In ascending order of quality. Will try to be brief.

She Came From the Woods - Lazy retro summer camp horror. Couldn't even be bothered to create a memorable villain, since the title "She" gets very little screentime. 3 / 10

Kindred Spirits - I know I've said a dozen times that Lucky McKee seems incapable of topping May but this dull family drama / thriller is another reminder. 4 / 10

Don't Look Back - The writer of Final Destination tries something similar - a group of people linked by tragedy have to figure out if they're still in danger - but it doesn't work as well here. Lead performance was solid but this might be an example of the low budget holding things back. 4 / 10

Renfield - Cage playing Dracula ends up slightly more entertaining than Cage playing Cage (Unbearable Weight...). 6.5 / 10

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - Likable characters, just the right tone, and some genuinely fun sequences. Also perfectly accessible for D&D noobs like me. 7.5 / 10

Renfield wasn't half as funny as it pretentiously being portrayed as such. A very unfunny, stale, stupid as fuck "comedy"
Should anyone be interested in a very well made, funny as hell vampire movie, I would wholeheartedly recommend 'What we do in the shadows'.

What we do in the shadows is great, both the film and the series.

I'm not familiar with the series. Please elaborate.

It's a continuation of the film, some characters reappear.

I didn't even like What We Do in the Shadows all that much. I think a better variation on that concept is a Belgium film from the 2010's called Vampires.

Every second of Cage as Dracula was greatness, but the rest of the movie was painfully generic and forgettable. He deserves better.

I haven't seem the What we do in the shadows movie, but the series is great. It spoofs vampire and horror tropes very well and has a great cast of characters.

Across the Spiderverse - Visually just insane. Stylish, strange blends of art styles, maybe the most colors ever in a movie, I dunno. Visually just wild really. Story I was less impressed with. Don't really need this much self-referencing offline social media drama and meta stuff in a movie. Just tell a regular story. The parts where they do that are OK anyway.

Asteroid City - Wes Anderson is a peculiar guy, but he gets this right a lot like with MOONRISE KINGDOM all those years ago. A simple story where most of it's inferred. The quirkiness and cartoony nature is just window dressing for simple yearning and human trying to understand. It's like a kaleidoscope in that it only has the depth you bring to it, which could be something to critique it for, but man I think he does such a good job with these. It can be viewed as just a silly adventure, but I found quite a lot to dig into with some of these characters and their interactions, a lot of quite deftly-written dialogue that kept getting stuck in my head.

No Hard Feelings - Haven't had just a regular old raunchy comedy like this in theaters in a while. It works because the characters are allowed to be both fuckups and awkward and also be vulnerable, and have these relatable parts. It's a solid story. Very funny overall. Jennifer Lawrence really sells it, and Andrew Barth Feldman really digs into his role too. Nothing complex but it's a fun watch. Breezy and enjoyable.

Cure (1997) - Sort of like a Japanese Se7en. A dark, artful thriller with some supernatural undertones you don't get with the Western counterparts. The look and visual feel of this is so addictive. Sometimes kind of seedy, sometimes darkly romantic, sometimes just barren and sad. It creates a great mood. The murders are done so gruesomely because they're so clinical, and I like that you never really get any explanation for much of anything. The villain's monologues are non-sequiturs, seemingly just babbling. So it's all just arcane, murky and twisted. And that's what'll keep viewers coming back again later.

Watched the new Oppenheimer movie earlier today. Splendid film overall. Cillian Murphy's portrayal of Robert Oppenheimer was especially fantastic, as you can clearly tell he's a man coming to grasps that he may or may not have doomed mankind with the invention of the nuclear bomb. One grip I have with the film though is its structure with how it cuts back to random points in Oppenheimer's life, which can be confusing at times. Other than that, would definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

I went see it the day it came out. Excellent music score..very well acted (especially by Murphy). The depiction of the Trinity test was okay but nothing memorable..those sex scenes came off as heavy handed. I was bored to tears at the long drawn out scenes of gov’t officials bickering over Robert’s security clearance.

I recently re-watched "The Count of Monte Cristo." Damn you Jim Cavisel and your amazing acting.

House (Hasua) - Criterion described this movie as being like an episode of "Scooby Doo directed by Mario Bava". What they did not mention is about 30 minutes into this movie how much it resembles the Evil Dead movies. It was a little silly and during the first 30 minutes I thought to myself "what am I watching?" but taken as a whole I think this was a great innovative horror movie from 1977.

