Pursuit.

Audio  The title above the blog post in these Eighth Doctor Time War releases is really starting to vex me. Pretty much every other release has a single title, with or without a number—for example, Connections or Ravenous 2. That was even the case with the first four in this series: Time War 1, Time War 2, Time War 3, and Time War 4. The next set along was Cass, but on Big Finish's website, it is listed as Time War 5: Cass, even though it seems like it is starting a whole new strand of stories. Okay, fine—even though it only says Cass on the front cover: Time War 5: Cass. This should lead to Time War 6: Reflections and now Time War 7: Pursuit. Instead, we now have Time War – Uncharted 1: Reflections and Time War – Uncharted 2: Pursuit, even though the spine numbers also list them as parts 6 and 7. Anyway, I am just going to stick with the short titles for these stories, if it is all the same to you.

Spoils of War

There are shades of Alien Bodies here, as Alex and Cass become wrapped up in an auction between alien foes over a mystery artifact. Said MacGuffin is rather more abstract than the Doctor's mortal remains, and it is arguable that if this had been a straightforward Doctor Who story, it would have been slightly less interesting. Instead, we have the Doctor's—not exactly great—grandson trying to do things differently than his "old man," even though he inevitably falls into the same patterns. The story does much the same to Cass; she has essentially been kidnapped and should be quite cross about it, but because of the needs of the narrative, she is somewhat forced to fulfill the companion role. Honestly, I found the sniping between the Doctor and Hieronyma—as they try to hold her ship together while pursuing Alex—to be more my cup of tea.

The Tale of Alex

This serves as a complicated synecdoche for the whole conflict, as the Doctor and Alex move backward and forward in time trying to fix an original sin. They remain suspicious of each other's motives, causing a colony to become temporally unstuck as competing causalities fight for supremacy. Finally, the two meet, and it is clear that their irreconcilable difference is down to the betrayal of the Doctor wanting his great-grandson back in the universe, yet keeping Alex's true origins from him. Meanwhile, the Doctor covertly makes Cass aware of her own origins and how her death is in flux. This also presents the intriguing idea that when she and the Eighth Doctor met "for the first time" in The Night of the Doctor, she might have been well aware of what was about to happen—and what needed to happen—which explains why she refused to fly away with him in the TARDIS.

See-Saw

This is superficially similar to Head Over Heels, the 1980s computer game by Ocean Software (or at least the opening part of it), with the competing TARDIS teams on different time tracks solving the same mystery and helping one another. How have they managed to land on Earth, a time-locked world which no one should be able to visit during the war, and what is the significance of the nursery rhymes? This inevitably leads to the same discoveries being made by both groups, which is tricky to do on audio without becoming repetitious, but it mostly happens simultaneously for various reasons; cross-cutting between groups of characters largely prevents annoyance from setting in. Something I only noticed on a second listen (don't ask) is that Hieronyma is recast in this installment, with Lizzie Hopley filling in for Niky Wardley, who plays the character across the other three episodes. Was it a scheduling issue, perhaps, or an illness?

The First Forest

After two stories that hinge on two realities occupying the same space and time, here is a tale about a place where numerous time zones are occurring in the same area—à la Voyager's brilliant "Shattered"—featuring a Tom Bombadil-type character who spends his life trying to avoid bumping into himself (rather like the Doctor). Caught in the middle of all this is Sharon, one of the Time Lord Sontarans, who has found himself lost in the forest; goddamn if Dan Starkey doesn't once again manage to give us yet another very individual example of the clone race, using the same voice as the others but remaining perfectly distinct. I particularly love how, when the Eighth Doctor and Alex finally do (sort of) reconcile, it is like many family members after an argument: calmly saying the things they may have said when bawling at each other, but previously lacked the ability to listen to.

Odeon Rochdale

For The Devil Wears Prada 2.  Originally opened by ABC Cinema is 1998, it was bought by Odeon in 2000 and rebranded.  But most of the decor doesn't seem to have been updated, including the small red dot matrix displays pointing to each of the screens with the titles of the films on them (which in modern Odeons has been replaced by a boring old PC monitor).  Saw the film in Screen One, the largest auditorium I've been to so far outside of Leicester Square and alone, my own private screening room the size of a church.  The screen itself is huge, as big perhaps as the ABC Cinema on Lime Street and so I moved back into the middle of the stalls.  Both the projection and sound quality were perfect, and this was one of the best cinema experiences I've ever had, so much so that at the end I asked to speak to the manager to tell her as much.  She was thrilled, pointing out that most of the time she's only on the receiving end of complaints.  

