4v291o

“Do you love old-timey musicals?”
“I sure do!”
“Well, do you know that they were also filled with some awful racism?”
“Um…”
“Here’s Lena Horne talking about how MGM never gave her a chance!”
“…”
“Here’s Joan Crawford in black face.”
*tugs collar*
“Here’s Judy Garland days before a nervous breakdown, doing a racist number about indigenous people.”

I half-ed this as a wacky “caveman in modern times” comedy, but instead it’s like BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS meets KING KONG, with the downbeat ending & unlikeable characters that implies.

Kiel’s probably the only actor of any talent here, and the tonal shifts are bizarre. “I’m was nearly sexually assaulted by a caveman.” “But, babe, you walked out on my low-energy rewrite of ‘Tequila’!”

Ray Dennis Steckler cameo!

Watched MST3k version but it doesn’t hide the bleakness.

Barely scrapes up to three stars, primarily on the basis of the Billie Holiday & Louis Armstrong’s multiple music numbers. But there is enough in here that you can squint your eyes & see a scenario Orson Welles might have commissioned.

There’s a lot of subtext about the racism & hypocrisy that kept jazz out of the spotlight & made its performers oppressed. But it keeps bumping up against the limits of the Hays Code & what movie exhibitors would show. And the fact the two leads are barely adequate means it flounders whenever Armstrong & Holiday are out of the picture.

But at least it has Holiday & Armstrong!

Really weird to rewatch this after so long because I forgot how long it takes Mary to show up. There’s a whole musical number with Elsa Lanchester (!!). 

Also gets to be a little bit of a slog when we’re just focusing on Mr. Banks. I can see why Walt wanted his role pared back. That late night bank tribunal is shot like it’s predicting the orgy scene from EYES WIDE SHUT, all red and black.

Julie Andrews is the best special effect.

A lot deeper and more visually beautiful than you would expect. This was a movie spin-off of a Disney Channel show!

Definitely hits harder as a father!

Sets out its thesis about five minutes in by ending the opening credits with a statement this movie is based on fact and then having the gunfight at the OK Corral play out in 20 seconds.

Given the complicated historiography surrounding Wyatt Earp*, claiming the whole movie is based in fact is clearly not accurate. But Sturges & co. are clearly more interested in the way that Earp’s contradictory desires (for revenge & order) are set loose in a specific political environment. This has got to be one of the few western movies that grapple with the political and legal maneuvering for control & authority in a (mostly but not completely) lawless frontier town.

Definitely benefits from being at the right point in the Western genre to be heroic, psychological or revisionist. The script, direction & performances all balance on a knife’s edge, suggesting we’re going to get one thing (shootouts, posses) and then withholding them or giving them in unsatisfactory ways. 

There’s a surprising amount of gore, but not in a cathartic way.

Lucien Ballard is doing a bit of a dry run for WILD BUNCH, giving us epic vistas that become more hemmed in and bleached out as the movie goes on.

Anyway, fascinating movie with an incredibly generic title.

*Earp is single and we don’t ever hear what his actual day job is. Still a little early in the period to grapple with that!

Godard’s INLAND EMPIRE

My favorite sequence is the one focused on Europe as a garish casino cruise filled with grifters and criminals.

That said, even the second and third sequence have their moments of beauty amongst the willful obscurity.

Honestly, the quote and digression-heavy movie with varying degrees of audio & video quality anticipate TikTok about a decade early. There’s even random cat videos and a llama!

Makes DANGER: DEATH RAY look like GOLDFINGER.

Babyface was in THE TRIAL!

MST3K version.

I ed finding this minor Lynch, and blamed it on being a dry run for MULHOLLAND DRIVE with less ambiguity. I wasn’t wrong about it being a demo for MD or not as good, but the Getty/Pullman tulpa stuff is more twisty than I ed.

The problem is Getty, who has the charisma of a sponge. Even if it might be intentional, he’s a vacuum. He sucks the life out of scenes. Which is a shame because we spend so much time with him.