You Won't Be Alone - This felt like The Witch remade according to an English speaker's parody of "artsy" European sensibilities. I could have overlooked the 1.44 : 1 aspect ratio and awkwardly translated dialogue if the movie had given me one single character I sort of cared about. 3 / 10

Evil Dead Rise - Ditching the cabin-in-the-woods setting was probably necessary to keep things fresh. I still prefer the 2013 version though. 6 / 10

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny- I watched the the trilogy a lot when i was a kid, especially Temple Of Doom. I enjoyed this one, but sucks itll be the last. Wish they wouldve done more in the 90s when he couldve done more.

Any of y'all on Letterboxd? I'll link my profile here. Been cranking through my pile of Blu-Rays. Need to watch my copy of Four Flies On Grey Velvet, Xtro 3, and Jacob's Ladder this coming week.

I dump a bunch of reviews on there occasionally: https://letterboxd.com/Griffin1991/films/reviews/

I also began using it to make lists of weird obscure stuff I want to remember to track down.

Aside from what's in the link... spending my weekend rewatching Under the Skin, Mulholland Dr and Heat. Been chill.

My favourite film of all time, and nothing else is even close.

I love it. It'd actually been a couple years since I sat down and watched it before this summer. Just such a mesmeric weird dream of a film. Lynch's way of showing this dark sinister underbelly of a bright traditional American imagery is maybe the most pronounced in this one, in the weird things that happen and the contrast between the two halves of the film. Such a wonderful rich character study too. Really gets you in Diane's head. And Naomi Watts is just unparalleled in it - fucking raw, wild, sensitive performance.

Hard to believe Justin Theroux would go do The Leftovers later, totally different vibe in this. Good versatile actor.

Inland Empire and Lost Highway, along with Twin Peaks: The Return, are more inscrutable and labyrinthine than Mulholland, and sometimes more intriguing - but Mulholland, shit, what an artistic, complete statement.

I watched Transformers: Rise of the Beasts with my Wife tonight. Great popcorn movie on a lazy Tuesday night together. I have been seeing it get panned online but I honestly really liked the Transformer redesigns and thought it was perfectly entertaining for being a mindless toy commercial. Didn't realize that Optimus Primal is Ron Perlman until the credits. I am a dumb man.

I just watched The Iron Giant again for the first time in decades, because it happened to be on at my brother's house while I was visiting. I've gotta say, it's held up well over the years. I also had no idea that Vin Diesel voiced the giant, heh.

My wife and I have for the last two weeks had several nights where we would watch a movie or two.

Chloe - Chosen simply for its cast. There was constant ads for the newest Liam Neeson sleeper film and it got me wondering why he has kept doing them. I mean the man played the title character in the most emotionally devastating drama of all time and has one of the most vivid faces Hollywood has ever seen, it is a shame he has become typecast. Rant aside, the cast perform adequately but the story is nothing special. 6 / 10

In the Shadow Of the Moon - This began rather captivating. Lots of disturbing imagery and a rather thrilling ride upon this unique and mysterious premise. After the 25 minute mark - and a seven year time jump - the film plummets and becomes unfocused. - 4 / 10

The Woman In the Window - Generic Thriller. Waste of a good cast but it did have some rather unique cinematography. - 4 / 10
Disappearance At Clifton Hill - Generic Thriller. I can barely remember what this film was about. - 3 / 10
Intrusion - Generic Thriller. The plot twist was sooooo obvious that I thought it was going to be a red-herring. No one would make their twist that obvious, right? - 4 / 10

The Devil All the Time - This was also chosen for its cast. I mean it has Winter Soldier, Dudley Dursley, John Conner & the latest to play Pennywise, Spider-Man & Batman all featured in prominent roles. Skarsgård and Melling are really convincing as disturbed people but the movie stealer was Tom Holland's turn as the main character. The best scene in the film is when it is just him and Robert Pattinson in a church and is a rather great display of acting itself building the tension, along with a very effective payoff to it. The plotline involving Jason Clarke's character is somewhat undeveloped but is still important to the film and rather uniquely disturbing. 8.5 / 10

Too bad Last Voyage of the Demeter flopped. A little long and some shitty cgi, but a good score and atmosphere. They shouldve delayed it two months.

