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Sadako DX ★★☆☆☆
I have been obsessed with the Ring series for a while. I’ve watched through all the others so I had to go with the latest. It’s? Okay? Weird? The series, after a string of bad sequels, just finally embraces full-on self-parody. It’s also maybe kind of about covid? There is a whole thing about how the cursed video has mutated and you need to immunise yourself against it by frequent exposure. There’s a character who is living as a shut-in in full self-isolation mode who only leaves the house wearing a gasmask. The curse’s connection to smallpox is brought up in a film for the first time in the series since Spiral in 1998. I am unsure what to make of it.
Ring (1998) ★★★★☆
The one unquestionably really good film in this whole bloody franchise lmao. I’ve seen it a few times at this point. Deserves its reputation. I don’t have much else to say.
Ring 2 (1999) ★☆☆☆☆
This one on the other hand I dislike more every time I see it. It feels aimless and muddled compared to its predecessor and fails to build the same atmosphere of dread.
Deathtrap ★☆☆☆☆
The recursiveness to the plot is a bit cute and it gets some points for being gay but I just found it a slog to sit through if I’m being honest.
Digimon The Movie ★★★☆☆
Sorry, this rules. It’s dumb as shit and I would watch it again right now.
Sonic the Hedgehog The Movie ★★★★☆
Same but also it’s Sonic.
The VVitch ★★★★☆
Oh god I can’t be arsed to write real reviews. Here is a more acceptable film to give four starts too I guess lmao. Weird. Good atmosphere. Archaic dialogue. There’s a goat in it.
Re-animator ★★☆☆☆
Uh???? I don’t know I was in a weird mood when I watched this. I know it’s a comedy but I couldn’t get it out of my head how fucked up it would be for all the reanimated corpse people.
Let the Right One In ★★☆☆☆
I think I liked this one? But also I barely remember it. Oh god why I am trying to write reviews for movies I watched almost a year ago I can’t remember shit I was doing last week.
Spirited Away ★★★☆☆
It’s good but I still think I don’t like it as much as I’m used to? Whimsy kind of loses its charm for me in repetition and it’s not a film that benefits from rewatching for me I think. It’s still cute though.
Knock at the Cabin ★★☆☆☆
It’s decent. Manages to maintain a tense atmosphere throughout. Bautista’s awkward acting helps his character come across as weird and offputting.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish ★★★☆☆
It’s extremely pretty, though the actual plot felt very by the numbers in many ways. I was also fully expecting Goldilocks to use the wish to become a bear at the end in an echo of the first Shrek.
The Fly (1986) ★★★☆☆
Jeff Goldblum sure can turn into a fly. Well made and manages to hold interest and keep the discomfort elevating throughout.
The Fly Ⅱ ★☆☆☆☆
The reason I wanted to watch The Fly was a vague memory from childhood of seeing this movie and particularly the ending where the executive is mutated into a horrible mandogslug thing. The movie in general isn’t good but damn that mandogslug thing is upsetting. The fly mutant also looks nothing like a fly in this one.
The Fly (1958) ★☆☆☆☆
Why not also watch the original? The cat is a good creepy moment but otherwise nothing much in it succeeds in grabbing me.
No Country for Old Men ★★★★★
This film has you coiled like a spring for the entire runtime. The tension is just fucking wonderful. Fuck.
Fargo ★★★★★
No Country for Old Men feels like the serious version of this in a lot of ways. Love it. Very funny while still having so much of that tension. Marge would be the ideal badass if she wasn’t a cop. I love her.
Hackers ★★★☆☆
Stupid as shit (complement). Hack the planet.
Street Fighter: The Movie ★★★☆☆
Hell yeah.
Kiki’s Delivery Service ★★☆☆☆
I am not such a massive fan of the cosy Ghibli movie thing. It’s alright and like all their stuff very pretty but I want more action and tension than cute vibes.
Cocaine Bear ★★☆☆☆
Too much plot not nearly enough people being killed by a cocaine bear.
