of Sight, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Weathering with You; to things I’ve upgraded but not watched my new copy, like Drive, The Godfather trilogy, The Guest, La La Land, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; to stuff I’ve simply been meaning to revisit, like Catch Me If You Can, The Martian, The Matrix Resurrections, and The Third Man. And those are just some edited highlights.

Then there’s all the new discs I’ve been buying to further enlarge my collection. Only a handful of them were 4K this month: Ozploitation sci-fi horror Patrick from Indicator; bodyswap sci-fi horror Possessor from Second Sight; and folk horror Witchfinder General from 88 Films. Horror always seems to be at the forefront of new formats… though I’m not sure we can still call 4K a new format at this point. But nonetheless, plenty of deeper-cut horror movies are finding their way onto 4K discs while studios still twiddle their thumbs about releasing major titles on the format, so my point stands. That said, some much-anticipated studio titles did make it to the disc this month, in the form of a trio of long-awaited James Cameron films… and they were pretty universally derided for their ‘restored’ (read: modernised) picture quality. I’ve wanted True Lies on disc for decades, but I’m skipping it based on what I’ve read and seen (for now — maybe I’ll cave when it’s cheap. I mean, it’s likely this is the only version we’ll ever get). The one I did pick up is apparently the least-bad, The Abyss. Frankly, the DVD is so ancient, almost anything will be an improvement.

That aside, I have no other ‘major’ titles to mention this month, only new releases of older films from boutique labels. As seems to be commonplace nowadays, lots of martial arts-related titles, with a duo of duos from Eureka — the two Bodyguard Kiba films, and a double-feature of influential titles, The Swordsman of All Swordsmen and The Mystery of Chess Boxing — plus a box set of the Bounty Hunter trilogy from Radiance and The Inspector Wears Skirts 2 from 88 Films. Indicator mix things up with a trio of lucha libre films: Santo vs. the Riders of Terror, The Panther Women, and The Bat Woman (which I’ve sort of seen thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000 taking it on last season). Rounding things out, some releases I can’t neatly combine in thematic bundles: the latest silent movie restoration from Redwood Creek Films, the 1928 version of The Fall of the House of Usher (at least the third screen adaptation of that story I own); River, another time loop film from the makers of Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (which I also haven’t watched); and Italian gangster actioner Tony Arzenta (aka Big Guns or No Way Out), which reportedly plays like a sequel to Le Samouraï (another film I’ve been intending to watch for decades).

The important thing to take away from all that is… I need more time to watch movies. But hey, at least there’s plenty of choice to fulfil the Failures category next month.

The Eggy Monthly Review of March 2024

Posted on April 1, 2024 by badblokebob

In case you somehow missed it, it’s Easter weekend. That’s the only reason for the title. There are no eggs involved anywhere else in this post.

In terms of observations actually related to the blog, I only managed to keep one of my two main viewing goals ticking over — that is to say, I hit my “ten new films per month” target, but fell short of keeping my 100 Films Challenge on track (more detail in Viewing Notes, as usual). That said, I’m pleased to have achieved even that much in March, when films have found themselves competing with an uncommon amount of other stuff for my entertainment time. To be specific, I’ve started a rewatch of the ’90s X-Men animated series (I’m ten episodes in, which adds up to 3½ hours); finally been playing point-and-click adventure classic Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (for about 11 hours); and, most consumingly of all, found myself somewhat obsessed with cult-phenomenon actual-play Dungeons & Dragons series Critical Role (I’ve watched 26½ hours, plus untold more spent reading around it, and barely made a start on it); and that’s without counting up sundry other bits and pieces, like reading books and comics, or slowly rewatching Blackadder.

Anyway, to get back to the films (though there’s always the comment section if you’d like to talk about the other stuff), here’s, um, the films…

This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#17 Dune: Part Two (2024) — New Film #3
#18 Maestro (2023) — 50 Unseen #4
#19 The Inspector Wears Skirts (1988) — Genre #2
#20 Black Tight Killers (1966) — Failures #3
#21 My Darling Clementine (1946) — Blindspot #3
#22 My Father and My Son (2005) — WDYMYHS #3

I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in March.
Just six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
That means (as I said at the start) that I exceeded my “ten films per month” minimum target — for the first time this year; also, that’s the fourth month in a row, which is the most consecutive ten-film months since a pandemic-aided run of 21 months in 2020/21. (The all-time record remains 60 months, aka five solid years.)
But (as also mentioned at the start) I fell short of where I should be in my Challenge — but only by two films. I’ve got the rest of the year to catch that up, so it’s far from a disaster. Yet.
This is also the first month of 2024 without any rewatches; although I did still manage two short films (I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I’m aiming to watch at least one of those each month too. That’s sort of an “unofficial” goal, though, in that I’m not exactly tracking it… except I am, because I keep records of all these things).
In terms of history and percentages and stuff, this is the best March since 2021, but because it’s still below March’s all-time average of 14.9, it brings it down to 14.6.
Conversely, being higher than last March means it does increase the rolling monthly average of the last 12 months, bringing it from 8.8 to 9.1. If I can continue my ten-films-per-month streak, eventually it’ll get above 10.0 again…
I posted my Dune: Part One review right at the end of February, fully intending to quickly follow it with my Dune: Part Two review in early March. That didn’t happen, obviously.
I’ve been buying Radiance releases since they sprung into existence back in mid-2022 (indeed, I’ve got 30 of the 37 titles they’ve released to date, plus several of their “partner label” releases too), but Black Tight Killers is the first one I’ve actually watched. I’m not one of those collectors who buys stuff just to keep on his self unopened… but I do have a bunch of stuff on my shelf unopened, because I am one of those collectors who’s interested in almost everything but can’t find the time to watch it all.
This month’s Blindspot film was John Ford’s version of the Wyatt Earp / gunfight at the O.K. Corral legend, My Darling Clementine.
Letterboxd informs me that My Darling Clementine was the first film I watched on a Tuesday this year. So there you go.
This month’s WDYMYHS film was Turkish intergenerational family drama My Father and My Son.
From last month’s “failures” I watched Black Tight Killers.

The 106th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I confess, I didn’t have any particular expectations of John Ford Western My Darling Clementine. Not that I thought it would be bad, but — despite it clearly having enough acclaim to get onto my Blindspot list — I didn’t sit down expecting a masterpiece or something either. Perhaps that’s what allowed it to blow me away, first from a visual standpoint (this is a film where even the day-for-night photography looks good) and then by… well, everything else.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This has to be Alan Bennett adaptation Allelujah, which for much of its running time is an amiable-enough pro-NHS / anti-cutbacks polemic, before a final-reel twist threatens to undermine the whole thing. What a way to mangle your own point.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Now, technically — technically — the winner for this month was February’s Failures, which was way down the overall chart. I stress technically because I’m going to say the award actually goes to something I posted in February… but I posted it on February 29th, so it didn’t have much of a chance last month; and February 29th isn’t a real day anyway, so it’s sort of part of March. Very tenuously sort of. Anyway, that makes the winner my review of Dune: Part One, which actually cracked the overall top ten (at #8).