Tag Archives: September

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 did actually make two trips to the cinema in September, but both were to see films that first came out back in August. I might have headed out for Korean monster flick Hope too, after seeing a trailer before one of my trips and thinking it looked fun, but it wasn’t actually playing at the cinema where it was trailed. Seems like a dumb idea to me, but there we go. It was the same story for the new Nicolas Winding Refn film, Her Private Hell, although the reviews didn’t look great and I’ve got several other Refns on disc I’ve not watched, so I doubt I’d’ve bothered anyway.

Other new releases that will end up on my streaming watchlist someday included The Death of Robin Hood (I’m always interested in Robin Hood movies, so maybe this one will even tempt me on disc), D-Day planning thriller Pressure, another reboot for the Resident Evil franchise, yet another adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Alan “Reacher” Ritchson / Owen Wilson action-comedy Runner (not to be confused with streaming original The Runner), another team-up for Fury director David Ayer and star Brad Pitt in Heart of the Beast, and, likely, the most fun of them all, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom. Also sequels where I’ve not seen the first film, like Fall 2 (although the original is currently on iPlayer) and Practical Magic 2, and a bunch of titles I’ve written down but can’t really remember what they are.

As for original releases on streaming, a new Guy Ritchie movie turned up out of nowhere, as they’re wont to do nowadays, even when they’re led by relatively starry names like Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill, who I guess counts as a Ritchie regular lead at this point. That’s called In the Grey and is on Amazon Prime Video, if it passed you by too. Also premiering on Prime was Gal Gadot-starring thriller The Runner (not to be confused with Alan “Reacher” Ritchson / Owen Wilson action-comedy Runner) and romantic drama The Love Hypothesis, which is mildly fascinating to me because, despite being about two scientists or something, it’s based on a novel that starts life as a Star Wars fanfic about Rey and Kylo Ren. How do you get from there to here? God knows, but I think I’d probably rather watch a film about that process.

Elsewhere, Apple TV+ premiered Mayday, “a genre-bending, action-packed buddy comedy that flips the spy thriller on its head”, apparently, starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh. It’s written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley of Game Night and the last D&D movie, so that makes it more appealing. It goes on the long list of stuff I keep meaning to watch on Apple — a list that means I keep not cancelling my subscription even as I keep not getting round to stuff. Goodness knows how much money I’ve given them for nothing…

One subscription I did cancel this month was Netflix, because it costs silly money these days if you want UHD (which I do) and I definitely don’t watch enough on it. I don’t even really care if they’re releasing new stuff or not because my backlog is long enough, but even still, they only debuted one new film in September, Unabomber. And that’s all I can tell you about that. They did add Spider-Man spinoff Kraven the Hunter, though, so that’s… good? I don’t know, I can’t remember what people thought of it. Probably not much, knowing Sony’s track record with Spider-Man spinoffs. The trailer looked like dumb fun, though. Of a different order of quality was Best Picture winner Anora, and I guess maybe sitting somewhere in between: Sonic the Hedgehog 3. (I am, of course, kidding.)

More superhero antics with a poor-to-middling reputation were to be found on Sky Cinema / NOW with the new Supergirl, alongside the fourth 28 Days Later film, aka the second 28 Years Later film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, plus Dev Patel in Welsh folk horror Rabbit Trap, and creature feature Hungry about a monstrous… hippo. Yep. I know they’re deadly dangerous in real life, but c’mon. Is it based on the board game or is the title just a cheeky reference? I have no idea and I don’t care enough to google it.

Another thing I don’t really care about is the latest Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, which came to Disney+ this month. I feel I kinda ought to see it just because it’s the only Star Wars theatrical release I’ve not seen, but descriptions of it being effectively a long episode of the TV show — a TV show I never got round to starting — don’t exactly inspire me. Unnecessary sequels really were the order of the month for Disney+, with Toy Story 5 also cropping up. I’m more likely to actually watch that, to be fair.

Looping back round to Prime, they also added comedy Fackham Hall (if you don’t get the joke, maybe try saying it out loud quickly), which I’ve had recommended to me so may well be the failure I actually get round to watching this month, and a rare-for-streaming silent film, Nanook of the North, which is so rarely available that it’s also a strong contender for actually getting watched.

What I won’t actually be streaming were the many films that I already own on disc, like sequels Creed III and Sicario 2 (both on iPlayer), a couple of titles I semi-randomly imported from Australia’s Imprint label, The Assassination Bureau and State of Grace (both on Prime), or the tonne of things I should rewatch — Gladiator, Miami Vice, Perfect Blue, The Silence of the Lambs, and Total Recall being some of the most egregious examples, considering how long it’s been since I last saw them and/or since I bought the disc. Or re-bought the disc, in some cases. Heck, re-re-bought for at least two of those.

You’d think such antics would’ve taught me to buy less by now… or you would if this is your first time reading this column. Regular readers will know of my literally-insatiable Blu-ray habit, and of course it continued this month. Headlining for sheer cost were ludicrously-price editions of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (which cost me the best part of £90 imported, and that was the cheapest copy I could find with some discounts applied) and Hamilton (over £60, also after a discount). Is it worth paying that much for just two films? I mean, I’ve waited literally decades for the complete Kill Bill (and a UK release doesn’t seem to be forthcoming) and I love Hamilton, so… I guess? But I hope that’s not the future for everything. Or maybe it would finally make me cut back if it were — I don’t think I’d be prepared to drop that much on many complete unknowns, which make up the majority of my purchases nowadays.

