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Big dumb action movies are a lost art. They've got be at least a bit smart about how big and how dumb they are. Hollywood lost the recipe somewhere.

Kind of impressive how it manages to have its cake and eat it too re: military honor and loyalty going too far.

Three super ladies, one good, one bad, and one mercenary, cross paths on a case involving kidnapped babies, then they team up. So Nineties Hong Kong it kind of staggers you. It's marred by some really obvious wire work (like you can really see the wires,) and by some frankly unnecessary bits of severe child injury. But fans of bonkers Asian cinema will get a kick out of it. And I think every individual of every gender expression and orientation will become infatuated with Maggie Cheung.

Horror anthology from Australia. The mixed bag nature of anthologies is always a thing, but this is the first time I can recall watching one where I didn't enjoy any of the shorts. There are some inventive scares and images, but they're not combined with anything. The shorts are mostly borderline plotless, with endings that feel like the production just ran out of film. You can skip it.

One of those movies I wanted to like more than I did. I think it couldn't quite figure out what kind of comedy it wanted to be, so it never got that funny. It's afraid to go full farce, but also too hesitant to be particularly real.

The weird fight scenes can be entertaining, guy who's a crappy (yet smart!) fighter and can't feel pain leads to some unusual bad-assery. But at its heart this is really a romantic film about two weirdos who find each other. Those were really the best moments in the film and I wish that was emphasized a bit more, and the rather boring, pointlessly dickish bank robbers a bit less.

Super rich guy adopts a homeless guy and goes around sowing chaos by being rich. It's a rather berserk, plotless, gratuitously shocking, surrealistic, anti-establishment satire that probably could only have happened in 1969. There are definitely moments that read subversive at the time that now look icky. Partly, it depends on whether you see Guy Grand as selfish and indulgent, or rebellious and anarchic. I'm in the latter camp.

I've seen this a few times, and it's one of those things I keep mising as liking more than I do. The biggest flaw is the lurching pacing and bad comic timing, tough to overcome in a farce. It also goes into outright fantasy (the cruise ship has a vampire?!) when I think a more realistic take might have been better. Peter Sellers' ego and insecurity are somewhat to blame, I think.

Still, there's a weird amount to enjoy. It's a good movie for playing spot the character actor. I dig the soundtrack ("Come and Get It" is maybe the best McCartney song not sung by McCartney.) Perhaps it's more interesting to consider this movie for its impacts on pop history. The Beatles' Let It Be sessions and rooftop concert happened partially because Ringo was scheduled to be in this. And the seeds of Monty Python and other British comedy I adore were definitely planted here.

Super weird I've never heard of this before. Overnight workers in a soon-to-close grocery store confront a slasher killer. Sam and Ted Raimi, Lawrence Bender, and Scott Spiegel are involved.

It's essential a parade of really clever shot choices, and memorable kills. Set up takes a while, the characters are a bit thin, and the mean-spirited, thematically problematic ending really sat wrong with me. But the inventiveness of the shots and use of the single space were enough to keep me engaged. Worth a look if you're into slashers.

Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee in the same film! In 1840 London, a surgeon attempts to develop anesthesia, and falls victim to drug addiction and a gang of body snatchers. Great to see Karloff in a kindly, sympathetic role. And Lee has a much smaller part, but he's striking as all get out as one of the snatcher gang. All the performances are terrific.

This wasn't released for four years after being made, which is wild to me. The pacing is good. It's feels bigger budgeted than most Karloff or Lee flicks. The time period is incredibly well realized, costumes, sets, and casting are all great. They managed to create a Victorian London thriller that doesn't seem to owe anything to Poe or Dickens. A good horror movie for people who don't like horror movies. Very pleasantly surprised by this.

Finally got around to this, after years and years of hearing people talking about it. Less a horror film and more a psychological thriller. Still not completely sure how I feel about it. Part of me wanted it to be more realistic, and part of me wanted it to be more insane. I normally love "WTF is going on?!" movies, but there was a distance to this I couldn't quite cross. Maybe it was too well constructed. I know how weird that sounds, but sometimes an air tight script results in airlessness.

It's still a fascinating work, with phenomenal bits of detail, and I can't stop thinking about it. I want to discuss any number of things about it, but as I'm not 100% sold on it, that might not be a satisfying conversion. I'll just have to stew on this for a long time.

My third watch, this time in a theater. If you ever get a chance to see this with a live audience, do it! I think this movie gets more impressive every time I see it.

