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November’s Failures

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

It may not be summer anymore, but there were still plenty of blockbuster-sized releases at the multiplex. The biggest of them seems to be Disney’s latest animation, Zootropolis 2 (aka Zootopia 2), which has apparently broken records of some kind (I confess, I didn’t read the articles, just saw the headlines). I liked the first a lot (9½ years ago! Time flies), so I look forward to catching the sequel at some point. Other sequels included a third Predator flick (and second this year) from director Dan Trachtenberg, Predator: Badlands, which seemed to be as well-received as his previous two; belated magic/heist threequel Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, finally using the subtitle everyone said should’ve been on the second film; Nazi-killing followup Sisu: Road to Revenge; musical second act Wicked: For Good; and a limited release for the third Benoit Blanc murder mystery, Wake Up Dead Man, ahead of its Netflix release at the end of next week.

Not technically a sequel, but still very much in the IP space thanks to being both an adaptation of a Stephen King story and a remake of the previous Arnie-starring adaptation, was Edgar Wright’s latest, The Running Man. Other films with noteworthy pedigrees included Sky Original Nuremberg starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, among others, which received a rare wide release for a streamer-branded film; Richard Linklater’s latest (finished) film, Blue Moon; Sydney Sweeney-starring boxing biopic Christy; the debut feature directed by Ronan Day-Lewis, starring his dad, Anemone; and a whole host of recognisable British faces in The Choral, the fourth film from the writer/director pairing of Alan Bennett / Nicholas Hytner.

For those not keen in venturing out in these colder days, the streamers offered up a batch of brand-new titles as well, although their perceptible quality is as variable as ever. I mean, for every well-reviewed film like Netflix’s Train Dreams, there’s a pile of churn like Prime Video’s action-comedies Bride Hard (probably the worst wannabe-pun title I’ve ever heard) and Playdate, a vehicle for the star of their Jack Reacher show, Alan Ritchson. Apple TV+’s The Family Plan 2 appears to be in a similar vein. At least Netflix’s other original offering, Jingle Bell Heist, has the good grace to be festive-themed.

Plenty of new-to-streaming stuff here and there, too. The one that intrigues me the most, in its way, is After the Hunt. I didn’t see any fanfare for this when it was in cinemas, nor when it came to Prime in the middle of the month, despite a starry cast and being directed by Luca Guadagnino. Is that because it’s bad, or just not discourse-provoking? No idea. Could be it’s just me, because when I did spot it on Prime it was apparently in their top ten films, so someone noticed it. Also on Prime: actioner Boy Kills World and “dark fantasy comedy horror” (Wikipedia’s sting of genres, not mine) Death of a Unicorn. Over on NOW, a reminder that I bought but haven’t watched Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, plus the latest from Christopher “Happy Death Day” Langdon, Drop, and video game horror adaptation Until Dawn. The most I noted from Netflix was Trump biopic The Apprentice, but Disney+ actually had a couple of things worth mentioning in the shape of The Fantastic Four: First Steps (though I’m so many Marvel films behind I can’t remember the number anymore, so I don’t know how soon I’m likely to watch it) and Freakier Friday (though it’s decades since I saw its predecessor, and I wasn’t clamouring for a followup).

As ever, tonnes of back catalogue additions and service-hoppers made my long-list of stuff to mention, but a couple seemed worthy of particular note: The Perks of Being a Wallflower on Netflix, purely because it’s one of the most popular films on Letterboxd that I’ve never seen, but it also never seems to be streaming anywhere (and I hardly care about it enough to watch it any other way — in fact, I might not even get round to it now, who knows); and Fellini’s La Strada on Prime, which has a slightly more prestigious Letterboxd pedigree of being on the Top 250 there, but is another one that isn’t regularly readily available.

But, as usual, the most egregious older titles were all the reminders of stuff I own on disc but haven’t watched — like Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, the reboot of Candyman, Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, Neil Armstrong biopic First Man (all Amazon, though Candyman was also on iPlayer) — or titles I’ve bought because I thought they were great and want to rewatch them, but again haven’t — like Oliver Stone’s JFK and Natural Born Killers, John Frankenheimer’s Ronin, David Cronenberg’s Scanners (also all Amazon. Their offering is rather underrated, you know, and I think it’s their own fault because they make it harder to use than Netflix, burying the good stuff under piles of random crap. Though it’s also partly user error, as so many people can’t seem to get their head around the fact you can rent films in addition to those you get as a subscriber).

Nonetheless, I keep buying stuff that’s destined to end up on future iterations of that list. This month, it was Arrow’s 4K re-release of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (upgrading my existing Blu-ray copy of that same version), Criterion’s 4K re-release of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (also upgrading my Blu-ray copy of the same), the 4K release of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (a leap up from the old DVD, at least), and The Goonies, a purchase prompted by, of all things, the tie-in LEGO set (which I did not buy because, although it looks cool, it’s expensive and I don’t love the film that much).

Of course, I also shelled out for piles (literally) of things I’ve never seen. Chief among them was Arrow’s release of City on Fire, signalling the start of their deal to release Golden Princess films in the UK, which in the future will bring us solid-gold classics like The Killer, Hard Boiled, and… well, potentially 153 more, according to news of the original deal (Shout have the US rights and Arrow’s is a sublicense). Maybe we’ll see some box sets like their Shawscope series, which this month added a Volume 4 with 16 new films to supplement the 40 already released across the first three sets.

As usual, most of my purchases this month came courtesy of boutique labels, whether they be new releases or sale pickups. From Eureka, two additions to the Masters of Cinema series: Michaelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte in 4K, and Kinji “Battle Royale” Fukasaku Shogun’s Samurai. From Deaf Crocodile (via an eBay seller, as the label won’t ship to the UK), the second volume of Treasures of Soviet Animation and “a wildly surreal early 1970s Lithuanian rock opera” that’s further described as a blend of Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Wicker Man (how could you resist that?!), The Devil’s Bride. From Criterion’s UK sale, noir Night Moves in 4K and Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth on regular BD; and from Indicator’s sale, 4Ks of Ozploitation flicks Harlequin and Thirst, plus Love Affair-emulating melodrama When Tomorrow Comes and “British crime classic” (their words) The Shop at Sly Corner. Singleton purchases included a 4K upgrade for Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung’s Heart of Dragon, and the latest in Hammer’s line of collector’s editions, The Men of Sherwood Forest.

