For the second month in a row, this monthly review is the only new post I’ve published. (I had intended to review Evangelion 3.0+1.01 in a timely fashion, but I couldn’t marshal my thoughts in time.) My viewing continues apace, however, with August seeing a return to the form of my January-to-May viewing.
Related to both those points, I’m continuing to mull over the specifics of the future of this blog — that’s both in terms of finding time to write reviews, and the relevance of its eponymous challenge. In respect to the latter, I crossed the 150-film mark this month, which got me looking at history again. It’s now almost a decade since I last failed to reach 100 new films, and it’s seven years since I watched fewer than 150. Heck, in the entire 15-year history of the blog, I’ve passed #260 as many times as I’ve failed to make #100; and the 260s were much more recently. Something for me to think about.
Before we return to August, a quick mention of another way I’ve been spending my free time: helping out with the Women Over 50 Film Festival, which is taking place online for the second year running (because, y’know, pandemic). And soon I’ll be lending my talents to FilmBath for a third year (though in a reduced capacity, what with having a day job now). Doesn’t bode so well for the ol’ blogging, eh? At least I can promise (as much as anyone can make promises about the future) that these monthly columns aren’t going anywhere.
On which cheery note…
#140 Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)
#141 Turks & Caicos (2014)
#142 A Damsel in Distress (1937)
#143 The Danish Girl (2015)
#144 Tea with Mussolini (1999)
#145 The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
#146 Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (2021), aka Shin Evangelion Gekijôban
#147 The Kid Detective (2020)
#148 Six Minutes to Midnight (2020)
#149 Love Affair (1939)
#150 Salting the Battlefield (2014)
#151 Thirteen at Dinner (1985)
#152 The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)
#153 My Man Godfrey (1936)
#154 Dead Man’s Folly (1986)
#155 Wuthering Heights (1939)
#156 Murder in Three Acts (1986)
#157 The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (2012)
#158 Appointment with Murder (1948)
- I watched 20 films in August.
- As noted in my intro, that’s an improvement on the last couple of months, and ties with March as my, er, joint 5th best month of the year. Okay, so it’s hardly an all-timer, but it’s an improvement.
- It’s not a bad one for averages, though, passing all the ones I usually mention: the August average (previously 12.6, now 13.1), the average for 2021 to date (previously 19.71, now 19.75), and the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 18.2, now 18.7).
- It’s also only the second time August has reached 20 films, with the first being right back in 2007. (My monthly stats for back then are only estimates, but I definitely passed 20 in August, probably landing somewhere around 25.)
- But there was no Blindspot film this month. Various reasons for that, but it doesn’t help that I’ve accidentally wound up with a pretty heavy-going lot left to choose from. A three-hour silent epic famed for its racism? A gruelling Russian depiction of World War 2? A black-and-white drama about poor immigrants in ’90s Paris called Hate? Eesh. Still, I intend to make my September extra miserable by squeezing in two next month.
- I didn’t watch anything from last month’s “failures”, either. Oh well.
The 75th Monthly Arbitrary Awards
Favourite Film of the Month
I watched several very good films this month (2021’s tally of five-star ratings leapt up), but my personal favourite was The Kid Detective. I liked the sound of the premise, and I thought the film nailed it. I doubt everyone will love it as much as I did (I’ve got its Letterboxd scores as evidence of that), but it’s a definite recommendation nonetheless.
Least Favourite Film of the Month
A different detective mystery sits at the other end of the spectrum. One of the three belated entries to the Falcon series, Appointment with Murder is a damp squib even by the relatively-low standards of ’40s mystery programmers. Those final three Falcons can be tricky to track down, and they’re not really worth it (unless you’re a completist, like me, of course).
Franchise of the Month
I worked through or touched upon multiple long-running film series this month: the Ripley films; Peter Ustinov’s Poirot; the Falcon; the Worricker trilogy… but, really, the dominant one is Neon Genesis Evangelion — not just because of the new, final-final (really final this time) movie, but also because I rewatched the three preceding movies (see below) and also dropped a huge wodge of cash on the ‘Ultimate Edition’ Blu-ray release of the original TV series. My bank balance and ever-receding shelf space hate me.
Most Deserved Best Actor Win of the Month
There’s a chance I’m missing something, but really I just want to take the time to say that Anthony Hopkins is excellent in The Father and I’m sure he deserved those (somewhat controversial) wins last awards season.
The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
As with last month, there’s no point awarding this (what with there only being one new post), but I’ll once again mention which archive post topped the chart. Last month, it was April 2017’s TV review #16, with March 2017’s TV review #15 in second place. This month, at the top is TV review #15, with TV review #16 in second. Why do they endure in popularity? Your guess is good as mine.
My Rewatchathon technically continues at average pace (i.e. about four films a month), although as I came into August about seven films behind target, I’m still about seven behind. Well, at least it’s not any worse.
