Tag Archives: October

October’s Failures

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Let’s start with what is easily this month’s biggest failure: Poor Things. No, it’s not out in the UK until January, but it was the highest-profile film screening at this year’s FilmBath Festival, and I had a ticket, but in the end I couldn’t make it, primarily thanks to lingering effects from when I had Covid. Damn. Other films of particular interest at the festival that I didn’t see for one reason or another included The Bikeriders (well received at other festivals and, just before its Bath screening, its general release was pushed back from December to sometime in 2024) and the new film by Carol Morley, Typist Artist Pirate King, which is now on general release. And… it’s not that there weren’t other interesting films screened at the festival this year, but nothing much major enough to warrant a mention.

On general release, the biggest news has to be the latest from Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon. Unless you’re of a certain age, that is, because apparently Five Nights at Freddy’s is a phenomenon-sized franchise to kids (so I’m told) and thus the (first) film did stonking business (in the US, at least — I’ve no idea if this is one of those genuine worldwide phenomenons or one of those US-centric ones that The Internet therefore portrays as global). Other big screen releases — of varying size, quality, and success — included legacy sequel The Exorcist: Believer, Michael Caine’s final role in The Great Escaper, kiddy franchise entries Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie and Trolls Band Together, emotional sci-fi Foe, and the latest attempt at reviving the Hammer brand, a modern reimagining of the sci-fi/horror classic, Doctor Jekyll. Allegedly there was also a theatrical release for David Fincher’s latest, but as that’s from Netflix it isn’t screening anywhere round me, so I shan’t deign to mention it by name. It’ll be in next month’s column, unless I actually watch it (I intend to, but my intentions often mean nowt).

Speaking of Netflix, I think their primary original this month was Pain Hustlers, which is almost notable for being director David Yates’s first non-blockbuster work in 18 years… except, after gradually eroding his talent/promise on seven Wizarding World movies, I’m not sure anyone particularly cares about Yates as a director anymore. Plus this new movie’s meant to be a bit shite, so that won’t help. Whatever happened to the guy who directed the original State of Play and Sex Traffic miniseries? Well, the Wizarding World / two decades of blockbuster work, I guess. Also new to Netflix were Fair Play, another attempt to revive the erotic thriller subgenre that apparently fails due to modern prudishness, and Ballerina — not the long-awaited John Wick spinoff, but another action movie; a Korean one, to be mildly more precise. The fact I’ve not seen anyone on Twitter going, “hey, you should check out this new Asian action movie on Netflix that you probably missed!” suggests it probably isn’t that great (because most new Asian action movies on Netflix seem to attract that kind of recommendation from someone).

I think Amazon were the only steamer to put any effort into providing a horror-themed original for Halloween, with time travel-themed ’80s throwback Totally Killer. Not that other streamers opted out entirely, mind, be it streaming premieres — the new Haunted Mansion on Disney+; the likes of Infinity Pool, Pearl, and The Pope’s Exorcist on Sky Cinema; Talk to Me on Netflix — or older fare… which, frankly, are too numerous to mention. As I said in my September review, I’ve never been one to spend all of October watching horror, but I’m sure I could’ve done, and one day maybe I will.

There were some other themes to this month’s streaming offerings, though, like original shorts: Disney’s official 100th anniversary celebration, Once Upon a Studio, and Pedro Almodóvar’s gay Western, Strange Way of Life, on MUBI. BBC Four have been having some kind of Shakespeare season, which then extends onto iPlayer. It’s largely been TV adaptations, but a few films have come through too, like the 1950s Julius Caesar with Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud, and Deborah Kerr; Laurence Olivier’s Richard III; and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (which I’ve seen but have long intended to revisit).

There also seemed to be an exceptional number of films I already own (or, erm, have downloaded) coming to streaming before I could watch them. As usual, that was mostly on Sky Cinema, with titles like of Cocaine Bear, The Fabelmans, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Searching sequel Missing. To be honest, I think this says more about my recent (as in, year-long) failure to keep up with newer releases/purchases than it has anything to say about an abundance of new stuff on streaming. That’s without even counting titles further into the back catalogue, or that have been around for long enough to leave streaming and come back, like Licorice Pizza (formerly of Amazon Prime, now on iPlayer), or the Candyman legacy sequel (also on iPlayer), or Another Round, Boiling Point, and Censor (all streaming on Channel 4). Heck, even purchases that haven’t arrived yet are getting in on the act: the day I placed an order for the US 4K release of The Train, it popped up on iPlayer. Well, at least I’ll get to watch it in 4K. One day (expect to see it in next month’s failures. Or maybe I’ll watch my 4K disc to cross off this month’s mention of it from streaming…)

Talking of things I’ve bought, no impairment can slow down my insane rate of disc purchases! Where to begin? Let’s sort them by label, starting with the large package that turned up this month from Australia’s Umbrella — large in part because of multiple titles, and in part because some of those titles are of the “lavish box set” variety. I mean, Razorback is not only a single film in a box roughly the depth of four regular Blu-rays, it also came with a T-shirt and an action figure. Although, the action figure — of the eponymous boar — doesn’t have any articulation, so maybe “in-action figure” would be more accurate. Not that it’ll ever leave its packaging. Also in that box from Oz, listed in order of decreasing thickness of edition: Peter Weir’s The Last Wave, Indiana Jones rip-off Sky Pirates, low-budget horror Undead, and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which at one time looked like the only disc release for that Roku-exclusive film, but now it’s coming in the US with new extras being worked on, so I may slightly regret that purchase. Oh well.

There was also a sizeable pile from Radiance, headlined by sold-out-on-preorder horror Messiah of Evil and accompanied by The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, The Hot Spot, The Iron Prefect, and Visible Secret, plus partner label title The Night of the Devils. I may not watch many horror movies in October, but clearly I do buy them (well, it’s what the labels choose to put out, isn’t it?) That continued with my latest acquisitions from Indicator, including the two new additions to their Jean Rollin collection, Fascination and Lips of Blood, plus pre-Code crime drama Thunderbolt, and the second six-film set in their Universal Noir range.

