10 Years, 2050 Movies, And Still Going

I've been seeing a lot of "Best of the Decade" posts rolling out.  I think that's dumb because the decade isn't over until the end of 2020.  I don't know what kind of math those people are using but I have never started counting at zero.  However, it has been exactly ten years since I started this blog so instead of my usual End of the Year review, I thought I'd look back at my top 25 favorite films of the last ten years.  I had to winnow down from 807 posts so I really hope you fuckers appreciate the time and effort this took.

25.  Easy A -- This is easily a new high school rom-com classic.  

24.  Captain America:  The First Avenger  -- I was surprised when I was putting this list together how well the Captain America segments of the MCU held up.  

23.  The Conjuring  -- This spawned an entire franchise universe that has been (mostly) successful on every entry.  

22.  Captain America:  The Winter Soldier  -- Honestly, this would still be a good movie even if the rest of the MCU went away.  It would make no sense but it would still be good.

21.  13 Assassins  -- This is way higher on the the list than it would have been if I had not just recently watched it again.  I'm glad I did, though, because it really is intensely beautiful and sad and timely.

20.  Cabin in the Woods  -- Horror comedy classic and the only horror comedy to make the list.

19.  Get Out -- This wasn't just a movie.  This was a cultural phenomenon.  Jordan Peele transcended genre to bring a masterpiece of social commentary to the forefront.

18.  Inside Out  -- Of all the Pixar movies, this was the one I identified with the most.

17.  Deadpool 2  -- This could have been a total cash grab and instead it managed to have a really sweet message about found family.

16.  Logan  -- The best possible way the X-Men movies could have ended.  Too bad they just kept going...

15.  It:  Chapter One  -- I had to add the colon because now there are two of them.  

14.  Black Swan  -- Still my favorite Natalie Portman performance of all time.  

13.  Deadpool  -- This exists solely because of Ryan Reynolds and it is perfect.

12.  Avengers:  Endgame  -- I mean, it had to be on the list.  It's such a fucking downer, though.

11.  Little Women  -- Again, this probably would not be on here if it weren't so fresh in my mind but it is a really good adaptation of one of my absolute favorite books.

10.  Green Room  -- If Anton Yelchin hadn't died, this probably wouldn't be here.

9.  The Man from Nowhere  -- John Wick before there was John Wick.

8.  Toy Story 4  -- The sequel literally no one asked for, yet it turned out to somehow be the exact story I needed to hear.

7.  A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night  -- This was such a nice surprise.  Nothing else is like it.  Really a gem.

6.  Toy Story 3  -- The most perfect Pixar movie ever made.  I still remember an entire theater of people sobbing during the ending.  

5.  Hereditary  -- God, I love this movie.

4.  Blancanieves  -- I really didn't expect this to wind up this high on the list but I couldn't stop thinking about it ever since I watched it.

3.  Mad Max:  Fury Road  -- Monumental, wild, explosive, amazing.  Words don't do Charlize Theron justice.

2.  Avengers:  Infinity War  -- I don't think this is a "better" movie than Mad Max but no other film dominated discourse like this one.  Endgame was never going to live up to the standards of suspense left by Infinity War.

1.  John Wick  -- No one saw this coming.  This movie launched Keanu Reeves back into the spotlight, kickstarted the directorial careers of David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, and sent action fans into paroxysms of joy.  Never has carnage looked so good.

So those are my favorites of the last ten years.  Feel free to disagree.  Thank all of you for reading and I look forward to spending another ten years screaming my opinions into the void.

Little Women (2019)

  I was not going to watch this initially.  Little Women was one of my absolute favorite books as a child and I could not get over my fear that this adaptation would ruin it.  But two of my friends also loved that book and convinced me to see it with them today as a group.

Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) is trying to make it as a writer in New York City.  She has had some success with sordid little romances in serials but her pride is checked when they are reviewed unfavorably by a professor she admires (Louis Garrel).  A family emergency prompts her to return home to her sister, Beth (Eliza Scanlan), who is gravely ill.  On her journey, Jo remembers her childhood and reflects on how their lives have changed.

This is definitely not for people new to the story.  You really need to have read the book.  The movie timeline is not linear and it jumps from "present" to "past" in ways that could be confusing if you are unfamiliar with the source material.  I think the casting was very good, but I did not like the direction given to Florence Pugh as Amy.  She basically just pouts and frowns a lot (which, to be fair, is what book Amy does) but it just seemed kind of a waste for Pugh.  She does have more of a dramatic scene with Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) in Paris than she gets in the book, so that kind of makes up for it.  All in all, there was a lot more depth of emotion from these portrayals than any other adaptation I have seen.  Especially Chris Cooper as Mr. Lawrence.  He was the best I've ever seen him here.

If I am really mad about any decision made here, it's got to be the depiction of Freidrich Bhaer.  He is supposed to be based on Louisa May Alcott's crush, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a man twenty years older than her.  Book Friedrich is large, older, German, and homely.  Louis Garrel is French, 36, and looks like a male model.  It is some bullshit.

I do not like Greta Gerwig, neither as an actress nor as a director.  This is much better than Lady Bird, however.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

  Has everyone seen this now?  Can we talk about it?  If you haven't, there are probably spoilers ahead (though I will try to be vague) so you might as well stop reading now and come back when you've seen the movie.

Rey (Daisy Ridley) is still training to be a Jedi while Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac) have made contact with a spy claiming to be within the First Order who has intel that Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is now collaborating with the "I Lived, Bitch" former emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).  Palpatine is still hellbent on achieving interstellar domination and has raised an entire army for Kylo Ren to take if he will just murder that pesky girl Jedi.  Or have the pesky girl accept her dark side and ascend to the throne, he's not picky.  Everybody else mostly gets short-changed.

Not going to lie, I had a lot of issues with this one.  I did not like the retconning of Rey's origins.  I thought it was much more egalitarian to have the Force just kind of pop up in individuals of any species or race, but they went ahead and turned it into a legacy thing.  I would have loved to see Finn progress and be recognized as a Force sensitive.  I would have liked to see Disney stop being fucking cowards about the Finn/Poe 'ship.  I thought the C-3PO sacrifice was rushed and extremely poorly handled.  There was no fallout and it should have been a major moment for a character that has been integral to the previous 8 chapters of this story.

There were things I did like.  Evil Marionette Palpatine.  Palpatine using Force lightning.  Evil Rey.  Evil Rey using Force lightning.  Keri Russell being smoking hot.  That little gremlin dude with the inexplicable Russian baby voice.  Did I mention the Force lightning?  I liked that part a lot.

I dunno, man.  I just kind of wish this had the same impact as season one of The Mandalorian.  Sure, that also had problems with pacing, filler episodes, and predictability, but I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next season.  As for TROS, I'm kind of glad this saga is over.  Maybe now explore other aspects of this universe instead of just this one family's feud against the government.

Blancanieves (2012)

  This movie is stunning in every sense.  First, it's a fake silent film, like The Artist, so you're probably thinking easy double feature, right?  No, friends.  You should pair this gorgeous, crisp black-and-white with Tarsem Singh's The Fall for maximum impact.  Yes, he also did Mirror, Mirror, a take on Snow White but the less said about that film the better.  This is the only Snow White adaptation you will ever need again.

