Tag Archives: movies

June’s Failures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Unseasonably Hot Monthly Review of June 2025

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

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

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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



The 121st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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


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

May’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.

As is so often the case, Disney were the dominant box office force this month, bookending May with a pair of discussion-worthy films. At the start, apparently Marvel have finally made a good movie again with Thunderbolts* (aka The New Avengers). I’ve just got seven other MCU films to catch up on before I get there (we’ll just gloss over the nine seasons of TV (plus two specials) that I also haven’t seen). At the end of the month, their latest live-action remake, Lilo & Stitch — from what I’ve seen, not a critical success at all, but certainly a moneymaking one. I guess they won’t be stopping these do-overs anytime soon, then.

Other noteworthy big screen releases in May included (but were not necessarily limited to) a horror franchise return in Final Destination: Bloodlines (the franchise has a history of inconsistent quality (heck, what horror franchise doesn’t?), but I’m sure I’ll watch it eventually); a new Wes Anderson, The Phoenician Scheme (like the MCU, I’m a few behind with Anderson now); and another belated franchise continuation, Karate Kid: Legends (I intend to finish Cobra Kai before I watch this, so I won’t be catching it on the big screen, but hopefully by the time it hits streaming I’ll be ready for it).

We’re clearly heading into summer blockbuster season (does that even exist anymore, with studios releasing big-budget tentpoles basically year-round now?), and streaming was keen to get in on the game with Guy Ritchie’s latest heading direct to Apple TV+. Fountain of Youth looks like National Treasure with the serial numbers filed off, and I read one review which argued it was beat-for-beat Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade but tweaked enough at every stage to avoid plagiarism. Not ringing endorsements, then, but as it’s a genre of movie I mostly enjoy, it might make for easygoing entertainment one evening.

Other original premieres included Cleaner on Sky Cinema / NOW, an actioner directed by Martin Campbell, which apparently continues his streak of only doing mediocre work on films that don’t star James Bond or Zorro. Oh well. In a similar vein, they had another actioner from a once-promising ’90s action director — Simon “Con Air” West — that looks like it’s gone direct to streaming for a reason: Christoph Waltz hitman comedy Old Guy. Going straight to Prime Video was Paul Feig sequel Another Simple Favour (like the original, it challenges whether you’re committed to the sanctity of English spelling or tempting search engines with the American original). As for Netflix, they also continue the franchise game with Fear Street: Prom Queen, which I think is the fourth one, but more interesting was Lost in Starlight. All I could tell you about it is it’s a sci-fi animation, but hey, that’s better than “fourth (I think) instalment in a horror franchise I’ve never watched”.

Turning to theatrical releases making their subscription streaming debuts, I don’t think Netflix had anything to offer this month. Sky Cinema lead the way, as usual, with Oscar nominee The Wild Robot and Tim Burton legacy sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Back when the latter hit cinemas, I wrote that “I’ve never been particularly fond of Beetlejuice… so I certainly wasn’t rushing out to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at the cinema, though I’ll inevitably catch it once it’s streaming somewhere.” Well, now it’s on NOW. I still haven’t rushed to see it (it’s been on there over a fortnight already), but I do intend to at some point. Amazon offered up the latest Jason Statham vehicle, A Working Man, while Disney+ stayed relatively up-to-date with the MCU by adding Captain America: Brave New World — thought I’ll wait until I can source a 3D copy before properly adding it to my aforementioned MCU catch up list.

Digging into back catalogue expansions, I’d love to say Netflix had more to offer, but I’m not sure the likes of Dracula Untold and Gran Turismo are anything to celebrate. They did add Machete Kills, which I have a vague intention to see (it’s 12 years old now and I haven’t seen it yet, which shows you how invested I am), but at this point I’m really keeping my Netflix sub so I can finish catching up on Cobra Kai. Also because I still haven’t watched Paddington in Peru. Prime had a typically lengthy list of kinda-random new stuff — particularly catching my eye were Luc Besson’s The Big Blue, Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter, and fantasy romance classic Ghost (yeah, I’ve never seen Ghost); plus a bunch of reminders for stuff I’ve bought with intent to rewatch but haven’t yet: A Boy and His Dog, A Few Good Men, Natural Born Killers, Ronin, Training Day… I could go on, but instead I’ll switch service for more of the same, as iPlayer also jabbed me about the original Halloween, Highlander, La La Land in 4K, and Toy Story 4 in 3D; plus one I’ve bought and never seen, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future — but let’s not venture too far down that road, or it’ll be another long list. Instead, let’s close out streaming with something more obscure on MUBI (of course): Only the River Flows. All I know about it is what they had to say, but something described as a “moody neo-noir… a pungently atmospheric serial-killer procedural” sounds right up my street.

But, inevitably, we must flip back to “stuff I bought on disc and didn’t watch”, because there was plenty of that, as ever. Leading the pack in May were 4K upgrades for some absolute classics: from Arrow, the first two entries in Sergio Leone’s trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More (I have The Good, the Bad and the Ugly preordered, of course), plus Akira Kurosawa’s reimagining of Macbeth, Throne of Blood, courtesy of the BFI. Also in 4K, I imported a trio of hefty limited editions by Umbrella from Australia: Tarsem Singh’s The Fall (considering MUBI are responsible for the 4K restoration, I presume they’ll do a disc here at some point, but no sign of it yet); Richard Stanley’s debut, horror sci-fi Hardware; and (not in 4K) medieval folk horror Black Death, which I have wanted to revisit for a while after I rather enjoyed it more years ago than I care to think about.