The Silent Priest (Classic Doctors, New Monsters: Broken Memories)

Audio  The stories in this fourth anthology of this series are all tonally pretty dark, with each incarnation of the Doctor on several backfeet, all of them illustrating Clive Finch's warning to Rose that the Time Lord's constant companion is death.  In the first story by Jonathan Morris, the Fourth Doctor comes face to someone else's face with the Harmony Shoal from The Return of Doctor Mysterio as they possess their way through a human colony.  The second has the Sixth Doctor and Mel defending a castle against the clockwork droids from The Girl in the Fireplace with Jac Raynor's script becomes darker and darker with each passing moment.  Both are, of course, utterly brilliant, and I applauded in my lonely room at the end of both.  But, wow, did I need to give it a day before I launched into the final two instalments.

The Silent Priest/The Silent City

This David K. Barnes two-parter doesn't offer much levity either.  We meet the Eighth Doctor at a point in this incarnation, in the midst of the Time War, in which he is done.  As the Time Lord describes, he thinks he's saved the day, then finds that everything he did has been reversed or worse that the planet on which it happened disappears from existence.  It's got the point where he's visiting a priest on the regular, looking for some kind of mental clarity but as the cover art reveals, said holy person is a member of The Silence, so he doesn't just forget he's met the man; that's why he keeps coming back.  This is the version of the wanderer who's working towards his regeneration, perhaps around the time of Lies in Ruins.  He's a professional actor, of course, and it's his job to know, but I remain impressed by the way that Paul McGann keeps track of which version of this Doctor he's playing, at the beginning, middle, and end of his journey.

The same guest cast continues into the final story with the Seventh Doctor, who's left to cope with his later incarnation's actions in trying to unite the warring factions which are breaking the city apart.  Barnes is very keen to show the different approaches of the two Doctors, the mastermind and the universally challenged, notably by putting Seventh also late in his timeline in the TARDIS, in the days or weeks before San Francisco.  There's a chilling moment when he says off-handedly that he'll shut down a casino he's surveying on behalf of the local constabulary "in the morning" as though it would be nothing for him, the kind of action that the Eighth Doctor has been trying to run away from since The Dying Days.  But like Eighth, he makes a number of catastrophic mistakes and like Eighth, he doesn't remember any of them by the end of the episode.

Odeon Preston

 

For Akira (1988).  Classic out of town multiplex, though it has few facilities in direct vicinity other than the Burger King opposite.  Originally opened in March 1990 as part of the UCI chain but it was taken over by Odeon in October 2004.  As the photo on Cinema Treasures shows, it apparently hasn't changed much since then other than some landscaping, particularly the removal of two boulders from outside the front entrance.  The duty manager says there is some refurbishing going on, including the replacement of seats in Screen 5.  There were three of us in the auditorium for Katsuhiro Otomo's masterpiece: me at the front, someone in the back row and an older gentleman, who knew the names of all the staff and just seemed to turn up in the afternoon to watch whatever was on, the usher explaining the basic plot of Akira to him beforehand.  The cinema is opposite a housing estate; frankly if I lived in one of those houses, I'd probably do the same.

The Caves of Erith (Short Trips Rarities).

Audio  Happy Christmas!  Originally releases as a subscriber special in December 2015, this is another out of season listen for me in which the Doctor has a festive faceoff against a race of Welsh bats and attempts to talk them into not destroying humans by demolishing their fertility rates.  Just the sort of weird Who I'm a huge fan of then.  Although much of the duration consists of the Time Lord engaging chiropteran in Socratic debate, there's something immensely appealing about a sentient bat throwing out place names in Southern Wales like an overworked Torchwood script editor.  Perhaps the most effective conversation is between Lucie and the human helper of the bats, in which we're given a glimpse of the trauma she experienced in her first few days in the TARDIS, meeting the Daleks on her first trip.

Placement: After Late Night Shopping.

