House on Haunted Hill (1959)

  The original House on Haunted Hill only bears a passing resemblance to its 1999 remake, so if you're expecting blood and gore, you will be disappointed.

Millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) and his beautiful wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) have rented the "House on Haunted Hill" for a dinner party.  Each invitee has been offered $10,000 to stay in the house overnight.  The owner, Mr. Pritchard (Elisha Cook, Jr.), is convinced the house is haunted by the spirits of at least seven people.  Right away, it seems the ghosts have targeted poor Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), an employee of Loren's who was chosen because she desperately needs the money.  First, they try and drop a chandelier on her, then drag her off to various locations around the house.  Dr. Trent (Alan Marshal), a psychiatrist specializing in hysteria, thinks the girl is just overwrought, but when Annabelle Loren turns up murdered, everyone starts taking the phenomena seriously. 

Vincent Price is fantastic, as always.  The man knew horror.  Sadly, this is a very mediocre work made even more shabby by the passing of time.  The effects are almost non-existent and the constant screaming from the female leads got on my nerves.

I do wish that they had done more with the supernatural element.  It's not germane to the actual plot of the story at all, more of a red herring, but they take the time to have blood from a long-ago murder drip from the ceiling onto Mrs. Bridger's (Julie Mitchum) hand.  Pritchard makes a point of saying that the ghosts have 'marked' Mrs. Bridger as theirs.  You immediately forget about that thanks to Nora's histrionics, but the film goes back later and shows Mrs. Bridger again wiping the phantom blood off her hand in her room.  I think it would have raised this movie to a completely new level if they had resolved the murder mystery with no supernatural elements and then had Mrs. Bridger just disappear in all the commotion. 

Billy the Kid in Texas (1940)/The Kid Rides Again (1943)/Cattle Stampede (1943)/Rustler's Hideout (1945)

  Billy (Bob Steele) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) arrive in Corral City, Texas after hearing that the town has no lawman.  It's true but the town is also run by the Lazy 8 Gang of roustabouts.  Billy takes on the job of Sheriff in order to protect the innocent townsfolk.

  After being thrown in jail for robbery, Billy (Buster Crabbe) escapes in order to find the true culprits.  He finds the town of Sundown under the thumb of the Slade Brothers.  Mort Slade (I. Stanford Jolley) is systematically driving the settlers off their land by buying mortgages, foreclosing, and then turning the properties around.  The only thing standing in his way is bank manager John Ainsley (Ed Peil, Sr.). 

  Billy (Buster Crabbe) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) pitch in to help a wounded colleague's family drive their cattle to market.  Once again, there's a greedy son of a bitch (Glenn Strange) who is trying to take over all the cattle in the region by having his henchman (Charles King) stampede the cows on the trail. 

And it's over.  Does it even matter what this one was about?  Blah blah Billy the Kid blah blah Fuzzy blah blah framed for something they didn't do blah blah. 

This set could have been way better if any attention had been paid to preserving and restoring these films.  I'm not saying that they changed the history of cinema, but serial Westerns were huge back in the 40s and 50s.  I just think that if you're going to take the time to drag these from the vaults of nostalgia, do it right.  Give them a makeover.  Fix the sound.  Make them something worth watching.

Fugitive of the Plains (1943)/Western Cyclone (1943)/Sheriff of Sage Valley (1942)/Billy the Kid Wanted (1941)

  Billy (Buster Crabbe) is being framed once again, this time by a gang led by Kate Shelly (Maxine Leslie).  He joins up with her in order to bring them down from the inside but her right-hand man Dillon (Jack Ingram) has other ideas.

  Billy (Buster Crabbe) is good friends with the governor (Karl Hackett) of a New Mexico town but one of the townsmen (Glenn Strange) plans to use that to his advantage.  He has Billy framed for murder in order to impeach the governor.  Now it's up to Fuzzy (Al St. John) to clear his name.

  Billy (Buster Crabbe), Fuzzy (Al St. John), and Jeff (Dave O'Brien) are trying to snatch a bunch of wanted posters from Sage Valley but Billy ends up getting made Sheriff instead.  He begins prosecuting a gang of outlaws but soon discovers the leader of the gang is his doppelganger, Kansas Ed (Buster Crabbe).

  Fuzzy (Al St. John) is tired of constantly being on the run.  When he hears about a homesteading opportunity in Paradise Valley, he decides that is the life for him.  But, of course, things are not as they seem.  Local land baron Matt Brawley (Glenn Strange) suckers farmers in with promises of easy money then screws them over their water rights.  Fuzzy calls on his old pals Billy (Buster Crabbe) and Jeff (Dave O'Brien) to help right this wrong.

