Tag Archives: Now TV

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.

January’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 usual, the new year in UK cinemas kicks off with a bunch of stuff the distributors held back from last year, for whatever reason (I don’t know how it will pan out in 2025, but in the past I’ve observed some awards-season not getting a UK release until as late as June or July). Highlights in that sphere included Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu, awards season favourite The Brutalist, Robert Zemeckis graphic novel adaptation Here, nonlinear romcom We Live in Time, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain (*chuckle*), Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Callas biopic Maria, British-made Swiss-hero biopic William Tell, TV show, er, biopic Saturday Night, 18-rated sexy times for Nicole Kidman in Babygirl and Noémie Merlant in Emmanuelle, Mike Leigh’s BAFTA-but-not-Oscar-nominated Hard Truths, and Oscar Best Picture nominee Nickel Boys, which I confess I hadn’t even heard of before it’s nomination. Whew!

Despite all that, there were even some honest-to-God (if we ignore film festivals, which really we should) 2025 films released, including the latest Universal horror reimagining, Wolf Man; Steven Soderbergh’s latest attempt at making low-budget releases work, horror Presence; robot horror comedy Companion; and the horror of Mark Wahlberg’s hairline in Flight Risk. I guess horror really is the big screen’s perpetual friend.

Netflix attempted to cut through the noise by releasing Back in Action, an ironically-named (but probably deliberately so) spyfi comedy, because it featured Cameron Diaz’s return to the screen after a ten-year break. Yes, really. No, I don’t think anyone else had really noticed either. I’ve not heard anyone say a good thing about it. And I think that was it for streaming originals, sending us straight to streaming debuts of varying degrees of noteworthiness. I mean, for example, half of what Disney+ could muster was Nightbitch, which stars Amy Adams and I suspect was supposed to be some kind of big-ish deal, but has vanished without a trace. The other ‘half’, as it were, was Alien: Romulus. Plus TV series, which I think is where Disney+ focus their energy nowadays.

More promising titles were to be found elsewhere. NOW (and Sky Cinema) gave us Alice Lowe’s Timestalker, which I heard about when its theatrical release was up against something-or-other big and various outlets were pleading people to not ignore it. I imagine it stands a better chance on streaming; certainly, it’s high on my watchlist now. They also gave a belated UK bow to John Woo’s remake of his own Hong Kong action classic, The Killer, which I don’t think gained strong reviews but, hey, it’s John Woo, what do you expect? His Western work is regularly looked down upon, which I’ve always suspected shows the benefit of being subtitled when it comes to genre cinema… Which brings us to Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In — not a sequel, despite the coloned title making it sound like one but a well-received Hong Kong actioner; so well received, I only recently bought it on disc. Let’s hope it lives up to the hype whenever I watch it. Other things I’ve already bought but that also popped onto NOW this month included Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (plus The Fall Guy — something I’ve actually watched! Wonders will never cease).

More foreign action was to be found on Amazon Prime in Kill, the Bollywood actioner that got a burst of publicity when the remake rights were bought by the makers of John Wick three days before its US theatrical release. Sounds worth a look, right? Prime also had much-discussed Nic Cage-starring horror-thriller Longlegs, and the belated UK premiere (skipping theatrical this side of the pond) of Dave Bautista action-comedy The Killer’s Game. Well, they can’t all be winners. Similar could be said of MUBI’s debuting titles, which are awards season runners but not likely winners: Denmark’s Best International Feature nominee The Girl with the Needle and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, which has netted star Daniel Craig nominations at some ceremonies but, as it turned out, was shut out of the biggest ones (by which I mean BAFTA and Oscar).

On to back catalogue fare, and the one I’m going to flag as most unusual was the BBC airing all nine hours of Shoah and making it available on iPlayer afterwards. I’ve owned the Masters of Cinema DVD for yonks (and tried to make it part of Blindspot 2023, but failed to get round to it), and now here it is for free in HD. Will that mean I finally get round to it? I mean, it’s a nine-hour piece about the Holocaust — that’s the polar opposite of “easy viewing”. That’s not to say I don’t want to watch it, but it’s not something you just decide to bung on one day, y’know?

