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A pleasant surprise in found-footage freakery tethered to the innate desire to push the envelope in being frightened around sicko’s Christmas in October. Despite being relatively tame in its execution, perhaps deserving to be assigned to the harsh reality of its hidden-in-the-dark malice, it’s one of the better outings for the sub-genre in recent years nonetheless—the usual jump-scare reliance from post-Paranormal Activity camcorder resurgence and the sphere’s ease of cheap thrills comes pre-built into the film’s skeleton, allowing it to play organically and inwards towards its characters rather than as a prop to the viewer, coming closer to the tangible document it’s borne from/meant to be before the fidgety montage these are often doomed to.

2010s | Found Footage

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #17—1970s

“I wouldn’t know a catatonic coma if it bit me.”

Classical filmmaking gone new-age monster-madness mysticism, crawling from the back-end of Hollywood’s Golden Age of celluloid and into what’s physicalized as an entirely original realm in such a vigorous normalcy funneled from synopsis to an anywhere/everywhere set design, with a whole lot of heart and soul, each eventually hanging by a thread. A blueprint for various familiar adventure/horror films of current cult status, whether they be in an external reminiscence of Sorcerer, or a cerebral trudge like The Ninth Configuration—pair that with some traditional Romero/NOTLD style framing + a kaiju centerpiece (with a dash of Necronomicon analog), and this far-from-messy combination of the most extraordinary instances of just how far genre competence can go is bulletproof, and remarkably influential, however silently forgotten it sadly may be. Quintessential, and a little kitsch.

1970s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings | Horror | Best of the Worst | Animals (and “Things”…) Attack: Creature Features | Intro Credits

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #44—Horror

About as petrifying and grotesque as anything from 103 years ago could appear as, and then some. On-screen baby sacrifices, demon birth, superimposed witches flying through the deep blue twilight, cauldron-bound alchemy, grave-robbing/luring—there’s a brazen onslaught of imagery here emphasized by its frame of historical documentation, propelling genuine horror to the foreground as we traverse these threads of blasphemous torture and forced hysteria of women in a tale as old as time, surviving, yes, as an impossible feat of film from a century beyond (and as one so feverish it’s difficult to articulate just how this could’ve been made and interpreted to the public of its era), but also as just this anxiously realistic artifact that begs to be assigned to the otherworldly, though we know it could not derive from anything but this Earth’s bones. Creepy.

1920s | Favorite Horror | Documentaries | Better on Rewatch | Scores

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #14—Watch a film from the Criterion Channel’s all-time favorites list

A sleuth in mink’s clothing: so sleek, so alluring, and so fiendishly scheming. The criminal cons of Tom Ripley beneath the burning French New Wave sun that glistens off his Alain Delon skin of puzzling intrapersonality we’re quite informed of and invited into, yet seldom given chance to pick at as he slips into the skin of another name while shedding it upon others, are wonderfully gravitational, in performer and character persuasion alike—what’s great about Purple Noon is the chosen sultry depiction of this man’s remorseless string of life/lives and its capacity for being a single step away from being the pretty bleak and almost horrifying exposé on an unchecked human condition, unsuspectingly, but so warmly. Beautiful—what a presence Alain Delon was.

1960s

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #47—Rachel Kushner’s Adventures in Moviegoing

The faceless identity of the bourgeois robbed — or rather, forced — into existence, and the faux euphoria that comes rushing through the veins and into each orifice of the skull in a benumbing crisis lacking the capacity to pinpoint the sensation with words, and seldom the right action to channel either. Pasolini notes that this is a parable, or, an enigma, and the hypocrisy — widespread, uniform, and interchangeable with scandal in a universality from any country to another — of the title boasts ambiguity and its indefinable reversal—the brisk, sudden interruption of upper-“normal” life is as fragile as the minute surrealism the mystery and subtle tangible flicks of it materializes, and the concept of how God/The Devil can appear in regularity and both ravage the hungry, insatiable soul of above-proletariat bodies while illuminating the husk that’d already been there. Stunning filmmaking, often so silent and inconsequential in the ghostly frames, further excavating a separation anxiety between class and earth that even those above it scramble to return to it, weep beneath its dirt, or scream into it—ineffably profound, and of the greatest films of our time.

1960s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings | Scores | Intro Credits

1998, the year of Blade, The Faculty, Urban Legend, Halloween/Childs Play/Phantasm/Children of the Corn/The Dentist/I Know What You Did Last Summer/Species sequels: a slew of films with an exceedingly familiar air about them in an MTV-era of entertainment and the swan songs of 90s camp preparing for the turn of the century. Enter Shadow Builder, emerging of similar kin from the opposite century’s Bram Stoker text which, like Coppola’s Dracula, continues to be the unlikely, yet perfect vessel for 90s horror filmmaking—between the random slow zoom-outs/dissolves, violence so sporadic and gratuitous it’s simultaneously intense and hilarious, some of the coolest digital effects ever, and a zany Tony Todd appearance without any rhyme or reason for the role, it’s the epitome of the decade’s best arguments for deserving the cult status its held onto for 30-going-on-40 years, and a true testament for the malleability->impossible potential for an 1800s Irish novelist’s pen + paper to go total Constantine/Wishmaster mode.

1990s | Favorite Horror | Best of the Worst

Tagged as “Scream meets Dawson’s Creek,” this negative-budget tangle of reels bellyflops into a sweet, autumnal pile of regional-horror leaves like it belongs there, confidently generating buzz from its proposed blend of ideas while practically having no reminiscence of either—and that’s more than fine! Charming and cheesy, circling about the crunchy backyard-woods floor while being hunted by a rubber-masked, pumpkin-headed horseman of legends—about is stripped-down as this sword-wielding short story could ever be, though, thanks to a handful of comedic beats (accidental or not), a splash or two of blood, and a cheeky twist, it’s easy to sit with, and completely harmless.

“That’s gotta be Freudian for something.”

2000s | No Mans Land: Regional Horror Oddities

Tunnel-visioned hell of grief cloaked by a blackened nothingness only capable of spawning from the mother-daughter gap of all-too-familiar distress so visceral it’s nearly nauseating. Luckily, The Surrender evades the relentless machine of modern metaphor horror and opts for something more personable, remaining grounded in desperation and a coinciding nuance rarely found in pieces as such with great thanks to Colby Minifie’s vehement performance—aside from a couple inevitable submissions to the contrivance of trauma-clad introductions before letting loose into the palpability of our resurrection device of choice, it’s quite refreshing to find interest in what’s usually a game of coaxing towards disappointing pleas for disbelief that might not be distinctly inventive, but a few pairs of glowing eyes in the squelchy dark proves it doesn’t have to be.

2020s

Atrocious through and through. The irony, if even considered to be implemented in the alleged 80s piece of nostalgia this tags itself as, is beaten into the far-dead horse of Netflix’s R. L. Stine disembowelment beyond recognition, both from its source and really whatever delusive inkling of actual filmmaking this happens to fall under, not garnering a feverish benefit of the doubt, nor any reasonable means for reviving the flatlined trilogy of four years-prior sharing the same forename. Exhausting, predictable, ugly, hollow—Prom Queen is brimming with trickle-down tropes of the worst kind assuming to derive from genre icons and amalgamate them, only to besmirch without the crutch of parody: digital blood, AI characters, stock synth score and all.

