June’s Failures

Posted on July 3, 2023 by badblokebob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May’s Failures

Posted on June 3, 2023 by badblokebob

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March’s Failures

Posted on April 2, 2023 by badblokebob

Box office-related chatter this month has mainly been asking, is the superhero boom over? With last month‘s Ant-Man 3 doing weaker business than expected, and now Shazam! Fury of the Gods underperforming, has given people cause to wonder if the near-monopoly the genre has exerted over the box office might finally be crumbling. I don’t wish for superhero movies to die off completely, but a little less dominance would be nice.

In their place, other films have flourished: Rocky spin-off sequel Creed III; horror franchise revival sequel Scream VI; fantasy reboot Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves; and, of course, the latest instalment in the popular gun-fu action series, John Wick: Chapter 4. The fact those are all still sequels or IP continuations might make some feel we’re just jumping out of the superhero frying pan into a different kind of IP fire, but at least there’s some variety of tone and style and content there.

Also reaching UK cinemas this month was the pulpy-looking Adam Drive vs dinosaurs adventure 65; a pair of Mia Goth-starring horrors, Pearl and Infinity Pool; a delayed bow for Warner Bros animation Mummies, a film I’ve heard so little chat about that I keep looking it up to check it’s real; and a bit of copyright exploitation (set to become a theme/genre unto itself over the next few years — it’s gonna need a catchy name, a la blaxploitation and sexploitation) in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Funny concept, maybe, but I heard it was not good.

Meanwhile, Marlowe — the new film by director Neil Jordan, starring Liam Neeson and a fairly name-y supporting cast (Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Danny Huston, etc), adapting a story about Raymond Chandler’s famed detective — went straight to streaming as a Sky Original. Oh dear. I’ve heard it’s as weak as that situation suggests. Still goes on my watchlist, though. Netflix’s headline premiere of the month was a revival of another popular detective, albeit a more recent creation, in TV series continuation Luther: The Fallen Sun. They actually put it into cinemas last month, presumably in an attempt to head off greater-than-usual accusations of it just being a TV movie (I mean, a new instalment of a TV series being released in such a way that you can only watch it on your TV? Of course it would’ve been fair to call that “a TV movie”.) They had another animation that seems to have flown under the radar, The Magician’s Elephant. Maybe it’s just me, but a lot of Netflix’s original animations seem to pass me by, only to then turn up with an Oscar nomination or something (cf. The Mitchells and the Machines, The Sea Beast, and others), so maybe it’ll enter my sphere of awareness again at a later date. Finally, Apple TV+ just debuted Tetris, about the creation of the eponymous video game. Maybe they couldn’t make a Pixels-style adaptation work.

I didn’t see tell of any brand-new originals on Amazon Prime, but they did add Palme d’Or winner and Oscar nominee Triangle of Sadness; and, from the less auspicious end of the spectrum, belated threequel Clerks III. Disney+ did their usual thing of rushing everything to streaming lickety-split, this time with Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light; although MUBI also pull a similar trick nowadays (though it feels more understandable with their smaller-scale, indie-type releases), this month with Iranian serial killer thriller Holy Spider. Meanwhile, Netflix seemed to get plenty of eyeballs onto their debut of extreme climbing-related thriller Fall, as well as sci-fi-horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II. That moved over to them from Sky Cinema, which still seems to be home to the most subscription streaming debuts. This month they included The Black Phone, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Elvis, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Where the Crawdads Sing, and the film that generated a tonne of awards season chatter thanks to the campaign for Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie.

As ever, I could go on and on about deeper catalogue titles across all the aforementioned services — plus titles on BBC iPlayer and All 4; and ITVX has quite the film section, though it’s hard to browse for new additions — but then we’d be here forever. Instead, let’s move right along to all the stuff I bought on disc this past month.

Perhaps the most noteworthy new release this month was Second Sight’s long-awaited 4K release of George A. Romero’s Martin. I do actually own the Arrow DVD from many moons ago and, in typical fashion, have never got round to watching it, so I wasn’t quite as itching for the very chance to see the film, as some have been; but it’s always nice to have something in tip-top quality. It also means I now own the vast majority of Romero’s filmography on Blu-ray or 4K (the only one I’m missing is Bruiser, which has only had an HD release in Germany and France). I ought to get on with watching them, really… Also coming to 4K this month, another relatively-minor feature from an acclaimed horror director, Red Eye. I previously owned it on DVD, which I only bought, cheap, a whole decade ago, because a Blu-ray wasn’t forthcoming and I wanted to rewatch it. That disc never entered a player. So, that rewatch is long overdue, and hopefully the 4K disc will be spun soon. In a similar situation of continual neglect is The City of Lost Children, released on 4K tomorrow (my copy trend up early). I’ve previously owned it on DVD and Blu-ray, but never seen it. Yeah, I’m a fool for this kind of thing. Anyway, another one that goes on my “really should watch this very soon” pile.