No mainstream releases to report this month (I intend to pick up Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, but haven’t yet), but all the usual boutique labels feature, albeit in smaller quantities than sometimes. Leading the pack by volume is Eureka, thanks to four-film Masters of Cinema box set Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA, featuring a quartet of sci-fi flicks from mid-20th-century East Germany; plus their latest Shaw Brothers release, The Bells of Death, which I hope lives up to its billing as “a standout wuxia film heavily influenced by both the longstanding Japanese samurai tradition and the emergent Spaghetti Western”. Next we find 88 Films with another giallo, Nine Guests for a Crime, and a pair of Japanese superhero comedies from insanely prolific director Takashi Miike, Zebraman and Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City. Finally, just one from Radiance this month: Japanese prison break thriller The Rapacious Jailbreaker; and one from their partner label, Raro Video: Shoot First, Die Later, a poliziottesco — and as I still need to watch seven of those for this year’s Genre category, it gets to immediately sit pretty high on my to-watch list. Imagine that: actually watching stuff I buy!

The Finally Deadly Reckoned Monthly Review of May 2025

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Has Tom Cruise reckoned his final impossible mission? Time will tell. I sort of hope not, even if it might be time to change up how they make those movies to bring a little more focus back to story and character instead of just extravagant stunt sequences.

They are really, really good stunt sequences, though…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#41 How to Train Your Dragon 3D (2010) — Rewatch #4
#42 Trancers (1984) — Failure #5
#43 I Saw the TV Glow (2024) — 50 Unseen #4
#44 Illustrious Corpses (1976) — Genre #3
#45 Spartacus (1960) — WDYMYHS #5
#46 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) — Rewatch #5
#47 Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) — New Film #5
#48 The Graduate (1967) — Blindspot #5
#49 Funeral in Berlin (1966) — Series Progression #7
#50 Backfire! (1962) — Series Progression #8


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in May.
  • Eight of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches.
  • I finished March a whole month ahead, April one film behind being a month ahead, and for May… I’m a month and one film ahead! The end of June might seem like it’s halfway through the year, but it isn’t in terms of days — so, the target date for #50 is actually a couple of days into July.
  • This “month ahead” business will inevitably slow down at some point — not just because of my usual tardiness, but because some films are ‘locked’ to certain months. There are five categories limited in that way, which means the last point I can still be “a month ahead” is the end of September. But that’s something to aim for, eh?
  • This month’s Blindspot film was only the third movie to take over $100 million at the US box office, The Graduate. (Surprising fact, huh?)
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus.
  • It’s not much of a Stanley Kubrick film (in the sense that, while he did direct it, he later disowned it), but Spartacus is the first Stanley Kubrick film I’ve watched since 2022. I went through a period (about a decade ago now) where I was watching an unseen Kubrick every year. Although that regularity has tailed off, I now have only two of his features left to see (Fear and Desire and Lolita). I own both, so perhaps I’ll try to complete the set sometime soon.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Graduate, Illustrious Corpses, and Trancers.



The 120th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’m not coming across many five-star films this year (in fact, the total so far might be none), but a couple have come very close, and I Saw the TV Glow is one of those. It’s hard to describe what it is without seeing it, though I saw someone say it’s the 2020s answer to Donnie Darko and that feels very on point.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
There have been numerous screen adaptations of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and I’ve seen a few of them now. 1989’s Ten Little Indians is probably the worst, although I didn’t dislike it as much as its poor reputation would suggest. That said, it’s only worth watching for people who have exhausted other, better Christie adaptations.


Halfway through the year. I mean, not for me — I’ve already done that. But for, y’know, time.

April’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.

Quite often this column seems to start on a negative note when it comes to new theatrical releases, usually because something has underperformed. Not so this month, with A Minecraft Movie being a box office juggernaut at the start of the month, and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners a huge hit towards the end, too. Is the cinema “back”? Or are these just fortunate exceptions? Or maybe they prove that, if you make the right stuff, people will go out to see it. Working out what “the right stuff” is has always been Hollywood’s game, of course; I think they just became so obsessed with shared universes and familiar franchises in the wake of the success of the MCU and The Force Awakens that they forgot they could do anything else if — or, as it’s turned out, when — the general audience began to finally turn their back on ‘reliable’ cash cows.

Also on the big screen this past month, unexpected sequel The Accountant 2 (the first one was nine years ago and it’s not like people have been clamouring for a followup, have they?); Rami Malek-starring spy thriller The Amateur; fantasy comedy Death of a Unicorn; a new thriller from the director of Happy Death Day (which I’m rather fond of), Drop; another Alex Garland war movie, this time shorn of the ‘alternate history’ element, simply titled Warfare; and a handful of other things with varying degrees of impact that aren’t as on my personal radar.