2020s | Slasher Showdown

“This reminds me of ‘Nam.”

Airtight mania tucked in the the vacuum of picture-perfect 2000s hues of blue with a little bit of green, a yearn for very-public, post-9/11 panic, and a healthy dose of absurdist, shit-eating-grin execution. The notion of omnipresent surveillance and a moral dilemma occurring off the sidewalk of a metropolitan concrete hustle/bustle is all Larry Cohen, Joel Schumacher, and Colin Farrell need to extract enthrallment from a wildly barebones concept fleshed fully into a pretty ridiculous audiovisual overload that keeps us stimulated amidst a near hour-long standoff of stalling out a confession of personal fallacies and failures just for kicks—quite reflective of the American “get the fuck out of here before I call Hillary and have you deported to New Jersey” dichotomous boredom and agitation filmed several months before the “war on terrorism”’s forthcoming chokehold and released 24 hours prior to its one-year anniversary, stretching its limitations to infinity in an unexpected hindsight.

2000s

Gratuitous solicitation for the suspension of disbelief or not, whatever endeavor to either bottle camp or produce cryo cabin-fever thrills are sorely undercooked and far from realized, dying on paper before it has it chance to get going. Sure, we get a few kicks out of the horrendous plotting of 3 vs. 1 nullity and this pitch-black fisheye it periodically retreats to, but it’s sprase and stretched too thin rather than strung too high—there’s only so much leeway this isolated and avoidable predicament can be given, and with the cheeky ending further folding itself in hindsight, it’s difficult to get on board with the sheer inauspicious shell it’s stuck inside.

2010s

Who knew a Ouija board would be such a tenacious conduit for exploring brotherhood fallout and bridging the tear in its rift with the lowest of B-genre dispositions. Witchboard kicks off with what seems to have the volatility to go in any direction: a Final Destination precursor with supernatural demise picking off its offenders one by one; an obsessive/serial psychosis serving as the medium for something a little less ambiguous—ultimately what we get, though, is a horror-tinged drama that, despite not granting itself the ambition to fully stick to this underdeveloped premise, is as welcomingly abrupt as it is inadvertently subversive, flourishing in its quieter moments shared with a couple of guys who break their frenemies trope with the unfortunate crux of circumstance. A couple of decent kills and recurring wide-angle prowls help meet the criteria for being a genre film, even if it could’ve been much more with it shifted to a backdrop—still, a great surprise.

1980s | No Mans Land: Regional Horror Oddities

The sorority girlies get caught in a web of Halloween-gone-Nightmare on Elm Street beneath the sweet, shining sun and the ceiling housing living room hypnosis both evoking a strange sense of nostalgia parallel to déjà vu, and the daze that accompanies this brand of stalker delirium. What would hardly be anything other than a sub-ordinary genre entry in the oversaturated craze of the 80s is almost shockingly palatable and just enough of its own flavor to remain intriguing and properly horrifying, flimsy as its blade may occasionally be—the expected comedy plays itself more in pockets of jump-scare trickery before it’s rammed head-first through the layer of glass thought to keep this routine and indifferent, but instead, opts for a pretty grim culmination filmed entirely in the blue-drenched night of an evening with friends gone awry.

1980s | Best of the Worst | Directorial Debuts

Not as tragically terrible as it’s sold as, surviving as this abnormal concoction of imperialism, newspaper-headline’d commodification of Superman, and a few dashes of Americana at the tail-end of the Cold War, all swirling in the political solemnity while the remnants of III’s comical stitching insists on trying to keep the charismatic tug of war alive. Of course, these aspects don’t quite gel under Konner/Rosenthal’s writing, and especially so in the absence of any remarkable cinematography to sustain the Reeve factor so marvelously catered to in the previous three films—sure, we get a slow-motion/zero-gravity duke-out with our caped powerhouses (extra love for Nuclear Man’s nails) on the moon and another batch of of endearment from Lois Lane to give everything a sugary pulse, though, when positioned beside a barrage of atrocious effects, Hackman’s rigid Batman/Robin-esque subplot, and just a looming air of apathy, there’s far too little to fuel the benefit of the doubt this may beg for.

1980s | Marvel vs. DC

Capitalism goes camp! Dr. Alan Grant is back with another coerced expedition into what’d been heeded against for almost a decade, but this time, unlike Lost Kingdom’s failed opportunism, we plummet into B-film territory with absolute glee, converting Jurassic warnings into some of the greatest popcorn big-house thrills the franchise has to offer. Dinosaurs-galore and the most insatiable poor decision-making brings some hefty violence in a whirlwind of excellent set pieces and a hell of a cast—the exchange of wide-eyed grandeur and resultant danger for just pure entertainment in the spirit of third-time’s-a-charm delight is a worthy trade, and it hits that optimal early 2000s nerve just right.

2000s | Best of the Worst

Regional-Outback horror crammed into a giallo skeleton and fit with a gloved slaughter + all the shimmery steel/red herrings it brings, with distinct reminiscence in Psycho->Halloween slasherisms and similarly rendered cold from not only the grisly nature of murder in plain sight, but the futility of preventative (and any semblance of reactive, really) measures from badges in the face of death gone routine. Coda’s fascination stems from the peppery mettle of our two main protagonists, both whom aren’t necessarily undisturbed by the horrors among them, but they’re far from dissuaded—the anxious edge this gives the film is tangible and soaked in genuine suspense, tying a knot about its drawn influences and procuring an individual spin on creeping lurk left to an unexpected sleuth’s navigation through the oh-so-textured, inky halls, rooms, courtyards, libraries…

“Why?”
“Why not?”

1980s | Favorite Horror | Scores | Wake in Fright: Ozploitation Chills & Thrills

Supernatural haunt in the throes of island folklore hatched from guilt-ridden floorboards creaking with humidity, and a tongue-tied incapacity to articulate what the film’s palpable perspiration derives from. Gorgeous tracking shots and a careful balance of slow-burn suspense with illusions in the dark make this completely bewitching, scrambling for concrete explicability in the mystery coaxing us comparably to that of Blow-Up/Blow Out, but without a physical frame behind the victim’s attraction to latch onto, let alone define—the juice is in the composure, script and lens alike, and with the imbued patience being rewarded via (fitting) drip-fed grain juxtaposed by the stress on character despair, it’s impossible to not be entranced with a ghost story so grounded in stark, regional hell, and the years of strife that precede it.

1970s | Favorite Horror | Scores

The bastard son bred in swampy malice has a problem or two crawling beneath his buzzing skin, signaling for a schizo’s daydream of townie murder much too small for the bones and prosthetics that try to repress, or at least just hold it together. There’s a remarkable deal of patience here, separating itself from the Howling II/III-bound tendencies that would otherwise undermine the Cronenbergian severity in the werewolf-adjacent flesh more concerned with the repercussions of its heinous birth and how our bodies sort of… molt from and out of it—the performances are as great as the culminating effects, holding strong without needing to depend on a third-act crutch nor paling in comparison to neighboring genre similarities thanks to an original thread keeping its grime intact. A pleasant surprise.