Other upgrades this month included 88 Films’ 4K reissue of Jackie Chan / Sammo Hung / Yuen Biao actioner Dragons Forever (it’s been out a while, but I’ve been waiting to snag it on an offer as, again, I hadn’t actually watch my Blu-ray copy); their newly-restored reissue of Chan’s Snake & Crane Arts of Shaolin; and Criterion’s Infernal Affairs Trilogy set (again, benefitting from waiting for an offer price). As if that wasn’t enough action from Hong Kong, I also picked up Eureka’s new releases of In the Line of Duty III and IV (following on from the series’ first two films, Yes, Madam and Royal Warriors, in December and January respectively); and another Jackie Chan title from 88 Films, Gorgeous. It felt to me like these classic HK/Chinese actioners were hard to come by in the UK in recent years (the Hong Kong Legends label used to do sterling work, of course, but that’s been defunct for some time), but we’re definitely spoilt now, with multiple labels regularly releasing high-quality editions. I’m doing a pathetic job of getting round to watching them (ain’t that true of everything?), but I continue to lap them up to sit on my shelf.

Similarly, almost anything put out by Indicator finds its way onto my shelves, and this was true again this month with their bundle of moderately obscure titles from the 1930s (and one from the ’40s). Those included Ernst Lubitsch’s Broken Lullaby and Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (I enjoyed the box set of his silent work that Eureka put out many years ago, so I’ve always been interested in seeing more of his Hollywood productions, with the famed ‘Lubitsch touch’); James Whale’s The Kiss Before the Mirror; and Frank Capra’s State of the Union.

The rest of my purchases this month were similarly based on reputation alone, usually of the filmmaker rather than the film itself, although all slightly older releases I’d waited for discounts on. Therein are the likes of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s La Prisonnière; Criterion’s releases of Jim Jarmusch’s “acid western” Dead Man and Kasi Lemmons’s Southern Gothic drama Eve’s Bayou; and, finally, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz — technically a 14-episode miniseries, but there were at least some theatrical screenings of the entire 15-hour piece, so it’s not wholly egregious to mention it here. Though considering I struggle to find the time for those 90-minute-ish comedy-actioners, when I’m going to get round to a 15-hour series about “misery, lack of opportunities, crime and the imminent ascendency of Nazism” in Weimar Germany, I don’t know.

February’s Failures

Posted on March 2, 2023 by badblokebob

What’s the big story at the box office this month, then? Normally a new MCU film would walk it, but Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is reportedly struggling. Well, it’s still making a tonne of money, but not as much as usual for these affairs, and not compared to its staggeringly over-large budget. Has the much-heralded end of the superhero boom arrived? Or is this just a blip? Probably Guardians of the Galaxy 3 in May will be a better indicator.

Also playing this month was the new M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin, which seemed to be as divisive as Shyamalan movies always are nowadays. I’ll definitely catch it at some point, but I still haven’t got round to Old. Then there was Cocaine Bear which, based on the early reviews I saw, sounds to be as delightfully trashy as its premise promised. Again, though, not something that’s actually tempted me out to the cinema (we might have to wait until a certain Part Two in November for that; but we’ll see). There were belated UK bows for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, The Whale, and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (which I was going to watch and review, until it turned out I’d been sent a faulty disc. The replacement turned up too late to hit the release date). I should also mention Magic Mike’s Last Dance. I’ve never seen a Magic Mike film, though they remain on my list due to Steven Soderbergh’s involvement.

Originals of note were in even shorter supply from the streamers. All I have jotted down to mention are Amazon’s Somebody I Used to Know (which I’m not sure I saw any significant discussion of beyond its poster), Netflix’s We Have a Ghost, and Apple TV+’s Sharper (which I did hear some good things about, but not many, because who watches Apple TV+? Hardly anyone). In “fresh from the cinema” stakes, Disney+ offered Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, though personally I’ll wait until I can find a 3D copy (not to mention that I’m multiple MCU films behind, so it’s a few down the line for me anyway); and, on a more low-key note, Sky Cinema had British indie comedy Brian and Charles. (More noteworthy additions to the latter’s catalogue might be Top Gun: Maverick, but I’ve seen that, and Bullet Train, but I already bought that (cheaply), so they’re not really “failures”. Not for this month, anyway.)

In terms of older films popping up, as ever I added multiple titles to all my watchlists, but little seems particularly worthy of note. Maybe submarine flick Black Sea on Netflix, which I vaguely remember coming and going with little fanfare back in 2014, but I saw someone describe as an “underwater heist” movie, which tickled my interest. On MUBI, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul would merit a mention if I hadn’t already downloaded it for my Blindspot challenge; the same could be said for Wild Tales, which is one of the handful of films I haven’t seen from IMDb’s Top 250.

I did rent something for the first time in yonks, though: Confess, Fletch — partly because I’ve heard good things, partly because Amazon were having a sale for Prime members. If that isn’t part of my March viewing, I’ll have wasted £1.99.

