Tag Archives: Radiance

January’s Failures

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Let’s start this month with a double failure: having missed Poor Things at FilmBath back in October, I now haven’t seen it on its general release either. It’s still screening near me though, so there’s still a chance I’ll temporarily get over my laziness and head out to see it. Certainly, there’s not been much else on the big screen this month to tempt my out of the house. I’m certain that I’ll eventually watch the likes of Jason Statham actioner The Beekeeper, musical remake Mean Girls, and Christmas-themed The Holdovers (oh yeah, smart idea to release that in January), but they’re also the kind of thing I can wait til streaming for. I know, I know, I’m a bad movie fan. Whatevs. Also on the big screen this month — and more-or-less as likely to make my streaming watchlist someday — were Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, biopic One Life, British post-apocalyptic thriller The End We Start From, haunted swimming pool (I shit you not) horror Night Swim, romantic fantasy All of Us Strangers, and another musical remake, The Color Purple.

Shifting to the streamers, I feel like Amazon scored the most-talked-about film of the month with Saltburn. Proof once again that a theatrical release before a streaming debut helps generate views and chatter, because various other direct-to-streaming debuts — Netflix’s Lift; Amazon’s action comedy Role Play — don’t seem to have generated nearly as much buzz. Heck, Netflix debuted a British sci-fi thriller co-written and -directed by Daniel Kaluuya, and I first heard about it from my mum because she’d seen someone interviewed on The One Show. (That was The Kitchen.) When my mum knows about a film like that before me, I feel like the marketing has gone awry somewhere. On the flipside, Disney+ did such a good job of making me aware The Creator was available to stream, it stopped me buying the physical media release. I nearly did anyway (physical is best; support non-franchise movies; etc), but there’s so much other stuff to fork out for nowadays.

That aside, Sky Cinema still dominate for major new-to-streaming releases over here, this month including the likes of Fast X (a rare case of a Fast & Furious movie retaining its original title for the UK release), Jennifer Lawrence R-rated comedy No Hard Feelings, and, um, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Yeah, they’re still making live-action Transformers movies; though, after I wasn’t so enamoured with Bumblebee, I might finally be done with that franchise. Plus, having commented in my “Best of 2023” post that I should check out the old Fletch movies, both Fletch and Fletch Lives cropped up amongst a load of additions on New Year’s Day. Normally I’d get Sky’s ‘budget’ version, NOW, to watch the Oscars and thus intend to catch up on these films then, but the awards have now moved to ITV over here. Dilemma. I’ll probably just wait until NOW next offer me a discounted membership. That usually happens around Oscar time anyway.

Next, Netflix rustled up Marvel-adjacent vampire superhero Morbius (as with most superhero movies these days, the idea of watching it feels more like mandatory homework than pleasure; although it’s meant to be so bad, I’m curious), plus Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (I found the first surprisingly enjoyable, so I’m definitely down for the second now it’s ‘free’). Plus, thanks to the addition of Michael Bay’s Ambulance, I noticed they have the Danish original, Ambulancen. I imagine it’s quite different; the contrast could be interesting. And talking of world cinema, I really, really wanted to catch Hit the Road while it was streaming on Channel 4 throughout December and the start of January… but didn’t manage it. “Why didn’t you just watch it if you really, really want to?” Y’all heard of family commitments, and work, and… ugh, December (and early January) can be a right pain.

Talking of pains, Apple TV annoyed me — and many others, based on the social media reaction — back in early December by sending out an alert saying Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon was now available to stream, only for it to turn out they meant it was now available to rent; and at the pricey “still in cinemas” rate of £16, at that. Cheeky so-and-sos. They later did the same thing again with Napoleon, but at least I was wise to it second time round. Anyway, Killers of the Flower Moon is now available as expected — as part of an Apple TV+ subscription — but I still haven’t got round to watching it because it’s over 3½ hours long. That’s not the kind of film you just bung on, is it? You’ve got to find time for that sort of thing, haven’t you? Well, I haven’t yet. It’s a fairly high priority, for reasons that should be self-evident, but still, when have I got 3½ hours?