Another multi-film set was Criterion’s release of Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers, headlined by his famous Freaks but accompanied by lesser-known silents The Mystic and The Unknown. For some reason I assumed it wouldn’t get a UK release, so I was pleasantly surprised when it did. Even better, in some respects, was Martin Scorsese’s After Hours — Criterion’s first 4K release in the UK market. Hurrah!

A more recurring theme amongst my purchases is classic Asian action movies, thanks to several labels doing grand work in that field nowadays. The regulars are 88 Films — who this month delivered a fancier re-release of Jackie Chan’s Battle Creek Brawl; a similarly lavish edition of Chan’s Twin Dragons; a film labelled Hard Boiled II over here but that really has nothing to do with John Woo’s classic, The Last Blood; and, last but not least, The Postman Fights Back — and Eureka, with James Bond spoof From Beijing with Love and epic Beach of the War Gods.

But it was another title from Eureka, this time in their sporadic Masters of Cinema line, that was my most anticipated this month — indeed, it fills the “disc” slot on the post’s header image (has anyone noticed that the three images up top come from the same specific media each month? I doubt it). That’s silent era classic Pandora’s Box, making it’s long-awaited debut on a UK Blu-ray (it’s over 20 years since there was a DVD release here, and Criterion’s DVD is out of print and thus goes for silly prices). I’ve waited so long for that to come out, and now I can… proudly put it on a shelf and not get round to it, knowing me. I despair of myself.

The Tumultuous Monthly Review of October 2023

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Well, I don’t know about you, but October’s been a funny old month around these parts. On the one hand, my minor medical maladies continued when I caught Covid. Fortunately, it was no worse than a bad cold, although it managed to linger somewhat in the form of a cough and a certain amount of lethargy, which ultimately led to me missing one of the two films I’d booked at FilmBath Festival. Disappointing, but at least it was one I’ll have a chance to see again in the future. The other screening — the one I made it to — included Danny Boyle’s rarely-seen short Alien Love Triangle, so I was glad not to miss that.

Also in the “negatives” column (as far as film viewing was concerned) was my personal marathon of various media in honour of Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary. Again, that robbed time from possible film watching, but not as much as feared after the BBC announced the new 60th anniversary specials won’t begin airing until 25th November. I’d been cramming stuff in aiming for 11th November, so I gained a bit of leeway once that news broke. Naturally, some of my re-gained time has been applied to movies.

And so, after all that tumultuousness, the past month in my Challenge ended up going as follows…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#73 Road to Utopia (1945) — Wildcard #9
#74 Partners in Crime (1961) — Wildcard #10
#75 Close-Up (1990) — Blindspot #8
#76 Flora and Son (2023) — New Film #9
#77 Nothing Sacred (1937) — Failures #10
#78 The Pigeon Tunnel (2023) — New Film #10
#79 Sing Street (2016) — Rewatch #10
#80 The Possessed (1965) — Genre #4


  • I watched 10 feature films I’d never seen before in October.
  • Yes, I’m back up to my minimum monthly target! At this point, I’ll save any more commentary on that until after we see how November and December play out.
  • Seven of those films counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • I completed my third Challenge category this month. After concluding Series Progression in August and Physical Media in September, this month it was the turn of the Wildcards. So much for them possibly being useful in December! The final two were spent on, funnily enough, a Series Progression and a Physical Media. Don’t expect any more to be crossed off until December now — two of them can’t be, due to their own rules; two of them shouldn’t be, because they’re designed to be paced throughout the year; and the other one is just too far off being done.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Abbas Kiarostami’s drama/documentary line-blurrer Close-Up.
  • No WDYMYHS film this month. More on that in the “next month” section.
  • From last month’s “failures” I only watched Nothing Sacred.



The 101st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
There are multiple possible interpretations of “favourite” in this context. The usual one is “best”. Another might be “most enjoyable”, which is more what I actually aim for. This month, I’m slightly realigning that to be “one I’m most glad I’ve seen”. I may have seen ‘better’ movies this month, but Danny Boyle’s short Alien Love Triangle was really good and, thanks to its extreme rarity, I’m pleased I even got the chance to see it. I hope it’s made more widely available sometime, because it’s fun and deserves an audience, and because I’d like to see it again.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I guess this goes to the Edgar Wallace Mystery Partners in Crime, which wasn’t bad — as a series of B-movies, they’re mostly solidly entertaining — but everything else I watched this month was slightly better.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
My continued lack of posting in between these monthly reviews means this category was once again a two horse race. Although, as if in a vain attempt to keep things moderately interesting, this month it was September’s Failures that was victorious. Neither set the chart alight, mind — it’s still my old TV columns that do most of the business.


As we head into the final 50 ‘useable’ days of the year (approximately. It’s family and Christmas stuff that take out the rest), I’ve got 20 films to go to complete my 2023 Challenge.

That includes four for both Blindspot and WDYMYHS. Sounds pretty equitable, right? Ah, but not all films are created equal! Those four WDYMYHS noirs have a combined running time of just under 7 hours, while the four remaining Blindspots add up to a little over 18 hours. Yeah, I’ve accidentally saved the three longest for last, again. Oops. History suggests I’m going to fail to pull it off, but you never know…

October’s Failures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Screaming Monthly Review of October 2022

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



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

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


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

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

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

Now, statistical stuff…

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

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



The 89th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

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

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

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

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

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



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


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

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

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

The Below Par Monthly Review of October 2021

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As you attentive readers will no doubt already be aware, during October I posted my first new review for almost five months — whoop whoop! Only the one, though. Indeed, if you wanted to read new writing by me, you’d be better off attending FilmBath Festival and trying to guess which of the Film Notes handouts I completely rewrote (if they appear online this year, I’ll let you know and you can indulge in this fun game).