Aside from that, it was the usual reams of stuff across all the various streamers. I should probably focus on the ones I particularly want to see (and/or feel I should see) that I don’t have access to otherwise — like The Creator, Fruitvale Station, Gandhi, and Inside Llewyn Davis on Prime; The Conjuring and Pearl on Netflix; Cyrano, Defiance, and Roise & Frank on iPlayer; I’m Your Man, The Quiet Girl, Petite Maman, Pig, Sexy Beast on Channel 4 — but my attention can’t help but be drawn to all the ones I own on disc but haven’t watched yet — like the Wachowski’s Bound, Alex Garland’s Civil War, and Ridley Scott’s Legend on Prime; Elvis and Missing on Netflix; Enys Men, The Long Good Friday, The Northman, Old, Robin and Marian on Channel 4 — and that’s before I even start on the stuff I’ve bought on disc to rewatch and haven’t got to yet.

But (as I feel I use as a segue almost every month) that hasn’t stopped me buying even more stuff. The physically largest release of the month was Hammer’s lavish 4K Ultra HD set for Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter — noteworthy not just in itself, but also as an indication that Hammer are going to be handling at least some of their own Blu-ray releases going forward (rather than licensing them out), and at least some of those will get gorgeously lavish editions (only “some” because they’ve already promised not everything will come in such shelf-space-hogging sets). Other catalogue titles getting a fresh 4K lick of paint included Tarsem’s The Cell from Arrow, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure from Masters of Cinema, and a version of Se7en with controversial revisions by director David Fincher. It’s my favourite film of all time, so I’m both trepidatious and intrigued by the changes. Some seen borderline inconsequential; others look distractingly irritating (based on screencaps) — by which I mean: it’s not a recut or drastic reimagining, which could undermine the entire work; but things like replacing the sky during the finale have changed an entirely natural shot into something that looks like iffy green screen (again, based on screencaps. Maybe it looks okay in motion. If only there was a way I could find out…)

Other recent-ish releases that fall under this banner (but I had to import from the US, so they came out at the end of last year, but I’ve only ordered and received them now) included Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes, and John Ford’s The Searchers, which is Warner Archive’s first foray into 4K, and received copious praise (indeed, I wasn’t going to bother with it, but the praise I’ve read was so superlative, I felt like I was missing out. Damn you, FOMO!)

My US order was bulked out by more UHD titles in the shape of the third Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection. These aren’t individually named or numbered on the title, which has led to most people to just refer to them as volumes one, two, and three based on order of release; but each used a different colour for its title, and I’ve always thought it would be more fun if we referred to them by their colour — so this is the green one, containing Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Torn Curtain, Topaz, and Frenzy. It came out back in 2023, and I always intended to pick it up when it dropped in price (as I did with the first two), but something weird went on with the UK release — I’m sure it came out, but it’s rarely listed by retailers (look on HMV and you can still get the red / volume one and blue / volume two releases, but no sign of this one), and even when it is, the pricing can be bizarre (Amazon UK most recently listed it for £499.99). So, I finally caved and imported the US release. The minor discrepancy in packaging from the first two bugs me slightly, but as I got it for over £450 less than the UK version (apparently), I can live with it.

Back to new releases, but in 1080p, and just popping in at the end of the month were a trio of Asian thrillers from some of the UK’s most consistent boutique labels. Undoubtedly the one with the greatest name recognition is the BFI’s release of Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, while digging into more obscurities were Masters of Cinema for Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai’s Running on Karma and Radiance with Seijun Suzuki’s Underworld Beauty. Those are all still older works, of course. Indeed, the only brand-new title this month was The Wild Robot. I wouldn’t typically buy a Dreamworks animation (not sight unseen, anyway — I do own a few), but this one has been so highly praised. Someday I’ll actually watch it and find out for myself…

August’s Failures

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

It’s that slightly-odd tail-end of summer time in cinemas at the moment (though, does the summer blockbuster season really exist anymore? Ever since Marvel started putting out major movies in the spring, and we’ve had major winter releases for even longer (at least since the 2001 double whammy of the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films), it feels like the idea of the year’s biggest movies being routinely limited to the summer months has evaporated. Regardless, August’s lot have that post-summer feel of movies aimed at a wide audience but that aren’t surefire major hits. We’re talking the latest M Night Shyamalan thriller, Trap; a new attempt to fresh the Alien franchise, Alien: Romulus; a reboot of The Crow; horrors Cuckoo and Afraid; psychological thriller Blink Twice; and apparently there was a new movie from Neil Marshall, Duchess, and video game adaptation Borderlands finally came out, though I don’t think I saw any actual talk about either, so they could’ve been bumped for all I know. And that’s without mentioning high-profile-ish rereleases like Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, a restored 3D version of Coraline (quite what needs restoring about such a recent film, I don’t know; maybe they just slap that label on any new rerelease now), and a 4K do-over of The Terminator (which I believe I heard James Cameron was involved with, so probably looks like shit).