1980s | Best of the Worst | No Mans Land: Regional Horror Oddities | Scores

A formidable homage to the lost films of 70s grit and grime, sans — minus a handful of digital effects that, sadly, are not of the Westworld/Star Wars kind of charm and bewilderment — the emulation that frequently taints these modern-made productions, delivering the clunky, yet exciting thrills found only in the bottom of the barrel. The film’s bookends are where it shines best, descending into a drunken daze of sought vengeance and a full-bodied dissolve into the supernatural atmosphere of the reaper lingering in a blue twilight backdrop—despite the midsection’s lull and eyesore of misplaced CG, the better bits carry the weight, and do so with a competence not simply for the sake of committing to the bygone visual filmmaking, but as a standalone feature adequate enough to blend its hodgepodge genre goldmine fluently, and with brains behind its heart.

2020s | Scores | Intro Credits | No Mans Land: Regional Horror Oddities | The Lost Picture Show: 16mm ↓

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #5—Great Soundtracks

A fever dream swaying from gazed-out fantasy to uncanny reality just brimming with a charisma so smooth it’s nearly inorganic, but wholly warranted for the coming-of-high-school graduate’s most ideal scenario after a run-of-the-mill life is too unsatisfactory to contain any longer, lest the quench for a “future entrepreneur”’s capitalistic allure and our very-televised complicity in nudging our youth into the gutter. There’s no world this could play-by-play materialize in, but that — along with Tangerine Dream’s deliberately post-Thief score — is just the mesmeric draw at work—not so much of a naive stab at money moving/making, but an advocate for cannonballing onto the fuzzy, night-cloaked train tracks that are certainly capable of leading anywhere, should the inevitable end of the line perhaps decide to grow a “liking” towards you, or find a prudish ignorance polar-opposite what we’re given to indulge. Something suggests a courteous killer pimp creeping into suburbia in broad daylight might bear an allegory.

1980s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings | Scores | Intro Credits

A few heaps of gore and a resuscitation of death’s now 25 year-old design could never save this from the premeditated rut it’s destined to reside in when clumsily situated between avoiding the loathsomely popular legacy sequel tropes and trying to forge an entirely new path while ignoring the cobwebs of a decade-gone’s path. The problem with choosing the latter is the innate linearity the Final Destination formula cannot stray from, plaguing what should perhaps step towards a coerced originality with the same old set-piece-machine’d song and dance pumped-full with family melodrama for characters we really just can’t care about while coating it in a digitized monotony to gloss the panic in a sheet of plastic—what worked with the original 3’s structure was the continued acknowledgement of how the cunning anomaly of the inverted/invisible slasher’s bloodletting pushed the yearn to cheat it and prey on the malleability of paranoia without forgetting the foundation both within script and filmic language alike. Here, it’s treated like a soft reboot absent of any bearings or interest in breaking the mold it settled into a generation ago, coagulating in this ugly and anti-dire mundanity that not even the worst of the bunch had previously committed—it’s exciting to see this franchise get another wind, especially a wind that gets blown onto IMAX cameras with New Line’s continued (and very important) breaching of -format screens with genre pieces you’d never think possible, but the studio’s string of 2020s efforts have proven to develop their own dry spell of middling-to-lesser results all too terribly routine and telegraphed (spare the almost-golden-child Malignant), and Bloodlines fits right in.

2020s | Horror: The Non-Slasher Franchise Phenomena

Obviously a decline in the fervent heroism as the film falls to the comedy of horns, jingles and whistles, but the thorn-in-the-side back-seating of Superman himself for the larger portion of the first hour is, sure, jarring and suggestively sacrilege, but unapologetically bold, slinking into its little Kryptonian decay while Richard Pryor weasels through and steals as much of the show as he’s able. Misses the sweeping awe of the previous two’s photography that granted such immaculate scale to the Smallville roots, but trades it for a much more regular and surprisingly intimate traversal back to them all the same, capitalizing on this essence of greed and fear of the computer age as a death/crux to the vivid capes that maybe won’t need to be relied on anymore—silly and solemn with each blink of the eye, and the blueprint for Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 (as were the predecessors and his own preceding installments as well), hokey and all.

1980s | Marvel vs. DC | Best of the Worst

“Capitalist to naturalist”

Or,

“Now you’re John Hammond.”

Has the potential to reap what it continues to shamelessly sow but just falls to this weird wayside of not knowing where to carry its torch until it culminates in a last-20-minutes set piece that’s so damn good it hurts to know it wasn’t assigned to a B-movie director who would’ve done wonders to this. It’s fun, solely from how ridiculous it in its pathing, and mileage for the entertainment factor while depend on how loose we like our sequelitis stupidity. Third time could be the charm, though—who’s to say.

1990s | Better on Rewatch | Animals (and “Things”…) Attack | Directors League — Steven Spielberg

Fabricate your life. Try to exorcise it, fill it with fantasy, emptiness, a scattered filmic language, all incongruent and clashing as possible, forming a reflective nothingness that can’t ever do or say the right thing, so it falls to a cycle of euphoria and coffin dreams without an exit. There’s a lot here that works well and doesn’t at all, but it’s difficult to assign something so dastardly committed to tormenting a persona into oblivion to mere vanity project when it flows with such an amount of tears and gasoline, even if the fragmentation is inadvertent and patchy when considering this as a proper feature. Like watching the esophagus swell and contract, not-so-accidentally coinciding with the push/pull of aspect ratio and the closeups that constantly fill the frame—almost horrifying (and almost embarrassing in the same sentiment), extremely elating, and about as strangely disheveled and dysfunctional as it can be.

Scores

(Almost) just fine. Amusing enough within its choice boundaries of psycho-object kill-ride struggling to ward off swings at actually instilling some semblance of emotional plot instead of just coasting the murderous wave of monkey madness—Theo James #1 is a delight to be around, a few drip/drop/pop of the arteries are tantalizing, and Osgood’s relinquishing of his almost-archetype’d procedural genre footing can have its moments, but the strain on a ~34-page idea from the breakneck 80s being shoved into 2020s filmmaking is wholly felt in frequent pockets of dead air where comedy and cruelty are left to duke it out rather than merge. Nice audiovisual “toy” design, though.

2020s | Neon | Stephen King

Can’t possibly separate this from the elated grandeur equated to Donner’s original, surviving as more of a part-two continuation rather than the sequel it’s tagged as where a formidable threat is conjured and the pure-hearted superhero mannerisms get a chance to reckon with misadventure and distress with a wonderfully tangible earthly backdrop to paint the blue/red silhouette with further vibrance. The crisp, flawless cinematography is as prevalent as ever, the peril swells alongside our Kent Man’s swirling perception of humanism through love and home with quiet, conflicted precision, John Williams sends his score deeper into orbit, the crystalline chemistry between Reeve and Kidder is glistening and bulletproof—there’s a touch of natural awkwardness that relays itself as a filmy layer of cheese over the unraveling/pivot towards pricking at skin with a lessened impervious exterior that does wonders for a little bit of charm spliced within laser eyes and world domination, and it’s nothing short of phenomenal witnessing it all coalesce and thrive together. The glasses-off “reveal” is the funniest thing of all-time.

1980s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings | Marvel vs. DC | Scores

Spielberg continues to take his jaws of cosmic splendor and latches them into the commodification of it, fascinating itself as much as it heeds into modernity and just how easy the “could” is while the “should” toils in irreverence. How fun! Generational awe, and the raptor sequence remains unrivaled.