Carmen (Macarena Garcia) grew up a lonely little girl, relegated to serving in her father's house by her evil stepmother, Encarna (Maribel Verdú).  Her father (Daniel Geménez Cacho), a famous bullfighter paralyzed by an unfortunate accident, loves her but is powerless against the cruel yet fabulous Encarna.  After securing the bullfighter's fortune with murder, Encarna sets her chauffeur (Pere Ponce) to kill Carmen.  She is presumed dead but secretly rescued by a troupe of traveling dwarf toreadors.  Now amnesiac and reinvented as Blancanieves, she begins making a name for herself on the bullfighting circuit, which brings her back around to Encarna's evil grasp.

I cannot stress to you what a boss bitch Encarna is.  Verdú is all camp here, rocking some flapper glamour.  Like, she could definitely be BFF with Cruella DeVil and Cate Blanchett's Lady Tremaine.  How boss is this bitch?  That's her on the poster, instead of the heroine.  When I say she steals a scene, she. steals. the. Film.  I would buy this movie for her performance alone.  If you're in the mood, it is streaming on Criterion.  Warning, the ending will come out and punch you right in the dick.  Just sayin'.

13 Assassins (2010)

Well, I finally made it all the way through the server and looped around back to the beginning.  I did buy this movie, FYI, and it's still just as glorious as it was when I first watched it.  Twitch is now a completely different website.  A lot of shit has changed over the decade.  I'm gearing up to doing a full Best of the Decade list instead of my usual best of the year.  It's just taking a long time.  

Everything I originally said about this movie still stands.  Originally posted 17 Oct 2011.      

I have been waiting for quite some time to see this one.  I read about it on Twitch ages ago.  If you're not familiar, Twitch is a great source of reviews and previews of Asian and festival films.  I don't think I've mentioned it before on the blog, but I've been waiting for a new job to start for almost a month and a half now.  On the one hand it's great because I get to watch a lot more movies than I had been, but on the other, it sucks because I have zero discretionary funds.  That means no going to the theater and no buying new films.  I either have to wait for it on Netflix, or beg Rob to get it.  This is one of the latter.

It is the tail end of the Edo era.  The age of samurai is waning and there has been peace under the Shogun.  However, the Shogun's younger half-brother, Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), threatens that peace by being a complete psycho.  Due to restrictions of honor, the Shogun can't have his brother 'taken care of', so one of his senior advisors takes the responsibility and contacts Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho), a well-respected samurai to take out the evil Lord.  Shinzaemon puts together a team of 11 other samurai (they come across the last guy about halfway through the movie) to help him outwit his old schoolmate, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), Naritsugu's top general.

There is a ton of violence in this movie.  Almost the entire last hour of the film is one extended battle scene, which is awesome.  With 13 good guys it's a little difficult to remember all the character's names, but only about 5 of them have speaking parts so that helps.  There are a lot of similarities between this and Kurasawa's Seven Samurai which I hope are intentional homages and not just an ultra-bloody ripoff.

I plan on buying this one at some point when I start getting paid again.

Valiant (2005)

  Seriously, except for The Mandalorian, Disney+ is not making much of a case for why I should throw money at it.  (But also seriously, The Mandalorian is totally worth the money.)

This is a fucking weird one.  It's not properly a Disney film, it was made in conjunction with several British production companies, and you can tell.  It also goes to show you how devastating Pixar was to Disney in the early 00s, since this was made just before Disney's re-acquisition of that company in 2006.

Valiant (Ewan McGregor) is a small pigeon desperate to join the war effort in WWII England but keeps getting rejected for his diminutive stature.  So he agrees to be a test subject for a super-soldier serum -- just kidding.  He name-drops the pigeon commander Gutsy (Hugh Laurie) in a bid to scam his way in with his buddy Bugsy (Ricky Gervais), and it works.  After mostly completing basic training, Valiant and Bugsy join Commander Gutsy in a super secret mission to retrieve plans from the French Resistance and carry them back without falling prey to the German falcon, Von Talon (Tim Curry.)

This movie has an incredible cast for how shitty it is.  The computer animation is obviously still in its infancy and the plot is weirdly dark for a Disney film, even a borrowed one.  Example:  There's a shot  of all the pigeons Von Talon has killed, sewn back together, and stuffed on his mantle, a row of little corpses on display that our hero has to hide among to escape notice.  That's creepy AF.  There's also a weirdly gross sexualization of female pigeons at the beginning.  I get that it's meant to emulate the real WWII propaganda but A) still gross and B) this was made in 2005, no excuses.  Also, C) it's a kid's movie.  WTF.

76th Golden Globe Nominations

And so it begins.  Awards season is underway with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association picking the movies and TV they think are worth talking about.  Sometimes it's a bellwether for the Oscars, sometimes it's completely out of left field.  Either way, I'm bringing it here to you.  Me and every other movie site.

Best Motion Picture - Drama

1917
The Irishman
Joker
Marriage Story
The Two Popes

No real surprises here, except maybe  The Two Popes.  I haven't really seen anybody talking about that one.  Three of the five nominees here are Netflix exclusives, so that's another blow for streaming services.

Best Motion Picture - Comedy

Dolemite is My Name
Jojo Rabbit
Knives Out
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Rocketman

Some heavy hitters in this category.

Best Actress - Drama

Cynthia Erivo - Harriet
Scarlett Johansson - Marriage Story
Saoirse Ronan - Little Women
Charlize Theron - Bombshell
Renee Zellweger - Judy

I can't believe they remade Little Women again.  It's supposed to be good but I fucking hate Greta Gerwig.  I just don't get why people like her.

Best Actor - Drama

Christian Bale - Ford vs Ferrari
Antonio Banderas - Pain and Glory
Adam Driver - Marriage Story
Joaquin Phoenix - Joker
Jonathan Pryce - The Two Popes

Again, no surprises here.

Best Actress - Comedy

Awkwafina - The Farewell
Cate Blanchett - Where'd You Go Bernadette?
Ana de Armas - Knives Out
Beanie Feldstein - Booksmart
Emma Thompson - Late Night

This is some fresh blood, though.  I love it when Emma Thompson gets nominated for stuff because she'll get drunk and throw her shoes around and it's hilarious.

Best Actor - Comedy

Daniel Craig - Knives Out
Roman Griffin Davis - Jojo Rabbit
Leonardo DiCaprio - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Taron Egerton - Rocketman
Eddie Murphy - Dolemite is My Name

I'm actually really excite about this race.  I'm actually thinking Daniel Craig and Eddie Murphy are the frontrunners here.  People have been raving about Knives Out and Dolemite is My Name.

Best Director

Bong Joon Ho - Parasite
Sam Mendes - 1917
Todd Phillips - Joker
Martin Scorsese - The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I really want Bong Joon Ho to take this one.

Best Screenplay

Marriage Story
Parasite
The Two Popes
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The Irishman

I haven't seen any of these yet so I can't venture an opinion.

Best Foreign Language Film

The Farewell
Les Misérables
Pain and Glory
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

It's going to come down to taste for this one.  I've heard great things about Portrait of a Lady but Almodovar is a favorite of the HFPA.

Best Animated Film

Frozen 2
How to Train Your Dragon:  The Hidden World
The Lion King
Missing Link
Toy Story 4

Disney is representing 3/5 here but I love Laika and I so want it to win.