Finally got around to this. West Virginian brothers down on their luck rob a racetrack. While Ocean's Eleven is slick and high tech, this is gritty and low tech, but it still manages to be engaging and breezy. I don't know why it surprises me that Soderbergh could work in both modes, but it kind of did. Great director. It also manages the juggling act of being amused by Appalachian types and also treating them with respect. Maybe it dragged a bit with the kiddie beauty pageant stuff, but not a big deal.

While I think Hell Or High Water handled the working class guys getting back at the system thing better, that movie was also deadly serious. A good heist movie should be fun, I think.

A corrupt politician in post-colonial Senegal takes a third wife, is struck with impotence, and then he crashes and burns. My knowledge of sub-Saharan African cinema is about as close to zero as it gets, so this was a fascinating watch. We see an unscrupulous bunch try to cherry pick the parts of traditional Wolof and colonial French cultures that most benefit themselves, at the expense of women, the poor, honest businessmen, etc. etc. It's all funnier than that sounds. This is some acid satire.

It's a very unpolished film, with some awkward shot composition and pacing problems. We probably didn't need to see quite so many shots of people walking somewhere. And I'm sure there are cultural subtleties that went over my head. It kept my Western ass from getting as engaged as it should have been. But I'm going to be thinking about this film for quite a while.

Steve and Marty do one of those showbiz semi-autobiographical shows. They do a lot of their polite insult shtick. It's not bad, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I saw it when it came out. I've seen some of these bits done on talk shows since then. There must have been some edits, I have no idea how Martin Short changed into that Jiminy Glick costume so fast.

And Steve Martin is a really good banjo player. His picking technique is really interesting, you barely see his fingers move.

Norwegian updating of the Cinderella story, focusing on a stepsister's desperation and trauma. It's a comparatively realistic take, emphasizing body horror. Let's just say 19th century beauty and weight loss treatments, not to mention plastic surgery, are pretty ghastly. It's firmly in Brothers Grimm territory. I was mesmerized throughout, it's a really pretty film even when being really gross.

The lead actress does a great job playing a perfectly attractive woman obsessed with obtaining impossible beauty standards. And I appreciated the somewhat redemptive and surprising ending.

An anthology of shorts. Most are abstract, surreal, and plotless, but it also includes the classic Bambi Meets Godzilla, a couple of Max Fleisher's Superman cartoons, and for some bizarre reason a Levi's and a 7-Up commercial.

Equal parts arty and fascinating, and arty and dull. But it's definitely something that could be enjoyed with the responsible use of hallucinogens.

It's streaming on Night Flight, although Letterboxd doesn't seem to acknowledge that.

Saw this weeks ago, I forgot you can list shorts here. Two humanoid ducks and a robot go to a bizarre carnival where time travel and other super-sciencey things occur.

How do I explain this? It's sort of like Betty Boop goes New Wave, except this was conceived and created years before New Wave happened. Really bizarre and surreal. Nothing quite like it. Fans of weird will dig this.

Definitely better than I was expecting, but maybe not as great as the word of mouth I've been hearing. It's too bad this came so late in the superhero cycle, too many people probably won't give it a fair shake. It manages to be more poignant about trauma than a lot of other MCU movies have been, as well as a nice take on a bunch of second string superheroes contending with a hugely more powerful opponent. It shows heroism is more than just punching something real hard.

The ending is a pretty big oversell, though. And I didn't like how they grossly underused one character.

Found footage horror involving a TV news crew investigating the tunnels under Sydney. It's possibly the most basic found footage horror movie out there. All the subgenre cliches are present, indistinct video images, screamed obscenities, and unlikeable characters, specifically jerky dudes and a hysterical self-centered woman. No interesting characters, and only a couple reasonable scares in the whole thing. I lost interest in it pretty early on.

I like Demetri Martin, but he kind of annoys me at the same time, because he does stand up the way I would probably do stand up if I did stand up. But I can't do that because Martin is already doing it.

I think I've enjoyed his other specials more, but this was a decent way to spend an hour.

The Delta blues vampire movie I didn't know I needed. Just spectacular. A take on bloodsuckers that's simultaneously traditional and fresh.

This could be a great introduction for people who say they don't like horror. Scary, yes, heartbreaking, yes, but not particularly gory and never gratuitous. It's mostly about blacks trying to carve out their own lives in the Great Depression South, and it never feels like a lecture or a rant. And the music is something else. I gotta get the soundtrack.

Stay through the credits. It's not a cookie, it's a continuation.

A music teacher, his wife, and estranged sister move into not simply a haunted house, but a whole haunted town. Directed by the guy who did the Hell House movies.