Pullman is much better, really inhabiting his outwardly successful but used up sad sack, while letting us slowly see how dangerous he is.

Fun performances by everyone else, including Arquette, who is much better in her double role than I ed, fitting the role that the mental movie Pullman is making casts her in, while giving us enough suggestions that she’s more complicated than that.

Also, great to see on the big screen, with the film grain & consumer video tape contrasting.

Every time I watch it I think, “man, so excited to watch this classic”, and then I get disappointed by it.

There’s two big problems: 

1. James Keach is nowhere near any of the other actors in talent or charisma, and he’s Jesse James. He gets a little better in the second half, but… he’s the exception to the family gimmick working. And he’s a main character!

2. The Keachs were developing this as a project about the James, then apparently combined it with another script that was about the James-Younger gang, and had a third writer patch it together, and you can tell.  There’s a weird lack of balance where you can’t tell if this movie is about the Youngers, the James brothers, or the whole gang.

That being said, on a scene by scene moment, it’s great, and the Carradines, Randy Quaid and Stacy Keach are all great. And Dennis Quaid & the Guests do nicely with their little bits.

Great production design too!

“And all that implies…”

These movies are so much about wrapping you in a warm blanket and lulling you to sleep, the haughty noble competitor doesn’t even get to do anything evil. 

Glad the lady from LOST is getting work.

In the current moment, having a movie about Southern Africa where the only person questioning the British presence in a cogent way is a Boer… has aged poorly. Choosing to present this almost totally from the British perspective is probably going to foreclose those options, but still… weird.

That being said, it clearly presents the contradictions of British imperialism (the continual establishment of hierarchy, the rules that must be followed even in life or death). I wish the missionary wasn’t discredited as a crazy drunk & his daughter as an uptight prude, since the missionary makes some good points, even if they don’t help the protagonists.

And also, it’s a well-staged, slow boil siege movie, where the action escalates & every character gets a bit of complexity. My favorite character is the thieving drunk malingerer who ends up somehow moved to one of the most extreme acts of bravery in the film.

And Michael Caine as a bit of a preening war nepo baby, slowly letting his insecurities out. Brilliant.

Definitely not quite up with BLAZING SADDLES or DESTRY RIDES AGAIN, but a charming Western comedy that is aided by James Garner’s charisma, and some good turns by character actors like Bruce Dern, Walter Brennan & Jack Elam.

The dialogue is also charming, how it will wander off topic, like a preacher wondering why a traveller died and whether it was contagious.

Crazy that Elam is in this and shortly thereafter is in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST as a member of the old guard exterminated by Chuck Bronson.

A Troma co-production! Lloyd Kaufman, Production Manager!

Two ppl talking metaphysics & civilization over dinner and it’s gripping stuff. The erudite, smooth, (but frequently bullshit) opining of Andre, countered every so often with the sputtering, fiery arguments of “Wally”, and the stakes are whether their friendship will survive the kind of real engagement Andre yammers on about.

The nadir of these actors’ careers and of this era of country music.

Glad RIFFTRAX cut the ending concert footage.

Might be overrating this, but the animation style is so cool (like CGI claymation in front of flip book backgrounds? That’s not quite right but it gets you close) and the story…

Let me back up, the Dreamworks problem lately has been they’ve had cool stylized animation but the stories suck unless they’re adapted from a book. Luckily, they adapted this from Dav Pilkey’s DOG MAN and they kept pretty true to the spirit of the series (which my son loves).

Dog Man is a lot more sentimental than Pilkey’s Captain Underpants (and less toilet-based), but just as goofy. There’s some great absurd humor here (Chief showing Dog Man his special equipment, the lead-up to the accident that creates Dog Man, the “free kitty” negotiations). And honestly, even if it does have a bit of a “power of friendship” ending, it feels sincere in a way that’s centered on kids. There’s no “oh, it’s so moving the cat has social anxiety/trauma” material here.

how Pixar used to be “kids movies that parents can enjoy” and then shifted to “movies aimed at Disney adults that kids will maybe enjoy”. DOG MAN is a “kids movie that parents will enjoy because it’s funny.”

