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The Painful Monthly Review of April 2025

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Parts two and three of the Kizumonogatari trilogy are, allegedly, two of the 100 greatest animated films of all time. The third was, for a time, one of the 250 greatest films of all time. Having consequently watched them (no, I hadn’t heard of them before that either), I can say that, in my opinion, they most certainly are not. But hey, it’s always good to discover new things.

They’re part of a wider long-running anime franchise that fans call the “Monogatari series”. For those who don’t know, “monogatari” means “story” — hence much more famous films like Tokyo monogatari and Ugetsu monogatari and Zatoichi monogatari and Kaguya-hime no monogatari. Imagine calling your series the “Story series” and, like, it not being Toy Story.

Anyway, “kizu” means “scratch” or “wound” according to Google Translate, along with a bunch of variants about scars and hurt. Basically, it’s a painful story. Yeah, checks out. Seemed like a reasonable adjective for this review too, as I did sit through three of those things.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#34 A Real Pain (2024) — New Film #3
#35 The Black Watch (1929) — Failure #4
#36 Kizumonogatari Part 2: Nekketsu (2016) — Series Progression #5
#37 Kizumonogatari Part 3: Reiketsu (2017) — Series Progression #6
#38 Havoc (2025) — New Film #4
#39 Cat People (1942) — Blindspot #4
#40 Saboteur (1942) — WDYMYHS #4


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in April.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
  • Having ended March a full month ahead of schedule, in April that lead slipped slightly… but only by one film. And that’s still better than February, which was two films behind being a month ahead (you follow?) Being almost a month ahead might not be as good as being a whole month ahead, but it’s not too shabby.
  • I can pinpoint the specific category where I failed, because I didn’t manage any rewatches this month. It’s always a shame not to hit my monthly goals, but it also feels like a particularly easy one to catch up.
  • Of the ten films I did watch, half of their titles begin with the letter K. The last time I watched a film that’s title began with the letter K was July 2024, nine months ago. What does this signify? Absolutely nothing, I just happened to notice it.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Val Lewton’s first horror production for RKO, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was, for the second month in a row, a Hitchcock thriller, although one not as significant: wartime ‘wrong man’ adventure Saboteur.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Black Watch and Knight Chills.



The 119th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
While calling the whole month “painful” might be a bit of a stretch, nothing really stood out as incredible either. There’s some films I’ll comfortably give four stars, but nothing I loved. The nearest was probably Cecil B. DeMille’s silent epic about Jesus, The King of Kings — not my typical fare, what with not being religious, but if you ignore all the worship-y stuff, it’s a pretty good story, well-told here.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Anyone who read my introduction can make a reasonable guess at what’s coming here. The trilogy does improve as it goes on, to some degree, leaving Kizumonogatari Part 1: Tekketsu as the weak link to be overcome to reach the dubious highs to follow. (They’re not that high.)


Next month’s New Film is already locked in, because I’ve booked my ticket to see Tom Cruise once again take on his greatest enemy: his own mortality — possibly for the last time — in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

Final? Final?! Let’s hope not.

March’s Failures

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

Pick your poison for what was the most noteworthy theatrical release in March: Bong Joon-ho’s first film since the all-conquering Parasite, Mickey 17; or Disney’s latest live-action remake and PR mess, Snow White. I know which I’ll be watching first when they make their way to disc and/or streaming. Elsewise, it was quite a strong month for animation, with Oscar winner Flow finally making it to UK screens, alongside the highest grossing animated movie of all time (thanks China), Ne Zha 2, and the latest entry in the long-running Gundam anime franchise, this time pairing up with the creatives behind Neon Genesis Evangelion for the barely-pronounceable Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: The Beginning, released theatrically ahead of its TV series (on Prime Video worldwide from next week. I presume the movie, or an episodic version of it, will form part of that offering). Also occupying screen space were Steven Soderbergh’s second film this year already, spy thriller Black Bag, and a new Jason Statham actioner directed by David “Suicide Squad” Ayer, A Working Man, plus other films I know even less about but had big names in them or just enough of a marketing push that they entered my consciousness, like Last Breath, Opus, The Alto Knights, Novocaine, and The Woman in the Yard. I look forward to next hearing of them when they’re on free/subscription streaming and I automatically add them to my never-ending watchlist.

Talking of streaming, Netflix had an original this month that managed to attract chatter on a theatrical level — albeit for all the wrong reasons, because The Electric State is supposedly slop of the lowest order. I’ll say this for it: it prompted me to buy the book it’s based on, which I hear is excellent. Conversely, attracting no attention whatsoever (as far as I saw) was Prime Video Original Holland, which appears to be some kind of mystery thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Macfadyen, and Gael García Bernal. That interests me on the surface, but dropping it with no fanfare hardly instills confidence. Similar could be said for O’Dessa on Disney+ — yes, Disney+ has some original feature-length content to report this month! It’s a rock musical of some sort, apparently, starring Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink, who the industry seems to be desperately trying to make happen and I have no idea if it’s working or not (nothing she’s led seems to have broken out, but who knows what’s going on with Young People on the TikToks and whatnot).

Otherwise it was business as usual, in the sense that theatrically-released films of various sizes made their subscription streaming debuts. Disney+ de facto leads the way with big-hit animated sequel Moana 2 and unwanted live-action sequel Mufasa: The Lion King. Prime Video was on a slightly smaller scale with Brit flick The Critic and second Hellboy reboot Hellboy: The Crooked Man, though I bet I watch at least one of those before I watch either of those Disney offerings. The best Netflix could muster was Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which may or may not have already been on NOW, I can’t remember, thus showing how much I care for that franchise at this point. And as for NOW, their slate included litigation-provoking adaptation It Ends With Us, one-quarter of an epic Western in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (has Chapter 2 come out yet? I forget), and AI horror Afraid (aka AfrAId, geddit?)

