It’s Black Friday Week, a week that I used to not give one solitary shit about until I started going out with someone with a great nose for a deal. Since then, Black Friday Week has come to be about one thing and one thing only – big discounts on the ODEON MyLimitless Plus subscription, which grants the bearer the right to go and see any film at any time completely free. Used smartly and with the Black Friday discount applied, the MyLimitless swizz can get your price-per-film down to below £5, leaving even old favourites like Peckhamplex in the dust. Take that, independent community cinemas! I’m giving my money to this big faceless corporation so I can watch more films for less money in less pleasant buildings!

Regular readers know what I’m like – I cannot resist anything that gamifies a cultural experience and transforms it from something done purely for the purpose of enjoyment into data to be ranked and analysed. As such, since discovering the MyLimitless Black Friday deal, I spend much of my year desperately trying to watch enough films to crunch the price-per-film down as low as it can go. This year, with a couple of days to go until it expires, I’ve currently got it down to £2.59 per film (this includes Zootropolis 2, which I have not seen yet but obviously booked for as soon as tickets went on sale). The price has gone up slightly this year compared to Black Friday 2024, so I’ll have my work cut out to beat it in 2026, but it’s a new personal best.

Joking aside, it is genuinely a game-changer. There’s something really nice about walking out of a really shit film and not feeling furious about the fact that you spent £18 on it. There’s something even nicer about walking out of a really brilliant film that you probably wouldn’t have taken a chance on if it weren’t basically free. This year I saw the amazing Michelle Terry talking at How The Light Gets In about how the spiralling cost of West End theatre shows mean it’s almost impossible to cultivate your own taste any more. She spent something like £200 for her daughters to go and see Wicked (more on which later), and realised that at those prices it’s very hard to go to something and give yourself the permission to think “That was shit” when you leave. We’re economically forced to buy into the consensus of what’s “good,” because it’s just too painful to admit that you might have spent all that money on something you didn’t like.

The same is true of film, I think, and of everything in the arts at the moment. It’s become so expensive to even just engage with culture, so things like the ODEON deal have come to be a real source of joy to me – it’s made it possible to actually find out what things people are making, what stories are being told, without my own personal enjoyment of it feeling like the be-all and end-all. I’ve been able to cultivate a sense of taste. So, with my membership expiring this week, I thought I’d look back on this year’s films:

TEN FILMS I’M GLAD I TOOK A CHANCE ON:

I have tried to focus this list on films I might not have caught if I hadn’t made an active effort to think “I wonder what’s on at the cinema this week?” So it doesn’t include several of my favourite films of the year, purely because they were already on my radar and I’d probably have paid to see them anyway – Conclave, Sinners, The Ballad Of Wallis Island, etc. So here are this year’s happiest accidents!

