Movies seen in 2022

It's that time again, when I post the list of movies  I've seen over the past year...  (Books will be in a separate post)

1. Better Watch Out - a Christmas themed horror/suspense movie that was quite enjoyable. Ashley is 17, about to leave town to go to college, but has one last babysitting gig to attend to. She’s watching over 12 year old (“13 in a few weeks”) Luke, who has an unrequited crush on her. When burglars show up, things get tense, but there’s more to this home invasion than meets the eye. It’s really best to watch this without knowing much more than that. I’ll just say that all of the teenage actors were remarkable, and the story really did a) keep me guessing and b) progress in a fairly logical manner.


2. Venom: Let There Be Carnage - this was a complete mess. And worse, it was a BORING mess. The first one was not great either, but it was at least *mildly* entertaining. This installment was …not. I know this was just a mindless popcorn flick, but the bickering between Eddie and Venom was stale, the relationships all felt flat and lifeless, and the villains were illogical chaos.


3. Fast Color - an indie superhero flick about a family of superheroic women of color. Sorta kinda the anti-MCU. I wish it were better than it was. I mean, it wasn’t BAD by any stretch of the imagination, it just was…only mediocre?


4. Werewolves Within - horror comedy that was basically a murder mystery with (maybe) werewolves mixed in. Finn Wheeler is a forest ranger who is stationed to the remote town of Beaverfield, Vermont in the middle of winter. There he meets a bunch of quirky townsfolk who are divided on the prospect of a new gas pipeline being built. After a snowstorm traps them all in the town, a dead body is discovered, and the real fun begins. This was delightful. Some (most?) of the characters kind of straddled the line between being actually quirky and “trying too hard to be weird”, but never (for me) crossed the line into annoying. And while I don’t think I laughed out loud more than a couple times, I did have a smile on my face the whole time.


5. Don’t Look Up - when two astronomers discover a “planet killing” comet is on a collision course with Earth, they try to get the president (or anyone) to listen and do something about it. Unfortunately for them (and the planet) the president is a fact-hating, selfish piece of garbage. This was quite a funny movie (considering the subject matter) and even had (some) actual pathos. It could have very easily been 20-30 minutes shorter, and it would have been better for it, but still, enjoyable.


6. Malignant - stupid garbage. The acting was horrible, the plot holes were too numerous to overlook, the characters all sucked. This horror/thriller/scifi …thing was just not good. I considered turning it off at around 8 or 9 minutes in when the husband physically abused the main character, and I should have listened to my gut. Just an all around waste of time.

7. mother! - Not a fun movie to watch, but certainly a unique one. An unnamed man and woman (Javier Bardiem and Jennifer Lawerence) live out in the middle of nowhere. He’s a poet going through writer’s block; she’s a housewife with NO AGENCY WHATSOEVER. Oh my GOD, it was infuriating to watch for two hours as she was constantly belittled, gaslit, ignored, harassed and terrified. The tension builds for the first half of the movie as a complete stranger (Ed Harris) shows up and essentially invites himself into their house (the husband allows this with more or less open arms, Jennifer Lawerence’s protests go unanswered). His wife (Michelle Pfiefer) shows up and she’s apparently never heard of the word ‘boundaries’. Things get violently worse when their adult children show up and bring their family drama with them. The second half of the movie deals with Jennifer Lawerence being 9 months pregnant, and the most batshit insane thirty minute segment I’ve seen in a LONG time. This movie had biblical metaphors thrown on top of it, while other people interpreted it as being about climate change. I think the interpretation that I found most appealing, though, was about it being about the creative process. Anyway. This was, as I said, definitely a unique movie, and one that I’ll probably think about for a while, but I don’t know that I *enjoyed* it, really.


8. The Rental - Alison Brie is in this slow-burn of a thriller about two couples who go on a weekend getaway to an ocean-side rental home that is run by a very creepy, probably racist guy. This was compelling enough that I finished the whole thing, but there isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, and there was no real point to the movie. But I’ve certainly seen worse. Purely forgettable thriller fluff.


9. Relic - low budget Australian horror movie that was heavy on the atmosphere. Edna is in her eighties and is starting to forget things. When she goes missing, her daughter, Kay, and granddaughter, Sam, come to search for her. When she reappears, she doesn’t want to talk about where she’s been for those days she was gone. Kay and Sam soon begin to realize that there might be something VERY wrong with her. This was a bit of a slow burn, and I’m not 100% sure that the payoff was worth it, but there were some very creepy moments in this, and the (real life) horrors of dementia and losing a parent to that were well portrayed.


10. Palm Springs - For Nyles, everyday is the same. Literally. He’s been stuck in the same day for so long, he can’t even remember what his life was like beforehand. But, being in a time loop ain’t all bad. Plenty of beer to drink! (Just watch out for Roy) When Sarah accidentally gets into the same time loop, Nyles awakens to what he was missing out on. This was a great romcom/time loop movie. Like Groundhog Day with WAY more drinking, swearing, and sex.


11. Halloween Kills - what the hell was this garbage? The 2018 Halloween was decent, but this sequel was just …bad. All of the characters (including the Strode women, who were the highlight of ‘18) were annoying or idiotic or both. The mob mentality of the town was just ridiculous and felt …outrageous, but not in a good or realistic way. I don’t know. There is a 3rd installment - Halloween Ends - coming, and, I know I’m going to watch it, but my desire to is much MUCH lower after having sat through this trash.