Yes, despite having a day job, I also served as Copy Editor for FilmBath once again — so at least this month I have an excuse for not writing anything here. It’s also the reason why this month’s viewing is way down, as you will now see…


#171 Appointment with Death (1988)
#172 Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2021)
#173 Raffles (1939)
#174 A Little Chaos (2014)
#174a Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900)
#175 Capernaum (2018), aka Capharnaüm
#176 Dune: Part One (2021), aka Dune
#177 Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
#178 Going in Style (2017)
#179 Search for Danger (1949)
Dune: Part One
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  • I watched 9 feature films I’d never seen before in October.
  • It’s the first month in which I’ve fallen short of 10 films since December 2019.
  • That means last month concluded a 21-month 10+ streak — not even close to the longest (60 months, from June 2014 to May 2019), but well beyond the previous second best (just seven, from September 2009 to March 2010).
  • As for averages, obviously it brings everything down. The worst affected is the average for 2021 to date, which falls a whole film from 18.9 to 17.9. The rolling average of the last 12 months drops from 18.00 to 17.25, while October’s average shifts slightly from 13.21 to 13.54.
  • I should’ve saved Frankenstein to be this month’s Blindspot film (for hopefully-obvious reasons). As it was, I didn’t watch any of the remaining three, meaning I need to watch two next month. That’s okay: I also missed one in August and managed to catch it up in September, so I’ve got form.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Everybody’s Talking About Jamie… twice (see Rewatchathon).



The 77th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I liked a few films this month, but there’s no real debate that this belongs to Dune: Part One (as I was insisting on calling it even before the sequel was greenlit, a piece of good news that has only made me more insistent).

Least Favourite Film of the Month
The pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant should be a great one — it gave us the likes of Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, after all — but their first film together, Sylvia Scarlett, just doesn’t work, on the whole.

Worst Accent of the Month
Dick Van Dyke gets a lot of stick for his Cockney in Mary Poppins, but perhaps he just watched Cary Grant in Sylvia Scarlett for research. Yes, it is comparably poor… but that also means it has the same kind of perverse entertainment value.

Completed Film Series of the Month
Just over nine years since I watched the first one, I finally finished off The Falcon series of ’40s detective mysteries with Search for Danger. Well, it depends how you count it. Really, I think there are 13 films, ending with 1946’s The Falcon’s Adventure; but some say there are 16 films, bundling in the three made a few years later by a different studio with a different star. I’d argue those are more of a ‘reboot’ series than a true continuation. They’re also trickier to track down — while I saw the first 13 thanks to the BBC airing them, the later three most assuredly weren’t included — but I finally bothered to find them, and so now, whichever way you cut it, I’m done.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
For the first time in a while there were actually two new posts this month, although it wasn’t much of a battle — No Time to Die romped away with the victory, besting even my ever-popular old TV reviews to be the month’s most-viewed post overall. It’s already in the top five new posts for the entire year, too, although its chances of overtaking the most popular TV posts are slim.



So, I think it’s now pretty clear I’m not going to make my goal of 50 rewatches in 2021 — I’d need to watch ten a month to get there, which isn’t impossible (I normally watch more new films than that… though not this month, obviously), but I know I just won’t do that (I’ll focus on the unseen stuff). Ah well, it’s only a target. Maybe next year… or maybe next year I’ll have a new goal…

Anyway, this month’s sole rewatch was…

#30 Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2021)

…which I’d only first seen earlier in the month! When I rewatched it I knew I’d only recently seen it, but I didn’t realise it was within the same month until afterwards. That had more to do with watching it with different people than rushing to rewatch it quickly. I do like it quite a bit, though.


Anyone would think the pandemic was over, the way cinemas are back in full flow (and doing fairly good business, based on my personal experience on the two trips I’ve made so far). Films hitting the big screen this past month that I’ve skipped ‘til disc or streaming include Ridley Scott’s acclaimed The Last Duel, Edgar Wright’s divisive Last Night in Soho, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, plus franchise sequels Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Halloween Kills, and The Addams Family 2. Also the sequel to The Boss Baby (I enjoyed the first one a surprising amount, so maybe I’ll make time for the sequel one day) and Dear Evan Hansen, which I’ll have to watch just to see how much of a train wreck it actually is.

Talking of the big screen, FilmBath Festival is currently mid-flow. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make any screenings this year, unfortunately, and films I’ve already missed include Mothering Sunday, Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman, Lamb, and Palme d’Or winner and French Oscar contender Titane.

The streamers continued to premiere new movies too, of course. Sky Cinema got UK exclusivity for sci-fi Voyagers (which suggests it’s not very good); Netflix had the English-language remake of thriller The Guilty (I watched the original back in February and it’s currently on All 4 again, FYI); MUBI had a Halloween premiere for BBFC-themed horror movie Censor (which I’ve heard good things about); and earlier in the month Amazon offered Bingo Hell (I like the sound of the concept, but I don’t think it’s been well reviewed). I guess Amazon’s big film was meant to be Infinite starring Mark Wahlberg, though I heard nothing about it until a big promo image popped up on Prime Video’s front page. Low marks on Letterboxd suggest it isn’t worth investigating.

Elsewhere on streaming, if I ever decide to embark on the Conjuring franchise, they’ve got me covered: the first two are on BBC iPlayer, while the third has arrived on Sky Cinema already (I’ve no idea about the spinoffs). Older titles bulking out my various watchlists included period lesbian drama Ammonite, Amsterdamned, David Cronenberg’s Fast Company, anime Mirai, and the 1990 Witches on Amazon Prime; Judas and the Black Messiah, The Little Things, Billie Piper’s Rare Beasts, and Nic Cage in Willy’s Wonderland on Sky Cinema; Halloween I to V (in particular, I want to see III), Honey Boy, Kung Fu Hustle, and Last Christmas on Netflix; The Arbor, The Love Witch, intriguing new animation Cryptozoo, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist on MUBI; and, on iPlayer, Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, Daniel Craig and Anne Reid in The Mother, Horrible Histories: The Movie, and one I’d never heard of before: A Woman’s Secret, which is apparently a noir-style melodrama starring Gloria Grahame. Whew.

