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…