Tag Archives: film

October’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.

At one point, I had Joker: Folie à Deux marked down as something I should make an effort to see at the cinema — a relatively rare marker, considering recently I don’t even make it to most of the films I mark. With hindsight, I’m not sure why — I wasn’t even a huge fan of the first film, although I didn’t hate it — but the poor reception put paid to that, anyway. I have a needling suspicion I might actually like it (I’ve seen reviews/comments that imply it was made to deliberately piss off fans of the first one, and as fans of the first one are often among The Worst People, I’m optimistic), but I’ll have to wait ’til disc or streaming to find out. Conversely, The Wild Robot was a film I’d paid no mind to whatsoever, until suddenly everyone was calling it one of the best films of the year. I was tempted, but I’m always hesitant to see kids’ films by myself for “having to endure suspicious glares from parents before, during, and after the screening” reasons. (Whether that’s an imaginary fear or something that would actually happen, I don’t know.)

Other blockbuster-expectant films this month included animation Transformers One (it’s great according to fans, but flopped. I guess that’s what you get coming off the back of almost two decades of Michael Bay and Bay-adjacent live-action films) and trilogy-former Venom: The Last Dance (I still haven’t seen the second one, but quite liked the ’90s-throwback charms of the first). Your typical October horror choices included a sequel in Smile 2, a threequel in Terrifier 3, and a remake in Salem’s Lot. Modern cinema, eh? (He says, as if horror hasn’t been a genre famed for long-running franchises since at least the ’80s.) There was some other stuff too, like Trump biopic The Apprentice. I feel like the only one really worth mentioning is Alice Lowe’s new film, Timestalker, which I heard was good and deserving of support (as a small British film up against the usual Hollywood big guns), but I don’t think it screened at my local even if I was the kind of person who got out to the cinema regularly. I’ll happily support it on physical media and/or streaming later.

If you think that’s an unedifying theatrical lineup, just wait ’til we get to the streaming originals! Netflix premiered The Platform 2 to absolutely no fanfare. Remember when everyone made a fuss about the first one? It wasn’t even that good, which is perhaps why no one paid attention to the second. Amazon Prime debuted Kate Beckinsale actioner Canary Black, which I hadn’t heard of before it popped up on my front page while I was looking for something else, and haven’t heard anyone else mention at any point anywhere ever. I’m assuming, therefore, that it’s shit. It’s a similar story for horror Hold Your Breath on Disney+, while at least Sky’s offering — Matt Haig adaptation The Radleys — managed some column inches (at least in the UK press) thanks to stars Damien Lewis and Kelly MacDonald. Review and viewer scores are still low, though. Netflix did also have the new one from Timo Tjahjanto, The Shadow Strays, but as I thought Headshot and The Night Comes for Us were a little overrated, and I’d completely forgotten that I hadn’t got round to his last one in the two years since it came out, I figure this can also go on the slop pile.

There was greater success in the list of theatrical releases making their subscription streaming debut. MUBI arguably scored biggest with much-discussed recent release The Substance, although Amazon had a sizeable one on their books with Challengers. NOW’s best offerings included Drive-Away Dolls and Lisa Frankenstein — more niche titles, perhaps, but ones I’ve been looking forward to. A bigger-name premiere was undoubtedly Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, but I’ve got that on disc (unwatched on a shelf, natch) — I tend to overlook things that appear on streamers when I’ve already got the disc because, y’know, I’ve got it on disc. The same goes for Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron popping up on Netflix already.

Other titles I own physically but haven’t watched yet that (re)materialised on streaming this month (across all the various services) included Babylon, the new (or “new-ish” at this point) Candyman, Enys Men, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, the 2018 Halloween, Lips of Blood, The Long Good Friday, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, live-action Resident Evil #4–6, Time Bandits, the aforementioned Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and— oh dear God, so much else. I haven’t even started on stuff I want to rewatch (The Babadook, Byzantium, Drive, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, A Few Good Men… oh, stop, stop, stop! Heck, all 25 James Bond films are in 4K on Amazon, which is theoretically better quality than most are available in on disc. We’re living in the worst timeline.)

Because I’ve got so much unwatched on disc, this month I didn’t buy anything new.

Only kidding! I bought tonnes of stuff! Heck, it’s been box sets a-go-go for the past couple of weeks. Out of 14 new acquisitions in October, just five were single-film sets — and one of those included multiple different cuts. In total, my physical media to-watch pile swelled by 54 films this month. (Early suggestions are next month could get even crazier: yesterday I took delivery of an Indicator sale order that, across just four titles, included 37 feature films. With Arrow’s 14-film Shawscope: Volume Three due before the end of the month, that five-set tally almost tops this month already. I would joke that I have a problem, but maybe I actually do… Aaaanyway…)

Where to begin? As we’re talking size, let’s start with the largest and work our way down in that order. I’ve had my eye on Lars von Trier: A Curzon Collection for a while, and Amazon cut the price significantly as a Prime Day offer, justifying my wait for it. I ought to hold off like that more often, but so much stuff is “limited edition” nowadays, and it can be hard to predict which titles will sell out almost instantly and which will linger until they’re in deep-price-cut sales. It’s a 15-film set — although, as I already owned some of those, it means technically my to-watch pile didn’t actually grow by 54 films. Technically.