12. Antlers - A horror movie set in Oregon starring Keri Russell (always a pleasure!) and Todd from Breaking Bad (I’m sorry for your loss). Keri’s a teacher of …I wanna say 6th graders? One of her students, Lucas, has been showing signs of abuse and neglect. Since she was a child of abuse herself, she starts investigating Lucas’s home life, and finds that his father and younger brother have, well… Let’s just say that things aren’t great for either of them. Sadly, while this started out with a lot of potential, and had some spooky atmosphere to it, it just doesn’t live up to that potential, and winds up mostly predictable and largely …boring. I wanted to like this more than I ultimately did, and I’m not entirely sure why. The pacing, maybe? Well, whatever the reason, this was sadly just not a winner in my book.


13. Come True - Sarah is an 18 year old who has run away from home, and is experiencing recurring nightmares. When she sees a flier for a sleep study that pays, she figures it’s an ideal solution to both having a place to sleep, and she gets cash for it. But is this facility on the up and up? If so, why is one of the doctors stalking Sarah? And why does she have a seizure when they show her a grainy photograph? This low-ish budget sci fi horror movie had a lot of great potential for the first 2/3rds of the film, but the “twist” ending sucked. A lot. I might have been okay with it, if there had been any clues as to what it was going to be. But there weren’t. It was just…here’s a random creepy ending that you weren’t expecting because we didn’t telegraph it in any shape whatsoever. Irksome.


14. Eternals - this FELT eternal. It was seriously about 5 hours too long, and I just …did not care about any of the characters. And with the stakes being so high, I was incredibly bored for most of it.


15. Encanto - very pretty, very enjoyable. I feel like maybe I should have more to say about this, but I don’t. I liked it, good Disney flick.


16. The King’s Man - ehhh. While I enjoyed the Kingsman movies, I was never truly enamored by them. This prequel didn’t do anything to really stand out. It did have a moment that was actually unexpected around the halfway mark, but aside from that this was mostly forgettable action blahness.


17. The Matrix Resurrections - I don’t know dude. It was okay. I liked some of the meta-ness, but overall…. Maybe we really should stop trying to recapture that ‘simpler time’ of the late 90s and just move on to how life is now.


18. Turning Red - There was something off about the ending, maybe? The pacing? I don’t know. I liked this a lot, but there was still something that made me not LOVE it, and I don’t know why. Maybe i’m just in a funk where all the movies I view are not hitting right. It’s not them, it’s me.


19. Onward - This Disney/Pixar flick was way undermarketed. It’s not an all out classic - there are some pacing issues in the beginning, and I think Chris Pratt is probably problematic in some sense, which may have contributed to the studios wanting to distance themselves from it. But it was still enjoyable! I laughed several times, and once the road trip portion of the movie kicked in, it was a lot better. The “emotion tugging” didn’t really work for me, but I’m a heartless cynic, so probably not the best to judge. Anyway, yeah, nice little mostly ignored gem. If you’re in the market for a decent family flick to watch, this one ain’t bad.


20. Nightmare Alley - This is a remake of a film from 1947, apparently (I’ve got it in my queue at the library so I can compare). This was quite good (which, duh, it’s from Guillermo Del Toro, so that’s pretty much a given) although it probably didn’t need to be as long as it was. Anyway. Bradley Cooper is a drifter in the early 40s, and comes across a traveling circus. He ends up joining these misfits and carnies, and learns the art of mentalism. (It’s basically a con where answers are fed to you by your assistant. That, and just taking cues from the person being conned.) Things are fine for a while, but he begins to get greedy and eventually crosses some very rich and powerful individuals. The ending was a bit cliche - you could see it coming from VERY early on - but, in a way, that makes it even more tragic.


21. Arrival - rewatched this sci-fi movie about first contact between humans and an alien race known as the Heptapods who have a unique way of communicating. I think it had moments that were pretty cool, and it certainly gives you lots to think about, but I don’t know that I enjoyed it any more than the first time I saw it five-ish years ago. It’s based on a short story, and I have a feeling that the source material is probably better.


22. West Side Story - this was the 2021 remake that was directed by Stephen Spielberg. It was… fine? I mean, it was pretty, and, you know, West Side Story, but… it felt unnecessary. Like, not everything needs to bring something new to the table, but …I don’t know. It just didn’t really work for me, I guess.


23. Free Guy - rewatched this with the kids. Ryan Reynolds is fun. I went back to see what I had said about this when I watched it last year, only to discover I didn’t write any sort of review then. Huh. Anyway, this was the tale of Guy, a video game character who eventually becomes aware of his reality. There’s lots of ideas to mine there, but this was a family rom-com so it mostly stuck to the doofy aspects of it. Guy was an amalgamation of Buddy the Elf and Deadpool, and the ‘discovering your world isn’t what you think it is’ was essentially The Truman Show, but with a video game coat of paint on top. All that being said, it wasn’t bad for what it was. But I doubt that I’ll ever want to view it a 3rd time.


24. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale - Turns out, Santa is actually a horrific monster who murders children, and was captured in ice and then buried deep in a mountain hundreds of years ago. When a company decides to unearth him, it’s up to a young child from a nearby town to save the day. This Finnish horror movie was unique. Not really scary, but a neat twist on the Krampus-type stories.