Also, it’s 94 minutes!

The three and a half stars is not my “normie” rating. This is for a certain kind of trash cinema fan.

It’s a MAD MAX/WARRIORS knock-off set in a vision of 2025 when everything has crumbled to pieces, but there’s still televised competitions with product placement for shitty nutritional supplements (one of the genius bits).

It’s a D’Amato movie, which means it’s cheap & trashy but in interesting ways. Unlike some Italian dystopia knock-offs, the cheapness mostly reads as a vision of just how shitty the world is. 

And while the script has the same bonkers logic of most Italian exploitation films, there’s enough downbeat nightmare fuel for it to work. Every momentary triumph is tinged with a lot of bitterness, and if this world can be fixed, our protagonist doesn’t really have a role in that world.

Also, it’s just cool to see George Eastman get a (relatively) complex role that puts his weird charisma to use!

If it’s not a perfect movie, then it’s pretty damn close.

The ending sound effect as they pan out of the studio…

Imagine making a SEVEN SAMURAI knock-off where almost every bit that wasn’t fighting or preparing to fight was excised.

That’s BEACH OF THE WAR GODS. The characterization level is mostly set by the fighters’ weaponry & outfits. But the fight set-pieces are so well-planned out & shot that it doesn’t matter.

The final battle between Jimmy Wang-Yu and the main villain is an amazing short film in and of itself.

Loses a few points for going all “ kids on their smartphones these days”, but also really fun.

And I always love a movie about a robot learning to be human.

Definitely one of my favorites, both sentimental and surprisingly brutal.

A precocious kid brutally murdered (offscreen), a guy gets his head blown off with a shotgun…

This time around, in addition to Boone’s conversation where he asks Scott to talk about his ranch, what sticks with me is the end, the delivery of “it’s going to be a beautiful day”. Scott in these Ranown is a very subtle actor, so the mix of anger and regret in that delivery… trying to convince himself that he doesn’t regret what he had to do.

Probably overrating this, but there’s something nice about seeing Humphrey Bogart & a multi-ethnic group of gangsters kick the asses of a bunch of Nazis.

Watched this for the first time because I’m reading THE PRINCESS BRIDE and Goldman jokes a scene is ripped off from S.J. Morgenstern and it provides an interesting lens for the first half, as the buddy comedy starts getting more serious,

Great performances by Newman & Redford, great ing cast, and great handling of tone. 

Sometimes you see something everyone praises and you think, “eh, it’s okay but a little overrated.” Nope, correctly rated.

Forgot about the racist depictions of Native Americans, and Karen Steele is… unreliable. She works in some scenes, but not others.

But the bleak vistas, the spare but poetic script, the shifting relationships between Scott & everyone else, as new layers & details emerge… 

And all in an hour & 12 minutes!

Doesn’t reach the heights of DJANGO, KILL or AND GOD SAID TO CAIN, but still ends up having its moments as a gothic western.

Steffen unfortunately feels like Great Value Eastwood at too many points in his poncho & hat. There’s still a great sense of menace and great visual touches (like a massacre where we never see the faces of the other side).

The only interesting thing about this is how many plane refueling scenes there are. Stands out in such a sexless film.

A movie that is required to be boring because its whole thesis is that the Air Force is full of nice normal guys with no issues, flying reliable planes!

Just an incredibly generic B-movie that feels like Monogram could have made it.

Main point of interest (if not watching the MST3k version) is the footage of downtown LA when it was still mostly art deco. Oh, Angel’s Flight!

It’s really funny that the need to divide this into two parts turned it into an arty film.

Just two minutes dancing to Nick Cave in a tent.

“Taylor Swift was arrested…FOR MURDER!”

Godard at that sweet spot where even his willful denial of the promises of genre are delightful, even as they are perverse! Having seen WIND FROM THE EAST, I can tell you there is a difference.

It’s barely THE JUGGER in any sense, except for Anna’s concluding stratagem. Instead, it’s JLG interrogating the detective film as a pointless, violent dead-end (thus all the detective movie and book character names). But it still holds our interest and engages us. 