1990s | Animals (and “Things”…) Attack | Directors League — Steven Spielberg

Stuntmansploitation? A couple of Vietnam War veteran buddies find themselves commissioned for espionage to the Pacific Islands aka an isolated anywhere building for a third-act rise in temperature that’s about as ultimately irrational as this being made to pivot from adrenalized comedy to misplaced action. The genres hardly gel here, causing the hijinks — which may have functioned better if left to lean into as a PTSD coping mechanism on the cusp of boredom/burnout — to feel shoehorned when it’s the thrills that undermine a potential for abnormal 70s comedy fluorescence—immediately stale despite some unbelievable stunt work on the bookends, and very, sadly so.

1970s

An inside job and its volatile, pressurized war on labor eating itself from the inside-out, tapping into the grit of Ozploitation classics of the Outback and bottling the rapid-fire fever into a compact heist-thriller that’s taut, and profoundly doomed. Really well-spun atmosphere boiling towards a surprisingly callous final sequence that pulls no punches—Terence Donovan embodies this keen dichotomy of desperation to and from the bottom of the barrel, and the blood from both ends is viscous as ever. A hell of a lot from very little.

1970s

Grueling post-Sawification of Troma’s blueprint inverted and dragged through the thresholds of suburbia ruthlessly bent on eradicating any semblance of comfort or camaraderie the second it begins, hitting the smut-parallel ground running as it forces the narrative to flesh itself out alongside the concurrent slashing/gashing of it. There’s a fine-line ridden here, barely skirting the torture-porn moniker chewed up and spit out on the back-end of the 2000s—this would be nothing without its characters and their performances trapped in the face of depravity, and, boy, do they deliver, meshing together dumb-as-rocks cowardice petrified by adrenaline, a proper thread of infuriating cabin-fever stifle, and just this impressively steadfast demeanor that sinks its physical abuse deeper into some leaden emotional turmoil before it dishes out a kitchen fight scene of the decade. An incredible (and unusually meritorious) use of deplorable filmic language that crosses boundaries but in total relevance to horror without succumbing to the gore-hound expo it might otherwise sans Darren Lynn Bousman.

2010s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings | Horror | Now That’s What I Call F***ed Up!

Much better when it sits with our female rat pack of charismatic innocents being thrown through the pre-Friday the 13th + Deliverance/Texas Chainsaw wringer of vacation->anxious victimization than when it’s off dwelling with the mental family and the Troma-tinged buffoonery it exhibits, but the inevitable brutality remains pretty unflinching thanks to our leads just knocking it out of the park in a misery that’s perhaps sloppy, but plainly visceral. Good gore, some crunchy film grain, nice location usage to not make it feel derivative of the aforementioned neighboring influence—it’s mean as all get-out, as largely is the work of Kaufman despite the hilarity that usually partners with it, but the contrast of tastelessness with a heartened, bubblegum vengeance is tangible and amusing in all the “right” sicko genre ways.

1980s | Better on Rewatch | Best of the Worst | Now That’s What I Call F***ed Up! | Troma: Cinema Bastardized

A sentimentalist orchestra (conducted by the legendary Morricone, of course!) of bridging the impossible void of outer-space’s vacuum to a blinding-white optimism birthed from sci-fi tropes gone saccharine and engrossing. The PG venture into the unknown from psycho-thriller De Palma may seem like a recipe for disaster, but it’s anything but, boasting an incredible aptitude for giving this all the right flavor without compromising its death or demise for the inevitable love that blooms forth—between spacial dismemberment, digitized extraterrestrials, the burnt-orange planet and the music that swells over it, it’s hard to not be completely swept away by everything that’s swirling lightly into the ether of choice, digging into a strange oscillation of poignance and fascination akin to the immense tones of Nolan in foresight and Spielberg behind it. Bonus love for that Space Odyssey sequence.

2000s | Best of the Worst | Scores | Directors League — Brian De Palma

A Terminator/Alien bastard child left marooned on a Russian research vessel fit with mechanical lifeforms hunting for a little more than what our earthly flesh may have to offer. Pretty routine stuff for the B-realm of this ilk, and sporadically rigid and drowning in over its head, but that ‘99 nonsensical freak-out horror sure does nail a bite right down and beneath the sweet spot—beautiful practical effects with a touch of CG slop + a ruthlessly greedy, yet wholly uninterested Donald Sutherland pitched against JLC’s just ridiculous amount of zeal kicks the film into gear when needed, and for an anchored single-location set piece depicting a strange iteration of tech anxiety, it’s a surprising treat.

1990s | Animals (and “Things”…) Attack: Creature Features

Splicing ethical code with worm-rotten immortality is quite the tantalizing narrative for the malleable swordsmen genre, and Miike is no better fit for melding the absurdist ultraviolence of his hand to the other’s solemn formalism, bringing manga to well-adapted life without compromise. It’s lengthy and cyclic, however, the perpetual body mutilation and deteriorating mental capacity strings its blood and brain out accordingly, and effectively—the gore is insatiable, and the various characters — of the hundreds of limbs sliced and diced — ranging from bleach-blonde spawns of anime to cannon fodder for the severing steel are each invaluable to the plight of man seeking, for him, god knows what across fashions of redemption and vengeance beneath a sea of skin and bones. Cold, gruesome, and straightforward.

2010s | Directors League — Takashi Miike

Grating and frequently flat like these Masters of Horror entries can be with their, sure, boundless opportunism free of MPAA constraints, but limited time slots pummeling the chance for fleshing-out into a one-dimensional pulse banking on wild gore—this isn’t inherently terrible by any means, especially with how Miike is able to channel his signature excruciating discomfort through aggressive bodily disfigurement that always morphs into an element of comedy, however, there’s little room for this gonzo arc of giddy misery when it’s buried beneath the torment of Billy Drago’s line delivery and fabricated motives far less interesting than the expository (and very graphic) flashbacks that should’ve been at the forefront. Some insane fetus/newborn imagery here and a dense torture sequence well earning its infamy, but it’s missing an extra hour that Miike would’ve knocked this out of the park with had it been a proper feature.

2000s | Now That’s What I Call F***ed Up! | Directors League — Takashi Miike

An anomaly of spoofed-out brutality that alleges a barely-PG rating before it takes a malicious turn and rips the Corey Yuen Kwai veins out for geysers of the good ol’ red stuff on full blade/bullet display. There’s an intense flair for dramatics stitched into the seams of a migration story built like the Revolutionary War on the docks, had it endured extravagant swordplay and an array of gash-wounds from a star-studded cast—too-little-too-late Shaw fatigue aside, Hero proves to be a delight come its third-act release, morphing a flimsy demeanor into maybe not the homage, send-off, return to form, or reminiscence of the pedestal the Brothers used to reside on, and that’s alright. Extra love for the romantic pulse this commits to.

1990s | Kung Fu Hustle: Martial Artistry

Disguises itself as trudge through familiar HK camp with an entourage of numbskulls on a trivial mission until — and with great, eye-opening hindsight — the ~one-hour mark stumbles in and barrels into blood dripping from the stakes becoming properly realized and heightened by a nasty rope. Deliberate with a surprise—the inversion of being anything but what it seems is as vast vistas suggest a journey that’s beautiful and standardized, but malicious in how it ultimately disposes its bodies without a lick of remorse, with the added bonus of Golden Harvest (though, diluted in comparison to the usual outings the studio symbol carries) combat to warm/burst the veins. Quick, and painful—and that ice fighting segment? Come on.