Master! Planet Doom: Hellbound

Audio  It's fair to say during the first couple of instalments of Planet Doom, I was concerned that the cover with its Axon Eighth Doctor was going to be an over-promise.  However enjoyable this redo of Aliens (1986) with the Bruce Master filling in the Ripley role as he's involuntarily tasked with investigating a Time Lord prison containing the parasitic multi-form entity.  As with similar stories, it just about finds the balance in making one of the worst people in the universe sympathetic enough for us to care about his safety by having him connected to one of Big Finish's other long-running anti-heroes Vienna, who is better than she's ever been here (even though he spends most of it saying he wants to kill her.

Hellbound

Then, some way into the third episode, the Axon Doctor finally turns up with Paul offering his monotone take on the best Doctor before the best Doctor himself turns up and this boxset elevates itself from Alternative Eighth Doctors section of the timeline to somewhere before (see below).  As he and the TARDIS are released from the Axon's grip, the Eight Doctor immediately steals the flow of the story from Vienna and the titular character, defeating the monsters and saving the day.  Quite honestly its brilliant and elevates a story which until that point is pretty grim and nasty in a way which isn't to my tastes.  If only Vienna had stayed with him at the end.  They could have some wild adventures together.

Placement: The cover art suggests he's wearing his Time War clothes and he makes a reference to there being much to do, so I'm putting this between All Hands on Deck and Mr. Eighth.

Half Human (Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #73).

Magazines  After deciding to boycott the movies this week because almost every local screen is filled with the Jackson sub-hagiography, I decided to make a special trip to the TG Jones on Allerton Road and buy this week's special edition of the parish circular dedicated to the Eighth Doctor and particularly the TV Movie with the Pertwee logo, on the occasion of its forthcoming 4K release. Sitting on the back balcony this afternoon, I read it cover to cover, captivated by the new information running right through its pages, including the enthralling interview with Dee Jay Jackson, who has had a busy life both before and after playing the security guard that bars the Doctor and Grace's early entry into the New Year's Eve Party. 

The cover also promises a new short trip from Matthew Jacobs, although if you're expecting a short sequel to the TVM he wrote, or some other piece of soggy nostalgia, you're going to be surprised to find instead a writer seeking an explanation for the controversial moment when the Doctor says he's half human "on his mother's side". With some prodding, he soon realises that... it doesn't matter. The various ideas he's been having about who the Doctor's human mother might be are probably a bit much for this assignment, and that, like everything else in this mad franchise, it's always worked best when it doesn't explain anything. Much as I like The Timeless Children (which he references), all it does is give the Doctor a different mysterious origin.

Placement: The Eighth Doctor does appear briefly, but it's mostly in a similar capacity to the Bogart ghost in Play It Again, Sam or Elvis in True Romance, setting the protagonist right on some things. So, into the Alternative Eighth Doctor section it goes.

The Battle of Giant's Causeway (Sontarans vs Rutans)

Audio  Sontarans vs Rutans is a four-part release which has all the hallmarks of having originally been conceived of as a themed boxset à la Peladon, but thank the maker, it has been split into three separate releases which makes it a bit cheaper for those of us with a particular set of interests.

As with the Time War, it's Big Finish filling in the gaps around moments in the timelines which were only hinted at on television, the ongoing war between the potato heads and the squids (terms which this audio also uses so it isn't racist) (although it probably is).

It's one of those wimey-blimey stories which is told out of order from the Time Lord's perspective but falls into place for the listener. But this release is pretty standalone with the Eighth not seeming to be bothered enough to chase up any mysteries himself.

The Battle of Giant's Causeway

... could be a proposed prequel to TV's Flux's War of the Sontarans. In that story, the clone race took advantage of the Flux and planted themselves into human history so they could battle their way through human history. Well, here they are on the Giant's Causeway in mid-last century BC but crucially unaware of their origins and under the impression they're Roman legionnaires. As you can imagine, actor Dan Starkey as the main Sontaran, deep breath, Commander Caecilius Crassus Procullus (which translates as dim-sighted fat alien), has much fun with this duality with writer Lizzy Hopley providing him with a number of excellent lines. This is a very funny script and his banter with Charley is a clear highlight.