And that’s not even including all my recent Black Friday orders that haven’t arrived yet. They say the first step to solving a problem is recognising their is one… so I fully intend to carry on in self-denial for a while yet.

The Dragonborn Monthly Review of November 2025

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Another month, another title that doesn’t actually refer to my film viewing.

I point you in the direction of my September review, where I reported my good fortune in winning a Steam Deck. Well, in November I installed a little game called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I’d bought it on sale at some point due to its reputation, but actually started it up this month on a whim, half expecting to wander around a little bit, get said whim out of my system, and move on to something else.

Over 58 hours of playtime later — during which I’ve only progressed the main plot about as far as I have to* (i.e. getting out of the tutorial, plus a tiny bit more) — and, yeah, I think I’m in this for the long haul. For perspective: according to HowLongToBeat, if you do focus on the main story, the average completion time is about 27 hours; but there’s so much else to do in the game that there are recorded playtimes over 700 hours; and even the “all play styles” average is 130 hours. Even after 58 hours, I still feel like I’m very much just getting started.

* (Somewhat ironically, I haven’t actually got to the point where the adjective I’ve chosen for this post’s title comes into play; but I didn’t have any other decent ideas for references, so it is what it is.)

I certainly didn’t spend that many hours watching films this month, let me tell you. Although I didn’t shirk either, as you can learn in the viewing notes…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#88 Hedda (2025) — New Film #11
#89 Midsommar (2019) — Blindspot #11
#90 Superman (2025) — Failure #11
#91 Street Law (1974) — Genre #9
#92 Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) — Rewatch #10
#93 Le Samouraï (1967) — WDYMYHS #11
#94 Top Hat (1935) — Rewatch #11


  • I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in November.
  • Five of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
  • The first-time-watches tally ties with June for the highest in 2025 (so far), but add in the rewatches and the total of 14 makes November the year’s largest month overall.
  • And one of those 12 was my 100th first-time watch of the year — that may not be my ‘official’ challenge anymore, but it still feels nice to hit that marker.
  • All the many Blu-rays and 4Ks I own and streamers I’m already subscribed to full of stuff I’ve been meaning to rewatch, sometimes for decades… and yet I signed back up to MUBI (albeit with a free trial) just to watch Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, a film I didn’t even like when I watched it 20-odd years ago. Big sigh. But that was the point of me rewatching it, of course — to reassess — and sometimes the itch you get is the one you’ve got to scratch, y’know?
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Ari Aster’s folk horror Midsommar, watched right near the start of the month so it still kinda tied in with Halloween.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was the one that inspired the category’s theme this year, Le Samouraï. For that reason, I’d been intending to save it ’til last; but, for various other reasons I shan’t bore you with, it felt like it made more sense to watch it now and leave the other outstanding film for December.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Superman.



The 126th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Looking back over this month’s first-time watches — both the five listed above and the other seven (nowadays the best place to see my whole month-by-month viewing is Letterboxd) — and there’s a lot I liked, a lot I have down as 4 stars, but not a lot I loved. Perhaps the closest to nudging up an extra half-star was Le Samouraï, which had the misfortune of coming with high expectations. It didn’t completely fail to live up to them, but perhaps the burden was still unfairly great.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is, unfortunately, a little easier. Clocking in as the biggest disappointment of the month was the new Red Sonja. Now, given its production and release history (i.e. incredibly low-key and minor), I was expecting it to be poor. But I enjoyed the ’80s movie (even if, yeah, it’s not actually good either) and I’ve been vaguely following the existence of this remake/re-do for years (and it has been in the offing for years), hoping it would wind up with some talent behind it and manage to fill the gap between the previous version’s potential and its actual achievements. Even when it became clear that it didn’t have the backing for that to happen, I hoped it might at least be another flawed-but-fun run at the material. But no, it’s simply not very good, sadly. There are ways it could have been even worse, and there are ways it’s not bad, but that really is damning with faint praise, isn’t it?


Last year I entered December on #93 and went on to complete my Challenge for the first time since I rejigged it in 2022. This year, I go in on #94… but complacency breeds failure, so I’m still going to try and get those final six films crossed off with relative haste. In 2024 I got to #100 on the 21st, and while I’m not aiming to beat that just for the sake of beating it, getting there even earlier wouldn’t hurt.

October’s Failures

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

With summer well and truly over, it seems like an unexceptional month at the multiplex. That’s not to say there are no good films, just few that truly felt like A Big Deal. The one being most written about, at least as far as I saw, was a low-budget indie horror… starring a dog: Good Boy. I’m assured the eponymous doggo doesn’t die, and therefore I shall be watching it when it hits one streamer or another. Other horrors gracing the big screen in ‘Halloween month’ included Him, Black Phone 2, and Shelby Oaks.

The anti-Good Boy in terms of buzz was After the Hunt — despite being a new film from director Luca Guadagnino starring names like Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edibiri, I had to check more than once that it had actually been released and not delayed or something. The era of the movie star may be over (allegedly), but there were still plenty of famous faces to be found: Emma Stone as a bald possible-alien in Bugonia; Dwayne Johnson making a bid for legitimacy in wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine; Channing Tatum headlining crime biopic comedy Roofman; and Jared Leto continuing to be box office poison as Disney tried once again to make Tron into A Thing with Tron: Ares. This year’s mandatory music biopic was Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. I believe David Mackenzie’s Relay was also released, over a year after its TIFF premiere, but that’s another one with so little chatter that I can’t be certain. (I guess I could confirm this by scouring film listings or whatever, but, believe it or not, I don’t actually put that much effort into these lists.)