There's interesting bits in here, the structure of seeing the same events through different characters eyes, and the way the town knows about the ghost but has no way to fight it. But it doesn't amount to much. Weak scares, and the logic of the haunting is confusing. For a while I thought there were two or three different ghosts. A disappointment.

What a darling little bundle of fun this was. Busby Berkley going to town with his crazy set pieces. Extra surprising considering it deals with the Great Depression in such a direct, unflinching way while still being a light musical comedy. I did find myself liking it more than 42nd Street, which is still fantastic mind you, but this was more about fun-loving types coming together and not about backstage rivalries. It's a more joyful film.

Oh sure, it's cliched as all get out, poor dancers trying to win over rich dudes and all that. But it's interesting to see the origination of those cliches, and how not cliched they come off.

Ending on a big production number that's a hard-hitting lament on the plight of the working man is a wild choice given the fluffiness of the rest of the movie, but it still works. Crazy.

I wasn't really prepared for how good this movie was. Nerve-wracking and yet surprisingly funny. The haves and have nots are contrasted in ways I haven't seen before, neither side is able to claim the moral high ground, and yet it's all relatable. The plot never once went in a direction I expected. Just a fantastic movie.

Great to see the Academy starting to acknowledge clever, original, borderline genre films like this. I hope they keep doing that.

Rewatch of an adaptation of HP Lovecraft, it leans more into the occult-people-scary thing than the cosmic horror thing. I it being not great, but definitely better than this.

It has a pretty clever way of portraying the other-dimensional entity, using flashes of color to obscure the cheapness of the model. And Dean Stockwell is definitely creepy. But all in all it's a rather mild business.

An aspiring lesbian filmmaker attempts to make a documentary about a forgotten black entertainer from the Thirties. This is what the low-budget indie boom of the Nineties was all about, just a great disarmingly simple little gem. Manages to cover a variety of issues without ever descending into a lecture. Lots of time spent on the problems of not being the right kind of lesbian or the right kind of black woman. Yet it never fails to be entertaining and positive.

A dead letter investigator discovers a blood-stained note. I found it more of a thriller than a horror movie, but that's hardly a complaint. This was just an amazing little low-budget gem, it never once went in a direction I was expecting. And it's smart enough to exploit its budgetary limitations to give the whole thing an eerie look. You really feel for the characters when bad stuff happens. It finds heroism in ordinary people doing ordinary things, no one is an expert with guns or anything like that.

It made me want to work for the post office in the dead letter office. That's alone is a pretty amazing achievement.

An old favorite of mine, I was obsessed with this film back in the day. I kept renting out the VHS and showing it to friends, then it just sort of faded from consciousness. A terrific and ionate road picture. And a great vehicle for Native actors. Graham Greene is in only one scene, but he absolutely kills it. And Gary Farmer makes Philbert Bono one of my all-time favorite characters in movies. A simple man, maybe not a genius, but wiser and more thoughtful than anyone else around. I wish to hell he got more roles.

There's something about this film. I don't want to use the word "ordinariness," but the way it's presented in such a simple, not gussied up, straightforward way really nails the themes for me. It's as real or as supernatural as you want it to be.

Also, this is one of the rare films in which none of the cops are good guys. Token understanding white guys are totally absent. That's especially noteworthy for the Eighties.

Terrific horror comedy from Quebec. Manages to nail the tone, it's never gets too broad or too gory, and manages to be genuinely sweet. It's not all about yuk yuks or yucks, if that makes sense. Somewhat similar to Let The Right One In, but it's very much its own thing. Great performances from the young leads.

It implies there's a whole underground subculture of vampires, with vampire doctors and other jobs. I kind of wish that was explored more, but it's such a nice, self-contained film the way it is. Adding more would lessen it.

Documentary about Joey Skaggs, a performance artist who works through media hoaxes. I'm a fan of Skaggs' work, I find a good hoax fascinating and enlightening. But the doc gets bogged down with process of assembling his latest hoax, an elaborate but tedious process with several setbacks. I'm also not sure why we needed to see him watching TV with his mom, or watch him shooting pool with his buddy. I would have been more satisfied to see his past work presented. And I also wonder how the hell he makes any money. But I think he's doing good work and there should be more people like him out there, pointing out the emperor wears no clothes.

Spanish horror film, a guy buys a coffee table his wife hates, and it leads to the most horrific situation imaginable.

It's an unusual horror flick in that it isn't a sequence of horrible events, but the consequences of one horrible event. It's one of the toughest watches I can recall. A great film in many ways, but I can't imagine wanting to see it more than once.

