Tag Archives: September

The Steamy Monthly Review of September 2025

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Ooh, saucy…

Nah, actually. The title was inspired by this turn of events: I recently won a Steam Deck (yep, won — lucky me!), and have consequently spent a disproportionate amount of my free time playing around with it, and generally getting back into gaming along with it. I imagine at some point the shine of newness will wear off, though hopefully not entirely because I’ve gone a bit crazy with buying stuff to play. Brand-new high-profile titles are insanely expensive nowadays, as the gaming media will often harp on about, but older games and indie titles regularly go for insanely low prices — which is great if you’re catching up on the past 20-ish years of the medium… though it does lead to your library bulging pretty quickly. Or it does if you’re me.

Anyway, naturally there was a knock-on effect on my film viewing. Not disastrous, but it does mean I failed to achieve ten first-time watches for the second time this year. Well, next month is always a fresh chance to start a new run.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#73 7 Women and a Murder (2021) — Rewatch #8
#74 KPop Demon Hunters (2025) — New Film #9
#75 An Aleutian Adventure (1920s) — Failure #9
#76 The Italian Connection (1972) — Genre #6
#77 Rebel Without a Cause (1977) — Blindspot #9
#78 9 (2009) — 50 Unseen #9
#79 The City of Lost Children (1995) — WDYMYHS #9
#80 Drive-Away Dolls (2025) — 50 Unseen #10


  • I watched eight feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • I remain ahead of pace for the year (to be at pace, September would end on #74), though the “whole month ahead” lead I had back in March, May and June is definitively over for the year (I would’ve needed to get to #83 to achieve it this month).
  • I say “definitively” because of the limitations on certain categories: there are five that should feature every month, meaning the highest point I could end October is #90, and pace for the end of November is #91.
  • Of course, as I mentioned in the intro, I didn’t hit my monthly target of ten first-time watches, so it’s not all sunshine and roses.
  • The Italian Connection is the second film in director Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu trilogy. Its predecessor, Milano Calibro 9, was the first film I watched for this year’s Genre category. I’ll give you one guess which film I’ve got earmarked to include among the remaining four Genre films…
  • I’d owned 9 on Blu-ray for 15 years, never played, before I finally watched it this month. I’m ridiculous like that — 9 is far from alone in suffering such a fate. And it might have stayed unplayed and mostly forgotten (as I’m sure many other things are, especially titles on DVD), were it not for it being on one of my 50 Unseen lists, which means it gets brought to mind every now and then, whenever I peruse that catalogue of failures for something to belatedly watch. I don’t watch as many of those as I’d like nowadays, but they’re still a useful reminder.
  • Talking of 50 Unseen, I finished that category this month. The final tally sees half of the films coming from last year and half from years before that. Seems like a pretty good balance to me.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was ’50s teen classic Rebel Without a Cause.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was dark steampunk fairytale The City of Lost Children.
  • When I decided to watch The City of Lost Children, I thought how it was nice that for once I was watching a disc I’d only bought relatively recently. Then I looked it up and discovered I purchased it 2½ years ago. Oh well.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched An Aleutian Adventure and KPop Demon Hunters.



The 124th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Last weekend came in swinging here: September had been an above-adequate (no bad films) but unexceptional month (like much of 2025 has been — my 5-star list is looking very thin), but then I watched a trio of films that impressed me mightily. Of those, my pick is probably Rebel Without a Cause. I thought I knew what it was going to be, and it wasn’t; not exactly. Also, James Dean really was very good.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This feels harsh — as this category sometimes does by its very nature (I’m not going to go out of my way to watch one certified-awful film every month just to guarantee a ‘winner’) — because 9 actually has some very strong points… it just drops the ball on some of the fundamentals underpinning those, and thus is the least-good film I watched this month.


It’s creepy and it’s kooky, mysterious and spooky, it’s all together ooky… and yet it’s all just because of one day right at the end. Any excuse, I guess. Certainly, I’ve got a few horror and horror-adjacent films lined up to try to watch in October, and maybe I’ll focus on finding some more too.

September’s Failures

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

I’m generally a fan of the work of Tim Burton (even his oft-derided later-career stuff), but I’ve never been particularly fond of Beetlejuice (as I wrote on Letterboxd last time I watched it, “I’d enjoy this a lot more if Betelgeuse wasn’t in it”), so I certainly wasn’t rushing out to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at the cinema, though I’ll inevitably catch it once it’s streaming somewhere. Elsewise, it felt like this month cinemas were mostly full of smaller or more unusual fare — some of it praised, some of it hated, some of it ignored, but none of it huge box office fodder. Of course, there’s Francis Ford Coppola’s new, possibly final, long-awaited work, Megalopolis, which certainly sounds like… an experience; and column inches have also been generated by The Substance. Speaking of horror, there was also Starve Acre, and Speak No Evil, and Strange Darling, and Never Let Go, and the latest attempt at Mike Mignola’s comic book creation, Hellboy: The Crooked Man. Apparently Saoirse Ronan is very good in The Outrun; and, talking of star names, The Critic boasts Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Ben Barnes, Alfred Enoch, Romola Garai, and Lesley Manville in a 1930s-set thriller, which sounds great, although the reviews seem to have been muted. Anyway, most of that will end up on future to-see lists, with varying degrees of importance.

The streamers also proffered more than their usual share of high-profile-ish originals — it must be that time of year. Leading the pack was Jeremy Saulnier’s Rambo-esque Rebel Ridge on Netflix, who also deployed Will Ferrell in road trip documentary Will & Harper, and seem to have sunk young adult dystopia adaptation Uglies before it even began by casting a bunch of pretty people. Plus ça change. Apple TV+ probably wins for star names thanks to George Clooney and Brad Pitt teaming up for Wolfs, though Prime Video also had plenty of recognisable faces to show off, albeit in films that seem to have mostly met with scorn: Samuel L Jackson and Vincent Cassel in Scotland-set serial killer thriller Damaged; tepid neo-noir Killer Heat with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Richard Madden, and Shailene Woodley; and what looks to be some kind of sci-fi actioner, Breathe (I’m going off the poster and logline here, because I’ve not seen anybody talk about it), which stars Jennifer Hudson and Milla Jovovich, along with Sam Worthington and Quvenzhané Wallis (remember her? The nine-year-old from Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I still haven’t quite got round to watching. She’s 21 now).

Talking of the surprising passage of time, I’ve got the Blu-ray of The Fall sat on a shelf somewhere waiting to be watched, and I think before I upgraded to that I owned the DVD, but MUBI have released a shiny new 4K restoration. For a film renowned for its visual splendour, I’m now divided about which way to watch it first… at least until someone releases it on UHD Blu-ray, I buy that, and leave it on my shelf for ‘sometime’. Meanwhile, the nearest thing Disney+ could muster to a premiere was the streaming debut of theatrical hit Inside Out 2. For a service that wants to compete with Netflix, they don’t seem to release a whole lot of content. Maybe they’ve realised their real value lies in permanent access to their extensive back catalogue (especially for kids who just want to watch their favourites on loop), so why invest too much in new stuff? Or maybe they’re just going through a fallow period, who knows.

Sky Cinema / NOW remain the go-to for most post-theatrical streaming debuts, although their slate this month possibly reflects the thinness of the big-screen docket in recent times. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was their only new blockbuster offering, alongside swashbuckling second part The Three Musketeers: Milady, Holocaust drama One Life, and a couple of comedies: Paint (with Owen Wilson as a Bob Ross-inspired TV artist) and I Used to Be Funny (with Rachel Sennott of Shiva Baby and Bottoms, both of which I loved; though the key to their success may be writer-director Emma Seligman). They had an original or two too, but Sky Originals tend to be of even lower worth than Netflix’s, so are rarely worth mentioning. That said, Frank Grillo-starring actioner Hounds of War is the kind of thing I’d’ve surely bunged on once upon a time… but I’ve got too much I really want to catch up on to spend time on stuff like that nowadays.