As the days get cold, the nights draw in, and many people would rather stay home in front of the telly, so the streamers start wheeling out bigger name originals, too. Well, most of them: the most Disney+ bothered to put forward was a remake of 1992 thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Quite who decided that was necessary or worthwhile (it’s hardly a big-name IP, is it?), I don’t know. I guess they think that kind of thing is a better use of money than, say, another season of Doctor Who, but who am I to judge. (I mean, at least Who has a certain level of dedicated fans who’ll stick with it however bad it gets. But I digress… and I’m not exactly sad about the Disney partnership ending anyway, so…)

For me, Prime Video nailed the biggest release of the month right at the start, with Shane Black being let out of director jail post-The Predator for heist action thriller Play Dirty. I don’t think the notices were that strong, but Black hits often enough for me to at least give it a go. The film is the ninth theatrical outing for literary anti-hero Parker, but you’d probably have to be a dedicated fan to know that because each one of those was a standalone offering and they’re spread across the last 60 years. Other titles catching my eye on Prime included The Ritual, starring Al Pacino and Dan Stevens as an old priest and a young priest performing an exorcism — hmm, sounds familiar… Apparently it did have a theatrical release back in May, but it could have been branded an original for all the awareness I had of it. Another “may or may not be the UK premiere” drop was Rust, aka that Alec Baldwin film. David Ehrlich has written what I suspect will be the definitive review of it, and I don’t think we need to say anything more about it.

Over on Netflix, the big-name title was a new film from Katherine Bigelow — her first since Detroit, eight years ago. A House of Dynamite sounds like a do-over of Cold War thriller Fail-Safe, but maybe it isn’t because I’ve not seen that comparison made as often as I expected to (or maybe I’m just out of the loop on stuff. Entirely possible). Another under-the-radar title (again, as far as I’m concerned) was Ballad of a Small Player, staring Colin Farrell and directed by Edward Berger, who’s managed to win the Best Film BAFTA for his last two directorial efforts — All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave — so, you never know, maybe this will suddenly swoop into the awards season conversation too (I have absolutely no idea). One film I know was a surprise, because I have seen others say it was a surprise, is spin-off The Rats: A Witcher Tale. You could argue it’s a TV special, what with it only scraping feature-length at 82 minutes, and apparently serving as some kind of bridge between season three and four of its parent show, but I’m not sure that distinction really means anything anymore anyway (and I’ve long advocated for the blurring/removal of the line). Finally, there was a new animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book The Twits — or, per the film’s tagline, an adaptation of the characters rather than the book itself. Whatever.

If we turn to films making their post-theatrical subscription streaming debut, there’s really only one horse in the race: Sky Cinema. Headlined by romcom fourquel Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy at the start of the month, they ended it with sci-fi AI thriller Companion, and in between brought kid-friendly animation Dog Man, plus a pair of Steven Soderbergh flicks that were both in cinemas earlier this year: haunting horror Presence and period spy thriller Black Bag. Soderbergh makes films faster than I can watch them (remember when he retired? Ha!), but they always go on my list.

As always, I could go on forever if I started digging into stuff jumping services and back catalogue additions, but a few that particularly caught my attention were Inside Llewyn Davis on Netflix, Jiro Dreams of Sushi on Prime, and If Beale Street Could Talk on iPlayer — it’s on and off there all the time, but if I mention it there’s a chance that’ll prompt me to finally watch it. For that same reason, this month’s reminders of stuff I own on unwatched discs included All the President’s Men (the third time it’s been a failure this year), the Back to the Future trilogy (how long ago did those 4Ks first come out? I dread to think), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Heat (also a three-time failure in 2025), The Train, folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (all three-and-a-quarter hours of it), a whole bunch of actual horrors — Deep Red, Don’t Look Now, Halloween 2018, The Haunting, The Others, Lovecraft fan film The Whisperer in Darkness — plus Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise, and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood.

I could go on, but that feels like enough of that — let’s instead talk about all the new stuff I’ve bought. Mmm, shiny! Especially shiny were the abundance of new-release 4K UHD titles I’ve picked up recently, including both recent theatrical titles — Jurassic World Rebirth, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and James Gunn’s Superman — and new editions of catalogue titles. The latter include a couple of major studio releases — Dead of Night from StudioCanal; The Rocky Horror Picture Show from Disney (it still feels wrong that Disney own Rocky Horror now) — but mostly come from a variety of boutique labels: The Crimson Rivers from Curzon; The Curse of Frankenstein from Hammer; Daughters of Darkness from Radiance; In the Mouth of Madness and Outland from Arrow. Plus, not brand-new but picked up in their current sale, Jean Rollin titles Requiem for a Vampire and The Escapees from Indicator (I’ve ordered more, but they’ll arrive on Monday and thus into next month’s update. Unless I watch them, of course. Haha.)

Similarly, I snagged Eureka’s 4K edition of The Old Dark House just before their site sold out of copies; and, at the same time, grabbed literally the last copy of their three-film set Martial Law: Lo Wei’s Wuxia World. Also from Eureka, another expansive box set of martial arts action in Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors: The Heroic Cinema of Chang Cheh, containing ten films directed by the “one of the most prolific and accomplished directors ever to emerge from the Hong Kong film industry.” And on a slightly different tack, Larry Cohen’s The Ambulance, which I vaguely remember someone recommending for some reason many years ago — honestly, that kind of “some random person once said this was good” feels like my motivation for a surprisingly large number of my buying/viewing choices.

Those aforementioned Indicator sale 4Ks (remember, two paragraphs back) were joined by a couple of regular Blu-rays: Marlene Dietrich pre-Code melodrama The Song of Songs and Edward Dmytryk’s “dark and unsettling journey into the mind of a murderer”, Obsession (aka The Hidden Room). More of those next month, too. And that lone Radiance 4K (even further back in the paragraph mentioned in the brackets in the previous sentence) was accompanied by their other new releases this month: also from Harry Kümel (the director of Daughters of Darkness), Malpertuis; François Truffaut’s childhood summer drama Pocket Money; and a second box set of Japanese ghost stories in Daiei Gothic Vol. 2.

If you go back over the last three paragraphs of purchases, you’ll count quite a few horror and fantastical titles — makes sense to release those just in time for Halloween. Would’ve made sense to watch them around this time, too. What an innovative concept. Maybe next year. Or, knowing me, in three or four or ten years’ time. Or never, whatever.

The Aramánian Monthly Review of October 2025

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The much-anticipated (if you move in circles that anticipate such things) fourth Critical Role campaign started this month, with a quartet of ‘overture’ episodes that set the scene for a different-feeling but hopefully-epic new adventure — or set of adventures, with three groups in play. It felt like watching the start of something like The Wire or Game of Thrones, in the best possible way. If you’ve ever been curious but never started, it’s a great time to dive in… so long as you can find 18 hours a month for it, that is.