Le Corbeau (1942)

  I'm not nearly as big of a film snob as I'd like to be, but I have to say, the Criterion Collection knows their shit.

Small towns run on gossip, everyone knows this.  But, when the residents of St. Robin start receiving poison pen letters from a mysterious Corbeau (Raven), it becomes clear that someone knows all their little secrets and isn't hesitating to spread them around.  Standoffish doctor Germain (Pierre Fresnay) in particular is targeted, accused of having an affair with his colleague's wife (Micheline Francey) and practicing abortions.  But he is not the only one.  As the secrets are revealed in ever more blatant ways, the public is whipped into a frenzy to find the one responsible. 

The only criticism I would make against this movie is that Germain is not as sympathetic a character as I would have liked to see.  His motivations are revealed too late and too dryly to resonate.  Otherwise, it's a very classy drama with a gorgeous transfer.  I would definitely recommend a watch. 

Panhandle Trail (1942)/Blazing Frontier (1943)/Oath of Vengeance (1944)/Wild Horse Phantom (1944)

  Billy (Buster Crabbe) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) try and help a brother and sister return to Laramie, which is now a ghost town.  They are in possession of a map leading to a fortune in gold but the town sheriff (John Merton) has his eye on it.  Billy and Fuzzy have to run the risk of being arrested by the marshals in order to help.

  Billy (Buster Crabbe) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) must head back to Red Rock Valley in order to stop a greedy railroad detective (Frank Hagney) from auctioning off the town.  This is one of the funnier ones in the series and, according to IMDb it's also the last.  Of course IMDb also says there are only 19 in this series while the collection has 20 movies so

  Fuzzy (Al St. John) buys a general store but finds that everyone in town has been buying on credit.  He calls on his friend Billy (Buster Crabbe) in order to solve the dispute between the cattle ranchers and the farming homesteaders so he can get his money.

  Ok, now what the fuck?  Every other film in this whole stupid series has Billy and Fuzzy solving some stupid dispute between two groups that can't see that it's the shifty-looking bastard in town setting them up.  Every time.  But it's okay because it's like 1889 or whatever. 

Not Wild Horse Phantom.  No shit, this time Billy (Buster Crabbe) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) are tracking a gang of escaped prisoners.  In the 1920's.  We're talking roadsters and tommy guns.  And then, the gang inexplicably switches to horses and western wear in order to recover stolen bank money from a defunct mine.  It makes no goddamn sense whatsoever. 

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

  Thursday was my 31st birthday.  My mom got me Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Since I had watched Mr. Fox with her in the theater, I decided to give Cloudy a shot.

It is way cuter than I thought it would be.  It is geared firmly towards children as far as plot and dialogue, but adults won't be bored into a drooling coma. 

The tiny island town of Swallow Falls is tired of eating sardines left over from when the cannery company went out of business.  Inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) decides to come up with a machine that will transform water vapor into any food desired.  He calls it the FLDSMDFR because he is terrible with naming things.  His father (James Caan) doesn't understand why he can't just come work in the family bait shop but Flint is determined to make something so awesome the entire town will love him.  He accidentally crashes the mayor's (Bruce Campbell) presentation of a Sardine World theme park trying to get his machine to work, and gains the eye of weather intern Sam Sparks (Anna Faris).  When food begins raining from the heavens, Flint finally gets the recognition he has longed for.  Then, of course, it all goes horribly wrong.

I have to say, Steve the translated monkey (Neil Patrick Harris) was my favorite character.  Normally the animal sidekick is merely an annoyance but Steve consistently steals the spotlight.  From his fascination with mustaches to his love of gummi bears, everything he did was hilarious.  The sequel is due out later this year and I may just have to brave the knee-high crowds to go see it. 

The Divide (2011)

  This movie starts out with a nuclear strike and does not get more cheerful from there.  You have been warned.

A handful of residents from a New York City apartment building manage to get inside the fallout shelter built by the crazy super, Mickey (Michael Biehn).  We don't really know anything about their lives before the blast, nor do we need to.  None of it matters.  All that matters is survival, a task that gets exponentially harder the longer they spend together.  It begins when their shelter is breached by what appear to be soldiers.  Instead of a rescue, however, they are only interested in removing Wendi (Abby Thickson), the only child, and they are not above using lethal force.  Josh (Milo Ventimiglia) puts on a containment suit and attempts to find the girl but this action results in them being welded inside by the unknown combatants.  The bonds of society shrivel after that, aided by radiation poisoning.

