Tag Archives: June

June’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 award for “film that almost tempted me to the cinema” this month goes to F1 — or F1: The Movie, as it may or may not be known now (websites seem to keep changing their mind). I don’t expect it to be a Great Film, but I figure it probably benefits from being seen big ‘n’ loud. Maybe I’ll still go, who knows, but with July’s films already bearing down on us (the new Jurassic World is out already, and Superman is imminent) the “big” part of “big ‘n’ loud” already has its days numbered.

Close second goes to another film with a maybe-maybe-not title change, John Wick spinoff Ballerina, aka From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. I mean, seriously. Meanwhile, June’s major release that sounds like it has the most actual quality was 28 Years Later, but I never bother to see horror at the cinema, so that was never going to be a goer. Also released: live-action remake How to Train Your Dragon, which sounds as pointless as expected; horror sequel M3GAN 2.0, which generated headlines by apparently not being a horror movie at all, more action-sci-fi, which conversely has made me more interested in watching it; and the latest Pixar, Elio, on which the word of mouth has been muted. I’ve got plenty of other Pixar films still to catch up on, so that just joins the list.

I guess summer movie season still exists, because the streamers offered almost nothing original to counterbalance those big screen spectacles. The only thing I have in my notes is Deep Cover, a Prime Video action-comedy from the director of the first two series of Ghosts, starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, and Nick Mohammed. Given all that, I’m assuming it’s more comedy than action. Audience scores look expectedly middling. It’s the kind of thing I definitely would’ve bunged on a few years ago, but nowadays I’m not sure I have the time. Nonetheless, it goes on the list of “2025 films”, so you never know — I mean, that’s a choice of two Challenge categories it qualifies for (until August begins, anyway). If I don’t get round to it soon, I very much doubt it will be significant enough to make 2025’s “50 Unseen” list. But hey, you never know.

As some kind of a counterbalance to that, plenty of big-name theatrical releases made their subscription streaming debut this past month (I wonder if the streamers take those into consideration when plotting their originals’ release dates? Never thought of that before). As per usual, NOW led the way with a slate that included Best Picture winner Anora; sequels to previous Oscar winners in Gladiator II and Joker: Folie à Deux; LEGO-based biopic Piece by Piece; superhero trilogy-closer Venom: The Last Dance; and the remake of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Prime continued to keep the theatrical window snappy with The Accountant 2 just six weeks after its big screen bow, along with Alex Garland’s Warfare after a longer-but-still-brief 16 weeks; plus Hugh Grant-starring horror Heretic, which feels like it’s taken a more traditional time period, but I haven’t bothered to work out how long. Even Disney+ had a couple worth mentioning — “worth” being a relative term, with one being their high-profile flop live-action remake of Snow White, though the other was doc Ocean with David Attenborough, which I presume has some degree of quality control due to its titular presenter. Even MUBI got in on the act with Best Animated Feature winner Flow (also out on Blu-ray at the end of the month, but I didn’t buy it because the US edition from Criterion sounds better).

Netflix, meanwhile, just had other streamers’ dregs: Barbarian, which used to be on Disney+ a while back; The Equalizer 3, fresh from NOW; Infinite and My Spy, which were both Amazon Originals during the pandemic, if I remember rightly; and the recent Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which of course used to be on iPlayer here in the UK. Of greater interest, to me at least, were sequel The Wrath of Becky (though I’ve not seen the first, which is streaming somewhere else, so maybe I won’t care to see the sequel, who knows), and The Purge: Election Year and The First Purge — they don’t have any of the other Purge films, but those are the next two I need to watch, so it’s fine by me.

The other fairly-recent catalogue title of note was Past Lives, which has bounced around a bit already but is now on iPlayer (which means I can download it and let it just sit on my hard drive forever alongside the likes of I, Tonya and Licorice Pizza and Selma). Amongst the dozens of other additions, not much provoked a significant “I really should’ve watched that by now” from me. Maybe A Cure for Wellness on Prime, just because I think director Gore Verbinski’s work is usually worth a look. And I remember Personal Shopper (also Prime) was meant to be good.

More conscious-pricking, as usual, were all the films I also own on disc and haven’t (re)watched yet, like Peter Jackson’s King Kong (I’m not sure I’ve seen that since the cinema, despite owning the extended cut on both DVD and Blu-ray), or Stargate (which I’ve owned with the intention of rewatching for literally decades), or Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (which, of course, I bought in Hammer’s recent lavish 4K edition), or Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (a general reminder that I own tonnes of 3D stuff I should get to before my TV dies or something), or Ridley Scott’s Legend (of which I bothered to import Arrow’s US-only release), or, heck, Se7en’s come around again, for the umpteenth time since I bought the 4K release. (All of those are streaming on Prime, by-the-way, who are the kings of making me think “should I have bothered to buy that or would waiting for it on streaming have sufficed?”)

Nonetheless, my addiction to buying more Blu-rays continues unabated. Plenty of upgrades to 4K this month, including a pair of early-’90s Jackie Chan outings from 88 Films, Crime Story and Armour of God II: Operation Condor; should-be-classic Dark City from Arrow; Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (a rare Steelbook buy because the regular edition’s cover was so fugly); the big box edition of The Nice Guys from Second Sight; and a selection of US imports (a bulk order, as always) including Darkman, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and the Rocky box set (I might not have bothered, but two new cuts swayed me). Plus another unwieldy big box from Hammer of The Quatermass Xperiment (not an upgrade, because I’ve never owned it before — how refreshing), and one actual new film on 4K, Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17.

The aforementioned US order also included my favourite first-time watch of last year, Bottoms; a rare 3D purchase (not because I don’t choose to buy them, but because they don’t release many nowadays) of ’50s noir The Glass Web; and more noir courtesy of Warner Archive in Mystery Street and Side Street, plus 1921 silent The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (which, I confess, I mainly bought to support the idea of Warner Archive releasing silent movies). Despite that trio, the most prominent label of the month has to be Eureka, with a stylistically wide spread of titles that included 1950s German fantasy Heart of Stone, wartime drama Hong Kong 1941, a double-bill of martial arts action under the surtitle Exact Revenge, and a sextet of ’60s crime thrillers in their Terror in the Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC box set.