Despite all of that (including staying up overnight twice to watch episodes as they premiered), I still found time for enough films to keep my Challenge on track. Indeed, I head into November the furthest ahead I’ve ever been in the new-style Challenge era…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#81 The Tough Ones (1976) — Genre #7
#82 The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025) — New Film #10
#83 Bride of Frankenstein (1935) — Rewatch #9
#84 Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage (1989) — Failure #10
#85 Slap the Monster on Page One (1972) — Genre #8
#86 Tenebrae (1982) — WDYMYHS #10
#87 Häxan (1922) — Blindspot #10


  • I watched ten feature films I’d never seen before in October.
  • That’s the sixth month this year to land on exactly ten new films, but the first since May.
  • Six of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • This month’s Blindspot and WDYMYHS films — silent witchcraft documentary Häxan and Dario Argento giallo Tenebrae, respectively — were ones I’ve been saving most of the year to watch around Halloween. They didn’t make the lists for that reason, but it was a fortunate side effect. In the end, my schedule meant I watched them as a double-bill on the night itself — kinda perfect, really
  • I’ve also been saving Midsommar for the same reason. At one point I was aiming to watch all three in the run-up to Halloween, sacrificing the intended ‘one per month’ structure for seasonal appropriateness; but then I realised that, with Halloween falling on a Friday, the first weekend of November is also Halloween-y — so I could both watch one a month, as intended, and watch them all at Halloween. Now I just need to make sure I actually do that today or tomorrow…
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage.



The 125th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Widely regarded as one of Dario Argento’s best, Tenebrae mostly lives up to that hype. I’m not convinced the plot entirely hangs together, but the sheer abundance of gorgeous style is enough to carry it.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
While I didn’t outright dislike it, The Woman in Cabin 10 is a by-the-numbers holiday-paperback of a thriller.


2025 races toward its conclusion! There are 13 films remaining to complete my Challenge, which should feel surmountable (the end felt comfortable last year, and I had 15 left at this point), but so much of this year has raced by, and the state of my calendar makes it feel like Christmas is the day after tomorrow… Well, I can but try.

September’s Failures

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

I’ve heard good things about a couple of last month’s theatrical releases: Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, One Battle After Another, which seems to be being hailed as a film of all-time-level greatness; and Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk, which maybe can’t equal that level of rapturousness, but I’ve nonetheless heard is good. I’ve heard not a word said about Downton Abbey finale Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which I guess means it hasn’t offended anyone, but also isn’t the cultural behemoth it was back when it was on TV, or even when the first movie landed. The same could perhaps be said for the belated theatrical release of Hamilton, massively undercut as it was by being on Disney+ for over five years now. It would be nice if a disc release were to follow. Talking of belated, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues arrived just 41 years after its predecessor, and seems to have gone down about as well as you’d predict — i.e. not very.

Also filling screens with various levels of noteworthiness this month were the latest from 50% of the Coen brothers, Honey Don’t!; the fourth (I think?) and final Conjuring, The Conjuring: Last Rites; and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which I don’t really know anything about except it has a starry-ish cast (Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and therefore probably merits a mention on some level.

Of more note, going direct to streaming (or maybe it had a theatrical release, I don’t know; I certainly didn’t register one) was Spike Lee’s latest, a modern-day remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, Highest 2 Lowest, which is on Apple TV+ and so I really should watch it to justify the fact I keep forgetting to cancel my subscription (that and the new season of Slow Horses that’s currently airing… if “airing” is the right word for a direct-to-streaming series). The only other streaming original I noted this month was Liam Neeson action sequel Ice Road: Vengeance on Amazon Prime Video, the most noteworthy aspect of which was that I guess Ice Road was successful enough to warrant a sequel. Remember Ice Road? Me neither.

As for films making their subscription streaming premieres, Sky Cinema almost have a monopoly this month, with a varied selection that encompassed one time Oscar frontrunner The Brutalist, horror reimagining Wolf Man, well-reviewed action-comedy Novocaine, and poorly-reviewed action-comedy Love Hurts. Also Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, but I bought that on disc a while back so it’s a different kind of failure on my part. In a less R-rated bracket, Disney+ offered up the live-action Lilo & Stitch. I tend more towards the “but why?” side of the debate on these live-action do-overs, and I didn’t much care for the original Lilo & Stitch anyway, so this one is a long, long way down my watchlist.

Some films reminded me they exist by flipping services, like popular romcom Anyone But You jumping from Sky Cinema to Netflix, or the Prime Original remake of Road House rocking up on iPlayer via a terrestrial TV screening. Back catalogue additions in general are just reminders of stuff I haven’t quite got round to, like Bones and All and Tár, both also on iPlayer; or Minari and Megalopolis on MUBI (ooh, alliterative). Heck, I’d include Selma on that list, and that premiered almost eleven years ago. A whole decade plus one year! Where does time go?!

In a similar vein, there were plenty of reminders of discs I’ve bought and not watched, the worst-feeling (at least for me) being stuff I’ve been meaning to revisit for ages, gleefully upgraded to 4K, and then still not got round to. There’s a double helping of Francis Ford Coppola in that bracket across The Godfather trilogy and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, while other titles alongside them include RoboCop, RoboCop 2, Schindler’s List, Training Day, and The Usual Suspects.

Nonetheless, I still fork over the cash for brand-new 4K upgrades; though I do feel I’ve slightly reined myself in recently. Maybe not compared to regular folks, but compared to past-me. That said, there are still titles I jump on eagerly at order time but don’t when they actually drop through the door… although, in fairness, that’s because placing an order takes mere minutes while carving out time for multiple hours isn’t what it used to be. Anyway, getting Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World into the 4K club was most welcome — I owned the old Blu-ray, but that was a slightly begrudging purchase because it wasn’t meant to be very good, I just figured it would never get an upgrade. Apparently the 4K disc is splendid. Well, my Challenge has four rewatch slots still to go this year, and that’s high on my list of films I intend to fill them.