Back to Amazon for more low-key sci-fi with Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal in Foe, plus acclaimed in-depth (look at its length!) folk horror doc Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, which I’ve actually owned on disc for… far too long, considering it’s still sealed. That’s as nothing to Decision to Leave, though, which is now streaming on iPlayer, having been on MUBI, and which I’ve bought on disc… twice, because after I picked up the original Blu-ray (fortunately, on offer) they went and announced a 4K one. More fool me, I guess. iPlayer are almost making a thing of streaming movies I’ve recently bought-but-not-watched on 4K, with In the Heat of the Night, The Others, and Thelma & Louise all popping up recently. On the other hand, MUBI might save me some money, as they added “unique take on the neo-noir genre” Suzhou River shortly after Radiance announced a disc release for March. I like supporting boutique labels, but I’ve already blind-bought plenty of Radiance titles — my conscience can withstand one (legal) “try before you buy” (assuming I actually get round to it…)

All this talk of purchases inevitably brings us round to what I did buy this month. It’s felt quiet at times, but the final list looks pretty long. I think that’s in part because several are titles I was expecting in December that rolled over to the new year, for one reason or another (delays in either shipping or getting through the postal system, mainly). The most forgivable are those that had to come from overseas, including 4Ks of Dellamorte Dellamore (aka Cemetery Man) from the US and Possession from Australia (I probably would’ve held out for the forthcoming UK release from Second Sight, if they’d bothered to announce it before I ordered this one). Other 4Ks included Rio Bravo (for Blindspot), Sisu, and Vanilla Sky (which I haven’t seen since its DVD).

From Warner Archive’s burgeoning UK range, I picked up early horrors Doctor X and Isle of the Dead (the latter mainly because I happened to see it reduced), plus Fritz Lang’s US debut, Fury. As is now almost customary, there was martial arts action from Eureka in the form of Kung Fu Cult Master, When Taekwondo Strikes, and Samurai Wolf I+II (the latter meriting inclusion in the Masters of Cinema range). Plus, from 88 Films, The Inspector Wears Skirts. I could more than fuel the Genre portion of my Challenge with new purchases, never mind the massive backlog I’ve got. Oh well.

The most-represented label this month was Radiance — the aforementioned postal/shipping delays meant I got two parcels from them this month, with both December and January releases, including titles from their partner labels. The latter included Palme d’Or-nominated Brazilian crime drama Black God, White Devil; giallo Murder Obsession; and an Italian crime drama that apparently sits at the intersection of gialli and poliziotteschi, Death Occurred Last Night. From the label’s own output there was even more Italian crime in Goodbye & Amen; “a ferocious satire on Japan’s post-war economic miracle”, Elegant Beast; “pitch black neo-noir” I, the Executioner; Cannes Grand Jury Prize-winning marital drama The Sting of Death; and a box set of World Noir, which is excitingly labelled “Vol.1”, and contains examples of the genre from Japan (I Am Waiting), France (Witness in the City), and, once again, Italy (The Facts of Murder). Now, I just need to actually watch some of those before World Noir joins Columbia Noir and Universal Noir as a pile of exciting but unplayed box sets…

January’s Failures

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I can’t speak for the whole country, but Avatar: The Way of Water seems to have still been the big title at the cinema here throughout January. By which I mean, my local still had it on their largest screen in most of the prime time-slots. But then, there’s been nothing else truly “blockbustery” to challenge its need for the grandest scale possible. There have been significant releases, sure; and there’s always the “every film should be seen on the biggest screen possible” argument; but nothing else came out in January that’s so expressly about visual spectacle. Any crowdpleasers that have turned up — horror M3GAN; Gerard Butler vehicle Plane; Tom Hanks comedy A Man Called Otto — hardly feel of the same scale.

I use the term “crowdpleasers” to differentiate those films from most of the UK’s January release slate, which is, as usual, dominated by awards season stuff that we’ve had to wait for: Babylon, Empire of Light, The Fabelmans, Tár, Till… Plus, limited releases that caught my eye included the new one from Mark “Bait” Jenkin, Enys Men (out on Blu-ray from the BFI in June), and Iranian thriller Holy Spider (which will be on MUBI in March and Blu-ray in April).

The streamers also seemed to be mainly trading in hangovers from last year, with Netflix releasing starry period mystery-thriller The Pale Blue Eye (reaction seems to have been mixed, but it looks really good), Amazon Prime offering Emma Thompson sex drama Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Disney+ generating plenty of discourse with The Menu, and even MUBI getting in on the act with awards contender Aftersun. Netflix did premiere a few brand-new things, though I’ve not come across a single mention of Bank of Dave, word has been poor about race/generation-based comedy You People, and the new sci-fi from Train to Busan writer-director Yeon Sang-Ho, JUNG_E, didn’t receive strong notices either. This is why I ended up watching Shotgun Wedding as my new film for January…

There was the usual mass of catalogue additions across all the streamers to bulk out my never-ending watchlists. Particular titles of note included, believe it or not, Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween, which I only note because it was on my first-ever list of 50 missed films but, in the intervening decade-and-a-half, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it on a streaming service before. Maybe it’s a sign I should give it a go. Maybe not. That’s on Netflix, along with The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (I liked the first one enough to put the second my watchlist, but not enough to rush to see it, clearly), Mars One (I’ve actually no idea what this is, but it keeps coming up on my Letterboxd under “popular films you’ve not seen”), and Vesper (a low-budget British young-adult sci-fi that I heard about somewhere and sounded quite good). Moving on to Amazon Prime were Judas and the Black Messiah and Mortal Kombat (the recent one), while I was surprised that Sky Cinema became home to David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. I think I’ll wait for Second Sight’s 4K disc release, thanks.

