Same here. I remember the wolves howling and the sound seemed to be coming from behind me!
I keep meaning to go back and watch this film again. My mother rented it for me back in the late 80s on a day that I was home sick from school. As an 11 or 12 year old with a fever, it definitely left an impression. The wheelers and the lady (witch or queen?) with a house full of reanimated heads have been burned into my memories. I do not remember much of the plot.
I also watched Good Omens 3 over the weekend. Overall disappointing. After two 6-part series this one was a single 90 minute offering, as if they ran out of ideas. Interesting but disappointing. I did like Jesus learning how to deal three-card monte under the tutelage of a guy named Fish.
Yeah, we enjoyed the first series, but lost interest in the middle of the second.
It’s in the same kind of weird dark space as The Dark Crystal and Ridley Scott’s Legend, if you know those movies.
Nope and nope, but willing to explore, thanks!
Wizard of the Kremlin, 2026, theater.
Paul Dano and Jude Law star in a rather dry “biopic” about Putin’s rise to power. Dano plays a composite character, a guy who didn’t really exist but is a composite of a few who did, Law plays Putin and does a pretty good job of it. Recommended if you like this sort of thing. I do think the very last shot of the film was over the top, a possible admission by the filmmakers that the film did not fully deliver the message they wanted it to deliver.
Remarkably Bright Creatures (Netflix)
It was sweet and cute and not very memorable. We paused with about 45 minutes to go to make our predictions, we were about 50/50.
1972’s The Hot Rock, with Robert Radford, George Segal, Paul Sand, Ron Leibman as a group of thieves, and good supporting turns by Moses Gunn and Zero Mostel. It’s a comedy, as they slightly inept gang has to resteal the same gem multiple times because they keep losing it.
Not bad, it tends to drag a little in some spots, but it does maintain the suspense even when you think it shouldn’t work. It’s also a great time capsule of early 70s NY locals and fashions. Plus, bonus helicopter shots of the WTC under construction.
But I couldn’t figure out why Paul Sand’s hair kept changing from a curly perm to slicked down and straight between scenes.
The first of the Donald Westlake/Dortmunder film adaptations. I never saw this one, but now I’m interested.
I think it works pretty good. I’ve never read the books, and I think I’ve never seen another movie. Have to go read wikipedia…
Another film: 1987’s Who’s That Girl?" with Madonna, and thankfully Griffin Dunne and not Sean Penn. It tried hard, but I thought Dunne’s character was such a doormat, and Madonna’s was such a jerk, I realized I didn’t care what happened to them. We gave uo after maybe 15 minutes. We switched to The Hot Rock. 
Jack Ryan: Ghost War (2026) on Amazon Prime
Meh. This continues John Krasinski’s version of the Jack Ryan character from four seasons on Amazon. The plot is ridiculous and doesn’t make much sense if you think about it too hard, and some of the dialogue is taken straight from cheesy 80s movies monologues. But it does have some decent chase scenes and set pieces.
It’s a self-contained story so you don’t need to have watched previous seasons, but I think you’ll appreciate it more if you already know the characters.
We Bury the Dead (2025) on Hulu. Australian zombie movie starring Daisy Ridley. It held my attention, but I didn’t think it was much better than average. Supposed to take place on Tasmania, although filmed in Australia, and the scenery was great.
Per IMDb: After a catastrophic military disaster, the dead don’t just rise - they hunt. Ava searches for her missing husband, but what she finds is far more terrifying.
Based on the book by his side babe Carlotta Monti [Valerie Perrine] (thus, the “Me”). This might as well have been a made-for-TV movie, as there really isn’t a lot more than a recap of his movie career–although there are a few early vignettes about his vaudeville days. No way of knowing where the person Bill Fields ended and the character W.C. Fields began–or was he always in character? Jack Cassidy has a few scenes as a perpetually inebriated John Barrymore. Well, I went into it knowing that biopics are fictionalized to varying degrees, and the further back you go, the more liberties they take.
Side note: I remember once when Cassidy–who, like Barrymore, would also lose his life to the bottle–was on “The Match Game” and mentioned this upcoming movie, turning to the side to show that he, too, had a ‘profile.’
Backrooms
I’m not the horror fan my daughter is as I don’t find jumpscares and excessive gore fun to watch per se, but good psychological horror will suit me well. And this is some very good psychological horror indeed.
Okay, yes, it can be seen as a hamhanded metaphor for AI and yes, it ends somewhat abruptly. But the visuals - oh man, the visuals are deeply unsettling throughout. Every room, every space is either small and cluttered and claustrophobic or oppressively big and empty. Nowhere is comfortable, nowhere is safe. There are a few jumpscares and a little gore but it’s the long, long traverses of the Backrooms that will wear your nerves raw. The moments when action happens are almost a relief after that.
I saw The Mandalorian and Grogu and The Sheep Detectives earlier this week and today I saw Tuner. Leo Woodall plays an apprentice piano tuner in New York City who gets involved with a gang of criminals due to his safe-cracking skills.
Fall (2022)
A year after her husband dies in an accident on a mountain climb with her and her friend, a woman agrees to join said friend on a climb up a decommissioned TV mast, with predictably dramatic consequences.
Wasn’t expecting much from this but it sounded like an easy watch. I was wrong. Talk about sweaty palms and curling toes. Very effective for what it is, even if rather implausible and at times I was saying to myself “why didn’t they just…?”. A little cheesy but the acting was pretty good and the direction was spot on.
You know, I love Fall. I don’t know why exactly, but it is captivating, And as you note, sweaty palms. High “pucker factor” film. Watching them sit on that platform, waiting for a miracle. Man!
And I want to go hunt down the two that stole her truck.
Now the movie makes no sense if you know anything about drones, cell phones, or radio towers*, but still, I recommend the film.
Did you watch the “making of”? Interesting. There was a lot of practical effects: They made a small tower and put it on the edge of a cliff.
*how, exactly. was a real repairman supposed to replace that lightbulb? Put some ladder pegs on that tower fer cripessake!
Anecdote time.
An EE friend of mine worked summers at a local radio station when he was in college. His first year the other engineers were sending him on useless missions like finding a cable stretcher. Then someone got the brilliant idea of changing the light bulb at the top of the tower. Not at all afraid of heights he found some cord, tied a sling so the replacement was at his back and made the climb.
At the top he unscrewed the old bulb then paused. He had two hands full of giant light bulb and its replacement tied on his back. Checking, he found no one below so dropped the old bulb, retrieved the new one and screwed it in before descending.
It turned out not only was the bulb very large, it was very special, costing about $1,000 – fifty years ago. Management issued a sternly worded memo about not hazing anybody any more.
Even if the bulb were worthless garbage, dropping it from the top of a radio tower seems like a questionable choice.
I guess that’s what it took to end hazing. Not the risk to someone’s life, but the loss of $1,000.