Talking of spending money, of course I bought more discs this month — fewer than normal, based on the length of my list, but still a definite pile of stuff. My 4K collection was emboldened by two labels: A24, from whom I imported The Green Knight (I already own the regular 4K release, but this has a bunch of exclusive special features, not least a whole new short film) and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (which, as previously mentioned, it turned out was faulty and I had to wait for a replacement); and Arrow, who this month brought out The Last Emperor (one of those ’80s historical epics I’ve yet to see) and The Sisters Brothers (a film I’ve consistently not got round to watching while it was on Netflix and iPlayer and possibly other streaming services, and now I can not get round to watching it on disc).

Indeed, breaking this section down by label is probably the right way to go about it, because so many of my purchases these days are random films — sometimes things I’ve never even heard of — which I blind buy because I trust the label (though there’s no label I blindly buy everything from — there has to be something about each release that piques my interest). In that sense, Indicator dominated the month with five titles: Spaghetti Western The Big Gundown (which pairs nicely with Eureka’s Run, Man, Run from last month. Just need someone to bring Face to Face to Blu to complete the trilogy of Sergio Sollima’s work in the genre); Mexican wrestler action in a box set of the first two Santo films, Santo vs. Evil Brain and Santo vs. Infernal Men (this is a real “well, if Indicator are releasing it…” punt, combined with the enjoyment I got from Mystery Science Theater 3000’s recent Santo episode); and then, right at the end of the month, Death of a Gunfighter, The Night of the Following Day, and the only one of these six films I would’ve classed as a “want to see” before Indicator announced them, Sherlock Holmes riff They Might Be Giants. The latter comes with three cuts of the film, so I’m gonna have to choose one somehow…

The only other label to mention this month (I said it was a smaller one) is Eureka, who continued their recent output of classic “girls with guns” / Michelle Yeoh titles with Magnificent Warriors and expanded their Masters of Cinema line with yakuza thriller Violent Streets; plus I dove slightly into their back catalogue (all the way back to October) and bought the Maniacal Mayhem set of three Boris Karloff / Universal horrors (to go with the Universal Terror set I already had and in anticipation of the Creeping Horror set that’s coming in April, not to mention their other collections of classic Uni monster/horror flicks).

My final purchase of the month is an oddity: a DVD (the only format it’s available on) of a Christmas movie (seasonal!) — or, rather, a Christmas TV special. And its only DVD release (that I’m aware of) was a freebie with the Daily Mail years ago, and it was that that I picked up from an eBay seller (for a reasonable price, considering most copies of it are advertised for £16+. Seriously). I’m talking about The Greatest Store in the World, which I’ve always felt would be remembered as something of a Christmas classic if it had been released as a proper movie rather than a BBC special in 1999. Or maybe the memory cheats? It hasn’t been repeated often, so I haven’t seen it for years. Well, I’m not about to watch it anytime soon — it’s a Christmas movie, remember! It’ll have to wait ’til December.

November’s Failures

Posted on December 2, 2022 by badblokebob

So, what’s the big cinema release of the month? Is it the latest instalment in the MCU, and the first direct sequel to that franchise’s only Best Picture nominee, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever? Or is it the limited theatrical release Netflix afforded to Knives Out sequel Glass Onion? Apparently it was such a roaring success during its one-week engagement, it left cinemas begging Netflix to extend its run and the box office commentariat noting Netflix’s obsession with avoiding/killing theatrical releases is seeing them leave millions (perhaps tens or even hundreds of millions) of dollars on the table. Funny days we live in.

There were a bunch of Netflix titles in cinemas this month, in fact, though none near enough to me to truly consider, so I’ll mention them when they actually arrive on the streamer. That said, if you’re outside the UK and Ireland, Matilda — or, to give it its full proper title, Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical — will be a Netflix Original when it premieres there at Christmas. Here, it’s a StudioCanal release with regular theatrical distribution (and a Netflix debut next summer). It’s an adaptation of the highly-acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company stage production, with songs by the wonderful Tim Minchin, which I’ve wanted to see since it opened (12 years ago) but have never found myself getting round to it. And now, frankly, I feel a bit weird going to see a children’s/family film in the cinema on my lonesome, so I guess I’ll be waiting for Netflix too. In the meantime, I’m just going to listen to Revolting Children on loop…

Also getting UK theatrical releases (of one scale or another) last month were Bill Nighy-starring Ikiru remake Living; fine dining thriller The Menu; festival favourite Aftersun; star-studded Armageddon Time; another attempt to reignite the “Jon Hamm is a leading man” spark in Confess, Fletch; real-life #MeToo retelling She Said; cannibal drama Bones and All; and under-promoted Disney animation Strange World. Plus a bunch of other titles I noted down but now can’t remember what they are, so I guess they’re not too significant.