Next, Arrow’s Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe, which includes ten films starring Brazil’s cult horror icon, plus a feature-length documentary. Talking of sets selling out unpredictably: this seemed to sell out instantly on its release back in January, only to later pop back up on some retailers (Arrow’s own store; Amazon) but not others (HMV). I’m not sure what went on there, but I’m glad it didn’t come back too quickly because I probably would’ve got FOMO and bought it at near full price. Instead, I picked it up heavily discounted in Arrow’s latest Shocktober sale. (Incidentally, this is why I’ve got so many huge box sets this month and next: big sales discounts on things I was prepared to miss out on at full price.)

Two sets with a coincidentally similar theme tie for third place. The newer one, Indicator’s Columbia Horror, features two ways to watch one of those films (black & white or tinted), so maybe it has the edge. This six-film new release includes the second 1930s film called Behind the Mask in as many months (the other was in the BFI’s Michael Powell: Early Works collection), as well as Fay Wray in Black Moon (that’s the one watchable in two, er, colours), Air Hawks, Peter Lorre in Island of Doomed Men, Cry of the Werewolf, The Soul of a Monster. For the other, I finally picked up Eureka’s Karloff at Columbia, getting a mint-condition second-hand copy of the limited edition for about the same price as the non-limited version currently goes for. Yay. That set includes the “Mad Doctor” cycle, a parody of the “Mad Doctor” cycle, and one other random Karloff-Columbia flick, which I guess necessitated the super-generic set name. Still, an example of something I sat on and then missed out on… although the fact I ultimately got a perfect copy for a reasonable saving suggests that, yeah, I need some self restraint.

Another Arrow sale purchase next, with the third volume in their series of four-film sets of minor Spaghetti Westerns, this one titled Savage Guns. It’s easier to know when it’s safe to wait for a set to be discounted when you’ve seen it happen to previous sets in the range (he says, having ordered Shawscope 3 at new-release price when Arrow have had to discount both previous sets eventually. But I’m always worried that will lead them to cut the edition size for future volumes, so when it’s something I really want, you’ve just got to bite the bullet). Despite all this sales talk, bargain of the month is arguably The Agitator: Three Provocations from the Wild World of Jean-Pierre Mocky, a Radiance set that was only released in July but Amazon and HMV randomly slashed to just £15. Presumably a misprice, but one Amazon honoured even after it went out of stock. Again, a title I’d decided to sit out, but was interested enough at just £5 per film (a price I wouldn’t guarantee it ever hitting again). On the other hand, I went straight in for Radiance’s newest three-film set, Daiei Gothic, featuring a trio of Japanese ghost stories (The Ghost of Yotsuya, The Snow Woman, and The Bride from Hades). If you’re noticing a distinct horror theme to this month’s purchases, well, that’s October sales for you.

And it’s another horror title for this month’s final multi-film release, Criterion’s 4K double-bill of Val Lewton productions, I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim. I’ve been resisting a lot of Criterion’s recent 4K releases because they’re pretty pricey and there’ll be a sale eventually (indeed, a 40%-off one is currently running at several retailers, and I’ve picked up several titles I’d been looking forward to — expect those to have been failed to be watched next month!), but someone somewhere relatively recently recommended The Seventh Victim (I forget where), and the only other copy I’d found was old and a bit ropey, so I decided to just dive straight in for this one.

Another horror title heads up the single film pile, with Radiance’s release of Italy’s first horror movie, I vampiri — which also includes the UK cut, Lust of the Vampire, and the US cut, The Devil’s Commandment, hence placing it first among equals in this size-based countdown. For the others, I randomly picked up an old Network title (oh, Network…! RIP), ’60s true-story spy thriller Ring of Spies, plus two new martial arts releases from 88 Films, Kid from Kwangtung and The Kung Fu Instructor. Last but not least, the film that would probably have led this roundup under normal circumstances (seeing as it’s a new release in 4K, albeit not a brand-new film), Guy Hamilton’s An Inspector Calls.

Oh, but there was one other box set! Originally announced for the end of September, then delayed until November, but arriving early for those of us who preordered direct, was Eureka’s Louis Feuillade: The Complete Crime Serials (1913–1918) collection. It contains the five-part six-hour Fantômas, ten-part eight-and-a-half-hour Les Vampires, 13-part six-and-a-half-hour Judex, and 12-part six-and-a-half-hour Tih-Minh. That’s over 27 hours of silent serial sensation! But… how many films is it? Four? That seems to undersell it. 40? But a lot of the ‘episodes’ couldn’t be considered features, running under 40 minutes each. So should it be counted as a mix of features and shorts? Now maybe you see why I didn’t mention it sooner in a size-based summary… although there’s a strong chance it’ll actually be the set I watch first, especially as I’m considering making it the focus of 2025’s Blindspot. How does that work when it isn’t easily countable as films? Yes, that’s what I’m struggling with…

The Spooky Monthly Review of October 2024

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I’ve never been one to go in for the whole “watch only horror movies in October” thing. I’m not enough of a fan of the genre to delight in the prospect of immersing myself in it for 31 days straight; and, while I’m sure I have more than enough qualifying titles I want to see to fill that period (probably several times over), there’s so much else to watch too. I don’t know if I’ve ever gone a whole October without watching a single horror movie (I haven’t bothered to go back and check), but the very fact I think it’s possible says all it needs to, I feel.