25. Slaxx - killer jeans!! Silly little horror movie. It was only like 78 minutes long, and there was nothing unexpected or surprising about it, but sometimes that’s what one needs - a short by-the-numbers horror comedy about possessed pants killing awful individuals.


26. Spider-Man: No Way Home - I think if I had seen this earlier, I would have enjoyed it more. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, and I did like it, but all of the ‘surprises’ have been pretty much spoiled at this point, and I think it may have been a smidge overhyped. Oh well. Still a good time, and it works as both a nice conclusion for Spider-Man’s story and as a way of making me want to see more. (Not more Venom. Good god, if only THAT aspect could be erased by Doctor Strange…)But, yeah, I’d be down for more Spidey in the future.


27. Coming Home in the Dark - Hoagie, Jill, and their two teenage sons are out on a family outing in New Zealand when two drifters - Mandrake and Tubs - approach them. Tensions escalate quickly when it’s revealed that Mandrake has a gun on him. After taking the family hostage, we learn that these criminals may have had a particular reason for targeting Hoagie.The acting in this was great, although the story is not really anything new, and actually got a little bit boring around the halfway mark.


28. The Adam Project - Sigh. This comedy with Ryan Reynolds as a 40 year old who time travels from 2050 back to 2022 and meets up with his 12-year-old self just didn’t work. The jokes were all flat, the delivery was often very …off, and I’m pretty sure that the plot was wonky (time travel usually is). But, then, I was having trouble staying awake during it, so I don’t know that I’m a perfect judge. It’s a family comedy that is directed much more toward the younger members of a family, so, whatev. It just wasn’t as funny or engaging as I was hoping it would be.


29. Nightmare Alley - the original 1947 flick. Essentially the same as the remake - Stanton gets into the carny life, and learns how to con people with mentalism, gets rich as a result, ends up with a tragic ending. I’m glad that I saw the remake first as I don’t know that I ever would have seeked the original out if I hadn’t. Both movies are decent, if a bit preachy, but it’s neat seeing the cultural differences between the two. I’m semi-tempted to read the novel all this has been based on, but I might be overdoing it with the story at that point. Anyway, part of me wants to seek out more noir/40s films, but I’m sure a LOT of them are garbage, so I don’t want to have to muddle through that to find stuff worthwhile. Also, who knows how long this interest in films from that time period will actually last.


30. Moonfall - I knew this movie about the moon crashing into the earth would be dumb, I just didn’t know HOW dumb. Folks. It’s very very dumb. It’s also sadly…boring? Like NONE of the characters are anyone you care about and there are no real threats to their existence - you know from the get go who will survive and who won’t. So, no tension. And none of the “jokes” are funny either. It’s just all… there. I wasn’t expecting much from this, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t get much.


31. Double Indemnity - quite good. Fred MacMurray is Walter Neff, an insurance agent who instantly falls for Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson, who is in an unhappy marriage. The two quickly conspire to commit the perfect murder on her husband in order to cash in on a life insurance policy. Naturally things fall apart, but it’s super engrossing watching it all crumble.


32. Gaslight - watching a man manipulate his wife into questioning her sanity really played havoc with my anxiety. OR did it?


33. Superintelligence - utter fluff. Melissa McCarthy gets picked by an AI to be the savior of humanity, and helps her re-connect with her old boyfriend in the process. There’s nothing funny in any of the “jokes”, there’s no surprises in the plot, and there’s nothing memorable about ANY of the movie. It’s just there for an hour and 40 minutes.Which is sorta sad, in a way. The concept of an AI deciding to judge humanity and using the most average person they can find as their litmus test is one that COULD produce an intriguing and thought provoking (and hell, with the right writers, even FUNNY) story. Instead, we got this.


34. Last Night in Soho - Eloise is a fashion student who moves to London. She’s also a bit of a social outcast, as she is just naturally shy, has a love of 60s music and culture, and, oh, she can occasionally see dead people. Ellie begins to relive the life of Sadie, an aspiring singer who lived in the 1960s, only to discover that maybe that time period wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops. This genre-blending movie was visually AMAZING and was thrilling, scary, sometimes funny, and overall just really good. Good stuff all around.


35. Meet Me in St. Louis - the past was garbage. Sorry, this musical just didn’t work for me at all.


36. Kimi - An updated (and bare bones, at only 88 minutes) version of The Conversation. Zoe Kravitz stars as Angela Childs, who suffers from agoraphobia, and works for a company in charge of “Kimi”s - basically Alexas, those devices that listen to people all the time. She overhears a murder. Unfortunately, her bosses are involved and want to cover it up. This had no surprises, really, but was still pretty entertaining.


37. X - in 1979 a group of twenty-somethings in Texas are making a porn movie. They rent out a house owned by an extremely creepy old man who lives there with his equally old and creepy wife. When the old couple discover what the young ones are up to, things go poorly for everyone involved.The trailer made this look like it was going to be a LOT more creepy than it turned out to be. The fact that it’s an A24 film - which has produced some of the most mindbending films of the last decade - probably played into that. As it is, this was …adequate, but I didn’t love it.