Other labels only contributed a title or two, although there’s a distinct eastern throughline: fantasy-flavoured action from Arrow in The Invisible Swordsman; samurai horror from Radiance with The Tale of Oiwa’s Ghost; and John Woo’s original cut of Heroes Shed No Tears, titled Sunset Warriors, from 88 Films. Breaking the mould, Curzon put out one of the key titles not included in their comprehensive Lars von Trier box set in 2023, Palme d’Or winner Dancer in the Dark. I own that Von Trier set too, so I really ought to dig into his back catalogue more. But then, I’ve got a lot of back catalogue stuff I really ought to dig into.

The Unseasonably Hot Monthly Review of June 2025

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“It’s summer, of course it’s hot,” cry certain people. Yeah, but yesterday was 10–12°C hotter than the average for this time of year, so all the “it’s just summer” people can F off. And let’s not start on the “oh we have those kinds of temperatures all the time” foreigners.

Also, I prefer the cold, so even “regular summer” is a pain in the arse.

Anyway, enough about UK weather (it’s due to break tomorrow anyway, hooray) — here’s what I’ve been watching over the past month…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#51 Predator: Killer of Killers (2025) — New Film #6
#52 The Untouchables (1987) — WDYMYHS #6
#53 Shoot First, Die Later (1974) — Genre #4
#54 Hardware (1990) — Failure #6
#55 28 Days Later (2002) — Rewatch #6
#56 28 Weeks Later (2007) — 50 Unseen #5
#57 Saltburn (2023) — Blindspot #6
#58 Paddington in Peru (2024) — 50 Unseen #6


  • I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in June.
  • That’s the first time this year I’ve reached above my minimum target of 10.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • That’s enough to keep me a whole month ahead of target. In fact, I’ve been doing so well at that, I now only need to average seven Challenge films per month for the rest of the year (normally it’s 8.5 for the back half of the year).
  • A fair chunk of my viewing this month was taken up with the favourite films of work colleagues. My team discussed our favourite-ever movies early in the month, and of the 18 picks, I’d not seen five — so I caught up on them all immediately. The only one that qualified for my Challenge was The Untouchables, because it was already on my WDYMYHS list (the team’s other picks didn’t conveniently slot into one of my incomplete categories — how inconsiderate!)
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Emerald Fennell’s kinda-kinky reimagining of Brideshead Revisited, Saltburn.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Brian De Palma’s stylish but, uh, not exactly historically accurate retelling of the mission to arrest Al Capone, The Untouchables.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Hardware, Paddington in Peru, and Shoot First, Die Later.



The 121st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’m not sure if it’s a “great movie” in its entirety, but The Untouchables has style to spare, plus one of the greatest shootouts in cinema history.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I feel mean picking one of my colleagues’ favourite films here… but hey, there’s no way they read this blog, so why not? It’s not that Save the Last Dance is necessarily terrible for what it is, it’s just that what it is isn’t exactly my kind of movie. That said, nearly a quarter of a century on from its release, it does feel rather dated.


Summer, summer, summertime. Whether the “good” weather stays or not, you can feel that summer season hitting the big screen, with the likes of Superman and a new Jurassic World on the horizon. Are either enough to tempt me out to the cinema? I’m currently unsure. (Find out next month!)

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.)

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.

The Lonely Monthly Review of June 2023

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After a relatively disastrous May, June saw a slight turnaround in my fortunes — not a complete rehabilitation (I’m still behind target on my Challenge, and I didn’t watch ten new films either), but a definite improvement.

That hasn’t filtered through to reviews, though, as I didn’t post any for the fourth month in a row. I’m also doing a shocking job of reading other people’s work (I’ve got a browser window open with so many tabs of stuff I’ve been meaning to get round to), so sorry about that.

Anyway, here’s what I did achieve this past month…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#39 Air (2023) — New Film #5
#40 Moneyball (2011) — Rewatch #6
#41 Killer of Sheep (1978) — Blindspot #4
#42 Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021) — Failures #6
#43 In a Lonely Place (1950) — WDYMYHS #4
#44 Glass Onion (2022) — Wildcard #3
#45 Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) — Blindspot #5
#46 Au hasard Balthazar (1966) — Blindspot #6


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in June.
  • Six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
  • That’s a total of eight (obv). Perfectly respectable under normal circumstances (8.3 films a month is the necessary average for the Challenge), but I need to do more to catch up — as noted in the introduction, I’m still behind target: I should have reached #49 by now (not #50, as you might expect. February being so short distorts the ‘halves’ of the year enough that #50’s target date falls in early July).
  • Eight is also very much my current average, both for 2023 to date (to be precise, it was 7.6, now 7.7) and for the last 12 months (to be precise, it was 8.2, now 7.8, dropping because last June‘s total was 12). It’s below June’s average, though, pulling it down from 11.5 down to 11.3.
  • On a broader note, my total for the year to date is below par. Coincidentally, I’m at #46 on both my Challenge and my new film count, but my all-time average for the end of June is 84. The second half of the year is going to have to outpace the first (an uncommon, but not unheard of, occurrence) if I’m to successfully reach #100 in any sense.
  • I didn’t count Glass Onion towards my Challenge when I first watched it because it would’ve been a Wildcard and I was certain I’d rewatch it, so it seemed prudent to save it to count as a Rewatch. As it turns out, I rewatched it after I’d already logged a Rewatch for the month, so it goes down as a Wildcard nonetheless. Hey-ho.
  • With both Blindspot and WDYMYHS beginning to fall seriously behind schedule, I decided to focus my catchup efforts on the former this month. I could’ve tried to do them both equally, but here’s the thing: Blindspot has some pretty darn long entries to be watched sometime this year (one that’s almost three-and-a-half hours long; one that’s almost four hours; and one that’s over nine hours), whereas the noirs of WDYMYHS are much more consistent (there’s a range of just 15 minutes from the shortest to the longest running times across the remaining films). Those handful of ultra-long Blindspot films were always going to pose an additional challenge, so by getting my overall progress back on track I’ve at least reset the difficulty. Conversely, the WDYMYHS films being within the same ballpark (all under two hours, too) means I can more easily attempt a similar “multiple films in a month” catchup at any point later this year (hopefully next month).
  • And so, this month’s trio of Blindspot films were Charles Burnett’s key text about the Black American experience, Killer of Sheep; my first full exposure to the work of Agnès Varda, Cléo from 5 to 7; and Robert Bresson’s bleak biography of a donkey, Au hasard Balthazar.
  • And this month’s sole WDYMYHS film was one of the primary inspirations for this theme in the first place, Nicholas Ray’s exceptional In a Lonely Place.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Air and Escape Room: Tournament of Champions.