1980s | Kung Fu Hustle: Martial Artistry | Now That’s What I Call F***ed Up!

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #18—William Friedkin’s Closet Picks

A grim fairytale in stark, desperate reality. Faust goes American plains/farmland, exploring morality within the dilemma of ease-of-the-devil access to those dire in the rubble of The Great Depression and the fumes bankrolled into the next World War—homespun to the nines with a tint of rose in the sooty glasses, however, the overt glow of fantasy threatening to blacken its sheen of goodhearted (“goodhearted”) white with the acute omnipresence of almost-horror — further deluded by the Ozian fuzz that feels like narrative technicolor being suppressed — lingering in wait to pounce on the soul’s contract agreement is much more than the simple country pride it can be reduced to. Defining the possession of a man’s soul through a ghostly trial is a hell of a feat for anything as modest as this, and doing so with a forked tongue subtly pressed against the cheek (see: the final frame) makes it even better.

1940s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #29—All-Time Top Criterion Closet Picks

Color-packed exuberance in what should be the bog of the human condition — and, it often is, scrambling to assign grief and catharsis to a personal symbolic act which we as those same beings know would never grant any sought abreaction — but, instead, is a pop of gorgeous, multifaceted motherhood and its engulfing blanket, sorrows, comforts and all. Not particularly a character study or melodrama that have tendencies to coalesce under the Almodóvar name: All About My Mother, while inherently a love-letter by title, bridges beyond ode, delicately, but vigorously imbuing its parents, daughters, friends, surrogates, and audience — of its own rows of seats or those onlooking through the screen — with an agency that can occasionally be short on shaky breath, but inflates with an great inhale in an emotive relief similar to an embrace from, well, a mother. Memories, grief, and a swelling love, in real-time. Achingly magnetic.

1990s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings | Scores | Intro Credits

“I even caught myself driving by convenience stores… that weren’t on the way home.”

A (literal) cartoonish barrage of desert-bound heedlessness grounded — ironically enough — by the threat and fantasy of dreams and their eventual materialization in this sort of reversal that balances right on the finest line of hyper/surreality. Or, maybe it’s just Nic Cage and Holly Hunter kidnapping a child and riding the improvisation the thievery of life offers as the road(runner) leads ‘round in a circle flat atop the same ilk/cloth for everyone—as sweet as it is exciting in its earnest, trailer-park’d humanity left to stare into a distorted mirror until maybe it’s time to detonate that other figure of the self and do some good for the two feet you’re stood upon.

1980s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings

Who knew an oddball outback thriller-fantasy dabbling in Wake in Fright/Wizard of Oz/ploitation sensibilities would be a catalyst for one of Cage’s more grounded and psychosis-free roles to date. Doesn’t mean it’s not an unusual sunbaked slow-cooker of identity and place shifting their tectonic plates on the brink of the break, though, of course—The Surfer makes mention of an idyllic life, and refracts just about anything but off its glistening waves as calming and pining as the brassy disruption just sweltering in the heat. It’s poignant, jarring, infuriating, salty-sweetened—not the strangest or most fulfilling, but inarguably mesmeric, and a hell of a looker.

2020s | Intro Credits

Doesn’t get much more prolific or superhero-definitive than this. A peerless mixture of grandeur in 70s filmmaking maximizing an inventive minimalism while peeling the color-soaked cells right from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s original pages, developing a soulful bout of chemistry brimming with love for/between performance and text in a heartened absorption of Superman as a character/movie as a whole—gorgeous hues of primaries burst right off the screen alongside another classic score from John Williams, and with the obvious picture-perfect casting of Reeve and Kidder, it’s impossible to not be completely enamored by Donner’s framework that hasn’t aged a single day.

1970s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings | Marvel vs. DC | Scores | Intro Credits

A valiant swing to put MCU back on track for what’s set to be the next big outing with a brand new phase doomed to rise from rubble and work out the kinks of the last six years of a post-culmination downfall most egregious and, well, unrewarding, struggling to situate payoff beside a filmic prowess that’s more or less been absent from the Marvel realm spare Gunn and Raimi surnames. But, here we are, with Thunderbolts*, the ashen congregation of delinquents with far greater character weight than those who’d come before, sometimes sluggishly hauling their downtrodden adversities through fragments of a beaten-down past of themselves and that which Feige cannot relinquish, and, sometimes — like a glimmer of hope in the desensitized void of comic book machinery — with a shaky smile exhumed from molted skin so damn eager to lurch forward—there’s a palpable attempt to finally step from a ledge tethered to the towering scope of Avengers and Disney+ muck that blows expectations out of the water, and a tantamount volume figuring out just what that means, but with the various notable talent behind production and a batch of not-so-heroic paragons filling into their own shoes stealing the limelight, it’s one of the few that actually feels like, ya know, a movie. Are there the usual pitfalls? Sure—there’s never enough time to flesh these bands of bodies out; the inability to properly write a corporatized fascist/indirect villain like Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Valentina is loathsome; the humor (while hardly an offender here in comparison to other label-mates) can have a hard time knowing where and when to land… however, if the better bits are a sign of what’s in the near future for the exhausted cash-cow, then it’s worth getting excited about again.

2020s | Marvel vs. DC

Ol’ disgruntled Earl Bassett’s return to the six-years-later saddle is of course more than it’s bargained for, juicing its comedic veins with idiocy before lunacy, but, man, is it not just an irresistible gem of 90s nonsense bleeding a love for the craft in an existence for nothing other than the sake of it. The graboid SFX are phenomenal, as is the near inverted spoof on itself—so much to love, and Chris Gartin’s giddy presence is a treat, suring any mere Kevin Bacon replacement antics to refuel the impending-franchise name with all the charm and eventual wit to butter up the popcorn with.

1990s | Horror: The Non-Slasher Franchise Phenomena | Better on Rewatch | Best of the Worst | Animals (and “Things”…) Attack: Creature Features

Nuclear fallout’s stretch to drag suburbia to its desert depths of exploitative agony in 1970s vinegar-doused rancidity made from the nightmare man Craven and his keen proficiency with bridging the horrors of what’s real and what can be, as both are in their dwelled actuality. The devil’s-dance this does in American genre film cavities with closing-in walls of Carpenter reminiscence and the obvious Hooper grime with bites of Italian melodrama is enthralling 50 years gone, and the unrelenting malice on a minimalistic budget keeps it pulsating with anxiety all the same, understanding the definition of what this avenue of celluloid has the capacity for without compromising for anything other than choosing to execute it. A staple.

1970s | Favorite Horror | Horror: The Non-Slasher Franchise Phenomena | Better on Rewatch | Intro Credits | Now That’s What I Call F***ed Up! | Directors League — Wes Craven

A teen sex comedy for the ages, and of the first to catapult the otherwise friendly, innuendo-insinuated genre into its crude late-90s skeleton that’s authentically awkward and raunchy before cartoonish or left gridlocked by simply being a relic of its time. Foolish? Well, yes, as any film depicting the sexual curiosities of a guy exploring the potential of an apple pie on the family kitchen counter, or a girl’s porno mag skimming like a Mother Mary voyeurism that’s just an exaggerated openness, neither with a trace of shame or sleaze, and both in plight and pursuit of the orgasm—free of coercion, flatline, or just general staleness, and full of this jocular, yet sincere embalming of youth and friendship at the turn of life’s few biggest pages.