Talking of which, catching my eye among back catalogue additions this month were Watcher on Netflix, which Mike Flanagan describes as “the closest a modern film has come to earning the word ‘Hitchcockian’ […] Highly recommended for fans of razor sharp thrillers”. Other reviews and scores are distinctly lower, but hey, people en masse can definitely be wrong. Also of note on Netflix is a film added back in April, Laapataa Ladies, but which has now entered the IMDb Top 250 — albeit hovering around #249 and #250, so it likely won’t last. Plus another one of those Liam Neeson old-man actioners, Memory, which (ironically) I don’t remember ever hearing of before, but it’s directed by Martin Campbell and co-stars Guy Peace and Monica Bellucci, so maybe it’s worth a look. Further catalogue additions worthy of bunging on my watchlists were ten-a-penny, as usual, but ones I’m going to specifically mention just so they’re an option for my Challenge in October included The Purge: Election Year (the whole series seems to be available on multiple platforms right now); 8 Mile, Hope and Glory, Magic Mike, and, to rewatch, the original Point Break (all Amazon Prime); on Disney+, Macross Plus (either in movie or series form, and considerably cheaper than Anime Ltd’s £150 version); Host and The Outfit on iPlayer; Morbius and Pig on Channel 4, plus a bunch of stuff I own on 4K disc and really should have got round to, like Event Horizon, The Northman, Old, Sleepy Hollow, and Three Thousand Years of Longing.

Stuff on disc I haven’t got round to watching, you say? Oh yes, there’s plenty of new stuff in that category, too. Quite a few headline-worthy 4Ks this past month, but top of the bunch is probably Second Sight’s long-awaited release of The Hitcher. Regular readers may recall I included the film in my 2022 WDYMYHS selection, on the assumption Second Sight’s release would be out before the end of that year. Well, seems it took a whole two years longer than expected. Is it worth the wait? I dunno, I haven’t watched it, have I! In fairness, it turned up right at the end of the month. A top contender for October viewing, then. As is Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, purely because I’ve been looking forward to it (the trilogy that precedes it having been so good) and have been holding off since its appearance on Disney+ landed it in August’s failures. Also brand-new on 4K was Hayao Miyazaki’s latest last film, The Boy and the Heron, while catalogue titles included Arrow’s edition of The Chronicles of Riddick (I’d intended to hold off on that, but then it seemed to be selling out already) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur from Kino.

The single label taking most of my dough this month was probably 88 Films, starting with more 4K martial acts action starring Jet Li in The Bodyguard from Beijing and The Tai-Chi Master, and Jackie Chan in Project A and Project A: Part II (a US-only collection that they, shh, helpfully sold on their UK site). Then, in regular ol’ 1080p, they also put out Island of Fire and “rediscovered classic” (we’ll see) To Kill a Mastermind; plus a New York-set drama starring Chow Yun-Fat, An Autumn’s Tale, and another addition to their Tigon horror range, The Sorcerers (I can’t say I’m picking up every title they’re putting out in that collection, but some appeal). Another label who always try to hoover up the contents of my bank account are Radiance, this month with a trio of gangster-related flicks: A Man on His Knees, Tattooed Life, and We Still Kill the Old Way (a ’70s Italian thriller, not that trashy-looking Brit flick of the same title from the mid 2010s). More crime drama courtesy of Arrow in early Kinji Fukasaku effort The Threat, while some welcome variety comes courtesy of the BFI’s genre-hopping five-film collection of Michael Powell’s early works, titled Michael Powell: Early Works.

I should certainly get started on all of that, right? Except I’m away from home this week, so I definitely won’t be watching any of it imminently. And then there’s bound to be something new coming out…

September’s Failures

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I was nearly tempted out to the actual cinema again in September. Ever since I first started seeing trailers for Gareth Edwards’s The Creator, I thought it looked promising — especially as I’ve enjoyed all of his previous films — and the recent word of mouth, since it started screening for critics, has suggested it would live up to those expectations. But it’s only just come out, and I was busy this weekend, so hopefully I can now make time for it in the next week or two.

Elsewhere, a lot of cinema bows this month were new entries in series, most of them ones I follow. A Haunting in Venice is the third of Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot adaptations. If its box office is anything to go by, it might be the last. I hope not, because I’ve been enjoying them. The Saw series returned from the dead — again — with Saw X. It’s a franchise of variable quality, but one I actually enjoy overall, though I never rush to catch a new instalment. I’ll be sure to catch it eventually, probably once it’s available on a service I already subscribe to. The same goes for the belated fourth entry in the Expendables series, which is apparently officially titled Expend4bles. It’s meant to be pretty awful, but then people have said that about every other film in the series so far, and I’ve mostly thought they were… alright. So, yeah, another one I’ll catch eventually. And the same can be said again of The Equalizer 3. Quite how that’s legged out to a trilogy, I don’t know — again, I’d describe each of the previous films as “alright”, but nothing about them screams “more is required”. But — as with all the others in this paragraph — I like them enough to watch it eventually.

An even more unlikely threequel is My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. I remember the first one being a breakout hit back in 2002, and the first sequel — coming almost 15 years later — feeling like a desperate attempt to revive a once-popular-but-now-forgotten phenomenon. Quite how that non-event led to a third go-round, I don’t know. At almost the other end of the spectrum, Past Lives also hit UK screens last month. Well, I don’t know where it sits on that spectrum — I don’t really know what it’s about, other than people seem to like it because I’ve seen it ranked highly on Letterboxd. Very much the kind of film I’m not going to rush to the cinema to see, but if it’s that good, I’ll find out what it actually is — and watch it, no doubt — at some point in the future.

As for interesting premieres on streaming, there really only seemed to be two, both released right at the end of the month — and one of them isn’t even a film. That would be Wes Anderson’s collection of Roald Dahl-adapted shorts for Netflix, led by The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and continuing with The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison. I’ve seen some query why these weren’t bundled into a portmanteau feature, a la the Coen brothers’ Netflix film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; or at least lumped together as a ‘series’, rather than having their own separate listings. But I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that this is how Anderson wanted it; for them to be considered as four distinct shorts, not a de facto feature.

The other title of note was No One Will Save You on Disney+ (or Hulu if you’re in the States). I believe it’s some kind of sci-fi/horror movie that’s told without any dialogue, but I confess I don’t really know too much about it, because I hadn’t even heard of it before the day it came out, when I kept seeing critics pointing it out on Twitter, as if I would know what it was. Anyway, I’ve not read too much more for the sake of staying spoiler free, but it sounds intriguing. That said, there were a couple of other streaming debuts this month, but I find it hard to get excited for Robert Rodriguez rebooting Spy Kids again in Spy Kids: Armageddon, and Netflix don’t seem to have done much to push Reptile beyond “it stars Benicio del Toro” — if I couldn’t tell you much about No One Will Save You, I could tell you even less about that.

Of course, there were the usual array of theatrical releases making their streaming debuts. Disney continue to keep their theatrical releases as short as possible, with the live-action The Little Mermaid and Pixar’s Elemental already available to stream. Things take a little longer to reach Sky Cinema, where this month the most noteworthy additions were titles I own on disc but haven’t got round to: Knock at the Cabin, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and Scream VI; plus Tár, which I’ve now mentioned in this column three months on the trot. Really ought to get round to it…

In terms if back catalogue titles, MUBI proved the most interesting, with the likes of David Lynch’s obscure 1988 short The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and Nothing Sacred, a film I’d never heard of but which they bill as “an utterly charming, wisecrack-filled screwball comedy shot in the vibrantly weird palette of early Technicolor”. Sounds neat. Similarly niche is Róise & Frank, which I remember noting when it screened at FilmBath last year — because it’s about a widow who meets a dog she believes is her husband reincarnated, and regular readers will know how much I love a “cute dog” movie — and now it’s as accessible as can be on iPlayer.