Other UHD purchases included John Wick sidequel Ballerina, a pair of old Hammer non-horrors, Blood Orange and The Man in Black, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy, and an upgrade for martial arts minor classic Come Drink with Me. As for regular Blu-rays, it’s mostly boutique stuff that, for one (understandable) reason or another, doesn’t merit a 4K disc, like the latest silent-era addition to the Masters of Cinema line, Finis Terrae, or Radiance’s fourth volume of world noir, World Noir Vol. 4.

Finally, a trio of box sets added a total of 18 films to my watch list; more if you count alternate versions. Two of those were from Anderson Entertainment, whose Super Space Theatre volumes collect the compilation films produced from episodes of Gerry Anderson TV shows; three Thunderbirds films in Volume One, and six Space: 1999 films in Volume Two, including one newly-created for this set, as well as Spazio: 1999, which was how Italian audiences first encountered the series, with a score by Ennio Morricone, no less. The remainder came from a belated pickup of Arrow’s V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal set, collecting nine features from Japanese studio Toei’s ’80s/’90s line of direct-to-video genre flicks. How “essential” is such a collection? I dunno, but it does sound kinda fun. Maybe some day I’ll actually get round to watching them and find out if they indeed are.

The Steamy Monthly Review of September 2025

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Ooh, saucy…

Nah, actually. The title was inspired by this turn of events: I recently won a Steam Deck (yep, won — lucky me!), and have consequently spent a disproportionate amount of my free time playing around with it, and generally getting back into gaming along with it. I imagine at some point the shine of newness will wear off, though hopefully not entirely because I’ve gone a bit crazy with buying stuff to play. Brand-new high-profile titles are insanely expensive nowadays, as the gaming media will often harp on about, but older games and indie titles regularly go for insanely low prices — which is great if you’re catching up on the past 20-ish years of the medium… though it does lead to your library bulging pretty quickly. Or it does if you’re me.

Anyway, naturally there was a knock-on effect on my film viewing. Not disastrous, but it does mean I failed to achieve ten first-time watches for the second time this year. Well, next month is always a fresh chance to start a new run.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#73 7 Women and a Murder (2021) — Rewatch #8
#74 KPop Demon Hunters (2025) — New Film #9
#75 An Aleutian Adventure (1920s) — Failure #9
#76 The Italian Connection (1972) — Genre #6
#77 Rebel Without a Cause (1977) — Blindspot #9
#78 9 (2009) — 50 Unseen #9
#79 The City of Lost Children (1995) — WDYMYHS #9
#80 Drive-Away Dolls (2025) — 50 Unseen #10


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • I remain ahead of pace for the year (to be at pace, September would end on #74), though the “whole month ahead” lead I had back in March, May and June is definitively over for the year (I would’ve needed to get to #83 to achieve it this month).
  • I say “definitively” because of the limitations on certain categories: there are five that should feature every month, meaning the highest point I could end October is #90, and pace for the end of November is #91.
  • Of course, as I mentioned in the intro, I didn’t hit my monthly target of ten first-time watches, so it’s not all sunshine and roses.
  • The Italian Connection is the second film in director Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu trilogy. Its predecessor, Milano Calibro 9, was the first film I watched for this year’s Genre category. I’ll give you one guess which film I’ve got earmarked to include among the remaining four Genre films…
  • I’d owned 9 on Blu-ray for 15 years, never played, before I finally watched it this month. I’m ridiculous like that — 9 is far from alone in suffering such a fate. And it might have stayed unplayed and mostly forgotten (as I’m sure many other things are, especially titles on DVD), were it not for it being on one of my 50 Unseen lists, which means it gets brought to mind every now and then, whenever I peruse that catalogue of failures for something to belatedly watch. I don’t watch as many of those as I’d like nowadays, but they’re still a useful reminder.
  • Talking of 50 Unseen, I finished that category this month. The final tally sees half of the films coming from last year and half from years before that. Seems like a pretty good balance to me.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was ’50s teen classic Rebel Without a Cause.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was dark steampunk fairytale The City of Lost Children.
  • When I decided to watch The City of Lost Children, I thought how it was nice that for once I was watching a disc I’d only bought relatively recently. Then I looked it up and discovered I purchased it 2½ years ago. Oh well.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched An Aleutian Adventure and KPop Demon Hunters.



The 124th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Last weekend came in swinging here: September had been an above-adequate (no bad films) but unexceptional month (like much of 2025 has been — my 5-star list is looking very thin), but then I watched a trio of films that impressed me mightily. Of those, my pick is probably Rebel Without a Cause. I thought I knew what it was going to be, and it wasn’t; not exactly. Also, James Dean really was very good.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This feels harsh — as this category sometimes does by its very nature (I’m not going to go out of my way to watch one certified-awful film every month just to guarantee a ‘winner’) — because 9 actually has some very strong points… it just drops the ball on some of the fundamentals underpinning those, and thus is the least-good film I watched this month.


It’s creepy and it’s kooky, mysterious and spooky, it’s all together ooky… and yet it’s all just because of one day right at the end. Any excuse, I guess. Certainly, I’ve got a few horror and horror-adjacent films lined up to try to watch in October, and maybe I’ll focus on finding some more too.

August’s Failures

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

Flavour of the month at the cinema was definitely the Liam Neeson-starring reboot of The Naked Gun. There was every reason to be dubious of this as an undertaking, but most of what I’ve read regarded it as a triumph. It’s not the kind of film I’ll rush to buy on disc (not that that’s any guarantee I’ll watch something quickly, as this column attests to every month), but I’m looking forward to it landing on streaming.

I’ve also got a general impression (because I just don’t read much new criticism in depth these days) that Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck is rather good, while horror Weapons and Ari Aster’s latest, Eddington, seem to have been divisive. That might be better than the net zero I’ve heard about Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing, although that did only just come out and I’ve been busy lately. The consensus I garnered about Nobody 2 was it’s the kind of sequel that’s fundamentally more of the same, but the first one was pretty fun so that sounds alright to me. Certainly better than Materialists, which it felt like the whole internet was lambasting when it came out in the US the other month. Also out was belated (legacy?) sequel Freakier Friday, which I feel compelled to mention but not compelled to watch.