Over on the streamers, Netflix tried to score blockbuster-style impact with the likes of Slumberland, an extravagant-looking (read: lots of CGI) family fantasy starring Jason Momoa and directed by Francis “Hunger Games” Lawrence. There was also the new work from Cartoon Saloon (last seen going Apple TV+ exclusive with WolfWalkers), the even-more-kid-focused My Father’s Dragon. And period drama The Wonder, starring Florence Pugh, provoked some chat for its “this is a film” opening shot/voiceover, if nothing else. And yet they were all topped by Falling for Christmas, a made-for-TV-level piece of festive churn starring Lindsay Lohan (yes, apparently she’s still working) and with no one else of note involved. Normally I wouldn’t mention shit like this, but it was Netflix’s #1 movie at one point (yes, really), plus I saw a review on Twitter that said it was so unremittingly terrible it made for a hilarious watch. I doubt I’ll actually test that assessment, though.

Apple TV+ went down a bigger-budgeted festive route, with Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell starring in yet another remix of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, this time a musical one titled Spirited. I’ve not really heard any reactions to it, probably because it’s on Apple TV+. Sky Cinema’s HBO Max affiliation granted them A Christmas Story Christmas, but as the original Christmas Story never seemed to be as big a deal here as it apparently is in the US, I doubt anyone will care. No such jollity on Prime Video, whose main original offering was My Policeman, which I’d heard of primarily because it stars Harry Styles and Emma Corrin, and Amazon’s promotion did little to enlighten me further, going with just a photo of Styles in a policeman’s uniform as the poster and key art. It looks like a period drama. I doubt I’ll watch it. Of more interest is Good Night Oppy, a documentary about the Mars rover that was expected to last 90 days but went on exploring for 15 years. Feels like exactly the kind of thing I put on my watchlist and maybe get round to on a whim one day in four or five or six years’ time.

Meanwhile, MUBI’s biggest debut wasn’t really a film at all: following restored releases of Lars von Trier’s ’90s miniseries The Kingdom and The Kingdom II, they’re currently premiering weekly new episodes of the third and final season, The Kingdom Exodus. I’ve been interested in the series for a while (I own the original two runs in a Second Sight DVD box set that Amazon tells me came out in 2011), but finding time for 13 episodes of TV is always a challenge these days. In a similarly TV-ish position, the most noteworthy thing on Disney+ was The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. It falls into the same “one-off special” bracket as Werewolf by Night last month, although I think this one sounds more explicitly TV-like; but it apparently contains some Guardians continuity stuff that will likely feed into the third film. Lines, blurred, etc.

As always, dozens (maybe hundreds) of back catalogue (re)releases on all the streamers further bulked out my watchlists, or made me annoyed that I hadn’t yet watched the disc I bought (I’m looking at you, Another Round, which after a period on Sky has now shifted to Netflix, to doubly rub in that the Blu-ray still sits unseen on my shelf). Despite the prominence of other outfits, Sky Cinema do still seem to get the big-name titles first, this month adding the likes of Morbius, The Northman, The Outfit, and The Phantom of the Open. Your mileage may vary on how much those are “big-name titles”, but I didn’t note anything of comparable scale making its streaming debut anywhere else. However, making noteworthy comebacks were both How the Grinch Stole Christmas — the live-action one with Jim Carrey — on Netflix, and The Grinch — the CG animation with the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch — on Prime Video. Choices, choices. I could keep going with all the stuff that’s popped up on streamers — not just those already mentioned, but also the free TV-based ones like iPlayer, All 4, and now ITVX too (apparently ITV’s new streaming service is finally in HD. Or some of it, anyway. Hopefully that applies to the films, because they have an interesting selection), but, seriously, we’d be here forever.

So it’s on to my purchases, then, with a list that looks surprisingly short this month. Well, I’m waiting on a lot of stuff to be delivered — both preorders and stuff delayed by the postal issues we’re currently experiencing in the UK — so December might be a bumper month. That said, if I were listing individual titles we might be here a while, because surely the month’s headline release is Arrow’s Shawscope Volume Two, featuring 14 more movies (plus a couple of alternate cuts) from the Hong Kong studio best known (at least in the West) for its prolific martial arts output. Plus, Indicator started a new range of box sets — this time collecting Universal Noir — so that’s another six films on the watchlist. Other brand-new releases included Bullet Train (the trailer looked fun, even if reviews were weak, and the disc was heavily discounted shortly after release, so I took the punt), and a 4K double-bill of Top Gun (now the third copy in my collection, after a special edition DVD (kept for its extras) and the 3D Blu-ray) and Top Gun: Maverick). New editions of archive titles included Arrow’s 4K restoration of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the BFI’s 4K-but-on-regular-Blu-ray release of The Draughtsman’s Contract.

