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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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