1990s

The Great American Satire. Gags dated in ripe belly laughs — parodic and original alike — and a damn steadfast commitment to running its series of bits through a mile-high wringer smooth and sound—Hays, Hagerty and Nielsen are all on fire, and the generational consistency remains thick and addictive thanks to a confident bounce between pure idiocy and deadpan glory. Can’t wait to watch it again.

1980s

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #23—2000s

“How can a train be lost? It’s on rails.”

A family seeking its portrait in the wrong way, but, luckily, the right place, and the right time. Hits the sweet-spot zenith of Anderson’s continually blooming style before it pivots into its much snappier visual/cast-overload demeanor he’ll come to remain known for—these earlier films being rooted in some sort of central tragedy that permeates and defines its characters (until it doesn’t!) are, conversely, light and investing, and Darjeeling’s journey into the aromatic yellow/orange fleshiness of brothers finding themselves as people rather than their surname is just as stimulating in an unusually linear asymmetry worth as much praise as any fox/hotel/dog outings soon to follow.

2000s | 2025 Favorite First-Viewings | Scores | Intro Credits | Directors League — Wes Anderson

The Criterion Challenge 2025: #1—Watch a movie from the CC40 box set

Soul-searching witnessed through the estrangement of the isolated “trade” of thievery and a lens that’s keen on capturing a third-person’s thrill of it and, instead, amplifying the stoicism and emotional detachment through slipping close, but intangible as a means of, well, “living”—whatever that may mean. The blend of internal monologue ramblings and seamless movement over an otherwise general silence is wholly absorbing, notching itself into a tangential rut of melancholy and excitement, neither of which are attainable for our protagonist’s reverse, irregular path towards a touch of anything in an existence of nothingness—really, really good, and something that will certainly fare even better on a gloomy midnight rewatch to par with the sullen duplicity.

1950s | Scores | Intro Credits

A political thriller crammed into the rabbit’s hat of a domestic drama, less interested in the facetious external trickery that shifts from clownery to sly miracle-worker madness than it is in the façade of cordial relations as an unnerving naturalism proves as easily invasive as it is welcoming, and deceptive. Genre hodgepodge, sure—what allows Harlequin to operate under its many yanked strings is Robert Powell’s jack-of-all-trades character who both reflects and ingests these various fabrics of filmic language, each of which ultimately converge on something unexpectedly melancholic, just as the mirror presents itself before another amalgamation of person found in the senator/“family” man David Hemmings who functions as the perfect opposite and vessel for the dour cloud left to toil in hindsight. Subtle one, treating its horror as an evocative musing rather than that of a thirst for blood.

1980s | Horror

1. Interstellar
2. The Lighthouse
3. Under the Silver Lake
4. Whiplash
5. Mad Max: Fury Road
6. La La Land
7. Her
8. The Grand Budapest Hotel
9. Mommy
10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

...plus 452 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My favorite horror films—anything I consider to be four stars and up + some favorite horror shorts towards the bottom. Organized loosely by personal rating.

Supplemental lists —

+ Slasher Showdown
+ Non-Slasher Franchise Phenomena
+ Regional Horror
+ Universal Monster Effect
+ Horror Noire
+ Giallo
+ Ozploitation Chills/Thrills
+ Found-Footage

• Halloween
• Evil Dead II
• Black Christmas
• Deep Red
• The Thing
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
• Scream
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man
• Alien
• Psycho

...plus 451 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

+ Cannibal Holocaust, if we want to get technical.

• The Blair Witch Project
• Paranormal Activity
• [REC]²
• [REC]
• Late Night with the Devil
• Cloverfield
• Cannibal Holocaust
• Creep
• Marebito
• Deadstream

...plus 33 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A collection of favorite introductory credit sequences that just suck ya right in!

• The Warriors
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• The Shining
• Climax
• Requiem for a Dream
• Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
• Fargo
• Superbad
• Seconds
• Pi

...plus 156 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Sometimes it takes two, or three… or four tries.

• The Worst Person in the World
• Deep Red
• Akira
• Aftersun
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
• The Fly
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man
• Blow Out
• House
• The Ring

...plus 235 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Lighthouse
2. Under the Silver Lake
3. Aftersun
4. Good Time
5. The Brutalist
6. Stop Making Sense
7. Hereditary
8. Swiss Army Man
9. Everything Everywhere All at Once
10. A Different Man

...plus 56 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Off to the races, baby! Full list/criteria here.

1. Watch a film from the CC40 Boxset: Pickpocket
2. Watch a film from the year you were born: Naked
3. Directed by Robert Altman: Nashville
4. Watch a film that would be your first choice in the Criterion Closet: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
5. Great Soundtracks: Risky Business
6. John Turturro’s Adventures in Moviegoing: On the Waterfront
7. 1920s: The Mystic
8. Watch a film that will be added to the physical collection in 2025: Drugstore Cowboy
9. 1930s: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
10. Andrew Garfield’s Closet Picks: Original Cast Album: Company
11. 1940s: Citizen Kane
12. Celine Song’s Top 10: The Age of Innocence
13. 1950s: The Seventh Seal
14. Watch a film from the Criterion Channel’s all time favorites lists: Purple Noon
15. 1960s: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
16. Watch a film that is currently out of print from the physical collection: Armageddon
17. 1970s: Equinox
18. William Friedkin’s Closet Picks: All That Money Can Buy
19. 1980s: Sex, Lies, and Videotape
20. Spine #451-499: Homicide
21. 1990s: My Own Private Idaho
22. Documentary: News from Home
23. 2000s: The Darjeeling Limited
24. Janus Contemporaries: Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus
25. 2010s: Inside Llewyn Davis
26. Bill Hader’s Second Closet Picks: Amarcord
27. 2020s: Vermiglio
28. Noir and Neonoir: Europa
29. All Time Top Criterion Closet Picks: All About My Mother
30. Criterion Releases Never Picked in the Closet: The Great Escape
31. North American film: Mon oncle Antoine
32. Ayo Edebiri’s Closet Picks: To Sleep with Anger
33. Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing: The Merchant of Four Seasons
34. South American film: La Llorona
35. Random Number Generator (Google random number generator, set values from 1 to whatever number Criterion has listed last here. This number will change as more releases are announced so please keep up to date by using the link I have provided as I will not be updating each time Criterion makes announcements. Watch whatever movie corresponds to the spine number you are given.): Short Cuts (265)
36. AAPI Filmmakers: Minding the Gap
37. Watch a film shorter than 80 minutes: The Gold Rush
38. European film: Man Bites Dog
39. Cult Movies: The Doom Generation
40. Isabella Rossellini’s Adventures in Moviegoing: The Thief of Bagdad
41. Winona Ryder’s Closet Picks: After Life
42. African film: Black Girl
43. John Carpenter’s Top 10: Kiss Me Deadly
44. Horror: Häxan
45. Asian film: Eastern Condors
46. Dark Comedies: Frownland
47. Rachel Kushner’s Adventures in Moviegoing: Teorema
48. Australian film: The Last Wave
49. Female Filmmakers: Boat People
50. Ben Wheatley’s Closet Picks: Rumble Fish
51. A film by a director whose work you have not seen before: Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard
52. Watch any Criterion film from your watchlist: Miller's Crossing

1. Pickpocket
2. Naked
3. Nashville
4. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
5. Risky Business
6. On the Waterfront
7. The Mystic
8. Drugstore Cowboy
9. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
10. Original Cast Album: Company

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

From gross-out, to gored-out—the heebie-jeebies, to depravity—feel-bad, shock-therapy—deplorable, miserable, weird and more. In no particular order.