That said, this year I did make a bit of an effort — while also aiming to hit my remaining Challenge categories, of course. So, for example, I picked out martial arts horror movies to tick off slot(s) in the Genre category; for my Rewatch, I looked to horror movies I’d been meaning to revisit; and for Blindspot, I specifically saved the two horror titles for this month — they weren’t originally included for that purpose (if they had been, I would’ve only picked one), but it’s a fringe benefit.

Well, those were my plans, anyway. Did I meet them all, or did I drift somewhere along the way? Read on to find out…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#76 Attempt to Kill (1961) — Wildcard #7
#77 Man Detained (1961) — Wildcard #8
#78 Host (2020) — Failure #10
#79 Encounter of the Spooky Kind (1980) — Genre #7
#80 Erin Brockovich (2000) — Rewatch #10
#81 The Wages of Fear (1953) — WDYMYHS #9
#82 Rosemary’s Baby (1968) — Blindspot #9
#83 Dreadnaught (1981) — Genre #8
#84 Possession (1981) — Blindspot #10
#85 The Guest (2014) — Wildcard #9


  • I watched ten feature films I’d never seen before in October.
  • Eight of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
  • I only ‘needed’ to get to #83 this month, so I’m currently ahead of schedule. More on why that’s especially beneficial right now in the “next month” section.
  • Outside of the Challenge, Encounter of the Spooky Kind was my 100th new film in 2024. That may not be my ‘official’ goal anymore, but hitting that milestone still feels worthy of note.
  • This month’s Genre films were both chosen because they were also labelled as horror films. Encounter lived up to it; Dreadnaught was a stretch (it’s sort of like a slasher movie, but only in a handful of individual sequences, not across the entire movie).
  • Three more Wildcards down, leaving just one for the final sixth of the year. I should have gone for a New Film on Halloween (I even had several horror options on hand), as I didn’t watch a 2024 release in October in the end, but I really fancied rewatching The Guest (which, if you don’t know, is set around Halloween, including a climax at the venue for a high school Halloween dance).
  • Possibly my most film-snob-y habit / opinion / whatever is that I insist on watching (feature) films on a TV (or at the cinema, obv). I don’t watch them on a computer; nor on a tablet; certainly not on a phone. But I made an exception for Host, because it’s such a ‘Zoom call’ movie that it kinda felt wrong to watch it on my TV when it was just as easy to watch it on my desktop (because it’s streaming on iPlayer).
  • This month’s Blindspot films were a pair of horror flicks I’d been saving especially for October, so I’m glad I got them both in. Specifically, they were Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession. Also, I’ve just realised they were both directed by Polish émigrés and about bad/abusive marriages. Coincidencetastic!
  • I didn’t have any outright horror films to choose for this month’s WDYMYHS viewing, but I went for The Wages of Fear because it has “fear” in the title — as good a reason as any, I guess.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Host.



The 113th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
It was a largely middling month, quality-wise, which would often make this category hard, but in fact made it easy, because one new film I watched was actually great and so stood head and shoulders above the others — that being Rosemary’s Baby. (I just realised the award title doesn’t actually specify “new film”, but it should. If rewatches were eligible, The Guest would’ve walked it.)

Least Favourite Film of the Month
The flip side to (almost) everything being middling is that there was nothing outright terrible. The two I’d single out at the bottom of the barrel are Dreadnaught and Attempt to Kill. The latter takes it because, although it’s not bad, it is thoroughly mediocre from beginning to end; and while I didn’t actually care for a lot of Dreadnaught, at least it has some fantastic sequences.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
There was only one film review to compete with my monthly summary and “failures” this month. Whether or not the fact it was for an acclaimed film by a beloved director had any bearing on the post’s success, I don’t know; but either way, the victory goes to Incendies.



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


Just two months of the year remain, and I feel like I need to be tactically-minded to complete my goals — after all, I failed in my New 100 Films Challenge in both its first and second years, so perhaps a different focus is needed to get it over the line this time.

On the bright side, I’m currently ahead of target pace, which is potentially a big bonus. That should go without saying as a general point, but it’s specifically the case with regard to the end of December. The final weeks of the year are a bad time to be trying to catch up, or even stay on target, as Christmastime family commitments make it trickier to watch films (especially specific films, as opposed to “what can we find to appease everyone?”) If I can get further ahead of target in November, that might enable me to push through the final few Challenge films in early December. According to the rules, December could be left with a minimum of five films (a new film, a rewatch, a ‘failure’ from November, plus the twelfth films from Blindspot and WDYMYHS) — if I can get to #95 by the end of November, that would be super.