Back catalogue additions that particularly caught my eye included two titles on Prime I’d never heard of before: The Black Watch, aka King of the Khyber Rifles, a 1929 John Ford movie co-starring Mrs Thin Man, Myrna Loy, which doesn’t have a great score on IMDb but, hey, what do they know; and Knight Chills, a TTRPG-related slasher movie, which looks low-rent but perhaps fun. Hey, it can’t be worse than Mazes and Monsters… probably. iPlayer filled a gap by offering the first Harry Palmer sequel, Funeral in Berlin. The others are on Prime, so now I can watch them all, for good or ill (I figure there’s a reason most people have only heard of The Ipcress File). MUBI are encouraging me to give the work of Jacques Tati another go by adding a bunch of his films. I saw M. Hulot’s Holiday and Playtime at uni (and reviewed the latter) and didn’t care for either, but my taste has broadened since then, so who knows now?

As ever, I could spend many paragraphs rattling through all the other streaming additions, but (as has become my habit recently) let’s focus on ones I already own on disc. For example, Se7en cropped up on Netflix, thus giving me an excuse to mention it for the third month in a row and hopefully push me to watch the 4K disc I bought. It could be worse: How the West Was Won is on iPlayer, and that was one of the first Blu-rays I bought, so it’s been sat on my shelf for 15 or so years. Could be worse: I own Orson Welles’s Confidential Report on Criterion DVD, and look, there it is in HD on Prime. At the other end of the scale, a recent ‘mistake’: I imported the US Blu-ray of The Last Voyage of the Demeter because there was no sign of a UK release, then didn’t rush to watch it and now there’s been a UK release, a 4K release, and it’s streaming ‘free’, and in 4K to boot. Dammit.

I could go on in this vein, but let’s instead to transition to future stars of my “regrets” section: all the new stuff I’ve bought on disc! Lots of 4K titles this week, from brand-new releases like Gladiator II, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, and Megalopolis, to lavish new editions of older titles, like a pair of David Cronenbergs from Second Sight, The Brood (which I’ve never seen) and Scanners (which I have and rather loved); a pair of Akira Kurosawas from the BFI, Yojimbo and Sanjuro (both great, though most praise tends to be aimed at the first whereas I have a soft spot for the second); the first in Hammer’s attempt to highlight some of their lesser-known titles, Four Sided Triangle; and, though I am usually loathe to pay full price for a Criterion, I wanted to support them releasing films like Godzilla vs. Biollante.

(If you’ll indulge an aside into some semi-informed analysis: Godzilla vs. Biollante strikes me as a telling release, in that Criterion putting it out by itself at this point suggests there’s no chance of the hoped-for Heisei Era set coming as a companion / followup to the Showa Era one they released as #1000 back in 2019. Sure, they released the original Godzilla as a standalone title before the Showa set, but that’s a different kettle of fish: the original will interest some people who don’t care for the franchise as a whole, whereas Biollante is nothing so iconic. The fact it’s only the second Heisei film leaves me hopeful the ones that followed will also get the Criterion treatment; at least the next two would be nice, as their previous double-bill Blu-ray release is currently $195+. Or maybe I’m looking at it all wrong — maybe they’ve got access to all these films in 4K and think a 4K box set would be prohibitive. But I think the fact they haven’t started with the era’s first film, The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1984), doesn’t bode well for that presumption. As always, time will tell.)

Also, I begrudgingly bought the Steelbook release of Panic Room. I’m not a huge fan of Steelbooks (unless they’re doing something clever or have exceptionally nice art, which they so rarely do), especially as nowadays it just seems to be an excuse to gouge an extra £10+ from the customer; but you can no longer guarantee that the Steelbook won’t be the only 4K release of a title (look at all those Disney+ series, and I guess that model works because Warner recently copied it for The Penguin), and, like many people, I’ve been waiting on Panic Room in HD (never mind 4K) for what feels like forever, so I didn’t want to miss out. It’s a particularly ugly Steelbook too, so I can’t even console myself with “at least it looks pretty”. If they do put out a regular edition soon, I’ll be miffed; but while there’s no sign of one, hey, at least I finally own it in HD.

Slipping down to regular ol’ 1080p Blu-ray, the boutique labels continue to dominate my spending. This month’s inevitable Radiance haul included new releases Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau (containing Police Python 357, Série noire, and Choice of Arms); French sci-fi romance Je T’aime, Je T’aime; a pickup from a previous wave, Italian newspaper-based thriller Slap the Monster on Page One; and, from their partner label Raro Video, poliziotteschi Rulers of the City. How am I meant to resist when they’re putting out stuff in some of my pet favourite subgenres? The same goes for Eureka releasing a double-bill of Venom Mob films, The Daredevils and Ode to Gallantry. I’m not even a fan of the Venom Mob films I have seen, but I see something classic from Shaw Brothers Studio and I struggle to resist. Maybe these will be the ones where I understand what makes the group so popular.

Okay, so, yeah, I should probably cut back on purchases like that. Will I ever learn? Well, news came at the end of the month that may help: HMV have ended their 20% “first order” discount, which has long been usable on as many orders as you like if you knew what you were doing. The scheme had been running for a couple of years, meaning big purchasers racked up hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of savings. I dread to think exactly how much I saved (because it would mean I spent four times more), but it was a significant factor in my purchasing decisions. Now, I guess I’ll end up spending about the same but get less for it, and spread my purchases around other stores too. We can’t exactly complain (we got far more out of it than we were ever meant to), but I can’t help but think that if HMV are expecting their gross sales to increase by 25%, they’ve got a nasty surprise coming.