Hello again C'rizz. Long-term readers will know I wasn't a huge fan of the Eutermesan and not just because I could never remember how to spell his name, once spending a whole review typing Cerys. I was always clear that it wasn't because of Conrad's performance but because as a very visual character there were always moments (as happens here) when a guest star has to remark on the change if he walks against an unusually coloured wall. There was always the third wheel syndrome of him getting in the way of us enjoying the Eighth Doctor and Charley's banter without him and the other two really having much to say to each other when they were alone, especially after they'd left the Divergent Universe.

The Battle of Giant's Causeway solves that issue by having him split off from the other two and being taken in by the Rutans (in more ways than one). Hopley makes good advantage of his naivety as he sees his own identity struggles in the Rutans' shape-changing abilities and Conrad's performance, picking up again after fifteen years, is fresh and honest. Perhaps one day I shall go back and reappraise his earlier instalments but there's so much other Eighth Doctor nightmarish stuff to be caught up on, it won't be for a while. I've set myself on a course of being completely caught up with Eighth Doctor stories, all of them, as soon as possible. Possibly.

Placement: Arbitrarily between Time Works and Something Inside.

Project Pendulum

Project Pendulum is a collection of digital recreations of television clocks from across the decades.  Seems like this could be an ideal use for an old phone or tablet as a wall clock.

Echoes.

Audio  As I write this, the world, or at least our tiny corner of it, is ecstatic about the news that the previously missing Doctor Who episodes The Nightmare Begins and Devil's Planet (or first and third instalments of The Dalek Masterplan) have been recovered and will be viewable via the BBC iPlayer on the 4th of April. You can read about the news via this oddly worded BBC article. Perhaps Toby springing the surprise on Peter will be part of a documentary on some future physical release of the episodes, although the teary moment was on BBC Breakfast this morning (and can be seen via YouTube). None of which has anything to do with this Eighth Doctor boxset, but I needed something to put in this opening paragraph and it makes a change from moaning about release schedules.

Birdsong

Obviously, with my highbrow brain, the title of this doesn't go to the Sebastian Faulks novel championed by William Hague on The Big Read, but to the bits of sound used to cover up the swears and unauthorised chatter from when Kermode and Mayo's podcast was at the BBC. None of which has anything to do with this audio, which has a similar story to The Rescue with the TARDIS team finding some scouts waiting for the rest of their colony to arrive, and nothing being as it seems, although it's probably not a spoiler to suggest birds have something to do with it. It features former Susan Foreman actress Jane Asher as one of the survivors and is just a very pleasant listen.

Lost Hearts

Another run-out for the celebrity historical as Monty James helps the Doctor investigate ghosts on a university campus in what ends up ploughing through a whole Moffat season of time dilations in about fifty minutes. Nicola Walker is on particularly great form as Liv finds herself seeking a solution alone whilst trying to convince the TARDIS to move using its telepathic circuits. Best in show is Tim Bentinck as the very Zaroff-like Professor Alistair Gray, whose rich voice and ripe delivery pit him against some of the show's best villains, and whose intellectual shell masks a personality which is completely unhinged and without a particularly rational motivation (the best kind).

Slow Beasts

On his website, the writer of Slow Beasts, Dan Rebellato talks about how "this is a culmination of a 48-year journey with Doctor Who" having been a fan since childhood.  He's written about it loads on his blog and clearly understands the thing, so it's no surprise that this is the most original of the stories on the set. In the "slow beasts", he conjures images which might not be credibly created on screen and that can probably only really work in our imaginations. There's also some brilliant writing for the Eighth Doctor as he finds a way to communicate with these colossal statues which involves something we could all do more of: listening. There's also an imaginative use of Derek Griffiths, playing on our expectations of him as a piece of casting.

Placement:  The usual.