Best Original Score

Little Women
Joker
Marriage Story
1917
Motherless Brooklyn

Best Original Song

"Beautiful Ghosts" - Cats
"I'm Gonna Love Me Again" - Rocketman
"Into the Unknown" - Frozen 2
"Spirit" - The Lion King
"Stand Up" - Harriet

Ha!  Fucking Cats.  This is the song Taylor Swift co-wrote with Andrew Lloyd Weber and it barely made the cutoff to be included.  The movie won't even release until Christmas.

Best Supporting Actress - Drama or Comedy

Kathy Bates - Richard Jewell
Annette Benning - The Report
Laura Dern - Marriage Story
Jennifer Lopez - Hustlers
Margot Robbie - Bombshell

It is a fucking crime that Jennifer Lopez got stuck down in Supporting Actress instead of lead.  From what I understand, she carries the whole movie.

Best Supporting Actor - Drama or Comedy

Tom Hanks - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Anthony Hopkins - The Two Popes
Al Pacino - The Irishman
Joe Pesci - The Irishman
Brad Pitt - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Likewise, I'm really surprised to see Tom Hanks down here considering the movie is about Mr. Rogers and he is playing Mr. Rogers.  But also, I really want Joe Pesci to win over everyone else.  It would be hilarious.

Best TV Series - Drama

Big Little Lies
The Crown
Killing Eve
The Morning Show
Succession

Best Actress in a TV Show - Drama

Jennifer Aniston - The Morning Show
Olivia Colman - The Crown
Jodie Comer - Killing Eve
Nicole Kidman - Big Little Lies
Reese Witherspoon - Big Little Lies

Best Actor in a TV Show - Drama

Brian Cox - Succession
Kit Harington - Game of Thrones
Rami Malek - Mr. Robot
Tobias Menzies - The Crown
Billy Porter - Pose

Best TV Series - Comedy

Barry
Fleabag
The Kominsky Method
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
The Politician

Best Actress in a TV Show - Comedy

Christina Applegate - Dead to Me
Rachel Brosnahan - The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Kirsten Dunst - On Becoming a God in Central Florida
Natasha Lyonne - Russian Doll
Phoebe Waller-Bridge - Fleabag

Best Actor in a TV Show - Comedy

Micheal Douglas - The Kominsky Method
Bill Hader - Barry
Ben Platt - The Politician
Paul Rudd - Living With Yourself
Ramy Youssef - Ramy

Best Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie

Catch-22
Chernobyl
Fosse/Verdon
The Loudest Voice
Unbelievable 

Best Actor in a Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie

Christopher Abbott - Catch-22
Russell Crowe - The Loudest Voice
Jared Harris - Chernobyl
Sam Rockwell - Fosse/Verdon
Sacha Baron Cohen - The Spy

Best Actress in a Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie

Kaitlyn Dever - Unbelievable
Joey King - The Act
Helen Mirren - Catherine the Great
Merritt Wever - Unbelievable
Michelle Williams - Fosse/Verdon

Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie

Patricia Arquette - The Act
Toni Collette - Unbelievable
Meryl Streep - Big Little Lies
Emily Watson - Chernobyl
Helena Bonham Carter - The Crown

Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Made-for-TV Movie

Alan Arkin - The Kominsky Method
Kieran Culkin - Succession
Andrew Scott - Fleabag
Stellan Skarsgård - Chernobyl
Henry Winkler - Barry

I have seen none of these shows so I can offer zero opinions here.

So there you go.  This year's crop of nominees is all new to me.  The only one I've seen is Toy Story 4.  Oscar nominations are still a month away, so we'll see how it shakes out.  This is still pretty early to call it.

Meet John Doe (1941)

  Did you ever put on a movie only to find that it perfectly matches your current situation or time of year or a person you knew?  I put Meet John Doe on, knowing practically nothing about it, and found that not only is it a Christmas movie, it's the Christmas movie I didn't know I needed.

Ann (Barbara Stanwyck) is a journalist laid off by a callous editor (James Gleason).  Angry and desperate, Ann writes a last article claiming that a man named John Doe is going to jump off the roof of City Hall at midnight on Christmas Eve in protest for corruption in government and the general shitty state of the world in the grips of the Great Depression and a looming second World War.  The editor is furious at what could potentially be a huge embarrassment for the paper, but the owner, a millionaire named D. B. Norton (Edward Arnold), sees potential in the story for raising circulation.  Ann hires John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a former bush league baseball player turned hobo, to pose as John Doe.  Alls well and good until a few speeches turns into a rallying cry from millions of Americans in need of hope.  Then the wolves descend.

This is an incredibly relevant story today.  In a country where the divide between rich and poor grows more insurmountable by the day, where politicians are bought by corporations, and human rights are thrown out so a billionaire can make a few extra pennies then get lauded by the press for contributing them to charity, Meet John Doe could have been made yesterday.  The messianic parallels are a little too on the nose for me but it remains one of the least sappy Christmas stories about suicide you'll see.

It's streaming on Amazon Prime or for free on Tubi.  Honestly, I think this should replace your annual viewing of It's a Wonderful Life, all due respect to Jimmy Stewart.

Fallen Angels (1995)

  I hated this movie.  It was meandering and pointless and I just barely held on long enough to finish it.  It's supposed to be a companion piece to another film called Chungking Express but I am now questioning whether or not I even want to bother with it.

Two unrelated storylines play out in '90s Hong Kong.  In one, a hitman (Leon Lai) decides to quit, discomfiting his assistant (Michelle Reis), who is obsessed with him.  In the other, a mute (Takeshi Kaneshiro) pines for a woman (Charlie Yeung) trying to get her ex-boyfriend back.

I was so fucking bored, you guys.  I did not give a shit about any of these characters, their lives and motivations were completely alien to me.  As far as the cinematography and direction... choices were made.  I respect that Wong Kar-Wai made choices even if I don't agree with them.  There was just nothing here for me.  Maybe it's for you.  Maybe you like disaffected, depressed people at loose ends in their lives.  If so, it's streaming on the Criterion Channel.

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (1982)

  I have always hated this play.  Yeah, I said it.  I've actually liked very few of Mr. Shakespeare's oeuvre but this is definitely one of my least favorites.  Did I pick it just so I could talk shit about one of the most highly regarded plays in the history of theater?  Maybe.

Romeo (Alex Hyde-White) is upset over having been rejected by the girl he thought he loved so his cousin (Fredric Lehne) sneaks him into a costume party held by a rival family.  There he meets Juliet (Blanche Baker), the only daughter of the house, attending the party so she could meet her prospective fiancé.  Instead, she meets Romeo, they hit it off, and before you know it, it's white doves and rice and the blessings of both their-- oh, wait, no.  They are emo teens who swear a suicide pact with each other while the city dissolves in chaos as this long-running feud is brought to a head.  Cool.

This isn't actually a terrible adaptation.  It's very straightforward, no ad-libs, no trying to "punch up" the material, acted on a real stage with only minor adjustments to being filmed.  The performers are professionals and every one of them is up for giving the material its due.  I have some complaints, though.  The cinematography is complete garbage.  It looks like the whole thing is out of focus and not even a 4K TV can fix it.  Given that it is clearly a filmed version of a theatrical performance, I suppose I shouldn't be mad that the actors are in no way close to the actual characters' ages.  They are both clearly in their mid- to late-20's playing people a decade younger.  But I am.

Look, these being stupid, spoiled, rich kids is the only thing that makes the story work.  They have to be young enough to think that no one has ever felt like they do, old enough to hate authority and refuse to seek advice, spoiled enough to think that the only option is suicide when they hit any kind of obstacle, and sheltered enough to go through with it.  That is a very narrow range, people, and seeing people with mortgages and heath insurance payments act it out just kind of ruins it.