The 97th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’ve already touched on this one, so I’ll just repeat myself: In a Lonely Place is a great noir; the fact I hadn’t seen it was a driving force behind making noir the theme of WDYMYHS this year, and it lived up to expectations. I’m shockingly late to the party with this one, but if you too like noir and haven’t seen it, you must.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It’s not a bad film — and it certainly has historical significance — but Killer of Sheep wasn’t really to my taste.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
As I mentioned at the start, this is once again a two-horse race; and, as with the previous three months, there’s nothing much exciting about that. That said, the result was slightly unusual, in that the winner — my monthly review of May — attracted almost double the hits of the other new post (May’s failures). In the past they’ve been very close, or the failures have had a clear victory. Huh. Neither were anywhere near the top of the chart, mind, which this year is being dominated by my post on the 2022 Sight & Sound poll.


It’s time for another one of Tom Cruise’s impossible missions.

June’s Failures

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The ‘big news’ this month that’s relevant here is I’ve finally decided to cancel most of my streaming subscriptions — namely: Sky Cinema, MUBI, Apple TV+, and Disney+. Yes, it’s crazy but it’s true: I’ve had all of them on the go at once, along with Netflix (though I share someone else’s account, so at least that’s free to me) and Amazon Prime (which has its own extra benefits, of course). My existing payments don’t run out on most of them until various dates in July, so they’ll still be a part of failures both this month and next. And that’s part of why the streamlining was necessary: there’s stuff I want to watch on all of these services, but I’m not getting around to enough of it to justify the cost. I might start bringing them back in, one at a time; but when there’s all of Netflix, Amazon, and my ever-growing Blu-ray collection to choose from, I hardly need them. And, frankly, for some of those services, I’ve paid for month after month without watching anything at all. Morally, I feel I’ve more than earnt the right to acquire anything already on my watchlist from (*ahem*) somewhere else, if or when I really want to see it.

Anyway, on to actual titles. The big film at the cinema this month was… Top Gun: Maverick again, really, as its phenomenal popularity led it to become the first billion-dollar-grossing film released in 2022. When it comes to Cinema, Tom Cruise doesn’t mess around. Trying to face up to it, the likes of Jurassic World: Dominion and Lightyear seemed to find it something of a struggle, apparently hampered by poor reviews. Maybe critics do still matter after all. Also filling out the multiplexes have been Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic, horror The Black Phone, and whatever exactly Alex Garland’s Men is. Also worth a mention, I hear, is Good Luck to You, Leo Grande for a first-rate performance from Emma Thompson, which isn’t likely to get much awards season buzz because the film is going direct to streaming in the US, rendering it ineligible for the Oscars. That said, with BAFTA increasingly going its own way, she’ll still stand a reasonable (perhaps even higher, now it’ll be the only opportunity to reward here) chance this side of the pond.

Talking of Alex Garland, I heard someone describe Spiderhead (Netflix’s biggest original of the month) as “Ex Machina but you can go make tea and not miss anything”, which is amusing but also means it’s still on my watchlist (I would never go make tea during a film without pausing, personally, but nonetheless, I get the point that’s being made). They also had a new Adam Sandler thing, Hustle, which I shouldn’t really mention because it’s going nowhere near my watchlist. I think I heard some people say it’s not too bad, but I’m not a Sandler fan and the plot is something to do with one of those sports only America really plays seriously, which makes it triply uninteresting (because sport would make it doubly so, and American-only sport even more so again). Meanwhile, their surprise hit of the month was apparently Interceptor, an action thing which received poor notices (19% on Rotten Tomatoes) but nonetheless hit #1 in many territories, sparking sequel discussion. It’s on my watchlist, but it’s hardly a priority.

The other streamers’s offerings were even less impressive, believe it or not. I mean, Amazon’s main original offering this month seemed to be Force of Nature, a Mel Gibson-starring (already a bad sign) cop drama (hardly popular right now) that was released elsewhere back in 2020. Oh dear. It doesn’t look good. Alternatively, there’s time-travel rom-com Press Play, which mixes things up by making it the woman who’s time-travelling for a change. Innovative. Doesn’t mean it’s any good though, with 56% on Rotten Tomatoes and low viewer ratings on the likes of IMDb. As for Sky Cinema, they had Gerard Butler vehicle Last Seen Alive, which my boss — who’s the kind of guy who likes Gerard Butler films — watched and said was awful. (I should probably stop bothering to mention all these films I’m never intending to actually watch…) The only thing that looked halfway decent was also a ‘Sky Original’, Dual, which I gather is some sort of clone-on-clone action thing starring Karen Gillan… but my Sky Cinema subscription has already expired, so I won’t be watching that anytime soon.

Also new to Sky this month (and therefore not actually getting watched) were reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which I heard nothing good about, and Clifford the Big Red Dog, which I also heard nothing good about. Poor old Sky, they do seem to be struggling nowadays. Though they did have The Matrix Resurrections — which I’ve seen, and should have reviewed; and bought on disc, so should watch again — and Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, which seemed to get divisive reviews, but is Edgar Wright, so I’ve blind bought it anyways. Noteworthy catalogue additions to the other streamers included, on Netflix, The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (I say “noteworthy” — I liked the first one enough that this sequel earns a spot on my watchlist, but it’s hardly a major title) and The Devil’s Men (a film made before the ’90s on Netflix? Why, wonders will never cease! Stops me forking out for the Indicator Blu-ray, too); and, on Amazon, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (a Best Picture nominee that I know isn’t meant to be very good, but, as well as being on my ‘to see’ list because of the Oscar nom, it was also on my 50 Unseen list for 2012, and I think this might be the first chance I’ve had to watch it for free in almost a decade).

And, if you’ve not seen Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, you can now stream it on Netflix… or Disney+… all All 4. For all the flack that film gets on Twitter, plus the facts that it’s been shown on TV and is currently on multiple services, I noticed that it had rocketed to #1 on Netflix the day after it was added. For all that certain cinephile hate it, I get the impression normies love it, or at least like it. So did I, so I ought to watch it again (I do own it on 4K disc, though).