I will say it again:  this is not a feel-good movie.  This is a "worst-case scenario" movie.  Do not look for the inherent nobility of the human soul to assert itself here.  Don't expect any exposition or answers to why any of this is happening.  Mickey has all sorts of theories about terrorist attacks but there is absolutely no indication of some greater cause to blame.  The evil here is not external.  It is in the hearts of everyone trapped in that bunker. 

The energy of the film is very tight, very claustrophobic.  There are parts that make your skin crawl but I found I had difficulties connecting to the characters emotionally.  For that, it was only so-so for me.  I think I was annoyed at the extent the majority of the characters allowed themselves to be bullied by a fringe minority.  Did nobody in this movie watch Old Yeller?  Mad dogs have to be put down. 

Shadows of Death (1945)/Devil Riders (1943)/Frontier Outlaws (1944)/Gangster's Den (1945)

  Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) is in the town of Red Rock to track down a murderer.  He's pretty sure it's local sleazebag Landreau (Charles King) but gets sidelined before he can prove it by hothead Clay Kincaid (Eddie Hall).  Kincaid thinks Billy is after his girl (Dona Dax) and is kind of a moron.  Fuzzy (Al St. John) has his hands full as the town's Sheriff, Judge, Barber, and Farrier.  

  Professional bad guy Del Stone (Charles King) and his sleazy lawyer (John Merton) try and pit Billy (Buster Crabbe), a Pony Express rider, against the father-daughter team of stagecoach owners in order to drive them both out of business.  

Charles King reminds me of the bad guy from the Western show the puppies were watching in 101 Dalmatians.  

  Ok, straight up, I have no idea what this was about.  I had it on mute while I made a phone call so I missed the first 10 minutes or so.  Something about Billy (Buster Crabbe) having to stand trial for murder and the Judge (Emmett Lynn) doesn't want to marry some woman named Ma (Marin Sais).  I don't know. 

  Billy (Buster Crabbe) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) are gold prospectors.  A crooked lawyer (Stan Jolley) is trying to force a young couple off their ranch and also buy the local saloon.  Fuzzy beats him to the property and Billy keeps his men from framing the ranch owner.  Charles King is back but, in a shocking twist, plays the boozehound bodyguard instead of the bad guy.

Mama (2013)

  This is a somewhat sad, sweet little horror story produced by Guillermo Del Toro.  It's very much in the vein of Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone. 

Two little girls, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lily (Isabelle Nelisse), are found in the woods after five years of being missing.  The feral children are taken in by their uncle (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his wife/girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain).  The girls' psychological care is looked over by Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), who is hoping to get a book out of it.  He is fascinated by Victoria's account that they were looked after by "Mama" who lives in the walls.  He fears that Victoria has developed a dissociative identity to cope with the trauma but Annabel thinks Mama might be real.  As they both get closer to the mystery, strange things start to happen.

The effects weren't as good as The Woman in Black although the story is very similar.  Were it not for the emotional underpinnings, this would be easily dismissed as just another knockoff horror movie.  The children really sell it hard, though, especially the conflicted Victoria.  Lily is just bug-nuts, which has its own creepy charm.  Coster-Waldau has the name recognition from Game of Thrones but he's very underutilized here.  It's definitely a woman's horror film.  I liked the mix of fantasy and reality at the end but Christy was confused by it.  Rob didn't appreciate the number of jump scares but he's kind of a Nervous Nellie with that stuff. 

Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

  I read several disparaging reviews before seeing this movie, but honestly, I don't know what the fuss was all about.  People said that it was ridiculously violent and that it had mixed messages about violence and that the female characters set terrible examples for women.  Maybe I'm just stupid but I thought that was kind of the whole point.

Dave Lizewski aka Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is trying to get Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) to teach him how to be a better super-hero.  But when her adoptive dad Marcus (Morris Chestnut) finds that she's been skipping school in order to continue fighting crime, he puts his foot down.  No more costumes, no more masks.  As just Mindy Macready, she will have to face the evils of high school without her butterfly knives.  Kick-Ass scours the Internet for like-minded people in her absence and joins Justice Forever, led by Colonel Stars-and-Stripes (Jim Carrey), a former mob enforcer turned born-again Christian. 

It's not all feeding the homeless and beating up human traffickers, though.  Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), formerly Red Mist, is still seething over the murder of his father.  With the help of his aide Javier (John Leguizamo), Chris becomes the first super-villain, The Motherfucker, and begins recruiting bad guys to his side. 

