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Sight & Sound’s The 100 Greatest Films of All Time (2012 edition)

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When I relaunched 100 Films back in January, one of the things I promised was “a new occasional series about various 100-film lists — you know, like the Sight & Sound poll, or all those AFI ones.” I hadn’t intended it to take until November to get started on that feature, but here we are.

And, in truth, I might not even have got round to doing it now, were it not for the fact that the results of Sight & Sound’s latest decennial poll are out next month (or possibly before the end of this one, depending who you listen to). So, before that renders this article near obsolete, let’s look back at their last poll…

For those who don’t know, Sight & Sound is a magazine published since 1932 by the BFI (British Film Institute). Since it integrated the Monthly Film Bulletin in 1991, it’s been the journal of record for films released in British cinemas, reviewing everything that’s granted a theatrical release in the UK (even the kinds of mainstream fare that might not appeal to its average readership), alongside all the film-related news and features you’d expect from such a publication.

Beginning in 1952, every decade the magazine has polled an international selection of film critics and professionals to create a list of the greatest films of all time. Each contributor submits an unranked list of their top ten films, with each named film receiving one vote when compiled into the overall list. The 2012 iteration was, deliberately, the biggest ever in terms of contributors: over 1,000 “critics, programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles” were approached to contribute, and 846 did — up from just 145 in the preceding 2002 poll. (Since 1992, the votes of film directors have been compiled into a separate list. In 2012, 350 directors voted on their list. Maybe I’ll cover that another time.)

Sight & Sound September 2012 issue, featuring the results of their 2012 poll on the cover

The poll has come to be recognised as one of — if not the — most important of its kind. The great critic Roger Ebert once asserted that, “because it is world-wide and reaches out to voters who are presumably experts, it is by far the most respected of the countless polls of great movies — the only one most serious movie people take seriously.” You’ll often hear it said that Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time, and if you’ve ever wondered just who decided that… well, it was the Sight & Sound poll: Kane was ranked #1 in every iteration from 1962 to 2002. (The 1952 poll was topped by Bicycle Thieves. Kane came =13th.) That was the main reason the 2012 poll made headlines at the time: Kane was unseated! But we’ll come to that in just a sec…

I think the poll’s exalted reputation is both a blessing and a burden that the magazine’s editors are only too aware of, hence the attempt to broaden its contributor base in 2012. How much further — or not — they’ve broadened it for 2022, I guess we’ll find out soon. Reports on social media indicate there are more than double the number of contributors, with an effort to make it truly a worldwide sampling and thus break the traditional dominance of American and European cinema. Surely such a focus is an inevitable side effect of the poll being conducted by an English-language British-based magazine, but there’s still value in trying to overturn the bias.

Below is the full list of 100 films (actually 101, thanks to a nine-way tie for 93rd place). When there’s a tie, I’ve copied the order from Sight & Sound’s own listing. (At first I’d thought they’d gone with chronological rather than alphabetical order (the list’s bias against recency is a whole separate debate), but it doesn’t seem to be either. Maybe it’s just random. I don’t know.)

I’ve done the same for translations of non-English titles. It seems to me that there’s little consistency about whether Sight & Sound used original titles or English translations, so I just copied their list. Depending on your awareness of world cinema and alternate titles, that may mean there are some titles you don’t recognise even though you do know the film, actually. I think that, thanks mainly to the Criterion Collection, it’s English-language titles that are commonly used online by English-speakers nowadays; but, ironically, one of the rare instances that Criterion use the original-language title is for a film here listed by its English-language alternative. Fun times.

Where a title is a link, it’s to my review. You can find Sight & Sound’s own write-up of the poll results here (courtesy of the Internet Archive, because as of 1st December 2022 the original page has been replaced with the new list).

1

Vertigo

(1958)

2

Citizen Kane

(1941)

3

Tokyo Story

(1953)

4

La Règle du jeu

(1939)

7

The Searchers

(1956)

8

Man with a Movie Camera

(1929)

10

8½

(1963)

11) Battleship Potemkin (1925)
12) L’Atalante (1934)
13) Breathless (1960)
14) Apocalypse Now (1979)
15) Late Spring (1949)
16) Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
17=) Seven Samurai (1954)
17=) Persona (1966)
19) Mirror (1974)
20) Singin’ in the Rain (1951)
21=) L’avventura (1960)
21=) Le Mépris (1963)
21=) The Godfather (1972)
24=) Ordet (1955)
24=) In the Mood for Love (2000)
26=) Rashomon (1950)
26=) Andrei Rublev (1966)
28) Mulholland Dr. (2001)
29=) Stalker (1979)
29=) Shoah (1985)
31=) The Godfather Part II (1974)
31=) Taxi Driver (1976)
33) Bicycle Thieves (1948)
34) The General (1926)
35=) Metropolis (1927)
35=) Psycho (1960)
35=) Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
35=) Sátántangó (1994)
39=) The 400 Blows (1959)
39=) La dolce vita (1960)
41) Journey to Italy (1954)
42=) Pather Panchali (1955)
42=) Some Like It Hot (1959)
42=) Gertrud (1964)
42=) Pierrot le fou (1965)
42=) Play Time (1967)
42=) Close-Up (1990)
48=) The Battle of Algiers (1966)
48=) Histoire(s) du cinéma (1998)
50=) City Lights (1931)
50=) Ugetsu monogatari (1953)
50=) La Jetée (1962)
53=) North by Northwest (1959)
53=) Rear Window (1954)
53=) Raging Bull (1980)
56) M (1931)
57=) The Leopard (1963)
57=) Touch of Evil (1958)
59=) Sherlock Jr. (1924)
59=) Barry Lyndon (1975)
59=) La Maman et la putain (1973)
59=) Sansho Dayu (1954)
63=) Wild Strawberries (1957)
63=) Modern Times (1936)
63=) Sunset Blvd. (1950)
63=) The Night of the Hunter (1955)
63=) Pickpocket (1959)
63=) Rio Bravo (1958)
69=) Blade Runner (1982)
69=) Blue Velvet (1986)
69=) Sans Soleil (1982)
69=) A Man Escaped (1956)
73=) The Third Man (1949)
73=) L’eclisse (1962)
73=) Les enfants du paradis (1945)
73=) La grande illusion (1937)
73=) Nashville (1975)
78=) Chinatown (1974)
78=) Beau Travail (1998)
78=) Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
81=) The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
81=) Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
81=) The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
84=) Fanny and Alexander (1984)
84=) Casablanca (1942)
84=) The Colour of Pomegranates (1968)
84=) Greed (1925)
84=) A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
84=) The Wild Bunch (1969)
90=) Partie de campagne (1936)
90=) Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)
90=) A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
93=) The Seventh Seal (1957)
93=) Un chien andalou (1928)
93=) Intolerance (1916)
93=) A One and a Two (1999)
93=) The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
93=) Touki Bouki (1973)
93=) Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
93=) Imitation of Life (1959)
93=) Madame de… (1953)

October’s Failures

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There can be only one release to kick off this month’s failures. Not because it was somehow the ‘most failed’ (it only came out yesterday, and — for various reasons — I didn’t get my copy until 10pm), but because it’s so long-awaited. Ever since StudioCanal started doing their lavish tat-filled 4K box sets a few years ago, I’ve been hoping they’d do one for Highlander (knowing that they owned the UK rights and had a 4K transfer ready, having released it on regular Blu-ray back in 2016), and it’s finally here. Hurrah! I haven’t actually watched Highlander since before Blu-rays were a thing (I bought a previous BD edition in 2009 and, shamefully, I’ve never watched it), so I’m looking forward to finally revisiting it.