There is literally a version of Romeo and Juliet being filmed every year.  Go to IMDb.  You will find entries from 1908 to present.  Is this the best version?  No.  Do I want to sift through 111 different adaptations to find a version I like?  Also no.  This one is from the year I was born.  Maybe pick a version from the year you were born.  Make a game out of it.  God knows there's plenty of them out there.

2 Guns (2013)

  Christy had given me a digital copy of this ages ago and I finally am cycling back through the server.  Which probably means more reposts in the near future but what can you do?  I only own so many.

Bobby (Denzel Washington) and Stigs (Mark Wahlberg) are a couple of two-bit criminals who decide to knock over a bank where a drug kingpin (Edward James Olmos) keeps his petty cash.  They figure about $3 million, enough to kind of tweak the old man's nose but actually get away with $43.125 million because the bank is actually a front for a CIA slush fund.  Now Bobby and Stigs are running from the cartel and the CIA and to make matters worse, neither one knows that the other is an undercover cop.

This is a really dumb, really fun buddy cop film that's great for a cold, rainy day.  There's no real stakes, you just turn your brain off and watch Washington be charming and Wahlberg talk a lot.  There's boobs and explosions and James Marsden and Bill Paxton (RIP) and CGI chickens.  There's a lot.  And it's loud and stupid and funny.  Generally, I am not a fan of any of those things but sometimes it just works.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

  This is a stunning film when you consider that it's all made of paper cutouts on colored backgrounds.  I think I read somewhere that it's the oldest stop-motion animated film and it was directed by a woman.  The original print and negative were lost but it was restored from a British print in 1999.

Told entirely in paper silhouettes, the film tells several of the 1001 Arabian Nights tales about Prince Achmed, an evil sorcerer, a magic flying horse, a beautiful maiden rescued from a land of demons, Aladdin and the magic lamp, and more.  The cutouts are beautifully intricate and it's clear a lot of effort went into this film.

I know silent films aren't for everyone but I really encourage you to take the time to watch it, not just for the technical achievements on display but to see an art form in its earliest stage.  People were still experimenting with what movies could be and Weimar-era Germany was a goldmine for creativity and boundary pushing.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

  This was supposed to be part of my Halloween marathon but I didn't get it in time.  I've been looking forward to seeing it but I think it may have been overhyped for what it turned out to be.

The New Zealand Documentary Board is granted unprecedented access to a rarified subgroup of citizens for the first time ever:  vampires.  A crew follows flatmates Viago (Taika Waititi), Vladislov (Jemaine Clement), and Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) as they try to navigate modern life.  A wrinkle is introduced when a victim (Cori Gonzales-Macuer) is accidentally turned and must be introduced into the finer points of vampire society, specifically that one doesn't go around broadcasting that one is a vampire unless one wants hunters to stick a dining room table leg in one's chest.

As a mockumentary, this is top-notch.  The effects are never overwhelming, the cinematography is just the right amount of grainy, and the characters are firmly on the right side of being total dorks.  The humor is a little too awkward = funny for me but the performances are delightful.  I feel like I might have enjoyed it more if people hadn't been broadcasting that this is the pinnacle of comedy, but that is the problem with high expectations.  I don't know that I would watch it again but it was very sweet and a fun film overall.

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

  We just started using Disney+ this week.  Tyler was more excited about it than I was because it has all the shows he remembers from his childhood like Gargoyles and Darkwing Duck and Kim Possible.  I was not terribly impressed with their opening lineup but I remain hopeful that future installments will get more substantive.  (Except for The Mandalorian, which is glorious.)

The one film I did want to see from the Disney vault is The Journey of Natty Gann.  I remember seeing the preview for it on my old clamshell VHS and wanting to watch it but I don't remember it ever being available on tape, DVD, or even as a re-release in theaters.  I couldn't even find anyone who had ever seen it.  But there it was, sitting in the Disney+ stream.

Natty Gann (Meredith Salenger) is a young, headstrong girl in Chicago.  Her father (Ray Wise), is a union organizer but since it's 1935, there's not a lot of work to be had.  He takes a job as a logger across the country in Washington state and leaves Natty in the care of their landlady (Lainie Kazan).  Natty decides that's not good enough and sets out to ride the rails across the country to find her father.  Along the way, she makes an animal companion from a wolf used in dogfights and the pair brave many hardships.

This is definitely one of the slighter entries in the Disney universe but it was a hole in my knowledge so I'm glad to have seen it.  I was definitely the kid who thought "oh, a wolf.  It would absolutely become my sworn companion should I meet one," despite the fact that I refused to go outside and was more of a cat person.  I was prepared for some casual cruelty but the movie steadfastly remains in the Heartwarming category.  Easy enough to watch with your kids but I don't know for sure if it's worth buying another streaming service.  Now, Gargoyles.  That's legit.

We're using our free year through Verizon so it remains to be seen if we keep it.

A Star is Born (1937)

  This is the original A Star is Born, the one that has now had three remakes, each launching (or re-launching) their female lead to new heights.

Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) dreamed of becoming a star in Hollywood but ends up a waitress at a cocktail party.  The star of the party, Norman Maine (Fredric March), notices her and gets her to meet his producer (Adolphe Menjou).  She is reborn as Vicki Lester and becomes his new leading lady to rave reviews and public acclaim.  Unfortunately, the public isn't as willing to forgive Maine for his drunken downward spiral and he soon finds himself lost in his wife's shadow.  Despite his best attempts to remain on the wagon, Maine slides into one relapse after another until Vicki decides to quit acting and just monitor him full-time.  Maine can't stand the thought of her destroying the career she loves so he leaves her in the most final way he can.

"How do you send a thank-you note to the Pacific Ocean?" has got to be one of the coldest lines ever spoken in a movie and that just goes to show you how hardcore writers were back in '37.  This had a team of screenwriters, including famed wit Dorothy Parker, and the script absolutely crackles.  Gaynor is pitch perfect as the wide-eyed Vicki née Esther, and March is surprisingly sympathetic.  I actually liked this version better than the 2019 remake because of his performance.

There are some minor differences between versions but the basic mechanics are the same.  Powerful but alcoholic dude meets ingenue, ingenue eclipses dude, dude gets depressed, ingenue feels guilty, dude kills himself.  It works in 1937 because of the historical context.  After the 1920s, the suffragette movement, and the Depression, women were more willing to go after jobs that had previously been for men.  This film subverts the notion that the woman is supposed to stay at home while the man has a career and shows the psychological effects of a society unprepared to accept that.  Norman is happy for his wife's success but still would rather it be him instead, despite as a judge points out, that he has had every advantage and wasted them all.  He is unwilling to let go of his pride and that's what leads to his death, not some notion that he is nobly sacrificing himself.

This film is in the public domain so it's available on pretty much every streaming service.  It's from the 1930s but it is not in black-and-white, it is in glorious color, and it's the only version of this film that isn't a musical, so you have zero excuse not to watch it.

The NeverEnding Story (1984)

  Saturday, I hosted a viewing party for my friends Bethany and Misha because Bethany had never seen this movie and it's Misha's absolute favorite.  I don't know that Bethany loved it as much as Misha (and I) but it was an important part of her ongoing movie education.