Dave is very nearly relegated to side character in his own movie, since Hit Girl's story arc gets at least half of the runtime.  This was a smart decision, considering that she was a fan favorite after Kick-Ass.  Moretz is more than capable of holding an entire movie by herself but, if they make a third one, I would like to see her and Dave's characters teaming up through the entire thing.  Their scenes together were the best part of the entire movie.

If you liked the first one, you'll enjoy the sequel.  It's not quite as good but still well worth watching.  The only part that I found even slightly disagreeable was the "sick stick".  You'll know it when you see it.  However, even that was ameliorated by the guy one row back in the theater who announced that he had just lost his appetite.  Normally I don't approve of people adding their editorials during a film but that was hilarious.  Also, there is an end credits scene so make sure you stick around.

Black Sheep (2006)

  This is not the Chris Farley movie from the 90's.  It's a New Zealand horror/comedy about killer sheep. 

As a child, Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) was traumatized by a sheep and the death of his father.  After fifteen years away from his family's farm, all he wants to do is sign over his half to his brother, Angus (Peter Feeney), and never see it again.  Meanwhile, a couple of eco-terrorists, Grant (Oliver Driver) and Experience (Danielle Mason), are trying to get documentation the Oldfields are using illegal and unethical genetic manipulation by stealing some laboratory samples.  When Grant is bitten by one, the contamination starts to spread to all the sheep, turning them into murderous, rampaging woolly menaces. 

Brought to you by the same effects house that Peter Jackson uses, this is much more Dead Alive than it is King Kong.  However, if you're a fan of low-budget gore-heavy creature features, you may enjoy this little Kiwi gem.  I've had it on DVD for a couple of years but Christy picked it up recently on blu-ray for a song.  We watched her copy and it was beautifully crisp. 

The Thing (2011)

  This prequel/remake of the 1982 John Carpenter classic succeeds on pretty much every level.  That is almost as rare as an Antarctic alien.

Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is contracted to travel to Antarctica to help a Norwegian research team with their discovery of an interstellar craft buried in a glacier.  Frozen in the ice nearby, they find the craft's operator.  What they don't know is that it's not dead, and as the ice starts to melt the creature wakes up.  One by one the research team and their American helicopter crew falls victim to an alien that can perfectly mimic its prey.

A lot of what I enjoyed from the original were the practical effects.  I though they added an extra layer of disturbance because they were real, physical pieces that light bounced off and that could interact.  The CGI here is good but it doesn't cross that line for me into awesome.  That's really the only negative thing I have to say about it.  I loved how they tied in to the footage from the original, explaining all the carnage found by Kurt Russell's character.  They even used the original theme over the end credits.

It feels like it was made by people who not only loved the original, but who understood that they didn't have to re-write it to make it theirs.  They made a complementary story that didn't try and supplant its predecessor.  I wish more people would espouse that philosophy with their attempts.

It's about half in English, half in Norwegian so I'm giving it the foreign tab.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)

  This is one of those movies that feels bigger than it is.  It manages to be more powerful with a cast of three than recent movies have been with a cast of hundreds.

You have to feel bad for Vic (Eddie Marsan).  He's out of prison, planned an extremely professional abduction of heiress Alice Creed (Gemma Aterton), and everything seems to be going well.  It's not his fault his partner, Danny (Martin Compston), has been keeping secrets from him.

Gemma Aterton gives more emotion in this role than she has in the last three movies I've seen her in (Hansel and Gretel, Prince of Persia, and Clash of the Titans).  I'm used to seeing Eddie Marsan in more comedic roles and sometimes I forget that he can be quite serious. 

I enjoyed watching this, even if nothing came as a surprise.  It played out pretty much exactly the way I thought it would. 

Billy the Kid Trapped (1942)/His Brother's Ghost (1945)/Billy the Kid's Range War (1941)/Billy the Kid's Gun Justice (1940)

  Rob got a pack of twenty Billy the Kid movies for free as part of some promotion.  He didn't want them so I said I'd give them a shot.  They're each about an hour, featuring Olympic gold medalist Buster Crabbe as Billy the Kid in various scrapes.  They're not presented in any sort of order on the discs, and IMDb lists about 36 films in the series from 1941-1946.

This first one, Billy the Kid Trapped, opens with three characters in jail.  We learn that Billy the Kid (Buster Crabbe) and his friends Jeff (Bud McTaggart) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) are about to be hanged for murder.  They are busted out by unknown persons and flee, before discovering that they are being framed for crimes by three doppelgangers led by Stanton (Glenn Strange).  Stanton wants further control over the town of Mesa City and plans to use Billy's reputation to drive out his opposition. 