All of which said, I don’t want to ‘gamify’ my film viewing too much, because that tick-box mentality is not the right way to approach art. But it’s been my attitude (for almost 18 whole years now) that if having these goals pushes me to watch a film, rather than spending another evening deciding it would be easier to just veg on social media or whatever, that can only be a good thing.

September’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.

I’m generally a fan of the work of Tim Burton (even his oft-derided later-career stuff), but I’ve never been particularly fond of Beetlejuice (as I wrote on Letterboxd last time I watched it, “I’d enjoy this a lot more if Betelgeuse wasn’t in it”), so I certainly wasn’t rushing out to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at the cinema, though I’ll inevitably catch it once it’s streaming somewhere. Elsewise, it felt like this month cinemas were mostly full of smaller or more unusual fare — some of it praised, some of it hated, some of it ignored, but none of it huge box office fodder. Of course, there’s Francis Ford Coppola’s new, possibly final, long-awaited work, Megalopolis, which certainly sounds like… an experience; and column inches have also been generated by The Substance. Speaking of horror, there was also Starve Acre, and Speak No Evil, and Strange Darling, and Never Let Go, and the latest attempt at Mike Mignola’s comic book creation, Hellboy: The Crooked Man. Apparently Saoirse Ronan is very good in The Outrun; and, talking of star names, The Critic boasts Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Ben Barnes, Alfred Enoch, Romola Garai, and Lesley Manville in a 1930s-set thriller, which sounds great, although the reviews seem to have been muted. Anyway, most of that will end up on future to-see lists, with varying degrees of importance.

The streamers also proffered more than their usual share of high-profile-ish originals — it must be that time of year. Leading the pack was Jeremy Saulnier’s Rambo-esque Rebel Ridge on Netflix, who also deployed Will Ferrell in road trip documentary Will & Harper, and seem to have sunk young adult dystopia adaptation Uglies before it even began by casting a bunch of pretty people. Plus ça change. Apple TV+ probably wins for star names thanks to George Clooney and Brad Pitt teaming up for Wolfs, though Prime Video also had plenty of recognisable faces to show off, albeit in films that seem to have mostly met with scorn: Samuel L Jackson and Vincent Cassel in Scotland-set serial killer thriller Damaged; tepid neo-noir Killer Heat with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Richard Madden, and Shailene Woodley; and what looks to be some kind of sci-fi actioner, Breathe (I’m going off the poster and logline here, because I’ve not seen anybody talk about it), which stars Jennifer Hudson and Milla Jovovich, along with Sam Worthington and Quvenzhané Wallis (remember her? The nine-year-old from Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I still haven’t quite got round to watching. She’s 21 now).

Talking of the surprising passage of time, I’ve got the Blu-ray of The Fall sat on a shelf somewhere waiting to be watched, and I think before I upgraded to that I owned the DVD, but MUBI have released a shiny new 4K restoration. For a film renowned for its visual splendour, I’m now divided about which way to watch it first… at least until someone releases it on UHD Blu-ray, I buy that, and leave it on my shelf for ‘sometime’. Meanwhile, the nearest thing Disney+ could muster to a premiere was the streaming debut of theatrical hit Inside Out 2. For a service that wants to compete with Netflix, they don’t seem to release a whole lot of content. Maybe they’ve realised their real value lies in permanent access to their extensive back catalogue (especially for kids who just want to watch their favourites on loop), so why invest too much in new stuff? Or maybe they’re just going through a fallow period, who knows.

Sky Cinema / NOW remain the go-to for most post-theatrical streaming debuts, although their slate this month possibly reflects the thinness of the big-screen docket in recent times. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was their only new blockbuster offering, alongside swashbuckling second part The Three Musketeers: Milady, Holocaust drama One Life, and a couple of comedies: Paint (with Owen Wilson as a Bob Ross-inspired TV artist) and I Used to Be Funny (with Rachel Sennott of Shiva Baby and Bottoms, both of which I loved; though the key to their success may be writer-director Emma Seligman). They had an original or two too, but Sky Originals tend to be of even lower worth than Netflix’s, so are rarely worth mentioning. That said, Frank Grillo-starring actioner Hounds of War is the kind of thing I’d’ve surely bunged on once upon a time… but I’ve got too much I really want to catch up on to spend time on stuff like that nowadays.

Talking of which, catching my eye among back catalogue additions this month were Watcher on Netflix, which Mike Flanagan describes as “the closest a modern film has come to earning the word ‘Hitchcockian’ […] Highly recommended for fans of razor sharp thrillers”. Other reviews and scores are distinctly lower, but hey, people en masse can definitely be wrong. Also of note on Netflix is a film added back in April, Laapataa Ladies, but which has now entered the IMDb Top 250 — albeit hovering around #249 and #250, so it likely won’t last. Plus another one of those Liam Neeson old-man actioners, Memory, which (ironically) I don’t remember ever hearing of before, but it’s directed by Martin Campbell and co-stars Guy Peace and Monica Bellucci, so maybe it’s worth a look. Further catalogue additions worthy of bunging on my watchlists were ten-a-penny, as usual, but ones I’m going to specifically mention just so they’re an option for my Challenge in October included The Purge: Election Year (the whole series seems to be available on multiple platforms right now); 8 Mile, Hope and Glory, Magic Mike, and, to rewatch, the original Point Break (all Amazon Prime); on Disney+, Macross Plus (either in movie or series form, and considerably cheaper than Anime Ltd’s £150 version); Host and The Outfit on iPlayer; Morbius and Pig on Channel 4, plus a bunch of stuff I own on 4K disc and really should have got round to, like Event Horizon, The Northman, Old, Sleepy Hollow, and Three Thousand Years of Longing.