Bastian (Barret Oliver) is a young boy trying to cope with the recent loss of his mother.  School has been hard, bullies harass him, and his dad (Gerald McRaney) doesn't know how to reach him.  So Bastian retreats into books.  One day, running from the kids who put him in a dumpster, Bastian finds an old bookshop, complete with a crotchety old proprietor (Thomas Hill) who very sternly warns Bastian that the book he is reading is much too intense for  a child, then conveniently leaving it behind so Bastian can take it, because that old man knows more about children and human nature than anyone else in Bastian's life.  Boy and book retreat to the attic of his school and Bastian is immediately captivated by the adventures of the warrior Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) against The Nothing which is eating the land of Fantasia.

As a kids' movie, this is still great.  As an allegory for adulthood, it's even better.  I'm sure there are people who have written full academic papers on how The Nothing is a metaphor for depression and loss of innocence while the characters Atreyu (and Bastian) meet are thinly veiled archetypes.  What I'm saying is that this movie holds up shockingly well.  And everyone should own it.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

  This might seem like a daunting movie to watch.  It's black and white, Swedish, with a loosely connected set of characters set in the Middle Ages during the Black Plague.  If you read that sentence and thought "Yikes," hold on.  It is absolutely worth watching and not just because it inspired the character Death from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

A lord (Max von Sydow) returns from the Crusades bitter and disillusioned, trying to get back to his lands and wife (Inga Landgre), only to be confronted by Death (Bengt Ekerot).  To buy time, the lord challenges Death to a chess game, drawing it out over the time it takes to return home.  Along the way, he and his even more bitter and disillusioned squire (Gunnar Bjornstrand) meet a handful of people trying to live under the specter of the plague.

It's almost a Canterbury Tales kind of movie, but without the nested stories, and a beautiful meditation on how people cope with the uncertainty of life.  Von Sydow has never been young, not ever, but he is always magnetic.  Ekerot is by turns sympathetic and cruel and the pair's banter is what makes the movie.  Most of the rest of the characters are one-note archetypes but the story is an allegory anyway so it doesn't matter.

The Seventh Seal is pretty much essential for any cinephile, if only because it inspired so many other films, art, and music.  If you can, it's streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Ray (2004)

Okay, so obviously this did not go up last weekend.  In fact, nothing did because it turns out that it is extremely difficult to watch a movie and sight-see.

No poster today because I am on a train to New York City for a girl's weekend.

I did get in a movie last night because I am dedicated.

Ray Charles (Jamie Foxx) moves to Seattle to join the growing Jazz scene but finds his blindness exploited by those he is meant to trust.  While on the road, he also develops a heroin addiction which will inform most of his life.

A lot was made about Foxx's performance and really going for the "method" approach but honestly every single person in this film acted their faces off.  Kerry Washington and Regina King are phenomenal.  Clifton Powell is amazing.  Even Warwick Davis is in this for a hot second.

It's not so much a revolution to the biopic formula but it is still absolutely worth watching.  Ray Charles was not a person who I had ever been curious about, and I was happy to learn that on top of being a gifted performer, he was an incredible mimic.

The direction is interesting, with sharp cuts to Charles' early life and childhood trauma, but it was a little jarring at first.  I would have liked to have seen a more seamless transition from his early life on the road to his meteoric success but I understand that everybody's life has boring bits that aren't cinematic and should be left on the cutting room floor.  Like I said, it's absolutely worth watching if you haven't seen it and it's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Clash (2009)

  I try to branch out and not just stick to the same genres but I don't know that I'll ever be any kind of expert on films from outside the U.S. (or film in general, really).  Still, this is my first Vietnamese action film.  Yay!

Phoenix (Veronica Ngo) is an enforcer for a gangster named Black Dragon (Hoang Phuc Nguyen).  She agrees to pull One Last Job in order to be free of him and get her daughter back.  She puts together a team, including Tiger (Johnny Tri Nguyen) and Snake (Lam Minh Tang), both men with secrets of their own, to track down and steal a laptop from a group of French mercenaries but things never go according to plan.

The action is appropriately gritty with excellent martial arts choreography.  Veronica Ngo is definitely someone to look for in the credits as an up-and-coming star.  Johnny Nguyen is also seriously underrated but from his IMDb credits, looks like he is a go-to for a lot of stunt crews.  It is pretty low-budget by Hollywood standards but I personally appreciate the focus on hand-to-hand and not shoot-em-up.  Writing is a little predictable but nowhere near the worst I've ever seen.  It's currently streaming on Tubi with ads.

I Married a Witch (1942)

  I thought about including this in my We Heart Horror marathon because it does involve witches but it's squarely a rom-com and not in any way horror.

Jennifer (Veronica Lake), a witch, places a curse on the Woolley family after Jonathan Wooley (Fredric March) burns her and her father (Cecil Kellaway) at the stake in the 1690s.  Returned to life after a lightning strike hits the tree their spirits were trapped in, Jennifer decides to wreak havoc on the current Wooley, Wallace (also Fredric March), by making him fall in love with her just before he is supposed to get married to a newspaper heiress (Susan Hayward) and run for governor.  She doesn't count on falling in love with him herself.

This is held up as one of the best madcap rom-coms of the 40s but I was really put off by how irritating Jennifer is as a character.  Veronica Lake was a great actress but she is given nothing to do here except pout and simper after March.  Like, I get that she's supposed to be a "bad" witch who turns good because of a misplaced love potion but there's nothing to her character other than being beautiful that would make a person care.  I guess I'm just stuck on how helpless she seems despite having a lot of power at her disposal.  I know that's supposed to be a bonus for women at that time but I just find it too annoying.

Of Fathers and Sons (2018)

  Okay, so we're back to regularly scheduled programming now.  Happy Day of the Dead, here's a movie about terrorists.

Filmmaker Talal Derki is originally from Syria and returned to go undercover in order to film a family involved in the Al-Nusra group of mujahideen.  The father, Abu Osama, has named all five of his sons after famous terrorists, including his oldest, Osama, who was born on September 11th.  (Not THE September 11, just A September 11th.  Like 2005, I think.)  Anyway, Derki stayed with this family for over two years, recording as much as he could about the kids' indoctrination into jihadist ideology.

Not going to lie, this is a pretty hard watch.  It's important, in that it shows exactly how similar all extremist groups are in their thought processes and habits.  They stress that war is unending, that there is a holy mandate, victory is assured but not imminent, devalue all education except religious, marginalize women except as for breeding purposes, and above all, decry that there is any other way to be.  From ISIS to the KKK, it is the same playbook.  These people believe they are in Armageddon and there is no concept of peace that does not include conquering everyone who does not share their beliefs.

There is a ray of hope, however, in that the second son, Ayyman, chooses to go to school instead of a militia training camp like his brother.  He at least has a chance to escape the crushing lockstep of true believers.  Education and exposure are the only chances anyone has.

I feel like every year there's a new documentary on Syria because it is a clusterfuck.  Next year is going to be harrowing because we've abandoned our Kurdish allies --already a persecuted minority group-- to be hunted down and murdered.  I'm sure someone will get it all on tape.  I hope so.  Exposure and education.  Show us so we may learn.

Of Fathers and Sons is currently streaming on Starz which I get through Amazon.

We Heart Horror - Day 31: All Cheerleaders Die (2013)

  It's finally Halloween!  Time for candy, trick or treating, and things that go bump in the night!  It also means that we have come to the end of our horror binge until next year, so let's go out on a high note.

