Recently Watched Films

Wow, I can see why this is considered a classic now. A masterful piece of film-making. The Soviet propaganda is kind of obvious, but the storytelling is excellent from a time when actions rather than words had to tell most of the story.

Much better than I expected. Watched this one with the missus, who had got it from her mother, so I was expecting it to be bored shitless. I wasn't. This is both tragic and witty. Judi Dench is her usual wonderful self.

I quite liked the first one. The second was watchable enough but lacked some of the charm of the first. 

I've seen a "making of" of this, and the scene at the dance leading up to the bucket of blood incident was all done in a single long shot. Looked really impressive when you realised how technically difficult it was.

Well this was arse. Cool theme tune. Cool helicopter but not enough of it. Ernest Borgnine giving it all but has a piss poor role. Jan-Michael Vincent shows the acting range of an Easter Island moai.

Decided to give this version a look to see if it's as bad as people say. Thought for a while that even though it was unnecessary and inferior to the 1960s version it was watchable enough, but it ruined it in the second half. The original is a masterpiece of atmospheric terror. This one ends up relying heavily on CGI that clearly isn't up to the task of being effective. The cast, while the most high profile of names across any version including the Netflix series, also feels rather mismatched with each other and mostly feel miscast in their roles compared to the other two versions, with the exception of Lili Taylor. Overall, despite a few positive factors including the set design, a waste of a couple of hours.