Film posts
I'm currently doing a film challenge:
I've posted film reviews (notes? ramblings?) on and off for years, and I discovered that writing a few paragraphs embedded the film a little more in my memory. I also love the structure of a film challenge. It gets me out of endless scrolling and helps me choose.
Previous film challenges:
October 13 2021, 05:57
The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971)
I though The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail would be a giallo, or at least a proto-slasher, but it is far more a crime-thriller. A wife inherits a million dollars and becomes the focus of a killer. [more...]
October 12 2021, 06:09
Nosferatu (1922)
The oldest unseen film in my collection. I appreciated the original Dracula and Frankenstein, but they were pretty dry in places. Nosferatu is ten years older again. This did feel like homework. [more...]
October 11 2021, 05:30
Salem’s Lot (1979)
Salem’s Lot has a special place in my heart. It was the first scary book I ever read. The film is the two part miniseries I remember from the eighties stitched together. [more...]
October 10 2021, 06:39
Nightmare Beach (1989)
The late eighties, Spring break in Florida, and thousands of young people are in bars and cars along the seafront, drinking, sunbathing and having sex. But this is Nightmare Beach. [more...]
October 09 2021, 06:25
A Quiet Place (2018)
Krasinski displays a touch of Spielberg in the way he shows the children’s lives, as well as in the adrenaline-inducing set pieces. [more...]
October 08 2021, 05:52
The War of the Worlds (1953)
I recently watched the cleak Spielberg/Cruise War of the Worlds, so I thought I’d go back to the original 1953 adaptation, whose bleakness is softened by the folksy charm of small town America. [more...]
October 07 2021, 05:49
The Thing (1982)
A perfect film. A shape-shifting alien picks off the crew of an Antartic research station. Suspicion turns to paranoia, and the remaining humans have stop the alien from taking over the world. [more...]
October 06 2021, 05:51
The Thing From Another World (1951)
A report of a crashed aircraft, a remote scientific outpost, a prickly doctor — and an alien whose unique biology threatens humanity. [more...]
October 05 2021, 05:50
Shadow in the Cloud (2020)
Horror stretches across many genres, and you can’t always know in advance how horror-y a film is, so with Shadow in the Cloud we are in war-action-horror territory, in that order. [more...]
October 04 2021, 05:42
Lisa and the Devil (1973)
One of the lesser-known corners of the Mario Bava-verse. Telly Savalas as the possible devil Leandro is an amusing presence, and if he is not particularly devilish, the dream-like plot definitely is. [more...]
October 03 2021, 06:28
The Addiction (1995)
This is a film thick with social commentary, philosophy texts and existential ideas. The first images we see are piles of dead bodies from the Holocaust and Vietnam. [more...]
October 02 2021, 06:08
Jakob’s Wife (2021)
The irrepressible Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden star in this story of a woman’s mid-life crisis being super-charged by an encounter with a vampire. [more...]
October 01 2021, 06:01
Werewolves Within (2021)
To kick off this year’s #31DaysofHorror I chose Werewolves Within, a comedy-whodunnit-horror based on a Ubisoft video game. It sounded like a fun October opener. [more...]
August 01 2021, 14:55
The Three Colours trilogy
The Three Colours trilogy marked my move from July into August, and amusingly the fledgling judge in Red is called Auguste. [more...]
May 30 2021, 18:02
Inland Empire (2007)
An unusual and meta experience, but after three hours, as the end credits roll, I find I’m crying, because of the joyful music, yes, and because I’m exhausted. [more...]
May 29 2021, 11:41
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Events organically unfold, the images are striking, the narrative is confusing, characters are not who they seem to be, and in the last twenty minutes he reveals what’s really going on, sort of. [more...]
May 27 2021, 19:46
The Straight Story (1999)
If David Lynch were trying to somehow redress all the darkness of his earlier films in one go, then he would make The Straight Story. [more...]
May 26 2021, 18:12
Lost Highway (1997)
Lost Highway is a puzzle. It opens with a jealous husband who thinks his wife is having an affair, and ends with a deadly resolution, but what happens in between is ambiguous and complicated. [more...]
May 24 2021, 12:59
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
A howl of pain from Laura Palmer, the murdered girl that opened the story of Twin Peaks. It’s difficult, heavy, hard to watch in places, and grapples with incest, rape, drug-taking, murder and domestic abuse. [more...]
May 18 2021, 17:41
Wild at Heart (1990)
Wild at Heart is a series of deliberately melodramatic, hyper-violent and sexual scenes stitched together into a road movie, with a tenuously-made connection to the Wizard of Oz. [more...]
May 12 2021, 15:02
Blue Velvet (1986)
Blue Velvet has a fearsome reputation but is also culturally beloved. Dennis Hopper’s over-the-top performance has become iconic, and its themes foreshadow those in the massively popular Twin Peaks. [more...]
May 09 2021, 20:10
Dune (1984)
I went into Dune thinking I would see something the critics were missing – I mean, how could the director of Eraserhead and The Elephant Man direct a complete dud? – and... it’s so over-the-top, it manages to not be awful. [more...]