Of course, that’s as nothing to my ever-growing pile of new purchases. Where to begin? How about my latest 4K acquisitions: M. Night Shyamalan’s newest, Old, and his best, Unbreakable; Second Sight’s luxurious new edition of The Guest (which you may remember was my sort-of-joint-first favourite film of 2015); StudioCanal’s latest swish 4K box set, for Joe Dante’s The Howling; plus Arrow’s edition of Oldboy, and The Shining, which features the longer US cut that I’ve not seen. New or recent releases in good ol’ 1080p included Another Round, Masters of Cinema’s second volume of Early Universal silents, Eureka’s release of the Sabata trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns, and Edgar Wright’s documentary The Sparks Brothers. I also finally got hold of Shout’s release of David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone, and another Eureka release of a Spaghetti Western, Sergio Corbucci’s The Specialists.

And to round things off, I tried to limit my purchases in Arrow’s Shocktober sale… and failed spectacularly. Some of them were recent-ish titles (Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee, still available as a multi-disc special edition, and Japanese corporate thriller Giants and Toys), and some they released so long ago they’re dual-format editions with DVDs (remember those?), like 52 Pick-Up and Howling II (which for some reason doesn’t feature its fab subtitle on the cover: Your Sister is a Werewolf). Rounding things out: more Japanese crime in Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!; another Spaghetti Western, The Grand Duel; a couple of gialli (The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion and The Pyjama Girl Case); and, released by Second Run but in Arrow’s sale, one of Letterboxd’s 250 greatest films of all time, The Shop on the High Street. Whew, again.


2021’s on the home stretch now — perhaps it’s time to start thinking about where my final tally will end up…

The Horrific Monthly Review of October 2020

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Don’t be fooled by the title, dear reader: I’m not one of those people who spends all of October watching horror movies. But the world we live in is horrifying enough for that adjective to apply to pretty much any month this year, isn’t it?

So as England prepares — not for No Time to Die, as we’d hoped for from November — but for Time to Try Not to Die in Lockdown 2, let’s look back at the month that was the tenth in the seemingly-never-ending year that is 2020…


#219 Lancelot du Lac (1974), aka Lancelot of the Lake
#220 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
#221 Patrick (2019), aka De Patrick
#222 Dick Johnson is Dead (2020)
#223 The Good Liar (2019)
#224 Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
#225 Some Beasts (2019), aka Algunas Bestias
#226 Luxor (2020)
#227 The American President (1995)
#228 Down with Love (2003)
#229 Puzzle (2018)
#230 Misery (1990)
#231 The Mole Agent (2020)
#232 Waxworks (1924), aka Das Wachsfigurenkabinett
#233 Vampires Suck (2010)
#234 The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)
#235 Tim’s Vermeer (2013)
#236 Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Patrick

Tim's Vermeer

Crazy Rich Asians

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  • I watched 18 new feature films in October.
  • That’s in the lower-middle for 2020 so far — 7th out of 10 months, to be precise.
  • Unsurprisingly, then, it fails to equal my 2020 average (previously 24.2, now 23.6).
  • It also fails to equal my rolling average for the last 12 months, but as last October was so poor (just four films), it still increases the average, from 19.9 to 21.1.
  • Continuing on the bright side, it surpasses the October average (previously 13.2, now 13.5).
  • #236 is also the furthest I’ve ever reached by the end of October, besting #222 in 2018.
  • You might think that makes 2020 a lock for my #1 year ever, but it’s not so simple (as my previous overviews of predictions have shown). There are 26 films to go to a new record — 13 per month for November and December, which sounds very doable (my worst month this year totalled 12), but it’s worth noting that the November average is 10.4 and for December it’s 11.2, so never say never.
  • As for the once-seemingly-possible target of #300, that would mean 32 per month in November and December. Literally, not impossible (I’ve managed over 30 in two consecutive months twice before), but also not likely (I’ve only managed over 30 in two consecutive months twice before). Time will tell…
  • This month’s Blindspot film was supposed to be An American Werewolf in London. For most of the year I’d had that singled out to be October’s pick, for obvious reasons. I considered watching it earlier in the month, but decided to leave it for nearer Halloween. Then as Halloween neared I thought, “why not save it for the day itself?” Because Halloween is the last day of the month and the best-laid plans are apt to be upended, that’s why not! So, yeah — oops. I’m aiming to watch it today to catch up quickly.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Crazy Rich Asians and The Good Liar.



The 65th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I watched a lot of films I liked this month — indeed, there was only really one choice for the “least favourite” category. But in terms of favourites, it was quite easy to single one out, too, because one film really blew me away: Tim’s Vermeer, a documentary about the point where art, technology, and obsession meet. It’s fascinating and genuinely awe-inspiring.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I was able to watch a few screeners this month for films showing as part of AMPLIFY! Maybe it’s wrong for me to pick one of those here (shh, don’t tell anyone!), but, well, Some Beasts was easily the worst film I watched this month. Not because it’s badly made, but a final-act plot swerve struck me as wholly distasteful and poorly handled. More on that whenever I get round to reviewing it.

Most Layers in a Title of the Month
Before viewing, I wondered if Crazy Rich Asians was about Asians who were crazy-rich or rich Asians who were crazy. Turns out, it’s both! So many layers! (Two. That’s two layers.)

Most Penises of the Month
One of Borat’s most famous scenes may be a nude wrestling/chase scene between two men, but that’s got nothing on Patrick, a whole film set in a nudist camp. (Don’t let that turn you off / switch you on, mind — there’s a lot of good stuff in Patrick, and the nudity is fairly incidental.)

