Tag Archives: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

The Cinematic Monthly Review of July 2023

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For a self-avowed film fan and film blogger, I don’t get to the cinema all that much. From the 16 completed years of this blog (2007–2022), only three have a number of cinema visits in double figures, and only two of those exceed a once-per-month average. Long-time readers may remember that I didn’t go at all in 2013 or 2014.

In that respect, 2020 was shaping up nicely — I’d been four times by the end of February, and if I’d continued at that kind of rate it would’ve been a personal record-breaker — and then the pandemic happened. I was lured back late in 2021 for Bond and then Dune, but then another lull kicked in: for one reason or another, I didn’t make it out to anything else for almost two years, until this very month.

And then, a few days later, I went again.

And the week after that, I went again.

I didn’t do Barbenheimer, though.

So I’ve already beaten 2022 (zero) and 2021 (two), and just one more trip will equal 2020 (four). (Now, if only I’d done Barbenheimer…) I can’t see myself going often enough across the rest of the year to reach the giddy heights of 2019 (which holds the record for my blogging era, on 19. Somewhat ironically, I went to the cinema a lot more often in the early/mid ’00s, just before I started this blog. If I’d been doing this in 2005 and 2006, those years would likely be stuffed to the gills with cinema trips. Or maybe I didn’t go quite as often as I thought and having historical stats would reveal that? I guess we’ll never know… unless I went back through the films released in those years and I worked out how many I saw on the big screen. Sounds like a lot of effort. But now that I’ve thought of it…)

Anyway, hurrah for my return to the cinema! It’s quite good, isn’t it?



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#47 Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022) — Failure #7
#48 John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) — New Film #6
#49 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) — New Film #7
#50 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) — Wildcard #4
#51 Santo vs. Infernal Men (1961) — Series Progression #9
#52 Oppenheimer (2023) — Wildcard #5
#53 Living (2022) — Wildcard #6
#54 Night and the City (1950) — WDYMYHS #5
#55 The Asphalt Jungle (1950) — WDYMYHS #6
#56 Sweet Smell of Success (1957) — WDYMYHS #7
#57 Beau Travail (1999) — Blindspot #7
#58 Black Dynamite (2009) — Rewatch #7


  • I watched 14 feature films I’d never seen before in July.
  • As regular readers will know, I aim to achieve at least 10 first time watches every month, so hurrah — especially as that’s just the second time I’ve managed it in 2023, and only the third time in the last 12 months.
  • 11 of those films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • If you check out my Recently Watched page, you’ll see three rewatches scatted amongst this month’s first-time watches. Why didn’t the other two count? The other two were stumbled upon on TV and, in one respect or another, only half watched; and yet, that half was enough to feel like I’d seen them again… sort of. Not like a full rewatch, really (hence why I didn’t allow them to count), but enough of a refresher that, if I ever watch either of them again, I don’t expect it to feel like a “second watch”. (For more philosophical musings along these lines, check out my reviews of the pair on Letterboxd.)
  • More importantly from my Challenge, reaching #58 means I’m back on target. That’s after ending the last two months behind. And it’s actually nearly three months that I’ve been lagging: the last time I was on target was 7th May.
  • Part of that was achieved via the use of three Wildcards. I didn’t necessarily want to burn through my Wildcards in the middle of the year; but, equally, I don’t have to save them for the end. And as I seemed to be struggling to watch other Challenge-qualifying films, I need the numbers where I can get ’em.
  • Under the Challenge rules, I should count one New Film a month. This month, there are four. I didn’t log one in May, so that needed catching up; then there’s the one for June; and then two more as Wildcards. I didn’t watch that many brand-new films in the first half of the year (just enough to keep the category ticking over), so it’s kind of nice to feel so inundated. Also, I’ve got loads to catch up on!
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Claire Denis’s Beau Travail, keeping that category on track too.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS films were archetypal heist thriller The Asphalt Jungle, London-set Night and the City, and battling newspapermen in Sweet Smell of Success. And watching three here means this category is back on track too, as per the catchup for Blindspot I wrote about last month.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, John Wick: Chapter 4, Living, and Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical.



The 98th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
If you’d asked me to predict this category before the month began, I’d’ve said M:I-7 was a strong frontrunner. But, while I did enjoy it a lot, I didn’t think it was good as the last two in the series (though I have a feeling I’m going to appreciate it more on a rewatch, divorced from all the expectation); plus, I happened to watch several other exceptionally great films this month, to the extent it was never really in contention here. Indeed, two other 2023 releases rose above it (namely, John Wick: Chapter 4 and Oppenheimer). In the end, I’m going to plump for an older film, because I greatly admired Jules Dassin’s British noir, Night and the City. (I have a sneaking suspicion those three films may end up getting rearranged somewhat by the time I get to my end-of-year best-of, but you never know. Only time will tell.)

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is a little easier. Really speaking, it should be one of the two Santo films I watched this month. I kinda enjoyed them, but they’re not good, especially compared to everything else. That said, I did enjoy them, which isn’t necessarily true of Beau Travail. Saying Denis’s film is worse than any Santo flick would sound ridiculous to most cinephiles — objectively (in as much as art can be judged objectively), it’s a better film. But, while I did like or admire parts of it, it’s not really to my taste; and even though they’re trashy and poorly made, I ultimately got more enjoyment from the Santo films.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Here’s a date for your diary: August 22nd. That’s the six-month anniversary of the last film review posted here. I had the best of intentions this month — having seen the likes of Indy 5, M:I-7 and Oppenheimer at the cinema, I wanted to review them promptly — but… well, it didn’t happen, did it? And so, for the fifth month in a row, this award has just two posts to choose from; and, once again, neither performed spectacularly on the chart. That said, one did do notably better than the other. When I turned my “failures” section into a series of standalone posts (back in February 2022), they were initially much more popular than the monthly reviews they’d spun out of. At this point, the tables have quite firmly turned. Yes, the victor here is my June monthly review.


It’s the 200th month of 100 Films!

And it looks set to be a challenge to my Challenge — having just got back on track, I’ve now got a busy work and personal calendar that’s liable to get in the way of film watching. Oh no! Can I nonetheless make it to my August target of #66? Join me in 31 days to find out. (Ooh, such drama!)

June’s Failures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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