The end of summer also means the streamers attempt to get back in on the action, with blockbuster-esque new releases in the form of Amazon Prime’s action-comedy from Paul Feig starring Awkwafina and John Cena, Jackpot!, and Netflix’s action-comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, The Union. Indeed, Wahlberg was pulling double duty for streamers this month, also appearing on Prime in true-story sports/dog movie Arthur the King. Even Apple TV+ got in on the action, tapping Matt Damon and Casey Affleck to star in director Doug Liman’s latest, action-comedy The Instigators. I guess the algorithm says people like action-comedies with stars in… There was also John Woo’s modern remake of his own action classic The Killer on Peacock in the US, but there’s no sign of a UK releaser or date yet. (Naturally, I’ve acquired a copy anyway.) They even got in on the “modified re-release” game, with Apple TV+ surprise dropping Ridley Scott’s Napoleon: The Director’s Cut earlier in the week, which adds 48 minutes to the already-lengthy movie. It also gives me the dilemma about which cut to watch, as I never got round to the original version. And speaking of director’s cuts, Netflix released Zack Snyder’s preferred versions of Rebel Moon Parts One and Two… or Chapters One and Two, I think they are now… with different subtitles, too. I don’t think anyone except Snyder diehards actually cared. (I appreciate this is tempting their vengeance, but I genuinely didn’t see anyone talking about those films after release day, and even on the day there was little more than an acknowledgment of their existence.)

Really, the most exciting thing from the streamers this month wasn’t any one film, but the fact NOW have finally added UHD quality. They used to lag so far behind in this — after all the others had introduced UHD, their version of HD was still only 720 — but now it seems they’ve caught up; and in one fell swoop too, because as soon as I noticed they had anything in UHD, it seemed almost everything was. So that’s nice. It makes me more inclined to actually watch stuff on there, whereas before it was a bit of a “stuff I’m not that fussed about but kinda want to see at some point”. And in terms of actual new additions, they had exciting recent releases like, er, Madame Web. Yeah. Of more interest, a couple of films I’d not heard of but I saw recommended in Radio Times: Irish noir thriller Barber and sci-fi romantic drama If You Were the Last. Also musical biopic All That Jazz, which crops up on “greatest films of all time” lists but never seems to be streaming anywhere.

On the more frustrating end of new-to-streaming titles, Disney+ debuted Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes almost two months before its disc release. I really want to see it, but I’m also inevitably going to buy it on physical media, so I want to wait for that… but there it is, on Disney+, tempting me. At least I don’t actually pay for Disney+ myself, so it’s a bit easier to resist. But I guess this is still their strategy to try to drive streaming over physical: “yeah, sure, we’ll release it physically eventually… but you can watch it on streaming right noooow…” Also Kinds of Kindness, the Yorgos Lanthimos film that arrived surprisingly quickly after his last one; but I haven’t watched that last one yet (i.e. Oscar winner Poor Things, also on Disney+), so his latest doesn’t exactly jump to the top of my viewing list.

What else was happening on the streamers? Netflix added Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color — I’ve still not got round to the colour version, so the black-and-white alternate is hardly a top priority for me. They also brought back The Power of the Dog in the UK, after its disappearance to be on iPlayer a couple of months ago; and the Criterion 4K release made it to the UK this month too, so now we’re spoilt for choice. Definitely the kind of film I feel I should see, and maybe I’ll like, but it also it feels like it’ll be heavy-going and I’ve got to be in the right frame of mind for that kind of thing. Maybe I’m wrong, who knows. I’ll find out someday. Just to rattle off a few other attention-grabbers from across the board: on Netflix, the film that provoked so much controversy with Andrea Riseborough’s Oscar acting nomination, To Leslie; on Amazon, a superhero movie I keep forgetting even exists, DC League of Super-Pets, but I remain kinda curious every time I remember it because it’s kind of an odd concept, really; also Scent of a Woman, which briefly, seemingly out of nowhere, popped into the IMDb Top 250 the other month, thus elevating it from “a film I’m vaguely aware exists” to “a film I should maybe watch”); and, oh, just so much other stuff.