Despite Black Friday and general end-of-year offers, my sale purchases were limited to a couple of BFI titles (noir comedy Beat the Devil, and Jean-Pierre Melville / Jean Cocteau collaboration Les enfants terribles), a couple from HMV’s Premium Collection range (vampires a la Tony Scott in The Hunger, and the 1944 American remake of Gaslight), and Masters of Cinema’s release of silent drama The Love of Jeanne Ney.

But after all that, likely to grace my player first is a niche documentary: Doctor Who Am I, coming to disc shortly after a brief theatrical run that also saw it mentioned in last month’s failures. But, unlike when I knew I’d never catch it on the big screen, I fully intend to actually watch it this time.

October’s Failures

Posted on November 2, 2022 by badblokebob

There can be only one release to kick off this month’s failures. Not because it was somehow the ‘most failed’ (it only came out yesterday, and — for various reasons — I didn’t get my copy until 10pm), but because it’s so long-awaited. Ever since StudioCanal started doing their lavish tat-filled 4K box sets a few years ago, I’ve been hoping they’d do one for Highlander (knowing that they owned the UK rights and had a 4K transfer ready, having released it on regular Blu-ray back in 2016), and it’s finally here. Hurrah! I haven’t actually watched Highlander since before Blu-rays were a thing (I bought a previous BD edition in 2009 and, shamefully, I’ve never watched it), so I’m looking forward to finally revisiting it.

Anyway, highlighting that has messed up the usual order of things, so let’s get back on track with what hit the big screen this month. Frankly, nothing that came particularly close to tempting me out the door. I guess The Banshees of Inisherin, maybe, as I love In Bruges, but I’m also happy to wait to watch it at home. Maybe I’d’ve been lured by documentary Doctor Who Am I if it had actually been playing near me. I’ve already preordered the Blu-ray that’s out later this month, mind. As for the ostensible blockbusters — your Black Adams and your Halloween Endses — I intend to watch them someday, but there’s so certainly no rush on my part. Same goes for most of this month’s other cinematic releases: Amsterdam, Barbarian, Bros, Decision to Leave, The Lost King, The Woman King… All stuff that will go on my watchlist when they come to a streamer I’m subscribed to, but I’m not sure there’s anything I’ll check out before that.

As for said streamers, Netflix score perhaps the most noteworthy release of the month with the new German adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. Not “noteworthy” in the sense of generating column inches (I’ve barely seen it discussed), but in terms of quality, perhaps the winner (when I have seen it discussed, it’s with nought but praise). As if to balance the books, they also had lamentable YA adaptation The School for Good and Evil. Despite the disparity in critical reception, I bet it’s the latter that gets more viewers, sadly. Higher up my “to see” list than either is the new film from Henry “the actual director of Nightmare Before Christmas” Selick, Wendell & Wild. I don’t know anything at all about it, other than it’s stop-motion animated (natch) and was cowritten with Jordan Peele, but “the new film from the director of Coraline” is more than enough to convince me it’s a must-see. Also premiering this month was family-friendly Halloween-targeted The Curse of Bridge Hollow (I thought the trailer looked fun enough, but I imagine I’ll promptly forget it exists), some thriller starring Joel Egerton and Sean Harris called The Stranger (mmm, generic title), and Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain in The Good Nurse. Redmaybe and Chastain in something based on a true story? Sounds like it should be an awards contender or something, not limited to a passing reference buried at the end of my Netflix roundup, but I’ve barely seen it mentioned (I’ve only vaguely picked up on the “true story” thing too, so I might not even be right about that).

Also worth a mention on Netflix was Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which I concluded is actually a TV series — an anthology of eight one-hour episodes — but there are some pretty big names starring in them, and some of the directors are familiar, too. In reliable “we still don’t really have proper rules about TV” fashion, Letterboxd have listed all the episodes individually, giving some credence to the idea of counting them as films… but Letterboxd also do that with Black Mirror, which similarly has name-y casts and directors (sometimes), but is definitely a TV series (aside from the odd special, arguably), so I’m not about to start counting either towards my 100 Films Challenge.

Talking of “TV that’s sort of a film”, Disney+ had the latest addition to the MCU, Werewolf by Night. It is, according to their branding, a “Special Presentation”. But in an era when Disney are happy to premiere big releases from their major studios (Pixar have suffered the brunt of this) on Disney+, what makes it “not a film”? Only its 50-something-minute runtime, I guess. It would’ve been a good one to watch in the lead up to Halloween (I mean, that’s why they released it when they did), but I didn’t make the time. And I haven’t decided if I should count it or not anyway (50 minutes is above the American Academy-derived 40-minute rule I use for differentiating features from shorts, but does that stop Werewolf by Night from being a ‘TV special’?) The only other brand-new thing on Disney+ I’ve noted this month is Rosaline, which has an intriguing premise (it’s about the girl Romeo loved before Juliet), but I’ve not encountered much discussion of it, which doesn’t bode well for it being worth paying attention.

