The “Am I Just a Letterboxder Now?” Monthly Review of July 2021

As regular readers (or should that be “regular non-readers” now?) may have noticed, I didn’t post a single review throughout July. Nor anything else, really: my previous post was my monthly review of June. Which somewhat drives me to consider the titular question, because while I’ve become increasingly poor at posting stuff here, I do still log (and write a little about) all my film viewing on Letterboxd. The little snippets I post there aren’t comparable to the full reviews I aim to write here; but, equally, I do actually post there consistently, so which is the more meaningful, really?

I’m not giving up on this blog just yet, but my strategy for finding time to write it (and, perhaps, what precisely I write about) needs some thought once again. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been watching:

#128 Jerry Maguire (1996)
#129 From Here to Eternity (1953)
#130 Strictly Ballroom (1992)
#131 Hotel Reserve (1944)
#132 Sneakers (1992)
#133 The Broadway Melody (1929)
#134 Murder by Decree (1979)
#135 Time After Time (1979)
#136 Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
#137 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
#138 The King (2019)

.

• I watched 11 films in July.
• That may be my poorest performance of 2021 so far, but it’s bang on the July average (which was, obviously, 11.0 and is now, obviously, 11.0).
• This is self-evident, but it’s not my best July ever (that was last year, with 29), but nor is it the worst (because that would be my worst month ever: July 2009, my only zero-film month).
• It fares less well compared to other averages, falling short of both my rolling average for the last 12 months (previously 19.7, now 18.2) and the average for 2021 to date (previously 21.2, now 19.7).
• This month’s Blindspot film: Powell and Pressburger’s satire of the upper-class attitude to World War 2, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
• From last month’s “failures” I watched a pair of films from 1979 that each saw a famous Victorian tackle Jack the Ripper (was there something in the water that year?), Murder by Decree (which sees Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper) and Time After Time (which is H.G. Wells vs Jack the Ripper).

The 74th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
Quite a few films I liked a lot this month, but I think I might just give the edge to Strictly Ballroom. I don’t feel it gets talked about as much as Baz Luhrmann’s later works because they refined the stylistic concepts he was aiming at, but it’s a more-than-fair first go at them. It’s inventively made, kookily funny, and, ultimately, shamelessly romantic. If you liked his Romeo + Juliet or Moulin Rouge! but have never gone back to the trilogy’s first part (like me, until now), I strongly recommend it.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Sometimes, you come across a film that you’ve never heard of but sounds good and it is good and you feel like you’ve discovered an overlooked minor classic. Other times, you discover why you’ve never heard of it. Sadly, pre-WW2 ‘wrong man’ spy thriller Hotel Reserve falls into the latter bracket. So much potential, almost entirely unrealised.

Most Inaccurate Title of the Month
There’s no character called Colonel Blimp in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, so we certainly don’t follow his life nor see him die. And as for the character who is presumably ‘Colonel Blimp’, well, spoilers, he doesn’t die either.

Title That Did Its Film the Greatest Disservice of the Month
I’ve seen Sneakers around on streaming platforms and whatnot for years, but always kinda ignored it. That poster is so bland, it tells you nothing; and the title… it’s an American movie called Sneakers: I think I assumed it must be about shoes. So thank goodness for the Film Stories Blu-ray release, which switched me on to the fact that it’s actually a fun all-star heist thriller — immensely watchable and entertaining, just my sort of thing, and nothing at all to do with trainers.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
With only one new post all of last month, I thought I’d throw this open and see what was most-viewed overall. And it was, incredibly randomly, from back in April 2017. Then I reviewed the first episode of Doctor Who series 10, the first seasons of Iron Fist and The Crown, the second series of Line of Duty, the musical episode of The Flash, and the first nine episodes of Twin Peaks season two, plus a few other bits and bobs. I’ve no idea what amongst that might’ve provoked particular interest in the last month.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Not a sausage.