Netflix’s offerings were, unsurprisingly, a bit more mainstream, including Wonder Woman 1984 (which I’ve had downloaded in 3D for yonks — I’m very behind on superhero movies), recent-ish reboots like Mortal Kombat and Tom & Jerry, Covid-era heist thriller Locked Down, plus both the 2013 Evil Dead remake/reboot/whatever and this year’s Evil Dead Rise. Now there’s a franchise I need to re-engage with the whole history of — I saw the original three when I was a bit too young to really ‘get it’, and have long meant to revisit them. Similar could be said of an otherwise very different film, The Usual Suspects, which popped up on Amazon — although I recently imported the US 4K release for that very reason. Still, it’s about the only noteworthy thing appearing on Prime this month.

Talking of stuff I’ve bought and not got round to… well, that’s the story of my Blu-ray collection, really. Now that I look at the list, a lot of it strikes me as horror or horror-adjacent, so perhaps it was best saved for October anywhere. I’m talking the likes of new 4K releases for Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, It Follows, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, and British folk horror classic The Wicker Man; the BFI releasing Ken Russell’s Gothic; and a package of sale purchases from Severin including 4K releases of Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre, plus regular Blu-rays of bizarre-sounding sequel Nosferatu in Venice, giallo The Fourth Victim, and giallo miniseries Private Crimes.

It wasn’t all October-appropriate fare dropping through my letterbox last month, though. There were animated superheroes thanks to 4K releases of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (which I need to precede with a long-overdue play of my imported 3D copy of the first film); film noir, both widely acclaimed (Eureka’s 4K release of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil) and deep cuts (Arrow’s third volume of Four Film Noir Classics, featuring Calcutta, Ride the Pink Horse, Outside the Law, and The Female Animal). There were sundry others, too: I finally picked up Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings in 3D (I quite liked it when I first watched it, and it was actually shot in 3D, so has long been on my “one day” list), and the BFI were finally able to release Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (I seem to remember they had it on the schedule years ago and had to cancel it?) And as if that wasn’t enough, my replacement disc for Vinegar Syndrome’s Showgirls 4K finally arrived as well.

So, which of these delights will end up qualifying for my Challenge as September’s Failure? Your guess is as good as mine. But despite all the money sunk on discs, I wouldn’t be surprised if the streaming cute dog film won out…

The “All Is Not Lost” Monthly Review of September 2023

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You may remember that, at the end of August’s monthly review, I forecast some potential problems for this month with regards to staying on track with my Challenge; but that there was also the potential boon of some time off. Of course, as anyone who read my mid-month update will already know, that spot of good fortune quickly disappeared thanks to some additional hurdles.

Nonetheless, all is not lost. Although I had hoped for a successful September, but have ended up with a lesser one, it wasn’t a total disaster: a few well-chosen watches kept the Challenge ticking over, and I’m notably ahead of where I was at this point last year. Of course, I ultimately chose to abandon the Challenge in 2022, so it’s hardly a positive benchmark. Still, despite September’s woes, I’m hoping to avoid such a fate this year.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#66 The Pied Piper (1986) — Failures #9
#67 The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) — Genre #3
#68 Spy (2015) — Rewatch #9
#69 Fisherman’s Friends: One and All (2022) — Wildcard #7
#70 Nightmare Alley (1947) — WDYMYHS #8
#71 Death on the Nile (2022) — Physical Media #10
#72 The Man Who Was Nobody (1960) — Wildcard #8


  • I watched six feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • Four of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with three rewatches.
  • I’m two films behind where I should be at the end of September to keep my Challenge on perfect track, which obviously isn’t ideal, but also isn’t the end of the world. Really, it just means I have to average 9.3 films per month for the rest of the year instead of 8.7 — which, either way, rounds to 9.
  • As you may have noticed, two more Wildcards were used this month. Fisherman’s Friends 2 is an additional rewatch, while I’ve counted Edgar Wallace mystery The Man Who Was Nobody as Series Progression #11 (it could equally have been Physical Media #11, as it was on DVD).
  • I’ve taken so long getting round to watching gialli for my Genre category that this month’s — only my third — bumped my first off the bottom of my Recently Watched page.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film was Nightmare Alley — the 1947 original, of course, not Guillermo del Toro’s re-adaptation. Though I’m even more curious to see that now, for the comparison.
  • Really, I needed to watch two WDYMYHS films to catch up; though with things being how they were, even watching one feels like an achievement. Certainly, I didn’t watch any Blindspot films — so both categories enter October in catch-up mode.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Pied Piper.
  • A final point: despite all my aforementioned struggles, if we count both new films and rewatches, at the end of September I hit exactly 100 feature films watched in 2023. So that’s nice.

And talking of 100 somethings…



The 100th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

100 — it’s a big and significant number. Heck, I’ve themed an entire site around it. Although, with a monthly event like the Arbies, it’s a bit of an odd one: it represents 8⅓ years of awards-giving. Hey-ho, let’s roll with it.

To mark the occasion, as well as the usual three awards I hand out these days (I keep meaning to go back to the old five, but it takes that bit more time each month and so I keep putting it off), there’s the “Arbie of Arbies” — my most favourite of the 100 films to win Favourite Film of the Month. More on that at the end. First, this month’s favourite…

Favourite Film of the Month
Only six films to choose between this month, but several were worthy of this honour. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage might be the best giallo I’ve seen so far (out of, um, three), but The Pied Piper is a truly remarkable feat of animation, silent filmmaking, and Gothic storytelling.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
With only six films to choose from, competition was hardly fierce; indeed, the winner of this category was an easy pick: Edgar Wallace programmer The Man Who Was Nobody. “Easy” in this case not because it’s a terrible film, but because the other five were so much better — this was certainly the least successful at what it set out to do.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
In a minor change from most of 2023, there were three posts eligible this month — the usual review and “failures” from the previous month, plus my mid-month progress update. None really set my stats alight, but — for the fifth month running — it was the monthly review that won out.

And the “Arbie of Arbies” goes to…
With 100 films to choose from, this was naturally a tricky proposition. Some were ruled out easily — the fact my Favourite Film is awarded from each month’s pool of new viewing means some films were good for that month but perhaps not so fantastic overall. Conversely, films that have grown in my estimations over time may have missed out due to being beaten by something even better (or that seemed even better at the time) in their original month. Never mind — it’s all just a bit of fun, anyway.

So, having gone back all over all 100 winners (including this month’s, obv), and narrowed it down to a quick initial shortlist (of 16), then halving that number, then umming and ahhing over the remaining eight (for a relatively short period of time because, as I said, it’s just a bit of fun), I’m declaring the winner to be Mission: Impossible – Fallout. It was a tough choice (the remainder of the “top eight” included another Mission: Impossible, two Denis Villeneuves, a Christmas classic, at least one modern action masterpiece, and several films that spoke to me personally even if the broader reception was more divided), but this is what I’ve landed on today.


I’m hoping to get at least somewhat back on track. As I said earlier, I’m not actually far off it, but with several categories complete or almost complete, it’s the others (Blindspot, WDYMYHS, and, especially, Genre) that really need attention. The biggest potential barrier (as mentioned in my mid-month piece) is that I’ve committed myself to a pile of Doctor Who watching, reading, and listening in honour of the series’ 60th anniversary. Will that ruin my film viewing? Will I be able to find a harmonious balance? Only time will tell (appropriately enough).

Also next month, it’s the FilmBath Festival. I haven’t actually attended for a few years, but I’ve got a couple of tickets booked this time — though I think only one of the films I’m seeing will qualify for the Challenge. Nonetheless, more on that next month.

And then there’s the Halloween of it all. Not for me, spending a whole month watching just one genre. Though I feel like I should do it one year, just to have done it. But 2023 will not be that year.

What a waste of a week

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Well, well, well — look who it is! Me, that’s who, with this rare-for-2023 mid-month post. Whatever’s going on?