  The sound transfer on this was just awful. 

Billy Carson (Buster Crabbe) is in town to help some sharecroppers being driven off their land.  When Andy Jones (Al St. John) is shot, Billy gets his twin Fuzzy (Al St. John) to pretend to be a ghost in order to scare the raiders. 

  I take it back.  Apparently Bob Steele wore the mantle of Billy the Kid before Buster Crabbe.  Looks like he only starred in three films, though.  Hilariously, he was also in The Big Sleep, which I just watched. 

Here, Billy (Bob Steele) and Fuzzy (Al St. John) are once again being framed for murders they didn't commit.  This time, it's to scare a young heiress (Joan Barclay) away from completing her stagecoach line.  The two are being pursued by a U.S. Marshal named Jeff Carson (Carleton Young), but he's not completely convinced that they're guilty.

According to these movies, Billy the Kid was a blameless do-gooder who just got a bum rap. 

  Billy the Kid (Bob Steele) and his pals Fuzzy (Al St. John) and Jeff (Carleton Young) Blanchard now, instead of Carson, need a place to hole up for a while until the law eases up off of them.  Jeff suggests his uncle's ranch, but when they get there, the ranch is being occupied by a woman (Louise Curry) and her father (Forrest Taylor), neither of whom have ever heard of Jeff's uncle.  They've only owned the ranch for a few months and are having trouble keeping it from being repossessed by Cobb Allen (Al Ferguson), a scam artist strangling their water rights.  It's up to Billy the Kid to provide justice.  Gun justice.

Bottom 11 for 25,000

Oh my God, you guys.  This blog has gotten 25,000 hits.  Weren't we just here for 20,000?  This is amazing.  I swear, I'm not trying to bore you guys with these stupid lists but I never expected to get this far this fast.  The next big milestone is probably 50,000, which fucking blows my tiny mind.

With over 800 posts so far, the top of the list hasn't had a lot of changes.  So let's talk about the bottom of the list.  For whatever reason, these eleven posts haven't had a single pageview.  I thought I'd post the links here and maybe you guys could show them some love or just tell me in the comments what you didn't like about them so I can fix it.

Newest to oldest, here we go:

11.  Public Enemies

10.  Mission:  Impossible 3

9.  Secondhand Lions

8.  SARS Wars:  Bangkok Zombie Crisis

7.  The Ladykillers

6.  The Cooler

5.  The Howling

4. Meet Joe Black

3.  Due Date

2. Casino

1.  Wallace & Gromit:  A Matter of Loaf and Death

Thanks so much for taking the time to come to this blog and read my disordered babblings.  Even you, Russian spambots!  I could never have made it this far without your help.

The Invisible Man (1933)

  This was never one of my favorites of the old Universal horror classics.  The character of Jack Griffins was never a particularly sympathetic one and the movie seems so short, it doesn't really give you a chance to get to know any of the others.

Chemist Jack Griffins (Claude Rains) succeeds in an experiment to become invisible, driving himself mad in the process.  He embarks on a spree of murder, robbery, and general terror, daring the police to arrest him.  His ultimate goal:  world domination.

The movie spends more time on the conundrum of how to catch an invisible assailant than it does on character development, so it's hard to care about Griffins or any of the people around him.  It's a neat idea and the special effects were fantastic for the time, but overall, it's kind of a let-down.  It would be nice to see this one updated for the times, seeing as the last adaptation was over ten years ago.

Dinner for Schmucks (2010)

  This was an utterly putrid movie that lasted about an hour too long.  Every gag was as drawn out as a coma patient's breath and just as unfunny.  

Tim (Paul Rudd) is an ambitious guy trying to get a promotion in his company.  He finally gets his shot when his boss (Bruce Greenwood) invites him to a dinner.  The catch is that everyone is supposed to bring a guest who is a bona fide idiot.  The person with the biggest social reject wins a trophy and the esteem of the boss.  While wrestling with the morality of this, Tim accidentally hits Barry (Steve Carell) with his car.  Barry taxidermies mice and stages elaborate shadowbox dioramas with them.  Seeing it as fate, Tim invites Barry to the dinner but soon realizes that Barry is a cyclone of disaster and he cannot escape.

The movie tries to walk that line between making Barry an object of derision and an object of pity, giving him a sad backstory where his wife left him for his boss, but the character is so stupid you can't root for him.  Tim just comes off as a mealy-mouth coward, lacking the balls to either make a clean break with Barry or man up and just go to the dinner.  It squanders the comedic talents of the two leads and only gives scant minutes to the dozen other highly talented comedians that play the other executives' dinner guests. 