Over on Amazon, they had the new film from writer/director Lena Dunham. Remember her? Lucky you if not. That nearly made me ignore Catherine Called Birdy entirely, but the trailer autoplayed at me and tickled me enough to put it on my watchlist. More likely to get me pressing ‘play’ is The Sound of 007, a documentary about (you guessed it) the music of the James Bond films. Considering how vital and influential the music of Bond is — both the scores and the title songs — it seems a worthy subject for such in-depth exploration. Its release was timed to coincide with the complete back catalogue of Bond films returning to Prime. Considering they own them now, when they’re available or not feels a bit like artificial scarcity. Anyway, they’re all in 4K, which is nice; but as I’ve had the “Bond 50” Blu-ray set for ten years and not finished getting through it yet, I doubt I’ll jump into Amazon’s offering. (Though Goldeneye has a notoriously weak transfer on Blu-ray, so subbing in the streaming 4K when I get there is tempting.)

Continuing in non-‘original’s territory, Amazon win the month with the streaming debut of “Nic Cage as Nic Cage (literally)” action-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. They’ve also now got X, the horror movie that only came out back in March and has already been sequelised (though apparently said sequel doesn’t have UK distribution, which perhaps doesn’t speak well of the first film’s success here). The best Netflix could manage in this field was… um… no, I got nothing. On the other hand, Sky Cinema (which, despite my attempts to wean off subscribing to so many streamers, I now have again thanks to a dirt-cheap offer) this past month premiered Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (I enjoyed the first more than I expected), The Lost City (strong Romancing the Stone vibes, in a good way), and Foo Fighters-starring horror Studio 666.

On to the final streamer I still pay for (unless I’m forgetting one, which is depressingly possible), and MUBI this month debuted Hit the Road, which I heard good things about when it played festivals last year so I’m looking forward to finally seeing, and The Wolf House, which I only know of because of its high ranking on Letterboxd animation lists, but I want to take this (thus far, rare) chance to see due to its high ranking on Letterboxd animation lists. (Now I’ve just gotta not forget those films are there and actually make time to watch them…) They also built up to Halloween with a whole season fo Dario Argento films — most of which I’ve not seen; all of which I own on disc, mostly thanks to Arrow. We’re talking The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Phenomena, Tenebrae…

Of course, horror movies were popping up left, right and centre throughout October. The one I really should’ve watched is Rosemary’s Baby on All 4, because it’s something I really need to tick off a few Letterboxd lists. Plus because it’s meant to be a great film, obv. But it’s gone now, so that ain’t happening. Other horror streaming for free included, on All 4, Monster House, the remake of The Ring, and Saint Maud; and on BBC iPlayer, Ghost Stories, His House (formerly a Netflix Original, but apparently it was a BBC co-production and so always destined to jump services), lockdown favourite Host, the original Poltergeist; and piles more that I’ve either seen or own on disc. People really do go crazy for the ol’ horror films in October, huh? I always feel I should watch more, but I’m never organised enough.

Talking of free streamers, this month I discovered that the ITV Hub actually has a load of interesting films on it. For some reason I didn’t think their streaming service offered many films at all; and if they did… well, I have low intellectual expectations for the kinds of films ITV would show. Clearly I’ve misjudged them, because they have stuff like Belleville Rendez-Vous, Dogtooth, A Ghost Story, I’m Not There, My Left Foot, Son of Saul, Sophie’s Choice, and more (plus some of the kinds of things you might expect ITV to show, which is less interesting, but fair enough). The only downside is that they’re only available in SD, because ITV technology is dated like that. Maybe the forthcoming launch of ITV X will solve the problem… although as that’s a subscription service, I don’t know if they’ll bother to upgrade their free catchup.

Speaking of expensive things, here’s what I’ve been spending all of my money on this month — in addition to the aforementioned Highlander set, obvs. Normally I’d begin the list with brand-spanking-new releases, but I don’t think there were any this month. Top Gun: Maverick came out here yesterday, but I’m still a bit torn between getting it by itself or in the 4K double-pack with the first film, so I haven’t ordered it yet. As for new editions of older films, 88 Films delivered Hong Kong thriller Righting Wrongs with a choice of four cuts of the film, and Italian crime thriller Blood and Diamonds. Giving Highlander a run for its money in the “chunky box set for a single title” stakes was 101 Films’ Blu-ray reissue of Ghostwatch. Okay, that’s a TV programme, but as a one-off feature-length drama you could argue it’s a TV movie. I’ve still never seen it (another one where I’ve just missed the prime night of the year to watch. Oh dear). In a similar horror vein, I imported the new 4K edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It only adds Dolby Vision encoding (which I have switched off because I’m not convinced by how my TV handles it) and a couple of slight new extras, but I never picked up the previous 4K disc, so it was an easy choice. (I didn’t have to import it — it was released here as a Zavvi exclusive — but the import was cheaper.) And, still technically horror but moving ever further away from it, Eureka brought us the 1923 iteration of The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney.