Disney+’s biggest add this month was Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, racing there so quickly from the cinema that it’s gained a rare two-months-in-a-row mention in my failures. Technically there are several Marvel things I should watch before I get to it, but as I’ve already jumbled up my viewing order, I might skip to it sooner rather than later. I’d quite like to see it in 3D, but as Marvel’s home-3D releases only happen in Japan nowadays, I think that would mean waiting until something like September. Maybe I should just hang back — it’s not as if people are still quiet about spoilers from it.

As ever, all of the streamers added tonnes of other stuff that I’ve bulked out my watchlists with, but if I started listing it all we’d really be here forever. I haven’t even discussed anything from iPlayer, MUBI, or Apple TV+, but little of it seems worthy of mention. MUBI’s sole brand-new addition, straight from a limited theatrical release, was Pleasure, which has been discussed in some circles for its unflinchingly graphic portrayal of the porn industry. Frankly, I’m not sure I care. And Apple TV+ had a different kind of festival darling, Cha Cha Real Smooth. I have no idea what it’s even about. I saw people logging it on Letterboxd when it played festivals, but I’ve heard it’s one of those kinds of films that people who go to film festivals enjoy while they’re there, but doesn’t merit much consideration outside of that context. Hardly praise to rush it up my list, that.

Last — but most certainly not least — all the discs I’ve been spending too much of my money on in the last month. The headliner this month has to be The Batman, one of those films I would say I’m really keen to see but have consistently failed to watch both at the cinema and on disc since it arrived a few weeks ago. It comes with two problems: it’s three hours long, so I’ve got to find the time (at the moment, I seem to be able to just about squeeze in a 70-minute noir of an evening, if I make a concerted effort); and my anticipation for it is so high, I can’t simply bung it on and hope for the best — I’ve got to be Prepared. So, goodness knows when I’ll get to it, but it’s right at the top of my “soon” list.

The only other brand-spanking-new release I picked up this month was Michael Bay’s Ambulance, which I feel like I’m more likely to get round to because, well, it’s Michael Bay — no need to engage brain there, right? But I’ve heard it’s one of his best films, hence why I’ve blind bought it immediately. For all the criticism he’s received down the years, when he’s on his game, Bay is one of the best pure action directors ever.

So, everything else I bought was either a new release of a catalogue title, or a slightly older release on offer. To stick with 4K, in the “new release” camp were The Untouchables and Wild Things, both blind buys but films that seem possibly up my alley. More of a known quantity was Drive, in a very lavish edition from Second Sight. I’m looking forward to revisiting it, because I put too much pressure on it to be an instant favourite first time I saw it. I didn’t dislike it, but I’m hoping I’ll like it even more on a rewatch. And, thanks to box set sales, I finally got round to picking up both the first Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection (the one with The Birds, Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo, the latter being the one I most need to revisit) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I shall refrain from ranting about the shitshow Warner Bros made of that release. Suffice to say, I’m not actually happy to have ‘had’ to buy the barebones films-only edition, but here we are.

Everything else cuts even deeper into moviedom’s back catalogue. Indeed, it’s mostly films I’ve never even heard of, frankly, but which are part of series or from labels that I trust. We’re talking stuff like Columbia Noir #5 and The Pemini Organisation from Indicator; Execution in Autumn and Outside the Law from Masters of Cinema; ’70s martial arts titles like The Killer Meteors (starring Jackie Chan and Jimmy Wang Yu), Monkey Kung Fu, Shaolin Mantis, and The Shaolin Plot; and both volumes of the BFI’s British horror short film anthology, Short Sharp Shocks. Finally, from a new StudioCanal line of cult movies, two Italian films directed by Enzo G. Castellari: High Crime (the original title translates as The Police Prosecute, The Law Acquits, which, as long Italian genre titles go, is a bit nothingy) and Spaghetti Western Kill Them All and Come Back Alone (which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a superb title).

I’ll tell you something: for all being a physical media addict costs my bank account, you certainly don’t stumble across any of this kind of stuff on the streamers.

The Halfway Monthly Review of June 2022

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Another month gone, and suddenly we’re halfway through 2022. Whaaaat?!

To mark the occasion, the Viewing Notes section is a little longer than usual, taking a look at how the rest of the year might shape up — or might need to shape up, considering my new 100 Films Challenge is currently running behind schedule…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#36 Top Gun 3D (1986) — Rewatch #6
#37 Scream (1996) — Wildcard #2
#38 Escape in the Fog (1945) — Genre #1
#39 Pretty in Pink (1986) — WDYMYHS #5
#40 Paris, Texas (1984) — Blindspot #6
#41 The Flying Deuces (1939) — DVD #3
#42 Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022) — New Film #6
#43 My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) — Genre #2


  • I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in June.
  • Six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
  • Wait, two rewatches? Yep, because I’ve deployed my second wildcard of the year to count Scream as a second rewatch for June. That means I can’t count two rewatches in a single month again this year; but, as it marks the beginning of a rewatch of the Scream series, it does open up the rest of those films to counting under Series Progression. Nifty.
  • Genre was the only category I hadn’t started when June began. Escape in the Fog changed that, meaning all 11 categories are officially underway — and all still ‘in play’, with none completed — as I reach the halfway point.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, starring Harry Dean Stanton as a dad trying to bond with his kid.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was the John Hughes-penned Pretty in Pink, co-starring Harry Dean Stanton as a dad who’s really good with his kid. I remain one behind here, but there’s still plenty of time to catch that up.
  • From last month’s “failures” I only watched The Contender.
  • I also watched a short film this month — my first this year! I often feel like I should watch more shorts, especially as I own hundreds on disc (a handful of dedicated collections, and then loads included as special features here and there). Maybe I should make it some sort of official goal. 100 Short Films in a Year? Sounds doable — but in addition to what I already aim for? Maybe not.