That last bit about fascism coming to though… in 1968 and 2024, equally trenchant.

Despite hearing so many quotes from it and references to it, it’s still surprising on a first-time watch.

And no one told me how funny it is!

The star is for J.K. Simmons and Simmons alone.

Rebane clearly saw THE FOG and decided to do a (faux) New England witchcraft version. 

What always gets me about Rebane is that he’s able to marshal surprising resources for a low-budget regional filmmaker… and does the worst possible job deploying them. He has no ability to handle actors, his scripts seem like he dashed out an outline and then wrote the scene 10 minutes before each shoot. He has no visual style or ability. And worst of all, he has nothing to say!

You can say a lot of awful things about Coleman Francis, but at least he had a worldview he was trying to get across.

The only good thing I can say about Rebane is that at least he doesn’t try to pretend he’s joking, like Ric Sloane. Whatever he’s doing (or failing to do), he’s taking it seriously.

I forgot how much is just ppl talking. And it still rocks.

Every human actor other than Carrey & his sycophant are checked out, but damn if Carrey isn’t still the bright spot.

And I do like a Chemical Brothers needle drop

An honest-to-god American giallo?

It’s a shame the best print circulating is pretty grainy, but immaculate dark winter vibes and proto-FIRE WALK WITH ME weirdness with a mix of old Hollywood character actors and Factory “stars”.

Not been in the best brain space lately, so the fact this kept my attention for the full run time is pretty extraordinary.

Mickey Rooney sounds drunk in this.

Object Class: Keter.

Containment Procedures: If exposed, please report to Site 72 for Class A Amnestics.

Sam the Snowman named names at the North Pole’s House of Nonconformity Activities Committee

Treat Williams has one really good scene where he’s frustrated with the ranch that he associates with his departed wife and tells his niece and nephew that it’ll devour their dreams & hopes. Very stock scene but he delivers it with a little more intensity than you normally see in this stuff.

Other than that, perfectly cromulent. Wouldn’t guess the guy who made THE GATE directed this.

It’s fine.

Film finally clicks when Grande & Erivo start interacting (which feels like 30 minutes in? Ugh). Gets better as it goes along, though everyone who’s not Elphaba/Glinda or the Bridgerton dude gets very little time to do anything.

Sound feels muted (although that might have been the Regal I was at) and the outside scenes are lit like a Disney Channel Original.

Still, once it hits the Act 1 intermission… I mean, end, it works.

There is no auteurist case for Ric Sloane.

Mary Woronov is the best part of this and she visibly has nothing but contempt for this movie.

Not a good movie. Like someone attempting to graft a cheap PSYCHO knock-off onto a Christian school’s production of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, but with the least interesting elements of each winning out. 

However, the thing I like more and more about these MST3k regional horror excavations is how they serve as an anthropological document of each filmmaker’s region and era. Since this was shot in Huntington, WV with a mostly non-professional cast in people’s homes, schools and businesses, you get a fascinating look into what their lives looked like. This version of the 1960s still looks mostly like the 1950s, to the point it’s jarring when someone starts shouting out the names of current musical acts to plug the local band’s “hit”.

Anyway, glad to watch this with MST3K keeping things moving.

Four stars but it’s Longfellow’s girl with the curl… when it’s good, it’s very good, but when it’s bad…

Best numbers are probably Stravinsky’s dinosaur death march, the abstract Toccata, and Mussgorsky’s Satanic panic. Sorcerer’s Apprentice is overexposed, but it is well-animated and I forgot how dark it gets.

The other ones have their moments, but so frequently wallow in kitsch. The Precious Moments satyrs are particularly annoying.

Even granting the low-points, this is probably Disney’s most daring animated film, with maybe only WALL-E’s first half coming close.

Shoutout to Lugosi for modeling for Satan!

A talking head music documentary about jazz, so it does make you appreciate Ken Burns’ skills more in their absence.