Sticking with the genre theme, I actually bought quite a few horror titles this month — not intentionally, but I guess it was an accident of what was on sale. So, from Network I picked up a few British classics (“classic” in the sense of “old” rather than “revered”), like The Dark Eyes of London starring Bela Lugosi, and The Ghoul starring Boris Karloff. From Arrow’s annual ‘Shocktober’ sale I snagged A Ghost Waits (which has a lovely textured slipcover, incidentally), and the two Giallo Essentials sets they’ve released in the UK (I may have to import the US-exclusive third one sometime just to complete the set). I also snagged a few horror titles from Indicator’s sale — or Hammer titles, anyway, which doesn’t necessarily mean horror. Those included the standard editions of The Full Treatment and The Snorkel, along with a spare empty Hammer Volume Two box, which is the set they were originally released in. I already owned the standard editions of the other two films from that set, so now I’ve got something that’s almost the same as having the real thing (I’m only missing the booklets and the bellyband). That means I now have all of Indicator’s Hammer sets bar the first, which I’ll never pick up because I won’t pay silly second-hand prices for it. That’s kind of a shame. Anyway. Also from Indicator: Fanatic (one of the films from that first Hammer set), early Mexican horror La Llorona, and experimental ’70s British horror Voices. Finally, as part of that US order with Dracula, I snagged George A. Romero’s The Amusement Park, Kino’s 4K of Invasion of the Body Snatchers ’78, and Shout’s 4K release of the original Candyman (I already owned Arrow’s regular Blu-ray box set, which is a nice set with good nice physical extras, but their 4K release just emulates it, whereas Shout’s adds a bunch of new on-disc extras. So, I’ll be keeping both). Plus, not strictly a horror title but it is relevant: the 4K edition of Batman: The Long Halloween. It cost literally twice as much as just buying the UK 1080p disc. Whether it’s worth it, I’m not sure.

Lest you think I deliberately went round hoovering up horror because it was Halloween, nearly all of those orders also included non-scary stuff. Like, from Network I also bought thrillers Defence of the Realm and The Quiller Memorandum, plus I finally gave in and upgraded The Story of Film: An Odyssey to Blu-ray. From Indicator, I grabbed spiritual drama Immaculate Conception and Western A Time for Dying. My US order was rounded out by Ex Machina in 4K (again, dodging an expensive Zavvi-exclusive UK version for a cheaper but feature-filled US release), noir double-bill The Guilty (which I’ve already watched, so it’s not a failure, so it’s not in bold) and High Tide, and a classic 3D triple(!) bill of Jivaro, Sangaree, and Those Redheads from Seattle. Even Arrow don’t just include horror in their sale, and from them I also picked up a couple of Japanese films: war drama Red Angel and classic movie homage To Sleep So as to Dream.

And, you know, that’s not even quite everything, but I think it’s more than enough.

Hamilton (2020)

Posted on July 4, 2020 by badblokebob

Hamilton, the original musical, is one of the great works of art of the 21st century so far, and now we all get a chance to be in the room where it happened (provided you’re prepared to pony up some dough to Disney+) thanks to the makers having had the foresight to film a full production with the original Broadway cast back in 2016 (and then flogging that recording to Disney for $75 million).

The show is a genuine phenomenon, but if you’ve let it pass you by, allow me to explain the basics. This is the life story of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the USA; an immigrant who fought in the War of Independence, became the first Secretary of the Treasury, and in between and around all that most assuredly lived a life — there’s friendship and rivalry; romance and infidelity; genuine triumph and heartbreaking tragedy. Here that story is told via music, written and composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda (who also portrays the title role), a fusion of hip-hop, R&B, and more traditional Broadway stylings, performed by a cast mostly made up of people of colour. It’s a tale of outsiders and immigrants and forward-thinkers who battled for the right to be recognised and respected — it’s a history lesson, but oh yeah, it’s timely.

It premiered back in 2015, so over the past five years the praises of the original show and its successful soundtrack album (the primary medium through which most people have been able to experience the work, given the scarcity and cost of tickets) have been thoroughly sung. To briefly offer my perspective, I came to it ‘late’ — sure, I heard about it (initially thanks to references to its ticket prices), but I overlooked it as just another bit of mass-popular culture that likely didn’t have any weight or staying power. My mistake. Long story short, I finally listened to it in full in 2019 and was blown away.

Adjectives to describe its quality are endless. It’s densely and intelligently written, packed with historical information at every turn, abundant with sly references to other media. Its structure is sublime, laced with callbacks and nods forward from the very opening number; musical motifs repeat, as do lines and ideas, some cropping up before their real significance has been reached, like flash-forwards; elements of plot and character are echoed and mirrored. Many of these are observable first time through; others only reveal themselves with repeat visits. The characters are sharply and smartly drawn, revealing layers and nuances and different perspectives as the piece goes on — it may ostensibly be about Alexander Hamilton, but multiple other characters are at least as richly painted, if not more so. It engrosses like a thriller and packs the serious emotional punch of a finely-wrought drama, but it’s also very funny at times, with numbers as toe-tappingly addictive as a great pop song. It’s hard to think of a more complete all-round experience.

