The Thing - John Carpenter (1982, DVD)
Yep, we watched this on Halloween morning, so it was like "nasty alien killing the humans one by one" day, all day. I'd never actually watched the whole thing through before. Why do people at an Antarctic research station or on a mining starship always have flamethrowers handy?
| Comments (42) | TrackBack (1097) | link me | November 2003

Ringu - Hideo Nakata (1998, VHS)
Japanese horror film that's spawned at least three sequels/prequels as well as a TV series and remakes out of both South Korea and the US (The Ring). The story is less cheesy than it could be, given the premise; watching it on videotape probably makes it creepier than seeing it in theater would. It's not a bad story, but hardly worth all the various filmings it seems to have inspired.
| Comments (3) | TrackBack (991) | link me | February 2003

Dog Soldiers - Neil Marshall (2002, in theatre)
Our new tradition of dinner at Ti Couz followed by a horror flick at the Roxie enters its second year! Dog Soldiers is an enjoyable werewolf romp, British soldiers versus big hairy snarly baddies, much in the mold of Aliens. Some great dialogue (it doesn't quite need subtitling if you've watched enough British TV), blood and guts ("we're gonna need some whiskey and super-glue!"), explosions, guns and more guns, severed heads, Scottish broadswords, and all that good stuff. The time-distorted battle scenes (the same effect used in Gladiator and The Messenger among others) are a little distracting, and it's sometimes hard to tell who's who since there's a whole squad wearing the same camo gear, and the werewolf costumes are pretty cheesy, but these are minor problems with a really solid action-horror flick.
| Comments (4) | TrackBack (279) | link me | November 2002

Battle Royale - Kinji Fukasaku (2000, VHS)
"Survivor" meets "Lord of the Flies" and Stephen King/Richard Bachman's "The Long Walk". A class of unruly Japanese schoolchildren are dropped on an uninhabited island, supplied with weapons, and given three days to kill one another off. The movie lurches unevenly between over-the-top splatter horror and veneer-of-civilization human drama, not really covering either aspect well; I almost wish two separate movies had been made based on the same concept. The "training video", however, was completely brilliantly done, perfectly Japanese, and worth the rental by itself.
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Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Philip Kaufman (1978, DVD)
Man, this one scared the hell out of me when I saw it as a kid. It's a bit campy now, but worth a watch, and still a good moody paranoid buildup. Another movie shot in SF; we walk past the Health Department building every time we go to the Symphony. Again, I'm surprised to see that the weird stunted mutant trees out in front of city hall (where Donald Sutherland is walking in the final scene) have ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THAT. Great cast. Seeing Jeff Goldblum's name in the credits, I expected to see him as a teenager or something; he's older than I thought, though, born in 1952.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (112) | link me | October 2002

What Lies Beneath - Robert Zemeckis (2000, DVD)
Supernatural-suspense thriller. Concept had potential, but the plotline was fairly contrived (and full of holes) and the dialog was terribly clunky. Mostly it's an excuse for a lot of jump-out-of-your-seat scenes, but even those started getting fairly predictable. You'd think that Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer could find better work than this.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (81) | link me | January 2002

Basic Instinct - Paul Verhoeven (1992, DVD)
Okay, let's get this all out in the open. There's no real reason to watch Basic Instinct except that you want to watch some sex scenes. Sex scenes with Sharon Stone (or Michael Douglas, as the case may be). And that's okay. It has additional redeeming features, too, like the Hitchcock references throughout, but that excuse isn't going to fool anyone.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (189) | link me | January 2002

The Crimson Rivers - Matthieu Kassovitz (Les Rivieres Pourpres) (2000, DVD)
French cops-hunting-serial-killers movie. (That'd make it a flic flick.) We picked it up because we like Jean Reno, but, oh dear, did this turn out to be bad. Meriko fell asleep partway through, and afterwards, as I was explaining the ending to her, she didn't believe me because it was so absurd. On the other hand, there was some really gorgeous scenery and cinematography in it.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (232) | link me | December 2001

The Invisible Ghost - Joseph H. Lewis (1941, DVD)
This is actually the first Bela Lugosi film I've seen, I think. What might have been terrifying to a 1941 audience is just amusing to a contemporary one. We caught it on the big screen at the Roxie, which was fun.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (123) | link me | October 2001

Perfect Blue - Satoshi Kon (1997, DVD)
A tense, fascinating anime psychodrama. As with Jacob's Ladder, Vanilla Sky, or Memento, the longer things go on, the less certain you are of what is real and what is delusion. Nary a giant robot, amorous tentacle, nor city-rending nukefest to be seen here; this could as easily have been done live-action.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (68) | link me | September 2001

Hannibal - Ridley Scott (2001, DVD)
Well, it was better than the book, but I'm glad I didn't bother to see it in theatre. Always a bad sign when Oscar-winning actresses are avoiding your movie...
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (60) | link me | September 2001

Memento - Christopher Nolan (2000, DVD)
Pretty brilliant conceptual film; I'm left with some questions at the end, but life's like that sometimes.
| Comments (13) | TrackBack (42) | link me | September 2001

The Others - Alejandro Amenabar (2001, in theatre on honeymoon)
Wasn't this flick called The Sixth Sense the first time I saw it? It did successfully make me jump, and had some good cinematography, but it started off pretty slow and just didn't excite me.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (214) | link me | September 2001

Rosemary's Baby - Roman Polanski (1968, DVD)
Not at all what I was expecting. Slow paranoid buildup that probably was more effective in 1968 than it is today.
| Comments (11) | TrackBack (127) | link me | June 2001

The Gift - Sam Raimi (2000, DVD)
Well-done story, excellent acting, lousy special effects. The "fan blowing actress's hair around means supernatural stuff is happening" trick only works in outdoor scenes, folks, and even there it's kind of cheesy. However, this movie does one thing about a million times better than any other movie has ever accomplished: getting Keanu Reeves to act. In light of what he does in this movie, you have to reconsider everything you've seen him in and ask yourself if his scriptwriters and directors aren't partially responsible for his, uh, limited performances in the past. "Whoa."
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (85) | link me | June 2001

The Watcher - Joe Charbanic (2000, DVD)
Weak, weak, weak serial killer story.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (253) | link me | June 2001

Hollow Man - Paul Verhoeven (2000, DVD)
Ugh. This starts off as suspenseful if cheesy science fiction, detours through typical Verhoeven breastploitation, then finally sinks into the mire of a weak doesn't-the-bad-guy-ever-die slasher flick. I wasn't expecting much beyond some good special effects — and there are some darn good special effects, actually — but it was much, much worse than I expected.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (79) | link me | March 2001