But it does provide a fascinating look into a period when the U.S. was using jazz to promote its image under the supervision of the State Department and with the help of jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie & Dave Brubeck. The filmmakers and interview subjects do capture how the musicians, not just being pawns of Uncle Sam, had their own agenda in being involved, as well as making new cultural connections that showed up in their music.

If, ultimately, as a PBS documentary, it comes down a little hard on the nice liberal sentiment of “art can bring us together” side, it does give time to other viewpoints that complicate that. 

Would have liked a minute or two of why the guy they got to interview ended up suggesting that the program be wound down. He’s in your studio! Ask him!

Revisiting and the jokes hold up, the animation is punched up nicely (check out the bizarre facial expressions on “drunk” SpongeBob) and the soundtrack is insane! Ween, Wilco, Flaming Lips, Motörhead…

Insane that Nickelodeon animation jumped so far ahead, just four years after the horror of JIMMY NEUTRON.

“You can’t fool me! I listen to public radio!”

Probably the best representation of the impulses of the first Trump era, the belief that the consequences incurred by all of one’s poor choices are the fault of someone else & that ascending to a position of power will fix that.

Heidecker embodying the grotesqueness of America and grievance politics perfectly.

The only false note is that he doesn’t even make an impact. There needs to be a sequel about his next run.

Just a list of movies I've watched that are set at Christmas or have a scene at Christmas.

• White Christmas
• Die Hard
• Die Hard 2
• A Diva's Christmas Carol
• Black Christmas
• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
• Meet Me in St. Louis
• Elf
• Frosty the Snowman
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

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

Films where drug cartels are the villains.

• Miami Connection
• Clear and Present Danger
• Extreme Prejudice
• Lethal Weapon
• Bad Boys II
• No Safe Haven
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

What it says in the title. Every animated film that ends with a dance party. Feel free to recommend.

• Shrek
• Zootopia
• Trolls
• Sing
• Trolls World Tour
• Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
• Despicable Me
• Kung Fu Panda
• Kung Fu Panda 3
• Rio

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Captain Celluloid vs. the Film Pirates
• J-Men Forever

• The Bad and the Beautiful
• Cannibal Holocaust
• Mulholland Drive
• The Last Tycoon
• Bowfinger
• Beware of a Holy Whore
• Sunset Boulevard
• All About Eve
• Twentieth Century
• Effects

...plus 41 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies I've seen that are about stage performances (theatre, musical theatre, opera). This is not a list of filmed plays but films that are specifically about the actors, directors and performers who inhabit the stage.

• Henry V
• Topsy-Turvy
• Stage Fright
• All About Eve
• The Band Wagon
• White Christmas
• The Tales of Hoffmann
• The Phantom of the Opera
• The Phantom of the Opera
• The Red Shoes

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• A Nos Amours
• Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein
• The Abominable Dr. Phibes
• Abuse
• Adam's Rib
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
• The Adventures of Robin Hood
• Robinson Crusoe
• The Adventures of the Wilderness Family
• The African Queen

...plus 3181 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every movie I’ve watched from Gold Ninja Video

• A Sweet and Vicious Beauty
• Fifth City
• The Dragon Lives Again
• The Terror
• Creature from the Haunted Sea
• Crocodile Fury
• Ninja Terminator
• Bluebeard
• Strangler of the Swamp
• Matalo! (Kill Him)

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films whose plots are inspired by Dashiell Hammett's novel RED HARVEST (i.e. stranger plays two warring crime families against each other).

• A Fistful of Dollars
• Yojimbo
• Miller's Crossing
• Last Man Standing
• Cry of a Prostitute
• The Warrior and the Sorceress
• Sukiyaki Western Django
• Roadhouse Nights
• Django
• Omega Doom

• Rio
• Rio 2
• Moana

• Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas
• Local Legends
• Don't Let the Riverbeast Get You!
• Slingshot Cops

• Joe Versus the Volcano
• Good Burger

• The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
• The Death of Louis XIV
• A Little Chaos

• Performance
• The Witches
• The Masque of the Red Death

  As cinematographer

• Eureka

These are movies that I started watching but never finished, because they were overdue, because they were bad, because they were dull, because I had a visceral reaction to a cast member (*cough* Warren Beatty *cough*).