• Happiness
• The Holy Mountain
• Antichrist
• The Happiness of the Katakuris
• The Untold Story
• Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind
• The House That Jack Built
• Cannibal Holocaust
• Irreversible
• Funny Games

...plus 227 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Thing
2. The Fly
3. Alien
4. Gremlins
5. Little Shop of Horrors
6. Predator
7. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
8. The Blob
9. Phase IV
10. Jurassic Park

...plus 99 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Thing
2. Evil Dead II
3. Stop Making Sense
4. Back to the Future
5. The Fly
6. Tetsuo: The Iron Man
7. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
8. Day of the Dead
9. Tenebre
10. The Shining

...plus 577 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Don't trust the numbers. Or me. You decide! Films rated 3.5+ with a <3.0 average.

1. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
2. The Keep
3. Freddy Got Fingered
4. Shock Waves
5. Dracula 2000
6. Equinox
7. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
8. Halloween II
9. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
10. Jade

...plus 140 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Halloween
2. Black Christmas
3. Deep Red
4. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
5. Carrie
6. Alien
7. The Exorcist
8. Dawn of the Dead
9. House
10. The Warriors

...plus 346 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. He Who Gets Slapped
2. Metropolis
3. Man with a Movie Camera
4. The Fall of the House of Usher
5. The ion of Joan of Arc
6. Faust
7. The Phantom Carriage
8. Häxan
9. The Gold Rush
10. The General

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Shoah
2. Night and Fog
3. Stop Making Sense
4. Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th
5. News from Home
6. Goodbye
7. Streetwise
8. Not a Pretty Picture
9. Fire of Love
10. De Humani Corporis Fabrica

...plus 36 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Psycho
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Woman in the Dunes
4. Midnight Cowboy
5. The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer
6. Theorem
7. Persona
8. Night of the Living Dead
9. Eyes Without a Face
10. Targets

...plus 148 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

an arrangement of my favorite film scores and soundtracks, in no particular order.

• Kajillionaire
• Good Time
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch
• Interstellar
• Her
• The Keep
• Dawn of the Dead
• The Worst Person in the World
• Spirited Away
• Ratatouille

...plus 351 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Fallen Angels
2. The Silence of the Lambs
3. Scream
4. La Haine
5. Heat
6. Se7en
7. Candyman
8. GoodFellas
9. Happy Together
10. Before Sunrise

...plus 486 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Ratatouille
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox
3. Spirited Away
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5. There Will Be Blood
6. American Psycho
7. Spider-Man 2
8. Superbad
9. Howl's Moving Castle
10. Shrek

...plus 446 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Worst Person in the World
2. Aftersun
3. Shin Ultraman
4. Perfect Days
5. Kajillionaire
6. Hundreds of Beavers
7. The Brutalist
8. Poor Things
9. Godzilla Minus One
10. Sick of Myself

...plus 434 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

From your backyard to that one place you might know. Or nowhere. Low budget/no budget gems to disappear into, and some of the classics that fit the bill, of course—16mm, Super8, and beyond. Pulling from these lists: here, and here.

1. Black Christmas
2. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
3. The Blair Witch Project
4. Night of the Living Dead
5. The Evil Dead
6. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
7. Shock Waves
8. Black Past
9. The ing
10. Maniac

...plus 183 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

major slasher franchises ranked alongside one-another.

1. Halloween
2. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
3. Psycho
4. Scream
5. Halloween II
6. Candyman
7. A Nightmare on Elm Street
8. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
9. Scream 2
10. Maniac

...plus 105 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Here’s to another year of first-go hits. You know the drill! Includes new releases for 2025 as well.
2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021

1. In the Realm of the Senses
2. The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer
3. Wild at Heart
4. Malcolm X
5. Theorem
6. Encounters of the Spooky Kind
7. The Insider
8. Three Outlaw Samurai
9. The Doom Generation
10. Tokyo Sonata

...plus 71 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Terror from Down Under, baby!

1. Walkabout

   Walkabout is a crucial and leading example of the breadth of ozploitation, especially in the sphere of horror/thriller, existing just on the cusp of genre piece in its adventure-drama swelter that pushes it to the furthest extremes. Definitive of the low-budget wave within Australia's broader New Wave that will come to deliver various breakout films worth acknowledging and iring.

2. Wake in Fright
3. Next of Kin
4. Mad Max
5. Coda
6. Harlequin
7. Night of Fear
8. Patrick
9. Money Movers
10. The Plumber

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Impressive feature-length directorial debuts personally considered 3.5 stars+.

1. Eraserhead
2. Akira
3. Aftersun
4. Nightcrawler
5. Night of the Living Dead
6. Hereditary
7. The Evil Dead
8. Monster House
9. Toy Story 3
10. Napoleon Dynamite

...plus 127 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Spider-Man 2
2. Superman
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
4. Superman II
5. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
6. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
7. Spider-Man
8. The Lego Batman Movie
9. Logan
10. The Batman

...plus 67 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man
• The Evil Dead
• Night of the Living Dead
• Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
• Carol
• Shoah
• Nekromantik
• Monterey Pop
• Martin

...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Cenobites, the possessed, zombies, werewolves, critters, aliens, freaks, predators, geeks... how did we get here? Must have three+ franchise installments to ride. Pairs well with Slasher Showdown.

1. Evil Dead II
2. Tetsuo: The Iron Man
3. Carrie
4. The Fly
5. Alien
6. Ring
7. The Ring
8. Day of the Dead
9. The Exorcist
10. Dawn of the Dead

...plus 248 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Back to the Future
2. Jurassic Park
3. Shrek
4. Gremlins
5. Back to the Future Part II
6. Raiders of the Lost Ark
7. Jaws
8. Gremlins 2: The New Batch
9. Poltergeist
10. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Carrie
2. The Shining
3. Christine
4. Misery
5. Creepshow
6. Salem's Lot
7. Pet Sematary
8. Maximum Overdrive
9. The Lawnmower Man
10. It

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Worst Person in the World
2. Perfect Days
3. Parasite
4. Anora
5. Fire of Love
6. Memories of Murder
7. Oldboy
8. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
9. Revenge
10. Titane

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Carrie
2. Blow Out
3. Body Double
4. Scarface
5. The Fury
6. Carlito's Way
7. Phantom of the Paradise
8. Sisters
9. Mission: Impossible
10. Obsession

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Oh, indie-reject grime, you sweet, sweet thing. The gleefully repulsive, yet, powerfully, and on occasion, properly exploitative. Distributed and produced.