#23 Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994)
#24 Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone. (2007/2009)
#25 Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance. (2009/2010)
#26 Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo. (2012/2013)
Having rewatched the first two Naked Guns over the past couple of months, it was only right to round out the trilogy. Its humour gets a bit too smutty at times, but the opening and closing set pieces are great, and there’s a pretty consistent gag rate throughout. On balance, I’d probably say it’s the second best in the series (after the first, of course).
But the main feature of this month’s re-viewing was Evangelion, revisiting the first three rebuild films before the release of the fourth. My original reviews are linked above, while here you can find my latest thoughts on Letterboxd about 1.11, 2.22, and 3.33.
Normally this section is dominated by all the new Blu-rays I’ve bought and not watched, but this month there was only one. Yes, one. That was Arrow’s new 4K disc of David Lynch’s Dune, a release I’m not even sure I want — not because the film’s a bit meh, but because the German edition out in a couple of months includes a feature-length documentary that Arrow couldn’t be bothered to wait for. But Amazon’s shipping policies nowadays mean I can’t preorder that, and I forgot to cancel my preorder for Arrow’s version, so now I have a dilemma: sell it and wait for the German one, or just live without that new doc. Elsewise, I’m not really sure why it’s been such a quiet month — other than that the labels have all been announcing their big expensive box sets for November and December, so I’ve been spending my money preordering those rather than on stuff in sales or what have you. I’ll tell you this: when we get towards the end of the year, my list of failures is gonna be looong…
Outside of my physical media library, new releases continue as if there wasn’t still a pandemic on. I expect Bond will tempt me back to the big screen in a few weeks, but until then I’m waiting on home releases for the likes of Free Guy, Snake Eyes, The Courier, Pig, Censor, and (probably my most anticipated from this lot) Candyman. Speaking of at home, the streamers inevitably had new stuff to offer too. The most critically acclaimed was probably Coda on Apple TV+, but I’ve also heard a lot of good things about Boss Level, which is on Amazon Prime here in the UK, as is The Vault, which is billed as a heist action-thriller and so sounds right up my street. Netflix’s best effort was probably wrong-man thriller Beckett, which seemed to get a middling reception, and animated musical Vivo, which I saw very little chatter about considering it’s got something to do with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Swinging away from new titles, there were plenty of archive additions bulking out my watch list. Sky Cinema headlines include Wonder Woman 1984 and the new Tom & Jerry, but there was also The Very Excellent Mr Dundee, a new-ish sort-of-spin-off from the Crocodile Dundee franchise. It’s meant to be terrible, and yet I still intend to watch it. The main things catching my eye on Netflix were titles that previously made my end-of-year ’50 unseen’ lists, like Black Mass, The Iron Lady, and Suffragette; while MUBI brought up obscure films of interest, like Amer, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, and Welcome II the Terrordome; and my Amazon Prime picks were hardly in a mainstream mood either, with the likes of comedy-horror Lake Michigan Monster, anime Mirai, Indian “neo-noir action thriller” (and brief IMDb Top 250 member, hence my interest) Vikram Vedha, and sci-fi drama Prospect (which has been popping on and off All 4 for a while now. Hopefully it’ll be a bit more stable on Amazon… so I can not get round to it for even longer).
Talking of All 4, this month I’ve managed to miss my chance to watch the likes of Mommy, Wings of Desire, The Old Man and the Gun, and Ida. But they’ve still got behind-the-scenes documentary Memory: The Origins of Alien, which I’ll intend to make time for. BBC iPlayer also has a film documentary that sounded interesting, Steve McQueen: The Man and Le Mans, plus the film that’s referring to, 1971’s Le Mans.
Oh, and everyone had stuff I either have owned on disc for ages but not watched (the full(er) cut of Metropolis on MUBI; The Dead Zone and The Last Samurai on Amazon; the live-action Beauty and the Beast on iPlayer; Only God Forgives on MUBI), or own on disc and should rewatch (Munich on Netflix; The Limey on Amazon), or have seen and should have reviewed by now (The Lego Movie 2 on Netflix; The Peanut Butter Falcon on iPlayer). Oh well.
Daniel Craig’s name is Bond, James Bond, for the last time.
Well now, hasn’t this been a long time coming? Just over two years since its western disc release was first announced, just over three years since it debuted in Japanese cinemas, and just over four-and-a-half years since 
Change, and the embracing or rejection of it, is surely one of the major themes of Evangelion. This is more explicitly debated as 3.33 moves into its middle section, where we get an extended dose of Shinji’s traditional insecurities. Hey, it wouldn’t be Evangelion without Shinji having a self-pitying whinge, right? Fortunately there’s more going on than that, but this is a section light on action and heavy on the series’ more thoughtful elements. There are answers to some of the mysteries, but it again wouldn’t be Evangelion if it all made easy sense. At the same time, Shinji bonds with new Eva pilot Kaworu. A controversial character, apparently, and not just because of the homosexual overtones (which some reviewers claim to miss, presumably because they’re blind), but the scenes where they harmonise by playing piano together are quite fantastically animated.