38. Studio 666 - The Foo Fighters star as themselves in this by the numbers horror comedy. It seemed like they had fun making it, so good for them. I did actually laugh out loud at two separate occasions. (Will Forte has a small role and one of his lines made me laugh, and there was an unexpected cameo that got a chuckle from me as well.) This was nothing groundbreaking, and probably could have been ten minutes shorter, but, ehh. I’ve certainly seen worse.


39. 30 Days of Night: Dark Days - ehhhh. Direct-to-video sequel of the pretty awesome “30 Days of Night” that felt…well, like a direct-to-video sequel. It had moments that were not bad, considering what it was. But the final 5 minutes were EXTREMELY sigh worthy. Like, no. No, this character would NOT do that. Also, while I haven’t seen 30 Days of Night in a while, I’m pretty sure that that OTHER character was a lot less…intact, so even if they had WANTED to, there wouldn’t be a way to do it. (No idea why I'm being spoiler-vague for a movie that most likely nobody is going to see, but there ya go.)


40. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. Nick Cage plays a version of himself where he’s broke, divorced, and has a less-than-stellar relationship with his teenage daughter. When Javi, a millionaire superfan, asks him to come to his birthday party (and also read his screenplay) he reluctantly does, only to get roped into spying on him because the CIA believes that Javi is a druglord who has kidnapped the daughter of that country’s president. Javi is played by Pedro Pascal, and he steals the show, although there were a few moments of greatness from Cage himself. But overall, the jokes didnt work as well as I had hoped they would, and the pacing itself was off somehow. It was still fine, but I think the trailers kinda raised my expectations higher than the film could deliver.


41. Finch - Tom Hanks and a robot and a dog go on a post-apocalyptic road trip. Sadly, it’s not as entertaining as that sentence makes it out to be. It’s not BAD, exactly, but it’s not a lot of substance either, and if you think about things too hard, it sorta crumbles. I’m sure if I had seen it as a 10 or 11 year old, I would have been mimicking Jeff for weeks afterward. Seeing it as a 47 year old, I’m unsure if I’ll recall anything from it in the next month.


42. The Batman - nope. Just didn’t work for me. Pattinson is a fine actor, but he’s not Bruce Wayne. Or Batman. I think maybe I’m done with ‘grimdark’ Batmen, for a while. This took itself WAY too seriously, and ended up circling back around to parody. And I just didn’t care. There were SOME good bits - I kinda liked the Riddler, and I kinda liked the shot of Batman HELPING people at the end (rather than just punching bad guys), and the actiony car chase scene was thrilling. But overall this was too long and boring and dark and meh. If they make a sequel, I’ll most likely pass.


43. The Northman - Viking Hamlet. The ONLY reason I watched this is because it’s from Robert Eggers, the director of The VVitch and The Lighthouse, which are two pretty insane and enjoyable flicks. This …was a chore to get through. It’s straightforward, but it’s just a revenge movie, basically, and I just …wasn’t in the mood for it? Maybe? I don’t know. Toxic masculinity runs through our history, of course, and, yes, murder and rape and slavery and all that shit are part of humanity’s story …I don’t know what i’m trying to say. It just didn’t feel like this was worth the extremely long runtime. Movies are supposed to entertain or evoke SOME sort of emotion and all I felt with this was boredom and annoyance.


44. Cats - uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.


45. Dashcam - Annie is a MAGAt, who makes her living (?) by livestreaming as she drives around town, harassing homeless people and making impromptu songs using words given to her by her trollish chat community. Charming individual. I’d say that this internet comment magically brought to life is a caricature of Trumpers but… is it? It’s truly hard to say anymore. So, yeah, the “protagonist” of this horror movie is one of the Deplorables. Once the Covid lockdowns are in effect, she decides she’s had enough of not having any of her “freedom”, so she flies over to England to crash with a friend of hers who she hasn’t seen in ten years or so, Stretch. Stretch is married now, and is vastly more liberal than Annie, so their personalities clash. (Annie doesn't help matters by refusing to mask up in public and fighting with restaurant owners when she goes with Stretch on a food delivery run) When she gets kicked out of Stretch’s place, she STEALS HIS CAR. When a Door Dash order comes in ON STRETCH’S PHONE - she decides to take it (it’s unclear whether she planned on actually making the delivery or if she was just going to eat the food). Once she gets there, though, she gets roped into giving an elderly woman named Angela a ride to a different location (the bundle of cash Angela’s friend(?) gives her helps her decide). Angela is a LOT more than what she appears to be, though.
I do have to say that this ‘iphone/dashcam footage’ style is not entirely my cup of tea (Annie’s personality certainly didn’t help. Nor did the near-constant chatter of her audience) but I don’t see it catching on, and so every once in a while, it’s kinda neat for something different. I mean, the “not calling the police '' and the “Continuing to film despite MUCH more pressing matters happening” things strain credulity, but… I don’t know. It was 40 minutes of weirdness put into an 80 minute movie and it (mostly) kept my interest for that time, even if there were way more questions than answers, and the truly scary part was the fact that so many people like Annie exist in the world.