It was a total waste of time that I could not, in good conscience, recommend to anyone.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

  This is how you do over-the-top ridiculousness.  There are many imitators but this is the real deal.

Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is just your average long-haul truck driver in Chinatown to do some business and see his old friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun).  Wang needs to go to the airport to pick up his fiancée, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai), who was born with very rare jade green eyes.  Unfortunately, underworld boss and ancient sorcerer David Lo Pan (James Hong) needs a green-eyed girl in order to break the curse he is under, so he kidnaps Miao Yin.  Jack and Wang must marshal their forces in order to defeat Lo Pan and his three Storms:  Thunder (Carter Wong), Rain (Peter Kwong), and Lightning (James Pax). 

Everything about this movie is insane.  The plot is nuts, the characters are outrageous, and the mythology is never adequately explained.  There are so many reasons why it shouldn't work, but it comes together with its own brand of magic.  John Carpenter is one of those directors whose style is immediately apparent.  You either strap in and enjoy the ride, or you avoid him entirely.  Personally, I'm down for that kind of crazy.

Watership Down (1978)

  I remember reading this book when I was in school but I never saw the movie.  I had heard somewhere that it wasn't all that suitable for children, despite being animated, so I thought I'd check it out.

There are definitely a couple of instances of nightmare fuel so you may not want to show this to kids under the age of 10.  I'd say that's probably a good cut-off.  The animation is pretty crap by today's standards and that actually adds to some of the more disturbing scenes.

When his brother Fiver (Richard Briars) gets a premonition of danger, Hazel (John Hurt) rounds up as many rabbits as he can to flee their warren.  They travel miles, braving all sorts of dangers, to find a place they can call home.  While searching for mates to make their colony viable, they run afoul of General Woundwort (Harry Andrews), a tyrannical Chief who rules his warren with violence and bloodshed. 

It's hard to be a prey animal.  This movie doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the fears of the rabbits.  It's very much like The Secret of NIMH but with less anthropomorphizing.  There is also a very definite mysticism and mythology which I thought was really beautiful.  I'd say see it and then read the book to get the real meat of the story. 

The Big Sleep (1946)

  I could watch Bogey and Bacall all day.  They really just set fire to the screen.  I don't think Humphrey Bogart was a handsome man but there's no denying the chemistry he had with Lauren Bacall.  

Private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is hired by aging millionaire General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) to stop the blackmail of his youngest daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers).  Before he can begin, he is summoned by Sternwood's older daughter, the divorced Mrs. Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) to discuss the disappearance of their previous detective.  Marlowe is attracted to the dangerous blonde, but he's no fool.  It's not long before he's up to his ears in murder, extortion, and mystery. 

This is just one of those great old movies you can throw on and just get sucked into.  William Faulkner did the screenplay, based on a Raymond Chandler story.  It's a classic.

Pandorum (2009)

  What a neat little film.  I wonder why I never heard anyone talk about it.  I don't even remember it coming to theaters. 

Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) wakes up from extended hypersleep on the spacecraft Elysium with no memory of who he is or why he is there.  The ship's bridge has been sealed off and the only other person in with him is Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid).  Payton and Bower must get the ship's reactor back on line or risk losing all life support.  Slowly, their memories start coming back and they realize they are on a mission to an Earth-like planet called Tanis and the ship is filled with sleeping colonists.  Or at least it was.  As Bower tries to negotiate the ship, he realizes that they are not the only ones moving around.  Humanoid creatures have booby-trapped some passages, hunting anyone awake and breaking open hypersleep pods to eat the colonists.  If that wasn't enough, extended hypersleep has been shown to cause "Pandorum", a psychological breakdown manifesting with hallucinations, paranoia, and psychosis. 

If you took Alien and Event Horizon and mixed them together with a sprinkling of the Reavers from Serenity, you would have Pandorum.  It has a very small, tight cast that does a fantastic job, especially Cam Gigandet, who might be giving the performance of his career so far.  I wish I had seen this before Man of Steel, so I could properly appreciate actress Antje Traue.  The whole time I was watching, I was thinking "well, hell yeah, if I'm going to be stuck on a spaceship with everyone trying to kill me I'd want Faora-Ul on my side."  That woman is badass.  I am really growing to love Ben Foster.  I've seen him play a mutant, a soldier, a cowboy, and a killer and he is fantastic at everything. 