As I was saying, now that we’re halfway through the year, here’s how things are shaping up overall…

  • I should be at #49 now (not #50, thanks to the first six months of the year being slightly shorter than the second six). Although I’m short of that, at least I’m not a whole month’s worth short (the target for the end of May is #41), so that’s something. Nonetheless, I need to push a bit harder for the rest of the year: the monthly average to reach 100 in 12 months exactly is 8.3 films per month, but for the rest of the year I need it to be 9.5.
  • As a point of comparison, so far this year I’ve averaged 7.2 Challenge films per month, so it’s a bit of a step up.
  • But I’ve averaged 10.5 films per month overall, so if I just make more of them Challenge-compliant going forward then I should be fine.
  • Were I still doing my old-style 100 Films Challenge (just watching any new-to-me 100 films in a year), I’d currently be at #63 — which would be my poorest performance at this point since 2014.
  • All of which sounds fine and dandy, until you remember this: I typically watch fewer films in the back half of the year.
  • That’s not just a casual observation: I have numbers on this. For example, I can tell you that, out of 15 years of running this blog, I did actually watch more films in the back half of the year five times. And on a further three occasions, the second half was within 10% of the first half’s tally. So, it’s not as if the two halves are often wildly different. Which is funny, when you think about it, considering my overall annual tallies can be so very different — historically, anywhere from 94 to 264 films in a year.
  • Anyway, what do the stats foretell for this year? Based on my all-time average first-half-to-second-half ratio, I would watch 122 films this year. Narrowing that to just the last five years, I would make it to 108. And if we look at just years where I’d made comparable progress by the end of June — which happen to be 2010 to 2014, when I’d reached between #55 to #64 by this point — they too reckon I’d make it to 122.
  • Which is all well and good for my old target, but what about the New 100 Films Challenge? Well, so far my ratio of new films to films that count is roughly 1.47:1. If that holds, then watching 122 new films would mean I watch only 83 that count towards my Challenge. So, as I said earlier, I need to up the number of compliant films. Or, of course, just watch more films.
  • As to that final point, the last time I watched more films in the second half of the year than the first was in 2015, driven by pushing myself to make it to #200. But such a goal isn’t always necessary: in 2014, I did an even greater percentage of my viewing in the back half, but only to make it to #136. And goals aren’t a guarantee of anything: in 2016, I watched more in the first half of the year than I had in 2015, but so much less in the second half that I only made it to #195.

All of which goes to prove one thing: when it comes to my film watching, statistics may be fun, but they’re useless at predicting the future.



The 85th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Quite a few more-than-solid films this month, but the one that comes closest to jumping out at me is also one I’ve been meaning to see ever since it came out, 12 years ago now. That would be political thriller The Ghost Writer (originally released as The Ghost here in the UK, but now under its international title on Netflix). Why does it sometimes take me so damn long to get round to things I was actually quite keen to watch? Goodness only knows. And it’s things like this — where, as I expected, I enjoy them a lot — that prove I shouldn’t let such delays happen.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Apologies to any Laurel and Hardy fans reading this, but my first real experience of their work didn’t really make me laugh, and a comedy that doesn’t make you laugh isn’t much of a success, so The Flying Deuces takes this (dis)honour.

Most Timely Viewing of the Month
Here in the UK, we got a bonus Bank Holiday if June, to celebrate Queenie’s Platinum Jubilee… and, on the first of them, I watched the fairly-obscure (I’d certainly never heard of it before) 1938 film Bank Holiday. The film and modern real-life event aren’t really connected in any way (no Jubilee going on in the film), but hey-ho.

Best Accent of the Month
Accents in films are a funny business. Sometimes, people don’t even bother: witness My Name Is Julia Ross, a Hollywood production set entirely in London and Cornwall, where half the cast don’t even bother to attempt English accents. Sometimes, you wonder if people needed to: take The Ghost Writer, where it feels like everyone’s doing one accent or another, be it Scots and Americans doing English, or Brits doing American. And then there’s films that are a wonder unto themselves, like House of Gucci, where the entirely-English-speaking cast are doing ‘Italian’ as if they’re in a Dolmio advert. “I cooka da pasta” indeed.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
For the second month in a row, my monthly failures roundup — namely, May’s Failures — has topped the chart. I say “topped”: it was the highest new post, but 29th overall. I guess my new reviews just haven’t been that interesting. (My ‘mistake’ has been stopping TV reviews: 24 of the 28 posts above May’s Failures were old TV columns.)



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


Y’know, I still haven’t been to the cinema yet this year. I keep meaning to see Top Gun: Maverick, but things keep getting in the way. But, as of today, my local cinema have put it back on to their biggest screen for the weekend, so maybe I’ll finally pull my finger out and get there in the next couple of days.

As for the rest of the month… oh, who knows!

The Terribly Tardy Monthly Review of June 2021

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That title is a slight misnomer, because this monthly review is bang on time (more or less), but everything else about my blog right now, oh, that could use a kick up the arse. I mean, I only posted one review this month. My 100 Week Roundups must be so far behind that I dread to even look. And when did I last post a TV column…?

And my actual film viewing was in similar doldrums: on the 22nd, I had the horrifying realisation that I had only watched three new films this month. My goal of at least 10 new films a month, which I’ve aimed for since c.2015, was again in jeopardy (I failed it multiple times in 2019 — and back then it was also June that broke my five-year-long streak). And that’s to say nothing of the 20+ new films per month I’d maintained throughout 2021 so far. Now, with 17 films to go for me to reach 20 in June, and just eight days left to watch them, it seemed virtually impossible. Sure, in theory that’s only two films a day (plus one), but, since I started my new job in May, my weeknight post-work film viewing had averaged 0.08 a day. No way was this happening.

Unless… there was one crazy idea that might just work…

“So,” I figured, “if I could manage one film per workday,” (which, despite the stats, seemed not unfeasible — recently of an evening I’d been catching up on TV), “then that would get me to six films. And if I could manage that, surely I could manage two on a Friday — so that’d be seven. Then on Saturday and Sunday I’d just need to watch…” (*gulp*) “…five films a day.”

I know some people marathon their way through films like nobody’s business — to them, five in a single day is virtually just “a day ending in Y” — but to me? Yikes. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched five films in one day. And to do it on two days, back to back? Well, I did say this was a crazy idea. But it was the only vaguely-plausible way I could still get to 20 films in June. “Vaguely plausible” is not “literally impossible” and, well, you don’t know if you don’t try, right?