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
…goes to my latest TV column again, for the fourth time this year. I’ve gotta say, this one did have one of my favourite header collages I’ve put together (the entire thing uses mirroring! Me so clever). (The highest film-related post was a distant second, Bloodshot.)



At one point I was over a month ahead on my Rewatchathon goal for the year. That lead has been slowly eroded, and now I’m officially one film behind. Still, with just two months to go, it’s certainly not impossible that I’ll get there.

#40 Live and Let Die (1973)
#41 Mystery Men (1999)

As a Bond film, Live and Let Die will get my ‘Guide To’ treatment at some point. For now, I put some thoughts on Letterboxd.

Superhero comedy Mystery Men was included in my 100 Favourites series back in 2016, but I hadn’t actually watched it in a decade or more. I’m happy to report that I did still enjoy it. It takes a while to warm up — basically until the whole team has been introduced, which takes longer than you might think — but, once it gets there, it’s frequently gold. Will it make the next iteration of my 100 Favourites list? It’s more borderline than I might’ve expected. It’s not a perfect movie, but it is very enjoyable overall.


Big titles have continued to flee, and with a new lockdown cinemas will be closing again, but a few releases did sneak out in the meantime, like acclaimed horror Saint Maud, and… um… Cats & Dogs 3? Eesh. London Film Festival organised outreach screenings across the UK, but the only one that made it into the schedule at my local was closing-night film Ammonite. And in the sort-of-cinema column, Robert Zemeckis’s re-adaptation of The Witches went straight to premium streaming. I wouldn’t pay £16 for a rental of that anyway, so the mixed-to-poor reviews certainly didn’t sway me.

Another re-adaptation, The Secret Garden, finally had a cinema release, but having been sold off to Sky as a Sky Cinema Original, it was more readily accessible at home. This month the streamer also offered up Underwater, Seberg, and films not starring Kristen Stewart, like Waves. But Now TV finally stopped giving me good cut-price offers to resubscribe, so I likely won’t be able to consider watching any of those until next Oscar season, when I resubscribe to watch the ceremony.

The other two big streamers had some significant originals too. Netflix offered yet another re-adaptation of classic English literature, Rebecca, plus Aaron Sorkin’s latest, The Trial of the Chicago 7; plus David Attenborough bio/polemic, A Life on Our Planet, and another Adam Sandler thing, Hubie Halloween. Over on Amazon, the headline grabber was Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (as you might’ve noticed in my viewing list, I finally watched the original in preparation, but haven’t watched the sequel yet), and a quartet of original chillers from Blumhouse — Black Box, The Lie, Evil Eye, and Nocturne — which I don’t think have garnered great reviews, but which look interesting nonetheless. Amazon also boasted another quartet this month: the Indiana Jones series. I’ve been meaning to rewatch them forever — indeed, I’ve owned the Blu-ray set since 2012 and never watched it. I ought to get round to that before they turn up on 4K and I buy them again…

And talking of purchases, I’m still failing to stop myself buying tonnes more stuff. Indy may not be on 4K yet, but that other Spielberg-related ’80s geek trilogy, Back to the Future, did make its bow on the format this month. Of course I bought it. I nabbed an even bigger box set in Amazon’s Prime Day sale: the Universal Classic Monsters complete 30-film Blu-ray set, which includes 38 films (because, thanks to Universal’s lazy bundling of existing sets, there are seven duplicate movies in the set (whole discs could’ve just been taken out), and one film they only count as an extra, the Spanish version of Dracula). Other horror-ish pickups included Indicator’s new Fu Manchu set (officially out tomorrow; I’ve already watched the first (#234 above)); Japanese classic House; and another Universal / James Whale / Boris Karloff effort, The Old Dark House (which I watched on streaming back in June and loved). New releases included interactive DC animation Batman: Death in the Family, 88 Films’ latest Jackie Chan classic, Spiritual Kung Fu, and an import of Requiem for a Dream in 4K (it’s out in the UK later this month, but the import was cheaper). Finally, a few more to rewatch in 4K, thanks to a 3-for-2 offer: Bad Times at the El Royale, Die Hard, and Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Whew!


Lockdown 2: Covid Boogaloo.

The Fluctuant Monthly Review of October 2019

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October was very nearly my weakest month in almost a decade (9½ years, to be precise), saved from that fate at literally the last minute, as the story of what may very well be 100 Films’ most fluctuant year continues…


#130a Fifteen (2018), aka Quince
#130b Cumulus (2018)
#130c Pleased to Eat You! (2019)
#130d Special Delivery (2018)
#130e Allan + Waspy (2019)
#131 Teen Titans Go! vs Teen Titans (2019)
#132 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part Two (2012)
#133 For Sama (2019)
#134 The Fear of God: 25 Years of “The Exorcist” (1998)


  • So, I watched four new feature films in October.
  • It was very nearly just three, until I watched that Mark Kermode Exorcist documentary (which was freshly added to BBC iPlayer for Halloween) late last night. And whether or not that counts as a film is debatable. (The one on iPlayer is an extended cut that Kermode calls the “festival cut” because it was only shown at film festivals, which I think means it’s a film, so it counts.)
  • As I said at the start, you’d have to go back 9½ years, to April 2010, to find another month with so few films.
  • But for four you only have to go back to June this year. Nonetheless, that means October is tied as the lowest-totalling month of 2019 (for now…)
  • Unsurprisingly, it’s not even close to any of the usual array of averages I mention, and so it brings them all down — taking October’s average from 14.0 to 13.2; the average for 2019 to date from 14.4 to 13.4; and the rolling average of the last 12 months from 15.4 to 14.4.
  • The run of shorts I watched at the start of the month almost doubles that tally for the year. It was a FilmBath thing, which also means there’ll be more next month.
  • Neither a Blindspot nor a WDYMYHS film this month, which leaves me with quite a few to catch up (seven in total) with just two months of the year left.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched only Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (see Rewatchathon).