Pacific Rim (2013)

  Intrepid boyfriend Rob spent last week trekking around London and Oxford.  He got back Wednesday night and was scheduled to work all weekend so I took Thursday off in order to spend some time with him.  Seeing Pacific Rim was at the top of his list of things to do.  It's nearing the end of its run in theaters but we managed to get in to the IMAX 3D showing.  The 3D didn't do it any special favors but the IMAX really showed off the scale of the robots.

In the near future, a dimensional rift at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean has started spitting forth gigantic beasts called Kaiju.  Humans have developed equally-large two-person-controlled robots called Jaegers to fight and kill them.  The two pilots must literally share the same brain function in order to control the massive bots, entering a combined consciousness called The Drift.  When Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) loses his brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) during a fight, he is left a broken man.  His boss, Marshal Pentecost (Idris Elba), seeks him out for one final attempt to seal the rift, partnering him with fresh-faced newcomer Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi).  Their job is to hold off the Kaiju while the Australian Jaeger, piloted by father and son team, the Hansen's (Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky) drop a nuclear warhead into the rift.  However, things get a bit dicey when the resident Kaiju expert, Dr. Newt Geiszler (Charlie Day) manages to Drift with a Kaiju brain and uncovers some new information.

The movie borrows a bit from other action-heavy summer tentpoles like Independence Day and The Avengers.  If you're expecting a purely original story, this may affect your enjoyment.  If you just want to see giant monsters versus giant robots, it will probably not bother you so much.  There was only one part of the move that was utterly stupid, and that was the line about Gipsy Danger being "analog, purely nuclear" instead of digital.  That felt like someone drive a needle into my brain.  Otherwise, I'd say it was a decent-enough summer popcorn flick.  It could have used more Ron Perlman, but I think every movie could use more Ron Perlman.

The Big Hit (1998)

Judge me all you want.  I love this movie.  I think it's hilarious.  Every time I watch it, I find something new to laugh about.

This time, it was Christina Applegate's hair.

Melvin Smiley (Mark Wahlberg) is a nice guy.  He has no problems doing favors for his co-workers, even when they're clearly taking advantage of him.  So, when Cisco (Lou Diamond Phillips) gets the bright idea to kidnap a wealthy mogul's daughter (China Chow) for ransom, Melvin gets stuck with her.

Unfortunately for all concerned, the mogul has gone completely belly-up after investing all his money in a disastrous vanity project and looks to Keiko's godfather (Avery Brooks) for help.  He just so happens to be Cisco and Melvin's boss.  Desperate to avoid getting whacked, Cisco pins the entire thing on Melvin and the chase is on.

This was before Mark Wahlberg really started to get taken seriously as an actor but you can see the diamond just beneath the surface here.  He is a naturally funny man who does very well with action comedies.  Lou Diamond Phillips is great here as the scuzzy bad guy.  I love his mean little smirks.

It's not an original concept by any means but it manages to be greater than the sum of its parts thanks to great character work.  I can watch this movie 100 times and not get bored of it.

The Visitors (1993)

  If you've ever wanted to see Warlock as a comedy, this is the movie for you. 

Sir Godefroy, Count of Montmirail, is on his way to wed his beloved, Lady Frenogonde (Valerie Lemercier) when he captures a witch (Tara Gano).  The witch slips him a potion and he accidentally kills his fiancée's father (Patrick Burgel).  Frenegonde decides to join a convent, leaving the knight with no hope of descendants.  In desperation, he turns to his father's senile wizard (Pierre Vial) who tries to send him back to moments before the accident.  However, he ends up in 800 years in the future with his hapless valet, Jacquasse (Christian Clavier).  They find that the 1990's are a far different animal than the 1100's.  With the help of the current Countess Montmirail (Valerie Lemercieer), Godefroy must find the wizard's spellbook in order to get back to his own time.

I couldn't tell you precisely why, but this movie left me completely cold.  I love Jean Reno.  The man is incredibly versatile as an actor, and he can surely do comedy.  But I was so bored halfway through, I started fast forwarding, skipping five minutes at a time, just to get to the end.  Maybe I've seen too many fish-out-of-water stories or maybe I was just too tired to appreciate it.  I don't know.  I feel bad, because this seems like something right up my alley.  I just didn't like it.

Evil Dead (2013)

  The poster lies.  This movie isn't scary.  Unless you're allergic to red food coloring or Caro syrup.  Then I imagine it's terrifying. 

The original Evil Dead is a genuine cult classic and this remake was very polarizing.  I wasn't going to see it but I heard good things and, well, it was free. 