The most noteworthy streaming premiere this month was the long-delayed new actioner from Gareth “The Raid” Evans… but I actually watched that (miracles do happen), so instead I guess the next-biggest was Amazon Prime’s actioner G20, which looks like it should star Gerard Butler but doesn’t. He also turned up on Prime this month though, in direct-to-streaming sequel Den of Thieves: Pantera, in case you missed him. That said, the film that most excited me on Prime this month was Superboys of Malegaon, which I also wrote about when it had a limited theatrical release in February. “If it so excited you, why didn’t you watch it?” A reasonable question. It only arrived near the end of the month, so it’s a top contender to be watched as May’s Failure.

There were plenty of other big-name and/or acclaimed theatrical titles also making their streaming debuts this month. Sticking with Prime, BAFTA Best Picture winner Conclave also dropped right at the end of the month, plus they offered awards also-ran September 5. Netflix had arguably the most populist newcomer with Paddington in Peru (I was surprised it was streaming “already”, then realised just how far through 2025 we are already), along with less well-known but well-regarded How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies. NOW was no shirk either, with Despicable Me 4, Twisters, Transformers One, and M Night Shyamalan’s Trap. Even Disney+ and MUBI got in on the game, with the former dropping Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, also right at the end of the month, and the latter offering Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl.

Recent-ish releases that also grabbed attention by moving around exactly where they were streaming included Anatomy of a Fall, Asteroid City, Black Adam, Don’t Worry Darling, Expend4bles, and Saw X (all now on Netflix), and… oh, I think that’s it. Does everything gravitate towards Netflix in the end? I’m sure they’d like you to think it does. My list of “stuff I could mention in this column” is far longer for Prime every month, I’ll tell you that. Amazon’s offering certainly includes more variety, with a greater number of older and more obscure titles. I mean, I’d never expect to find well-regarded poliziotteschi Illustrious Corpses or Neil “brother of Sean” Connery-starring James Bond spoof Operation Kid Brother on Netflix, yet they’re both on Prime now. Heck, even something like American Graffiti would be a surprise — sure, it’s directed by George Lucas, but it’s old! Yuck! Plus, they’ve also recently added a bunch of stuff that’s been released on disc by Radiance — ones I spied (because I own them, of course) included Big Time Gambling Boss, Messiah of Evil, We Still Kill the Old Way, and Yakuza Graveyard.

The list of other back catalogue stuff I could mention is, as ever, long. For a little insight, even six paragraphs into the column, my list of still-unmentioned streaming additions is 123 films long. Exactly half of those are reminders of stuff I own on disc that I either haven’t watched or would like to revisit. (Obviously exactly half would be 61.5, but you can’t have 0.5 films, so it rounds to 62, which is exactly how many there are. Ha-ha!) Any of particular note? Well, a handful of titles I need to watch for Blindspot that left streaming earlier in the year are now back — Midsommar and The Notebook on Prime; The Graduate on iPlayer — but I already, uh, acquired other copies, so it doesn’t really matter. Reminders for films I’ve upgraded to 4K on disc but still haven’t rewatched were, as ever, abundant, with headliners including Schindler’s List on Netflix; The Departed, Heat, and The Lost Boys on Prime; Vanilla Sky and The Warriors on NOW; The Abyss on Disney+; and the first four Indiana Joneses pulling a double whammy by turning up on both Netflix and NOW.

There were also additions to almost every streamer that remind me how poorly I’ve done with reviews over the last few years — i.e. stuff I’ve already seen but haven’t written up, like Fast X on Netflix, Judgment at Nuremberg on Prime, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm on NOW, and Dumbo (the live-action one) on iPlayer. They’re not failures in the sense this column means, because I’m not imminently intending to watch them again (heck, half of them I don’t ever intend to watch again), but they’re certainly failures of a different kind.

And if we’re talking about failures on multiple levels, well, what are my disc purchases but failures of self-control? Especially considering how few of them I actually watch. But let’s dodge that existential crisis (as I do every month) by just diving into a list of what I’ve bought recently. Brand-new films are limited to Nosferatu on 4K, but other 4K new releases included ’80s sci-fi actioner Trancers from 101 Films, ’90s action thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight from Arrow, and giallo Short Night of Glass Dolls from 88 Films, who also released Jackie Chan’s Miracles. Those latter two labels feature prominently in a bunch of sale pickups this month, too: from Arrow, vampire horror The Addiction, horror thriller Mute Witness, and horror sequel three-pack Psycho: The Story Continues, plus another horror sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic, on regular Blu-ray; and from 88, giallo Eyeball and Lovecraftian horror From Beyond, That’s a whole lot of horror, especially considering I’d never say it’s a favourite genre. Possibly that’s why I have so much to catch up on. Other 4K titles I’ve waited to appear in sales included Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead, Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, and James Cameron’s The Terminator (I avoided it initially because of Cameron’s love for AI upscaling, but apparently it’s not that bad here).

In terms of non-4K releases, 88 feature heavily again, though here with Japanese and Hong Kong movies of various stripes: Kinji Fukasaku’s Jakoman & Tetsu, Shaw Brothers’ Lady with a Sword, and gangster drama Yakuza Wives. More recently from Japan is fantasy comedy A Samurai in Time, the first-ever independent film to win Best Picture at the Japanese Academy Awards. Also “recent” in the sense of “from this century”, the BFI release of Takeshi Kitano’s Brother. A few more titles in the same general milieu came from Eureka, with ’90s Hong Kong actioner The Adventurers and a pair from director Chang Cheh, The Magnificent Trio and Magnificent Wanderers. Eureka also released a box set of six Dr Mabuse films from the ’60s in their Mabuse Lives! box set, which also prompted me to finally pick up their 2012 Blu-ray of Fritz Lang’s classic Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse.