A couple of the streamers boasted themed seasons this month. MUBI had a run of debuts, featuring filmmakers as diverse as Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Love Is Colder Than Death, an awesome title) and Paul W.S. Anderson (Shopping). All 4 have had a run of Steven Spielberg’s major works, all of which I’ve seen, but it did remind me that I bought his brilliant The Adventures of Tintin in 3D yonks ago and still haven’t got round to watching it. Plus I loved it, so it’s long overdue a rewatch anyway.

Talking of purchases, of course my habit continued unabated throughout January. It began with some hangovers from last year — orders from the US and Australia that took longer than expected to turn up, thanks to postal strikes and general season delays. From Oz, some new Imprint titles, including the second volume of their After Dark: Neo-Noir Cinema series, ’50s post-apocalyptic sci-fi On the Beach, and Akira Kurosawa’s Russian feature, Dersu Uzala. My order from the US was an even more ragtag bunch, starting with a few recent classic 3D releases: The Diamond Wizard and I, the Jury, the latter of which also comes with an apparently-underwhelming 4K copy. Also on 4K were George Miller’s latest, Three Thousand Years of Longing, Kino’s release of The Usual Suspects (which I never bought on Blu, so that’s a healthy upgrade), and, on something of a whim, Shout’s The Company of Wolves. Also in the box were a couple of titles I’ve had on standby for a while ready to bulk out a US order: Criterion’s edition of Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman and Warner Archive’s release of A Night at the Opera. Finally, the US-only “yellow” set from Arrow’s Giallo Essentials range, which includes Strip Nude for Your Killer, Torso, and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?

I was buying that anyway, but after deciding to make gialli a category in my 2023 Challenge, I also picked up a couple more titles that caught my eye while going through lists of the genre; namely, Death Laid an Egg and The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh. Those were both UK releases; I’ve got my eye on a couple more next time I do a US bulk order. I also upgraded my copy of Arrow’s Phenomena to the 4K version, having noticed that some of their Argento 4K sets are beginning to go out of print (replaced by standard editions, at least) and this one did look like a noticeable upgrade (I didn’t bother with Bird with a Crystal Plumage because it didn’t seem that big a jump from the existing Blu-ray).

There’s normally a trickle of 4K titles in these failure posts, and I’ve already mentioned six, but there were even more this month: Arrow’s recent-ish reissue of Silent Running; Jordan Peele’s Nope on offer; similarly, the Bad Boys trilogy and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood all in a 2-for-1 type deal; plus nice editions of The Green Mile and Reservoir Dogs (the Steelbook with the slipcover that makes his ear come off. Hilarity). Finally, the second volume of the Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection, which I’d intended to get at some point anyway, but was on a reasonable offer and includes Shadow of a Doubt, which I’ll be watching sometime this year for WDYMYHS.

All those titles — so, so many titles — and I don’t think I’ve mentioned a single brand-new release yet. Most notable there is my first batch of titles from new label Radiance, all of which are blind-buy punts (well, so is an awful lot of what I buy, to be fair, but I don’t think I’d even heard of any of these before I dived in). They include yakuza classic Big Time Gambling Boss, Palme d’Or-winning social drama The Working Class Goes to Heaven, ‘lost’ ’60s serial killer thriller A Woman Kills, and a crime comedy from the director of the brilliant Grosse Pointe Blank, Miami Blues. They’re all very handsome editions, so hopefully the content lives up to the thoughtful packaging. I’ve already got a few more of their releases on preorder.

Talking of preorders turning up, I spent far too much money in All the Anime’s pre-Christmas preorder announcements/sale, but its finally beginning to bear fruit, with Liz and the Blue Bird and The Deer King both turning up (weeks before their official dates) this month. I didn’t realise the former was a spinoff from the series Sound! Euphonium — I’ve heard of it (and decided to buy it) because it’s a staple of the mid-range on Letterboxd’s official list of the 100 highest-rated feature-length animated films. I was briefly worried (“will I need to have seen other stuff to ‘get’ it?”), until I remembered the Letterbox list explicitly excludes “sequels to shows or anime series […] that need greater context before watching are not included”. Phew!

Finally, in the new-new pile we can also find Eureka’s editions of Sergio Sollima Spaghetti Western Run, Man, Run and — last but not least, one of the film’s in this month’s header image — Michelle Yeoh actioner Royal Warriors.