Something to watch tonight: Friday 4 October

Reptile (Singer, 2023)

Editor’s note

Stop it! I’m get­ting anxious about all these great recom­mend­a­tions that are pil­ing up. 😀

A read­er pos­ted this com­ment yes­ter­day and I real­ised that it’s prob­ably time to check in to see wheth­er the fre­quency etc. of these updates is work­ing for everyone.

I always inten­ded that these updates would be low impact – easy to ignore if you had already seen some­thing, or knew that it wasn’t for you, and that (mostly) you could read them in a couple of minutes.

Let me know what you think.

While we are at it, I’ve been con­sid­er­ing some slight changes for myself. When I star­ted, I assumed that my back cata­logue was so extens­ive that three out of five updates could be recycled. What I’ve dis­covered is that lots of what I want to recom­mend to you isn’t avail­able any­where – or are only digit­al rent­als and I’m con­scious of how those costs can mount up when people are already pay­ing for stream­ing services.

Also notice­able is the fact that the archive only really cov­ers films released between 2006 and now – with the bulk from 2007–2013. I’m becom­ing frus­trated by the lack of variety.

If I’m going to stand behind my man­tra that “there are a lot more good old films than there are good new films”, I need to vis­it or revis­it older titles which in turn means more new writ­ing about older films.

And I always said that the new writ­ing would have to go behind the pay­wall1 as that is what takes the most work.

Another con­sid­er­a­tion is the to-be-watched pile of phys­ic­al media which is grow­ing faster than I can get to them2. A lot of the best and most inter­est­ing stuff is on those shelves and I’d love to be able to bring them to you.

So, my slightly adjus­ted sched­ule as from next week is that Monday will remain new releases and there will only be two recycled pieces, leav­ing room for two new recom­mend­a­tions. They could be TV – we are stead­ily work­ing through new series on the stream­ing chan­nels – or fea­ture films that for one reas­on or anoth­er I haven’t writ­ten about elsewhere.

Unless you tell me that’s too much to stay on top of and I should slow down.

A year ago in the new releases news­let­ter for 6 October, I wrote about Reptile behind the paywall.

It’s worth a look, though, espe­cially if your taste is for sol­id, old fash­ioned, char­ac­ter drive thrillers.

Benicio Del Toro anchors this atmo­spher­ic and styl­ish murder mys­tery as Tom Nichols, a big city hom­icide detect­ive in a small town, painstak­ingly track­ing down the con­spir­acy behind the bru­tal murder of a loc­al real estate agent.

Regular film­go­ers, such as yourselves, will have a fair idea where this is going but it is the get­ting there that is the pleas­ure. Old fash­ioned film grain, rainy loc­a­tions, bursts of viol­ent energy – it’s like it could have been made in the 70s.

Del Toro co-wrote the script and has fash­ioned for him­self a char­ac­ter well-suited to his tre­mend­ous tal­ents. At times I was reminded of Robert Mitchum – not doing very much but always hold­ing your attention.

Also in that 6 October update, the New Zealand coming-of-age Springbok Tour drama Uproar, French anti-terrorist thrill­er November, John Carney’s charm­ing Flora and Son, French romance The Tasting, and fran­chise hor­ror The Exorcist: Believer.

Where to watch Reptile

Worldwide: Streaming on Netflix

2

This is the ‘to watch’ shelving unit at the moment. When I’ve ticked them off, they move into anoth­er room.