To wit: a big pile from the recent Radiance sale, including Palme d’Or-nominated Euripidean tragedy Iphigenia; gothic psychosexual thriller Libido; satirical crime drama The Ogre of Athens; a romantic melodrama by director Johnnie To, better known for his crime/action movies, Romancing in Thin Air; an “almost Shakespearean” drama about a sex worker, Rosa la rose, fille publique; and three Takashi Miike-directed yakuza films bundled as Underworld Chronicles. And because Radiance titles seem to be particularly addictive to me, for some reason, new releases The Saragossa Manuscript and World Noir Vol. 5, to go with the first four volumes that I’ve also still not watched. I feel a new idea coming on for next year’s Challenge Genre category…

Almost everything else I bought this month was in UHD, be it catching up with some old(er) favourites I missed when they came out in 4K recently-ish — namely, Fight Club and Stardust — or jumping on some boutique box sets in series I collect — like the latest of Hammer’s lavish single-film extravaganzas, The Abominable Snowman, or Arrow’s latest offering from John Woo’s back catalogue, the A Better Tomorrow Trilogy — or some brand new releases that took my fancy — Disclosure Day (can’t overlook a new Spielberg) and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (on the recommendation of “kept seeing it pop up on Letterboxd”. Not great reasoning, I know). And I said “almost everything” because I also bought the new film from Bait’s Mark Jenkin, Rose of Nevada, which is dual format with DVD. Yes, DVD! They still make those! And long may they continue to.

The 20th Monthly Review of September 2026

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I don’t know if I could say things went well enough in September to call it a turnaround, but they have improved. I’m currently only 11 films behind my Challenge target, which is back down to below the level of tardiness I was at in March and April.

Plus, this month alone I made the same number of trips to the cinema as in the whole of 2025, and more than in the whole of 2024! That number of trips was, um, two… but still, it’s a true fact.



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#50 The Double (1971) — Failure #9
#51 Cocaine Bear (2023) — 50 Unseen #5
#52 Magnificent Bodyguards 3D (1978) — Genre #5
#53 Coyote vs. Acme (2026) — New Film #9
#54 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) — Series Progression #7
#55 Team America: World Police (2004) — Rewatch #4
#56 Belle de Jour (1967) — Blindspot #5
#57 Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 (2012) — WDYMYHS #5
#58 Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 2 (2012) — WDYMYHS #6
#59 Suspicion (1941) — Blindspot #6
#60 Topper (1937) — Wildcard #9
#61 The Set Up (1963) — Series Progression #8
#62 The Rescuers (1977) — Rewatch #5
#63 The Rescuers Down Under (1990) — Rewatch #6


  • I watched 12 feature films I’d never seen before in September.
  • That makes September the best month of 2026 for new films — indeed, for film viewing fullstop — so I’m finally heading in the right direction.
  • It’s also my second consecutive month with at least ten first-time watches, which is the first time I’ve managed two such months back-to-back since October/November last year.
  • 11 of those first-timers counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with three rewatches.
  • The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under win spots by dint of being relatively short. Of course, I did want to rewatch them sometime: they’re Disney canon films I saw in childhood but have no strong memories of; but that’s hardly been a pressing project. Nonetheless, I had them ready to go, and they’re under 80 minutes apiece, so they were great for squeezing in on weeknights, especially when I’m so far behind my target.
  • This month’s Blindspot films were (to quote the original poster) “Luis Bunuel’s masterpiece of erotica” Belle de Jour, and the only Alfred Hitchcock movie to earn an acting Oscar, Suspicion.
  • This month’s WDYMYHS films were both parts of Indian gangster epic Gangs of Wasseypur. I’ve been planning to watch that double over a single weekend ever since I fell behind on my WDYMYHS goal (which has been for most of the year), so I’m glad to have finally pulled it off.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched films Coyote vs. Acme, The Double, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, plus TV short La cabina.



The 136th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
At one time destined to end up in the dustbin of history — literally, as Warner Bros planned to scrap it — the fact we can even see Coyote vs. Acme is something to be applauded. Heck, that’s a big reason why I went to see it at the cinema rather than just waiting for disc or streaming. Fortunately, as well as being a victory for the release and preservation of art, it’s also damn funny.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
It seems almost churlish to pick on a ’60s programme-filling B-movie, but the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series are usually moderately solid but The Set Up (or, as it’s technically titled on screen, The Set up) was disappointingly weak. It’s adequately made on the surface, as the series always is, but the plot is predictable and hole-riddled literally to a fault. Or several faults, even.


I don’t really like turning film viewing into a tickbox exercise… although I guess you could argue that’s inherent in the current structure of my Challenge, so maybe I shouldn’t be so snooty. Anyway, with three months of 2026 left, if I want to complete my goal then a typical month needs to contain 12 qualifying films, made up more-or-less as follows:

  • 1 New Film
  • 2 Rewatches
  • 2 Blindspot films
  • 2 WDYMYHS films
  • 1 Failure
  • 1–2 ‘50 Unseen’ films
  • 1–2 Genre films
  • 1 Series Progression

I was hoping that summary would be neater than having to assign “1 or 2” films to some categories, but my viewing hasn’t been so neat — because it’s not just a tickbox exercise, see! Even the Series Progression number isn’t quite right: I’ve only got two to go (plus one Wildcard, so that’s sort of covered off there, even though it’s a completely different category). Heck, even saying I need to watch 12 films a month isn’t quite accurate, because the average is actually 12.3.

But the overall point is: it’s still a challenging Challenge. Will I get it done? The number of films I watched in September renders the answer to that a definite “maybe”.

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

.


  • 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.