I held off on that last one because I own it on DVD as part of Eureka’s nicely-presented Lang/Mabuse set, and somehow 13 years has passed. 13 years! Gives you some perspective on how long Blu-ray has been around now, and how much the industry fucked up driving a transition away from DVD. All those people who’ve proudly bought 4K TVs and probably just watch DVDs and low-tier-subscription low-quality streaming on them, thinking they’re getting a UHD experience… Well, that’s not my problem!

The Painful Monthly Review of April 2025

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Parts two and three of the Kizumonogatari trilogy are, allegedly, two of the 100 greatest animated films of all time. The third was, for a time, one of the 250 greatest films of all time. Having consequently watched them (no, I hadn’t heard of them before that either), I can say that, in my opinion, they most certainly are not. But hey, it’s always good to discover new things.

They’re part of a wider long-running anime franchise that fans call the “Monogatari series”. For those who don’t know, “monogatari” means “story” — hence much more famous films like Tokyo monogatari and Ugetsu monogatari and Zatoichi monogatari and Kaguya-hime no monogatari. Imagine calling your series the “Story series” and, like, it not being Toy Story.

Anyway, “kizu” means “scratch” or “wound” according to Google Translate, along with a bunch of variants about scars and hurt. Basically, it’s a painful story. Yeah, checks out. Seemed like a reasonable adjective for this review too, as I did sit through three of those things.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#34 A Real Pain (2024) — New Film #3
#35 The Black Watch (1929) — Failure #4
#36 Kizumonogatari Part 2: Nekketsu (2016) — Series Progression #5
#37 Kizumonogatari Part 3: Reiketsu (2017) — Series Progression #6
#38 Havoc (2025) — New Film #4
#39 Cat People (1942) — Blindspot #4
#40 Saboteur (1942) — WDYMYHS #4


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in April.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge.
  • Having ended March a full month ahead of schedule, in April that lead slipped slightly… but only by one film. And that’s still better than February, which was two films behind being a month ahead (you follow?) Being almost a month ahead might not be as good as being a whole month ahead, but it’s not too shabby.
  • I can pinpoint the specific category where I failed, because I didn’t manage any rewatches this month. It’s always a shame not to hit my monthly goals, but it also feels like a particularly easy one to catch up.
  • Of the ten films I did watch, half of their titles begin with the letter K. The last time I watched a film that’s title began with the letter K was July 2024, nine months ago. What does this signify? Absolutely nothing, I just happened to notice it.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Val Lewton’s first horror production for RKO, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was, for the second month in a row, a Hitchcock thriller, although one not as significant: wartime ‘wrong man’ adventure Saboteur.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Black Watch and Knight Chills.



The 119th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
While calling the whole month “painful” might be a bit of a stretch, nothing really stood out as incredible either. There’s some films I’ll comfortably give four stars, but nothing I loved. The nearest was probably Cecil B. DeMille’s silent epic about Jesus, The King of Kings — not my typical fare, what with not being religious, but if you ignore all the worship-y stuff, it’s a pretty good story, well-told here.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Anyone who read my introduction can make a reasonable guess at what’s coming here. The trilogy does improve as it goes on, to some degree, leaving Kizumonogatari Part 1: Tekketsu as the weak link to be overcome to reach the dubious highs to follow. (They’re not that high.)


Next month’s New Film is already locked in, because I’ve booked my ticket to see Tom Cruise once again take on his greatest enemy: his own mortality — possibly for the last time — in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

Final? Final?! Let’s hope not.

March’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.

Pick your poison for what was the most noteworthy theatrical release in March: Bong Joon-ho’s first film since the all-conquering Parasite, Mickey 17; or Disney’s latest live-action remake and PR mess, Snow White. I know which I’ll be watching first when they make their way to disc and/or streaming. Elsewise, it was quite a strong month for animation, with Oscar winner Flow finally making it to UK screens, alongside the highest grossing animated movie of all time (thanks China), Ne Zha 2, and the latest entry in the long-running Gundam anime franchise, this time pairing up with the creatives behind Neon Genesis Evangelion for the barely-pronounceable Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: The Beginning, released theatrically ahead of its TV series (on Prime Video worldwide from next week. I presume the movie, or an episodic version of it, will form part of that offering). Also occupying screen space were Steven Soderbergh’s second film this year already, spy thriller Black Bag, and a new Jason Statham actioner directed by David “Suicide Squad” Ayer, A Working Man, plus other films I know even less about but had big names in them or just enough of a marketing push that they entered my consciousness, like Last Breath, Opus, The Alto Knights, Novocaine, and The Woman in the Yard. I look forward to next hearing of them when they’re on free/subscription streaming and I automatically add them to my never-ending watchlist.