Stuff on disc I haven’t got round to watching, you say? Oh yes, there’s plenty of new stuff in that category, too. Quite a few headline-worthy 4Ks this past month, but top of the bunch is probably Second Sight’s long-awaited release of The Hitcher. Regular readers may recall I included the film in my 2022 WDYMYHS selection, on the assumption Second Sight’s release would be out before the end of that year. Well, seems it took a whole two years longer than expected. Is it worth the wait? I dunno, I haven’t watched it, have I! In fairness, it turned up right at the end of the month. A top contender for October viewing, then. As is Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, purely because I’ve been looking forward to it (the trilogy that precedes it having been so good) and have been holding off since its appearance on Disney+ landed it in August’s failures. Also brand-new on 4K was Hayao Miyazaki’s latest last film, The Boy and the Heron, while catalogue titles included Arrow’s edition of The Chronicles of Riddick (I’d intended to hold off on that, but then it seemed to be selling out already) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur from Kino.

The single label taking most of my dough this month was probably 88 Films, starting with more 4K martial acts action starring Jet Li in The Bodyguard from Beijing and The Tai-Chi Master, and Jackie Chan in Project A and Project A: Part II (a US-only collection that they, shh, helpfully sold on their UK site). Then, in regular ol’ 1080p, they also put out Island of Fire and “rediscovered classic” (we’ll see) To Kill a Mastermind; plus a New York-set drama starring Chow Yun-Fat, An Autumn’s Tale, and another addition to their Tigon horror range, The Sorcerers (I can’t say I’m picking up every title they’re putting out in that collection, but some appeal). Another label who always try to hoover up the contents of my bank account are Radiance, this month with a trio of gangster-related flicks: A Man on His Knees, Tattooed Life, and We Still Kill the Old Way (a ’70s Italian thriller, not that trashy-looking Brit flick of the same title from the mid 2010s). More crime drama courtesy of Arrow in early Kinji Fukasaku effort The Threat, while some welcome variety comes courtesy of the BFI’s genre-hopping five-film collection of Michael Powell’s early works, titled Michael Powell: Early Works.

I should certainly get started on all of that, right? Except I’m away from home this week, so I definitely won’t be watching any of it imminently. And then there’s bound to be something new coming out…

The Incendiary Monthly Review of September 2024

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I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you… this month’s films.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#67 Godzilla Minus One (2023) — Wildcard #3
#68 Incendies (2010) — WDYMYHS #8
#69 Desperado (1995) — Failure #9
#70 The Fall Guy (2024) — New Film #9
#71 Frozen II 3D (2019) — Wildcard #4
#72 The Batman (2022) — Wildcard #5
#73 Golem (1980) — Wildcard #6
#74 Cutthroat Island (1995) — Rewatch #9
#75 Rio Bravo (1959) — Blindspot #8


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • Eight of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • Four of those qualified as Wildcards. That’s… fine. I mean, I should’ve been watching Blindspot and WDYMYHS films instead, really, but at least I was watching something. I always intend to leave the Wildcards as late in the year as possible, because they’re considerably easier to cross off than some other categories; but I’m also not going to watch a film that could qualify and not count it just so the slot is left open to be filled later — that’s a different kind of madness.
  • I left it so long to watch Godzilla Minus One that I didn’t think it was going to qualify for my Challenge. Let’s walk through the categories. My “New Films” go by UK release date, but G-1 is a seemingly-rare example of a film that is foreign language and an Oscar nominee, but was actually released in the UK in its original year of release. It was on my WDYMYHS list when I published that in January, but has since dropped off the IMDb Top 250 so no longer counts. It was in both May and June’s “Failures” after being surprise dropped on Netflix on June 1st, but I wasn’t subscribed at the time (I’m, uh, still not) so I missed that. It also featured in August’s Failures, but technically that was the black-and-white version so it would sorta be cheating. I could have waited until the UK disc release delivered it onto the Failures for a fourth time, but I have a suspicion that won’t be out until December. There is a theatrical re-release coming in the interim, but that only works for qualification if it (a) screens for more than one night (I don’t think it actually did last time, at least not near me), and (b) it’s released one month and is still screening the next (to qualify as a “failure”, again). But, for all that, it does perennially qualify thanks to being on my 2023 “50 Unseen” list… but I used up all the slots in that category already… but that’s what Wildcards are for! Hurrah! (And whew!)
  • For some reason I thought I had one Series Progression slot left to go, and Frozen II was going to fill that slot. It wasn’t a fault in my record keeping, just in my memory. So, as a wildcard, Frozen II could’ve counted as either Series Progression (that series being the Disney Animated Canon) or 50 Unseen (it was on 2019’s list). I went with the former because, as I said, that’s what I thought I was doing; and also because I’ve already has a 50 Unseen wildcard, so let’s keep it mixed up.
  • I’d been trying to keep the Batman films on my List of Reviews page in some semblance of series order, though that was always made harder by the animated films taking place in various different chronologies, not to mention two-thirds of the Dark Knight trilogy not even beginning with the word “Batman”. Now, after The Batman, I’ve just given in and put it in full-on alphabetical order. That also doesn’t feel quite right (the four Burton+ live-action films are now scattered and out of sequence), but nothing’s perfect (except arguably strict chronological across all the films… but even that throws up oddities, like interrupting the aforementioned live-action run with 1993’s Mask of the Phantasm).
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Howard Hawks and John Wayne’s response to High Noon, Rio Bravo. It’s a good film, though (even setting aside political leanings) I thought High Noon was better.
  • No WDYMYHS film this month, meaning I’m two behind on both the Blindspot categories. That’s intentional for Blindspot itself (I’ve got two horror films on the list, so I intend to watch both of those in October), but WDYMYHS now just needs to be caught up on.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Desperado, The Fall Guy, and Golem.



