Recently Watched Films

The second brilliant musical this week. This has to be one of the best ever. Good story, and not a dud song in it. The dancing is incredible, as you'd expect from anything with Gene Kelly in it. Apparently he was a bit of a tyrant on set, terrorizing 19-year-old Debbie Reynolds, who hadn't done any serious dancing before this movie.

Road movie/bank heist movie where Clint Eastwood gets upstaged by Jeff Bridges and George Kennedy.

Rear Window meets those 80s/90s style erotic thrillers. Twisty and disturbing, but it'll probably be remembered most for the graphic nudity that actually adds very little to the plot. 

I decided to whack a few titles off my Netflix list that have been there since I've had access to Netflix and this was the first I picked. Picked but should have skipped. I like lead actress Ruth Wilson but this film was just boring. 

This one was better, but not by much. The dumb thing is that had I actually watched this when I first had Netflix I'd probably have been more into it. Trouble is I've got a lot pickier about horror movies since then. 

A newer one found on Netflix. Less home invasion than the title would suggest and actually just an out and out slasher that seems like it wants to be Scream but knows it never will be. I'm being unkind because it was the most watchable (but not re-watchable) of these three horror movies. If you need your movies to tick all the woke boxes you'll probably like it a bit more. 

Now here's Pixar delivering a movie that nobody asked for if ever there was one. I will watch new Pixar movies religiously but this is the first one that's really just felt completely meh to me. Not horrible, just a movie that's kinda there. And since this is supposed to be considered a film within the film that is Toy Story that Andy watched in 1995 it feels like a massive missed chance to have had a post-credits scene full of Toy Story cameos. 

This however, was a really solid thriller about a young woman's abduction, where little is as it seems. 

AKA Lost Child. And we're back to meh. Sort of presented as a horror movie but turns out to be more of a straight drama with some folklore and paranoia at its core. Unfortunately whatever you call it the film soon outstays its welcome. 

So I finally saw this and it's just as I expected the experience to be: pop culture has ruined this movie for anyone who didn't get to see it back in the day. The twist is so well known it's impossible to avoid (one episode of The Big Bang Theory absolutely flagrantly spoils this movie along with certain key Harry Potter spoilers with a big old 'it's your fault if you don't know' attitude) and so also impossible to watch without seeing the obvious from the start. 

Now onto the recent re-watches:

A fine film from Ridley Scott that doesn't always get the attention it deserves. 

A decent war film made by Clint Eastwood (it's always been rightly overshadowed by its companion film Letters From Iwo Jima). But since this was made it has been harmed by the fact that they've now realised that out of the three soldiers the film follows, two of them weren't in the famous photo of raising the flag over Iwo Jima in real life. So these days this feels like a biopic of someone getting credit for someone else's life. 

A good companion to the earlier De Palma/Pacino collaboration Scarface. The earlier film has Pacino rising in the criminal underworld, this one has him trying to get out. 

I reckon it's at least the fourth time on this one for me. Made a good comfort film since I wasn't feeling well yesterday.

Watching this trilogy again. Started last night but fell asleep in 1985 and woke up in 1955. I watched it properly this morning and will probably go straight to part 2 and 3 before watching anything else. Though I still have Letters From Iwo Jima to re-watch as well, which I hope holds up better than Flags of Our Fathers does. 

The Man with No Name gets a name, and the bad guys pay dearly. This movie also revived Lee Van Cleef's career, who is almost Clint Eastwood's equal here. A highly regarded movie and rightly so.

Bruce the rubber shark wouldn't work properly in the original Jaws, so Steven Speilberg had to improvise the shark shots, which arguably made it a better movie. Bruce worked perfectly well through this, was unrealistic as fuck, and the movie's a turd. Not only is the shark really shit, and it's eventual demise really anti-climactic (don't care about spoilers - the shark always dies), but the overall story is really boring. Michael Caine phoned it in, and Mario Van Peebles over-acted so badly he accidentally stole all the scenes he was in for the wrong reasons.

Not seen this in about 30 years. Don't trust Nazi dentists...

Lots of gratuitous nudity and some of the worst blood effects you'll ever see make for a pretty dull Satanic exploitation movie.

A satisfying end to the trilogy, and my disc for this one doesn't glitch!

Possibly Hitchcock's most underrated movie. 

I'm slowly going through these again with other stuff between them due to length.

This continues to be one I can watch any time.

Back to back viewing. 

More to come.

This trilogy could never hold up to The Lord of The Rings, but I still like what they did with it a lot. People like to run them down, but the way people are already going on about the Rings of Power series when it hasn't even debuted, maybe some will come to look back more favourably on these. 

I'm randomly going through Ghibli again. It's been a while since my big in release order re-watch. This one is kinda my go to comfort movie. 

Also re-watching some Hitchcock that I've only seen once. I didn't remember this one too well, and to be honest I get why. It's not among his best. 

The recent same named soft reboot/sequel does not do this justice. 

The shortest Middle-Earth movie even in the extended versions, it's also one that seems a bit better each time I watch it. 

One of the more overtly kiddie Ghibli films, but it's still an absolute pleasure to watch. 

My third time on this one. I've never actually seen the theatrical version: I always just go straight in for the 170 minute long director's cut. 

I'll also be going through the Park Chan-Wook films that I own again. This is probably my favourite outside of the Vengeance Trilogy.

Possibly my favourite Miyazaki movie, but I can never settle on picking one due to the sheer quality of his work. I find this one very re-watchable though and the presentation is suitable for while not necessarily aimed at kids. 

Kim Jee-woon is another Korean director whose films I own I will be going through over the coming weeks. Will likely end up throwing Bong Joon-ho into the Korean re-watches as well. 

For now though, I'm focussing on going through Batman again:

These two hold up to second viewings well. A bit more silly than later Batman movies despite being 15 rated (a trait shared since only with The Batman), but they work well. I wasn't that fussed about Keaton as Batman the first time around, but I liked him more this time. 

The same thing cannot be said for these two. I thought them a bit better than their reputations the first time around but boy do they not hold up. Either that or I was just feeling charitable with my opinions when I watched them before. Forever is okay but I could really do without Jim Carrey, but both suffer from awful acting (considering the talent involved in both films that's unforgivable), are far too corny and in Batman & Robin most of all far too many of the jokes just fall back on unfunny innuendo. Luckily the next Batman movie was this one:

This is the start of the modern, gritty Batman movies that made me a fan of the character. This movie single-handedly saved Batman as a going concern on the big screen. 

And this is finally the point I'm caught up on posting everything I've watched lately. 

What if climate change hit the world overnight? The reality of it is very well done for 1961, although the special effects have been criticised. For a 60 year old British film they aren't bad - consider the average Hammer Horror or Quatermas movie.