After her best friend is killed in a cheerleading accident, Maddy (Caitlin Stasey) hatches a plan to destroy the squad from the inside.  She pretends to be interested in cheering, makes friends with Head Cheerleader Tracy (Brooke Butler), and proceeds to break up Tracy's relationship with football Team Captain, Terry (Tom Williamson).  Unfortunately, she misjudges exactly how psychotic Terry is when he runs the car full of cheerleaders off the road to die in the river.  But Maddy's ex-girlfriend, Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), isn't ready to say good-bye and raises all five girls from the dead.  Zombie Maddy still wants to take down Terry but now she'll also have to learn important lessons about sisterhood and how to Be Aggressive.  B-E Aggressive.

This is like the unholy union of Bring It On and Jennifer's Body and I am so here for it.  It's fun, funny, and builds to a really tense third act.  I wasn't completely sold on Maddy and Leena's relationship (tbh, Leena seems incredibly controlling/borderline obsessive) but I was really happy about it not being played for a joke or somehow diminished because it was same-sex.  All Cheerleaders Die is a really great movie to watch on Halloween because it was breezy, funny, but easy enough to skim so I didn't feel like I was missing anything to answer the door for trick or treaters.  Maybe that could be a knock; it's not exactly grand cinema, but who cares?  Binge it like that bag of Kit-Kats you've been saving for yourself!  Currently streaming on Amazon Prime or Tubi for free.

We Heart Horror - Day 30: Vampyr (1932)

  Here's a throwback to when vampires weren't sexy, misunderstood, tortured souls but rather just reanimated corpses that fed on the living.

Allen Grey (Julian West) is a student of the paranormal looking for an experience, and boy, does he find one.  While on vacation in a small town, he stumbles upon a family plagued by a mysterious illness.  One of the daughters, Léone (Sybille Schmitz), has wasted away with only a mark on her neck.  Though she is being treated by the local doctor (Jan Hieronimko), her prognosis is grim until one of the servants (Albert Bras) reads about a similar occurrence from years ago believed to be the work of a vampire.

Allen Grey is much less of a protagonist than he is just kind of a nosy bystander.  He is a very passive character that things just kind of happen around, which is also an unusual narrative choice.  There are some pretty neat effects for the time period and it's a scant hour and a quarter long, but I will say that it involves a fair amount of reading and the subtitles superimposed over the text of a book makes it kind of challenging.

I did think it was neat that this version was restored from French and German prints with the English believed to be lost.  Is this the most important film ever preserved?  No, but it is definitely worth watching.  It's on the Criterion channel and they also have a full length commentary that I'm sure is also great but I didn't listen to because ain't nobody got time for that this close to Halloween.

One more day!  Light your jack-o-lanterns and ready the candy!

We Heart Horror - Day 29: Cooties (2014)

  And there it is, this year's completely underrated sleeper hit.

Clint (Elijah Wood) does not have his shit together.  He is trying to write a horror novel but not even his mom likes it and he's forced to take a job as a substitute teacher for summer at the elementary school he used to go to as a kid.  Good:  he reconnects with Lucy (Alison Pill), the girl he's had a crush on forever.  Bad:  she has a boyfriend, the douchey P.E. teacher, Wade (Rainn Wilson).  Worse: mutated chicken nuggets have turned all the children into rampaging rage-zombies.

Oh, man.  This movie perfectly encapsulated all the things I hate about children and then gave me an outlet to reasonably cheer for their extermination.  If you've ever needed to see a twelve-year-old just absolutely smashed in the face by a baseball, this is your movie.  And hey, who hasn't?  I'm sure your children are wonderful, but all children?  Other people's children?  No judgement.  They're zombies.  Fuck 'em.  Aim for the head.

I laughed my ass off the entire time it was on.  A++, would definitely watch again.  It is on Hulu and it is amazing.

We Heart Horror - Day 28: Green Room (2015)

  Again, I'm not sure that I would characterize this as a horror film.  Thriller, for sue, but there were no horror elements for me.

A gig gets cancelled, leaving a punk band struggling with how they're going to get home from tour.  Their host (David Thompson) feels bad so he calls his cousin (Mark Webber) and gets the band a replacement gig.  When they get there, however, they find the audience filled with hardcore white supremacists.  Nothing they haven't handled until somebody ends up dead.  Now witnesses to a crime, the band barricades themselves in the green room while the skinheads plan to murder them.

This is by the director of Blue Ruin and it has the same kind of sparse, pared down feel.  Everything is gritty, muted, and dingy and the color green is pervasive.  There are times where it is almost too much so if you are squeamish, maybe give it a pass.  There is a ton of violence and I'm sorry, Sir PatStew, not enough justification for the N-word even if you're playing a racist.

The late Anton Yelchin is in it, one of this final roles, and he is stellar.  Every time he was on screen, though, I would get so sad.  Everybody in the band gets at least one moment to shine, which is great.  I know it's sometimes hard with an ensemble cast.  If you're looking for a newer, fresher take on Assault on Precinct 13, slide over to Netflix and give this a shot.

We Heart Horror - Day 27: Dead Ringer (1964)

  Bette  Davis is a great actress but something about this movie just didn't click for me.  I definitely wouldn't consider it horror.  Maybe just a thriller and a lesser one at that.

Edie Phillips (Bette Davis) kills her twin sister, Margaret, over a lie from 20 years ago that resulted in Margaret living a luxurious life with the man Edie loved, and Edie living over a ratty bar that's three months behind on rent.  So Edie fakes a suicide and assumes the role of Margaret but soon discovers that a surface resemblance isn't enough to cut it when there's a nosy cop (Karl Malden) and a suspicious lover (Peter Lawford) sniffing around.

Unless you are a hardcore Bette Davis fan, there's really nothing here worth searching out.  The special effects are pretty decent for their time but we now have deepfake performances of dead actors so it's safe to say that the bar has been raised.

We Heart Horror - Day 26: Hellraiser (1987)

  This is another in Bethany's continuing horror education.  It's not my favorite Halloween series but I do think it's a classic.

Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) is just trying to live her life but she becomes worried after her dad (Andrew Robinson) expresses concern about his new wife, Julia (Claire Higgins).  See, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, Julia has been luring random dudes to the house and sacrificing them to her brother-in-law, Frank (Sean Chapman), who fucked around with an evil puzzle box and got torn apart by Cenobites.  Frank and Julia then came up with a plan to rebuild his body by using unwilling donors and they might have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that meddling Kirsty.

All anybody remembers about this movie is Pinhead.  And he's in it for five minutes, tops.  The rest of the movie is just gore and body horror and that one horrifying scorpion-tailed demon thing that I legit forgot about.  This most recent viewing did show me that every single dude in this film is garbage, just an awful person, and deserved whatever happened to them.  That's my 2019 hot take on this 30+ year old movie.  Currently streaming on Prime.

We Heart Horror - Day 25: Pumpkinhead (1988)

  I don't care what anyone says.  Pumpkinhead is a classic.  Fight me.

After a group of city slickers accidentally kill his child, farmer Ed Harley (Lance Henrikson) summons the local demon to exact revenge.

That's it.  That's the movie.  It is a B-movie creature feature, sure, but the special effects are top-notch, especially for the time period and it's really satisfying to watch these snotty twenty-year-olds get terrorized.  Sometimes, dammit, that's all you really need.  Streaming on both Shudder and Hulu.

