There was a time on this site when blogs and articles used to be posted almost as often as reviews. Then again, that was also a time when reviews used to be posted a lot more bloody frequently than they have been of late. Admittedly, this is something that only long-time visitors to the site – if, indeed, such a creature exists – will really be aware of. If, by some happy chance, that includes you, you’ll also be aware that the majority of blog entries in recent years have been posted to explain why reviews have been a bit thin on the ground of late, usually due to misfortune, health or family issues, or just occasionally the fact that I’m going to be out of the loop for a few weeks because I’m off to Japan for an always welcome break in my very favourite part of the world. My partner and I were originally intending to take such a break almost exactly a year ago but chose to delay the trip until March of this year, for the simple reason that Japan is at its most beautiful in spring, when the cherry trees blossom and the weather is pleasantly warm and sunny without the overpowering heat and humidity that makes the Japanese summer so exhaustingly uncomfortable. We thus booked our flights and our preferred rooms at our favourite cheap business hotel and were really looking forward to getting away.
Then, in December, my partner received the sort on news that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, news that turned both of our worlds upside down, the fallout from which we are still dealing with almost a year later. This made our trip to my partner’s homeland all the more important for her, providing as it would the chance for her to spend some dearly needed time with her surviving Japanese family. It was then that we learned something – by sheer bloody chance, I should add – that completely scuppered the trip at the very last moment, forcing us to cancel flights and hotel bookings and take the financial hit that came with both. I’m not going to go into detail about the root cause of this here but may well expand on it in my usual end-of-year piece as I know for a fact that that others have been similarly affected. For my partner, it couldn’t have come at a worse time, and the process of sorting it plunged us into a nightmarish bureaucratic maze from which we have only recently emerged and proved hugely stressful for us both, particularly as we were already dealing with, well, see above. We thus re-booked our flights and our hotel for October and are finally heading back to Japan. Chances are that this will be posted as we are on our way to the airport.
It’s because the impact this has all had on our lives that I’ve been forced to put Cine Outsider on the back burner not just for a few weeks but for far too much of 2026, as my free time has been whittled down to often as little as an hour a day. Knowing that I would be visiting Japan again soon – and that I plan to retire at the end of February next year – my kindly manager and his minions have been hurling jobs my way. My manager has made no secret of the fact that a key reason he has been keen for me to delay my retirement even further than I already have is down to my ability to deliver quality work to seemingly impossible deadlines, but some of the stuff that’s been coming my way in recent weeks has been pushing the limit of what even I can achieve. As I feel like I’m drowning, the site feels like a life raft that’s increasingly drifting out of my reach. To give a flavour of how things are on that front, I started work on this blog over a week ago, and until this afternoon had only written the opening paragraph, and I leave for Japan at midday tomorrow. The fact that we are due to depart then has thrown us both into a flap because the battles that we’ve had to get to this point had somehow convinced us that the trip would end up not happening again, and once it finally sank in that it will, we realised that we still had much preparation to do and precious little time left to do it.
So what does this mean for Cine Outsider? Logically, I should call it quits and focus instead on my upcoming retirement and getting my mind and body to a place where I can fend of the health implosion I’m convinced will hit me if I continue at this rate. The site will never be what it was at its most active, but that’s inevitable at a time when long form written reviews tend to read only by the devoted few, and many seem reluctant to pay attention to anything longer than a Tweet, and even then would rather watch a video instead. What’s frustrating – and I mean, really frustrating – is that I get sent so many great, great looking discs for review by the likes of Indicator, Radiance, Eureka and Second Run, and oh, how I’d love to write about some of Arrow’s recent and upcoming 4K releases. Yet due to the pressures I’ve briefly outlined above (for personal privacy’s sake, I’ve only scratched surface), just finding time to watch even a small number of them has recently proved nigh-on impossible. It doesn’t end there. Sitting by my TV cabinet are a collection of recently released 4K titles that I eagerly pre-ordered – Soylent Green, Forbidden Planet, The Name of the Rose, Dead Man’s Shoes, Misery, Falling Down and Sexy Beast – and to date I’ve only watched half of one of them, and most are still wearing their cellophane wrap. This is fucked up not just because I’m not delivering what this site is supposed to be about, but because I love movies to bits and not being able to watch them is akin to starving a lifelong junkie of his heroin.
So, not for the first time, I’ve given serious thought to just winding the site up, closing the door to new reviews and just leaving the hundreds that we have written over the years up for anyone who may still be interested in reading them. I do, however, feel this would be unfair on the others who contribute to the site. Gary continues to deliver thoughtful and expertly written reviews of almost every title that the BFI puts out and more besides, and always on, before, or just after the release date, a skill that I also once had and now genuinely envy. I know that both Jerry and Camus would be hugely disappointed if the site was to shut down, something that Jerry reminded me of when we recently had a rare chance to meet up.
So what to do? I’ve given it some serious thought and here’s my hopefully long-term proposal. For the next month, I’m effectively out of the loop, and while I still can’t believe we’re actually going to make this twice delayed trip at last, when I get to our destination I just know that the only thing on my mind will be eating, drinking, and soaking up the atmosphere of Ōsaka, a city I adore and which always lifts my spirits, no matter how down I am before I arrive. I am hoping to watch a couple of films on my review list on the 14-hour plane flight, but whether I’ll find the time to write about them before I return is another matter entirely. I shoot a lot of video when in Japan and spend the last couple of hours of each day editing the footage into short vlogs for friends and family back home, and there’s so much to do during the day that my free time will be as short as it has been for the past few weeks, just a lot more fun. I’ve no doubt that I’ll be hit with a slew of daytime work jobs that have been saved up for me to scowl resentfully at when I return, but one of the issues that has been dominating my time for the past few months will almost have been concluded by then, which should ease the pressure enough for me to start reviewing discs at a more productive pace. The real change, however, should come in the spring of next year, when I will no longer have to balance my work life with my hobby, which should allow me to cover far more disc releases than I have for some considerable time. This will also make it possible for me to join Jerry for more comprehensive coverage of the 2027 London Film Festival, and hopefully revive an aspect of the site that’s been dormant for some time now by conducting video interviews with filmmakers.
So that’s where we stand at the moment. I have to apologise again to site regulars and distributors alike for the fact that reviews have been so few and far between of late, especially as so many of the films we get sent to cover look so damned good and and very much in my viewing wheelhouse. The fact that I’ll be away when the BFI releases Plan 9 from Outer Space on Blu-ray and Salò. or the 120 Days of Sodom on UHD particularly stings, as I’d normally jump at the chance to cover both. So that’s the situation. Right now, I need to finish packing, and am even taking my portable UHD drive in the hope that I will be able to watch a couple of the 4K discs that that I can’t play on my laptop until I get the necessary software codes. I will continue to post news stories when they fly my way, as well as any reviews sent to me by Gary, Jerry or Camus, though there may be the occasional delays on this front due to the time different and my prioritising fun. For now, I’m just looking forward to heading to somewhere warm, eating some of the best street food in the world, soaking in an onsen, and sinking a few glasses of shōchū. Cheers everyone.