The 53rd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
A film that, frankly, I might’ve overlooked were it not for most of the rest of the FilmBath office talking about how great it was, Channel 4’s hard-hitting war documentary For Sama.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is an even easier choice: of course it’s Breaking Dawn: Part Two.

Favourite Short Film of the Month
Sorry to recommend this when I don’t think it’s freely available to see anywhere, but Pleased to Eat You! is bloody brilliant. Look out for it. (If you’re in the area, FilmBath are screening it before Little Monsters.)

Most Disappointing Non-Appearance of the Month
Not meaning to spoil anything (it’s kinda shown in the trailer anyway), but the storyline of Teen Titans Go! vs Teen Titans involves amassing different iterations of the Titans from across the multiverse… but that doesn’t include the cast of the live-action version, Titans. Okay, it might’ve been hard to integrate them with the animation, plus they’d’ve had to actually get the cast together, but it still seemed like a missed opportunity.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Even though I’ve been posting a lot less recently, my number of monthly hits has stayed within the same range — but, over the past few months, the number of unique visitors has started dropping a lot. This month, it dropped to its lowest level since June 2017. Well, fair enough. But what I find weird is that the ups and downs of both views & visitors have always been in sync before, so I don’t know why they’ve started separating. Anyway, this is meant to be about this month’s posts. Despite going up just 38 hours before October ended, the winner is this month’s TV column.



Things aren’t looking any rosier down here. I should be at #41 by now, but instead all I’ve got is this…

#24 Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018)

My brief review (linked above) possibly doesn’t do justice to my feelings about this movie (i.e. I love it!) I mean, I didn’t even mention the guest voice cast, which has some superb cameos. Partly that’s to do with not ruining gags and surprises, I guess. Still, I feel I could’ve and should’ve done better on that one. I did include it on my best-of-year list, at least.


No cinema trips this month, so I’ve missed a bunch of big releases, not least the super-discourse-provoking Joker; the third attempt at Terminator 3, Dark Fate; the inevitable flop Gemini Man (and it was showing in 3D HFR near me too, which I’m never likely to have a chance to see it in again); and the second Shaun the Sheep movie, Farmageddon.

More big-screen misses resurfaced on disc this week, namely X-Men: Dark Phoenix (in 4K) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (in 3D). I also picked up a handful of Criterion titles in a Zoom sale (Do the Right Thing, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, and Panique); a selection of Asian movies (re)released by Arrow (Oldboy, with Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Lady Vengeance) and Eureka (King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan and three films with Sammo Hung (Eastern Condors, The Magnificent Butcher, and The Iron-Fisted Monk); I finally managed to get a great deal on the Spider-Man Legacy 4K set (containing Sam Raimi’s trilogy and Marc Webb’s duology); and I ended the month with Arrow’s new release of An American Werewolf in London, which made me glad I never got round to upgrading from DVD to the previous BD. (Whew! That’s quite a lot, really, isn’t it?)

Finally, there were a few big name releases on streaming this month. Most discussed was probably Netflix’s Breaking Bad sequel, El Camino. Well, I’ve still not seen any of Breaking Bad, so it’ll be a long time before I watch that. Higher on my watch list are the new Steven Soderbergh, The Laundromat, and Eddie Murphy true-story comedy Dolemite is My Name, which looks like a lot of fun. There was also In the Tall Grass, which I’ve heard mixed things about. Amazon had no brand-new additions to equal that lineup, but I did spot a few archive adds of interest, including Robin Williams sci-fi thriller The Final Cut, arthouse classic La Dolce Vita, and Liam Neeson’s latest revenge thriller Cold Pursuit.


FilmBath Festival should guarantee a tally over ten films, as the rollercoaster of my 2019 monthly totals continues.

Another Month Bites the Dust: The Monthly Update for October 2018

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Another month gone and another month gone, another month bites the dust. Hey, I’m gonna get November too! Another month bites the dust!

(So, I didn’t actually get to see Bohemian Rhapsody this month, but I thought of this title and it was too good to miss.)


#207 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011)
#208 Prevenge (2016)
#209 Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016)
#210 TiMER (2009)
#211 Suspiria (1977)
#212 Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999), aka Jin-Rô
#213 Matinee (1993)
#214 Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage (1966), aka Zatôichi umi o wataru
#215 The Night Comes for Us (2018)
#216 The Producers (1967)
#217 Rocky Balboa (2006)
#218 It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
#219 Unsane (2018)
#220 The Lives of Others (2006), aka Das Leben der Anderen
#221 Phantom Thread (2017)
#222 Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Suspiria

Phantom Thread

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  • This month I watched 16 new films. It’s not the best month of the year, but it’s not the worst, either.
  • It beats the October average (previously 13.8, now 14.0), but not the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 21.0, now 20.4), nor the average for 2018 to date (previously 22.9, now 22.2).
  • One of those 16 was Rocky Balboa, which means I’ve now watched all the main Rocky films for the first time this year. That wasn’t the plan when Rocky scraped onto my WDYMYHS list in last place! But at some point I made the conscious decision to finish them (rather than let them spread out indefinitely, like many other series I’m in the middle of), and I’ve enjoyed them all (even Rocky V). With Creed II out at the end of November, I intend to get fully caught up on the entire Rocky legacy very soon.
  • This month’s Blindspot film: colourful and sonically bombastic horror in Dario Argento’s original Suspiria. I’ve been saving it all year for this month (for hopefully obvious reasons), and it didn’t disappoint.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film: superb behind-the-Berlin-wall dramatic thriller The Lives of Others. And, as I only do ten of them, that’s the final WDYMYHS film for 2018!



The 41st Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Lots of enjoyable films this month, including some high-quality Oscar winners… but it was October, aka horror month, which just tips the scales in favour of Suspiria. It was the first Dario Argento film I’ve seen, but I look forward to experiencing more.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
There’s no point beating about the bush: it was definitely The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1.