Here's the thing:  Even though it's a classic, The Evil Dead (1981) is not a good horror movie.  That's why it's achieved cult status.  This movie is how The Evil Dead should have been, if it had been made with a real budget and real technology.  You sacrifice a lot, okay all, of the charm in order to have a gore-filled demonic-possession movie.  And that's not a bad thing.  Because The Evil Dead was made first.  No one can take that experience away from you.  You can treasure every unintentionally hilarious moment.  If this film had been made first, we would never have had Army of Darkness and the world would have been a worse place.  This is the alternate future.

Five friends gather at a remote cabin in order to help Mia (Jane Levy) quit her drug addiction cold turkey.  Once there, however, strange things begin to happen as soon as they uncover an odd book from the basement.  Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) reads from the book and unleashes a demonic force. 

Christy thought it was obscenely gory and hated how over-the-top it was.  I wouldn't put it on my Christmas list, but I thought it was an interesting experiment.  It's not often that you get to part the veils and see what might have been.

The Devil's Double (2011)

  It's easy to dismiss Dominic Cooper because he's not a leading man very often.  He's a side character, usually one that's not quite good or bad.  Here, he not only anchors the entire movie with presence, he also manages to play two roles completely.  You know it's the same guy playing Uday and Latif but their personalities are so different, it feels like you're watching two different people.  I can think of no finer praise for an actor.

Latif Yahia (Dominic Cooper) has the misfortune to closely resemble Uday (Dominic Cooper), the psychotic son of Saddam Hussein (Phillip Quast) and is press-ganged into becoming his body double.  He is catapulted into a life of extreme wealth and extravagance, but knows that he walks on the knife's-edge of death, whether by assassins or Uday himself.  The man is dangerously unstable and violently possessive.

This was much better than I had thought it was going to be.  Seeing as I spent about six months in Iraq, I am very familiar with the persons depicted.  It added an extra level of depth to watching it, but don't think you need a crash course in the Hussein biography to enjoy it.  They don't shy away from violence or bloodshed, so you should be aware of that when you see it.

I don't know if I'll put it on my list to buy.  I might have to give it some time to sink in first but I definitely recommend it.

Better Than Chocolate (1999)

  This is a cute little Canadian rom-com that I had never heard of before I pulled it off Christy's shelf.

Maggie (Karen Dwyer) has dropped out of college in order to determine what she wants out of life when she meets Kim (Christina Cox).  Impulsively, she asks Kim to move in with her the same day her mother, Lila (Wendy Crewson), announces that she is getting a divorce and needs to stay with her daughter until she gets things worked out.  Maggie wants to avoid coming out to her mom but finds keeping it a secret is a lot harder to do when you're right under someone's nose.  With the help of her transgendered friend, Judy (Peter Outerbridge), and her boss, Frances (Ann-Marie McDonald), Maggie learns that life and art are what you make of them.

There are some fairly gratuitous sex scenes so, if you're bothered by hot naked lesbians, you should probably skip this one.  Honestly, I found the horrible 90's clothes to be much more objectionable but that's me.  Also, the soundtrack is very "indie grrl" because that was a thing that happened in the 90's that we will have to accept.  Otherwise, it's very cute.

The Descendants (2011)

  If you're a regular reader to this blog, it should come as no surprise that I didn't enjoy this movie.  I had heard from someone, I can't remember who, that this was "surprisingly funny".  They lied.  It's not funny at all.

Matt King (George Clooney) is a real estate lawyer on Oahu.  His family descends all the way from Hawaiian royalty and they have 25,000 acres of virgin land in a trust that is about to dissolve.  Matt is the only executor but has regular meetings with his cousins to discuss the bids they've gotten should they decide to sell.  One of the developers is offering half a billion dollars so the pressure to sell is quite intense.  Matt is also dealing with the pressure of raising his two daughters alone, after being told that his wife will never wake up from her coma.  His 17-year-old, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), informs him that she had caught her mom having an affair before the boating accident that landed her in the hospital.  Lost and overwhelmed, Matt manages to track down the guy (Matthew Lillard) (I know, right?) and discovers that he is also married with two children and happens to be the brother-in-law of the most popular bidder for the land.

Here's the part where they lost me.  At this point, the only ethical thing to do with the land is notify the court that there is a conflict of interest and have them appoint a new executor.  I know, that's a weird thing to get mad about, but it seriously irks me.  What is the point of this movie?  What message is it trying to send?  That it's okay to make an emotional decision with far-reaching consequences that affect hundreds, if not thousands, of people?  That it doesn't matter if you screw over your extended family as long as you've made peace with your children?  I don't get it.  That annoys me.  If anybody does get it, could you please explain it to me?