Talking of streaming, Netflix had an original this month that managed to attract chatter on a theatrical level — albeit for all the wrong reasons, because The Electric State is supposedly slop of the lowest order. I’ll say this for it: it prompted me to buy the book it’s based on, which I hear is excellent. Conversely, attracting no attention whatsoever (as far as I saw) was Prime Video Original Holland, which appears to be some kind of mystery thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Macfadyen, and Gael García Bernal. That interests me on the surface, but dropping it with no fanfare hardly instills confidence. Similar could be said for O’Dessa on Disney+ — yes, Disney+ has some original feature-length content to report this month! It’s a rock musical of some sort, apparently, starring Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink, who the industry seems to be desperately trying to make happen and I have no idea if it’s working or not (nothing she’s led seems to have broken out, but who knows what’s going on with Young People on the TikToks and whatnot).

Otherwise it was business as usual, in the sense that theatrically-released films of various sizes made their subscription streaming debuts. Disney+ de facto leads the way with big-hit animated sequel Moana 2 and unwanted live-action sequel Mufasa: The Lion King. Prime Video was on a slightly smaller scale with Brit flick The Critic and second Hellboy reboot Hellboy: The Crooked Man, though I bet I watch at least one of those before I watch either of those Disney offerings. The best Netflix could muster was Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which may or may not have already been on NOW, I can’t remember, thus showing how much I care for that franchise at this point. And as for NOW, their slate included litigation-provoking adaptation It Ends With Us, one-quarter of an epic Western in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (has Chapter 2 come out yet? I forget), and AI horror Afraid (aka AfrAId, geddit?)

Back catalogue additions that particularly caught my eye included two titles on Prime I’d never heard of before: The Black Watch, aka King of the Khyber Rifles, a 1929 John Ford movie co-starring Mrs Thin Man, Myrna Loy, which doesn’t have a great score on IMDb but, hey, what do they know; and Knight Chills, a TTRPG-related slasher movie, which looks low-rent but perhaps fun. Hey, it can’t be worse than Mazes and Monsters… probably. iPlayer filled a gap by offering the first Harry Palmer sequel, Funeral in Berlin. The others are on Prime, so now I can watch them all, for good or ill (I figure there’s a reason most people have only heard of The Ipcress File). MUBI are encouraging me to give the work of Jacques Tati another go by adding a bunch of his films. I saw M. Hulot’s Holiday and Playtime at uni (and reviewed the latter) and didn’t care for either, but my taste has broadened since then, so who knows now?

As ever, I could spend many paragraphs rattling through all the other streaming additions, but (as has become my habit recently) let’s focus on ones I already own on disc. For example, Se7en cropped up on Netflix, thus giving me an excuse to mention it for the third month in a row and hopefully push me to watch the 4K disc I bought. It could be worse: How the West Was Won is on iPlayer, and that was one of the first Blu-rays I bought, so it’s been sat on my shelf for 15 or so years. Could be worse: I own Orson Welles’s Confidential Report on Criterion DVD, and look, there it is in HD on Prime. At the other end of the scale, a recent ‘mistake’: I imported the US Blu-ray of The Last Voyage of the Demeter because there was no sign of a UK release, then didn’t rush to watch it and now there’s been a UK release, a 4K release, and it’s streaming ‘free’, and in 4K to boot. Dammit.

I could go on in this vein, but let’s instead to transition to future stars of my “regrets” section: all the new stuff I’ve bought on disc! Lots of 4K titles this week, from brand-new releases like Gladiator II, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, and Megalopolis, to lavish new editions of older titles, like a pair of David Cronenbergs from Second Sight, The Brood (which I’ve never seen) and Scanners (which I have and rather loved); a pair of Akira Kurosawas from the BFI, Yojimbo and Sanjuro (both great, though most praise tends to be aimed at the first whereas I have a soft spot for the second); the first in Hammer’s attempt to highlight some of their lesser-known titles, Four Sided Triangle; and, though I am usually loathe to pay full price for a Criterion, I wanted to support them releasing films like Godzilla vs. Biollante.

(If you’ll indulge an aside into some semi-informed analysis: Godzilla vs. Biollante strikes me as a telling release, in that Criterion putting it out by itself at this point suggests there’s no chance of the hoped-for Heisei Era set coming as a companion / followup to the Showa Era one they released as #1000 back in 2019. Sure, they released the original Godzilla as a standalone title before the Showa set, but that’s a different kettle of fish: the original will interest some people who don’t care for the franchise as a whole, whereas Biollante is nothing so iconic. The fact it’s only the second Heisei film leaves me hopeful the ones that followed will also get the Criterion treatment; at least the next two would be nice, as their previous double-bill Blu-ray release is currently $195+. Or maybe I’m looking at it all wrong — maybe they’ve got access to all these films in 4K and think a 4K box set would be prohibitive. But I think the fact they haven’t started with the era’s first film, The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1984), doesn’t bode well for that presumption. As always, time will tell.)

Also, I begrudgingly bought the Steelbook release of Panic Room. I’m not a huge fan of Steelbooks (unless they’re doing something clever or have exceptionally nice art, which they so rarely do), especially as nowadays it just seems to be an excuse to gouge an extra £10+ from the customer; but you can no longer guarantee that the Steelbook won’t be the only 4K release of a title (look at all those Disney+ series, and I guess that model works because Warner recently copied it for The Penguin), and, like many people, I’ve been waiting on Panic Room in HD (never mind 4K) for what feels like forever, so I didn’t want to miss out. It’s a particularly ugly Steelbook too, so I can’t even console myself with “at least it looks pretty”. If they do put out a regular edition soon, I’ll be miffed; but while there’s no sign of one, hey, at least I finally own it in HD.