Not much, actually — and that’s the problem. You see, as I mentioned in my August review, I’ve just left one job and am about to start another, with (to quote myself) “a small amount of time off in between”. That was 11 days, to be precise, which are now coming to an end. My plan for that time (as has been my plan for most of my times off in the past 17 years or so) had been to “cram a bunch of films in… I’ve certainly got plenty that I want to catch up on.”

Dear reader, I have not crammed. In fact, I have watched… just checking my notes, adding them all up… one (1) film.

Look, for once it’s not my fault. Yes, sure, I have been spending some time on Twitter X… no, let’s keep calling it Twitter. And yes, that site is often a drain on my time — but that’s not what happened here. Rather, I’ve had an eye infection. It’s actually been rolling on for months, waxing and waning, which is why I haven’t really had it treated (I got over-the-counter stuff, which didn’t work, which in itself is surely a factor in it being a longer-term problem). Now, I’ve battled through this affliction on other occasions — it was present to some extent when I made all those cinema trips in July, for instance. I say “battled” — it’s often been ‘not that bad’; a minor nuisance rather than a choice-limiting irritant. But last weekend it spread to the other eye, since when it’s been a right pain; and getting appointments and whatnot… well, anyone who’s had to deal with the NHS in recent times will know what a palaver that can be.

Consequently, I haven’t wanted to watch any films. Sure, I could’ve tried; but anything in 4K or 3D I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate fully, and anything with subtitles throughout would have been a headache; and while those were the most rule-out-able, anything else would’ve been compromised, and I don’t like that kind of compromise if I can help it. So, I’ve not watched anything this week. I’ve tried to put my time towards other forms of entertainment that I sometimes overlook in favour of films: reading books and comics; listening to audio dramas; playing games. (Of course, some of these are also vision-based, but I find them less bad than films at the moment — if my eyes begin to become a problem, I can take the time to clear or rest them before continuing. You can pause a film, obviously, but I find it less convenient to do so when it’s required frequently.)

And that’s how we come to this: a week wasted… although not completely wasted; but I still feel a bit wasted, because it’s meant I’ve fallen further behind on my Challenge when I had hoped to stay caught up, and possibly even get a bit ahead, before I start this new job, which itself may have a negative effect. Damn.

Plus, I’m going to further self-sabotage my film-watching efforts over the next couple of months, thanks to planning a personal celebration of Doctor Who for its 60th anniversary. In the run up to the venerable sci-fi series’ birthday (23rd November), which will bring the broadcast of three new episodes (probably throughout November, but the airdates haven’t been confirmed), I’ve plotted out my own series of viewings, readings, and listenings to mark the occasion — a collection of episodes, audios, books, comics, and the like that covers every canonical Doctor, and therefore is going to take some time to get through. All fun and exciting, and I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t want to (and maybe I’ll post some more about it here at some point, although there are no films involved so I ‘shouldn’t’ really), but it’s not conducive to catching up on a stalled Challenge. Oh dear. Well, maybe I’ll just cram ’em in throughout December instead…

Oh, and back to the eyes: I’ve got a hospital appointment on Tuesday. Hopefully they’ll give me some stronger antibiotics or something that’ll get it all cleared up, allowing my comfortable film viewing to resume before too long. Whether the whole of September becomes a washout or not, I’ll let you know on October 1st.

September’s Failures

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Arguably my true failings his month were not watching any Blindspot or “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen” films, plus all the other 100 Films Challenge categories I’m behind on. But, as usual, this column will focus on all the new releases and purchases of interest that I didn’t see either.

The season for big-name blockbusters may have ended at cinemas, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t films worth mentioning — like George “Mad Max” Miller’s latest, Three Thousand Years of Longing; or a limited UK release for David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future; or Kevin Smith’s return to the milieu that made his name in Clerks III — and there were certainly films that generated blockbuster-sized numbers of column inches, like Don’t Worry Darling and its endless behind-the-scenes controversies. In and around those were the likes of starry whodunnit comedy See How They Run; George Clooney / Julia Roberts romcom Ticket to Paradise. Also, a bunch of horror and/or horror-adjacent movies that seem to have accidentally released a month early: Fall; Bodies Bodies Bodies; Smile… Plus, horrific in a different way, the belated debut of Michael Flatley’s Blackbird.

And yet, for all that, the biggest of them all was arguably a re-release: James Cameron’s Avatar returned to the big screen for its… fourth? fifth? (I forget, but it’s had a fair few re-releases at this point) go-round at box office glory. I don’t think it topped the chart, but it certainly kickstarted conversation about the film’s merits (or lack thereof) and enduring influence (or lack thereof). I haven’t seen it since it was first in cinemas almost 13 years ago, so I probably ought to revisit it before the sequel arrives in a couple of months. The only question is, which version? Even without finding a cinema showing, I can choose from the theatrical cut in 3D, or two different extended cuts…

And talking of social media chatter, the only thing with even more than Avatar was Netflix’s Marilyn Monroe kinda-biopic Blonde, which some people would have you believe you’re an evil degenerate for even considering watching it. I’m 50/50 on its director, Andrew Dominik (I adored The Assassination of Jesse James; Killing Them Softly bored me), and, to be honest, he’s given some spectacularly tin-eared interviews in promotion of his new work. I don’t morally object to it, I’m jus not sure I care enough to give it nearly three hours of my time. We’ll see.

Other Netflix premieres included Lou, which I only heard about due to the Netflix Twitter account sharing some behind-the-scenes footage of Allison Janney’s fight training. But that day it was #1 in their films category, so maybe I missed some other promo. I also didn’t see any official promo for Athena, but I did see a couple of critics saying it was very good (while expressing their disappointment about it going direct to streaming — it was worth seeing on the big screen, apparently. Oh well, we’ll never know). Meanwhile, seemingly the best Amazon could offer was another mistimed horror remake, Goodnight Mommy with Naomi Watts, and horror-comedy My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which I just happened to see advertised on their app last night, hardly a ringing endorsement. (I call all of these horror movies “mistimed”, but there are people who spend the entirety of October just watching horror movies, so it’s a boon for them.)

Disney+ were getting in on the act too, with the debut of Hocus Pocus 2. I’ve never had any interest in the original, so I doubt I’ll be watching this either. Earlier in the month, discussion focused around the Robert Zemeckis-helmed live-action remake of Pinocchio. Even the best reviews couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for it, but it goes on my watchlist — alongside the various other Disney live-action remakes I still haven’t got round to (Lady and the Tramp, Beauty and the Beast, etc), so who knows when, if ever, I’ll actually watch it… As for new-to-streaming titles, I think Disney+ also had the most noteworthy of the month with the latest divisive MCU instalment, Thor: Love and Thunder. Also catching my eye were a variety of short films — something streamers could do a lot more with in general, I feel — including Hard Way: The Action Musical (sounds… interesting) and The Devil’s Harmony, which I actually watched back in 2020 when it was Short of the Week someplace online, but I never got round to reviewing it. It was quite good.

Actually, maybe beating that Thor flick was Amazon bringing Everything Everywhere All at Once to the UK (it did have something of a theatrical release here, but Amazon are pushing it as an “Exclusive” as if it didn’t), which I only didn’t note more prominently because I’d already imported the 4K disc (see July’s failures). Other streaming debuts or re-appearances filling out my various watchlists included, on Amazon, Cyrano (the new one with Peter Dinklage, directed by Joe Wright), Chopping Mall, and Selma; on Netflix, Kajillionaire and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre (which has already been removed again); on MUBI, Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover and Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers (do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Almodóvar film? Ought to correct that); on BBC iPlayer, Journey’s End, The Sisters Brothers, Stan & Ollie, and Blazing Saddles (which I’ve seen but owe a reconsideration); and on All 4, Bacurau, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, Monos, and True History of the Kelly Gang. I think some of these are available on other streamers already (especially when it comes to stuff on the TV-tied ones like iPlayer and All 4), but them getting added (or removed) does help remind me of their existence.