Well, complete but for visuals if (like me) you’d never seen it performed, only listened to the soundtrack. And, you know, the soundtrack’s not a bad way to experience it — it doesn’t feel notably incomplete. Normally when you listen to a musical’s album, you just get some nice songs from the production. With Hamilton, you get (very nearly almost) the entire soundtrack, and therefore the entire story — you can follow it and not feel like you’ve missed anything. (I do wonder if that’s part of why it’s been such a success.) The lyrics and music conjure up their own imagery in your mind — certainly for me, ever since I first listened to it I’ve pictured whole chunks of it as I’d realise them in a movie version. I’m sure they’ll do a ‘proper’ film of it someday (you really think they’re going to leave all that money on the table?), but I think it’s for the best that’s not the first way I’m seeing it, because I worry it won’t live up to what I’ve concocted in my version.

As I mentioned at the start, this isn’t a film reimagining like a normal movie musical, but rather a filmed record of the original production. It was shot over three days back in June 2016 (shortly before the original cast moved on), during a mix of live performances and in an audience-less auditorium for the sake of closeups, crane shots, etc. That’s one of the things that elevates this particular film above other recorded-theatre productions I’ve been watching recently (like One Man Two Guvnors, Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein, or the RSC’s Macbeth): whereas they have clearly been filmed live during a single performance, with all the restrictions that implies (limited camera angles; making editing choices in real-time), Hamilton has some extra remove, which has allowed director Thomas Kail to be a bit more creative.

The camerawork endeavours to add something no theatre performance could, allowing us to see details that would be missed from even the best seats in the house. Closeups let us appreciate the full spit-flecked contempt from Jonathan Groff’s George III in You’ll Be Back; the restrained emotional sacrifice injected into Angelica by Renée Elise Goldsberry during Satisfied; Eliza’s heartbroken defiance from Phillipa Soo in Burn; or the rare occasions Leslie Odom Jr. allows Aaron Burr’s true emotions to break through in the likes of Wait For It and The World Was Wide Enough. That’s not to mention the countless other moments and performers that benefit from us being able to see how much they’re giving their performances; all the subtleties they’re adding.

At other times the camera angles show off the choreography, for example with punch-ins to highlight specific elements during stage-wide ensemble showpieces, like the rewind at the start of Satisfied, or a bird’s eye view as paper flutters in the air during The Reynolds Pamphlet. Still other scenes are reframed for our convenience, such as an exchange between Burr and Hamilton during Non-Stop that takes place upstage off to one side, but is now centred through medium shots and closeups. If all that sounds like it might serve to undermine the staging, it most certainly does not. When called for, Kail and editor Jonah Moran frequently fall back on wide angles to ensure we see the scope of what’s occurring. Only once or twice during the whole two-and-a-half hours do you feel maybe they chose a less-than-ideal angle or over-edited a sequence.

Having said that listening to the soundtrack feels like a complete experience, watching it certainly shows what you were missing. There’s so much more to add, from little nuances of performance, to visual-only gags and callbacks, to impressive dance and staging — and if we’re already comparing this to the presumed ‘proper film’ version that will exist someday, I also presume some of that staging will be lost in the visual translation. But while there’s an undoubted “designed for the stage” aspect to the blocking or the way some things are realised, it still works on film.

You can’t ignore that this is a film of a Broadway production — even if you wanted to, an opening subtitle reminds us it’s June 2016 in the Richard Rodgers Theatre, and the audience is frequently to be heard clapping, cheering, and laughing (mixed onto the rear speakers if you’re watching in surround sound, as you’d expect, along with a few other moments and effects that add to the experience if you can benefit from such a setup). But it’s so well staged and filmed that you can buy this as the intended experience. With those other filmed-theatre productions I mentioned, you’re often aware that what you’re watching has primarily been staged for those in the room, and that you getting to observe it from a few fixed camera positions is a nice bonus if you couldn’t be there. With Hamilton, it feels like nothing is missed; not only that, but that this is the way the story was meant to be told, complete with elements of theatrical artifice, like the stripped-back staging and actors playing multiple roles (which roles are shared by the same actors is not without significance). Whenever and whatever they do for that theoretical ‘proper film’, I feel like it won’t negate this version, not just as a record of the original show, but as a film in its own right.

That’s perhaps the most striking aspect of this particular version: it doesn’t feel like a mere stopgap until they film it ‘properly’, nor a “that’ll do” stand-in for a real theatrical performance, but instead like a legitimate experience in its own right. Hamilton is a masterpiece, and getting to see it performed by the original cast in its original staging via a film so carefully and lovingly crafted is an absolute thrill.

Hamilton is available on Disney+ now. It placed 3rd on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2020.

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