The 112th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Quite a few films I enjoyed this month, even though a couple fell a little short of my high hopes for them (said hopes were probably too high, but what can you do?) One that absolutely lived up to its billing was Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies — one of those films that’s truly gruelling, but also truly exceptional.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
One of the things about liking 3D is that I’ll watch almost anything in 3D, which is how I came to watch “nudie cutie” Adam and 6 Eves. It’s a 60-minute film that exists to primarily show off topless women, with some pun-laden narration because, I dunno, I guess someone thought if they made it funny it would somehow stop it being crass? It didn’t work; it just made it worse.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Hey, would you look at that: I posted some actual film reviews! And one of them came out on top, too, with The Swordsman of All Swordsmen being my most-viewed post of the month. That said, it was only slightly ahead of the August monthly review; and the other new review post (Hepworth shorts) was way down the list. But if I was doing all this just for hits, I’d’ve given up a long time ago.



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


For some people, October is all about the horror movies. I always feel like I’ll go all-in on that too one year, but every time it rolls around I haven’t even considered that “one year” being this year. I do have a couple of seasonally-appropriate flicks I’ve been holding back for the occasion, though, so in 31 days we’ll see just how horrific my month gets.

August’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.

It’s that slightly-odd tail-end of summer time in cinemas at the moment (though, does the summer blockbuster season really exist anymore? Ever since Marvel started putting out major movies in the spring, and we’ve had major winter releases for even longer (at least since the 2001 double whammy of the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films), it feels like the idea of the year’s biggest movies being routinely limited to the summer months has evaporated. Regardless, August’s lot have that post-summer feel of movies aimed at a wide audience but that aren’t surefire major hits. We’re talking the latest M Night Shyamalan thriller, Trap; a new attempt to fresh the Alien franchise, Alien: Romulus; a reboot of The Crow; horrors Cuckoo and Afraid; psychological thriller Blink Twice; and apparently there was a new movie from Neil Marshall, Duchess, and video game adaptation Borderlands finally came out, though I don’t think I saw any actual talk about either, so they could’ve been bumped for all I know. And that’s without mentioning high-profile-ish rereleases like Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, a restored 3D version of Coraline (quite what needs restoring about such a recent film, I don’t know; maybe they just slap that label on any new rerelease now), and a 4K do-over of The Terminator (which I believe I heard James Cameron was involved with, so probably looks like shit).

The end of summer also means the streamers attempt to get back in on the action, with blockbuster-esque new releases in the form of Amazon Prime’s action-comedy from Paul Feig starring Awkwafina and John Cena, Jackpot!, and Netflix’s action-comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, The Union. Indeed, Wahlberg was pulling double duty for streamers this month, also appearing on Prime in true-story sports/dog movie Arthur the King. Even Apple TV+ got in on the action, tapping Matt Damon and Casey Affleck to star in director Doug Liman’s latest, action-comedy The Instigators. I guess the algorithm says people like action-comedies with stars in… There was also John Woo’s modern remake of his own action classic The Killer on Peacock in the US, but there’s no sign of a UK releaser or date yet. (Naturally, I’ve acquired a copy anyway.) They even got in on the “modified re-release” game, with Apple TV+ surprise dropping Ridley Scott’s Napoleon: The Director’s Cut earlier in the week, which adds 48 minutes to the already-lengthy movie. It also gives me the dilemma about which cut to watch, as I never got round to the original version. And speaking of director’s cuts, Netflix released Zack Snyder’s preferred versions of Rebel Moon Parts One and Two… or Chapters One and Two, I think they are now… with different subtitles, too. I don’t think anyone except Snyder diehards actually cared. (I appreciate this is tempting their vengeance, but I genuinely didn’t see anyone talking about those films after release day, and even on the day there was little more than an acknowledgment of their existence.)