Anyway, highlighting that has messed up the usual order of things, so let’s get back on track with what hit the big screen this month. Frankly, nothing that came particularly close to tempting me out the door. I guess The Banshees of Inisherin, maybe, as I love In Bruges, but I’m also happy to wait to watch it at home. Maybe I’d’ve been lured by documentary Doctor Who Am I if it had actually been playing near me. I’ve already preordered the Blu-ray that’s out later this month, mind. As for the ostensible blockbusters — your Black Adams and your Halloween Endses — I intend to watch them someday, but there’s so certainly no rush on my part. Same goes for most of this month’s other cinematic releases: Amsterdam, Barbarian, Bros, Decision to Leave, The Lost King, The Woman King… All stuff that will go on my watchlist when they come to a streamer I’m subscribed to, but I’m not sure there’s anything I’ll check out before that.

As for said streamers, Netflix score perhaps the most noteworthy release of the month with the new German adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. Not “noteworthy” in the sense of generating column inches (I’ve barely seen it discussed), but in terms of quality, perhaps the winner (when I have seen it discussed, it’s with nought but praise). As if to balance the books, they also had lamentable YA adaptation The School for Good and Evil. Despite the disparity in critical reception, I bet it’s the latter that gets more viewers, sadly. Higher up my “to see” list than either is the new film from Henry “the actual director of Nightmare Before Christmas” Selick, Wendell & Wild. I don’t know anything at all about it, other than it’s stop-motion animated (natch) and was cowritten with Jordan Peele, but “the new film from the director of Coraline” is more than enough to convince me it’s a must-see. Also premiering this month was family-friendly Halloween-targeted The Curse of Bridge Hollow (I thought the trailer looked fun enough, but I imagine I’ll promptly forget it exists), some thriller starring Joel Egerton and Sean Harris called The Stranger (mmm, generic title), and Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain in The Good Nurse. Redmaybe and Chastain in something based on a true story? Sounds like it should be an awards contender or something, not limited to a passing reference buried at the end of my Netflix roundup, but I’ve barely seen it mentioned (I’ve only vaguely picked up on the “true story” thing too, so I might not even be right about that).

Also worth a mention on Netflix was Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which I concluded is actually a TV series — an anthology of eight one-hour episodes — but there are some pretty big names starring in them, and some of the directors are familiar, too. In reliable “we still don’t really have proper rules about TV” fashion, Letterboxd have listed all the episodes individually, giving some credence to the idea of counting them as films… but Letterboxd also do that with Black Mirror, which similarly has name-y casts and directors (sometimes), but is definitely a TV series (aside from the odd special, arguably), so I’m not about to start counting either towards my 100 Films Challenge.

Talking of “TV that’s sort of a film”, Disney+ had the latest addition to the MCU, Werewolf by Night. It is, according to their branding, a “Special Presentation”. But in an era when Disney are happy to premiere big releases from their major studios (Pixar have suffered the brunt of this) on Disney+, what makes it “not a film”? Only its 50-something-minute runtime, I guess. It would’ve been a good one to watch in the lead up to Halloween (I mean, that’s why they released it when they did), but I didn’t make the time. And I haven’t decided if I should count it or not anyway (50 minutes is above the American Academy-derived 40-minute rule I use for differentiating features from shorts, but does that stop Werewolf by Night from being a ‘TV special’?) The only other brand-new thing on Disney+ I’ve noted this month is Rosaline, which has an intriguing premise (it’s about the girl Romeo loved before Juliet), but I’ve not encountered much discussion of it, which doesn’t bode well for it being worth paying attention.

Over on Amazon, they had the new film from writer/director Lena Dunham. Remember her? Lucky you if not. That nearly made me ignore Catherine Called Birdy entirely, but the trailer autoplayed at me and tickled me enough to put it on my watchlist. More likely to get me pressing ‘play’ is The Sound of 007, a documentary about (you guessed it) the music of the James Bond films. Considering how vital and influential the music of Bond is — both the scores and the title songs — it seems a worthy subject for such in-depth exploration. Its release was timed to coincide with the complete back catalogue of Bond films returning to Prime. Considering they own them now, when they’re available or not feels a bit like artificial scarcity. Anyway, they’re all in 4K, which is nice; but as I’ve had the “Bond 50” Blu-ray set for ten years and not finished getting through it yet, I doubt I’ll jump into Amazon’s offering. (Though Goldeneye has a notoriously weak transfer on Blu-ray, so subbing in the streaming 4K when I get there is tempting.)

Continuing in non-‘original’s territory, Amazon win the month with the streaming debut of “Nic Cage as Nic Cage (literally)” action-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. They’ve also now got X, the horror movie that only came out back in March and has already been sequelised (though apparently said sequel doesn’t have UK distribution, which perhaps doesn’t speak well of the first film’s success here). The best Netflix could manage in this field was… um… no, I got nothing. On the other hand, Sky Cinema (which, despite my attempts to wean off subscribing to so many streamers, I now have again thanks to a dirt-cheap offer) this past month premiered Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (I enjoyed the first more than I expected), The Lost City (strong Romancing the Stone vibes, in a good way), and Foo Fighters-starring horror Studio 666.

On to the final streamer I still pay for (unless I’m forgetting one, which is depressingly possible), and MUBI this month debuted Hit the Road, which I heard good things about when it played festivals last year so I’m looking forward to finally seeing, and The Wolf House, which I only know of because of its high ranking on Letterboxd animation lists, but I want to take this (thus far, rare) chance to see due to its high ranking on Letterboxd animation lists. (Now I’ve just gotta not forget those films are there and actually make time to watch them…) They also built up to Halloween with a whole season fo Dario Argento films — most of which I’ve not seen; all of which I own on disc, mostly thanks to Arrow. We’re talking The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Phenomena, Tenebrae…

Of course, horror movies were popping up left, right and centre throughout October. The one I really should’ve watched is Rosemary’s Baby on All 4, because it’s something I really need to tick off a few Letterboxd lists. Plus because it’s meant to be a great film, obv. But it’s gone now, so that ain’t happening. Other horror streaming for free included, on All 4, Monster House, the remake of The Ring, and Saint Maud; and on BBC iPlayer, Ghost Stories, His House (formerly a Netflix Original, but apparently it was a BBC co-production and so always destined to jump services), lockdown favourite Host, the original Poltergeist; and piles more that I’ve either seen or own on disc. People really do go crazy for the ol’ horror films in October, huh? I always feel I should watch more, but I’m never organised enough.

Talking of free streamers, this month I discovered that the ITV Hub actually has a load of interesting films on it. For some reason I didn’t think their streaming service offered many films at all; and if they did… well, I have low intellectual expectations for the kinds of films ITV would show. Clearly I’ve misjudged them, because they have stuff like Belleville Rendez-Vous, Dogtooth, A Ghost Story, I’m Not There, My Left Foot, Son of Saul, Sophie’s Choice, and more (plus some of the kinds of things you might expect ITV to show, which is less interesting, but fair enough). The only downside is that they’re only available in SD, because ITV technology is dated like that. Maybe the forthcoming launch of ITV X will solve the problem… although as that’s a subscription service, I don’t know if they’ll bother to upgrade their free catchup.

