Recently Watched Films

Took a blind buy gamble on this one and it paid off. Very intriguing, stunningly shot movie (especially the early island sequences). 

Haven't done one of these for a while, but it's also time for...

RYM Satire!

L'Avventura, an Italian film telling the tale of Anna, Claudia and Sandro after Anna goes mysteriously missing during a yachting cruise and the latter pairs efforts to find out what happened to her (while also inappropriately falling for each other even though Sandro is supposed to be with Anna).

RYM genre police: Not a mystery movie. 

My second time watching Dawn of the Dead and this time I watched the extended cut. I can't really recall what bits weren't in the earlier version I saw (which was the Italian cut), but I know I dug this movie more this time around, which is the same experience I had with Night of the Living Dead. I've still not seen Day of the Dead at all. 

Started going through some more DVDs that I may not keep and first up was Friday the 13th, which I recall being rather poor despite its legendary status. I was sure this one would be getting ditched but it opened up a lot this time around. I'm not sure it earns its status among the likes of Halloween, but it turns out its a keeper after all. 

This one's quite decent with a really good atmosphere but the actual story is basic and upon conclusion of a second viewing I'm just left feeling that I really don't need to see this ever again. One for the get rid of pile. 

One of the DVDs I've owned for the longest time and had never watched it again until today. Must have had this over ten years since I'm sure it wasn't that old of a film when I got it. I didn't not enjoy it, but it could easily go back on the shelf and sit there gathering dust for another decade without coming down again, so not a keeper. 

What do you think of this one? I've seen it twice but made the mistake both times of trying to watch it late at night and getting sleepy and inattentive. 

Considerably weirder than anticipated. By a country mile even. I enjoyed it though. 

Brilliant anime film. Three homeless people, a drunk, a transwoman and a teenage runaway, find a baby abandoned in the trash and set out to find its mother, which is anything but straightforward. 

The little wizards are a bit bigger... The cast and story expands a bit.

Pretty solid space movie but it does lose something as it goes along. And the ending glosses over far too much. 

I don't even know where to begin with this one. I can't decide if it's a masterpiece or the biggest pile of steaming crap I've ever seen. It's certainly a long difficult watch and more intriguing than riveting viewing. It's about another planet which is just like Earth but stuck in their middle ages, with Earthlings having infiltrated them. The depiction of the kind of squalor of these times is certainly unmatched by any other movie. It's really quite foul to watch. Lots of mud, blood, piss and shit and bare arses. I had to take a break half way through its three hour runtime, because I just couldn't take any more by that point. By the time the difficult to follow plot actually concludes it had also lost most of my attention. 

If I'm still thinking about it over a year from now like I was with Stalker I may seek it out again to re-evaluate, but for now I'd say 2 stars at most. 

Sweet! Hippogriffs! The werewolf was a bit shit though, as they generally are.