Best Demonstration That Shooting On Film Is Still Better of the Month
Phantom Thread may’ve looked gorgeous in 35mm-derived UHD, but nothing reminds you of the beauty of film quite like Unsane’s fugly shot-on-iPhone visuals.

Most Gratuitous Nude Scene Without Any Nudity of the Month
Bella and Edward going skinny dipping before finally consummating their marriage was barely necessary, but at least the whole series had basically been building to the point when they finally do it. Megan Fox going for a completely unmotivated nudey dip in Jennifer’s Body, on the other hand, was… well, gratuitous.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
For only the fifth time this year, the winner of this award is not my TV column. In fact, it’s the second most-viewed winner of this award in 2018 (behind Avengers: Infinity War’s huge tally back in April). That would be Netflix’s Indonesian actioner The Night Comes for Us.

Leaving aside new posts, my overall most-read post of the month by an absolute mile (much higher than any other post has ever managed in a single month, barring that time Cracked.com linked to me, which is mainly why I’m mentioning it) was last month’s TV review. Why? Well, it included my review of Bodyguard, which, following its phenomenal success in the UK, debuted on Netflix in the rest of the world last week. It previously won Most-Viewed New Post in September, but in October it received over six times as many hits!



My Rewatchathon continues apace…

#39 School of Rock (2003)
#40 Face/Off (1997)
#41 South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)

Face/Off was one of the films I put into my 100 Favourites without rewatching, but if I had… well, I’m not saying I wouldn’t’ve included it, but I wouldn’t’ve given it 5 stars. It’s sort of terrible… but it goes about its business so outrageously and so ridiculously that it’s also sort of glorious. If it didn’t star Travolta and Cage or wasn’t directed by John Woo, I think it would’ve been a disaster; but they all carry out their roles with OTT abandon, and that’s actually what makes the ludicrous material work.

The South Park movie was going to become the latest in my ongoing series of “films I’ve owned forever on a DVD that I’ve never played, but were available on a streaming service in HD so I watched there instead”. Not that South Park’s self-consciously simplistic animation is crying out for the extra detail of 1080p, but a bit of crispness never hurt. But then it turned out it was only available to stream in SD anyway (goodness knows why — an HD version definitely exists because there’s a Blu-ray available in several territories), so I decided to pop in the DVD after all. But then I couldn’t find where my DVD copy was, so I elected to just watch the streaming version after all. What a story, eh? Look out for the movie adaptation, coming soon…

Oh, and the film was pretty good. It’s nearly 20 years old and has dated somewhat, but the vulgar irreverence has its charms.


A new Coen brothers movie! A new Orson Welles movie! Chris Pine’s penis! And that’s just on Netflix…

The Lost in Time, Like Tears in Rain, Monthly Update for October 2017

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This month includes three shorts and two feature films in the Blade Runner universe, one of them a contender for Film of the Year. Now I just need to dig out the old computer game…


#129 Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
#130 Public Access (1993)
#130a Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 (2017)
#130b 2036: Nexus Dawn (2017)
#130c 2048: Nowhere to Run (2017)
#131 Perfect Sense (2011)
#132 Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
#133 The Straight Story (1999)
#134 Manchester by the Sea (2016)
#135 Assassin’s Creed 3D (2016)
#136 Frost/Nixon (2008)
#137 Vixen (2017)
#138 What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
#139 Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D (2008)
#140 Train to Busan (2016), aka Busanhaeng
#141 Silence (2016)
#142 The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
#143 Rurouni Kenshin (2012), aka Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins
#144 The Heat (2013)
#145 Moon (2009)
#146 RocknRolla (2008)
#147 In the Loop (2009)
#148 Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
#149 Rurouni Kenshin 2: Kyoto Inferno (2014), aka Rurōni Kenshin: Kyôto taika-hen
#150 The Exorcist (1973)
#151 Vehicle 19 (2013)
Blade Runner 2049

Train to Busan

Rurouni Kenshin 2: Kyoto Inferno

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  • With 23 new feature films watched this month, October becomes the best month of 2017 so far, beating the 20 of March.
  • It smashes the October average (12.78), raising it over one whole film in the process (to 13.8). It’s not the highest October ever, but October 2015 is my highest-ever month, so, you know.
  • It also surpasses the average for 2017 to date (14.2; now 15.1) and the rolling average of the last 12 months (13.83; now 14.58).
  • Reaching #151 means 2017 is already my third best year. I’d have to reach #196 for second place, which I’m not on track to do. But come the end of the year I’ll factor in the Rewatchathon too, and that may say differently…
  • This month’s Blindspot film: it was Halloween, so I saved the film still advertised as “the scariest of all time” for October — William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. S’not that scary. S’good, though.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film: with Duncan Jones’ new film coming to Netflix sometime this year, I finally got round to the movie that made his name (and his Twitter name in particular), Moon.



The 29th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
There were a fair few films I enjoyed a lot this month — indeed, when I’m finally done reviewing them, there could be as many as nine five-star ratings handed out (that’d be 39% of this month’s films, well above my average of 16.7%). In most months that’d make this a very tough choice, but after only a little consideration it’s clear that the winner has to be Blade Runner 2049.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Conversely, there were a few clangers too — again, several I’d be happy to give this dishonour to. The most egregious of them all was Vehicle 19, a thriller whose high concept was right up my alley, but was so poorly realised that I’ll be giving it a very low score indeed.

Film I Most Often Forgot to Review This Month
I watched Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows partly so I could review it the day his Thor sequel hit UK cinemas… but I forgot. Then I discovered it was going to be on BBC Two last Sunday night… but that was only 55 minutes before it was due to start. I guess next I’ll aim to tie my review to Thor 3 coming out in the US… but I’ll probably forget.