Odeon Oldham

For EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert.  It's another Odeon with a statue in front (see also), on this occasion Annie Kenney, the suffragette who seems to have partly inspired Carey Mulligan's fictional character in the film Suffragette (2015).  Possibly my favourite suburban Odeon so far.  Opened in 2016 at about the time of the AMC takeover, it was built as an extension onto the existing but derelict Oldham Town Hall, retaining the fixtures of the Grade II listed building whilst still installing cinema screens into the interior, along with a massive Costa Coffee on the ground floor.  It's most noticeable in Screen Two, which used to be the old court house.  An usher allowed me to nip in and take some photos which I've haphazardly collaged together here:

So as not to affect the existing fixtures, the screen is a massive version of the pulldown kind you often find in conference centres, lecture theatres and people with big living rooms.  Behind is the original crest or coat of arms.  There's a much better image here, along with some history of the scheme.  If I'd known about this I would have booked whatever film was showing here, but instead I'd opted for Screen One, which has a more traditional auditorium with stadium seating.

In the corridor leading up to Screen One is a small display of items from Oldham's original Odeon on Union Street, including these actual advertising banners.

 

All of these films date from 1967 when Rank still had ownership of the chain and were in the process of expansion.  The rest of the areas are littered with old leather chairs from its time as council chambers.  There's also an old door attached to the wall (not pictured) with no explanation of where it came from.

Odeon Bromborough

Film  For Crime 101.  Part of the Croft Retail Park, this is some way from actual Bromborough which made it a tricky cinema for visit, necessitating a long walk from Bromborough Rake Station.  This was mostly along a street called Mark Rake (translated from Old English as "boundary path") and there are several people in the world for whom that is their name, including this surgeon who was interviewed for the Royal College of Surgeons' oral history project.  Originally opened in 1991 as an eleven-screen multiplex, Odeon Bromborough was remodelled in 2019, with the number of screens reduced to seven. Perhaps this was to make way for some of the restaurants in the same block, including the Popeyes next door. No complaints about the film viewing: the large screen was not too close to the front row, although the speakers rattled a lot during the louder bits.

Odeon Warrington

Film  For "Wuthering Heights".  Warrington's original Odeon on Buttermarket Street in the city centre was a typical Oscar Deutsch art deco special designed by John Gummersall and opened in 1937.  After several refurbishments, it closed in 1994 and was demolished to make way for a Yates's Wine Lodge which is now a Wetherspoons (Chester Cinemas has a shot taken during its closing week).  This current building opened as an AMC in 1988, though it quickly rebranded to UCI after the takeover (h/t to Cinema Treasures for the history and a photo which includes the original ridiculous glass canopy).  In 2004, it became an Odeon and in 2019 it was refurbished to become the current Luxe offering with a smaller capacity and many more recliners.  The interior also manages to include a bar area and a sit-down Costa Coffee.

All the films featured in the theatrical review section of every issue of Empire Magazine as Letterboxd lists.

Film  With apologies for the slightly SEO title but I didn't know what else to call this.  For the past few years I've been creating Letterboxd links for every issue of the film organ Empire Magazine and now they've busted past their 450th issue, I thought it would be handy to put link to all of them in one place, so find that below.  There's a lot of them so I've spaced them out for easy clicking. They also start at the top and work their way down.

Late Night Shopping (Short Trips Rarities).

Audio  It's over twenty years since this project began to cover everything featuring the Eighth Doctor starting with the novels but due to one thing and another, I've fallen behind, a whole pile of downloads and CDs to catch up on.  But even if I had been keeping up with release dates and schedules, I'd never be completely up to date because of the unavailability of four audio Short Trips which were included as bonuses to Big Finish monthly range subscribers on a semi-annual basis from 2014 onwards.  Some of the others have been made available as stand-alone releases in the meantime, but Late Night Shopping, The Caves of Erith, Tuesday and An Ocean of Sawdust stubbornly remained at the bottom of the checklist.

But it's 2026 and since we'll be lucky if humanity reaches 2027, Big Finish have read the room and all four have been released as a reasonably priced boxed set.  As Nick Briggs (creative director at Big Finish) says:  

"As part of our McGannuary jollity, we're re-releasing these four great Short Trips, previously only available to subscribers of our very first Doctor Who audio range which ran for 22 years and 275 stories. We wanted others to be able to luxuriate in the sheer McGann-ness of them! And with their single narrator style and modest duration, they're ideal to listen to on the way to and from work, or short trips - see what I did there? - to relatives and friends."

The first, Late Night Shopping, is a very short trip at roughly fifteen minutes.  I can see now why Big Finish decided this play in particular couldn't be released as one of the original wave of stand alone Short Trips rarities - £2.99 would have been a lot to pay for what amounts to something which would be at home as a sketch on Comic Relief Night.  