House (1977) ★★★★★
🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌
Johnny Mnemonic ★★★☆☆
Watch the extended edition for the heroin-addict dolphin and the least transphobic joke Hollywood has ever done.
Kill Bill vol 1 ★★☆☆☆
Not one of Tarantino’s best.
John Wick 4 ★★★☆☆
The only other John Wick film I’d seen was the second one and I hated it. I felt it was like watching someone play Time Crisis. Just him going into someplace shooting everyone and moving on. That also largely describes this one but for whatever reason it clicked with me more here. Also him falling down the stairs for unnecessarily long was funny.
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Final Alchemy ★☆☆☆☆
Oh bloody fuck just watch Brotherhood.
American Psycho ★★★★☆
God Bateman is such a loser. It’s great. If this was set in the modern day he would just be refreshing Reddit all day and regurgitating his opinions from there instead of magazines.
Evil Dead Rise ★★★☆☆
I had never seen an Evil Dead film before but I quite liked this. Good film.
Chicken Run ★★☆☆☆
It’s fine. Not Ardman’s best.
Dragon Ball Z: Super Guy in the Galaxy ★★★☆☆
This is the only version of this movie I have seen. I love Uncle Motong. Also “Super Guy in the Galaxy” is just hilarious as a name.
Dragon Ball Z: Vengeance of the Demon King ★★☆☆☆
I had actually seen Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone before this. Not as funny as Super Guy in the Galaxy.
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! ★★☆☆☆
She wasn’t lying. Those pirates can in an adventure with scientists.
Wings (1927) ★☆☆☆☆
I watched it for that one dolly cam scene, which was cool and has lesbians in it. Unfortunately a lot of the rest of the movie is dull as dishwater. It is also bizarre to see WWI treated in a movie as lightly as this one does.
Hellraiser (2022) ★★★☆☆
Trans.
Princess Mononoke ★★★★☆
Studio Ghibli but a bit less cozy and with more wolf violence, hell yeah.
Hormonal ★★★☆☆
Cute little short film that was played before the screening I saw of The People’s Joker. It’s about some trans guys stealing testosterone from a dodgy gym that sells it under the table and treated them like shit.
The People’s Joker ★★★★☆
Weird and disjointed as hell. There is CGI and animated segments and they were all obviously done by different people in completely different styles. The tone is all over the place but it works as a collage of weird shit. The acting is just as inconsistent, unfortunately, but the main cast is solid enough. The way it handles deadnaming is surprisingly powerful and impactful and it manages to make it feel genuinely violent. Also Mr. Boop is in it.
Four Lions ★★★★☆
2010 British comedy about a bunch of Muslim lads plotting a suicide bombing sounds like it would be the most racist thing ever but it’s comedy is in treating them entirely as regular, goofy, likeable, blokes who are roped into doing something horrible.
The Shape of Water ★★☆☆☆
Damn she fucked that fish.
Fern Gully ★☆☆☆☆
I liked this as a child.
Barbie ★★★★☆
yay 💖
Brazil ★☆☆☆☆
Wow this film sucks a lot more than I expected.
Grappler Baki: The Ultimate Fighter ★★★☆☆
A man pulls Baki’s optical nerve out of his neck and severs it with his bare fingers. No one has ever known less about the human body than Keisuke Itagaki and it is as amazing as it is unpleasant to watch. Every time I watch anything Baki I feel like my grasp on anatomy gets worse.
Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County ★☆☆☆☆
I had a memory of watching this as a child on Sky, in particular the bit where a girl sits a piano and the family talks about how beautiful her playing is while no music plays. I think that bit is still effective but a lot if it is weird. I think as a kid I must have missed the start because I did not remember at all how much it overplays its hand at the start. It just straight up shows the spaceship near the start and it looks like shit, though they try to disguise it with some video artefacting effects. It also has these rubbish expert interview segments scattered around it as a framing device that really overhype it. On top of all that is the awkward bits of the family being racist to one of the women’s boyfriend. It also turns out it’s a remake of:
UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape ★★☆☆☆
Even less happens in this film than its remake but I dig it a bit. It has vibes. And it’s a found footage horror movie that predates The Blair Witch Project by a decade, which is cool. It does do that same thing I dislike of showing the spaceship way to early. I ended up watching it with a director’s commentary track on it and it becomes clear as it goes on that he is a genuine believer in alien abductions, which puts a funny twist on the whole thing.