As ever, that’s just a few selected highlights — stuff comes and goes from these guys all the time, and I follow it all because I like to have an awareness of what’s available to me, but if I listed it all we’d be here forever (and these columns are long enough as it is). One streamer I haven’t mentioned is NOW, aka Sky Cinema, which I’ve just resubscribed to. I was supposed to be cutting down on streamers but I’ve ended up back on MUBI, Apple TV+, and now NOW! But they offered me two months (with their Boost add-on, which is essential because it’s how you get HD) for a total of £7 (vs £30 at regular rates), so I took it. I’m sure there’s a whole load of stuff on there I need to catch up on (I noticed they added Belfast at the beginning of the month), but I’ll look into that for next month.

Finally, as always, new additions to my disc collection. Almost all were brand-new releases this month, because the boutique labels just keep putting out interesting stuff, and there are more of those guys than ever — I remember when we basically just had Eureka/Masters of Cinema in the UK, and then Arrow came along, and now we’ve also got Criterion over here, and Indicator, and 88 Films and Second Sight have stepped up their games, and Radiance is on the way… Whew!

Anyhow, let’s begin with 4K. The highlight of the month there is surely Eureka’s first foray into the format, a box set of Jackie Chan’s Police Story Trilogy. I got my copy early, even, but unfortunately haven’t had a chance to watch any of it yet. 88 Films also made their 4K debut with Drive — not the Nicolas Winding Refn / Ryan Gosling cult fave (that came from Second Sight earlier in the year, you’ll remember), but the 1997 actioner. I remember the DVD cover; it was the kind of cheap-looking title I used to avoid that nowadays I kinda revel in. As for major label 4K titles, there was a nice box set for The Lost Boys (a film I’ve been meaning to revisit for years, and what better time?) and the regular release of Jurassic World Dominion (which I’ve not heard anything good about from anyone, but, hey, gotta complete the set).

No other brand-new films made their way into my collection this month, but plenty of other new releases from the boutiques did. To go label by label, from Arrow there was a pair of films with superb titles: Japanese epic crime drama A Fugitive from the Past and Indonesian action throwback Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash. Another title I love is All Deceased… Except the Dead (what does it even mean?), billed as a “mid ’70s Italian horror combining the aesthetics of Giallo with an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery” (sounds like my idea of a good time), which came from 88 Films, along with Yeun Biao thriller On the Run and Sherlock Holmes drama The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (which, I’m ashamed to say, I’ve never seen but am now buying for the third time. Anyone want the US Blu-ray? I think it might even still be sealed…) Indicator finally brought The Swimmer to the UK (if you don’t know, their releases are numbered, Criterion-style, and while some of their new titles are into the 300s now, this is #46, suggesting they’ve been working on it for a looong time). It’s missing the feature-length documentary from the US release, but I managed to, er, find a copy of that elsewhere. They also put out a two-film Robin Hood at Hammer set, which seemed worth a punt (I enjoy Hammer films; I enjoy Robin Hood films), and Madigan, which I confess I only bought to get the bundle discount (and because it sounded potentially up my street — believe it or not, I don’t buy just anything).

As for labels who only put out one title of interest this month (or where I mentioned the other title(s) already)… more martial arts action from Eureka in an Angela Mao double-bill of Hapkido (aka Lady Kung Fu) and Lady Whirlwind (aka Deep Thrust); Tom Hanks-starring ‘satanic panic’ Dungeons & Dragons-aping TV movie Mazes & Monsters, a worldwide HD premiere from Plumeria Pictures; Katsuhiro “Akira” Otomo-led anime anthology Memories from All the Anime; and 101 Film’s clone of Severin’s AGFA release Smut Without Smut, Volume 1, featuring two X-rated genre movies with the good naughty bits removed, to better allow you to focus on the genre stuff. They also include the uncut versions, fortunately.

And that’s it for another month! I say “that’s it” as if I haven’t just listed about as many movies for one month as I’ve watched in the entire year to date…

The Funereal Monthly Review of September 2022

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I’m not, by nature, a royalist (although I’m not sure that I’d vote for their abolition, if it came to it — I’d rather the certainty of Charles III and William V than risk the whims of the UK public vote giving us something like President Boris), but I know history when I see it, and there’s no doubting that the death of the Queen — and all the ensuing pageantry — was history, on a scale we’ll probably never see again.

So that’s my excuse for this month’s relatively paltry film viewing: I watched a lot of news and TV coverage. Plus, a known quantity: the much-anticipated release of the long-hoped-for Return to Monkey Island, which I spent most of my free time on for the best part of a week. It was worth the wait. If I included non-film stuff in my “best of” lists and whatnot, it’d be a shoe-in.

Anyway, enough about other timefillers — let’s look at some films…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#55 Clerks (1994) — DVD #6
#56 Persuasion (2022) — New Film #9
#57 He Walked by Night (1948) — Genre #5
#58 Paddington 2 (2017) — Rewatch #9
#59 Broken Blossoms (1919) — Decades #12
#60 Scream 2 (1997) — Series Progression #3


  • I watched six feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • That’s my worst month of the year so far. In fact, it’s my worst month since December 2019. Oh dear.
  • That means my average for 2022 drops further below my goal of 10 — last month it hit 9.88, now it’s 9.44. The rolling average of the last 12 months just keeps its head above water, though, dropping from 10.67 to 10.17.
  • Four of the seven counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with two rewatches — one under my Rewatch category (natch), the other under Series Progression, as my Scream series rewatch finally moved forward.
  • Indeed, Scream 2 is the first Series Progression entry since April. I really thought I’d do better with that category. I’m gonna be progressing a lot of series in the last three months of the year if I want to reach #100…
  • In better news, Broken Blossoms completes the Decades portion of my challenge — the first category to be finished! It started off as the easiest to do (almost any film I watched counted; I completed 58% in January alone), but as it went on it became a bit harder. Turns out I don’t watch many films from the 1950s (that took until May), and even fewer from the 1910s — which I knew, and is the kind of reason the category exists.
  • Back on the downers now, because I managed no Blindspot or WDYMYHS films this month. Oops. As I was already one behind on each, that’s something else I need to up the number of in the year’s closing months.
  • In related news, Second Sight have confirmed that their 4K restoration of The Hitcher won’t be completed until next year. That means I need to choose a substitution for this year’s WDYMYHS. I’ve gone for that year’s Palme d’Or winner, which was also an Oscar and BAFTA Best Picture nominee, The Mission.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched absolutely nothing.



The 88th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I finally saw it and, just like almost everyone else, I loved it. It’s a small field this month, I know, but Top Gun: Maverick is both an easy victor and likely to find a place somewhere on my “best of year” list come December (well, January; it’d be a miracle if I got my list together in December).

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I enjoyed it more than I expected, but Persuasion was still the weakest link amongst this month’s viewing.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
My review of Love on a Leash made a resurgence in the chart this month. (It looks like it actually started last month, but was overshadowed by Prey doing so well.) No idea why that’s happened. As for what this award is actually about — i.e. new posts — the winner is a rarity: the monthly review of August. The last time that happened was May last year — and it might’ve been the first time, too (back then I couldn’t be bothered to dig through 71 previous awards, and I can’t be doing with that now, either).



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


Halloween — one night of the year that, if some people were to be believed, goes on an entire month (at least). Regular readers will know I don’t celebrate it too heavily, but this year I am intending to offer a series of “Guide To” posts covering the Scream series.

The Name’s Monthly Review… September Monthly Review

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Daniel Craig’s final turn as Bond, James Bond, parachuted into cinemas just in time to make the cut for this monthly overview. But there was a whole month before that, so let’s look back at it.