The ⅓ Monthly Review of March 2025

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I tried to find an elegant way to use the title to express the concept “I’ve watched a third of my Challenge, even though we’re only a quarter of the way through the year”, but somehow I couldn’t condense that into just a word or two, and so I’ve resorted to echoing August 2016’s title — although then it was just bluntly factual, lacking even the trace of irony present in using ⅓ at the ¼ point. Shame on you, past me, for your lack of… eh, it’s pretension, really.

So enough of that, let’s get on with the films…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#23 Never Back Losers (1961) — Series Progression #3
#24 Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) — Wildcard #7
#25 Hooray for Hollywood (1982) — Wildcard #8
#26 The Sinister Man (1961) — Series Progression #4
#27 Lifeforce (1985) — Failure #3
#28 Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) — Wildcard #9
#29 The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) — WDYMYHS #3
#30 Revolver (1973) — Genre #2
#31 Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) — Blindspot #3
#32 The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) — Rewatch #3
#33 Mobile Suit Gundam (1981) — Wildcard #10


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in March.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • But most significantly, getting to #33 means I’m a whole month ahead of target.
  • I think it’s the new-style Wildcards that have really made a difference — rather than rear-loading them to help me across the finish line (a plan that only worked once out of three attempts), they’ve now helped give me a healthy head start. It’s no coincidence it’s become my first completed category of the year. In my introduction I mentioned the possibility of adding a mitigating rule so that I didn’t burn through those ten slots too quickly. The fact it took me three months to get here makes me think the current, simple rules are more-or-less ok — it doesn’t need to be forced to drag further into the year just for the sake of taking longer.
  • Conversely, I failed to watch a New Film in March. As someone who doesn’t get to the cinema much, it’s always harder to add to that category early in the year, but I still had options. Considering how far ahead I am overall, it doesn’t worry me — it’s an easy one to catch up later. It’s a shame not to hit the goal every month as planned, but it’s not something I’m going to lose sleep over.
  • The Man with the Golden Gun could also have counted for Series Progression, because it’s part of my chronological rewatch of the Bond films (which has, ridiculously, been going since 2012), but it served a stronger purpose counting for Rewatch this month.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was D.W. Griffith’s insanely-expensive anthology epic Intolerance, aka Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (I feel like it used to commonly go by the short title and now commonly goes by the long one, and there’s a reasonable argument either way).
  • Not that it matters, but I bought Intolerance on Blu-ray ten years ago this month, but only just put those discs in my player. And I’m sure that’s not even close to the oldest unplayed title I own.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was — to quote Hitch himself — “the first true Hitchcock picture”, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Lifeforce.



The 118th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
It’s sort of ridiculous and clearly more of a “cult classic” than a genuinely great film, but I really enjoyed Lifeforce. It’s a film that’s not afraid to go big and barmy, despite its limitations, and I admire that ambition. And, yeah, Mathilda May doesn’t hurt either. As I wrote on Letterboxd, “this is exactly the sort of stuff stereotypical 13-year-old boys should want to watch, not more Marvel slop.”

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It feels somewhat like punching down to pick on films from the Edgar Wallace Mysteries for this award — they’re somewhere between a ‘quota quickie’ and an anthology TV series, after all, and I’m sure no one involved thought they were making Great Art that would still be watched over 60 years later. Nonetheless, many of them are perfectly fine entertainment, so it’s still noteworthy when they fall short; and, to be honest, I didn’t watch anything else that bad this month. Of the two Edgar Wallaces I watched in March, particular dishonour goes to The Sinister Man for being casually racist — not maliciously so; more through ignorance, a lack of accurate information, and therefore poorly engaging with its own themes and content; but still, watching today, even at its best its somewhat laughable.


I got through ‘April’ in March — will I get through ‘May’ in April? Even if I don’t, I hope I don’t throw away this nice lead I’ve built up.

February’s Failures

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

Normally theatrical releases feel like the right place to start this column, but I’m going to pivot slightly this week and look through the prism of the Oscars. I stayed up to watch the ceremony this past weekend, as I have every year for the past twenty-something years. I’m not even a great believer in the quality of the awards, but there’s something about the occasion and pomp of it all that I enjoy nonetheless. It’s certainly not about backing my favourite film(s), because this year I’d only seen one of the Best Picture nominees (Dune: Part Two) — and so that’s some kind of failure in itself, even though they’re not all necessarily readily available here in the UK right now.

Well, that depends how you define “readily available” — just because a few of them were only released here last month doesn’t guarantee they’re playing widely; and while you can rent The Brutalist for £16, I’m never going to pay that for a rental. Not everything’s so pricey: you can rent the night’s big winner, Anora, for a fiver in UHD, and the same for BAFTA victor Conclave. That said, you can’t rent Wicked for any price now, which is usually a sign that it’s coming to a streamer soon. It won’t be the first: Emilia Pérez is a Netflix film, so has been on there since it came out, of course; The Substance has been on MUBI for a little while; and, with no fanfare whatsoever, Amazon Prime dropped Nickel Boys last Friday. That just leaves A Complete Unknown and I’m Still Here as theatrical-only propositions — and the latter would’ve been mentioned at the top of this column anyway, because it only came out on February 21st.

Most of February’s other theatrical releases are unlikely to trouble next year’s awards season. They’re led by a couple of ‘fourquels’, Captain America: Brave New World and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, which are both the kind of film I’ll catch one day in no hurry (indeed, for the former, I have plenty of ‘homework’ viewing to do first). The year-round horror parade this month offered Stephen King adaptation The Monkey and emoji-inspired Heart Eyes, while school half-term fare was led by Captain Underpants spinoff Dog Man (my six-year-old nephew enjoyed that, I’m told). There was also poorly-reviewed actioner Love Hurts, and a couple more films from the 2024 awards cycle that didn’t trouble the big prizes in the end: The Last Showgirl, Memoir of a Snail, and September 5.