It's delightful.  Attack of some killer tomatoes in the aisle of a supermarket with the Doctor utilising his culinary abilities to save the planet.  If it had been filmed to be watched between charity films, you could well imagine various previous Taskmaster contestants filling out the rest of the cast as the lonely enamoured shopper and harassed supermarket employees.  Matt Fitton's textual efficiency amusingly sketches out the scene, aided by the old Who trick of putting fantastical scenes in mundane environments and helpful spot effects or Foley work.  Can anyone tell me if these and the dizzily camp remix of the title music were on the original release?

All of which said, for much of the short runtime I was distracted by how much the reader, Hugh Ross, an actor whose CV stretches all the way back to the late 60s but has managed to dodge Doctor Who until this recording (despite appearing in numerous wilderness years substitutes like Sea of Souls and Invasion: Earth), sounds like the late Peter Jones, the Voice of the Book in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.  At one point the Doctor says he's going to fry something in "some nice hot olive oil" and it's impossible not to hear an echo of the Guide entry for the Infinite Improbability Drive, "a nice hot cup of tea".  With that in mind, you can imagine what his vocal characterisation of Lucie Miller sounds like.  Incredible stuff.

Placement:  Arbitrarily next to All The Fun of the Fair towards the start of Lucie's second season.

Odeon Camden

 

Film  For Sentimental Value.  Really friendly staff though its clear that the cinema itself hasn't had much investment for quiet some time with mucky staircases, broken seats and stains on the screen.  Sat at the front of Screen 5 which put the image directly in front of me which along with having to climb stairs to reach the seats in the auditorium offered Manchester Cornerhouse Screen 3 vibes.  Originally opened as a large single screen Gaumont in 1937 and has operated in various arrangements and guises over the years (full history at Cinema Treasures here).  As I was leaving I informed an usher I'd been chatting to about the stains on the screen, at which point she told me they'd be closing in five weeks so its unlikely to be replaced or refurbished.  Cinema Treasures explains that by the end of the year this ninety year old cinema with its Art Deco foyer will be demolished to make way for student halls.

Odeon Leicester Square

 

Film  For 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.  The chain's flagship and built as such by Oscar D back in 1937.    As well as a box-ticking exercise, this was the fulfilment of an ambition to visit the site of so many premieres and Royal Film Performances across the decades (although the late Queen stopped going after The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and who can blame her).  The cost always seemed ridiculous (at present £25 for the cheapest ticket, £32.50 in the Royal Box).  But with a MyLimitless membership, it's £3 and only because it's a recliner seat in Dolby Cinema screen.  For that price, how could I not ... spend £50 going down to London and back for it?

It is an absolutely massive auditorium on two tiers of the kind which used to be incredibly common in the UK.  Refurbished in 2018 to Luxe standard with a reduced seat count of recliners and the installation of a Dolby projection system which offers vivid colours and blacks which are blacker than black.  The sound echoes into the space in a way I haven’t heard since the ABC Cinema on Lime Street closed.  Here is the view from the very back row, at which point you’re probably going to get a larger image watching it on your phone:

What look like the arms of a chair are actually replicas of the Art Deco features which were removed in the 1960s but added during the most recent refurbishment and looked humongous from my front-row seat.  The cinema has four other screens which are about the size of the average Everyman auditorium and were added in 1990 by covering over what was the alleyway at the back of the cinema.  But honestly, I wish all Odeons were as obviously well-maintained as this.

Predictions 2025.

That Day We reach the time when I assess how well I predicted the ups and downs of the year and look forward to the next. Here we go again:

There won't be a nuclear conflict.

There wasn't!  One mark.

Doctor Who gets another season either from Disney or the BBC or both.

A Christmas special at least.  In 2026.  Half mark.

The Sugababes release an whole album of brand new material.

Teased us with Jungle, Weeds and Shook giving every impression it was the lead up to an album release, then nothing.  No marks.

I finally finish reading Empire Magazine.

Ha, no.  No Marks.

The BBC opens official accounts on BlueSky.

Plenty of journalists and staff but still no official account, they're still very active at the Nazi bar.  No marks.