Slipping down to regular ol’ 1080p Blu-ray, the boutique labels continue to dominate my spending. This month’s inevitable Radiance haul included new releases Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau (containing Police Python 357, Série noire, and Choice of Arms); French sci-fi romance Je T’aime, Je T’aime; a pickup from a previous wave, Italian newspaper-based thriller Slap the Monster on Page One; and, from their partner label Raro Video, poliziotteschi Rulers of the City. How am I meant to resist when they’re putting out stuff in some of my pet favourite subgenres? The same goes for Eureka releasing a double-bill of Venom Mob films, The Daredevils and Ode to Gallantry. I’m not even a fan of the Venom Mob films I have seen, but I see something classic from Shaw Brothers Studio and I struggle to resist. Maybe these will be the ones where I understand what makes the group so popular.

Okay, so, yeah, I should probably cut back on purchases like that. Will I ever learn? Well, news came at the end of the month that may help: HMV have ended their 20% “first order” discount, which has long been usable on as many orders as you like if you knew what you were doing. The scheme had been running for a couple of years, meaning big purchasers racked up hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of savings. I dread to think exactly how much I saved (because it would mean I spent four times more), but it was a significant factor in my purchasing decisions. Now, I guess I’ll end up spending about the same but get less for it, and spread my purchases around other stores too. We can’t exactly complain (we got far more out of it than we were ever meant to), but I can’t help but think that if HMV are expecting their gross sales to increase by 25%, they’ve got a nasty surprise coming.

The ⅓ Monthly Review of March 2025

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I tried to find an elegant way to use the title to express the concept “I’ve watched a third of my Challenge, even though we’re only a quarter of the way through the year”, but somehow I couldn’t condense that into just a word or two, and so I’ve resorted to echoing August 2016’s title — although then it was just bluntly factual, lacking even the trace of irony present in using ⅓ at the ¼ point. Shame on you, past me, for your lack of… eh, it’s pretension, really.

So enough of that, let’s get on with the films…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#23 Never Back Losers (1961) — Series Progression #3
#24 Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) — Wildcard #7
#25 Hooray for Hollywood (1982) — Wildcard #8
#26 The Sinister Man (1961) — Series Progression #4
#27 Lifeforce (1985) — Failure #3
#28 Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983) — Wildcard #9
#29 The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) — WDYMYHS #3
#30 Revolver (1973) — Genre #2
#31 Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) — Blindspot #3
#32 The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) — Rewatch #3
#33 Mobile Suit Gundam (1981) — Wildcard #10


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in March.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • But most significantly, getting to #33 means I’m a whole month ahead of target.
  • I think it’s the new-style Wildcards that have really made a difference — rather than rear-loading them to help me across the finish line (a plan that only worked once out of three attempts), they’ve now helped give me a healthy head start. It’s no coincidence it’s become my first completed category of the year. In my introduction I mentioned the possibility of adding a mitigating rule so that I didn’t burn through those ten slots too quickly. The fact it took me three months to get here makes me think the current, simple rules are more-or-less ok — it doesn’t need to be forced to drag further into the year just for the sake of taking longer.
  • Conversely, I failed to watch a New Film in March. As someone who doesn’t get to the cinema much, it’s always harder to add to that category early in the year, but I still had options. Considering how far ahead I am overall, it doesn’t worry me — it’s an easy one to catch up later. It’s a shame not to hit the goal every month as planned, but it’s not something I’m going to lose sleep over.
  • The Man with the Golden Gun could also have counted for Series Progression, because it’s part of my chronological rewatch of the Bond films (which has, ridiculously, been going since 2012), but it served a stronger purpose counting for Rewatch this month.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was D.W. Griffith’s insanely-expensive anthology epic Intolerance, aka Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (I feel like it used to commonly go by the short title and now commonly goes by the long one, and there’s a reasonable argument either way).
  • Not that it matters, but I bought Intolerance on Blu-ray ten years ago this month, but only just put those discs in my player. And I’m sure that’s not even close to the oldest unplayed title I own.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was — to quote Hitch himself — “the first true Hitchcock picture”, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Lifeforce.



The 118th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
It’s sort of ridiculous and clearly more of a “cult classic” than a genuinely great film, but I really enjoyed Lifeforce. It’s a film that’s not afraid to go big and barmy, despite its limitations, and I admire that ambition. And, yeah, Mathilda May doesn’t hurt either. As I wrote on Letterboxd, “this is exactly the sort of stuff stereotypical 13-year-old boys should want to watch, not more Marvel slop.”

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It feels somewhat like punching down to pick on films from the Edgar Wallace Mysteries for this award — they’re somewhere between a ‘quota quickie’ and an anthology TV series, after all, and I’m sure no one involved thought they were making Great Art that would still be watched over 60 years later. Nonetheless, many of them are perfectly fine entertainment, so it’s still noteworthy when they fall short; and, to be honest, I didn’t watch anything else that bad this month. Of the two Edgar Wallaces I watched in March, particular dishonour goes to The Sinister Man for being casually racist — not maliciously so; more through ignorance, a lack of accurate information, and therefore poorly engaging with its own themes and content; but still, watching today, even at its best its somewhat laughable.


I got through ‘April’ in March — will I get through ‘May’ in April? Even if I don’t, I hope I don’t throw away this nice lead I’ve built up.