46. Hell Baby - it’s a good thing I’m living forever, otherwise watching this painfully unfunny horror/comedy would have been a waste of 2 hours of my life. It’s disappointing, though, because I like so many of the people in it - Rob Corddry, Michael Ian Black, Thomas Lennon, Keegan Michael Key - but, yeesh. This mockery of Exorcist and Amityville type flicks was just NOT funny. Plot: Jack and Vannessa move into a run down house in the poorer part of New Orleans. Keegan Michael Key is their neighbor F’Resnal (well, “neighbor” who has full access to their home and uses their shower, and stores his porn in their attic, etc), who informs them that it’s the “house of blood”. Vannessa is 8 months pregnant, and begins to exhibit strange behavior. I’m sure any jokes you can think of for the situations they encounter are probably better than those that were actually in the movie.


47. Little Shop of Horrors - decided to rewatch an old favorite of mine, just cuz. But this was (unbeknownst to me when I started watching it) the Director’s Cut. Holy crap, ya’ll. WORLD of difference between the endings of the theatrical cut and this version. I’d read about the ending before - basically that Audrey II’s plan of world domination comes to fruition and they terrorize America - but this was my first time seeing it. ALSO! Audrey and Seymour die in this rendition. Gotta say, while the rampage was sorta neat to see… count me on Team Theatrical. The downer ending was too long, and doesn’t feel like it matches the tone of the rest of the film. (This could be bias from having grown up with that version, but I don’t think that’s entirely it. It’s overall just a better narrative choice. I mean, the beginning starts with a narrator saying that this happened a while back, but then the rampage ending has it happening “now”... so if for no other reason, the happy ending is a better way to go.)


48. Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - ehhh….not nearly enough multiverse or madness. It was fine, as a Marvel movie, but I think I’ve really hit my peak with them. (I feel like I’ve said this, or something similar, multiple times now…)


49. Men - Can’t say that I saw that coming. What in the?? This started off as a typical horror movie and got progressively …weirder. The final twenty minutes were NOT where I thought it would go at all. After the death of her husband, Harper wants to get away from life for a bit, so she rents a vacation house out in the countryside of London from Geoffrey. Geoffrey is an odd type, and their initial meeting is awkward af. But once he finally leaves, things are normal, and Harper proceeds to just moving on. She takes a walk in the woods and is chased off by a man who is possibly homeless. He winds up following her back to the house - oh, and he’s naked - and attempting to break in. She phones the police, who actually arrest him and the female officer gives her a nice talking to. Unfortunately, from there things get exponentially worse and weirder. I don’t know if this was a GOOD movie (I’m still not sure what -if any- message it was trying to convey about men at all) but it’ll probably stick with me for a bit.


50. Stretch - Patrick Wilson is a limo driver who has one weird ass night as he tries to secure 6000 dollars to cover his gambling debts. Ed Helms plays a ghost, Chris Pine is a coked out billionaire wanted for various white collar crimes, and Ray Liotta and David Hassellhoff have cameos (The Hoff actually made me laugh out loud, so the flick has that going for it). Nothing to go out of your way to seek, but if you like any of the actors mentioned, it may be worth checking out.


51. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - It was fine for what it was, but totally didn’t need this to be 2 hours. (It really probably didn’t need to happen at all, but, you know.)


52. Hostel - Absolutely irredeemable. None of the “protagonists” are good guys, none of the “villains” are anything beyond cardboard characters. Just torture and nudity. I plan on watching the stupid sequels because …of reasons, I guess.


53. Hostel part II - garbage. I think the thing that pisses me off the most about these is that people got paid to create them.


54. Hostel part III - This is by no means a good movie, but it was, dare I say, a notch or two above the first two? I didn’t see the twist at the beginning coming. And it was set in “Vegas” so that's always good for a laugh. Overall, though, this series was utter shit, and I’m no better for having watched them, and the world is no better for having them exist, period. At least they’re no longer making them.


55. Everything Everywhere All at Once - THIS is how you do a multiverse, Marvel. It was a good movie, very funny, very weird, with a nice solid emotional core, but oddly I don’t really have a lot to say about it.


56. The Black Phone - or, as the cover of the poster makes it read, “Bltheack Phone”. Wasn’t bad. Got the atmosphere/look of the late 70s down pretty well. Set in 1978-79, in Denver, where a kidnapper has been terrorizing the kids and avoiding the police. Finny Shaw is 13, living with his drunk dad and his slightly younger sister. He gets taken by The Grabber and stored in his basement. Inside the room is a disconnected telephone. When it rings, Finny can hear the ghosts of the previous victims, who help him plan his escape. Meanwhile, his sister is having psychic dreams in order to aid the police in tracking him down. (It’s based on a Joe Hill short story, so, you know. That sort of thing happens.) Like I said, wasn’t bad.


57. 3000 Years of Longing - Tilda Swinson is a single woman who has (maybe??) made peace with living that sort of life. She is a “narrator-ologist” - basically she studies stories and ancient cultures and tales. While abroad, she discovers a genie in a bottle (played by Idris Elba). Since she’s genre savvy, she knows that making her 3 wishes will not end well, and asks to hear his life story. He tells her of how he became trapped, released, retrapped, and rereleased over the millennia. I kept expecting a twist of some sort and there… kind of wasn’t one? It was just a straightforward telling of his really long life. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t all that memorable as a result, either. We did go out to the theater to see this (it was “National CInema Day” and all the movie theaters across the country lowered their fee to 3 dollars a ticket. So.)


58. Jurassic World: Dominion - “We need a way to end our franchise.” “How about we make an entry so goddamn shitty and boring and unrealistic and confusing and long that nobody wants to ever make a sequel?” “Oh, like Star Wars did?” “Yeah, exactly. Let’s get that guy to do it.”