Of greatest interest to me, debuting right at the end of the month, was Superboys of Malegaon — an adaptation of the documentary Supermen of Malegaon, which was one of my top films in 2015. It’s a limited release, and not screening anywhere conveniently near me, so I hope it comes to a streamer sooner rather than later.

As for said streamers, the only totally original title I noted this month was Apple TV+’s romance/action mashup The Gorge, which I might have been tempted to watch if I hadn’t finally cancelled my subscription because I don’t watch it enough. Elsewhere, Amazon Prime gave relatively strong promo pushes to the likes of Anthony Mackie-starring sci-fi Elevation, Justin Kurzel-directed thriller The Order, and video game adaptation Borderlands, and yet snuck out the likes of Sing Sing (another Oscar nominee) and Here, the Robert Zemeckis films starring Tom Hanks, alongside the aforementioned Nickel Boys. Pick your depressing truth: Amazon either have no clue what the heck they’re doing, or they know streaming audiences are more likely to watch one of the former three.

Acclaimed films debuting on other streamers included two-time BAFTA nominee (including Saoirse Ronan for Best Actress) The Outrun on Netflix, and Letterboxd favourite I Saw the TV Glow on NOW. Also on the latter: motorcycle crime drama The Bikeriders and geriatric revenge comedy Thelma, plus the third theatrical Garfield movie, The Garfield Movie (bit of an abuse of the definite article, there), and the feature directorial debut of Ishana “daughter of M.” Night Shyamalan, The Watched (known as The Watchers in the US — apparently it was retitled here to avoid confusion with a Netflix show, which (a) I’ve never heard of, and (b) is, like this movie, American).

Amongst the many other comings-and-goings in the streaming space, my attention was caught by Magic Mike’s Last Dance on Prime, meaning that whole trilogy is now on there — not my kind of film on the surface, but the involvement of Steven Soderbergh means they’ve long been on my watchlist. Also now on Prime: the most recent Charlie’s Angels reboot, Monty Python-adjacent comedy A Fish Called Wanda, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s first Oscar-nominated performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Highlights* (* mileage may vary) on other streamers included Beau Is Afraid, Polite Society, and Renfield on Netflix; Doctor Zhivago, Godland, and The Outfit on iPlayer; Moonfall, Pig, and Sexy Beast on Channel 4; and a 4K restoration of Tsui Hark’s romantic comedy Shanghai Blues on MUBI.

Notice I’ve not mentioned Disney+ at all yet. There were literally no films of note on there all month, again. Not even something for the ever-lengthy list of “stuff I already own on disc to (re)watch”, which this month, across all the other streamers, included All the President’s Men, Another Round, Chinatown, the Dark Knight trilogy, Ex Machina, Hugo, The Long Good Friday Puss in Boots, Requiem for a Dream, Se7en, Stargate, the Three Colours trilogy, and To Live and Die in L.A.. And to think I always tell myself one of the main reasons to stay engaged with physical media is because you can get films you just wouldn’t see on streaming.

Well, in fairness, that’s often still the case, as many of my newest acquisitions demonstrate. I mean, who’s going to stream the kind of stuff Radiance put out? February’s releases included a double bill from Hong Kong New Wave icon Patrick Tam, Nomad and My Heart Is That Eternal Rose; Kinji Fukasaku’s final yakuza film, Hokuriku Proxy War; and ’80s German heist thriller The Cat. The same can be asked of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema line, which recently added an altogether different kind of Fukasaku film, fantasy actioner Legend of the Eight Samurai, alongside box set Sirk in Germany 1934–1935, containing three features and three shorts directed by melodrama auteur Douglas Sirk during his earlier days in Germany. Heck, even though the kind of things 88 Films release might be more accessible — HK actioners like the Jackie Chan-starring Dragon Fist, now in 4K, or The Lady Assassin — which streamer is going to dig into that catalogue? None of the major ones. And that’s before we get into all the other benefits of actually owning physical copies, of course.

Certainly, it’s not as if I don’t buy streaming-friendly titles too. I’ve definitely spotted Lifeforce on Prime Video and/or Netflix in the past, but I still bought Arrow’s new UHD disc, for all the reasons that make physical media superior (I’ll give you a list if you want, but there’s no real reason to rehash those arguments in full here unless someone literally asks for it). The same could be said for other new-to-4K titles like The Lion in Winter and Constantine, and I paid extra for North by Northwest when the tat-filled collector’s edition unexpectedly came back in stock at Amazon. Why save money with a regular edition when you can pay tens of pounds more for a hard box and some paper bits & pieces you’ll only look at once or twice? Haha… ha… hmm.

Oh, but it also has a booklet. I love a booklet. You definitely don’t get booklets on streaming.

The Belated Monthly Review of February 2025

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A belated ‘hello’ from me for this month’s look back at last month. Don’t take this post’s delayed appearance as a worrying sign of me slipping further away from the blog — I simply had a busy end to February, meaning I couldn’t get a head start on this, and then an occupied weekend (mainly Oscar-focused), which combined meant I was only able to crack on with this post today. Similarly, I wouldn’t bank on seeing the “failures” before Thursday.

(Related side note: across 116 adjective-led monthly reviews, can you believe I’ve never used “belated”? This certainly isn’t the first late edition! Maybe I previously thought it was too obvious. Well, I’ve burnt that usage now.)