Speaking of expensive things, here’s what I’ve been spending all of my money on this month — in addition to the aforementioned Highlander set, obvs. Normally I’d begin the list with brand-spanking-new releases, but I don’t think there were any this month. Top Gun: Maverick came out here yesterday, but I’m still a bit torn between getting it by itself or in the 4K double-pack with the first film, so I haven’t ordered it yet. As for new editions of older films, 88 Films delivered Hong Kong thriller Righting Wrongs with a choice of four cuts of the film, and Italian crime thriller Blood and Diamonds. Giving Highlander a run for its money in the “chunky box set for a single title” stakes was 101 Films’ Blu-ray reissue of Ghostwatch. Okay, that’s a TV programme, but as a one-off feature-length drama you could argue it’s a TV movie. I’ve still never seen it (another one where I’ve just missed the prime night of the year to watch. Oh dear). In a similar horror vein, I imported the new 4K edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It only adds Dolby Vision encoding (which I have switched off because I’m not convinced by how my TV handles it) and a couple of slight new extras, but I never picked up the previous 4K disc, so it was an easy choice. (I didn’t have to import it — it was released here as a Zavvi exclusive — but the import was cheaper.) And, still technically horror but moving ever further away from it, Eureka brought us the 1923 iteration of The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney.

Sticking with the genre theme, I actually bought quite a few horror titles this month — not intentionally, but I guess it was an accident of what was on sale. So, from Network I picked up a few British classics (“classic” in the sense of “old” rather than “revered”), like The Dark Eyes of London starring Bela Lugosi, and The Ghoul starring Boris Karloff. From Arrow’s annual ‘Shocktober’ sale I snagged A Ghost Waits (which has a lovely textured slipcover, incidentally), and the two Giallo Essentials sets they’ve released in the UK (I may have to import the US-exclusive third one sometime just to complete the set). I also snagged a few horror titles from Indicator’s sale — or Hammer titles, anyway, which doesn’t necessarily mean horror. Those included the standard editions of The Full Treatment and The Snorkel, along with a spare empty Hammer Volume Two box, which is the set they were originally released in. I already owned the standard editions of the other two films from that set, so now I’ve got something that’s almost the same as having the real thing (I’m only missing the booklets and the bellyband). That means I now have all of Indicator’s Hammer sets bar the first, which I’ll never pick up because I won’t pay silly second-hand prices for it. That’s kind of a shame. Anyway. Also from Indicator: Fanatic (one of the films from that first Hammer set), early Mexican horror La Llorona, and experimental ’70s British horror Voices. Finally, as part of that US order with Dracula, I snagged George A. Romero’s The Amusement Park, Kino’s 4K of Invasion of the Body Snatchers ’78, and Shout’s 4K release of the original Candyman (I already owned Arrow’s regular Blu-ray box set, which is a nice set with good nice physical extras, but their 4K release just emulates it, whereas Shout’s adds a bunch of new on-disc extras. So, I’ll be keeping both). Plus, not strictly a horror title but it is relevant: the 4K edition of Batman: The Long Halloween. It cost literally twice as much as just buying the UK 1080p disc. Whether it’s worth it, I’m not sure.

Lest you think I deliberately went round hoovering up horror because it was Halloween, nearly all of those orders also included non-scary stuff. Like, from Network I also bought thrillers Defence of the Realm and The Quiller Memorandum, plus I finally gave in and upgraded The Story of Film: An Odyssey to Blu-ray. From Indicator, I grabbed spiritual drama Immaculate Conception and Western A Time for Dying. My US order was rounded out by Ex Machina in 4K (again, dodging an expensive Zavvi-exclusive UK version for a cheaper but feature-filled US release), noir double-bill The Guilty (which I’ve already watched, so it’s not a failure, so it’s not in bold) and High Tide, and a classic 3D triple(!) bill of Jivaro, Sangaree, and Those Redheads from Seattle. Even Arrow don’t just include horror in their sale, and from them I also picked up a couple of Japanese films: war drama Red Angel and classic movie homage To Sleep So as to Dream.

And, you know, that’s not even quite everything, but I think it’s more than enough.

The Screaming Monthly Review of October 2022

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Alright, Halloween’s over — but, later on, there are a few statistics about how far off-track I am in completing my 100 Films Challenge this year, and that gave me the heebie-jeebies, at least.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#61 The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes’ Greatest Case (1932) — Series Progression #4
#62 The Two Faces of January (2014) — Rewatch #10
#63 Walk the Line (2005) — DVD #7
#64 The Thrill of It All (1963) — Wildcard #3
#65 Scream 3 (2000) — Series Progression #5
#66 Scre4m (2011) — Series Progression #6
#67 The Guilty (1947) — Genre #6
#68 The Mission (1986) — WDYMYHS #8
#69 Scream (2022) — New Film #10
#70 La Grande Illusion (1937) — Blindspot #8


  • I watched six feature films I’d never seen before in October.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with four rewatches.

The rest of this week’s observations fall into a few different categories. First, some thoughts on the films themselves and the Challenge categories they qualify under…

  • I had drafted a rather long bit here about the first of those rewatches, because originally I counted a rewatch of Encanto — but I’d already counted Encanto earlier this year, the first time I saw it. Technically my rules state that “a film can only count once”, but what I really meant was “a viewing can only count once”. I rarely watch the same film twice within a year, so it didn’t cross my mind to anticipate that in my rules. Nonetheless, I was torn about whether counting the same film twice, albeit on different viewings, was ‘legal’. Then I happened to rewatch The Two Faces of January, which didn’t qualify under any other category, so I thought I may as well count that instead. Quandary solved! But I might need to rethink and be more specific for 2023.
  • The next rewatch is also a little contentious for me. The point of the DVD category was to make me watch more of my DVDs, and I watched someone else’s copy of Walk the Line (because I was at their house; meaning my copy still sits unplayed, 15+ years after I bought it). But, referring to the rules again, I didn’t make it hard-and-fast that it had to be my DVD that was watched (it’s just heavily intimated). If I was closer to my target, I might let this go uncounted; but with things looking tight, I feel like I have to exploit my own unintended loophole.
  • The Thrill of It All was also a DVD, also owned by someone else, but I dodged the issue this time by counting it as the Wildcard for the Decades category. That’s a funny one, because basically any film can count — it’s just got to have been released in, er, a decade. Daft, maybe, but them’s the rules. And so, as the first new film I watched (that didn’t qualify for another category) since I completed Decades last month, The Thrill of It All just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be a Decades wildcard.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Jean Renoir’s anti-war prisoner-of-war classic, La Grande Illusion.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was The Mission. Arguably I should’ve left that until last, as it was a stand-in for another film, but eh, I fancied watching it, so I did.
  • I didn’t watch anything from last month’s “failures”.