Knives Out ★★★★★
I saw this movie twice in the cinema and have seen it three times since. It’s so fucking good.
Glass Onion ★★★★☆
I don’t like it as much as Knives Out but I like it more having seen it a couple of times. After a conversation with some friends about how the film is split into two halves I actually made my own edit of that puts the two halves of the film side by side. This is obviously not a good way to watch a film generally but the way the two halves of the film rhyme is interesting and it highlights things I didn’t notice the first time like Miles and Helen running around with fake blood all over them at the ends of each half of the film. It mostly works for the start and the end, the middle just being kind of muddled without less things lining up between the two halves.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline ★★★☆☆
I feel that this film did not adequately prepare me to blow up a pipeline if I am being honest, but it was a good movie.
All Dogs Go to Heaven ★☆☆☆☆
I had a vague memory of liking this as a child. It’s bad.
Misery ★★★☆☆
Mostly really good but the sheriff scenes really feel inserted to lighten the tone and I really don’t like how the affect the pacing at all.
Nosferatu ★★☆☆☆
lmao at the hyena
Friday the 13th Part 2 ★☆☆☆☆
Boring.
Train to Busan ★★★★☆
I love Yoon Sang-hwa.
The Secret of Roan Inish ★☆☆☆☆
Plus: There was seals in it. Minus: It’s twee and boring.
Gremlins ★★☆☆☆
I had not watched this since I was a child. In my head I had sectioned off Gremlins 2 as the silly one and I thought Gremlins was the serious scary one. No the first one was like this as well actually, just not as extreme and not as good.
Deadware ★★☆☆☆
Deadware captures the quality and scariness of 00s horror Flash games. I like that someone tried to make a film with this concept but I wish it was actually any good. I also would have preferred if it was just a static feed of the desktop rather than zooming in on sections.
Ghostwatch ★★★★☆
Look I love diegetic conceits like found footage, mockumentaries, etc. Of course I love Ghostwatch. And it doesn’t just have the creepiness of the haunting but the growing sense throughout of how the TV production is also exploitative of this family.
Resident Evil: Death Island ★★☆☆☆
Not as stupid as I would like from a Resi movie.
Videodrome ★★★★☆
LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH
Tetsuo ★★★★☆
LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH
Tetsuo Ⅱ: Body Hammer ★★☆☆☆
Trying to put a more conventional narrative around these ideas didn't really help them at all I feel and it ended up shaping the transformations into things more suitable for typical action pieces like them just getting gun arms.
The Muppet Christmas Carol ★☆☆☆☆
I liked the Marley & Marley song when I was a kid, but really this is boring and what am I meant to find it funny at the end when Scrooge hangs the power he has over their lives over the Cratchit’s heads as he makes Bob think that he is about to fire him before telling him the good news instead? It illustrates how hollow the idea of Scrooge just becoming a more generous is. He not only still has the power over these people’s lives but enjoys reminding them of it before being so magnanimous as to not send them out onto the street to freeze and starve.
Tokyo Godfathers ★★★★★
I do have some reservations about some of the ways the film talks about family but it’s also just so good. I will kill for Hana. She’s great. It feels like she might be the but of the joke at the start and the rest of the cast struggles with gendering her correctly, but they get their act together about it. It’s spiky, but it’s a movie about three homeless people. They have a shit time. Of course they do. But I dunno I’m extremely tired while writing this.
Some Like it Hot ★★★★☆
Daphne is trans.
Mean Girls ★★☆☆☆
Wow this has aged. Absolutely 2004 movie.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget ★★☆☆☆
I think I liked it a bit more than the first one actually? The 60s spy asthetics were cute.
The Batman ★☆☆☆☆
Why was this so long. Will admit I didn’t really pay attention. Might actually be good if you did? So long though.