#159 Three Identical Strangers (2018)
#160 Boss Level (2021)
#161 The Birth of a Nation (1915)
#162 Daughters of Darkness (1971), aka Les lèvres rouges
#163 Futureworld (1976)
#164 Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019)
#165 La Dolce Vita (1960)
#166 Terje Vigen (1917), aka A Man There Was
#167 David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)
#168 The Current War (2017)
#168a Scenes with Beans (1976), aka Babfilm
#169 The Green Knight (2021)
#170 No Time to Die (2021)
The Green Knight

No Time to Die

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  • I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • Not a terrible showing (it’s not the worst month of 2021), but far from spectacular (it’s joint second worst).
  • It fell just short of the September average (previously 12.54, now 12.50), and well below the average for 2021 to date (previously 19.75, now 18.89) and the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 18.7, now 18.0).
  • One notable success, however, came in my Blindspot viewing: after missing one in August, I caught up by watching two this month — and two of this year’s longest, at that. They were the 193 minutes of D.W. Griffith’s silent racist epic The Birth of a Nation, and the 175 minutes of Federico Fellini’s depiction of the high life in 1950s Rome, La Dolce Vita. I was no fan of the first Fellini I watched, 8½, but I quite liked this one. The Griffith, however, should be consigned to the bin of history.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched Boss Level and Memory: The Origins of Alien.



The 76th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Lots of enjoyable flicks this month, some unexpectedly so, but perhaps the greatest was David Lowery’s divisive adaptation of The Green Knight. I can see why it turned some people off, but it hit just the right tone for me.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
This is an easy one, because I liked all of the film I watched this month, with one glaring exception: The Birth of a Nation. As I wrote above, D.W. Griffith’s once-acclaimed silent epic is so horrendously racist that it deserves to be forgotten. Actually, there’s a more nuanced discussion to be had there about remembering the misdeeds of the past — it merits viewing on such an academic level — but the old “yeah, it’s racist, but if you ignore that it’s really good” arguments can get in the bin. It does have some decent stuff, but the racism is so awful that it completely overshadows any other merits.

First Film I’ve Seen in the Cinema for 19 Months
After a very long wait, it was finally time to not die of COVID from watching No Time to Die.

Most Surprising Sequel of the Month
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the original Westworld (it’s fine), and the sequel has a rep for being much, much worse. So it was a delightful surprise to me that I really enjoyed Futureworld. Whereas the first film basically hangs out in the park until there’s a bit of robot-on-human violence, Futureworld takes the time to have more of a plot, latching itself to the ’70s vogue for conspiracy thrillers. I reckon it might be worth a reappraisal.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
I’m not sure how much point there is keeping this particular award going until I get back on my reviewing horse. Highlighting the most viewed overall post of the month worked at first, but (based on history) it’s going to be my 15th TV column most of the time (as it was this month, and last month), with only the occasional other old TV column pipping it to the post.


My Rewatchathon continues to tick along, although another month just off pace means I’m falling ever-further behind where I should be to reach my goal of 50 this year. Who knows how things will pan out, but at this rate I’ll be pleased to make 40.

#27 Bill (2015)
#28 Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
#29 Spectre (2015)

Bill was 2021’s #1 back in (obviously) January. I liked it first time, but I enjoyed it even more on a rewatch. Quite the other end of the rewatch timeline was Pan’s Labyrinth, long-overdue a revisit because I last watched it 14 years ago. My review (linked above) is a brief 2007-style one… though that’s better than what I post currently, eh? Anyway, some fresh thoughts on Letterboxd.

Spectre was also rather overdue a revisit: it was the only Daniel Craig Bond I’d only seen once, and that was six years ago at the cinema. I was fairly positive about it on Letterboxd, but, I must say, it gets worse the more I reflect on it. Blofeld is horrendously mishandled — underwritten and underused — meaning Waltz is wasted, and I think he knows it, just giving another slight variation of his usual Tarantino performance. It really undermines the entire third act of the film, which is kinda crucial. Still, the film as a whole definitely has some high points.


This month’s big release at the cinema… doesn’t get a mention in this section, because I saw it. Wonders will never cease. Although, as things edge towards normal, there were a couple of other noteworthy titles too, like Disney’s “theatrical only” ‘experiment’ release of Marvel’s latest, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark. I’ve never seen all of the The Sopranos, though I mean to, so it may be a while before I get round to that one…

Perhaps the most-discussed direct-to-streaming release of the month was not a Netflix title, for once, but Amazon’s new version of Cinderella. Unfortunately for them, that was because it looks terrible. And apparently it is terrible. It’s not on my watchlist. They also generated a few column inches with erotic thriller The Voyeurs, but I didn’t see many people talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, though I did pick up that it’s quite good. Meanwhile, on Netflix, the only new title I’ve noted is actioner Kate. I don’t actually know what the reviews have been like — “Mary Elizabeth Winstead leads an action movie” was enough to get it on my list. And talking of female-driven action, Sky Cinema grabbed the UK release of Gunpowder Milkshake.

Among the never-ending parade of old(er) titles coming and going and jumping from one streamer to another, standouts to me included Minari on Sky Cinema, as well as the Russian remake of The Raid, cannily titled Russian Raid. Leaving Sky to popup on Netflix was the new Charlie’s Angels; and, having left Amazon a while back, The Farewell is now on Netflix too. As for Amazon, they now have Chaos Walking (in 4K, too), and also Selma, which I think has been available on every streamer at one time or another (even iPlayer) and I really should get round to. And talking of iPlayer, they had a seemingly-rare chance to watch The Graduate this month, so I should do that too. They also had Whiplash, which I ought to rewatch — I liked it a lot, but don’t really understand why it seems to have become an Instant Classic in the past few years.

Finally… I say “finally”: this is going to take more than half the section. Yes, my bank balance is sobbing once again — as is my shelf space — as new purchases flowed through my letterbox like water. Where to begin? Indicator’s Columbia Noir series reached its fourth iteration, adding six new films to my unwatched noir pile. Similarly, Master of Cinema’s Early Universal range is just getting underway (I hope), with Volume 1 bringing me three silent titles I’d never heard of before. Fun times. Other new releases included an MoC edition of Johnny Guitar; Eureka’s release of Duel to the Death, billed as “one of the greatest swordplay movies of all time”; an Aussie Imprint import for Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven; and Anime Ltd’s release of the first CG Lupin III film, Lupin III: The First.

My 4K collection also got a considerable boost this month, between brand-new releases like Black Widow (the first Marvel film in yonks I’ve not been able to buy in 3D — boo!); archive releases in fancy box sets, like The Thing and The Servant; semi-random sale pick-ups, like Shadow and Full Metal Jacket; and the kind of titles you might once have never believed you’d see on Blu-ray, never mind 4K, but nowadays all bets are off as indie labels go for the new tech but studios remain wary — by which I specifically mean a bundle I imported from Vinegar Syndrome including The Beastmaster, Daughters of Darkness, and SexWorld — which, if you’ve not heard of it, is a porno riff on Westworld and Futureworld. It sounds surprisingly good. I also bought Eleven Days, Eleven Nights and Robotrix this month, which as a set make my glad Blu-rays don’t come through the post in transparent boxes…

But I’m still not done! I caved to a bunch of gialli and other international semi-oddities in a recent 88 Films sale on HMV, snaffling the likes of The Bloodstained Shadow, Eyeball, Harlequin, Ironmaster, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, and Watch Me When I Kill. Throw in The Blood Spattered Bride with that VS order, and there’s clearly a lot of the red stuff waiting to spray from my Blu-ray player. Finally, helping round out my classic 3D collection was Dynasty (nothing to do with the TV series), and I completed Richard Lester’s Musketeers trilogy with The Return of the Musketeers.

And that’s not even mentioning the TV Blu-rays I bought.


We’re off to Arrakis. Hopefully it’ll be a return ticket.

The Man Who Killed the Monthly Review of September 2020

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This month started off strong: reaching #200 (for only the third time ever); watching plenty of films; posting a lot of reviews… but then it tapered off on all fronts. Partly this is because I’ve found myself back in the employ of FilmBath Festival — yes, even in this crazy COVID world, we’re putting on a film festival. Plus an online offering that will be accessible nationwide… but shh, that’s not been officially announced yet! More details in the coming weeks.