February’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.

Normally theatrical releases feel like the right place to start this column, but I’m going to pivot slightly this week and look through the prism of the Oscars. I stayed up to watch the ceremony this past weekend, as I have every year for the past twenty-something years. I’m not even a great believer in the quality of the awards, but there’s something about the occasion and pomp of it all that I enjoy nonetheless. It’s certainly not about backing my favourite film(s), because this year I’d only seen one of the Best Picture nominees (Dune: Part Two) — and so that’s some kind of failure in itself, even though they’re not all necessarily readily available here in the UK right now.

Well, that depends how you define “readily available” — just because a few of them were only released here last month doesn’t guarantee they’re playing widely; and while you can rent The Brutalist for £16, I’m never going to pay that for a rental. Not everything’s so pricey: you can rent the night’s big winner, Anora, for a fiver in UHD, and the same for BAFTA victor Conclave. That said, you can’t rent Wicked for any price now, which is usually a sign that it’s coming to a streamer soon. It won’t be the first: Emilia Pérez is a Netflix film, so has been on there since it came out, of course; The Substance has been on MUBI for a little while; and, with no fanfare whatsoever, Amazon Prime dropped Nickel Boys last Friday. That just leaves A Complete Unknown and I’m Still Here as theatrical-only propositions — and the latter would’ve been mentioned at the top of this column anyway, because it only came out on February 21st.

Most of February’s other theatrical releases are unlikely to trouble next year’s awards season. They’re led by a couple of ‘fourquels’, Captain America: Brave New World and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, which are both the kind of film I’ll catch one day in no hurry (indeed, for the former, I have plenty of ‘homework’ viewing to do first). The year-round horror parade this month offered Stephen King adaptation The Monkey and emoji-inspired Heart Eyes, while school half-term fare was led by Captain Underpants spinoff Dog Man (my six-year-old nephew enjoyed that, I’m told). There was also poorly-reviewed actioner Love Hurts, and a couple more films from the 2024 awards cycle that didn’t trouble the big prizes in the end: The Last Showgirl, Memoir of a Snail, and September 5.

Of greatest interest to me, debuting right at the end of the month, was Superboys of Malegaon — an adaptation of the documentary Supermen of Malegaon, which was one of my top films in 2015. It’s a limited release, and not screening anywhere conveniently near me, so I hope it comes to a streamer sooner rather than later.

As for said streamers, the only totally original title I noted this month was Apple TV+’s romance/action mashup The Gorge, which I might have been tempted to watch if I hadn’t finally cancelled my subscription because I don’t watch it enough. Elsewhere, Amazon Prime gave relatively strong promo pushes to the likes of Anthony Mackie-starring sci-fi Elevation, Justin Kurzel-directed thriller The Order, and video game adaptation Borderlands, and yet snuck out the likes of Sing Sing (another Oscar nominee) and Here, the Robert Zemeckis films starring Tom Hanks, alongside the aforementioned Nickel Boys. Pick your depressing truth: Amazon either have no clue what the heck they’re doing, or they know streaming audiences are more likely to watch one of the former three.

Acclaimed films debuting on other streamers included two-time BAFTA nominee (including Saoirse Ronan for Best Actress) The Outrun on Netflix, and Letterboxd favourite I Saw the TV Glow on NOW. Also on the latter: motorcycle crime drama The Bikeriders and geriatric revenge comedy Thelma, plus the third theatrical Garfield movie, The Garfield Movie (bit of an abuse of the definite article, there), and the feature directorial debut of Ishana “daughter of M.” Night Shyamalan, The Watched (known as The Watchers in the US — apparently it was retitled here to avoid confusion with a Netflix show, which (a) I’ve never heard of, and (b) is, like this movie, American).

Amongst the many other comings-and-goings in the streaming space, my attention was caught by Magic Mike’s Last Dance on Prime, meaning that whole trilogy is now on there — not my kind of film on the surface, but the involvement of Steven Soderbergh means they’ve long been on my watchlist. Also now on Prime: the most recent Charlie’s Angels reboot, Monty Python-adjacent comedy A Fish Called Wanda, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s first Oscar-nominated performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Highlights* (* mileage may vary) on other streamers included Beau Is Afraid, Polite Society, and Renfield on Netflix; Doctor Zhivago, Godland, and The Outfit on iPlayer; Moonfall, Pig, and Sexy Beast on Channel 4; and a 4K restoration of Tsui Hark’s romantic comedy Shanghai Blues on MUBI.

Notice I’ve not mentioned Disney+ at all yet. There were literally no films of note on there all month, again. Not even something for the ever-lengthy list of “stuff I already own on disc to (re)watch”, which this month, across all the other streamers, included All the President’s Men, Another Round, Chinatown, the Dark Knight trilogy, Ex Machina, Hugo, The Long Good Friday Puss in Boots, Requiem for a Dream, Se7en, Stargate, the Three Colours trilogy, and To Live and Die in L.A.. And to think I always tell myself one of the main reasons to stay engaged with physical media is because you can get films you just wouldn’t see on streaming.