Really, the most exciting thing from the streamers this month wasn’t any one film, but the fact NOW have finally added UHD quality. They used to lag so far behind in this — after all the others had introduced UHD, their version of HD was still only 720 — but now it seems they’ve caught up; and in one fell swoop too, because as soon as I noticed they had anything in UHD, it seemed almost everything was. So that’s nice. It makes me more inclined to actually watch stuff on there, whereas before it was a bit of a “stuff I’m not that fussed about but kinda want to see at some point”. And in terms of actual new additions, they had exciting recent releases like, er, Madame Web. Yeah. Of more interest, a couple of films I’d not heard of but I saw recommended in Radio Times: Irish noir thriller Barber and sci-fi romantic drama If You Were the Last. Also musical biopic All That Jazz, which crops up on “greatest films of all time” lists but never seems to be streaming anywhere.

On the more frustrating end of new-to-streaming titles, Disney+ debuted Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes almost two months before its disc release. I really want to see it, but I’m also inevitably going to buy it on physical media, so I want to wait for that… but there it is, on Disney+, tempting me. At least I don’t actually pay for Disney+ myself, so it’s a bit easier to resist. But I guess this is still their strategy to try to drive streaming over physical: “yeah, sure, we’ll release it physically eventually… but you can watch it on streaming right noooow…” Also Kinds of Kindness, the Yorgos Lanthimos film that arrived surprisingly quickly after his last one; but I haven’t watched that last one yet (i.e. Oscar winner Poor Things, also on Disney+), so his latest doesn’t exactly jump to the top of my viewing list.

What else was happening on the streamers? Netflix added Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color — I’ve still not got round to the colour version, so the black-and-white alternate is hardly a top priority for me. They also brought back The Power of the Dog in the UK, after its disappearance to be on iPlayer a couple of months ago; and the Criterion 4K release made it to the UK this month too, so now we’re spoilt for choice. Definitely the kind of film I feel I should see, and maybe I’ll like, but it also it feels like it’ll be heavy-going and I’ve got to be in the right frame of mind for that kind of thing. Maybe I’m wrong, who knows. I’ll find out someday. Just to rattle off a few other attention-grabbers from across the board: on Netflix, the film that provoked so much controversy with Andrea Riseborough’s Oscar acting nomination, To Leslie; on Amazon, a superhero movie I keep forgetting even exists, DC League of Super-Pets, but I remain kinda curious every time I remember it because it’s kind of an odd concept, really; also Scent of a Woman, which briefly, seemingly out of nowhere, popped into the IMDb Top 250 the other month, thus elevating it from “a film I’m vaguely aware exists” to “a film I should maybe watch”); and, oh, just so much other stuff.

I’m not even going to begin listing the stuff I own on disc that its appearance on streaming reminded me I really should’ve got round to watching — except I am going to “begin” that, because some highlights (if you can call anything about my constant failure a “highlight”) include Shaun of the Dead (which I’ve not seen in almost 20 years); Ben Affleck’s The Town (one of those films that’s hardly a ‘major’ movie but also feels daft I’ve never got round to); Tremors (a film I thought was merely fine when I first saw it, whereas now I think I might better appreciate the B-ish charms that made it a cult favourite, so I bought the Arrow 4K back whenever that came out); and the trilogy of Piotr Szulkin sci-fi movies that I blind bought the Radiance box set of — The War of the Worlds: Next Century, O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization, and Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes — but which are now also on MUBI, along with a fourth film (Golem) that was included in the US equivalent of the set but for which a different distributor was supposedly working on a UK release (which hasn’t yet materialised, as far as I know).

That’s only scratching the surface… and, naturally, I bought even more stuff that’s destined to be a similar failure in the future. Let’s begin with another box set of Eastern European genre titles: Deaf Crocodile’s Aleksandr Ptushko Fantastika Box, which includes the fantasy epics Ilya Muromets (released in the West — and riffed over on Mystery Science Theater 3000 — as The Sword and the Dragon), Sampo (similarly released and spoofed as The Day the Earth Froze), The Tale of Tsar Saltan, and Ruslan and Ludmila. Hopefully they’re as good as they look, because they look gorgeous; like classical fantasy art brought to life. Another box set making its way from the US into my hands this month was Severin’s Cushing Curiosities (featuring the films Cone of Silence, Suspect, The Man Who Finally Died, Blood Suckers, and Tender Dracula, plus the surviving episodes of Cushing’s BBC Sherlock Holmes series), which I picked up in their sale alongside a trio of Dario Argento titles: 4K UHD releases of The Five Days and Opera (aka Terror at the Opera in the UK), and the rarities collection Dario Argento’s Deep Cuts (which possibly doesn’t merit listing here as a lot of it is made-for-TV content, but I’ve mentioned it now, so there we go).