Now, statistical stuff…

  • With just six new films watched, October ties with September for the weakest month of the year so far. But there were an uncommonly high number of rewatches, so in that respect it’s not so bad.
  • Indeed, thanks to those rewatches — and that all the new films I watched qualified for the challenge — this is actually the most successful month for 2022’s 100 Films Challenge since January!
  • I also watched three short films this month, which doesn’t get mentioned anywhere (until their reviews turn up, eventually), but is the most for a single month this year. So, despite how it looks at first glance, October wasn’t so bad after all.
  • That said, it doesn’t sit well statistically, lowering every average you care to mention: my average new films in October (from 13.2 to 12.7), the average new films for 2022 to date (from 9.4 to 9.1), and the rolling average of new films for the last 12 months (from 10.2 to 9.9).
  • It’s also the sixth month this year that’s failed to reach my minimum target of 10 new films, which makes 2022 the least successful year in this regard since 2013.
  • Such a poor run means that, with 83% of the year gone, I’ve only completed 70% of my 100 Films Challenge.
  • The only other occasions on which I’ve been in comparably poor shape heading into the final two months of the year were 2008 (when I ended October at #73) and 2009 (when I was at #66). In 2008, a last-minute push saw me just reach #100 after watching 11 films in six days. In 2009, if I’d pulled off the same feat again I could’ve made it… but I didn’t, and ended on #94.

There’s more about what all this means for the last two months of 2022’s 100 Films Challenge in the “Next Time” section at the end of this post.



The 89th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
This month’s viewing included a highly-acclaimed anti-war classic and a Palme d’Or-winning multi-Oscar- and BAFTA-nominee — very worthy films no doubt, but often they’d be usurped by something more populist that I just enjoyed more. Scream (2022 version) comes closest, but not quite close enough. As for the other two, I think I give the edge to The Mission.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I guess, on balance, this goes to B-league film noir The Guilty. I didn’t dislike it at all — it’s a perfectly respectable slightly-above-run-of-the-mill B-noir — but the other new films I watched were just that bit better, overall. (I was going to deliberately watch a bad film last night to stop this from happening, but I ran out of time.)

Best Scream of the Month
In typical me fashion, I started my rewatch of the Scream films back in June, aiming to space them out up until Halloween, but ended up not watching the second until the end of September and the rest this month. Oh well. But of the three I watched this month, which is the best? I say Scre4m. The 2022 one is good, but the 2011 film got to the “legacy sequel” thing first and did it near-perfectly. Still, whichever way you cut it, I think the good Scream films now outnumbered the bad (or, at least, lesser) ones, so that’s nice.

Best Early-Cinema Short Film of the Month
As I mentioned earlier, I watched a few short films this month, all from the early days of cinema — titles like The Sick Kitten, which is basically the world’s first cat video (it’s little more than a 30-second close-up of a kitten. I won’t be reviewing it). There was also Life of an American Fireman, which was once hailed as the first example of crosscutting (between action inside and outside a burning building), until it was discovered that was a re-edit decades later, and the original cut actually played the action in full twice. Oops. Of higher quality were two films by the great Georges Méliès: The Infernal Cauldron, in which some devilish business sees people thrown in a burning cauldron; and The One-Man Band, which uses trick photography to have multiple Méliès play in a band together. Maybe nowadays we can see the seams a bit in how it was done, but the filmmaker’s sense of fun and experimentation for the sake of it radiates off the screen.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
No posts particularly shone in October (y’all weren’t interested in my Scream coverage, huh?), with the victor being the monthly review of September. Previously it’s been a rarity for a monthly review to win here (this may be only the third time it’s happened), but that’s now two months in a row. On the one hand, weird. On the other, I do like my monthly reviews — to me, they’re the backbone of the blog, with their regularity and their neat little summaries of things. So, if y’all want to start treating them that way too, that’s cool by me.



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


As we head into the final two months of the year, the number of films I have left to watch for my 100 Films Challenge are, frankly, a lot higher than I’d like — they should average 8.3 per month, but for November and December it’ll need to be 15.0.

On the bright side, those numbers break down neatly across most of the remaining incomplete categories: each month should have three film noirs, three films that progress a series, two Blindspot films, two WDYMYHS films, one new film, and one rewatch; plus, there are five DVDs to split between them, and a single wildcard to go somewhere, which may well end up being a 13th DVD, or perhaps another film noir, or another series entry. I’m not sure things will pan out quite so neatly, but maybe they will — it’s something concrete to aim for in each category, after all.

More importantly, is that doable? My averages across 2022 so far suggest not. But I’ve pulled things out of the bag in December before now (see the last bullet point under “Viewing Notes”), so only time will tell…

September’s Failures

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Arguably my true failings his month were not watching any Blindspot or “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen” films, plus all the other 100 Films Challenge categories I’m behind on. But, as usual, this column will focus on all the new releases and purchases of interest that I didn’t see either.

The season for big-name blockbusters may have ended at cinemas, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t films worth mentioning — like George “Mad Max” Miller’s latest, Three Thousand Years of Longing; or a limited UK release for David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future; or Kevin Smith’s return to the milieu that made his name in Clerks III — and there were certainly films that generated blockbuster-sized numbers of column inches, like Don’t Worry Darling and its endless behind-the-scenes controversies. In and around those were the likes of starry whodunnit comedy See How They Run; George Clooney / Julia Roberts romcom Ticket to Paradise. Also, a bunch of horror and/or horror-adjacent movies that seem to have accidentally released a month early: Fall; Bodies Bodies Bodies; Smile… Plus, horrific in a different way, the belated debut of Michael Flatley’s Blackbird.

And yet, for all that, the biggest of them all was arguably a re-release: James Cameron’s Avatar returned to the big screen for its… fourth? fifth? (I forget, but it’s had a fair few re-releases at this point) go-round at box office glory. I don’t think it topped the chart, but it certainly kickstarted conversation about the film’s merits (or lack thereof) and enduring influence (or lack thereof). I haven’t seen it since it was first in cinemas almost 13 years ago, so I probably ought to revisit it before the sequel arrives in a couple of months. The only question is, which version? Even without finding a cinema showing, I can choose from the theatrical cut in 3D, or two different extended cuts…

And talking of social media chatter, the only thing with even more than Avatar was Netflix’s Marilyn Monroe kinda-biopic Blonde, which some people would have you believe you’re an evil degenerate for even considering watching it. I’m 50/50 on its director, Andrew Dominik (I adored The Assassination of Jesse James; Killing Them Softly bored me), and, to be honest, he’s given some spectacularly tin-eared interviews in promotion of his new work. I don’t morally object to it, I’m jus not sure I care enough to give it nearly three hours of my time. We’ll see.

Other Netflix premieres included Lou, which I only heard about due to the Netflix Twitter account sharing some behind-the-scenes footage of Allison Janney’s fight training. But that day it was #1 in their films category, so maybe I missed some other promo. I also didn’t see any official promo for Athena, but I did see a couple of critics saying it was very good (while expressing their disappointment about it going direct to streaming — it was worth seeing on the big screen, apparently. Oh well, we’ll never know). Meanwhile, seemingly the best Amazon could offer was another mistimed horror remake, Goodnight Mommy with Naomi Watts, and horror-comedy My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which I just happened to see advertised on their app last night, hardly a ringing endorsement. (I call all of these horror movies “mistimed”, but there are people who spend the entirety of October just watching horror movies, so it’s a boon for them.)