59. Birdemic: Shock and Terror - WOW. Ya’ll. I have seen a lot of garbage but… this is something else.


60. Underwater - great premise, decent enough acting, but really squandered its potential. Set at the bottom of the Marina Trench 7 miles at the bottom of the ocean on a drilling site, a small crew struggles to escape after an earthquake damages the station. Complicating matters is the sea creature(s) who have been awakened by mankind going where we shouldn’t. Not an original bone in its body, this still had an occasional moment or two of tension (while watching it, I actually thought, “I bet this scene would be even MORE intense if they took out the fucking music cues.”) but really, ALL of this has been done better before.


61. Ambulance - it’s a Michael Bay movie about two brothers who rob a bank and make a getaway in an ambulance. So, pretty much exactly what you expect.


62. Sinister - a haunted house/murder mystery/family drama that I thought was going to go one way, but ended up not. I kept being distracted while watching this, and I feel like this is the type of movie that works best if you’re completely paying attention to it. As a result, it didn’t wow me.


63. Prey - More of this type of horror/action movie, please! A Predator movie set in the 1700s, with the alien predator going up against a Native American hunter girl. Not a perfect film, but very solid for what it was.


64. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre - I’d never seen the original film (or, come to think of it, any of the sequels, spinoffs, reboots or prequels), so figured I’d give it a shot. Gotta say, for a film that is almost 50 years old (!!) it was pretty damn effective in it’s tone. Not nearly as gory as I had thought it would be, but definitely has a sense of doom that pervades it. Most of the murders were essentially jumpscares, but MAN they worked.


65. Thor: Love and Thunder - Very few of the jokes actually landed (the goats didn’t work for me, surprisingly. And they were used a LOT) but I didn’t outright hate this. Wanted it to be more Jane’s story than Thor’s, but, Hollywood gonna Hollywood, ya know? Gorr was a pretty cool villain.


66. Popeye - one of those films from my youth that I must have watched multiple times (or at an extremely impressionable age) because I still get bits of it in my head, 40 years later. Is it good? ERmmm… not particularly, no. But it’s charming and enjoyable despite (or maybe also because of) its flaws.


67. Dead Heat - intriguing idea - take 80s buddy-cop action movie and mix in zombies. Unfortunately, the result is …less than great. I had seen this when I was 12 or 13, and liked it (didn’t love it, even then, I think I knew it didn’t reach its full potential) and decided to revisit it. I think that it could work if it were written now - it could/should probably still be set IN the 80s, as maybe a spoof/deconstruction of those types of films. Will it ever happen? Eh. Probably not. But, anyway - the plot - detectives Bigelow and Mortis (Joe Piscipo and Treat Williams) are rogue cops trying to stop the latest rash of jewelry thieves. They shoot up two of the crooks only to discover that a - they seem resistant to bullets and b- once they have died that …they were dead a few weeks back. Both of the bodies have high concentrations of a certain chemical, that leads them to a company that bought a bunch of it. Once there, they discover that in a hidden lab, the company has a resurrection machine. Mortis ends up being killed and resurrected, and then the two cops - one living, one undead - try to solve who’s behind the whole thing. Neat idea, woefully written.


68. Haunt - a group of twenty-somethings go out on Halloween and wind up at an “extreme” haunted house that ends up being a lot more real than they had hoped it would be. This was not a bad horror movie! Likeable, believable characters, for the most part. They behaved (at least at first) pretty much how you’d expect REAL people to behave in a situation they found themselves in. Enjoyed it more than I thought I would.


69. Falling Down - I remember when this came out in ‘92 or ‘93 and …well. I wouldn’t say that I *idolized* D-FENS (the middle-aged white guy who goes on an increasingly violent rampage against all of society’s slights against him - overpriced soda, fast food that doesn’t look like the pictures, gangs spraypainting the city, unnecessary road construction) …but I don’t know that saying that would be that far off the mark, either. I recognize now (and maybe somewhat did back then, too) that his actions were a revenge-fantasy, and it kinda squicks me out that I bought into it so much back then. Funny what 30 years will do to one’s viewpoints. Ignoring all that, though, the movie itself is …not a great one. The “symbolism” is not very subtle, what with the constant shots of the american flag being knocked over, and lingering shots on the young children watching D-FENS. It’s also interesting how OBVIOUS it is that Michael Douglas’s character is NOT a good guy when you actually pay attention to his wife. She’s terrified of him and his potential violence. And with good reason. Anyway. Part of me wishes I had not revisited this - i figured it probably wouldn’t be as “good” as I remembered, and I kinda figured I’d not find his actions defensible ( ha ha) but another part of me is glad that I DID rewatch it just so I could realize that I have grown as a person and am not the same know-it-all I thought I was in my late teens. (I mean, I would HOPE not, but, you know.)


70. Demolition Man - rewatch. Stupid, brainless action movie from my youth. “Now all restaurants are Taco Bell” is still the best part of this.