Back at home, this month’s only brand-new released was The Fall Guy in 4K, but the boutiques drained my bank account as thoroughly as ever: from Arrow, Robert Rodriguez’s Mexico Trilogy, including a 4K disc for Desperado (probably the best-regarded of the three, and also the only one I’ve never seen, having caught Once Upon a Time in Mexico in the cinema back in 2003 and El Mariachi on a previous DVD version of this trilogy set); from Eureka in the Masters of Cinema range, Kinji Fukasaku’s yakuza classic Wolves, Pigs & Men; and from Radiance, more gangsters in Tai Kato’s Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza, plus their second World Noir box set (encompassing Germany’s Black Gravel, France’s Symphony for a Massacre, and Japan’s Cruel Gun Story); plus, excitingly, from partner label Raro Video, The Italian Connection, which completes Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu Trilogy (alongside a Raro release from earlier this year, The Boss, and a title Arrow put out nine years ago, Milano Calibro 9). Finally (literally, because it’s officially out today but my copy turned up on the last day of August), 101 Films’ UHD upgrade for Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, which I intended to watch back when I was watching all of Villeneuve’s earlier films in the run up to Dune, but didn’t and so is a possibility for this year’s WDYMYHS list.

I say “finally” — I bought a further 16 titles in sales of one kind or another. From the US, A*P*E in 3D; George A. Romero’s Creepshow in 4K plus Just Desserts: The Making of Creepshow; Flicker Alley’s Argentinian noir Never Open That Door; a couple of US-exclusive titles from UK labels: Arrow’s release of John Wayne’s final film, The Shootist, and Indicator release Untouched (which, somewhat aptly given its title, is a US-only release because the BBFC insisted on cuts); and Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell and Walker. And from the UK, a quartet of StudioCanal Cult Classics: Blazing Magnum, Devil Girl from Mars, The Final Programme, and Horrors of the Black Museum; the BFI’s 4K of Full Circle (aka The Haunting of Julia) and volume 3 of their Short Sharp Shocks series; classic ghost story The Queen of Spades; and Lisa Joy’s Hugh Jackman-starring sci-fi noir Reminiscence. When you lay it out like that, it kinda sounds like I have a problem. But shh, don’t tell anyone, because then I might have to deal with it.

The Wicked Little Monthly Review of August 2024

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In the spirit of “littleness”, I don’t have any great or insightful or amusing intro ideas for this month, so let’s just dive on in…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#59 Scenes from a Marriage (1974) — Blindspot #7
#60 Robot Dreams (2023) — New Film #8
#61 The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) — Failure #7
#62 Road to Bali (1952) — Series Progression #9
#63 Clue of the Silver Key (1961) — Series Progression #10
#64 Hamilton (2020) — Rewatch #8
#65 Wicked Little Letters (2023) — Wildcard #2
#66 The Swordsman of All Swordsmen (1968) — Genre #6


  • I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in August.
  • Six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
  • That leaves me bang on target with the Challenge, which is slightly better than this time last year — which is good, because things only got worse month by month last time.
  • This post’s namesake, Wicked Little Letters, could’ve qualified as a wildcard on two fronts: as an additional New Film or an additional Failure. It doesn’t really matter which I class it as, but because it was a Failure in both February and July (and as one festival screening makes it, on most listings, a 2023 film rather than a 2024 one), it felt more fitting to designate it an additional Failure.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Scenes from a Marriage. I should’ve watched two to get fully caught up, but (as discussed last month) I’m intentionally putting off that double-bill until October (let’s hope that pans out!)
  • No WDYMYHS film this month. I had a few days at the end of the month where I intended to get one in and, you know, I just didn’t feel like any of them. That’s just how it goes sometimes. I feel like that’s ok when I’ve still got a whole third of the year left to get caught up. That said, out of the past five runs of Blindspot/WDYMYHS I’ve only succeeded once, so maybe I should take the task a little more seriously.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Wicked Little Letters and rewatched The Man from U.N.C.L.E..



The 111th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
At either end of this month’s viewing sit the two best (new) films I saw this month. Now, I should probably pick the “insight into the human condition”-packed Bergman film, but, you see, that movie doesn’t have any sword fights, whereas The Swordsman of All Swordsmen has seven really good ones. Sorry, Ingmar.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I expected Save the Cinema to be a pleasantly quirky British true story kinda film — a sort-of genre we seem to have specialised in for the past couple of decades — and it is, kinda… but it also feels like an imitation of one, where it’s going through the expected motions but doesn’t properly hang together in its own right. Shame.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
No reviews again this month (at this point you’d be more surprised if there had been, right?), so once again it’s a two-way battle between the monthly review and failures. The victor, by a considerable margin — and, somewhat intriguingly, continuing the alternating pattern that’s been going on since April — is July’s monthly review. Will the failures win again next month? Will there actually be some reviews in contention? Find out in 30 days’ time…


Summer’s over, here comes autumn. I know that kind of thinking depresses many people, but I welcome it. Heck, it’ll be Christmas before we know it. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves — I’ve still got 34 films left to go in my challenge, after all.

July’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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mysterious Monthly Review of July 2024

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

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

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 110th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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


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

June’s Failures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sunny Monthly Review of June 2024

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 109th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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


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