Disney+ were getting in on the act too, with the debut of Hocus Pocus 2. I’ve never had any interest in the original, so I doubt I’ll be watching this either. Earlier in the month, discussion focused around the Robert Zemeckis-helmed live-action remake of Pinocchio. Even the best reviews couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for it, but it goes on my watchlist — alongside the various other Disney live-action remakes I still haven’t got round to (Lady and the Tramp, Beauty and the Beast, etc), so who knows when, if ever, I’ll actually watch it… As for new-to-streaming titles, I think Disney+ also had the most noteworthy of the month with the latest divisive MCU instalment, Thor: Love and Thunder. Also catching my eye were a variety of short films — something streamers could do a lot more with in general, I feel — including Hard Way: The Action Musical (sounds… interesting) and The Devil’s Harmony, which I actually watched back in 2020 when it was Short of the Week someplace online, but I never got round to reviewing it. It was quite good.

Actually, maybe beating that Thor flick was Amazon bringing Everything Everywhere All at Once to the UK (it did have something of a theatrical release here, but Amazon are pushing it as an “Exclusive” as if it didn’t), which I only didn’t note more prominently because I’d already imported the 4K disc (see July’s failures). Other streaming debuts or re-appearances filling out my various watchlists included, on Amazon, Cyrano (the new one with Peter Dinklage, directed by Joe Wright), Chopping Mall, and Selma; on Netflix, Kajillionaire and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre (which has already been removed again); on MUBI, Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover and Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers (do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Almodóvar film? Ought to correct that); on BBC iPlayer, Journey’s End, The Sisters Brothers, Stan & Ollie, and Blazing Saddles (which I’ve seen but owe a reconsideration); and on All 4, Bacurau, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, Monos, and True History of the Kelly Gang. I think some of these are available on other streamers already (especially when it comes to stuff on the TV-tied ones like iPlayer and All 4), but them getting added (or removed) does help remind me of their existence.

As ever, that’s just a few selected highlights — stuff comes and goes from these guys all the time, and I follow it all because I like to have an awareness of what’s available to me, but if I listed it all we’d be here forever (and these columns are long enough as it is). One streamer I haven’t mentioned is NOW, aka Sky Cinema, which I’ve just resubscribed to. I was supposed to be cutting down on streamers but I’ve ended up back on MUBI, Apple TV+, and now NOW! But they offered me two months (with their Boost add-on, which is essential because it’s how you get HD) for a total of £7 (vs £30 at regular rates), so I took it. I’m sure there’s a whole load of stuff on there I need to catch up on (I noticed they added Belfast at the beginning of the month), but I’ll look into that for next month.

Finally, as always, new additions to my disc collection. Almost all were brand-new releases this month, because the boutique labels just keep putting out interesting stuff, and there are more of those guys than ever — I remember when we basically just had Eureka/Masters of Cinema in the UK, and then Arrow came along, and now we’ve also got Criterion over here, and Indicator, and 88 Films and Second Sight have stepped up their games, and Radiance is on the way… Whew!

Anyhow, let’s begin with 4K. The highlight of the month there is surely Eureka’s first foray into the format, a box set of Jackie Chan’s Police Story Trilogy. I got my copy early, even, but unfortunately haven’t had a chance to watch any of it yet. 88 Films also made their 4K debut with Drive — not the Nicolas Winding Refn / Ryan Gosling cult fave (that came from Second Sight earlier in the year, you’ll remember), but the 1997 actioner. I remember the DVD cover; it was the kind of cheap-looking title I used to avoid that nowadays I kinda revel in. As for major label 4K titles, there was a nice box set for The Lost Boys (a film I’ve been meaning to revisit for years, and what better time?) and the regular release of Jurassic World Dominion (which I’ve not heard anything good about from anyone, but, hey, gotta complete the set).

No other brand-new films made their way into my collection this month, but plenty of other new releases from the boutiques did. To go label by label, from Arrow there was a pair of films with superb titles: Japanese epic crime drama A Fugitive from the Past and Indonesian action throwback Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash. Another title I love is All Deceased… Except the Dead (what does it even mean?), billed as a “mid ’70s Italian horror combining the aesthetics of Giallo with an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery” (sounds like my idea of a good time), which came from 88 Films, along with Yeun Biao thriller On the Run and Sherlock Holmes drama The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (which, I’m ashamed to say, I’ve never seen but am now buying for the third time. Anyone want the US Blu-ray? I think it might even still be sealed…) Indicator finally brought The Swimmer to the UK (if you don’t know, their releases are numbered, Criterion-style, and while some of their new titles are into the 300s now, this is #46, suggesting they’ve been working on it for a looong time). It’s missing the feature-length documentary from the US release, but I managed to, er, find a copy of that elsewhere. They also put out a two-film Robin Hood at Hammer set, which seemed worth a punt (I enjoy Hammer films; I enjoy Robin Hood films), and Madigan, which I confess I only bought to get the bundle discount (and because it sounded potentially up my street — believe it or not, I don’t buy just anything).

As for labels who only put out one title of interest this month (or where I mentioned the other title(s) already)… more martial arts action from Eureka in an Angela Mao double-bill of Hapkido (aka Lady Kung Fu) and Lady Whirlwind (aka Deep Thrust); Tom Hanks-starring ‘satanic panic’ Dungeons & Dragons-aping TV movie Mazes & Monsters, a worldwide HD premiere from Plumeria Pictures; Katsuhiro “Akira” Otomo-led anime anthology Memories from All the Anime; and 101 Film’s clone of Severin’s AGFA release Smut Without Smut, Volume 1, featuring two X-rated genre movies with the good naughty bits removed, to better allow you to focus on the genre stuff. They also include the uncut versions, fortunately.

And that’s it for another month! I say “that’s it” as if I haven’t just listed about as many movies for one month as I’ve watched in the entire year to date…

The Funereal Monthly Review of September 2022

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I’m not, by nature, a royalist (although I’m not sure that I’d vote for their abolition, if it came to it — I’d rather the certainty of Charles III and William V than risk the whims of the UK public vote giving us something like President Boris), but I know history when I see it, and there’s no doubting that the death of the Queen — and all the ensuing pageantry — was history, on a scale we’ll probably never see again.

So that’s my excuse for this month’s relatively paltry film viewing: I watched a lot of news and TV coverage. Plus, a known quantity: the much-anticipated release of the long-hoped-for Return to Monkey Island, which I spent most of my free time on for the best part of a week. It was worth the wait. If I included non-film stuff in my “best of” lists and whatnot, it’d be a shoe-in.