For now, back to the last month on this blog…


#199 All Is True (2018)
#200 In the Mood for Love (2000), aka Fa yeung nin wah
#201 Anand (1971)
#202 Ikiru (1952)
#203 The Man Who Sleeps (1974), aka Un homme qui dort
#204 All About Eve (1950)
#205 A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)
#206 Vice (2018)
#207 The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
#208 For the Love of Spock (2016)
#209 Guinevere (1994)
#210 Blind Fury (1989)
#211 Waking Ned (1998)
#212 Out of Africa (1985)
#213 The Hippopotamus (2017)
#214 Enola Holmes (2020)
#215 Fanny and Alexander (1982), aka Fanny och Alexander
#216 The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)
#217 Lost in La Mancha (2002)
#218 He Dreams of Giants (2019)
Anand

Farmageddon

Fanny and Alexander

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  • I watched 20 new feature films in September.
  • That makes it my 25th month with 20+ films, and my first 20+ September in five years.
  • It surpasses my September average (previously 11.9, now 12.5) and the rolling average of the last 12 months (previously 18.9, now 19.9), but falls short of 2020’s average to date (previously 24.75, now 24.2).
  • Early in the month I reached my 200th film for this year. I wrote about the history and stats of that achievement here.
  • Moving beyond #200 means 2020 is already my second biggest year ever, with three months still to go
  • #218 is the furthest I’ve reached by the end of September (my previous best was #206 in 2018), meaning a new all-time record is not impossible — but there are still 44 films to go to get there, more than double the number I watched in October-to-December last year.

As for the films themselves…

  • Back in July, I identified that Vice was the only film I needed to see to complete the last five years of Oscar Best Picture nominees (that’s 43 films). So, now I’ve done that, it’s on to the last decade of the same (which is 88 films), for which I still need to watch another ten. Let’s see how long that takes…
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (see the Arbies for more about this).
  • This month I watched four Blindspot films. That makes it sound like I’m doing it very, very wrong, but allow me to explain.
  • Firstly, I needed to catch up for missing one last month — that was In the Mood for Love.
  • Then I needed to watch one for this month, of course — that was Ingmar Bergman’s magnum opus, Fanny and Alexander.
  • Then you may remember I had a list of eight ‘overflow’ films to also consider watching — this month, I watched two, Ikiru and All About Eve.
  • So, I’m now back on track for the main list and over halfway through the overflow. But I’ll still need to watch exactly one overflow film a month (in addition to a main list film) for the rest of the year if I want to finish all 20.



The 64th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Rather spoilt for choice this month, what with four Blindspot films that mostly lived up to expectations, plus several other great and/or very enjoyable movies too. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise was Fanny and Alexander — I’ve not always got on with Ingmar Bergman’s films before, so his over-three-hour magnum opus could’ve been horrific for me, but I actually thought it was fantastic.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Un homme qui dort? More like Un homme qui t’endort.

Best Blind Swordsman of the Month
I had intended to save Blind Fury until after I’d finished the Zatoichi series (which I really should have done by now, but I’ve let various things get in the way). For those who don’t know, it’s a modern-day US-set remake of Zatoichi Challenged — a thoroughly bizarre idea, so it seemed best to leave it until I was done with the series proper. But then I noticed it was leaving Amazon Prime imminently, so I decided I’d better get on it. Such are the ways of the streaming era. It’s not as good as the real thing, but it was more fun than I expected.

Most Debatable Viewing Order of the Month
I’ve owned acclaimed (un)making-of documentary Lost in La Mancha on DVD but never got round to watching it — so long, in fact, that Terry Gilliam was finally able to actually make the film it’s about, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and it’s now streaming on Sky. The makers of La Mancha also documented that successful effort, in a new film called He Dreams of Giants, which I recently had access to a screener for. So the question became: which order to watch them in? I’m not sure the one I plumped for (see #216–218) was the right way to go about it, but then neither of the alternatives (La Mancha – Don Quixote – Giants; or La Mancha – Giants – Don Quixote) seemed perfect either, so this was as good as any. In fact, with hindsight, I think it might have been the best way — watching the docs before the resultant feature would’ve set too many unnecessary expectations.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
For only the third time this year (there have been other years where it happened most months), my most-viewed new post was my latest TV column. (The most-viewed film post was, as befits its status as a modern masterpiece, my review of Love on a Leash.)



The Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies have made up over a third of my Rewatchathon so far this year. With them finished, there’s now a hole where they used to be as a go-to choice, meaning my pace has slipped slightly… but I’m still currently on target for 50 by the end of the year, so that’s okay (for now).

#38 Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)
#39 Mission: Impossible II (2000)

I wrote my review of Jodorowsky’s Dune after that rewatch, so my Letterboxd log adds little more than that I enjoyed it more second time round.

M:I-2 is a different kettle of fish: you can find my latest opinion of the film itself on Letterboxd (short version: I still really like it). As for its place in the Rewatchathon, it continues my rewatch of the Mission: Impossible movies in 4K that I started back in May. Then I mentioned that it’s the first two films that feature the biggest upgrades in PQ with their 4K transfers. M:I-1 is the more strikingly good-looking film, but this one looks great most of the time too. The downsides are that the overall improvement reveals how much softness there is in some of the original photography, and skin tones look too hot in a couple of scenes (though I couldn’t quite be sure if I needed to fiddle with my TV settings, or if it was the transfer’s fault, or just the way the film was shot). Still, a resounding improvement over the old Blu-ray.


The reopening of cinemas continues with Bill & Ted Face the Music making its UK debut on the big screen only, and… that’s probably it: Tenet’s underperformance at the US box office has the studios running scared again. Bond is still on schedule for November, but will that hold? Only time will tell.

Another film that got a cinema release in some territories was Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan. Of course, it went direct to streaming everywhere that Disney+ is available, and that includes the UK, even though our cinemas are open. £20 vs a £6 cinema ticket? Hmm… Anyway, I guess that didn’t do well either, given that Disney have moved the rest of their big titles into 2021 rather than send them to Disney+ too.

Also on streaming, Netflix had a couple of big originals in the shape of Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things and The Devil All the Time. Both set Film Twitter and Letterboxd abuzzing, but I haven’t been in the mindset for their heaviness yet. There was also the hugely controversial Cuties, which is a debate I’m not interested in reigniting, and they ended the month with a new adaptation of gay play The Boys in the Band. Also catching my eye on Netflix were a string of titles I’ve bought on Blu-ray but not got round to watching: First Man, The Handmaiden, the new Halloween… Shame on me. (They’ve also added various things I have seen and reviewed, of course, but that’s not the point of this section.)

Over on Amazon, no brand-new films that I could see, but they did have the streaming premieres of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen and acclaimed crime drama Queen & Slim. They’ve also now got Crazy Rich Asians, after it ended its time on Now TV / Sky Cinema. Talking of which, after having a subscription to that for most of the year — first for the Oscars, then via a series of free and heavily discounted months — I cancelled it at the start of this month because it was going to be full price, only for them to now offer me a free month. Additions there this month include The Good Liar, Motherless Brooklyn, and Judy.

BBC iPlayer’s also had a pretty strong slate of movies recently, including recent-ish titles moving in from other streamers (Molly’s Game, I, Tonya) and HD versions of classics (Doctor Zhivago, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, etc). Also, Christopher Nolan’s Memento, which I’ve not seen for a very long time indeed and ought to take the chance to rewatch in HD (that feels like the kind of film that’s due a 4K release from someone like Arrow, but who holds the rights I don’t know).

Finally, my disc purchases were a lot calmer than last month’s 54 films. It’s taken five years, but I finally completed my collection of the “Top 5 Films I Hadn’t Heard of Before Watching The Story of Film But Now Really Want to See” by importing the US release of Hyenas. I managed to find a copy of Doctor Sleep with the director’s cut included (if I’d realised they really meant it when they said it was “limited edition”, I’d’ve bought it sooner! After being out of stock on HMV’s website for months, they seem to have found some additional copies, so fortunately I only paid normal price for it). Rewatching Jodorowsky’s Dune inspired me to purchase Arrow’s new Jodorowsky box set, which I fear I may regret (his films aren’t half odd looking), but there we go (knowing me, I’ll not get round to them for years / ever anyway).