Did I manage it? There’s only one way to find out…


#116 Pillow of Death (1945)
#117 The Money Pit (1986)
#118 My Fair Lady (1964)
#119 Dumb and Dumber (1994)
#120 Seven Chances (1925)
#120a What! No Spinach? (1926)
#121 Rodan (1956), aka Sora no daikaijû Radon
#122 The Mummy (1932)
#123 A Brief History of Time Travel (2018)
#124 Superman and the Mole-Men (1951)
#125 The Invisible Man (1933)
#126 Space Station 3D (2002)
#127 Rain Man (1988)
My Fair Lady

The Invisible Man

.


  • To answer my previous question: no, I did not.
  • I watched 12 films in June, which may not be close to 20 but, in the grand scheme of my blog, is far from the worst. To be precise, there have been 79 lower-totalling months in the blog’s history, which is 45% of all months. So, June 2021 is somewhere in the middle. That’s alright.
  • I did, at least, slightly pass the June average, which is 11.4 (previously just under at 11.38, now just over at 11.43).
  • Other averages… not so much. The rolling average for the last 12 months was 21.0, now it’s 19.7; and the average for 2021 to date was 23.0, now it’s 21.2.
  • One thing that’s been somewhat overshadowed by all this: I reached #120, which is officially my main-list goal nowadays. Though that I’ve done that with half the year still to go does make me think I still need to rethink this whole “viewing goal” thing.
  • On the other hand, What! No Spinach? is only the second short film I’ve watched in 2021. But I don’t have a short film viewing goal, so that’s okay.
  • Also, I finished the Inner Sanctum Mysteries film series this month. Actually wrapping up a series rather than constantly adding new ones? Makes a nice change.
  • This month’s Blindspot film: an Oscar winner in its day (over 30 years ago), but somewhat controversial now for its depiction of autism, I thought Rain Man still did enough right. Relatedly, I found this short Letterboxd review to be insightful.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched nothing, again.



The 73rd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
A few great-but-imperfect films compete for this month’s crown, but just edging it is the 1933 version of The Invisible Man. Director James Whale may be best remembered for his pair of Universal Frankenstein flicks, but I preferred this, which has a great mix of thrills, humour, and still-impressive special effects.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is an easy one for me: it’s a film that I felt lived up (or down) to its title, Dumb and Dumber. I only watched it because it’s on iCheckMovies’ Most Checked list and I’ve nearly completed that. It did have some moments that amused me, but overall, nah, I’d not really been missing anything by not watching it for the past 27 years.

Most Ropey-Yet-Still-Scary Special Effect of the Month
The “man in a suit” antics of Japanese monster movies are a bit of a “take it or leave it” style, but I think part of what makes them palatable is that the men in suits are stomping on miniatures — the whole thing is an affectation. But in Rodan, before the titular pterodactyl turns up, there are giant dragonfly nymphs that are played by men in suits opposite normal humans. Their blocky shape and waddly movement is kinda silly… and yet, at the same time, they’re man-sized baby insects, which I find inherently repulsive and terrifying.

Film Most Like a Twilight Zone Episode of the Month
I confess, I didn’t expect much of Superman and the Mole-Men, a film made primarily to instigate interest in producing a Superman television series (I guess the term “pilot” hadn’t yet been coined in 1951). And it’s far from the greatest screen realisation of the superhero ever, but what it does have is a neat little twist in who the villains are — at the risk of spoiling the surprise, it’s not the eponymous Mole-Men, but the small-townsfolk who get scared and turn into an angry mob. The social commentary isn’t exactly at Rod Serling level, but it’s surprisingly close.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
It was very much a two horse race this month, considering I only managed two posts throughout June. The end result wasn’t close, though, with my guide to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom romping away to victory.


This section seems a bit pointless, considering I only posted one review and I’ve already linked to it, but the format is the format…


I came into June five films behind target, and I end it six films behind. Dammit. Well, with my main list having passed its 120-film goal, and my 20-per-month streak ending, maybe that’ll allow me to feel I can spend more time on rewatches in the second half of the year.

#17 Pride & Prejudice (2005)
#18 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
#19 The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

Rather than repeat myself across the interweb, I’ll point you towards Letterboxd for some of my latest thoughts on Pride & Prejudice and Last Crusade. As for The Naked Gun, once I realised my crazy “get to 20” project had failed, I bunged it on one evening after work as something nice and easy. Most of it holds up very well, but I do feel it’s beginning to slip a little with age — it doesn’t feel quite as nonstop as it once did, and there’s the occasional topical gag that’s long past its sell-by (the film is almost 35 years old, after all). It also reminded me that about a year ago I bought Police Squad on Blu-ray and haven’t watched it (of course I haven’t).


Cinemas are back, and the idea of a joint theatrical/streaming release already seems a distant memory — which is funny, because in the US they’re still doing it all the time on HBO Max, and I think Disney still intend it for Black Widow, and I’m sure the kind of smaller films that were doing it even before Covid are still doing it now. But, here in the UK at least, the likes of Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, The Quiet Place Part II, In the Heights, Nobody, and Fast & Furious 9 have all landed in cinemas without (as far as I’m aware) matching availability at home. Also finally gaining big-screen outings were the likes of The Father, Supernova, and, um, Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. None of these have tempted me out of the house yet, but something will at some point…

Whether by coincidence or design, big and/or interesting new offerings from the streamers seem to have dried up. I think it was MUBI who had the closest to anything ‘high profile’ with the UK release of Shiva Baby. All I have in my notes for Netflix is America: The Motion Picture, which came out earlier this week, and the global release of the fourth film in the Rurouni Kenshin live-action series (I really enjoyed the first three when I watched them a few years ago, so that’s definitely on my radar). Meanwhile, Amazon had another Liam Neeson actioner, The Ice Road, which I initially thought was just the one he’d done a year or two ago (that was Cold Pursuit). Ho hum. As for new-to-streaming titles, Amazon pretty much win the day with the acclaimed horror Saint Maud, because I’ve got nothing in my notes for Netflix except a couple of things I’d already seen but not reviewed. Meanwhile, new highlights on Sky Cinema / NOW included Kajillionaire, the very belated UK debut of Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, and the final Fox X-Men film, The New Mutants, which I own on disc anyway (but keep not getting round to).