I had never seen any of the Hope and Crosby road pictures. If you know me and my fondness for old comedies, that's a particularly inexplicable lapse. I blame my father, who rather strongly disliked Hope. I'm not wild about his horny coward persona either, but with Crosby to play off of, and all the fourth wall breaking calling out the artifice of the whole situation, it was a good time. Lots of fun dialogue, although I can't imagine many of the Forties era references will be understood today. It's a nice bit of silliness. Just be advised this flick is pretty darn dated in places.

Douglas Sirk rom-com about a film director who tries to off his latest discovery as a French superstar. It's basic old Hollywood fun, great sets, gorgeous costuming, cutting repartee, and stylish musical dance numbers. I don't think I could describe it as essential, but lovers of old Hollywood fluff will dig it.

I always get a lot of weird looks when I said I've never seen this. I have also looked at myself weirdly on this lapse. So I've seen it now. It's definitely as weird and unusual a horror film as you will ever see, if it even is a horror film. It's more of an exercise in surrealism, with some truly odd musical choices and a strange obsession with watermelon. Somehow, it reminded me of Jack Kirby's Newboy Legion comics, the gang of kids who are all named after their primary personality characteristic and shouldn't be friends but somehow are. Return of the Living Dead also did that, so it's in good company.

If you're into weird, you will enjoy this. If not, you'll probably think this is worst movie ever made. Fortunately, I am into weird.

Before he was known for soap opera melodramas, Douglas Sirk directed this rather remarkable noir, starring Lucille Ball in her early glamor girl days. An American actress stuck in London is recruited to help capture a serial killer.

I'm amazed this movie flopped when first released. It's stylish, has a terrific cast, great dialogue and tension, and excellent misdirection. It manages to find a mid point between British and American noir without shortchanging either approach. It even veers into horror for a scene, without seeming forced or arbitrary.

It's not as well-known as some other noirs, but it should be.

Executive produced by Benson and Moorhead! Two criminals, siblings with a past, hide out in a farmhouse that's caught in some sort of time loop, manipulated by unseen forces.

If you can accept that two bank robbers will just take some rando's word that some house will hide them in a different time period, it's a pretty great movie. Simultaneously not as opaque as other Benson and Moorhead films, and yet maybe even more opaque. I was glued to it from start to finish. I wish more genre film makers could manipulate mysteriousness like this.

Science-fiction anthology film, all the shorts deal with dystopian themes in some way or other. No framing sequence, which I kind of appreciated.

Two are excellent, one very good but marred by a sudden and inconclusive ending, one is fine, and one is just boring and predictable. That's a pretty decent hit ratio for an anthology. And with one exception, they really manage to get a lot out of their budgets. For the most part, it's a fantastic looking picture.

Underwater rip off of Alien, but as rip offs go it's a pretty good one. It reminded me a bit of the video game Dead Space at times. Great cast and direction, and a lovely and gross monster, but a certain something is missing. I guess the characters could have been more interesting.

Also, why does an underwater facility have flame throwers?

Paul Thomas Anderson eschews his usual boisterous, energetic approach and themes for something more along the lines of Merchant Ivory or Douglas Sirk. As a great film maker, he pulls it off. No huge, bravura moments, but finely focused attention on upper class manners and tensions. I've never seen a relationship quite like this before, a rigid, inflexible fashion designer and his more carefree working class muse. It's toxic and bizarre, and yet in some perverse way they fill each other's needs.

If nothing else, you will certainly ooh and aah at the costuming. And the sound design is remarkable. I'm sure Skywalker must have worked on other art films, but it was still surprising to see them on this.

A skeptical archeologist researches pagan locations near his country home, and when his son starts acting strangely, dark forces come about.

This is a very gentle, subtle film. It reads more like dark fantasy about trauma and grief than as folk horror. And it's a little opaque at times. But if you're patient with it, I think it pays off. I can't imagine the climax working in a faster paced, more boisterous movie.

Also, I never thought an ordinary rabbit could look so sinister.

The little discussed sequel to Westworld. And now that I've seen it, I can see why. Really dull, even the climactic chase scene feels dead. Dumb bits of non-science (Mars has red snow?) and nonsense (Yul Brynner's Gunslinger shows up in a gothic romance dream sequence?) No interesting characters, although I liked Harry and his robot pal Clark.

It's odd how these pre-Star Wars Seventies sci-fi flicks date worse than the cheesiest rubber suit monster movies of the Fifties. There's an intensity that's absent.