A separate issue: no new film reviews yet this year. I now ‘owe’ at least three, to fulfil my commitment of reviewing the previous month’s favourite: The Good, the Bad, the Weird from December, Milano Calibro 9 from January, and whatever this month’s winner is (see below to find out!) I’m hoping to begin that catch-up in March, but we’ll see what else life throws my way.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#12 Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) — 50 Unseen #3
#13 Macbeth (2025) — New Film #2
#14 Vendetta for the Saint (1969) — Wildcard #3
#15 Silver Blaze (1937) — Series Progression #2
#16 Long Story Short (2021) — Wildcard #4
#17 Róise & Frank (2022) — Failure #2
#18 Snake Eyes (1998) — Rewatch #2
#19 Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) — WDYMYHS #2
#20 Freaks (1932) — Blindspot #2
#21 Grand Theft Hamlet (2024) — Wildcard #5
#22 Marty (1955) — Wildcard #6


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in February.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • #22 is the furthest I’ve reached by the end of February since my new-style Challenge began in 2022 — my target for this point is only #16, so I easily cleared that. (I would have had to get all the way to #24 to be a whole month ahead.)
  • Watching Silver Blaze means I’ve finally finished the Arthur Wontner Sherlock Holmes films (what survives of them, anyway: there were five; one is lost), which is the first time in quite a while* I’ve been able to remove a series from my “in the middle of” list. (* The last was Song of the Thin Man, completing my Thin Man rewatch, back in May 2024 — nine months ago.)
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Tod Browning’s enduringly-controversial carnival drama Freaks.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr — it’s the one where the house falls around him.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Róise & Frank and rewatched Snake Eyes.



The 117th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’m borderline on whether this even counts as a “a film”, because it’s a filmed stage production — that’s the kind of thing I’ve gone either way on in the past. The deciding factor, really, was that I saw it in a cinema — not only because “what you see in cinemas is films”, but because if I didn’t count it, I wouldn’t be able to count it towards my stats at the end of the year, which could potentially lead me to write something like “I made no trips to the cinema this year” when I had, in fact, made one. Also, the fact I’m now saying it’s the best feature-length filmed thing I watched this month is another reason it seems worthy of inclusion. Anyway, it’s the David Tennant and Cush Jumbo-starring version of Macbeth, which seems to have been so popular they’ve scheduled multiple encore screenings and even a proper re-release — so if you missed it and are interested, keep your eye on local listings.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
No disasters this month, which leaves me with the always-slightly-awkward task of lambasting something I fundamentally enjoyed, just not as much as everything else. If you were to look at my Letterboxd diary, you might think this an easy decision: there’s only one film there I’ve graded 3 stars, so it’s that one… right? But I don’t feel like Silver Blaze was that bad. But then, what was? So, any pick is a bit harsh, but I’ve still settled on <strongLong Story Short, which I think I may have slightly overrated because its concluding message hit me particularly hard, for whatever reason.


Reviews? Maybe! Films? Definitely. And, launching off the success of this month, there’s a very real chance I’ll be a whole month ahead of target on my Challenge by the end of March. No guarantees, though — you’ll just have to come back in 31 29 days to find out.

January’s Failures

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

As usual, the new year in UK cinemas kicks off with a bunch of stuff the distributors held back from last year, for whatever reason (I don’t know how it will pan out in 2025, but in the past I’ve observed some awards-season not getting a UK release until as late as June or July). Highlights in that sphere included Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu, awards season favourite The Brutalist, Robert Zemeckis graphic novel adaptation Here, nonlinear romcom We Live in Time, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain (*chuckle*), Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Callas biopic Maria, British-made Swiss-hero biopic William Tell, TV show, er, biopic Saturday Night, 18-rated sexy times for Nicole Kidman in Babygirl and Noémie Merlant in Emmanuelle, Mike Leigh’s BAFTA-but-not-Oscar-nominated Hard Truths, and Oscar Best Picture nominee Nickel Boys, which I confess I hadn’t even heard of before it’s nomination. Whew!

Despite all that, there were even some honest-to-God (if we ignore film festivals, which really we should) 2025 films released, including the latest Universal horror reimagining, Wolf Man; Steven Soderbergh’s latest attempt at making low-budget releases work, horror Presence; robot horror comedy Companion; and the horror of Mark Wahlberg’s hairline in Flight Risk. I guess horror really is the big screen’s perpetual friend.

Netflix attempted to cut through the noise by releasing Back in Action, an ironically-named (but probably deliberately so) spyfi comedy, because it featured Cameron Diaz’s return to the screen after a ten-year break. Yes, really. No, I don’t think anyone else had really noticed either. I’ve not heard anyone say a good thing about it. And I think that was it for streaming originals, sending us straight to streaming debuts of varying degrees of noteworthiness. I mean, for example, half of what Disney+ could muster was Nightbitch, which stars Amy Adams and I suspect was supposed to be some kind of big-ish deal, but has vanished without a trace. The other ‘half’, as it were, was Alien: Romulus. Plus TV series, which I think is where Disney+ focus their energy nowadays.

More promising titles were to be found elsewhere. NOW (and Sky Cinema) gave us Alice Lowe’s Timestalker, which I heard about when its theatrical release was up against something-or-other big and various outlets were pleading people to not ignore it. I imagine it stands a better chance on streaming; certainly, it’s high on my watchlist now. They also gave a belated UK bow to John Woo’s remake of his own Hong Kong action classic, The Killer, which I don’t think gained strong reviews but, hey, it’s John Woo, what do you expect? His Western work is regularly looked down upon, which I’ve always suspected shows the benefit of being subtitled when it comes to genre cinema… Which brings us to Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In — not a sequel, despite the coloned title making it sound like one but a well-received Hong Kong actioner; so well received, I only recently bought it on disc. Let’s hope it lives up to the hype whenever I watch it. Other things I’ve already bought but that also popped onto NOW this month included Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (plus The Fall Guy — something I’ve actually watched! Wonders will never cease).