Talking of discs, naturally I’ve continued to blow my disposable income on those shiny, shiny circles. Nowadays it feels like most of what I buy is stuff so obscure I hadn’t even heard of it until someone announced the disc release, and that certainly continued this month with Arrow’s Years of Lead box set, a collection of five Italian crime thrillers from the ’70s. Similarly, I bought the Masters of Cinema releases of PTU (a Hong Kong thriller) and The Hands of Orlac (an Austrian silent chiller); 88 Films’ new edition of giallo So Sweet… So Perverse; and Indicator’s release of Eye of the Cat.

In terms of more known quantities (in that I’d actually heard of them, even if I’ve not seen them), there were new editions for Waterloo and Sammo Hung’s Encounter of the Spooky Kind, and Indicator’s sixth Hammer box set. I’ve got four of those now, from volume three onwards, which makes me regret never getting the first two; but I bet they cost an absolute bomb on the secondhand market, so I’ll have to live with it. From StudioCanal came a 4K release of Basic Instinct (judging from the screencaps, it looks like the quality of the new transfer absolutely blows the Blu-ray away), and a similarly restored (but only on regular Blu-ray) Murder by Decree, with Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes taking on Jack the Ripper. The same villain is taken on by H.G. Wells in ‘present day’ (i.e. 1970s) New York in Time After Time, which I picked up in HMV’s latest Premium Collection sale, alongside a literal pile of other stuff: Clash of the Titans and Mighty Joe Young (edging my Ray Harryhausen collection towards completion), plus Grand Prix, Murder, My Sweet, and A Scanner Darkly. Finally, another literal pile, this time of six Spaghetti Westerns: I wanted to import Arrow’s US-only 4K release of Sergio Corbucci’s Django (which comes bundled with Texas, Adios), and so to spread the postage I also threw in Kino’s 4K edition of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and another highly-acclaimed one by Corbucci that I’ve wanted to see for yonks, The Great Silence; then, in an 88 Films sale, I also added another Django film, Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! (love that title), and a third Corbucci, The Mercenary. Now I just need to make time to actually watch all (or any) that…


What will the second half of the year bring? All bets are off nowadays…

The Jaja Ding Dong (Ding Dong!) Monthly Review of June 2020

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My love for you is wide and long, dear readers, and so (one of) the breakout hit(s) from Netflix’s Eurovision movie seemed the only appropriate title for this month’s review.

Also, I didn’t have any better ideas. I mean, I could’ve called it “halfway”, because we are halfway through the year and I’m going to talk about that… but it’s not as fun, is it?


#128 The Children Act (2017)
#129 Paris When It Sizzles (1964)
#130 Shadowlands (1993)
#131 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
#132 The Gay Divorcee (1934)
#133 The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
#134 The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)
#135 Split Second (1992)
#136 Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
#137 The Old Dark House (1932)
#138 The Rhythm Section (2020)
#139 The Vast of Night (2019)
#140 The Armour of God (1986), aka Lung hing foo dai
#141 Gemini Man (2019)
#142 Cairo Station (1958), aka Bab el hadid
#143 Tomb Raider 3D (2018)
#144 7500 (2019)
#145 Do the Right Thing (1989)
#146 Shazam! 3D (2019)
#147 Crawl (2019)
#148 Chicken Run (2000)
#149 Man on Wire (2008)
#150 Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010)
#151 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
#152 Polytechnique (2009)
#153 Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
#154 The Invisible Man (2020)
#155 Without a Clue (1988)
Paris When It Sizzles

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

The Old Dark House

The Invisible Man

.


  • I watched 28 new feature films in June.
  • It’s my joint-3rd best month of 2020 (tied with March), which is right in the middle when you remember there have only been six months… but 2020 is clearly an exceptional year, because it’s also in the top 5% of months all-time.
  • It’s also my best June ever, beating the 21 of June 2018.
  • Naturally, that means it stomps all over the June average (previously 10.0, now 11.4).
  • It also sails past the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 15.3, now 17.3), and also pips the average for 2020 so far (previously 25.4, now 25.8).
  • Reaching #155 means I’ve already passed my final total from last year, making 2020 already my fifth highest totalling year ever.

Now, some observations on the actual films I watched…

  • They included my 2,000th film for this blog. I wrote about that here.
  • I was also particularly glad to get a chance to see Cairo Station, one of the five films I flagged from The Story of Film: An Odyssey (my 1,000th film) back in August 2015. In the almost-five-years since that post, I’ve seen two of those films. Of the other three, I’ve owned one on Blu-ray for several years; another was released on Blu-ray in the UK last November; and the fifth recently came out on Blu-ray in the US. So, I could/should be completing them by now…
  • This month’s Blindspot film: Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, which is exceptionally pertinent right now — which, considering it’s now over 30 years old, is rather depressing. A great film, though.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Crawl, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Peanut Butter Falcon, The Rhythm Section, and The Vast of Night.

Finally, returning to statistics: the end of June marks the halfway point of the year, of course, and at #155 it’s the furthest I’ve ever reached by this point (beating #145 in 2018). So, to mark the occasion, I’ve gone back over previous years to see what I can learn about the first half of the year as a predictor for the second.

  • Logic might suggest the second half would be double the first, but that’s never been the case.
  • Of the previous 13 years, five saw the second half more than double the first, with the other eight showing a decrease (obviously).
  • The biggest discrepancy came last year, 2019, when I did 64.9% of my film viewing in the first half of the year, leaving just 35.1% in the second.
  • The biggest swing the other way was in 2009, when I watched 40.4% in the first half of the year and 59.6% in the second.
  • On average, the second half of the year accounts for 48.3% of my viewing; though if we look at just the last five years, that drops to 44.8%.
  • So, as a predictor for 2020, if I follow the all-time average I should end the year on #305 — holy moly! A feat that never seemed possible, considering I’ve only passed #200 twice.
  • If I take the average of just the last five years, I only reach #283 — which would still be my highest year ever by over 20 films.
  • And, compared to the two extremes detailed above, anything below #239 would be a new second-half low (in percentage terms), while a new high would see me watch over 383 films! The latter would mean a monthly average of 38.1 for the rest of the year — higher than I’ve ever reached in a single month. I really don’t see that happening.
  • Leaving percentages behind, the average number of films I’ve watched in July-to-December is 69, which this year would put my final total at 224.
  • Lest all this sound like plain sailing to a number definitively above 200, my weakest-ever July-to-December was 33 in 2011, which, if repeated, would see 2020 end on 188. Never say never…



The 61st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Lots of stuff I liked a great deal this month, and as usual it’s hard to compare such wildly different films. For surprise value, I’m drawn towards Paris When It Sizzles — it doesn’t seem to be well-rated on the whole, but it’s a lot of fun as a kind of “insider’s view” Hollywood spoof that feels ahead of its time.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
No outright bad movies this month, in my estimation, but there were more than a couple that didn’t live up to my expectations. Perhaps the worst of these was Crawl, purely because it was doing so much better early on than it was by the end.