Well, in fairness, that’s often still the case, as many of my newest acquisitions demonstrate. I mean, who’s going to stream the kind of stuff Radiance put out? February’s releases included a double bill from Hong Kong New Wave icon Patrick Tam, Nomad and My Heart Is That Eternal Rose; Kinji Fukasaku’s final yakuza film, Hokuriku Proxy War; and ’80s German heist thriller The Cat. The same can be asked of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema line, which recently added an altogether different kind of Fukasaku film, fantasy actioner Legend of the Eight Samurai, alongside box set Sirk in Germany 1934–1935, containing three features and three shorts directed by melodrama auteur Douglas Sirk during his earlier days in Germany. Heck, even though the kind of things 88 Films release might be more accessible — HK actioners like the Jackie Chan-starring Dragon Fist, now in 4K, or The Lady Assassin — which streamer is going to dig into that catalogue? None of the major ones. And that’s before we get into all the other benefits of actually owning physical copies, of course.

Certainly, it’s not as if I don’t buy streaming-friendly titles too. I’ve definitely spotted Lifeforce on Prime Video and/or Netflix in the past, but I still bought Arrow’s new UHD disc, for all the reasons that make physical media superior (I’ll give you a list if you want, but there’s no real reason to rehash those arguments in full here unless someone literally asks for it). The same could be said for other new-to-4K titles like The Lion in Winter and Constantine, and I paid extra for North by Northwest when the tat-filled collector’s edition unexpectedly came back in stock at Amazon. Why save money with a regular edition when you can pay tens of pounds more for a hard box and some paper bits & pieces you’ll only look at once or twice? Haha… ha… hmm.

Oh, but it also has a booklet. I love a booklet. You definitely don’t get booklets on streaming.

The Belated Monthly Review of February 2025

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A belated ‘hello’ from me for this month’s look back at last month. Don’t take this post’s delayed appearance as a worrying sign of me slipping further away from the blog — I simply had a busy end to February, meaning I couldn’t get a head start on this, and then an occupied weekend (mainly Oscar-focused), which combined meant I was only able to crack on with this post today. Similarly, I wouldn’t bank on seeing the “failures” before Thursday.

(Related side note: across 116 adjective-led monthly reviews, can you believe I’ve never used “belated”? This certainly isn’t the first late edition! Maybe I previously thought it was too obvious. Well, I’ve burnt that usage now.)

A separate issue: no new film reviews yet this year. I now ‘owe’ at least three, to fulfil my commitment of reviewing the previous month’s favourite: The Good, the Bad, the Weird from December, Milano Calibro 9 from January, and whatever this month’s winner is (see below to find out!) I’m hoping to begin that catch-up in March, but we’ll see what else life throws my way.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#12 Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) — 50 Unseen #3
#13 Macbeth (2025) — New Film #2
#14 Vendetta for the Saint (1969) — Wildcard #3
#15 Silver Blaze (1937) — Series Progression #2
#16 Long Story Short (2021) — Wildcard #4
#17 Róise & Frank (2022) — Failure #2
#18 Snake Eyes (1998) — Rewatch #2
#19 Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) — WDYMYHS #2
#20 Freaks (1932) — Blindspot #2
#21 Grand Theft Hamlet (2024) — Wildcard #5
#22 Marty (1955) — Wildcard #6


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in February.
  • All of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • #22 is the furthest I’ve reached by the end of February since my new-style Challenge began in 2022 — my target for this point is only #16, so I easily cleared that. (I would have had to get all the way to #24 to be a whole month ahead.)
  • Watching Silver Blaze means I’ve finally finished the Arthur Wontner Sherlock Holmes films (what survives of them, anyway: there were five; one is lost), which is the first time in quite a while* I’ve been able to remove a series from my “in the middle of” list. (* The last was Song of the Thin Man, completing my Thin Man rewatch, back in May 2024 — nine months ago.)
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Tod Browning’s enduringly-controversial carnival drama Freaks.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr — it’s the one where the house falls around him.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Róise & Frank and rewatched Snake Eyes.



The 117th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I’m borderline on whether this even counts as a “a film”, because it’s a filmed stage production — that’s the kind of thing I’ve gone either way on in the past. The deciding factor, really, was that I saw it in a cinema — not only because “what you see in cinemas is films”, but because if I didn’t count it, I wouldn’t be able to count it towards my stats at the end of the year, which could potentially lead me to write something like “I made no trips to the cinema this year” when I had, in fact, made one. Also, the fact I’m now saying it’s the best feature-length filmed thing I watched this month is another reason it seems worthy of inclusion. Anyway, it’s the David Tennant and Cush Jumbo-starring version of Macbeth, which seems to have been so popular they’ve scheduled multiple encore screenings and even a proper re-release — so if you missed it and are interested, keep your eye on local listings.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
No disasters this month, which leaves me with the always-slightly-awkward task of lambasting something I fundamentally enjoyed, just not as much as everything else. If you were to look at my Letterboxd diary, you might think this an easy decision: there’s only one film there I’ve graded 3 stars, so it’s that one… right? But I don’t feel like Silver Blaze was that bad. But then, what was? So, any pick is a bit harsh, but I’ve still settled on <strongLong Story Short, which I think I may have slightly overrated because its concluding message hit me particularly hard, for whatever reason.


Reviews? Maybe! Films? Definitely. And, launching off the success of this month, there’s a very real chance I’ll be a whole month ahead of target on my Challenge by the end of March. No guarantees, though — you’ll just have to come back in 31 29 days to find out.