Anyway, enough about other timefillers — let’s look at some films…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#55 Clerks (1994) — DVD #6
#56 Persuasion (2022) — New Film #9
#57 He Walked by Night (1948) — Genre #5
#58 Paddington 2 (2017) — Rewatch #9
#59 Broken Blossoms (1919) — Decades #12
#60 Scream 2 (1997) — Series Progression #3


  • I watched six feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • That’s my worst month of the year so far. In fact, it’s my worst month since December 2019. Oh dear.
  • That means my average for 2022 drops further below my goal of 10 — last month it hit 9.88, now it’s 9.44. The rolling average of the last 12 months just keeps its head above water, though, dropping from 10.67 to 10.17.
  • Four of the seven counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches — one under my Rewatch category (natch), the other under Series Progression, as my Scream series rewatch finally moved forward.
  • Indeed, Scream 2 is the first Series Progression entry since April. I really thought I’d do better with that category. I’m gonna be progressing a lot of series in the last three months of the year if I want to reach #100…
  • In better news, Broken Blossoms completes the Decades portion of my challenge — the first category to be finished! It started off as the easiest to do (almost any film I watched counted; I completed 58% in January alone), but as it went on it became a bit harder. Turns out I don’t watch many films from the 1950s (that took until May), and even fewer from the 1910s — which I knew, and is the kind of reason the category exists.
  • Back on the downers now, because I managed no Blindspot or WDYMYHS films this month. Oops. As I was already one behind on each, that’s something else I need to up the number of in the year’s closing months.
  • In related news, Second Sight have confirmed that their 4K restoration of The Hitcher won’t be completed until next year. That means I need to choose a substitution for this year’s WDYMYHS. I’ve gone for that year’s Palme d’Or winner, which was also an Oscar and BAFTA Best Picture nominee, The Mission.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched absolutely nothing.



The 88th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I finally saw it and, just like almost everyone else, I loved it. It’s a small field this month, I know, but Top Gun: Maverick is both an easy victor and likely to find a place somewhere on my “best of year” list come December (well, January; it’d be a miracle if I got my list together in December).

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I enjoyed it more than I expected, but Persuasion was still the weakest link amongst this month’s viewing.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
My review of Love on a Leash made a resurgence in the chart this month. (It looks like it actually started last month, but was overshadowed by Prey doing so well.) No idea why that’s happened. As for what this award is actually about — i.e. new posts — the winner is a rarity: the monthly review of August. The last time that happened was May last year — and it might’ve been the first time, too (back then I couldn’t be bothered to dig through 71 previous awards, and I can’t be doing with that now, either).



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


Halloween — one night of the year that, if some people were to be believed, goes on an entire month (at least). Regular readers will know I don’t celebrate it too heavily, but this year I am intending to offer a series of “Guide To” posts covering the Scream series.

August’s Failures

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In terms of what people are buzzing about — even ‘film people’ — I don’t know that it’s been that much of a movie-centric month. Of course, Jordan Peele’s latest, Nope, generated discussion, but that was a little while ago because the UK release was slightly later. Instead, I feel like movie folk were mostly nattering about the release of a novel: Michael Mann’s Heat 2. Not to mention all the cultural air being sucked up by two massive fantasy TV series: HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, which is two episodes in and has been met with acclaim from critics and viewers alike; and Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which debuts its first two episodes today, but seems to have been getting strong notices. And that’s before we even mention Netflix’s The Sandman, which has managed a good few weeks of chatter before these behemoths turned up.

But anyway, let’s turn back to the big screen, because Peele’s flick wasn’t all that’s on offer — there was also Bullet Train, which I thought looked fun from the trailer but didn’t seem to garner great reviews; and horror… prequel? Sequel? Spin-off? I don’t know. I don’t care. Whatever, I’m talking about Orphan: First Kill. I shouldn’t really mention it, because I’ve not seen the first one, nor whatever it’s spun off from (I think it’s a spin-off? I might be confusing it with something else), and I have no intention of watching this one either, so it’s not really a “failure” in that sense. More worthy of mention, because I will watch them someday, are Idris Elba vs a lion in Beast, and cosy Britflick sequel Fisherman’s Friends: One and All. I’m sure that’ll be cheesy but heartwarming.

As for feature-length entertainments on the small screen, both Amazon and Netflix seem to have picked up the pace this month — and that’s without mentioning Hulu/Disney’s Prey (because I watched it) or Apple TV+’s big-budget-looking animation Luck. Guess it must be something to do with the end of the traditional summer season (what big-name theatrical releases there were seem to have tailed off too, as evidenced by the relatively-anaemic previous paragraph).

Amazon probably thought they were onto a winner with Thirteen Lives, a true-story flick about the Thai boys football team who got trapped in a cave, directed by the reliably solid Ron Howard and starring Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, and Joel Edgerton. Then they released it the same weekend as Prey and The Sandman, and I don’t think I saw a single person say anything about it. They also debuted a new Liam Neeson actioner, Memory, directed by Martin Campbell and co-starring the likes of Guy Pearce and Monica Bellucci. Are such names big enough to overcome the usual terribleness of “Liam Neeson actioner that’s gone direct to streaming”? Not according to the review scores. Similar can be said of Sly Stallone’s venture into the superhero genre, Samaritan. The best thing I heard about it was that it’s workmanlike, so hardly big praise. And yet, for some reason, it remains on my watchlist.

Indeed, it’s been a strong month for growing my Amazon watchlist: beyond their slate of originals, this month they became the streaming home for inventively-titled Channing Tatum dog movie Dog; Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, Licorice Pizza; Roland Emmerich’s latest ludicrous disaster… sorry, disaster movie, Moonfall; plus Bollywood actioner Shamshera, which I saw a clip of on Twitter the other week and looks awesomely insane. I probably ought to get round to RRR first, though…

Maybe it’s just be, but Netflix’s offerings feel thinner than all that. Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco in vampire action-comedy Day Shift? I guess it might be fun. Hugh Bonneville turning villain in I Came By? Honestly, the promo interview I read, which emphasised its timeliness with regards to real-world social shifts, just made it sound heavy going. Best of the bunch might be Carter, which I skimmed right past when I saw the title on my “new on Netflix” site, but then happened to see someone on Twitter explain that it’s from the director of The Villainess and the whole movie is one (fake-)single-take 139-minute action sequence. Well, that sounds awesome. So awesome that I haven’t made time for it yet. Well, it’s not special in that regard.

After making a big deal of cancelling a load of streaming services for that very reason, I’ve ended up keeping MUBI (they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, apparently) — so I should note that their offerings this month included animation The Illusionist and Zhang Yimou wuxia House of Flying Daggers — and realising my parents still had a Disney+ account that I could co-opt — perfect for watching Prey, and intending but not getting round to Lightyear, plus MCU series like She-Hulk.

As for the free streamers, I just feel the need to note that this month iPlayer offered the Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, and not for the first time. I’ve re-bought Apocalypse Now on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, and I’ve still only watched it once, many years ago, on the original Redux DVD I bought. And the Final Cut has been on TV four times already — yes, four TV screenings, plus all that attendant time available on iPlayer. I despair of myself.

But that doesn’t stop me, because — talking of purchases — here are some of this month’s. Let’s start with the latest additions to my Ultra HD collection, which included lavish new editions for Dog Soldiers from Second Sight and Get Carter from the BFI. Never seen either; now I have no excuse. There was a more standard release for Michael Mann’s Heat, which met with some points of controversy in Blu-ray fan circles, but the right people liked it so I convinced myself to pick it up. I also upgraded Spartacus on the cheap (another film I’ve now owned on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K but never seen), and realised there was a UK 4K release for The Green Knight, so picked that up too.