71. Satanic Panic - I’ve enjoyed the books that Grady Hendrix has written, so when I saw that there was a horror movie he wrote the screenplay for, that I had not heard of before, I figured I’d give it a shot. Then I watched it, and saw why I hadn’t heard about it previously. Sam is a 22 year old working as a pizza delivery girl, and dealing with the crap that comes with that lifestyle - customers who don’t tip, skeezy coworkers constantly hitting on her, not having enough gas for her scooter. When a large order from the rich side of town comes in, she jumps at the chance, thinking (incorrectly) that the wealthy will tip more. Instead, she winds up interrupting a satanic cult that wants to summon a demon. This really wasn’t all THAT bad - some of the humor provided a smirk or two from me - but it needed something really amazing to help knock it out of the park of “average and forgettable” and, alas, it didn’t have that.


72. Zardoz - The 70s had some crazed out shit, yo.


73. Nope - Jordan Peele’s 3rd film. A brother and sister who own a horse ranch out in California attempt to record a UFO. It doesn’t go well. This wasn’t as horrific as “Us” or as metaphor-y as “Get Out” (although after reading reviews online, it appears a lot of the symbolism flew over my head - either that, or people were searching for/finding symbolism that wasn’t really there) but it was still very enjoyable. It oddly felt like it was just a little bit too long, and also that there could have been more bits added to make some of the plot points a bit clearer. Still, good stuff.


74. Young Frankenstein - some of the shine has worn off on this, and maybe it’s largely nostalgia that finds things like “It’s pronounced Fronkenshteen”, “Walk this way”, and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” funny, but those ARE still amusing. Not laugh out loud funny the way they were when I was a young teen, but still able to give a burst of dopamine.


75. Bullet Train - there was a LOT (perhaps too much) going on in this over-the-top action comedy about a train filled with assassins. Brad Pitt is the “unlucky” Ladybug, an assassin who is in therapy to better himself and find non-violent solutions to his conflicts. Tangerine and Lemon are there to deliver a briefcase full of cash along with the son of The White Death to that leader of the Japanese mafia. On board are also The Wolf, The Hornet, a teenage girl named who goes by The Little Prince, and a father who is trying to find the person who pushed his son off a rooftop. Like I said, there’s a lot going on. It’s all a bit frenetic - especially at first - but after a bit, it kinda settles into its groove and I had a pretty good time with it.


76. Black Friday - a by-the-numbers comedy/horror film set in a department store on Thanksgiving night. An alien meteor that takes over people’s bodies crash lands, turning shoppers, police, and store employees into zombies, and our band of misfit employees and managers need to survive. Bruce Campbell is in this, and that’s what caused me to stick with it. He’s definitely the best part. None of this is outright *bad*, but it certainly doesn’t bring anything new or memorable to the table either.


77. House - I’d seen this comedy-horror flick as a kid, but didn’t remember much about it, so figured I’d rewatch it. I see why it had faded from my memory. It’s rather boring, honestly. William Katt plays Roger Cobb, a Vietnam vet who makes his living as a horror writer. After his aunt kills herself, he inherits the haunted house, and goes there to work on his memoir. Ghosts, his PTSD, and his nosy neighbor (played by Norm!) keep interrupting his work.


78. Deep Blue Sea - Cheesy action movie from the late 90s about super smart sharks turning on their captors. That one scene is 100% the best part of this movie. If you’ve seen it, you know. If you haven’t - and don’t know what I’m talking about - try and go in without finding out. It’s great, if you know, it’s a thousand times better if you *don’t*.


79. The Happening - this would be fantastic….if it were a film student making something for their final exam. The acting and writing (and premise) is just so, so very bad.


80. 2067 - a lowish budget sci fi film that started off somewhat interesting, but lost steam near the end. In 2067 due to environmental disasters, Earth is running out of breathable air, and humanity is nearly extinct. The big evil corporation in charge of everything has a time machine that can send Ethan Whyte 400 years into the future in hopes of finding a cure. This had a lot of pretty common tropes with regard to time travel and dystopias, but didn’t really do anything new or interesting with them.


81. Time Bandits - I loved (and was terrified by) this movie as a kid. Bits of it still work. It’s weird and fantastical and occasionally funny (the Robin Hood sequence is particularly great comedy). I’d say that I’d like to see a remake, but, I doubt that lightning could strike in the exact same way again. The concept of a bunch of bandits using God’s map of the universe to travel through time stealing treasures is a pretty great one, though.


82. The Immaculate Room - a couple - Mike and Kate - enter a plain white room for 50 days. If they can manage to both stay in there the entire time, they’ll win 5 million dollars, but if either one of them leaves before the time is up, the remaining person only wins 1 million. An okay concept that feels like it was written by someone experiencing lockdown boredom, but there was nothing really done with it. It wasn’t clear if this was a reality tv show or just some random bored billionaire fucking with people (I believe it was meant to be the latter, but there were mentions of their “experiment” having been on television, so, whatever, writers.) But, either way, the premise isnt enough to carry the whole thing, and the characters aren’t much better. When a (Checkov’s) gun is introduced I was almost hoping it would end with both of them dead before the end of the film. It doesn’t, but …that would probably have been a better film.


83. Barbarian - now THIS is what I want from my horror movies. It wasn’t perfect, but it really was enjoyable. Tess, a young Black woman, goes to an Air B N B in rundown Detroit, only to find that someone is already inside it - a young charming(ish) man named Keith who claims to have booked the same house through a different company. He invites her in, and holy FUCK the tension during this first 30-40 minutes is off the charts. It SEEMS like Keith is on the level and just a nice, decent guy, but… is he? AND THEN!! There’s actually WAY more to this movie than just the Tess and Keith portion, because this house has got some secrets to it. Whoo boy, does it. Going in as unspoiled as you can is absolutely the best way to experience this. The second and third acts aren’t quite as up to the level of greatness that the 1st act lays out, but this was still a pretty great ride overall.