I don't know if anyone else feels this way about Lynch, but while I enjoy him, I don't really care to figure out what his films mean and am more content with just riding the roller-coaster of surrealism. I think I feel this way partly because he's famous for never explaining what his films mean and rejecting viewers' interpretations, so I choose to take his films at surface-value only.

That's definitely a lot of the appeal. I wouldn't say it's only surface level for me, I like trying to parse the strange emotions and whatnot behind what's happening, etc. And Mulholland Dr is a really quite straightforward meaning despite the surreal elements and the playing with the narrative. But yes - the ride and the experience are the key there.

I remember seeing it for the first time back in 2001 (while the internet was still fairly Jurassic and you couldn't go read think-pieces, reviews and breakdowns so easily) and being totally confused and scared by it. I re-watched the film about 6-8 times that first summer alone trying to make the jigsaw puzzle pieces fit.

I still to this day find the film scary, even though I've only met like 3 other people that would use that term to describe it. Most say eerie, creepy, weird, surreal, bizarre, unsettling; and I'd agree with all those descriptions as well. But there is something about it that terrified me on the first watch, and while it's my favourite film of all time, that feeling still lingers.

Oh for sure. It's a jarring thing. I think it might've been the first Lynch movie I'd seen - maybe I'd seen some Twin Peaks before that, but I didn't understand it as much at the time. Mulholland Dr really has that beating dark heart at its core.

All I meant was that it's fairly easy to get the sense of what it is, this doomed scorned lover story that plays out at least half in a fever dream fantasy. But that directness of the message is part of what helps it become so effective at being this fucking insane nightmare of an experience.

I watched Terrifier 1 and 2 a few time ago, the film script and direction seem to have been made by children between 7 and 11 years old.

Suspiria - this gets better every time I watch it.

Just watched KNOCK AT THE CABIN. Been a Shyamalan skeptic, to put it lightly, for years. This was at least better than most of his recent comical disasters of movies... still just sort of basic. Very standard script, doesn't really explore these ideas that well. Interesting enough themes of LGBTQ relations with mainstream society that aren't really explored beyond wading-pool levels. And I'm sure people have written about it before, but his Christianity is honestly of the really weird, creepy variety the way he writes these movies.

It starts great but sadly it goes nonwhere.

Aenigma - Lesser late-period Fulci. The highlight is a grossout scene involving


but that happens in the first half. Pretty dull after that. I won't link the poster because it's borderline NSFW but it's cooler than the actual movie. 4 / 10

The Third Saturday in October Part V - From the "meta = automatically good" school of filmmaking, somebody decided to spoof lame 1990s slasher sequels by making a lame slasher in 2022. Get it? The killer's mask is SUPPOSED to look cheap! *Yawn* 4 / 10

The Super Mario Bros. Movie - An animated kids' movie based on video games I was never particularly serious about? Somehow it worked for me. 7 / 10

I feel that way about Lost Highway. Minus the favorite film of all time part.

Like "Old" it has a few good scenes but doesn't really use any kind of artistry to build on them. Though this one doesn't seem like he was half joking through random parts anyway...

Which version of 'Old Boy' do you lot like better?

What do you mean by that? I'm a casual Shyamalan fan and he doesn't particularly strike me as a Christian filmmaker. He has said that he's not religious but that he's very spiritual if his word is enough for you. I am curious about what you see in his films that lead you to believe that he's a Christian.

I mostly just meant this new one I suppose...



Also in Signs where the whole idea is that "everything happens for a reason and everything is guided by some omnipresent force" but it's been so long since I saw that, that I shouldn't really use it as a serious debate.

Watched some of a CAM quality version of Expendables 4. Wouldnt surprise me if the digital version is out before halloween.

Before I forget to mention, but about a month ago, I watched the Swedish film Ronia, The Robber’s Daughter. I've been wanting to see this for a while, as I first heard about it when I saw that Van Canto covered it's theme for the opening of their first album, but it's a very entertaining fantasy film. It tells a traditional Romeo & Juliet type of story where the children of two rival families become friends with each other and the other family members become resistant to this friendship being formed. I'd say it's a pretty good film amidst all the fantasy films that were popping up apparently all around the world in the 1980's.

Ah that's cool. What an over the top, awesome series. The cats always got better and better too! Wonder who they recruited this time around.