One and a half.  Somehow worse than last year.  Anyway, let's try some of these again:

There won't be a nuclear conflict.

Doctor Who gets another whole season announcement for 2027.

The Sugababes release an whole album of brand new material.

Donald Trump impeached out of office.

The BBC opens official accounts on BlueSky.

Review 2025: My Year in Film

Film  God, where would we be without Letterboxd? That is about where I was in the first fifteen years of the blog, scrabbling around at the end of the year trying to remember which films I watched and what I thought about them. Now a quick click of my Letterboxd profile tells me I watched 278 films this year (so far), which equates to 519 and a half hours of viewing, nearly 22 days, averaging 24 films per month and about five per week (give or take a decimal point).

As to ratings. I gave 70 of those films five stars, of which 32 were released in this decade and twenty-one were released this year. But in my scoring system, the only difference between four and five stars is whether I think I'd want to buy a physical copy or not; in that case, I also rated fifty films from this year as four stars, which means I enjoyed those as much as the five-star films. In other words, there wasn't a flaw which nagged at me the whole way through.

Before I offer my top ten films, here are the films I rated with one star:

None.

But then looking at the two-star entries, I was probably a bit generous:

Happy Gilmore 2

War of the Worlds

Mountainhead

A Minecraft Movie

Star Trek: Section 31

Of those, my worst film of the year was probably Section 31 with its failed-pilot stink - Star Trek does not have to pretend to be Guardians of the Galaxy or Farscape. It has its own unique bouquet (if you will) that make it worth watching.

Now for the top ten.

The truth is I don't really have a top ten, at least one which isn't much different to anyone else's, which is in itself a change thanks to having actually been to the cinema at least weekly for most of the year and having seen some films (see yesterday).  My favourite film of the year was probably Thunderbolts* because it was a rare superhero film which made me feel seen. So instead here's a list of five overlooked movies which clearly cost a bit of money and would (probably)(maybe?)(possibly) have been crowd pleasers if they'd had a proper theatrical rollout.

Into The Lost Lands

High fantasy across an apocalyptic landscape. PWS Anderson's films aren't for everyone, but having recently rewatched the Resident Evil series, I've realised I'm more than satiated by Milla Jovovich outsmarting lots of enemies in slow-mo for a couple of hours. But this also has a couple of excellent twists and some beautiful aesthetic choices (on Netflix).

G20

Die Hard at the G20 with Viola Davis as the action lead. Just tremendous fun (Amazon Prime).

Drop

It's Phone Booth on a date. Two things I loved: The way the threatening text messages are blasted across the screen to demonstrate the protagonist's various levels of anxiety and that it utilises casting as an example of Hitchcock's bomb under the table. Saw this in its one screening on one day at the Odeon, then came home that night and bought the stream on Amazon (on NowTV).

Deep Cover

Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, and Celebrity Traitors loser Nick Mohammed play three out-of-work comedians who are recruited to infiltrate London's gangland. Sounds like a hokey premise, and it is, but it's elevated by some wonderfully self-aware performances, especially from Bloom and Paddy Considine as the "villain", and some superb plotting in which obvious twists are turned on their head (on Amazon Prime).

The Gorge

Demented sci-fi romcom in which Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy fall in love across a physical and metaphoric divide. Deserved a wide release and would have looked incredible on IMAX. Has the kind of WTF plotting and casting which I'm looking for in a film (on AppleTV).

Something I've pursued less this year are films not in the English language which is partly as a result of the Odeon only rarely presenting non-genre subtitled fare.  Seeing It Was Only An Accident at the Manchester Great Northern was a rare treat.  But I've plenty of Criterion discs to catch up on and I'll hopefully next year I'll be in a better headspace and be able to seek out  more challenging fare.  

All The Odeons

Film  In 2025, I began seeing films in a cinema again. Over the past ten years, the only films I've visited cinemas for have been big spoiler-prone franchise blockbusters. Partly it was the cost, but mostly it was the audiences, who generally didn't seem very interested in seeing the film, or spent the whole time masticating. But after experimenting with Cineworld a couple of summers ago, this year I took out an Odeon myLimitless subscription and have pretty faithfully been visiting these churches of cinema every week for at least six months.