We Heart Horror - Day 24: Brightburn (2019)

  Man, this was so disappointing.  I don't really know how to make it better, either, which is even worse.  This should have been a slam dunk but it somehow just did. not. work.

Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle Breyer (David Denmen) really wanted a baby, so when one crashed in a spaceship outside their small Kansas farm, they were overjoyed.  Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) was a great kid right up until he turned twelve and started developing a little more of a bloodlust than a normal pubescent boy.  But how do you discipline a kid with laser eyes and super speed?

When this was first announced as a Superman-as-horror film, I was intrigued.  Then reviews came in and they were... not great but I still thought it might be an entertaining watch.  Literally the only part I enjoyed was the Michael Rooker cameo over the closing credits.  And it's such a shame!  This had a great pedigree, stellar cast, interesting premise, and none of that could make it worth watching.  I've been thinking about it for a while now and I have come to the conclusion that no matter what you do, you can't make Superman interesting as a character without reducing him to something closer to human.  Brandon doesn't work as a villain because I do not care about him.  He's so overpowered it's boring to watch.  We never see him struggle against the weird Jor-El whispers from his spaceship.  We never see any indication of empathy despite being raised as human for 12 years.  It's just overnight, he's a monster, the end.  What a waste.

We Heart Horror - Day 23: Phenomena (1985)

  Phenomena, the film where a girl can telepathically communicate with insects and that's the least weirdest thing in the movie!

Jennifer (Jennifer Connolly) is sent to a prestigious Swiss boarding school but no sooner than she arrives --and eats some baby food-- she is informed by her roommate, Sophie (Frederica Mastroianni), that a killer is stalking the town and murdering young girls.  Jennifer has a spiritual connection with bugs and also sleepwalks to the killer and eventually finds her way to the home of a famed entomologist who specializes in cadaver insects, Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasance).  McGregor tells Jennifer that telepathy is actually weirdly common in bugs and that she should use her ability to follow the flies to track down the killer through his victims.  Which kind of works, but mostly doesn't.  Also, there is a chimpanzee with a straight razor.  It gets weird.

This is fairly restrained for a Dario Argento film.  Nobody gets gratuitously nude, for starters, and the gore isn't wall-to-wall.  There is really only the loosest semblance of a plot and a lot of reliance on "Women Be Crazy" to sell the whole thing, but again, fairly restrained for an Argento.

Jennifer Connolly (and her amazing, super-shiny hair) is the only reason to watch this film.  She TALKS to BUGS and uses that to SOLVE CRIME.  That is objectively the least horrifying use of that skill.  I would genuinely love a follow-on movie where an adult Jennifer uses her bugs as a P.I. It doesn't even have to be a horror movie.  Just a whodunit.  Until that happens, the original is streaming on Tubi for free or Amazon with a Prime subscription.

We Heart Horror - Day 22: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

  I loved this movie so much.  It's sure to put people off because it is both black and white and subtitled but it is honestly worth looking up.  It's a critical darling but that's generally not a selling point for most people so I'm making sure you all know it has the Lucy stamp of approval

Arash (Arash Marandi) is trying to get by without being hassled by the local drug dealer (Dominic Rains) about his father's (Marshall Manesh) heroin habit when he meets a girl (Sheila Vand) walking alone at night.  She is a vampire and Arash doesn't know it, but she is going to change his entire life.

I've been worried all month that I wouldn't get a vampire movie.  The last three I've tried to watch have unfortunately been taken off their streaming platforms.  Y'all know they're my favorites.  But Criterion and Shudder had my backs and made this beauty available.

This is not the first Iranian movie I have ever seen, but it is the first horror.  Director Lily Ana Amirpour has a master's grasp of the interplay of light and shadow, banality and horror, beauty and ugliness.  It is a stunning debut feature and definitely a new vampire classic.

We Heart Horror - Day 21: Mother! (2017)

  The only way this is a horror movie is if you are just straight terrified by Christianity.  (I'm not saying you shouldn't be, just that it's not really the go-to when you think of horror.)

The Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) wakes up to find that her husband (Javier Bardem) has invited a strange couple into the house she has spent all of her time restoring.  They are very unmannered guests but Mother is too hesitant to call them out, until they invite an actual tragedy.  Then she's able to reclaim her house for a bit.  But those pesky, uninvited guests keep showing up, especially after her husband releases a new book about love and grief.  Mother is bewildered, overwhelmed, terrified, and finally apocalyptic.

Honestly, I wouldn't be as annoyed by this film if it had been characterized correctly.  It's an interesting take on the Old and New Testaments from the perspective of an anthropomorphic Earth and pretty much what I expected from Darren Aronofsky.  The cast list is impressive but it feels like kind of a waste.  It's an interesting film but it's not a fun watch.  Currently streaming on Hulu if you're curious but you may want to have a Cliff Notes of the Bible handy.

We Heart Horror - Day 20: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

  Well, this was certainly the hardest movie to watch so far.  It reminded me a lot of Man Bites Dog.

Becky (Tonya Arnold) has left her abusive husband to move in with her brother, Otis (Tom Towles), and his friend, Henry (Micheal Rooker), in Chicago.  Otis is a gas station attendant and part-time weed dealer while Henry picks up odd jobs and uses them as cover to murder women.  Henry begins to groom Otis to help him in his murder sprees but Otis is too undisciplined for that to last long.  Becky just wants to be a shampoo girl and is blissfully unaware of what Otis and Henry do in the evenings.

This is a stark look at people who live on the fringes.  Becky is poor and been abused one way or another since she was 13.  Otis is stupid and has no concept of boundaries, happily opportunistic with regards to sex, violence, and petty crime.  Henry is a true psychopath, constantly searching for victims, smart enough to change his methods with every one to keep the police from linking them together, and completely incapable of truly feeling any emotion.

This film doesn't have a lot of gore and you don't really see Henry torture any of the victims, just their corpses after, except for the home invasion which is very graphic but still one step removed by use of a camcorder.  Because we never see Henry commit any of the most violent acts, it's easier to maintain sympathy for the character, a very dangerous thing.  I would think this needs to make a resurgence as one of the top horror films about serial killers.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

We Heart Horror - Day 19: The Possession (2012)

  This wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be, despite the cast.  It's really hard to do a good possession film.  Still, it was nice to see something non-Catholic-centered.

Ten-year-old Emily (Natasha Calis) finds a carved wooden box at a yard sale.  Her dad, Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), is confused but thinks it's harmless.  He's much too busy trying to further his career to pay attention anyway, and her mom (Kyra Sedgwick) is distracted by her new boyfriend (Grant Show).  So the possession is pretty far along before either parent knows what's happening.  Clyde takes the box to a professor at the college he works at and is referred to a community of Hasidic Jews.  A man named Tzadok (Matisyahu) agrees to perform the exorcism.

I think this movie went wrong making most of the conflict about the dad.  Morgan spends 90% of the runtime completely baffled and hurt by why he can't get his adolescent and teenage daughters to be exactly the same as when they were small.  He is a man clinging to the past, whether it is sports fame or the remnants of his marriage, and he doesn't want anyone to be able to move on.  It's an annoying frame and has no purpose in the narrative.  In fact, in any other movie, he would be the antagonist for Sedgwick to overcome and move on to a soundtrack of Motown hits.  She's not given very much to do here so maybe she should start looking at that rom-com remake.

