Recently Watched Films

A bit outside the season now but I was looking for something casual after the three hour Wuxia epic and spotted this in my watchlist that I forgot about over the holidays. It was actually pretty good. Perhaps the best Xmas horror film I've seen so far. Not that that's many. 

Slow to get into but ultimately pretty good Japanese Yakuza flick. Stylish and with a jazzy score, but also somewhat more accessible than anything else I've seen by the director. 

Saw this one some time ago and had been wanting to see it again. It's a vampire film but extremely far removed from horror and shows the vampire as a more sympathetic creature, putting this film in a similar vein as ones like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Byzantium. 

French war film. Guess it's not a very well known one. Very effective at making the viewer feel both sympathy and contempt for its lead character at the same time. 

And so the six day revisit to Middle-Earth concludes with Return of the King in all its extended four hour glory. Loved going through these again, but due to length it probably will be a while before they get another airing. 

Not the best anime I've ever seen, but pretty intriguing. Bleaker than anticipated as well. The end is pretty shocking. 

Dumb but fun. A great cast, and some really funny set-pieces with a pretty decent rocking soundtrack.

(Used this picture because it's got the Aston Martin in it, and the release date is woefully wrong!) But anyway... Not a typical Bond movie at all. Except for the mad plots, the evil geniuses trying to destroy the world, the insane stunts, and the wacky gadgets. But besides all that, this is a Bond who's still effortlessly cool, but more vulnerable than he's ever been before. A great place for Daniel Craig to end his run.

The Invisible Man gets a modern update. While the 1933 film was considered to be part of Universal's Monsters franchise, it sits most firmly in the science fiction realm than horror. This, in spite of being more high tech, really ramps up the horror of The Invisible Man, as he unleashes a stream of psychological torment on the woman he was abusive to who ran away from him. 

And that restaurant scene... 

Watched this thinking it was the TV series, but it's actually the movie version. Anyway, funny as fuck! Loretta Swit as US president, Peter Cook as British Prime Minister, Michael Richards as a global terrorist, and best of all Rik Mayall as a sweary SAS commander.