Some of them I might finish, someday. Others, I won't. Some of them come from directors whose other work I love.

• Dick Tracy
• Reds
• The Hellbenders
• Written on the Wind
• Halloween
• House of 1000 Corpses
• If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death
• Mary of Scotland
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Return of Frank James

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not a joke. This is the list of movies that were on Osama Bin Laden's computer apparently, according to the CIA. Source is here: twitter.com/jseldin/status/925766924117725187/photo/1

• Antz
• Cars
• Chicken Little
• Home on the Range
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
• Storm Rider: Clash Of The Evils
• Resident Evil
• The Three Musketeers
• Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?

Only for the 1930s through the 1950s.

• The Killer Is Loose
• The Big Combo
• Act of Violence
• The Big Heat
• Fury
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Big Sleep
• This Gun for Hire
• The Blue Dahlia
• The Phenix City Story

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Including spaghetti westerns and other foreign versions of Westerns (chop-suey, sukiyaki, etc.)

• The Long Riders
• My Darling Clementine
• Tombstone
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
• Rancho Notorious
• Django Unchained
• Sabata
• Duck, You Sucker
• God Forgives... I Don't!
• Death Rides a Horse

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

Zombie movies I've seen (whether voodoo, flesh-eaters, or something else)

• Zombies of Mora Tau
• Creature with the Atom Brain
• I Walked with a Zombie
• I Drink Your Blood
• The Plague of the Zombies
• 28 Days Later
• 28 Weeks Later
• Shaun of the Dead
• Braindead
• Versus

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

Films by directors whose very incompetence shows the auteur theory in action.

• The Room
• Birdemic: Shock and Terror
• Tell Your Children
• If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?
• Plan 9 from Outer Space
• The Beast of Yucca Flats
• Red Zone Cuba
• Monster a Go-Go!
• The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?
• The Wild World of Batwoman

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

Still to be seen, THE GHOST SHIP, ISLAND OF THE DEAD, & CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE

1. The Seventh Victim
2. Cat People
3. I Walked with a Zombie
4. The Body Snatcher
5. Bedlam

A list of traditional and non-traditional World War 2 films I've seen (i.e. World War 2 setting is sufficient, even if not an actual war film).

I will also include films that are set immediately pre-WW2 (i.e. Visconti's The Damned and Fosse's Cabaret)

• Salon Kitty
• Cross of Iron
• The Devil Strikes at Night
• The Damned
• Once Upon a Time

  Only film I've seen that is set in the Pacific Theatre (well, Japanese-occupied Korea). I don't know if it is that WWII films about Japan are often more racist or just interest me less.

• The Dirty Dozen
• Inglourious Basterds
• Cabaret
• 49th Parallel
• Escape in the Desert

  Did we ever really need a version of The Petrified Forest that involved Nazis instead of gangsters?

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

• Deadly Prey
• The Most Dangerous Game
• The Running Man
• Surviving the Game
• Bloodlust!
• Turkey Shoot
• Battle Royale
• The Hunger Games
• Deadliest Prey
• Predator

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies I have seen on the big screen at Cinefamily, Los Angeles' best repertory/art-house non-profit.

• White of the Eye
• The Innkeepers
• Black Death
• United Trash
• Topsy-Turvy
• Dogtooth
• Neighboring Sounds
• Allegro non troppo
• If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?
• No Safe Haven

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

Movies have long had a love-hate relationship with television. These films listed here all have major sequences or plot points related to the making of television shows.

• My Favorite Year
• Stay Tuned
• Dawn of the Dead
• The Howling
• Die Hard
• Die Hard 2
• To Die For
• White Christmas
• Natural Born Killers
• Nightmare City

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

Sam Neill improves everything.

• In the Mouth of Madness
• Children of the Revolution
• Jurassic Park
• Event Horizon
• Jurassic Park III
• The Horse Whisperer

Jennifer Jason Leigh films I've seen!