Meanwhile, breaking containment from the largely-online world of modern moviedom, I feel like I’ve seen The Roses all over the place in The Real World. It’s made me realise how weird that feels for a film nowadays; like they’ve given up on targeting Regular People and are just happy with the guaranteed crowd. Or maybe I just don’t look in the right places and The Roses has been ubiquitous. I mean, it does star Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, who are both mainstream darlings (not undeservedly) in the UK. If anything’s going to tempt out your not-a-regular-moviegoer, that’s a combo worth pushing.

The opposite of advertised has been KPop Demon Hunters. Yes, that’s how it’s spelt, despite K-pop being spelt, well, “K-pop” and the logo kinda having a hyphen in it too. (I get that most people don’t care about this kind of thing. I do, though.) It came out months ago but I didn’t mention it because it’s not my kind of thing; seemingly just another CG-animated kids’ movie dumped on Netflix, of which there seem to be dozens every year. Whether this one is actually good or just hit the right spot at the right time, I don’t know, but it’s become a bit of a phenomenon. Just this past weekend, it claimed the crown of the most-watched movie on Netflix ever, while the weekend before the limited theatrical release of a singalong version won the box office in the US, another first for a Netflix film. I’m tempted to watch it to see what all the fuss is about. Stranger films than this have turned out to actually be good.

Comparatively, August’s new streaming offers are underwhelming. On Netflix: thriller Night Always Comes starring Vanessa Kirby, which has all of 55% on Rotten Tomatoes; and a new original animation from Genndy Tartakovsky, who once attracted cult-following-ish levels of esteem for work like Samurai Jack and the 2D Star Wars: Clone Wars series, but has now made Fixed, an adult-orientated comedy about a dog about to be neutered. That’s amassed 58%, at least. Mind you, those are figures Prime Video might be glad of, considering their action-comedy The Pickup with Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson sits on 25%. (I don’t put much stock in Rotten Tomatoes generally, but these scores at least indicate the dismal state of things.) Sitting between the two is Disney+’s heist thriller starring Samara Weaving, Eenie Meanie, with 44%. Now, that’s not great, but also it’s a heist thriller starring Samara Weaving, so I’m prepared to overlook the fact it might not be very good.

Perhaps of more note were films that started a subscription streaming stretch — an emphasis on sibilance there because, for whatever reason, most of the ones joining Sky Cinema / NOW seemed to start with an S: Saturday Night, September 5, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and The Surfer. Also Heart Eyes, because I guess something had to buck the trend. And The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, but as I own that on disc I class it as a different type of failure. Prime Video also had a share of newcomers, including Babygirl, Mark Wahlberg vehicle Flight Risk, Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, Luc Besson’s Dogman, and the Ultimate Cut of Caligula. Several more films did the ol’ service shuffle, with Meg 2: The Trench leaving Sky for Prime, The Iron Claw leaving Prime for Netflix, and Five Nights at Freddy’s joining Netflix from Sky.

As usual, other back catalogue additions reminded me of all the stuff I’ve bought on disc but not watched yet, whether that be films I’ve never seen — like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hackers, In the Heat of the Night, The Northman, or Now, Voyager (quite a spread of types and eras, which is nice to see) — or films I’ve seen before but own in shiny newer editions I’ve not yet played — like Collateral, Ex Machina, Galaxy Quest, The Godfather trilogy, Psycho, or Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Both of those lists are just a sampling, because (as we know) I buy far too much stuff.

And, naturally, I bought even more this month. That said, the stack is looking a little shorter than usual. Whether that’s a result of less interesting stuff coming out, or I’ve finally demonstrated some restraint, I’m not sure. Either way, I definitely wasn’t going to miss out on shiny new 4K UHD releases of all-timers like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Sunset Boulevard, as well as films I feel there’s a strong chance I’m going to enjoy, like Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress and Michael Mann’s Thief. Rounding out the 4K selection was one of Radiance’s first forays into the format, French police noir The Inquisitor, which is paired with an HD copy of a similar work by the same director, Deadly Circuit, for extra value.

Also from the Radiance stable was a trio of ninja action in their second volume of Shinobi films. I also picked up a slightly-random threesome of titles in Indicator’s sale earlier in the month, namely their two-film El Vampiro set, plus Western Geronimo: An American Legend and WW2 epic Midway. Throw in a couple of Kickstarter rewards — silent documentary An Aleutian Adventure and Hal Hartley’s new film, Where to Land — and… that’s it. Yes, really. But lest you think I’m breaking my habit, know that I’ve already got stuff in the post that will surely feature here next month.

The August Monthly Review Club

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August has been a funny old month. On one hand, it’s felt like there’s been no time to get anything done — just like every month nowadays, really. But on the other, it seemed very long — it feels like ages since I wrote the July monthly review.

In a similar vein, whereas I struggled (and ultimately failed) to hit my viewing targets in July, I made it past ten new films this month without even particularly trying. Considering I’ve both been extra busy at work and had a host of other options and distractions taking up my free time — some of them excitingly new, as well as the old favourites — it’s a minor miracle. Indeed, I’d basically written off getting to ten films this month (once you’ve failed once, what does failing again the month after matter, eh?), only to succeed regardless. Wonders will literally never cease.

As for how this month’s viewing translates specifically to my Challenge… read on.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#65 Candidate for Murder (1962) — Series Progression #9
#66 The Power of the Dog (2021) — 50 Unseen #7
#67 Gwen and the Book of Sand (1985) — Failure #8
#68 Girl, Interrupted (1999) — Blindspot #8
#69 The Road to Hong Kong (1962) — Series Progression #10
#70 The Thursday Murder Club (2025) — New Film #8
#71 Project A (1983) — WDYMYHS #8
#72 The Wild Robot (2024) — 50 Unseen #8


  • I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in August.
  • Eight of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
  • No rewatches this month, which is a shame as I’m meant to get in at least one a month. Still, it’s not the first time I’ve had to catch up on them this year, so, y’know, these things happen. (Should I be injecting more fake jeopardy into my commentary when I fail like this?)
  • I needed to get to #74 to be a whole month ahead of pace again. Obviously that didn’t happen, but I’m still six films in the clear, which is a nice buffer.
  • Part of that included finishing off the Series Progression category for 2025. 40% of the qualifying films this year came from the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series of British crime B-movies, which is perhaps more than I’d’ve liked (I’ve got so many series on the go, I’d appreciate the incentive to progress some others). That said, it was almost worse: it was set to be 50%, but then I watched something else that counted…
  • To wit: I finally finished the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope ‘Road To’ series. I watched my first of those back in 2007 — this blog’s very first year. And that’s why I like (or need) a tangible incentive to get on with these things.
  • Speaking of tangible incentives, this month’s Blindspot film was the gender-bent remake of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (okay, that’s a tad harsh, and it’s not literally that… but it certainly feels like it in places), Girl, Interrupted.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Jackie Chan’s piratical actioner Project A.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Gwen and the Book of Sand.