When broken down to its components, this movie should be terrible, late Eighties trash. And yet it's still a blast. Probably the ultimate example of that contradiction. Casting people who actually look like they'd live in rural Missouri (well, except for the leads) is maybe a factor.

It's great to see top flight directors tackling science-fiction like this. Especially sci-fi that isn't strictly an adventure or action story.

My only real issue is that it was marketed as being this big, rollicking comedy, and it isn't exactly. The satire is more the kind that makes you wince rather than laugh. Especially at this moment in time. But that can be a good thing. If humankind ever gets to the point of colonizing planets, it's not going to be Star Trek. It's going to be something like this.

Virginia Woolf writes Mrs. Dalloway in the Twenties, and women in the Fifties and the modern day wind up paralleling the novel. Lots of bisexuality and suicide stuff.

It's really a shame the only thing film fans talk about in this movie is Kidman's nose makeup. This is really a terrific film with a frankly jaw dropping cast. It's just ridiculously stacked with acting talent. Okay, maybe it's a bit Oscar bait-ish, with the Philip Glass score and the overly writerly dialogue, but that all feels appropriate here, as it's about literary types dealing with generational trauma, tragedy, and longing.

I need to remind myself that movies like this deserve to be seen. Not everything needs to be genre or wacky or weird.

I barely had any idea what was going on at any moment in this movie, but in a way I found enjoyable. Something about an evil immortal clan trying to kidnap a princess to resurrect their slain leader, and there are these eight resurrected warriors who will save the princess and are identified by these glowing balls that just show up. There are blood baths (like a pool of blood you immerse yourself in,) old ladies that change into giant centipedes, giant flying snakes, birthmarks shaped like flames, intensely Eighties era music, and I don't know what else. Tremendous sets and costumes. You won't know what's going on, but it looks great.

I'm terrible at picking all-time favorites, I can never make up my mind. But this film would probably always be on the list.

It's almost impossible to imagine something like this was made by a major studio in the Fifties. Incredibly prescient about what was happening to the media, and the rise of right wing grifters. Still immeasurably relevant today. The sexual innuendo alone is startling.

You'll never look at Andy Griffith the same way again. He's one of cinema's great, narcissistic monsters here.

Definitely not the giant ant movie. A French couple in Romania run into a home invasion scenario.

French New Extreme isn't really my bag, but this was made before the extreme overwhelmed every other aspect of story. It's very simple and direct, and not nearly as gory as I was expecting. Maybe it wasn't extreme enough? I find me looking askance at myself for saying that. But it's worth 74 minutes.

Appreciated the quietly upsetting ending. Probably the scariest thing in the whole film.

Watched as a part of MST3K's The Gauntlet. Something about an undersea lab and there's benevolent hivemind aliens and an evil corporation and an evil boss. A ripoff of The Abyss, I guess.

Honestly, one of the most boring, tensionless hunks of celluloid I can recall watching. Nothing happens. No one acts. Gratingly cheap looking. Never cared for one second what was going on. Jonah and the Bots wring what life they can out of it.

Asylum's rip of guess what? Watched as a part of MST3K: The Gauntlet, which made it sort of tolerable.

What is The Asylum? Why is The Asylum? How is The Asylum? I'm mystified how they manage to be an ongoing cinematic concern. Uninspired and lazy in all the worst ways.

But it was cool to see Graham Greene as the grouchy iral, and not as a Native stereotype. It would have been cooler if he gave a crap, but oh well.

Japanese film about a small town in a remote wooded area, and how they're impacted by plans to build a luxury campground.

This is one of the slowest paced films I've seen in recent memory. But there's something meditative about it. These Japanese woods feel a lot like the Minnesota north woods, maybe that's why I felt a connection to it. It really does create a mood like you're up north in a cabin, just hanging out, hoping none of the beauty gets despoiled.

But again, super slow pacing. And I'm still unsure about the vague, abrupt ending.

Basically, imagine Green Room if the punk band was replaced by pro wrestlers and white supremacists were replaced with a satanic cult. Much less jokey and campy than you would imagine. It's hemmed in a bit by its budget, and I suspect someone who's a bigger wrestling fan than me would have gotten more out of it. And I don't know about the ending. But it's a genuinely tense movie and you care about the characters and what happens to them.

Decent doc on the musical guests, sketches, and controversies on Saturday Night Live over the years.

The opening sequence of music mashups goes on for maybe twice as long as it should have, and there aren't any major insights for those who have followed the show all their lives. But I was glad to see the musical sketches get featured, and that there was such a significant amount of time spent on hip hop. Also cool they didn't ignore the more avant-garde acts that had been on in the earlier days.