That Daniel Kaluuya can act. I liked him in Nope as well.
Yeah, this was me. I liked Us, too. Almost scarier because of how it all turned out. I’ve been to the Santa Cruz boardwalk several times, so that sense of closeness to something very weird worked for me, too. Most horror movies now are very slick and have good special effects, but ultimately ring hollow for me.
On completely different note, I just watched From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The book was published when I was older than the age it was pitched to, and because of that I’d never seen the movie either. About a year or two ago, when I was catching up on juveniles that I missed due to being the wrong targent audience, I read the book and liked it a lot. It showed up on TCM, and I watched it last night. Not bad! It was faithful to the book for the most part and well done. I’m not a big Ingrid Bergman fan, but she was very good here. The kids were serviceable.At least, not horrible. However. That cheesy 70s soundtrack. Oy.
- It was actually called The Hide Aways in the titles. But it had the original book title in imdb. Guess they found out if they wanted to capture the readers of the book, they needed to make sure kids knew which book it was based on.
Did you mean to refer to some movie besides Avatar here? Because that’s about as far away an example as I can think of from what you wrote in the spoiler tag.
Well, the guy thinks he’s on the side of angels going in, and it turns out not so much.
Great in Judas and the Black Messiah (won an Oscar) and steals every scene he’s in in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Don’t Worry Darling, aka Bioshock meets The Stepford Wives.
I haven’t seen it yet but the newest Godzilla film, from Toho yet, will be shown at a theater only about half an hour from me. This will be in December. I’m told the timeline it’s set in is before the 1954 film. And it will be in Japanese, with subtitles in English, the way I like it. I hate the usual dubbing jobs one hears.
Ahem, Argentinian horror film.
Ah you are correct. I meant to write “Spanish-language” film.
I lived overseas when the first Saw movie released and just never got around to catching up. I’ll see Saw X when it hits streaming. Probably come and share some thoughts on it then.
I entered these movies with no bias or preconceived opinions. I tried to read very little outside thought and just watched the series straight through on my own. Here are my rankings and micro-reviews.
Overall: Fun series, competently made. Better than a lot of crap out there. Rarely amazing, often pretty good.
Now, from best to worst:
Saw VI – This entire movie worked. The insurance guy, the traps, the entire storyline worked well and was thrilling. Really excellent entry
Saw – Yep, it was really good as well. I had no idea about the twist at the end Very satisfying.
Jigsaw(8) – If you are going to mini-reboot the series, this is probably a pretty good way to do it. I mean, I still think they regret killing Jigsaw.
Saw 2 – Good sequel. Well done, not much to say.
Saw 3 – Another good sequel, but killing both Jigsaw and Amanda wrote them into a corner. Still, solid stuff.
Saw VII – Fun, but the most obvious example of “just film the traps and take the movie-goers money”. Minimal plot until the very end. I still had fun on this one.
Spiral(9) – It wasn’t boring, but was almost comedic to me at times. Samuel Jackson’s worst performance I’ve seen; he should not have taken this role. I see what it could have been, but in the end it was mostly…zany? The ending caught me off guard, which is something to say the least.
Saw V – Mostly dull. The ending was interesting, but the rest was boring.
Saw IV – The low-point. A completely forgettable sequel. I was bored almost the entire time.
Psycho (1960). This one, of course, has been seen and talked about so much over the years that it’s almost a cliché. Not much more to say except that it’s definitely one of Hitchcock’s best. I had not seen it in so many years that I’d forgotten much of it, so it was an enjoyable repeat.
I was surprised to read on IMDb that
Hitchcock was so pleased with the score written by Bernard Herrmann that he doubled the composer’s salary to $34,501. Hitchcock later said, “Thirty-three percent of the effect of Psycho was due to the music.”
I don’t agree. Some of it is classic horror-movie soundtrack, yes, but there are points in the film when there’s just too much of it and it becomes annoyingly intrusive. It’s like old Bernie was a little bit too enthusiastic when scoring the film.
The movie was nominated for four Oscars, none of them for the music; the best-deserved ones for best director and cinematography.
The young secretary in the real estate office is instantly recognizable as Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia. He cast her in minor roles in various productions including the iconic TV series, where I think she had a fairly central role in at least one episode.
Am I the only one that thinks the most suspenseful scene in the film is when Janet Leigh is questioned by the cop?
Nah, but the cop looked pretty ominous and it was a good scene – one of so many in that great film. I’m so glad that I watched it again, after knowing that I’d seen it before and how familiar its various plot elements had become over the many years.
I’ve been watching the Hitchcock TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Occasionally an episode’s background music is so engrossing that I make a point to see who wrote the music. I can pretty much tell when it’s by Bernard Hermann. Like looking for Hitchcock’s brief cameos in his films, now I look forward to the music to be by BH.
Green Zone, Matt Damon in Iraq looking for WMDs. Overwrought music score was mostly annoying, lots of handheld camera work, lots of action taking place in the dark. Entertaining, I guess, if you’re bored.
Nowhere on Netflix. A Spanish film about a pregnant woman adrift in a shipping container (and that’s not even her most harrowing ordeal). The main character has to overcome so many challenges it just gets exhausting at times, but there are some fun problem solving scenes on par with better films like The Martian.
The Creator (2023): Visually interesting especially how well the environment blended in with the “real” world. The story was fair and given the subject, and the current discussion about AI it does lead to considering different ways of viewing it. In the end though, it is mostly an action movie, there is some exposition, but it is not overlong and some things are left for the viewer to figure out as the plot advances, which is nice. I enjoyed it more for the environment in which it was set than the plot itself, though the acting was good so I could not fault it on the actors.
//i\\
Just saw Renfield; enjoyed it very much. I’m pretty ambivalent about Nicholas Cage, but the movie itself was funny and cartoon-violent.
Carrie
Somewhat recommended.
I’d never seen it and it is pretty good, but there is an awful lot of filler for a horror movie. I feel like the movie comes down to just a couple of interesting sequences and the final 20-25 minutes are very well done. Besides that, it is just standard stuff.
Asteroid City. 4/5 stars. The house was completely divided on this one, but I liked it a lot. I think I understand what it was about, but I have to think about it for a while.
Infinitely more comprehensible than The French Dispatch.