The 123rd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’m struggling for standout films this year — it’s been one of those years where you begin to think, “have I just seen all the great films already?” The closest I’ve come to having my faith restored is this month’s favourite pick, cosy sci-fi animation The Wild Robot.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Greatness may be in short supply, but there’s also nothing terrible this month — although there was plenty of mediocrity. I don’t know if it was the outright worst film I saw, but the biggest letdown was The Thursday Murder Club. So much potential, and it got some of it right, but some poor adaptation decision scuppered the overall effect.


The year’s final third begins. It’ll be Christmas before we know it…

July’s Failures

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

Plenty of blockbusters hitting the good old summer release window this month, starting with Jurassic World Rebirth (I’d intended to use that as a prompt to finally get round to the previous Jurassic film, Dominion, but failed at that too), and continuing with outings from both major superhero houses: James Gunn’s Superman kicking off a new era for DC on the big screen, and Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps hoping to make people stop proclaiming the slow death of the MCU (as if the flood of news articles related to the next Avengers film still not having a screenplay, despite being deep into principal photography, hasn’t kept that up anyway. Maybe Marvel Studios should learn to make films properly).

Filling screens here and there between those big gun(n)s: a new David Cronenberg, The Shrouds; horror reboot I Know What You Did Last Summer; animated sequel The Bad Guys 2; and yet another attempt (goodness knows why) to turn the Smurfs into a viable franchise in the simply-titled Smurfs. The films in the first paragraph might’ve tempted me to actually get out to the cinema for once (if I hadn’t been so busy elsewhere), but this lot? Ha. (Okay, Cronenberg will make my to-see list eventually, but as a sometime scaredy-cat I prefer horror in the privacy of my own living room.)

One film that didn’t set the box office alight was belated Adam Sandler sequel Happy Gilmore 2 — because it went direct to Netflix, where it became their biggest opening ever (at least in the US), and thus proved they probably should’ve done a theatrical release instead of leaving all that money on the table. Will they ever learn? No, demonstrably not. I’m not a Sandler fan, and consequently I’ve never seen the first Happy Gilmore, so I’ve no plans to watch this new one. I hope his fans enjoyed it. I did watch the first The Old Guard however many years ago, though, and the not-as-belated-but-still-tardy sequel to that also turned up this month, imaginatively titled The Old Guard 2. I’m not sure I care enough to take the time, to be honest, especially as reviews have been less than stellar, and apparently it contains a bunch of setup for a third film that may never happen.

The only other direct-to-streaming premiere I noted in July was an even more bizarre choice: on Prime Video, a new version of War of the Worlds — yes, another one — but this time apparently crossed with Searching, because it’s all from the perspective of Ice Cube watching the alien invasion unfurl on his computer. I guess maybe they were trying to go for a modernised version of Orson Welles’s famous radio broadcast? I don’t know. I haven’t even got round to watching the BBC miniseries version from a few years ago, which at least was interesting for trying to do it properly as a Victorian period piece, so I very much doubt the Ice Cube version will be hitting my screen anytime soon.

While the other streamers didn’t bother to offer much brand-new, a few relatively big hitters made their subscription streaming bows, including the viral success (if not a box office one) that was Robbie Williams biopic Better Man (you know, the one where he’s played be a CGI monkey), which also came to Prime; Disney+ did their usual speedy cinema-to-streaming pipeline with spy thriller The Amateur; Netflix offered nonlinear rom-dram We Live in Time; and Sky Cinema / NOW fared best, as usual, magicking up Wicked (aka Wicked: Part I), Clint Eastwood’s well-reviewed courtroom thriller Juror #2, and, um, Kraven the Hunter. Hey, can’t win ’em all. And, heck, they also had even less noteworthy stuff than that, so it could be (indeed, was) worse. I mean, Rumours sounds kinda interesting, but its audience scores are terrible… though IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes voters are exceptionally dumb nowadays, so maybe that 75% critic score is worth bearing in mind.

Crappy recent superhero movies also feature in back catalogue changes. Well, where don’t they nowadays? Morbius — a Spider-verse spin-off even more poorly regarded than Kraven — popped onto Amazon; as did The Flash, reminding me that I have an itch to watch it even though it’s meant to be poor and everything I’ve seen from it looks shit. I was going to say that at least it would allow me to close out that era of DC’s cinematic universe, but I still haven’t watched Wonder Woman 1984 or Aquaman and the Forgettable Sequel Subtitle either. Other stuff of note on Prime included Trumbo, which never especially interested me before, but I’ve just been reading a book on the history of the Oscars which told some of his story so now I think maybe. It goes on the list, anyway. Same for Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which was So Good back when it first came out (I ranked it 4th for films I first saw in 2017, which was a hotly contested year), but after almost a further decade of Taika Waititi’s schtick, I wonder if it still plays as well? Talking of rewatches, Amazon also threw up Blade Runner: The Final Cut, a reminder that it was one of the earliest 4K discs I bought but I still haven’t watched that, and The Hobbit trilogy, a reminder that I own them in 3D but have never watched those copies, and it’s been a while since I watched them at all so maybe they deserve another look.