• eXistenZ
• The Anniversary Party
• Miami Blues
• The Hudsucker Proxy
• Margot at the Wedding
• Greenberg

Movies where Harry Dean Stanton only has one scene. Usually, he ends up having to ground something pretty ridiculous with his careworn features.

• Red Dawn
• The Last Stand
• The Avengers

Films where you can't trust the POV character's story, narration, or sense of perception. Doesn't matter if they are lying or just confused.

• Inside Man
• Brazil
• The King of Comedy
• Inception
• The Usual Suspects
• Memento
• Fight Club
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• Shutter Island
• Diabolique

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

Movies which involve a white guy shooting his problems away.

• Postal
• Taxi Driver
• Falling Down
• Rambo
• First Blood
• Commando

All the Hammer horror films I have seen (or horror-adjacent, in the case of CAPTAIN CLEGG).

• Paranoiac
• The Damned
• Captain Clegg
• The Curse of Frankenstein
• Taste the Blood of Dracula
• Countess Dracula
• The Vampire Lovers
• The Revenge of Frankenstein
• Frankenstein Created Woman
• Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

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

Reminds me I need to revisit SMALL SOLDIERS.

1. The Movie Orgy
2. The Screwfly Solution
3. Piranha
4. The Howling
5. Innerspace
6. Small Soldiers
7. The Second Civil War
8. Amazon Women on the Moon
9. Homecoming

Exclusively his directing credits. If I added his screenwriting credits, things would get crazy.

1. The Driver
2. The Warriors
3. Streets of Fire
4. The Long Riders
5. Extreme Prejudice
6. Last Man Standing
7. 48 Hrs.

1. The Man from Laramie
2. The Naked Spur
3. Man of the West
4. He Walked by Night
5. Reign of Terror
6. The Last Frontier

With more to be added as I watch

1. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
2. Stagecoach
3. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
4. My Darling Clementine
5. The Informer
6. The Horse Soldiers
7. Mary of Scotland

1. This Man Must Die
2. Nightcap
3. The Eye of Vichy
4. The Flower of Evil
5. Dr. M

By no means a complete ranking of Fulci, just what I've seen so far. Will update as I see more.

1. The Beyond
2. Zombie Flesh Eaters
3. The House by the Cemetery
4. The Conspiracy of Torture
5. City of the Living Dead
6. Four of the Apocalypse

RIP Jess Franco, one of the most idiosyncratic European exploitation film-makers ever.

• Two Undercover Angels
• The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus
• Female Vampire
• The Awful Dr. Orlof

Includes giallos and proto-slashers.

• April Fool's Day
• Slaughter High
• Halloween
• Halloween
• My Bloody Valentine
• The Prowler
• The Smiling Ghost
• The Leopard Man
• The Spiral Staircase
• Dressed to Kill

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• House of the Dead
• BloodRayne
• Alone in the Dark
• Postal

Indie horror auteur Lucky McKee's movies, ranked. I haven't seen his Masters of Horror yet, so I haven't included it.

1. May
2. The Woods
3. The Woman
4. Red

The 1980s-1990s cliche of "terrorists take over a BLANK and the good guy(s) have to stop them"

• Die Hard
• Die Hard 2
• Sudden Death
• Under Siege
• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
• The Rock
• Speed
• Con Air

Not including the screenplays Donald Westlake wrote but did not originate. Parker/Dortmunder films, mostly

• Point Blank
• The Outfit
• The Split
• Payback
• Parker
• Slayground
• The Hot Rock
• The Ax
• What's the Worst That Could Happen?
• Pillaged

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

• M
• Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
• The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
• The Big Heat
• Fury
• Rancho Notorious
• Hangmen Also Die!
• Metropolis

Films by independent American film director Phil Karlson

• The Phenix City Story
• Kansas City Confidential

Films by under-appreciated German emigre director Robert Siodmak that I've seen

• Son of Dracula
• The Devil Strikes at Night
• The Killers
• The Spiral Staircase