The Liverpool One Odeon has always been something of a film presentation nemesis, a trend which continues to this day.  Up until this year, the last time I visited was for Fant4stic (curiosity kills the brain cells), a screening afflicted by a dodgy and quite noisy air conditioning fan which led to me receiving a refund (probably only fair considering the film itself). Actually no, it was for San Andreas where the restless audience was the problem as my seat rocked back and forth, not because of 4DX, but due to a group of teenagers kicking the back of the chair.

Which isn't to say it's been a complete cakewalk. Even during my first visit this year, Final Destination: Bloodlines, there was someone who was texting back and forth throughout the film and popping out now and then to make a phone call. Later screenings have been beset by dead pixels, light pollution through the windows of auditorium doors onto the "laser" screen, a fly which had landed on the projector during The Fantastic Four: First Steps taking up a quarter of the screen on occasion, banging auditorium doors, and persistent liquid stains on the screen.

But despite a number of issues since (and writing a lengthy email of complaint), I've kept going because it's just been nice to treat cinema as an occasion again. I've tried to train myself to be more tolerant of such issues and of audiences in general, and to keep myself focused on what's in front of me, rather than being micro-distracted by what's going on behind me (I always book for the front row, or as close to it as possible). Most of it has been Hollywood fare, but it's also nice to have seen what's in the film charts while it's still there rather than many months afterwards.

All of this preamble is to introduce the following list of every Odeon in the country in alphabetical order. A few months into visiting Liverpool, I began to wonder what other locations in the chain were like and how they compare to this city's interesting collection of architectural choices (seriously, why do the doors have windows?). So I decided to go and visit a few in other cities, a plan which quickly grew into a project to visit all the Odeons (yes, all of them) and also give a reason to go to places I wouldn't otherwise have a reason to visit.

So like all my other tick-box projects, I thought it an idea to start posting about them on the blog and then linking to them all in one place. The actual posts aren't going to be anything too elaborate, probably just a photo, a couple of observations, and a link to somewhere which has more information (because what's the point in ripping off someone else's research when I can just refer you to it). Some of them will be an expensive and logistical challenge through public transport, but let's see how far I get.

Note:  I've added some recent encounters but I'll do a proper catch up when I have a moment, plus include some which don't exist anymore at the bottom.  I'll delete this message when I'm all caught up.

Now:

Acton
Andover
Aylesbury
Basingstoke
Bath
Beckenham
Belfast
Birmingham Broadway Plaza
Birmingham New Street
Bournemouth BH2
Braehead
Bridgend
Brighton
Bristol
Bromborough
Camden
Cardiff
Chatham
Chelmsford
Colchester
Coventry
Crewe
Derby
Dorchester
Dudley (Merry Hill)
Dundee
Dunfermline
Durham
East Kilbride
Edinburgh Fort Kinnaird
Edinburgh Lothian Road
Edinburgh West
Epsom
Exeter

Gateshead Metrocentre
Glasgow Quay
Greenwich
Guildford
Harrogate
Hastings
Hatfield
Hereford
Holloway
Huddersfield
Hull
Islington
Kilmarnock
Kingston
Lee Valley
Leeds Thorpe Park
Leeds-Bradford
Leicester
Lincoln
Liverpool ONE
Liverpool Switch Island
Llanelli
London Haymarket
London Leicester Square
London Tottenham Court Road
London West End
Loughborough
Maidenhead
Maidstone
Manchester Great Northern
Manchester Trafford Centre
Mansfield
Middlesbrough
Milton Keynes Stadium
Newark
Northampton

North Tyneside Silverlink
Northwich Barons Quay
Norwich
Nuneaton
Oldham
Orpington
Peterborough
Port Solent
Preston
Putney
Richmond
Rochdale
Salisbury
Sheffield
South Woodford
Southend
Stafford
Stoke
Streatham
Swadlincote
Swansea
Swiss Cottage
Tamworth
Taunton
Telford
Trowbridge
Tunbridge Wells
Uxbridge
Warrington
West Bromwich
Wimbledon
Worcester
Wrexham Eagles Meadow

Lost in Time:

Chester

Leeds The Headrow

Liverpool Allerton Road

Liverpool London Road

Manchester Oxford Road

Oxford