Recently Watched Films

A modern black and white silent comedy. Utterly madcap.

Long but well worth it - an examination of 1980s horror movies.

A docu-comedy which does exactly what it says.

I'm also 7 movies away from having seen all the Best Picture Oscar winners.

Liked Alien: Romulus a lot for all it re-treads familiar ground with the original. Still the best once since Aliens.

Cisco Pike was slow but good. First film of Kris Kristofferson as a leading actor.

Halloween Ends kinda meh. Lets hope Halloween actually has ended here. 

The Odessa File was very good!

Pearl was excellently unhinged. 

Scream VI was surprisingly solid but is another franchise they seem determined to run into the ground. 

The Specialists was an excellent western!

Valdez is Coming was okay but talks too long to get to the point and when it does it just ends without the confrontation it was building up to happening. 

Right, onto this month and I'll bring the posters back now:

The Chase (1966)

An underseen gem with a stellar cast.

Homicidal (1961)

Sometimes called a Psycho knock-off but it's not really. This film would probably be decried today as being transphobic because the plot is basically (spoiler alert) that a baby girl is forcibly socially transitioned to live as a boy because her father wants a son, and this is hidden from him until he dies. Said girl then has to continue living as a male in order to get her inheritance otherwise it defaults to her older sister. This inevitably leads her sanity to deteriorate and she starts living as two people, one male, one female, using the female persona to kill. 

It's really all kinds of messed up. 

Watcher (2022)

Didn't rate it. It's got a point to make but the execution is so slow, drab and dreary and we've probably all seen something like this before anyway:

1. Woman notices man watching/following her.

2. Women's husband thinks she's being paranoid.

3. Women gets police involved; they're useless.

4. Man claims its the woman who's watching/harassing him.

5. Man turns out to be serial killer. I'd say spoiler alert but like nobody didn't see it coming.

Yawn.

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

I'll give it to M. Night Shyamalan that this is engaging enough to watch, but that doesn't mean it really makes any sense whatsoever. 

Babylon (2022)

A darkly comic tale of Old Hollywood decadence as the industry moves from the silent era into talkies. Bloody brilliant movie; one of the best newer movies I've seen for a while. 

Went to see War of the Rohirrim the other day. I'd been pretty excited for this one so I was happy that it didnt end up being shit or something but I was let down by the animation quality. The art itself is lovely but the animation is choppy at times and looks a bit cheap. I saw it english dubbed if that matters to anyone and thought the cast was fine, no one stood out to me as a particularly off performance or anything although Brian Cox is noticeably better than anyone else and I'd say a pretty inspired choice for the character of Helm Hammerhand. The biggest flaw in my opinion is just how hard the movie tries to connect to the Peter Jackson films, I think it could've easily stood on its own without that. If you arent entirely averse to that anime look (or animated stuff in general) I'd definitely say it's worth a watch.

This gets overlooked next to the Dollars trilogy and the other two Once Upon a Time films (it's alternate title is Once Upon a Time...The Revolution) but it's just as good. Only my second time seeing it. 

Bit of a gem. In the last days of WW2, the sole survivor of a ship sunk by a German U-boat sets out for revenge, becoming increasingly obsessed with retribution. 

Re-watch. Eastwood's weirdest western. Somehow this is only the second time I've watched it. In a western mood lately so I'll be revisiting all his westerns in due course including of course the Dollars trilogy. 

Well, I had fun with this, as someone who grew up watching Ghostbusters in some form or other. Nice throwbacks to the original film but they didn't rehash the basic plot as with Afterlife, but the got the comedy vibe more on the money than Afterlife did. This one won't sell you on the franchise if you're not a fan or wish it has been left in the 80s, but I enjoyed it. 

Bit of a new gem from Netflix that plays out like a neo-western. Except instead of the stranger riding into town on horseback he's on a bike (listening to The Number of the Beast no less ) where he quickly runs afoul of the local law. 

That was an odd one! This is one of those films I've been aware of for a while but never watched yet always had some impression of what it was about, what style it was in, etc....turns out I was completely wrong about everything. Where I was expecting a black and white film full of moody nighttime scenes it's actually in full colour and takes place in daytime. Not sure why I had the wrong impression of it, maybe it was the posters? I enjoyed the film but doubt it'll be a regular re-watch. 

80s horror comedy. I've actually seen the 2011 remake before, but always wanted to see this version. I wasn't blown away but its solid enough. 

Very fun spaghetti western although upon conclusion I felt like maybe there was still a bit of story left to tell?