I continue to be behind pace on my Rewatchathon, which isn’t surprising when my main viewing is behind normal standards too. Still, at least I’ve been watching some stuff…

#20 The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)
#21 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
#22 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Wrath of Khan being down here feels like a bit of a technicality. You see, for years I could remember seeing a film as a kid in which two guys in spacesuits in a desert had nasty worm-things inserted into their ears. Eventually I learned that scene was from Wrath of Khan, ergo I must’ve seen it as a kid. So it’s taken me decades to finally get round to watching all the Star Trek movies, and it turned out that one scene was more or less all I remembered from Khan (of course I knew other bits thanks to picking them up down the years as a sci-fi fan, but that was the only part I remembered). Anyway, this means I won’t give it a ‘proper’ review (though how much stuff am I properly reviewing nowadays anyway?), but it goes on the list for the Guide To treatment.

And I finished my Indiana Jones HD rewatch… just in time for HMV to have a massive 20% off sale that included the new 4K set, so of course I caved and bought it. Hopefully it won’t take me another decade or more before I watch that… As for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I stand by my assessment from its theatrical release (linked above) that it’s not at all a bad movie. There are some iffy bits, for sure, but overall it’s a plenty worthy return outing for Dr Jones. Maybe one day more people will stop being grumpy about a fucking fridge and allow themselves to have a good time.

With cinemas reopened, the new releases just keep coming. I haven’t yet talked myself into going back to the big screen (in part because I just don’t think I could comfortably wear a mask for a whole movie, though that requirement is now more flexible, I guess), but releases on my radar to almost tempt me include Black Widow, M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, The Suicide Squad, and Jungle Cruise. Ones I’d wait for rental anyway include The Forever Purge and Escape Room: Tournament of Champions… and, even though I’m fairly sure I’m going to hate it, I’ll probably wind up watching Space Jam: A New Legacy someday.

Over on the streamers, Netflix added Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning to go with the series’ other four films that I mentioned last month. Their only original I noticed was the Fear Street trilogy, which I put on my watchlist but don’t feel any burning desire to make time for, to be honest. MUBI brought arthouse hit First Cow to the UK, while, at probably the other end of the artistic spectrum, Amazon offered sci-fi-actioner The Tomorrow War, which I’ve heard mixed things about. They also had belated UK debuts for Guns Akimbo and Shadow in the Cloud (which I, er, acquired back around its US release because it sounded fun, but I’ve not got round to watching), plus Kate Beckinsale actioner Jolt, which sounds dumb and, based on the critics and viewers scores, I think probably is. Other than that, it felt like Netflix and Amazon were both trying to remind me of stuff in my Blu-ray collection that I’ve either never seen or been meaning to rewatch — I could list what, but there’s at least 20 titles in that category.

And talking of my Blu-ray collection, of course there were a load of new purchases. I imported a couple of titles from France (something I haven’t done for a while), so I could get my hands on Godzilla vs. Kong in 3D (bundled with the 4K disc, which is good because I suspect it looks fab on both formats) and The Limey in 4K with special features (as far as I know, France is the only country to have released its 4K restoration on a 4K disc; and the audio commentary is legendary, so I want to finally listen to that). All my other 4K purchases this month were, similarly, things I’ve already seen: fancy editions of The Babadook from Second Sight and True Romance from Arrow, plus regular editions (thanks to the HMV sale I mentioned earlier) of Big Fish, Gattaca, Last Action Hero, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World — plus the Indiana Jones films, of course.

In terms of blind buys, I couldn’t resist Indicator issuing The Day of the Dolphin — that’s the film famous for its poster tagline: “unwittingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States.” How can you resist a pitch like that? There were more box sets from Arrow in the form of the Daimajin trilogy and Vengeance Trails, in which they bundled together four obscure Spaghetti Westerns, I guess because they have a better chance of selling as a set than individually. (In fairness, it works on me: things like that and the films in their Years of Lead set, if they were released individually I’d probably wait for them to be cheap in a sale and then maybe buy some of them. In swish limited edition box sets, well, I’m preordering! (Now I feel like a sucker…)) Amongst a few other random purchases were Son of the White Mare, an acclaimed Hungarian animation for which I don’t see a UK release on the horizon so I paid a reasonable price to import the US edition; and, thanks to a Network sale, the fourth series of Quatermass, which includes its movie-length re-edit, The Quatermass Conclusion; and the Up series of documentaries, which are considered a TV series here in the UK but received festival/theatrical releases elsewhere so are often regarded as films. I’ll have to decide whether I count them as films or not… but I’ll have to get round to watching them first.

THIRD IMPACT! Evangelion ends for the third time as the fourth part of the story’s second telling premieres worldwide on Amazon Prime Video.