Song That Most Stands a Chance at the Oscars of the Month
God only knows what’s going to be going on at the Oscars next year, but they should be more amenable to streaming movies than ever, and that might open the door for a song from The Story of Fire Saga to get in — if there’s one thing most people who’ve watched it can agree on, it’s that the original songs are rather catchy (in a Eurovision-y way). Heck, why just one? In the past, multiple songs from the same film have made it, so never rule that out (I have no idea how the rules for the song category work). But if only one song makes it then… no, it won’t be Jaja Ding Dong (well, you never know). It might be Volcano Man, just because that had several weeks of advance play due to being released as a kind of teaser trailer. But judged as an actual song, the big emotive climactic number Husavik surely deserves a shot.

Most Desirable House of the Month
I can see why Jimmie Fails obsesses over restoring, maintaining, and (re)acquiring that house in The Last Black Man in San Francisco — it’s gorgeous. Until it gets that makeover at the end, anyway (um, spoilers? I dunno).

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Maybe it’s because there’s nothing new in cinemas. Maybe it’s because Eurovision remains popular in many places, as does Will Ferrell. Whatever the cause, Netflix’s Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga has generated a lot of chatter since its release last Friday, and so it’s of little surprise that my release-day review has attracted a fair few visitors. It easily tops this month’s chart (both new and all-time posts), and has overtaken another Netflix original, Extraction, to be my most-viewed film review of 2020 so far.



This month, my Rewatchathon movies forward at give-or-take its intended pace — which, after last month’s bumper crop, means I’m still over a month ahead of schedule.

#27 The Scarlet Claw (1944)
#28 Gambit (1966)
#29 The Pearl of Death (1944)
#30 The House of Fear (1945)

Three of those continue my rewatch of the Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. My original reviews are linked above; the following links are to new thoughts on Letterboxd. In summary, I think The Scarlet Claw remains my overall favourite from the series, but I enjoyed both The Pearl of Death and, in particular, The House of Fear a lot more this time — together, the trio are definitely among the series’ best.

As for Gambit, it made my yearly top ten back in 2011, but if anything I enjoyed it even more on this second watch. I’d remembered the famous first-act trick, of course, but forgotten the substance of all the twists at the end, which kept it exciting. It’s so much fun in between too, and moves like a rocket without ever feeling rushed.


Cinemas remain closed, but that hasn’t put a stop to new releases, with the likes of Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York and Simon Bird’s Days of the Bagnold Summer heading direct to rental. Plus, there was an even more high-profile new release in Spike Lee’s acclaimed movie for Netflix, Da 5 Bloods.

Other titles new to the preeminent streamer that caught my eye include action movie VFW; last year’s animated revival of The Addams Family; documentary The Show Must Go On: The Queen + Adam Lambert Story; and almost a dozen movies directed by Youssef Chahine — I watched the most noteworthy one, Cairo Station, but I’ve seen several others recommended. I also noticed Line of Duty pop up, but only because it was released theatrically here as In the Line of Duty, presumably to avoid conflict with the popular TV series, but Netflix have reverted to its original title. I don’t remember it being well reviewed, so I won’t be rushing to catch up with it.

Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video offered the new Shaun the Sheep movie, Farmageddon, which I’ve been looking forward to getting round to. Also a couple of documentaries, one titled Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show, which kind of sums up its topic, and the other about a pioneering early female filmmaker, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (which still hasn’t been picked up by the site I use to track additions to Amazon, so it may’ve been there a while for all I know). Also standing out from the pack was the brilliantly titled Django and Sartana Are Coming, It’s the End (the titles seem to be the best thing about any of the movies starring Sartana) and a steampunk adaptation of The Secret Garden. Um, what? Colour me curious.

Once again, Sky Movies / Now TV suffered by comparison. Mr. Jones sounds interesting, but has the kind of grim subject matter that’s going to make me keep putting it off; I didn’t mind the first one, which hardly pushes Maleficent: Mistress of Evil to the top of my must-see list (I didn’t even bother to put it on last year’s ’50 unseen’ list); and I’m not sure I’ve seen enough Kevin Smith films to really ‘get’ Jay & Silent Bob Reboot… but, hey, I guess it is a reboot, right?

Oh, and lest you think I’d curbed my spending this month, oh dear me, no. Recent films finally hitting disc here included The Lighthouse and Pixar’s Onward (in 3D, natch), while new releases of catalogue titles included 88 Films’ latest Jackie Chan release, Armour of God II: Operation Condor (hence why I watched the first one this month); Eureka adding film noir Criss Cross to their Masters of Cinema line; and BFI issuing a restored Tokyo Story, a film I’ve been meaning to rewatch for a very long time. And offer pricing was once again the siren to my wallet’s sailor: from the BFI, The Crying Game, doco Mifune: The Last Samurai, and their Early Women Filmmakers box set (with seven features and 15 shorts, including several by the aforementioned Alice Guy-Blaché); from a Masters of Cinema twofer, Faust and Witness for the Prosecution; and from the recent UK Criterion offer, Fail Safe, Holiday, Kiss Me Deadly, and Solaris. I think I would’ve caved to more in the latter, but I’m trying to hold some money back for the Barnes & Noble Criterion offer that should be starting in a couple of weeks. I can never have enough set aside for that…


UK cinemas are set to reopen… but how long will that last? Will anyone go? The major films scheduled for July have already been pushed (again) to August, leaving only re-releases and some small-scale new releases with nothing to lose by testing the waters. Hardly an enticing slate, especially when the safety measures on offer are dubious (personally, I’m almost entirely put off by the lack of reserved seating at Odeon). Some people would like to pretend this is all over, but anything could still change any day…

Well, at least we’ll definitely have Hamilton on Disney+.