More foreign action was to be found on Amazon Prime in Kill, the Bollywood actioner that got a burst of publicity when the remake rights were bought by the makers of John Wick three days before its US theatrical release. Sounds worth a look, right? Prime also had much-discussed Nic Cage-starring horror-thriller Longlegs, and the belated UK premiere (skipping theatrical this side of the pond) of Dave Bautista action-comedy The Killer’s Game. Well, they can’t all be winners. Similar could be said of MUBI’s debuting titles, which are awards season runners but not likely winners: Denmark’s Best International Feature nominee The Girl with the Needle and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, which has netted star Daniel Craig nominations at some ceremonies but, as it turned out, was shut out of the biggest ones (by which I mean BAFTA and Oscar).

On to back catalogue fare, and the one I’m going to flag as most unusual was the BBC airing all nine hours of Shoah and making it available on iPlayer afterwards. I’ve owned the Masters of Cinema DVD for yonks (and tried to make it part of Blindspot 2023, but failed to get round to it), and now here it is for free in HD. Will that mean I finally get round to it? I mean, it’s a nine-hour piece about the Holocaust — that’s the polar opposite of “easy viewing”. That’s not to say I don’t want to watch it, but it’s not something you just decide to bung on one day, y’know?

Aside from that, it was the usual reams of stuff across all the various streamers. I should probably focus on the ones I particularly want to see (and/or feel I should see) that I don’t have access to otherwise — like The Creator, Fruitvale Station, Gandhi, and Inside Llewyn Davis on Prime; The Conjuring and Pearl on Netflix; Cyrano, Defiance, and Roise & Frank on iPlayer; I’m Your Man, The Quiet Girl, Petite Maman, Pig, Sexy Beast on Channel 4 — but my attention can’t help but be drawn to all the ones I own on disc but haven’t watched yet — like the Wachowski’s Bound, Alex Garland’s Civil War, and Ridley Scott’s Legend on Prime; Elvis and Missing on Netflix; Enys Men, The Long Good Friday, The Northman, Old, Robin and Marian on Channel 4 — and that’s before I even start on the stuff I’ve bought on disc to rewatch and haven’t got to yet.

But (as I feel I use as a segue almost every month) that hasn’t stopped me buying even more stuff. The physically largest release of the month was Hammer’s lavish 4K Ultra HD set for Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter — noteworthy not just in itself, but also as an indication that Hammer are going to be handling at least some of their own Blu-ray releases going forward (rather than licensing them out), and at least some of those will get gorgeously lavish editions (only “some” because they’ve already promised not everything will come in such shelf-space-hogging sets). Other catalogue titles getting a fresh 4K lick of paint included Tarsem’s The Cell from Arrow, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure from Masters of Cinema, and a version of Se7en with controversial revisions by director David Fincher. It’s my favourite film of all time, so I’m both trepidatious and intrigued by the changes. Some seen borderline inconsequential; others look distractingly irritating (based on screencaps) — by which I mean: it’s not a recut or drastic reimagining, which could undermine the entire work; but things like replacing the sky during the finale have changed an entirely natural shot into something that looks like iffy green screen (again, based on screencaps. Maybe it looks okay in motion. If only there was a way I could find out…)

Other recent-ish releases that fall under this banner (but I had to import from the US, so they came out at the end of last year, but I’ve only ordered and received them now) included Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes, and John Ford’s The Searchers, which is Warner Archive’s first foray into 4K, and received copious praise (indeed, I wasn’t going to bother with it, but the praise I’ve read was so superlative, I felt like I was missing out. Damn you, FOMO!)

My US order was bulked out by more UHD titles in the shape of the third Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection. These aren’t individually named or numbered on the title, which has led to most people to just refer to them as volumes one, two, and three based on order of release; but each used a different colour for its title, and I’ve always thought it would be more fun if we referred to them by their colour — so this is the green one, containing Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Torn Curtain, Topaz, and Frenzy. It came out back in 2023, and I always intended to pick it up when it dropped in price (as I did with the first two), but something weird went on with the UK release — I’m sure it came out, but it’s rarely listed by retailers (look on HMV and you can still get the red / volume one and blue / volume two releases, but no sign of this one), and even when it is, the pricing can be bizarre (Amazon UK most recently listed it for £499.99). So, I finally caved and imported the US release. The minor discrepancy in packaging from the first two bugs me slightly, but as I got it for over £450 less than the UK version (apparently), I can live with it.

Back to new releases, but in 1080p, and just popping in at the end of the month were a trio of Asian thrillers from some of the UK’s most consistent boutique labels. Undoubtedly the one with the greatest name recognition is the BFI’s release of Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, while digging into more obscurities were Masters of Cinema for Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai’s Running on Karma and Radiance with Seijun Suzuki’s Underworld Beauty. Those are all still older works, of course. Indeed, the only brand-new title this month was The Wild Robot. I wouldn’t typically buy a Dreamworks animation (not sight unseen, anyway — I do own a few), but this one has been so highly praised. Someday I’ll actually watch it and find out for myself…

The Back to the Start Monthly Review of January 2025

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As always, the triumph (or failure, but you feel it more after triumph) of the end of the year is followed by being kicked right back to the start. So, without further ado, the 19th year of my Challenge began with…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#1 Death Goes to School (1953) — Wildcard #1
#2 Anna Karenina (2012) — 50 Unseen #1
#3 The Six Triple Eight (2024) — Wildcard #2
#4 Run Lola Run (1998) — Failure #1
#5 Eraserhead (1977) — Blindspot #1
#6 Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger (2025) — New Film #1
#7 Milano Calibro 9 (1972) — Genre #1
#8 Ice Age: Collision Course 3D (2016) — Series Progression #1
#9 Empire of Light (2022) — 50 Unseen #2
#10 Fist of Fury (1972) — WDYMYHS #1
#11 Oliver & Company (1988) — Rewatch #1


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in January.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • Regular readers may be aware that the target for the end of January (to be on track for #100) is #8, so I’m nicely ahead. Mind you, I’ve been ahead every year of the new Challenge so far; in 2022, I even made it one further. Point being: it doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot.
  • More importantly (I think), I’ve managed to get all nine Challenge categories underway — the first time I’ve achieved that in January.
  • An even longer-held first (which I can report on because, yes, I keep records of ridiculous things like this): 2025 is the first time in the 19-year history of this blog that I’ve watched films #1 and #2 on the same day. (With the caveat that my records are a bit less thorough for 2007 and 2008, so it may have happened all the way back then as well.)
  • On the downside, I didn’t manage to post any film reviews this month — neither an attempt at starting 2025’s coverage, nor my favourite film winner from last month. Having devoted so much time to my end-of-year wrap-up posts at the start of the month, then having a busy time at the ol’ day job, I didn’t squeeze any review-writing in. I’ll try to get back on it next month.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was the debut feature by David Lynch (RIP), Eraserhead.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Bruce Lee classic Fist of Fury.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Run Lola Run.