On regular ol’ Blu-ray, Masters of Cinema’s latest addition to their Buster Keaton catalogue — The Saphead — also led me to pick up a second-hand copy of their Buster Keaton: The Complete Shorts collection (second-hand because I wanted the 184-page book that the initial print run came with). They also put out a double-bill of Hong Kong action in Johnnie To’s Running Out of Time 1&2, while 88 Films had a triple-bill of similar in the Tiger Cage trilogy. I guess it was that kind of month, because I also randomly upgraded my old DVD of Shoot ’Em Up to the equally-as-old Blu-ray, and — speaking of The Villainess earlier — I finally bought The Villainess, too. And the random upgrades didn’t stop there: Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (completing my set of Batman: The Animated Series-related series and films in HD); TRON: Legacy in 3D in a dirt-cheap second-hand copy, alongside Piranha 3D. I have no particular hopes for that beyond the 3D making it hilarious. Fingers crossed.

And that’s not even everything, but I’m going to stop there because, dear God, I have to stop somewhere.

The Predatory Monthly Review of August 2022

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Last month I said I was going to refocus my free time on films in August.

Yeeeaaah, about that…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#49 Prey (2022) — New Film #8
#50 Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972) — DVD #5
#51 Batman: Dead End (2003) — Rewatch #8
#52 Repeat Performance (1947) — Genre #4
#53 Mona Lisa (1986) — WDYMYHS #7
#54 Mirror (1975) — Blindspot #7


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in August.
  • Another month where I failed to reach my minimum target of 10 new films — and that means my monthly average for the year falls below 10 as well, to 9.88. The rolling average for the last 12 months just about keeps its head above water, though, on 10.67.
  • Five of those films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch — which, this month, was a short film.
  • Wait — a short film? Yes, I’ve counted a short as part of my 100 Films Challenge. Should I be allowing shorts to qualify? Well, why not – I never specified that they were excluded. Plus, it’s in the Rewatch category, so it doesn’t count towards my previously-unseen film tally anyway. (To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have counted it if it only qualified under something like New Films. Maybe that’s a double standard, but then I make the rules — literally.)
  • If it really bothers you for some reason, then know that I also rewatched Love & Friendship this month, so you can count that instead.
  • Also of note: I passed the halfway point. Bit late getting there, considering we’re two-thirds of the way through the year, but milestones are milestones. (If I were still doing my old-style challenge: I’m currently at #79, which is considerably behind other recent years, but still ahead of schedule.)
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Andrei Tarkovsky’s poetic evocation of memory and mid-20th-century Soviet history, Mirror. (Also, I’m still one behind on these.)
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Neil Jordan’s neo-noir filtered through a British gangland love story, Mona Lisa. (I’m still one behind on these, also.)
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Repeat Performance.



The 87th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Three quite different films vie for the trophy this month, which is like a microcosm of the problem I always have ranking films: how do you truly compare a period-set sci-fi actioner, a lightly-fantastical film noir melodrama, and a gritty ’80s gangster love story? Such different films, such different aims — all very successful at what they’re doing, but none doing the same thing, or doing it in the same way, so how do you say which is ‘better’ or ‘best’? But ties are cheating, so I’m going to say Repeat Performance, because it’s the most generally overlooked of the trio.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Here’s a toughie: do I go for the acclaimed world cinema classic that I didn’t get on with, or the ‘classic’ musical that’s often looked down upon nowadays for its outdated social values, which I didn’t like anyway because the songs aren’t great and the plot’s a bit weird? Well, in spite of that, of the two, I’d rather watch Carousel again, so Mirror takes it.

Best New Direction for a Franchise of the Month
I’m not the first person to say this, but if the Predator movies just want to copy the Prey formula, I reckon that would be good for a few more movies. Just drop a Predator into any time and place in history with a warrior culture. Predator vs samurai? Yes please! Predator vs vikings? Sounds fun! Predator vs medieval knights? Yes, yes, yes — gimme ’em all!

Most Underwhelming Film That Made Me Want to Watch the Original of the Month
Did yo know that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s very Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-y musical Carousel is based on a play, Liliom? I didn’t (until it said it quite prominently in the opening credits). I assumed this was one of those situations where “based on” meant “lightly inspired by”, but it sounds like it’s actually quite faithful — albeit with added lengthy song-and-dance numbers. The original was so popular that it was filmed twice before: in 1930 in the US by Frank Borzage, and in 1934 in France by no less than Fritz Lang. Even though I didn’t care for the musical version, I’m intrigued enough that both of those have gone on my watchlist.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Long-time readers will surely remember that reviews of new-to-streaming titles often do well for hits, and so it was again this month, with Hulu / Disney+ Original Prey easily winning this category. Indeed, it was my second most-viewed post for the month overall, which is the first time this year that a new post has placed higher than 9th on the monthly chart.



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


Avast, me hearties! The long-awaited treasure of Return to Monkey Island is finally released on 19th September — aka Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arr!

Okay, so that’s not a film, but me devoting a load of time to playing it is going to explain why my film viewing will be lower than it should be next month. (At least there’ll be a concrete reason for once…)

July’s Failures

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As readers of my monthly review will likely have already gathered, I didn’t go to the cinema this month. Well, if I didn’t make it out for some of the big hitters earlier in the year, I wasn’t likely to be tempted by the poorly-reviewed Thor: Love and Thunder or kiddie sequel Minions: The Rise of Gru, was I? (I actually quite enjoyed the first Minions film, to my surprise, but I’m still not paying cinema prices for the sequel. Happy to wait for it to be free someplace.) Other big screen offerings this month included The Railway Children Return (never seen the original), Where the Crawdads Sing (couldn’t tell you anything about that), and DC’s League of Super-Pets (a box office flop, apparently).

Also in cinemas — then on streaming a week later — were a pair of Netflix original movies. You don’t need to have even read Jane Austen to realise that Persuasion is not particularly faithful, even just from watching its trailer; and if you are a fan of Austen, apparently it’s a travesty. I may end up watching it at some point out of morbid curiosity, but I’m in no rush. Then there was action-thriller The Gray Man, which seems to have received universally mid to poor reviews, but which I know I’ll end up giving my time to someday. You never know: plenty of people seemed to hate Michael Bay’s Netflix movie, 6 Underground, and I found it passingly fun, so there’s always hope.

Other premieres further down the streaming hierarchy (as in, I don’t think they were granted theatrical releases) included The Sea Beast, a fantasy animation with “How to Train Your Dragon at sea” vibes that looks like it might be fun; and Rogue Agent, which is apparently a true story about a conman pretending to be an MI5 agent, starring James Norton and Gemma Arterton. I presume that one can’t be very good, because it’s had zero press that I’ve seen, but it sounds up my street. (Mind you, it’s not out in the US until 12th August, where it’s apparently getting a limited theatrical release, so if there’s any buzz to be had I guess it’ll come when US critics get their hands on it.)

As for Amazon Prime, it seems the best they could offer in the film department was remake Most Dangerous Game. Billed as a “new movie”, it turns out it was originally a Quibi series in 2020 (they never even tried to launch Quibi in the UK, so anything on there has had zero cultural footprint in the UK; which, as I understand it, is roughly the same as the cultural footprint it left in the US). As it has somewhat starry names (Liam “that’s the one who isn’t Thor” Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz), I guess someone felt it was worthwhile to repackage it as a feature film for Amazon. But before they go that far, as a series it moved to The Roku Channel, who commissioned a second season — assuming that goes ahead, I guess we might be treated to a ‘sequel’ someday. Maybe Amazon are on to something after all.