I’m not even going to begin listing the stuff I own on disc that its appearance on streaming reminded me I really should’ve got round to watching — except I am going to “begin” that, because some highlights (if you can call anything about my constant failure a “highlight”) include Shaun of the Dead (which I’ve not seen in almost 20 years); Ben Affleck’s The Town (one of those films that’s hardly a ‘major’ movie but also feels daft I’ve never got round to); Tremors (a film I thought was merely fine when I first saw it, whereas now I think I might better appreciate the B-ish charms that made it a cult favourite, so I bought the Arrow 4K back whenever that came out); and the trilogy of Piotr Szulkin sci-fi movies that I blind bought the Radiance box set of — The War of the Worlds: Next Century, O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization, and Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes — but which are now also on MUBI, along with a fourth film (Golem) that was included in the US equivalent of the set but for which a different distributor was supposedly working on a UK release (which hasn’t yet materialised, as far as I know).

That’s only scratching the surface… and, naturally, I bought even more stuff that’s destined to be a similar failure in the future. Let’s begin with another box set of Eastern European genre titles: Deaf Crocodile’s Aleksandr Ptushko Fantastika Box, which includes the fantasy epics Ilya Muromets (released in the West — and riffed over on Mystery Science Theater 3000 — as The Sword and the Dragon), Sampo (similarly released and spoofed as The Day the Earth Froze), The Tale of Tsar Saltan, and Ruslan and Ludmila. Hopefully they’re as good as they look, because they look gorgeous; like classical fantasy art brought to life. Another box set making its way from the US into my hands this month was Severin’s Cushing Curiosities (featuring the films Cone of Silence, Suspect, The Man Who Finally Died, Blood Suckers, and Tender Dracula, plus the surviving episodes of Cushing’s BBC Sherlock Holmes series), which I picked up in their sale alongside a trio of Dario Argento titles: 4K UHD releases of The Five Days and Opera (aka Terror at the Opera in the UK), and the rarities collection Dario Argento’s Deep Cuts (which possibly doesn’t merit listing here as a lot of it is made-for-TV content, but I’ve mentioned it now, so there we go).

Back at home, this month’s only brand-new released was The Fall Guy in 4K, but the boutiques drained my bank account as thoroughly as ever: from Arrow, Robert Rodriguez’s Mexico Trilogy, including a 4K disc for Desperado (probably the best-regarded of the three, and also the only one I’ve never seen, having caught Once Upon a Time in Mexico in the cinema back in 2003 and El Mariachi on a previous DVD version of this trilogy set); from Eureka in the Masters of Cinema range, Kinji Fukasaku’s yakuza classic Wolves, Pigs & Men; and from Radiance, more gangsters in Tai Kato’s Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza, plus their second World Noir box set (encompassing Germany’s Black Gravel, France’s Symphony for a Massacre, and Japan’s Cruel Gun Story); plus, excitingly, from partner label Raro Video, The Italian Connection, which completes Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu Trilogy (alongside a Raro release from earlier this year, The Boss, and a title Arrow put out nine years ago, Milano Calibro 9). Finally (literally, because it’s officially out today but my copy turned up on the last day of August), 101 Films’ UHD upgrade for Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, which I intended to watch back when I was watching all of Villeneuve’s earlier films in the run up to Dune, but didn’t and so is a possibility for this year’s WDYMYHS list.

I say “finally” — I bought a further 16 titles in sales of one kind or another. From the US, A*P*E in 3D; George A. Romero’s Creepshow in 4K plus Just Desserts: The Making of Creepshow; Flicker Alley’s Argentinian noir Never Open That Door; a couple of US-exclusive titles from UK labels: Arrow’s release of John Wayne’s final film, The Shootist, and Indicator release Untouched (which, somewhat aptly given its title, is a US-only release because the BBFC insisted on cuts); and Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell and Walker. And from the UK, a quartet of StudioCanal Cult Classics: Blazing Magnum, Devil Girl from Mars, The Final Programme, and Horrors of the Black Museum; the BFI’s 4K of Full Circle (aka The Haunting of Julia) and volume 3 of their Short Sharp Shocks series; classic ghost story The Queen of Spades; and Lisa Joy’s Hugh Jackman-starring sci-fi noir Reminiscence. When you lay it out like that, it kinda sounds like I have a problem. But shh, don’t tell anyone, because then I might have to deal with it.

The Value-for-Money Monthly Update for February 2016

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It’s only words, and words are all I have to introduce this post.

So let’s get on with it.