84. Bodies Bodies Bodies - a group of 20-somethings decide to have a “hurricane party” at David’s dad’s mansion (David is played by Pete Davidson). They bring along all their baggage and insecurities which fully come out after David winds up dead with his throat slit. This was like a live action game of Among Us, with all of the players being coked up gen Z narcissists. It wasn’t nearly as funny as it probably should have been, and the setup took a bit longer than necessary, but once it got going, it was a bit of fun.


85. The Exorcist - bloated, and VERY 70s, but there were bits that were still pretty effective. I felt bad for Reagan’s mother. Having your child be ill, and not be able to do anything to help is every parent’s worst fear.


86. Spirited - Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell star in a holiday musical comedy that is another retelling of A Christmas Carol. Reynolds is Clint Biggs, the “Scrooge” of this story - he works in social media, and he lives to generate outrage and drama in people’s lives. Ferrell is the Ghost of Christmas Present - he and his undead cohorts each year pick someone to haunt, showing them their crimes and how awful they are, in order to make them change and become better people. This was maybe a tad overlong - it was 2 hours and 10 minutes, so I think there *possibly* could have been some stuff trimmed - but it was very enjoyable. I laughed many times, and the songs were all mostly quite good. I don’t know that we’ll watch this every year, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it again during the holiday season.


87. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension - hmm. I can appreciate what they were going for, and I think if I had seen this when I was a kid in the 80s, I would have fucking LOVED it. But, I saw it as a middleaged loser in the 2020s instead, so I only found it mildly entertaining and largely pretty meh. The cast, though! Holy shit! John Lithgow! Christopher Lloyd! Jeff Goldblum! Even a young Johnathan Banks (from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul). And, I have to admit, that the end credits scene with the cast walking in formation while the most 80s synth music ever plays is fucking awesome. That alone bumped this movie up a notch or two.


88. The Innocents - Norwegian film about a group of preteen kids who discover they have abilities. Turns out mixing powers and the casual cruelty of children is NOT a good mix. There’s a lot of truly disturbing scenes in this, including some with animals. It’s very evocative, but I’m not sure what the overall message of the film was, so I’m not sure I can say that I’d recommend it, or that I *enjoyed* it. The young actors are all quite remarkable.


89. Scrooged - I had never seen this all the way through before- somehow only catching bits and pieces over the years. Decent Christmas Carol adaptation. Funny, but kinda drags in bits.


90. A.I. Artificial Intelligence - huh.


91. Harry and the Hendersons - not sure why I wanted to rewatch this. It wasn’t particularly good when I viewed it as a kid, and it’s certainly not now.


92. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - a lot of this has aged, but then, a lot of this is still pretty amazing.


93. Roxanne - “Because I was afraid of worms, Roxanne! I was afraid of worms!” Charming rom-com from the 80s that holds up pretty well.


94. Smile - meh. Had some disturbing scenes/imagery scattered throughout (that birthday party, holy crap!), and about 4000 too many jumpscares, but the overall storyline was not strong enough to carry this. (It was essentially “It Follows” but with suicide instead of sex as the means of passing on the curse.)


95. After Yang - Perhaps it was because I watched this at 5 in the morning, but about 45 minutes into this, I could. Not. stay. Awake. It just got super boring and I didn’t care about the revelations of a robot learning to love, or the family that had to learn to let it go. It was interesting up to a point, and then, I was just like - whatev.


96. Phantasm - BOY!! I didn’t remember much (just the Tall Man, and the flying sphere of death) about this fever dream of a horror movie from the late 70s, but it turns out that’s because it’s a freaking fever dream of a horror movie, lol. Aliens (?) have arrived on earth and they turn dead people into zombie dwarfs in order to use them as slaves. Oh, and occasionally the leader (?) - the Tall Man, who has a day job of being a mortician - will use ..magic? In order to disguise himself as a flirty blonde who will lure men into the graveyard so he’s able to stab them to death. Jody, his younger brother Michael, and their ice cream truck driving friend Reggie all have to stop the Tall Man from… that. It’s a crazy ass movie that shouldn’t work, but somehow does. (I mean, it’s nowhere near GOOD, but it was still entertaining enough.)


97. Black Adam - I seriously thought as the end credits were rolling that this was going to say “Written by ChatGPT”. It was just entertaining enough as a VERY basic superhero movie that I watched the whole thing. I mean, I went in with the expectation of two hours of The Rock being essentially “Superman, but with zero fucks to give”, and …that’s what I got. 

98. Mad God - an hour and twenty minutes of nightmarish, surreal images and sequences, all done in stop-motion. There’s no dialogue, no plot, it’s just essentially about two dozen Tool music videos back to back (without the Tool music/lyrics). It LOOKS cool, and apparently it took about 30 years to create, but… without the cohesion of an actual STORY to go with it, it’s just… sorta pointless? Some of the images may stick with me, but this was absolutely NOT something I’d recommend to anyone, and I’m kinda irked that I wasted my time on it.