1. Terror Firmer
2. The Killer Condom
3. Story of a Junkie
4. Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead
5. Combat Shock
6. Screamplay
7. Rabid Grannies
8. The Last Horror Film
9. Frightmare
10. Graduation Day

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Audition
2. Graveyard of Honor
3. Ley Lines
4. Dead or Alive 2: Birds
5. Dead or Alive
6. The Happiness of the Katakuris
7. One Missed Call
8. Ichi the Killer
9. 13 Assassins
10. Blade of the Immortal

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

emphasis on Eastern action + wuxia films + franchises giving a home to the standalone films of the nature as i continue to sift through the endless abundance of greatness. Western counterpart: here.

1. Police Story
2. Encounters of the Spooky Kind
3. Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky
4. The Heroic Trio
5. The Seventh Curse
6. Hero
7. Ashes of Time
8. Versus
9. Heroic Trio 2: Executioners
10. Yes, Madam!

...plus 59 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Resuming last year’s attempt with my varying challenges, weekly/monthly/yearly, top picks of 2025 releases, + a few other stabs I'll be taking at comprehensive director watches and a return to sifting through 1973's great year of film—which will lead the pack. I'll list select favorites from each batch of anything I get into with some notes along the way — happy 2025!

1. A Virgin Among the Living Dead

   The icing on the 1973 cake, thus far. This year was full of horror-extraordinaire, and this slots right in perfectly.

2. The Wrong Tros

   Short film Saturdays! An outlet for a personal reset to cut some watch-time and sift through the not-so-small corner of film where a few minutes can be some of the best.

3. In the Realm of the Senses

   Japanuary pick #1: the taboo film chock-full of provocative imagery wrapped around skin and entangled limbs, contorting love into obsession. Nothing else like it - historical, and crucial for Japanese and world cinema alike.

4. The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer

   The capper on a 9+-hour trilogy's devastation of war, following a character's anti-conflict->inescapable despair immersion in bullets, famine, dirt, death--bleak, of course, but remarkably stunning in how fleshed-out something like this can be, while still feeling like there could be several more hours to it.

5. Three Outlaw Samurai

   Japanuary pick #2: justice boiled-down to cabin-fever cynics, turning the samurai code into that of fallacy as words slip from forked tongues, rendered futile and distrustful. Miserable in tone, but wholly gripping.

6. The Doom Generation

   Criterion Challenge pick #1: The United States of Blood and Sex. Gregg is of his own caliber, and the only one who could channel besmudged red, white and blue schlock into something criminally dramatic, and quite tragic.

7. News from Home

   Criterion Challenge pick #2: a merger of estrangement and comfort tracked to the motion of a city and the noise that often overwhelms all about it. As much of a “call your parents” film as it is of retrospect for any of those who’ve distanced themselves, primarily physically, but to any capacity. 

8. Se7en

   Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist! Challenge pick#1: there's not much that needs to be said about this detective-thriller cult-classic: 30 years later, it's just as horribly bleak and decrepit as it was when it demoralized its own sins in '95. Absolutely enthralling.

9. Dante's Inferno

   Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist! Challenge: pick #2. When considering the genre of horror, we seldom look as far back as the early 1900s for how far our development of the form has come, however, it should be innately expected of a 1910s painterly rendition of Divine Comedy to boast some of the greatest examples of unnerving atmosphere for the barebones plunge into hell. And, man, does this take the cake for exemplary utilization of screen trickery from next to nothing. Eerie.

10. Kiss Me Deadly

    A Very 50s February: American noir had no shortage of mileage in Hollywood in the 50s and 60s, and with a genre so saturated, it's can be a rarity to find something so wildly unique and demented as this. A descent into the crave for knowledge with plenty of juice to set it apart from anything else of its kind/time.

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. The Red Shoes
3. Meshes of the Afternoon
4. Black Narcissus
5. Ornamental Hairpin
6. All That Money Can Buy
7. The Wolf Man
8. Casablanca
9. The Snake Pit
10. Rope

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. The Darjeeling Limited
5. The Royal Tenenbaums
6. Rushmore
7. Isle of Dogs
8. Bottle Rocket
9. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

1. Godzilla
2. Night and Fog
3. Sunset Boulevard
4. The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity
5. Ikiru
6. Gun Crazy
7. Kiss Me Deadly
8. On the Waterfront
9. 12 Angry Men
10. Vertigo

...plus 62 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Bride of Frankenstein
2. The Wizard of Oz
3. The Invisible Man
4. Make Way for Tomorrow
5. City Lights
6. Freaks
7. Modern Times
8. Dracula
9. Frankenstein
10. M

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Ratatouille
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox
3. Spirited Away
4. The Nightmare Before Christmas
5. Akira
6. Shrek
7. Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
8. Perfect Blue
9. The Iron Giant
10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

...plus 123 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Meshes of the Afternoon
2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
3. The Wrong Tros
4. Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 2
5. Doctor Death
6. Treevenge
7. Outer Space
8. The Little Soul
9. The Heart of the World
10. Rabbits

...plus 84 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2019's documentary synopsis says it best: “delving into a century of genre films that by turns utilized, caricatured, exploited, sidelined, and finally embraced them”... the history of black Americans in Hollywood through and their connection to the horror genre is crucial, and wholly integral to its existence—directed, led, and ing alike.

• Candyman
• Night of the Living Dead
• Sinners
• Nope
• Ganja & Hess
• Tales from the Hood
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Get Out
• Sissy
• Blade

...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Tetsuo: The Iron Man
2. Tokyo Fist
3. Tetsuo II: Body Hammer
4. Kotoko
5. Hiruko the Goblin
6. Killing
7. Bullet Ballet
8. Vital
9. Nightmare Detective
10. Lizard

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

At only 22% completion when viewing the full list, I have a lot of work to do. If it was on the list when i watched it, it will be on here, even if it falls off.

1. There Will Be Blood
2. Whiplash
3. The Worst Person in the World
4. The Thing
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. Alien
7. Psycho
8. Fantastic Mr. Fox
9. The Silence of the Lambs
10. It's a Wonderful Life

...plus 149 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Dante's Inferno

1. Deep Red
2. Tenebre
3. Opera
4. A Blade in the Dark
5. Rings of Fear
6. Murder-Rock: Dancing Death
7. The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh
8. All the Colors of the Dark
9. The Suspicious Death of a Minor
10. Obsession: A Taste for Fear

...plus 51 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Murder-Rock: Dancing Death
2. Zombie Flesh Eaters
3. Don't Torture a Duckling
4. A Lizard in a Woman's Skin
5. The Beyond
6. The New York Ripper
7. The Psychic
8. City of the Living Dead
9. The Devil's Honey
10. The House by the Cemetery

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Blackout
2. Bad Lieutenant
3. The Driller Killer
4. China Girl
5. King of New York
6. New Rose Hotel
7. The Funeral
8. Dangerous Game
9. 4:44 Last Day on Earth
10. 'R Xmas

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The many iterations, replications, and offshoots of Universal's blueprint and its sweeping influence in horror, + Nosferatu. An ongoing work-in-progress.

1. Bride of Frankenstein
2. The Invisible Man
3. The Mummy
4. Dracula 2000
5. Frankenstein
6. Dracula
7. Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein
8. Nosferatu
9. The Phantom of the Opera
10. Edward Scissorhands

...plus 53 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Lost Highway
2. Eraserhead
3. Wild at Heart
4. Mulholland Drive
5. The Elephant Man
6. Twin Peaks
7. The Straight Story
8. Inland Empire
9. Rabbits
10. Blue Velvet

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.