Over on Netflix, the “I should give that another look” theme continues with Forrest Gump, which I haven’t seen since I was a kid and should probably form an adult opinion on; plus more reminders of discs I bought with enthusiasm but still haven’t watched, like Heat and Minority Report (I don’t even want to look up how long ago the Blu-ray I haven’t watched came out. It’ll be on 4K before you know it). Similarly, though not actually a rewatch, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes — I really enjoyed the original trilogy quartet, and this prequel seemed to be well received (certainly successful enough that they’re immediately adapting the next book in the Hunger Games universe), so I ought to get on that too. In terms of stuff I don’t already own on disc, BlackBerry seems like it should be meritless attempt to engineer another Social Network / Steve Jobs kinda film, but I hear it’s actually good whenever it comes up.

iPlayer has a similar injection of quality with Cannes winner Fallen Leaves and Oscar nominee Women Talking, although most of my list of interest there are more reminders of unwatched discs: All the President’s Men, Don’t Look Now, and Spellbound for just three I’ve never seen; plus plenty to rewatch, like my 4K copies of the Back to the Future trilogy, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, The Searchers, and The Wicker Man. Heck, even MUBI — who seem to primarily deal in films I’ve not even heard of — reminded me I own Irreversible and Peeping Tom.

Okay, enough about discs I already own that I haven’t watched — what about all the new stuff I’ve bought to add to that never-ending kevyip? After receiving a large amount of praise and success at the box office earlier this year, and then seeing plenty of love for the quality of its 4K disc release online, of course I immediately blind-bought Sinners — it’s got variable IMAX aspect ratio, I was never not likely to miss it! That’s the only shiny new film on my list this month, although there were a good few back catalogue 4Ks: the latest in Hammer’s lavish collector’s edition range, Quatermass 2 (sadly, it sounds like rights issues mean we won’t be getting a matching version of Quatermass and the Pit anytime soon); a similarly extravagant reissue of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran; and, just arrived, a ludicrously chunky box set for a film previously relegated to the status of “special feature”, Apocalypse Now making-of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. Yes, I bought that, despite already owning in two copies in my two copies of Apocalypse Now. It wasn’t just for the 4K restoration: it also comes with a bunch of special features, and a physical copy of Eleanor Coppola’s behind-the-scenes book Notes, which I don’t already own. Whether that package was worth the asking price, I’m not sure, but I still paid it, so…

More UHD discs: from 88 Films, Lucio Fulci’s giallo Murder Rock (aka Murderock, aka Murder-Rock: Dancing Death), along with a regular 1080p reissue of vampire giallo Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye; from Arrow’s recent sale, Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Sam Raimi’s The Gift; and I imported a pile of Deaf Crocodile animation releases, led by “German adult animated psychological horror mystery” but starring cats (yes, really) Felidae and French post-apocalyptic adventure Gwen and the Book of Sand; plus, in good ol’ 1080p, Hungarian epic The Tragedy of Man and the sci-fi-focused Treasures of Soviet Animation Vol. 1 (apparently there are at least six volumes of that coming. I’m going to end up getting them all, aren’t I?)

In terms of home-grown boutique labels, I am actually trying to cut back a bit (a bit), so there was just one title from Eureka this time out: German-made Western The Sons of Great Bear. Immediately belying the idea I’m in any way cutting back, Radiance dominated the month with a selection of both new releases — The Beast to Die (which has an all-timer cover, as well as sounding like a good film) and World Noir Vol. 3 (I ought to make a start on those sets… but then, that’s true of so many box set series I own) — and a pile of pickups from their sale: Dogra Magra, Mississippi Mermaid, A Quiet Place in the Country, The Story of Adele H., Tchao Pantin, and What Happened Was….

What happened was… I spent way too much on discs again. Maybe one day I’ll stop doing that. But not this month. (Not next month either, as we shall see in 31 days’ time.)

Live Like a Month, Die Like the Review of July 2025

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If you’re wondering what the hell that title is supposed to mean, the only explanation I can offer is to see #61 below. Other than that, yeah, it’s meaningless. Such is life sometimes, my friends.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#59 Heads of State (2025) — New Film #7
#60 The Invisible Swordsman (1970) — Failure #7
#61 Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976) — Genre #5
#62 Stargate (1994) — Rewatch #7
#63 The Wolf Man (1941) — WDYMYHS #7
#64 The Notebook (2004) — Blindspot #7


  • I watched six feature films I’d never seen before in July.
  • That’s the first time I’ve failed to reach my minimum monthly target of ten films since November 2023 (at least back then I had a Doctor Who-shaped excuse). Sadly, that means this ends a run of 10+ months that isn’t even my second-longest (this time I reached 19 months, but I hit 21 in 2020/2021, and my record is 60 from 2014–2019). I’m doubtful August will go too well either, but we’ll see.
  • Five of those six counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • That’s slightly above my minimum monthly requirement of five, but behind the average need to reach 100 (which is eight). Of course, thanks to bumper months earlier in the year, I’m still well ahead of target overall — to stay on pace, I only need to reach #58 by the end of July, and I got there last month.
  • I watched the extended cut of Stargate, which I’ve never seen before, but the additions are minor enough that it isn’t worth counting as ‘new’; especially as I haven’t seen it for the best part of 30 years, so I didn’t notice any changes myself, only read about them online.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Nicholas Sparks-based romantic weepy The Notebook.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was classic Universal horror The Wolf Man.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Invisible Swordsman and finally rewatched Stargate.



The 122nd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Nothing spectacular this month; indeed, the highest star rating I gave on Letterboxd to a first-time watch was 3½ — hardly a ringing endorsement. I handed that out to two films, both of which were underwhelming or flawed in some ways, but entertaining in others — the latter elevating them above 3 stars, but the former preventing them from hitting the giddy heights of 4 stars. It’s basically a coin toss which I preferred, so because it has a much cooler title I’ll pick Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man. (The other was Heads of State, by-the-way.)

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I felt disappointed by two films in particular this month, so the question is: which was worse? That’s got to be The Wolf Man, which I’ve been meaning to watch for many years and hoped would be up to the high standards of the other classic Universal monster movies, but I found it to be riddled with faults. Shame. (The other was The Invisible Swordsman, which I’d never heard of before Arrow announced their Blu-ray earlier this year, so it was much less long-awaited.)


As I said earlier, I suspect August will turn out to be another below-par month — but you never know. Still, I’m glad I’ve built up a significant lead on my Challenge, because it means even if I just watch the ‘required’ five films (new film, rewatch, failure, Blindspot, and WDYMYHS), I’ll still end the month ahead of target pace.