1. BETTER MAN – The film where Robbie Williams is a CGI ape that culminates with him fighting all the different aspects of his personality in a mass ape battle at Knebworth ‘03. I went into this feeling completely indifferent to Robbie Williams, and came out actively identifying as a huge fan. Sang exclusively Robbie songs at a friend’s birthday karaoke do the week after. Got booed for “Rock DJ” and “Let Me Entertain You,” brought the house down with “Angels,” because of course I did.
2. THE LAST SHOWGIRL – My film of the year. Pamela Anderson is a deluded performer who prioritised a crappy Vegas revue show over being there for her daughter, and is still trying to convince herself it was the right decision. Absolutely heart-breaking film. The core storyline of You Wait. Time Passes. had already been written by the time I saw this, but I can’t deny the way this film made me feel had a huge influence on the show.
3. FLOW – A cat and a lemur and a secretary bird and a capybara get on a boat to survive rising sea levels. Gorgeous film. It’s rated Universal with a warning for “Mild peril,” but my God the word “Mild” is underselling it. Spent the full 90 minutes absolutely terrified for that poor cat. If it had fallen out of the boat just one more time I think I’d have had a heart attack.
4. ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO – Documentary about John Lennon and Yoko Ono putting on a big concert in New York for peace or something, and Yoko is trying to get hold of some flies for an art project. I’ve always firmly placed myself in the “John is the worst Beatle, Paul is the best” camp, a camp people place themselves in ironically at first before eventually realising they do actually mean it. So it was interesting to learn a bit more about who John was, and to recognise that his music was great and that he did a lot of good things, alongside his widely acclaimed work of being an absolute prick. Yoko’s great though, got a lot of time for Yoko.
5. LILO & STITCH – I was expecting this to be absolute dross, but took a chance on it because it was directed by Dean De Blois, who directed stone-cold masterpiece Marcel The Shell With Shoes On. So glad I did, because this is one of my favourite films of the year. I’m not fond enough of the original to care about them reheating another old IP, and I honestly found this remake so funny and charming and it has so much heart. Maia Kealoha gives one of the best child performances of the last few years as well, she’s incredible.
6. THE NAKED GUN – Another one that I went into thinking “The best I can hope for this is that I leave not wishing it didn’t exist, but stoically accepting the fact that it has been made now.” What a surprise, then, that it’s the funniest film of the year. I can’t remember the last time I cried laughing in a cinema. Liam Neeson is no Leslie Nielsen – he doesn’t twinkle in the same way. But it was such a joy to watch a film that was doing nothing other than trying to make me laugh.
7. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – Leonardo DiCaprio plays a shit dad running around in a dressing gown while his daughter tries to escape from a crazy racist military dude. If you’d asked me straight after seeing Licorice Pizza if I wanted to go and see the next P.T. Anderson film, I’d have smacked the milkshake out of your hand and cartwheeled away down the hill (a fun, wacky way of saying “No way, that was absolute shite.”) But hey, what the hell, it’s basically free, so let’s give it a go. So, what a surprise that this is brilliant. I really enjoyed the fact that Leo’s character is basically irrelevant to the story and achieves nothing. And give Sean Penn the Oscar right now.
8. BUGONIA – Emma Stone gets kidnapped by a nutjob who thinks she’s an alien. I’ve heard that the reason Yorgos Lanthimos keeps making films with Emma Stone is because he really wants to be her friend and be invited round for dinner, but it hasn’t happened yet. I wonder if he’s considered casting her in a role that doesn’t involve her being held captive and abused by men. Oh well, maybe next time! Still, taken by itself rather than being read as the latest in a disturbing pattern, this film is very good, and the final montage is one of the most astonishing pieces of filmmaking I’ve seen all year.
9. DIE MY LOVE – Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson have a baby, and then Jennifer Lawrence just has the worst time ever. Can’t say I enjoyed this film necessarily, it’s pretty upsetting, but as a study in post-natal depression and bipolar disorder, I guess it was never going to be fun. I’ve not seen any of Lynne Ramsay’s films before and I thought this was brilliant, so I should go back and check out the back catalogue.
10. NOW YOU SEE ME, NOW YOU DON’T – Some young magicians team up with some slightly older magicians and do some magic to steal a diamond from Rosamund Pike. I’ve not seen either of the previous Now You See Me films, and my God do I regret it. This was the most fun I’ve had in the cinema this year. It’s an absolute hoot. The long single-take tracking shot where all eight main characters run around a French chateau doing competitive close-up magic at each other while Morgan Freeman watches them clapping and going “Ooh, good one!” is astonishingly dumb. I loved it I loved it I loved it.

TEN FILMS I’M GLAD I DIDN’T PAY £18 FOR:

1. QUEER – Daniel Craig plays, essentially, William S. Burroughs and goes to South America to find a hallucinogenic plant. I’m trying to remember why I hated this but can remember nothing about it. I think I found it unbelievably pretentious and incoherent. A Burroughs adaptation? Surely not. Craig’s great in it, though.
2. BLACK BAG – Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are married spies who spy on each other. I found this one baffling, because it got rave reviews across the board and I honestly could not see what people saw in it. Nothing felt remotely real or convincing. At least it had Pierce Brosnan in it with that nice big grey beard he’s got now, so you could think about better films like Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga while you were waiting for this dross to wrap up.
3. DEATH OF A UNICORN – Paul Rudd hits a unicorn with his car, but then it comes back alive and tries to kill him because unicorns are big scary monsters in this. Fun premise, crap film. Would not be surprised if it turned out the whole thing was written by Chat GPT using the title as the prompt.
4. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON – I forgot my glasses for this one, which might be part of why I didn’t love it. I get the feeling it’s one of those films where it really helps if you can see what’s going on. Mostly, I left feeling like there was no reason to make this film, as it was more or less exactly the same as the original. Bonus points for casting the brilliant Anna Leong Brophy as a new character, but points deducted for not giving her more screen-time. Get Gerard Butler off the screen, he was already in the original doing the exact same stuff! Give us more Retcha! Give us new things! (I’m aware of the irony of saying this when the Lilo & Stitch remake is on the other list, but I dunno, that felt less slavishly tethered to the original? But then I don’t remember the original very well. Maybe I’m being a hypocrite).
5. THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS – I decided to stop watching Marvel films a couple of years ago because they’re all bollocks, but made an exception for this because I grew up loving the Fantastic Four. Left absolutely livid that Mr Fantastic (whose powers are that he can stretch) doesn’t stretch anywhere near enough. If one of your main characters can stretch, then you’d better be making him bounce like a spring, or flatten himself like a pancake or something. He reaches across the room to pick up a pen and that’s it? Are you kidding me? Not only that, Galactus (a big purple giant man in a silly helmet) later picks him up and stretches him out really long and he goes “Ow, ow!” What do you mean, ow? Isn’t stretching your main thing? You’ll include the big giant in the fucking stupid helmet in your film, but you’re worried making Pedro Pascal bounce like a spring will look silly? Grow up.
6. SPINAL TAP II: THE END CONTINUES – “Everybody loves Spinal Tap! And the things people loved about it were the bits where the characters sat around being interviewed and did funny improv!” “What about the big, inventive comedy set-pieces like Derek getting stuck in the pod, or the band getting lost backstage?” “Nope, people want to see the actors sitting around doing improv.” “What about the Stonehenge bit?” “Oh you’re right, people did like that, so we’ll do that bit again.” “What about the really funny songs parodying specific musical genres and eras?” “Yeah we’ll do some of the songs from the first film again.” “Right. Are we going to do anything new?” “Yeah, a few celebrity cameos maybe.” “Right. And we’ll be trimming down the improv to just the absolute funniest moments, right?” “Yep! And we’ll put those bits in the end credits, and leave the rest in the actual movie.”
7. A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY – I don’t have the words for how bad this film is. Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie go for a drive in a car and keep finding magic doors that teleport them to moments from their past. I guess the reason neither of them ever go “What the fuck is going on, why is the car taking us to magic doors that teleport us back into our pasts?” is because the film is going for some sort of Studio Ghibli-esque sense of magical realism, but it doesn’t quite work because the whole thing is really shit. I spent a lot of the film wishing I could spy on Farrell and Robbie’s WhatsApp thread from when they were filming this, because they’re smart enough people that presumably every day when they got back to their hotel rooms they texted one another to say “Lol this film sucks.”
8. THE SMASHING MACHINE – This is fine. I just didn’t care. I don’t care about The Rock trying to give a sincere dramatic performance, and I don’t care about some guy who was an Ultimate Fighting Champion in the 90s and seemed to be an absolute bellend. This is probably a great film for someone who cares about those things, but you could probably say that about any film. “You’ll like this film if you like the elements it is composed of.” What a pointless thing to say. Oh well, nearly there.
9. SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE – I’m heartbroken that a film about Bruce Springsteen is one of the most boring films I’ve seen this year. I think it’s just that the story they chose to tell essentially amounts to “Did you know that Bruce Springsteen made this album this one time?” The album in question is, let’s be honest, among the most boring he ever made. Culturally significant, don’t get me wrong, and it has some lovely story-songs on it, but nobody actually enjoys listening to Nebraska, do they? If you were to rank the Springsteen albums in order of how much fun it would be to watch a film about him making them, surely the one he recorded alone in his bedroom while depressed comes near the bottom? This movie should’ve been about Wrecking Ball (not the Miley Cyrus song, obviously).
10. WICKED: FOR GOOD – Spoilers ahead! Hey, are you different from people around you? Do you struggle to fit in? Well bad luck, society will always hate you and there’s nothing you can do about that so you might as well leave forever. Yeah you can take your boyfriend if you want, but bad news, he’s a scarecrow now. Meanwhile, if you side with powerful people and do everything you can to fit in with the status quo and never stick your neck out to protect your friends, you will be rewarded with unlimited power. Dogshit film.

Which did you see? Any you strongly agree or disagree with? Let me know!

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – The annual festive smash hit The Stepdads Nativity returns to the Bill Murray this Sunday with a typically brilliant line-up! It’s sold out as usual, but maybe there’ll be returns or something. This year I am the narrator, but I won’t spoil what character I am playing in that role. Let’s just say he is simultaneously both very Christmassy and very not Christmassy.

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – That competitive close-up magic tracking shot in Now You Three Me.

Book Of The Week – Currently reading Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang, whose fantasy-history epic Babel I loved earlier this year. Yellowface is about a white writer who steals the manuscript of a dead Chinese-American author and she’s getting away with it for now but I think she might be about to get into some big trouble! Really enjoying it so far.

Album Of The Week – The World Under Unsun by Lunatic Soul. Every now and again I start to think to myself “Maybe I’m done with prog now. Maybe I’ve listened to all the prog I need to.” Then a new prog album will come out that’s so good I reconnect with the entire genre all over again. Apparently this 90-minute epic is the final part of one continuous song-cycle that’s formulated Lunatic Soul’s entire eight-album discography! I didn’t even know! Gotta go back and do my homework now, because this stuff is sick.

Film Of The Week – Now You Three Me, obvs.

That’s all for this week! Let me know what you thought, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it! Take care of yourselves until next time,

Joz xx

PS If you enjoy this newsletter and want to support my work and enable me to keep writing, you can make a one-off donation to my Ko-Fi account, and it’s very gratefully appreciated!

PPS Saw a Fun House in Cardiff. Went in. You gotta have fun:

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