The other major complaint I have with the movie is the sound.  Dialogue is muted for background noise, like it was recorded underwater, only to fade back in and be super loud.  Also, I've never seen a Jewish exorcism but I don't know that I expected quite so much yelling.  I would have liked to maybe see more about the rituals and how they differ from the Catholic versions, but that's something I can look up on my own.

Bottom line:  this is yet another "clueless dad clueless because he refuses to listen to women in his life yet somehow still the hero of the story" film not enlivened by swapping Catholic rituals for Judaic.  Pass.

We Heart Horror - Day 18: Annabelle Comes Home (2019)

  This was such a fun movie!  Ugh, it's so nice to see a horror movie (much less an entire ass franchise) devoted to having a good time.  There have been a couple of missteps, sure, but the Conjuring extended universe is really setting a high bar.

Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) have taken possession (ha!) of the evil doll Annabelle and installed her in a shielded case in their room of cursed objects to prevent her malevolence from infecting her surroundings.  Then they promptly left on a business trip, happy and secure in the knowledge their daughter, Judy (McKenna Grace), was being watched by a responsible babysitter, Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman).  What they don't know is that Mary Ellen's friend Daniela (Katie Sarife) is fascinated by the Warrens' no-no room and also super desperate to talk to her dead dad.  Hilarity mayhem ensues.

You guys.  This was like the office pool from Cabin in the Woods made into an entire movie.  Daniela manages to awaken every single cursed object, turning the normal suburban house into a haunted nightmare.  There's a decade's-worth of spin-offs just in this movie alone.  There are werewolves, killer brides, one of those always-evil clapping monkey toys, and even a goddamn haunted board game.  A BOARD GAME.  Called FEELY-MEELY.  Coming to theaters in 2023.  (Probably.)  This movie made me so happy.

We Heart Horror - Day 17: The Amityville Horror (2005)

  This is not the original, which I have previously blogged about, but the just-as-good remake because if you can combine a horror movie with a mostly shirtless Ryan Reynolds, why wouldn't you?

The Lutz family think they've hit the jackpot when they score an enormous waterfront house on Long Island but soon discover that the price tag was hiding a sordid history.  The previous residents were murdered as they slept by one of the sons (Brendan Donaldson) who claimed he heard voices that drove him to kill.  As Kathy Lutz (Melissa George) grapples with her husband and children's altered behavior, she digs deeper into the history of the house and uncovers a dark and bloody history.

So this adds a shitload of unnecessary backstory as to why the house is haunted which leads to some disturbing imagery but not really a lot of plot relevance.  I'm not mad at it, though, because the visuals are really well done.  Stellar work by Isobel Conner as creepy dead child Jodie.  Reynolds has always been very good at switching between comic and dramatic parts and he is definitely the star of this show, even without the abs.  They don't hurt, mind you, but he didn't need them.

Both Amityville Horrors are currently streaming on Hulu.

We Heart Horror - Day 16: Children of the Corn (1984)

  I completely forgot to post yesterday.  So now you get two.

A couple (Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton) driving through Kansas have a car accident and head for the nearest town only to discover the children of said town have fallen under the influence of a demagogue named Isaac (John Franklin) and have been sacrificing any handy adults to the corn for the last three years.

Conceptually, a cult of bloodthirsty children is solid gold.  The execution, however, strays into the goofy.  The special effects have aged poorly, the protagonist is kind of a douche, and the voiceover is incredibly annoying.  I would be in favor of a remake since we seem to be having a Stephen King resurgence.  All you'd need to do would be update the couple dynamics because yikes are they dated, cut some of the trying-too-hard comic relief, slap some decent effects in there and you're ready to go. You could even get Courtney Gains to cameo as a throwback.

I do still consider it a classic but every once in a while, it could stand to be updated.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

We Heart Horror - Day 15: The Orphanage (2007)

  You guys, October is halfway over already.  That sucks.  But, alternatively, only 16 more days until Halloween!

This is one of my favorite ghost stories.  It's a Spanish film produced by Guillermo Del Toro and if you get the chance, you should absolutely check it out.

Laura (Belén Rueda) is very excited to bring her husband (Fernando Cayo) and son (Roger Princep) to the orphanage she grew up in.  She plans to revitalize the old place and turn it into a home for special needs children.  But on the day of the grand opening, her son goes missing.  Laura is desperate to find him, so desperate that she is willing to turn to anything that will help, including the supernatural.

I love this movie.  It's surprisingly poignant with a total gut punch of a third act.  In that way, it does remind me of Pan's Labyrinth but the supernatural elements are much more understated.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

We Heart Horror - Day 14: The Omen (1976)

  Children are horrifying.  Always have been, always will be.  Especially when they are the literal spawn of Satan.

Richard Thorn (Gregory Peck), the U.S. Ambassador to Italy is devastated when he is told that his son died stillborn and is therefore very suggestible to the idea of immediately adopting another child whose mother died in childbirth.  For a few years, everything seems great.  Thorn gets a dream posting as Ambassador to Great Britain, his wife (Lee Remick) is happy, and Damien (Harvey Stephens) is a cute, normal little boy.  Then the nanny (Holly Palance) kills herself at Damien's fifth birthday party and things just go downhill from there.  Thorn slowly becomes convinced that there is something very wrong with Damien but does he have enough time to stop it?

This is an absolute classic and you should definitely watch it.  Unfortunately, it's only streaming on AMC right now and the remake is on Starz.  So if you have cable, you've got a better chance of catching it.

We Heart Horror - Day 13: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

  It has been another educational weekend for Bethany.  This time, I went with a theme of "evil children" since I ended up showing almost all slasher films last time.

Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), get a lucky break when they find an open apartment in the historic Bramford building, despite the building's rather gruesome reputation.  Their neighbors are a little intrusive but Rosemary writes it off as them just being nosy old people.  Everything changes when Rosemary gets pregnant, however, and well-intentioned but annoying turns into a sinister plot to steal her baby.  As the pregnancy progresses, Rosemary's trust in those around her plummets even as they close tighter and tighter around her.

The true horror of this film is not the Satanic cult but the constant gaslighting and enforced isolation Rosemary experiences.  From the beginning, she is told that her pain doesn't matter, her thoughts are confused, her feelings are unimportant.  Someone controls what she eats, what she drinks, who she sees, and she --a polite Midwestern girl-- goes along with it because she was raised not to make a scene or put herself first.

It works as a horror film and also as a reminder that we haven't progressed as far as people like to think since the 60s.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime and Hulu.

We Heart Horror - Day 12: Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)

  It's just not Halloween without a zombie film.

Two construction workers break open a vault sealed in 1666 and release a flood of zombies into modern London's East End.  Meanwhile, two brothers (Rasmus Hardiker and Harry Treadway) decide to rob a bank in order to get enough money to save their grandfather's (Alan Ford) retirement home from being destroyed by the same construction group.  Now, these would-be bank robbers, their hostage (Georgia King), their cousin (Michelle Ryan), friend (Jack Doolan) and local psycho (Ashley Thomas) have to rescue the old-timers before they are eaten by the walking dead.

It's refreshing to see a zombie movie clearly aware of zombies.  None of this "what are they?" "What do we do?"  "What's wrong with Grandma?" bullshit, just straight up "Oh, zombies.  Okay, aim for the head and don't let them bite you."

Cockneys vs Zombies doesn't rewrite the zombie movie formula but it is a really fun watch.  It's currently streaming for free on Tubi or on Amazon Prime if you're fancy.  Keep an eye out for former Bond girl Honor Blackman as well.