The 116th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’d never previously seen a poliziotteschi, this year’s chosen genre, so I decided to dive in with something that is regularly highly recommended — and (as you’ve surely guessed from this intro) it paid off, with Milano Calibro 9 (aka Caliber 9) being just about my favourite film this month (“just about” because there were a couple of other very good ones). That’s fortunate — imagine if I’d hated it just after I’d committed myself to a year of them?

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I finally went back to a film series I was working through a few years ago, and almost immediately regretted it. I did wonder if they were always this bad, but the internet assures me that, no, Ice Age: Collision Course really is a nadir.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
You might be expecting me to again mention my lack of reviews, and I was going to, but something more pressing has emerged. Unfortunately, WordPress / Jetpack recently changed the way they display traffic statistics, which means it’s become a pain in the arse to work out the winner of this category every month. I battled through to the end of last year, but I’m not going to put up with it going forward — so, sadly, the audience award is no more.

And on that downer…


February is the shortest month of the year. Fortunately, I’m already ahead of schedule. Will I still be ahead as we head into March? Find out in 28 days!

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen These Films You’ve Bought Multiple Times?

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Reader, I want to make a confession: sometimes I buy new copies of films I already own but have never seen. Never mind blind buying, I blind upgrade. It’s stupid, I know — why not at least watch the copy I already have to see if I like the thing before purchasing it a second time? But when Blu-ray came along, the leap in quality from DVD was so great (especially with a new transfer and/or restoration) that sometimes it feels like “why would I watch this crappy version just because I already have it when that better one exists?” And now with 4K… well, I do it less often, because the jump between HD and UHD isn’t always as pronounced (and if they fuck it up, sometimes the new version is worse).

Nonetheless, the theme of this year’s WDYMYHS was provoked by my relatively recent (i.e. in October) purchase of Le Samouraï in 4K. I first owned that film on DVD, didn’t get round to watching it, then a Blu-ray came along, and it seemed like it would be worth an upgrade. I didn’t get round to watching that either before the 4K came along — well, I wasn’t going to upgrade again! But then the reviews were so good… I did at least manage to resist until it was discounted. Although, all three of those were Criterion editions, so it was never truly cheap. Eesh. I really hope I like it as much as I’m expecting to…

That might be my most egregious example of ridiculous triple-dipping (I feel like I’ve more than triple-dipped on some titles, but at least those were ones I already knew I liked), and it’s what led me to this theme: I wanted a selection methodology that would force me to finally watch Le Samouraï, so what better than the very reason I wanted to be forced to watch it? I was certain I’d find another 11 films (at least) that had a similar purchase history. And, reader, I did. Of course I did. I won’t give you the full story of how many times I’ve re-bought them or why, but I’ve owned them all at least twice without ever actually watching them — until now!

In alphabetical order, they are…

The City of Lost Children

The City of Lost Children

Fist of Fury

 Fist of Fury
The Lodger

The Lodger

Out of Sight

 Out of Sight
Project A

Project A

Saboteur

 Saboteur
Le Samouraï

Le Samouraï

Spartacus

 Spartacus
Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Tenebrae

 Tenebrae
The Untouchables

The Untouchables

The Wolf Man

 The Wolf Man

As I intimated in the introduction, these aren’t the only 12 films I’ve upgraded without watching, so how did I settle on this particular batch? For once, it was mostly personal preference rather than other people’s rankings. I started by making a list of eligible titles, along with how many times I’d owned them — given the theme of the list, I wanted to err towards the ones I’d repurchased the most. Then I simply picked the ones I wanted to include.

Except it wasn’t quite that simple. In compiling the list, I noticed a couple of themes. Thanks primarily to some films being released repeatedly in sets, there were multiple films on the list directed by Alfred Hitchcock, or Dario Argento; or starring Bruce Lee, or Jackie Chan, or Buster Keaton; or from the classic period of Universal’s horror output… I decided that, as those were clear groups, representative examples of each should definitely be included. And that’s when I did fall back on old tricks: I ranked each group by their popularity and average ratings on Letterboxd. That wasn’t the be-all-and-end-all (neither of the two Hitchcocks I chose were in his top two), but it was a useful guide. I chose one from each category, with the exception of Hitchcock, who gets two because I’ve upgraded his films in different ways for different reasons. Saboteur represents the 14 titles that Universal have repeatedly reissued in box sets of varying kinds. The Lodger represents the rest, though in particular his British pre-Hollywood career.

With the five other films featuring work by visionaries like Stanley Kubrick, Steven Soderbergh, Brian De Palma, and Jean-Pierres both Jeunet and Melville, it looks like another exciting year ahead for this category. Let’s hope they live up to my expectations — I’ve certainly spent enough money on them.

Blindspot 2025

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This is my 13th year doing a version of Blindspot, so I’m not sure my customary introduction to the concept is still necessary. But in case there are still people who haven’t heard of it: this is a challenge in which you pick twelve films you’ve never seen but feel you should have (your blindspots) and watch one per month throughout the year.