The Martian#21 Predestination (2014)
#22 Prisoners (2013)
#23 Macbeth (2015)
#24 Daybreakers (2009)
#25 The Martian (2015)
#26 Ex Machina (2015)
#27 Quigley Down Under (1990)
#28 Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)Ex Machina
#29 SuperBob (2015)
#30 The East (2013)
#31 Pillow Talk (1959)
#32 Home on the Range (2004)
#33 Crimson Peak (2015)
#34 Grand Piano (2013)
#35 Home (2015)
Crimson Peak#36 Noah (2014)
#37 The Equalizer (2014)
#38 The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)
#39 Big Eyes (2014)
#40 The Hangover (2009)
#41 Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
#42 Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo. (2012/2013)
#43 Cinderella (2015)
#44 Lucy (2014)


  • Value For Money Assessment, Part 1: before I cancelled Netflix last month, I watched 10 films on there. That’s £0.79 per film.
  • Value For Money Assessment, Part 2: after joining Now TV this month, I snuffled out 230+ films that interested me. Of those, I watched 10, plus the Oscars. That’s £0.91 per film/awards ceremony. (That subscription’s not over, so I’ll get more value out of it next month.)
  • Value For Money Assessment, Part 3: I bought and instantly watched four new-release Blu-rays this month. That was £11.87 per film. Picture quality and special features were lovely, though.
  • No WDYMYHS film this month, for reasons I’ll come to in a minute. I did watch two last month, though, so it’s OK.


This month, I watched 24 new films. Yeah, that whole “watch fewer films so I can do other stuff” thing isn’t going so well. (“Moan when you’re not watching enough films, moan when you are watching plenty of films — what’s wrong with you?!” Yes, I do feel a bit Shinji-ish.)

The reason? The Oscars. Not watching the nominated films, but paying £9.99 for a month of Now TV so I can watch them. Are the Oscars worth £9.99? No, of course they’re not — hence catching up on lots of other films while I have it. That’ll continue until the middle of next month… when I’ll get Netflix so I can watch Daredevil season two, and also attempt to extract maximum value for money by watching a load more films. So in the middle of April I may finally stop watching so many movies…

Of course, watching so many films brings with it a number of personal ‘achievements’: it easily surpasses the February average (9.63) and crushes the February record (13, jointly held by four previous Februarys); it’s the 21st month in a row where I’ve watched over 10 films; it’s only the fifth month ever with over 20 films; oh, and it’s a new third best month ever. (“Best” in this sense just meaning “most prolific”, of course. Volume does not equal quality. Unless you’re Mad Max: Fury Road, in which case winning the most Oscars means you are the Academy’s best film of the year. Yes it does. Yes it does.)

Quick inaccurate future predictions: following the relatively-huge January and February, and as I intend to maintain my ten-per-month minimum, this year’s looking at a final tally of at least 144 films. That would make it easily my second most prolific year ever. Which is nice. If by some failure of purpose I continued to achieve my current 2016 average of 22 films per month, I’d be looking at ending around #264. Sounds utterly ridiculous, but in January 2015 I laughed at the statistics suggesting I might make it to #192, and I ended up reaching #200.


This month, I’ve all but finished posting my 2015 reviews. Just The Story of Film remains, joining Veronica Mars in the eternally-unreviewed club. Maybe I’ll fix them both next month. Plus, the debut of my monthly TV review.


Superheroes, Disney, history, and noir — both classic and futuristic. Alphabetisation leaves the structure of this series to the whims of fate, but I think it’s a nicely varied month.



The 9th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Any month with 24 films is likely to have more than its fair share of highs and lows, and so it was with February. Shortlisting contenders for both this and the next award showed more of the former than the latter (nine vs. three), thankfully, but I think this one boils down to a three-way five-star sci-fi stand-off. Of those, I think the best marriage of idea and execution may have come from Predestination.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Two animations with “home” in the title are the frontrunners (rear-runners?) here. However, I expected Home on the Range to be terrible (and only watched it in aid of seeing all the Disney Animated Classics), whereas I only watched Home because I thought the trailer looked entertaining, so was thoroughly disappointed.

Best Apocalypse of the Month
Plenty of movies have shown us the end of the world now, but very few have done it in a story set millennia ago. For doing it so convincingly (if not plausibly), congratulations to Noah.

Most Disappointing Shakespeare Cut of the Month
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” Why did they excise one of the best lines from Macbeth?!

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Maybe it was the broad range of series covered, maybe it was just because it was something new and different, but my most-viewed new post in February was The Past Month on TV #1. (For the sake of keeping things on topic, I’ll add that the most-viewed film-related review was my Oscars-centric take on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.)


Halfway.