I also picked up… Bullitt (primarily for one of its special features, feature documentary The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing) … the US 4K release of anime Ghost in the Shell (though I accidentally ended up with two copies, so I need to get that on eBay) … and re-bought all three Ghostbusters films (the original pair in a new-to-the-UK 4K box set, which duplicates the discs from last year’s limited and expensive US 35th anniversary set; and the 2016 reboot in 3D, which I got brand-new for £1.50. The fact most people have given up on 3D is a boon for those of us who haven’t).


October means one thing for some people: Halloween. I doubt I’ll be so singularly focused (I never have been before — why start now?), and I’m not even sure what I’ll do for the day itself (because it is just a day, not a season, or even a month — sorry, people). Between 2015 and 2019 I spent it covering the Twilight saga, but I finished that last year (thank God) so need a new notion. Although there’s always that Twilight spoof — which, according to IMDb voters, is the 46th worst film of all time, ranking lower than any real Twilight film. Dare I brave the horror?

Si vis pacem, para menstruum review Septembris MMXIX

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Crikey, is it really October already?! Where did September go?!

Time always flies, and it certainly seems to have disappeared for me of late, making the past month a quiet-ish one for 100 Films. There were relatively few movies watched (though it was far from my worst month of the year) and even fewer reviews posted (including no TV column, for various reasons). Let’s take a more thorough look…

(Before I begin, if you were wondering about the post’s title… well…)


#123 The Red Shoes (1948)
#124 Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. Erster Teil: Der große Spieler. Ein Bild der Zeit. (1922), aka Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler. Part One: The Great Gambler. An Image of the Time.
#125 Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. Zweiter Teil: Inferno. Ein Spiel von Menschen unserer Zeit. (1922), aka Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler. Part Two: Inferno. A Game of People of Our Time.
#126 Dollman (1991)
#127 John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)
#127a Battle at Big Rock (2019)
#128 Downton Abbey (2019)
#129 Agatha and the Truth of Murder (2018)
#130 Howards End (1992)
The Red Shoes

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

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  • So, I watched eight new feature films in September.
  • That’s the third time this year I’ve not reached my long-standing goal of at least ten films per month.
  • Naturally, therefore, it doesn’t measure up to any averages — not for September (previously 12.3, now 11.9), not for 2019 to date (previously 15.25, now 14.4), not for the last 12 months (previously 16.3, now 15.4).
  • This month’s Blindspot film: silent epic Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler — both parts. Well, I’d counted both as a single entry in my Blindspot list (even though I’ve counted them as two films in my tally), so I always intended to ensure they both fell within the same month. In the end, I watched them in a single (very long) sitting.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS film: Powell and Pressburger classic The Red Shoes. While I watched two films from Blindspot again (sort of), I’m still one behind on WDYMYHS.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched… absolutely nothing. Oh dear.



The 52nd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
I watched a few well-regarded films this month that I too regarded well, but the most artistically accomplished of them all was surely The Red Shoes.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
There was nothing I disliked this month, but something has to bring up the rear. That dishonour goes to Agatha and the Truth of Murder, which is a passable Christie pastiche but somewhat marred by its low-budget TV-movie roots.

Most Beautiful Film of the Month
The Red Shoes has gorgeous Technicolor cinematography by a true master, Jack Cardiff; and John Wick: Chapter 3 went all out with its neon cityscapes and glass buildings, looking particularly resplendent in UHD; and Downton Abbey appeared to have been entirely shot at golden hour, with its glowing, nostalgic pictures… but of them all, I think I most appreciated the 4K restoration of Howards End. I didn’t even watch it in 4K, just 1080p on Netflix, but the richness of the colours still filtered down. One caveat, though: I watched it on my partner’s parents’ TV, which I’ve always felt errs somewhat too much towards reds. But even if that’s the case, it really paid off here.

Best Special Effect of the Month
Battle at Big Rock boasted animatronic dinosaurs even on a TV budget (well, I suspect it wasn’t an average TV budget — probably more in the Game of Thrones ballpark on a per-minute basis), and John Wick must be littered with effects to make all those action scenes work (unless Keanu Reeves went around brutally slaughtering stuntmen), but I was most enamoured of a floating head in Dollman. Its headline effects (making a real man doll-sized) are no great shakes, and the close-ups of the floating head were just closely-framed shots of a real person, but the wider shots employed a practical model head that was really rather good. Okay, the dinos were probably more effective overall, but I do miss the days when even low-budget efforts had decent practical props.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
It was a close run thing between the two new releases I watched this month, one a big-screen TV spin-off and the other a small-screen movie spin-off. In the end it was the latter, Jurassic World sequel bridger Battle at Big Rock, that emerged victorious.



This is the best month for my Rewatchathon since May. That may not sound like much given the tallies for the last three months were zero, one, and zero, but… no, it really isn’t saying much: I only watched two. The chances of me reaching my goal of 50 this year are basically nonexistent. I don’t mean to be defeatist, but c’mon: to get there I’d need to average nine films per month for the rest of the year, and my average for the past four months is 0.75 films per month. S’not gonna happen, is it?

Anyway, here’s the pair I (re)watched in September…

#22 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
#23 Hannibal (2001)

Some Letterboxd thoughts on each are linked to above.


Naturally with lesser viewing comes more misses. The cinema release I’d most meant to get round to was widely-praised Brad Pitt-starring sci-fi Ad Astra, which I still might make time for. Much less well received was Rambo: Last Blood. The poor reviews killed any thoughts I had of making a cinema trip for it, but I’ll catch it somewhere someday. The same could be said for It: Chapter Two — not about the reviews, but about watching it later. I don’t bother with horror on the big screen, but I enjoyed the first one a lot so I’ll definitely catch up with the second half.

In terms of brand-new releases on streaming, Netflix’s In the Shadow of the Moon caught my eye. I don’t really know what it is or if it’s any good, but I’ve seen it listed as a neo-noir sci-fi thriller, which would be right up my alley. They also released Between Two Ferns: The Movie this month. I’ve never watched the series, but I’ve heard it talked about, so maybe I’ll see what the fuss is. As for more older things that’ve now found their way to streaming, Netflix offered the Taron Egerton-starring Robin Hood, which obviously went down poorly but I’ll still give a chance because I do enjoy those kind of films; London Fields, which also received bad notices but sounded interesting; and The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, which I have no idea about the quality of but is a helluva title. Over on Amazon’s Prime Video, recent-release additions include last-awards-season contenders Vice, Stan & Ollie, and If Beale Street Could Talk, and last-awards-season one-time hopeful On the Basis of Sex. I also noticed Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet crop up there.

The headline addition to my Blu-ray collection this month was the Apocalypse Now: Final Cut on UHD. I’m considering double-billing that with the theatrical cut, which I’ve never seen; the shorter version in 1080p and the new one in 4K, just to help emphasise the improvement for myself. Seems unlikely I’ll find the time for that, but we’ll see. I also picked up a few Indicator sale titles — namely, Age of Consent, Born of Fire, and Suddenly, Last Summer. From another sale, a few to be rewatches: an unexpected favourite from last year, Teen Titans Go! to the Movies, plus 3D versions of Life of Pi and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (I need to rewatch that whole trilogy). Finally, not really a film (though I believe a cutdown version was theatrically released in some territories), but I got the Blu-ray of 1980 miniseries Shogun for a steal. I’m currently reading the book though, and as that is 1,200 pages it’s going to be a while before I even think about starting the nine-hour miniseries.


Some people spend all of October watching horror movies. I never have the appetite to be so monophagous, but I expect some’ll make it into next month’s listing. For one thing, I’m due to finally finish the Twilight saga…