As I mentioned last month, I’ve dropped many streaming services I was subscribed to. The subscriptions for a couple of them lasted into this month — Disney+, for example, on which I could’ve watched the likes of The Princess or Flee if I’d pulled my finger out in time. (Though Flee was added on the very day my sub ended. After hearing about how good it is on Letterboxd for what feels like years, for it to finally be available to me — only to immediately not be — felt bloody typical.) Over on MUBI, there was acclaimed Nick Cave doc This Much I Know To Be True, but I never got round to the last acclaimed Nick Cave doc (One More Time With Feeling), so I feel I should see that first (probably doesn’t really matter, but you never know). Other titles of note included Paul Verhoeven’s sexy nun flick Benedetta; drama Bergman Island (it’s surely some kind of arthouse Inception when an arthouse film about the work of a famous arthouse filmmaker is available on the arthouse film streamer); Cold War (which I think is still available someplace else anyhow); and — a true rarity — titles streaming on MUBI that I own on disc! Namely, Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin and Mountains May Depart (I have Arrow’s box set; indeed, I mentioned it in June 2019’s failures. Over three years ago… jeez…

Speaking of box sets, on to the latest stuff I’ve been buying on disc, ready to leave on my shelf for years (or decades) to come before I finally watch it (maybe). This month’s brand-new releases included Everything Everywhere All at Once (imported, because there’s no UK disc release even scheduled currently), Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (what can I say? I’ve got to complete the set), The Northman, and anime Belle — all in 4K, naturally. And that’s not the end of it, because catalogue titles in 4K included Okja (also imported, because Criterion aren’t bothering to release on 4K over here, even though they’re region free so they could literally just send us the discs they’ve printed for the US); Out of Sight (also imported); Arrow’s new edition of Tenebrae (I’ve not bothered with all of their Argento 4K upgrades, but this is a significant do-over from the Blu-ray in terms of extras and packaging, no matter what the film’s PQ is like); also from Arrow, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (waited for that one to be discounted); Red Sonja (which StudioCanal didn’t see fit to give their box-o’-tat treatment, probably wisely); but they did do one for the second Doctor Who movie, Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., and of course I bought it; and, finally, Second Sight’s lavish edition of The Witch (which, in my head, I still call The V-vitch).

I think I’ve mentioned before that my strategy for importing from the US these days is wait until I’ve built up quite a few titles I’m interested in, then order them in bulk. That spreads the postage thinner and, it seems, on the site I regularly use, if you spend enough then you dodge them adding a VAT charge (gasp!) So, alongside the aforementioned US 4K titles, I picked up Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (the last Batman: The Animated Series-adjacent movie I hadn’t upgraded from DVD); Warner Archive releases of Drunken Master II and the 1951 Show Boat (never let it be said my taste is not varied); Flicker Alley’s releases of rare noir Repeat Performance and In the Shadow of Hollywood, a box set of Poverty Row titles; anime Vampire Hunter D (to go with its sequel, Bloodlust, which I bought the UK edition of years ago; no local release of the original has been forthcoming); and… Zebraman. Total punt, that, but I happened to see someone review it on Letterboxd and it sounded awesome. Yeah, that’s all it takes to get me to fork over the cash sometimes.

That should be more than enough… but no, my lack of self control knows no bounds. For new releases of catalogue titles, well, I can scarcely resist a Shaw Brothers film nowadays, so of course 88 Films got me with Martial Club, and also The Seventh Curse; while Eureka tempted me with a trio of old Universal horrors in their Boris Karloff-starring Universal Terror set. And then there were the sales! From Dogwoof, documentaries Max Richter’s Sleep (the concept of which fascinates me, so a doc on it seems a good punt) and David Byrne’s American Utopia (a doc in technicality only, because it’s a concert film; one I adored). And HMV had one of their regular 2-for-£15 offers on their Premium Collection range, and (as usual) I couldn’t resist. Four titles this time: more Jackie Chan in Mr. Nice Guy; more noir in The Set-Up; more classic horror in The Mystery of the Wax Museum; and an upgrade from my old two-disc DVD for A Streetcar Named Desire.

Now, that’s plenty, right? …right? Nah, we haven’t even got to the stuff I bought on a random whim yet! Brothers Till We Die, In the Cold of the Night, Knight and Day, Sorcerer… Sometimes I think I might have a problem…

The Melting Monthly Review of July 2022

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Hello, dear readers! No, this month’s heatwave didn’t melt me away to nothing (though it tried its damnedest), but this is a rare sighting of a post on this blog nowadays. I hadn’t intended to be so quiet this month (well, I never do), but, you know, life. Nothing serious, just a mixture of work and personal commitments.

It’s been the same story with my film viewing, which once again fell short of my ongoing aim of watching at least ten new films a month. And as for my 100 Films Challenge, well, that’s way behind where it should be. To reach #100 in December at a steady pace, I should be at #58 by the end of July. As you’ll soon see, I’m not even close.

What I did spend a fair amount of time on this month was catching up with TV — things like Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, which I seemed to enjoy more than most, and Apple TV+ spy thriller Slow Horses, which is as good as the reviews say — so I intend to refocus on films in August. We’ll see how that pans out.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#44 Ambulance (2022) — New Film #7
#45 Johnny Gunman (1957) — Genre #3
#46 A Better Tomorrow (1986) — WDYMYHS #6
#47 Mifune: The Last Samurai (2015) — DVD #4
#48 Calamity Jane (1953) — Rewatch #7


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in July.
  • Four of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • Those are the kinds of numbers there’s not much to say about: they’re nothing special, but they’re not spectacularly bad, either.
  • That said, I’ve slipped further behind in my 100 Films Challenge — as I noted at the start, I should be at #58 by now. I now need to watch, on average, more than 10 qualifying films each month for the rest of the year to complete the challenge.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was John Woo’s classic action-thriller that defined the ‘heroic bloodshed’ subgenre, A Better Tomorrow.
  • I remain a film behind in my WDYMYHS challenge, and now the same is true of Blindspot too, as I didn’t watch one of those this month. At least there’s still five months left for me to catch up.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Ambulance.



The 86th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
When Michael Bay is on form, there’s no action director quite like him — and, for my money, Ambulance is Michael Bay very much on form.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Nothing absolutely terrible this month, which leads me to name Johnny Gunman for this category. It suffers for being a low-budget independent film in an era when low-budget independent films weren’t really yet a thing — it’s solid enough for the forgiving viewer, but does suffer from some weak acting and novice-like filmmaking choices. I didn’t dislike it, but, in the context of the rest of this month’s viewing, it doesn’t quite measure up.

Bickering Old People of the Month
45 Years depicts a couple’s sudden relationship difficulties after four-and-a-half decades of marriage with such scathing realism that I have to give this to The Bucket List for being fun bickering. But I think we all know which is the better film, really. Only one of them is in the Criterion Collection, after all.

Best Weather of the Month
A scathingly realistic drama about a couple having sudden relationship difficulties after four-and-a-half decades of marriage, in part because their emotional communication is inadequate, set in grey, misty, wintry countryside? 45 Years is British through and through, not least that weather. Oh, it looked so beautiful, especially watching it on a hot summer day — personally, I long for our winter to come again.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
After a couple of months where this category has been dominated by my ‘failures’ posts, they dipped to second place in July. Instead, the victor was something of a surprise, but a pleasant one: my review of undeservedly forgotten 1930s melodrama Bank Holiday.



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


More films, hopefully.

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.