Regular readers will know that my Blindspot selection process is often tortuously complicated. I don’t just pick twelve films I feel like watching, but compile various “great films” lists and use them to concoct some kind of ranking. Not so this year. I’m still using other people’s opinions, I’ve just made it very simple: every film on the list is the most popular one I’ve not seen (according to Letterboxd) from each decade since the origin of feature films.

In chronological order, they are…

Intolerance

1910s
Intolerance

1920s
Häxan

 Häxan
Freaks

1930s
Freaks

1940s
Cat People

 Cat People
Rebel Without a Cause

1950s
Rebel Without a Cause

1960s
The Graduate

 The Graduate
Eraserhead

1970s
Eraserhead

1980s
Kiki’s Delivery Service

 Kiki's Delivery Service
Girl, Interrupted

1990s
Girl, Interrupted

2000s
The Notebook

 The Notebook
Midsommar

2010s
Midsommar

2020s
Saltburn

 Saltburn

Normally I close out this post with a lengthy explanation of my process, but, um, I’ve already covered that this year. I suppose I should preemptively add that, yes, I’m aware the very first feature-length film was released in 1906; but few followed until the 1910s, so I still feel fine with this basic concept.

To finish, a bit of… trivia? I don’t know. Anyway: I did consider making this year’s selection simply the all-time most popular films I’ve not seen (that’s sort of what Blindspot is, after all), but Letterboxd skews incredibly recent in that regard. I mean, if I’d taken those twelve, two-thirds would have been from 2023–2024, and the oldest would have been from 2012. That’s the kind of thing I have the 50 Unseen category for.

The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025

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For the 19th year in a row, I’m going to try to watch 100 films in a year. And for the fourth year in a row, I’ve made it much more complicated than that. I don’t know if I can still call it “new-style” at this point, but nonetheless, here I go again with the, er, more-recent-style 100 Films in a Year Challenge.

This year, I feel a renewed sense of confidence in this Challenge actually having a point, thanks to finally completing it in 2024. I mean, if I kept failing it, why keep doing it? Surely that would mean it just doesn’t work? But now I’ve done it, I’ve proved to myself I was right: it’s not an unreasonable exercise. (Talking entirely about myself, here. I’m sure the kind of people who routinely watch 300 or 400 or 500 or more films year after year would have no problem dashing this off in amongst their viewing.)

You might think that, having apparently hit upon the right formula after three years of trying, I wouldn’t make any changes to the Challenge for 2025. And… you’d sort of be right. That wasn’t my motivation, but I have got a balance of categories that I’m happy with. So, no brand-new categories this year, although I have completely changed the rules for one (and another almost got replaced — read on to find out which); plus, a couple of others have changed their specific theme, as always.

But enough of being vague — let’s get into this year’s categories and their rules.

First, the one rule that applies across all categories: a film can only count once. Sounds obvious, but the categories are not mutually exclusive: I could rewatch a film from a series I’m halfway through that’s in this year’s genre, and thus it could qualify in three categories — but it can only be counted in one of them.

New Films

x12. Any film with a general release date (i.e. not festival screenings, etc) in the UK (i.e. not in the US, nor any other country) between 1st January 2025 and 31st December 2025. Maximum one per month (but rolls over if I fail to watch one).

Rewatches

x12. Any film I’ve seen before (unless it’s already been counted in 2025’s Challenge). Maximum one per month (with rollovers, as above).

Blindspot

x12. Twelve films, specifically chosen and named in advance, that I should have already seen. Meant to be watched one per month, but I typically fail at that and have to play catch up. This year’s twelve are discussed in a dedicated post here.

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

x12. Similar to Blindspot, these are twelve specifically chosen films meant to be watched one per month, but here my selections are based around a theme. This year’s theme, and the twelve films selected, are discussed in a dedicated post here.

Failures

x12. Every month, I list my “failures”: brand-new releases, additions to streamers, and disc purchases that I failed to watch in the previous month. Sometimes I catch up on some of them the next month. Often I don’t. Making them a Challenge category helps with this. A maximum of one per month counts; if I miss one, I catch up on that specific month later.

50 Unseen

x10. Any unwatched film from one of my year-end ’50 Unseen’ lists. It’s likely to be dominated by films from 2024’s list as I catch up on what I missed last year, but anything from the previous 18 years is eligible. (If you’re interested, there’s a complete list of candidates here.)

Genre

x10. Any films from within a specified genre — or, arguably, a sub-genre: I’m not focusing on anything broad like “Action” or “Comedy” here, but something relatively specific. Previous choices have included film noir, gialli, and martial arts movies. This year, it’s back to Italy for poliziotteschi.

Series Progression

x10. I considered replacing this category (not just for the sake of it — I had a specific idea), but it fills a gap the other categories don’t reach (and my replacement wouldn’t have been so unique). Besides, Letterboxd tells me I still have 33 series underway, so it’s a worthwhile cause. The rules haven’t changed: any instalment of a film series I’m already watching qualifies; if I start a new series, the first film can’t count but any further films can.

Wildcards

x10. For 2025, I’m turning the Wildcard category on its head, because it now has only one rule: films can’t have qualified in any other category. If I watch two brand-new releases in January? Sorry, that second one just doesn’t count. If I’ve filled up Series Progression and then watch an eleventh film? Nope, no doing. This is a way to capture (and encourage) my viewing of anything and everything not covered by the other categories. (With such simple qualification criteria, there’s every chance I’ll burn through these ten slots fairly quickly. I considered introducing a second rule to mitigate that, but decided to see how it goes in 2025 and maybe I’ll tighten it up for 2026, if that would be productive.)

As the year goes on, you can follow my progress on the Challenge Tracker page, and also via my monthly reviews; or there’s always my Letterboxd for the guaranteed most up-to-date status of my film logging.