Most Surprisingly Popular Review of the Month
My most-read post for the past two months in a row is The Past Fortnight on TV #22. Is that because of The Defenders? The Game of Thrones finale? The long-awaited return of Agent Cooper to Twin Peaks? Well, I’m sure they all helped, but my stats say the highest number of referrals from IMDb (far higher than anything else in that post) came from Designated Survivor. Who’d’ve thunk it?

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Reviews of new cinema releases almost always do well, and so two of them duked it out for the top spot this month: Blade Runner 2049, which sat clear for most of the month, and Thor: Ragnarok, which took a run at it in the last week. With 24 hours to go it was still a tight race: they were separated by fewer hits than Thor had typically been getting in a day. But in the end the Marvel movie didn’t get anywhere near that many yesterday, leaving Blade Runner 2049 this month’s victor.



I always thought that the next time I watched Blade Runner it would be to finally see the original theatrical version. That’ll have to wait for another day: because I was rewatching it the night before 2049, it seemed most appropriate to choose the ‘official’ final version.

#36 Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007)
#37 Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
#38 Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
#39 Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
#40 The Reckless Moment (1949)

I’ve got a long list of things to consider rewatching for this project, but that’s frequently going ignored in favour of where my whims take me. So, after randomly alighting on Wayne’s World last month, I fancied carrying on through Mike Myers’ oeuvre, thus all three Austin Powers flicks are here (with my short Letterboxd comments on each linked to above). It’ll be Shrek next. (That was a joke, but, actually, it is something I’ve been planning to rewatch…)

Finally, film noir The Reckless Moment. I first watched it over a decade ago (and reviewed it here) and have been meaning to revisit it for a lot of that time because I thought I’d been unfair to it. Now, I’m not so sure. It’s got a lot of good stuff — the cast, the direction, the concept — but parts of it are rushed or underemphasised. Although it’s not all it could be, I feel like something will keep drawing me back to it. Not any time soon — that’s not in my nature — but someday. Maybe, ironically, some of the appeal lies in the imperfections.


As 2017 hurtles towards 2018, the big screen offers up a death on a train, a marmalade-loving bear, and a league of justice. Feel free to guess which is the only one of those I’m likely to bother going to the cinema for.

The Strange Monthly Update for October 2016

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TV dominated my viewing this month, with whole seasons of Luke Cage, Red Dwarf, and Ripper Street released, plus sundry other shows, new and old — so many I’m not even going to list them. And I’m currently most of the way through Stranger Things too (more on that in next month’s TV round-up).

Despite that, I still found the time to watch a decent number of films — in fact, October isn’t even the lowest-totalling month this year.

And those films were…


#158 The Russia House (1990)
#159 The Quay Brothers in 35mm (2015)
—#159a In Absentia (2000)
—#159b Quay (2015)
—#159c The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) (1990)
—#159d Street of Crocodiles (1986)
#160 A Knight’s Tale (2001)
#161 The Big Short (2015)
#162 Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (2016)
#163 Moneyball (2011)
#164 Raising Arizona (1987)
#165 The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again (2016)
#166 The Transporter Refuelled (2015)
#167 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
#168 Cover Girl (1944)
#169 Doctor Strange (2016)
#170 The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
#171 The Witch (2015), aka The VVitch: A New-England Folktale
The Russia House

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Doctor Strange

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  • I watched 14 new films this month, for the 29th consecutive month with 10+ films.
  • No WDYMYHS film this month, the first time I’ve faltered this year. Concerted effort at a double-bill in November, then.
  • 2016 slips behind 2015 for the first time this month: by the end of October last year I’d reached #172, whereas this year it’s only #171. Not a huge difference, but how much more will that gap widen over the next two months? Well, November 2015 was unexceptional, but I’m away for most of this December (more on that this time next month). Time will tell.
  • Two Le Carré adaptations this month, The Russia House and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Later in November, Our Kind of Traitor is coming to Amazon Prime Video; and of course we had The Night Manager earlier this year. I would say I’ll be Le Carré’d out, but his stuff is so darn good.
  • I can’t spend a whole month watching horror movies like some people do — if I spend a week watching one kind of thing I’ll usually get fed up of it. Nonetheless, I had a whole load of horror movies lined up for the last weekend or so of October… but then Stranger Things happened. Well, it happened in July, but I finally got round to it. Anyway, that’s why the extent of my horror viewing became New Moon and The VVitch.



The 17th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Quite a few films I liked this month, but only a couple that stand out as worthy of a “favourite” award. The biggest pleasant surprise was Cold War spy thriller The Russia House, an underrated Le Carré adaptation.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Oh, but this one’s hard! A couple of weaker films are spared this award by a pair of horrors: Fox’s Rocky Horror remake and the second Twilight movie, New Moon. Which was worse? Rocky Horror was insultingly poor, but it did have a couple of enjoyable parts, whereas New Moon was just dull.

Best Worst Fake Action Movie Title Ever
Face Punch! Whatever else it does or doesn’t offer, I will always be grateful to the Twilight saga for giving us the scene where they decide to go and see Face Punch.

The “Oh, Look Who It Is! This Must’ve Been Before He Was Famous” Award
goes to The Russia House, for featuring an abundance of recognisable British faces in smaller roles, from Martin Clunes as an aide who doesn’t have a single line of dialogue, to David “grandad from Outnumbered” Ryall as Sean Connery’s chum whose face we don’t even see properly because he’s filmed half from behind.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Whether or not people wanted to do the Time Warp again I don’t know, but it certainly seems they wanted to read about it: my review of Fox’s dire The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again isn’t just my most-viewed new post of October, it’s already my most-viewed new post of 2016.



More of the most popular movies of all time in this month’s selection, starring big damn actors, made by big damn directors, and featuring big damn heroes.


As my 10th year of 100 Films heads into the home straight, I’m not only thinking about what the final tally for 2016 will be, but also my total for the past decade of doing this blog. Exciting times.