3.33 divides quite neatly into three half-hour sections. I guess that should be expected, as the whole tetralogy has been based in traditional Japanese ideas of narrative/musical structure, hence the films’ Japanese titles incorporating the names for the three movements: jo, ha, and kyū (序破急), which roughly equate to “beginning”, “middle”, and “end”. As discussed, the first is fantastic, some of the best material in the entire series, in my estimation. Also as discussed, the second is a lot slower, but has its plus points too. The third… ah, the third. Here we get some more action, which will please anyone who thrills to Eva combat, but it is also utterly mind-boggling. I’ve been reading up on a few fan sites since watching, and I’m still not absolutely sure what was going on or what it signified. You won’t find any enlightenment in the disc’s special features, which present a long list of extras at first glance, but turn out to be 19 repetitive trailers, TV spots, and promo reels. Yes, nineteen.
So when will that conclusion come? Well, a few years ago Anno ‘joked’ that the finale might be released “four to six years” after 3.33. As we’re already almost at four years with no sign of a release date, I guess it wasn’t so much of a ‘joke’ after all. An English-friendly DVD/Blu-ray will inevitably take an additional couple of years, too. So an indefinite, but undoubtedly lengthy, wait begins…
Just over a year since the 
For my money, the first 40 minutes or so of the film are (by and large) the best bits. It opens with a barnstorming action sequence, a great scene for newbies and fans alike as we’re introduced to Eva pilot Mari, who didn’t appear in the TV series. That she then disappears for most of the film, only to make a thoroughly mysterious return later, is one of those explanation-lacking flaws. I’m sure it won’t look so bad once the next two films provide us with answers. Well, I hope not.
Then the gang take a trip to a scientific installation which is trying to preserve the oceans and their wildlife. It feels like animation shouldn’t be as effective for such a sequence as, say, the footage in a David Attenborough documentary, but nonetheless it feels extraordinary, in its own way. It also marks itself out with the interaction of the characters on a fun day out rather than their usual high-pressure monster-fighting world. And then it’s back to that world for another impressive three-on-one Angel attack.
But it’s all building somewhere. For one, there’s another of the film’s best sequences — certainly, its most shocking, which readily earns the 15 certificate. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone yet to see the film, because it’s one of the plot points that differs from the TV series, but it involves the death of a main character in a brutal, deranged way. I say “death” — they pop up in the third film trailer that runs after the end credits, so there’s more to this yet…
And then, after the end credits, there’s a brief scene that throws another spanner in the works! Double-cliffhanger-tastic… one might say…
In short, if you’ve always liked Evangelion then you won’t be waiting for me to tell you this is a must-see reimagining; if 
When I (first) reviewed 
is a new addition I swear, while he also listens to a (digital, at least) cassette player rather than an iPod (other MP3 players are available, naturally). It’s not a major flaw — unlike, perhaps, the fact that the “covert” and top-secret Nerv organisation has great big signs plastered all over town and everyone seems to know about them — but, still, maybe a new bit of animation to replace the tape-playing close-ups would’ve been nice.
The pros and cons of the series remain. Shinji is alternately interesting, perhaps even complex, and a whiney little irritant. Here he has a character arc at least, suggesting he may be more sufferable next time out. His relationship with Major — sorry, 
Another factor thrown up by the TV-series-to-feature conversion is the image quality. An HD big screen is a mixed blessing here. On one hand, it looks great on Blu-ray, with crisp lines and solid colours, the result of re-filming, colouring and CGI-ing the original animation elements rather than using the finished TV shots. On the other, such clarity sometimes shows up a lack of detail in the original animation — these elements were created for 4:3 mid-’90s TV, not a hi-def (home) cinema — and the solid colours and money-saving techniques (for example, showing something static rather than a lip-synched (ish) mouth during conversations) can remind the viewer of cheaper TV roots. Perhaps I’m being overly critical though, because much of it does look fabulous; at the very least, the thorough ground-up rebuild means it looks better than the TV series ever will, never mind has.
It’s enough to make one scurry back to the series for answers, though the three movies still to come promise whole new characters, plots and a — frankly, much-needed — brand-new ending. After two misfires (one in the series, one in 
Eight weeks and sixteen films later than I’d’ve liked, I can finally complete the Evangelion story! (For my review of the first film, look 
The genesis of this film is a long story (at least, longer than I’d like for this review!) The anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion ends with bizarre theme-centric episodes that fail to conclude the story; a film was produced to re-tell the end from a story-centric position and/or to provide an alternate ending (depending who you believe). This is not that film, but something that was released a bit before that.
100Films.co.uk 