129 The Haunting

4/5



Lovely, atmospheric, tense, watchable. Not scary, but mesmeric.

It adheres very closely in both story and tone to the Shirley Jackson book it's based on, even using parts of the beautifully written opening and closing paragraphs of that book in voiceover at the beginning and end.

Beautiful horror.

130 The Hunchback of Notre Dame

3.5/5



Disney did a rather fine job compressing the complexities of Hugo's work into a simple narrative, and it worked quite well. The music and themes are strikingly sophisticated for Disney, and I do believe the rather dark 2nd act, whilst having some very fine music and animation, was probably a section a lot of kids would be getting bored and antsy. There was one section in particular where Claude Frollo was singing about Esmarelda that was particularly dark/scary/hellish, and was more like a Fantasia sequence than a more traditional Disney sequence.

Enjoyable.

131 Mulan

3.5/5



Rather good Disney that is different in many ways from other Disney fare. This is an out and out action movie, and a rather fine one, with some solid set pieces, well balanced comedy from Eddie Murphy, and a rather well-crafted, simple story. A fine movie.

And the only Disney princess with a body count, I think.

132 Tarzan

4/5



Excellent and well put-together adventure movie from Disney, with some great action sequences (the 2 jaguar attacks, the baboon chase, the end fight) and bland but not terrible songs as background, I really, really enjoy this one. A great Tarzan movie too, though the comedy elephant did feel a little George of the Jungle.

imo, the best Disney since Aladdin at this point.

133 Stridulum aka The Visitory

3.5/5



Completely bananas movie with an impressive cast (John Huston! Shelley Winters! Glen Ford! Franco Nero as Jesus Christ!) and with a young Lance Henrikson, this is a nutty cross between The Omen and the theatrical cut of Highlander 2, with elements of The Boys From Brazil and The Exorcist 2 thrown in.

Enjoyable, but don't expect any sense.

134 Pygmalion

4.5/5



Terrific movie based on the play by George Bernard Shaw (and later adapted into the musical My Fair Lady), with funny, sad, angry scenes all mixed up together, and a great performance by Wendy Hiller as the brave, put-upon Eliza. I can't decide if she's uncannily beautiful or odd-looking...

Leslie Howard also puts in a 100% exhilarating performance as the brash, bullying Henry Higgins, and the bit players are also pretty good, especially the guy playing Eliza's father. He's hilariously low-class in all respects.

135 Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

3.5/5



Reasonably funny and diverting comedy from the cringe-tastic Alan Partridge, that works well if you watch it in 2 or 3 servings, rather than one sitting - Partridge is definitely a characters that works better in several small doses than one big pigout.

Does this work overseas though? I think it's a very British offering.

136 Fantasia 2000

4/5



Rather fine movie using some of the ideas of the original Fantasia with a little pepping up between sequences by assorted celebrities, but the really fine stuff are the animated sequences. None of them are particularly weak, and the inclusion of the Sorcerer's Apprentice was perhaps unnecessary, but particular visual treats were the Gershwin sequence and the wood-nymph sequence, and the Noah's Ark sequence also had some great animation and visual gags.

I just wish it was longer.

137 Filth

4/5



Wow, a real tour-de-force with McAvoy as a complete *******, who we get to see as a tortured, lonely man in this Scottish comedy version of Bad Lieutenant. This film is funny, repulsive, tragic in turns, and it did feel like a Trainspotting-lite in the first 20 minutes, but then quickly shed that feel and became its own thing.

I'm not entirely sure it's a great movie, though it had many, many memorable scenes, and I'm sure I'll remember it for years to come, but it's a very, very good movie.

Oh and a spectacular and glorious cameo from David Soul too.

138 Dinosaur

2.5/5



A really nice opening, but this has not aged that well. Some of the shots and CGI is really good (the opening scenes are the best in the film), but others look like the rough cuts and outtakes you see in documentaries about more modern films and their roughcut CGI.

In addition, the story and characters just aren't that engaging or exciting, though the fights with the carnotaurs are pretty good still.

I think I remember seeing Bad Lieutenant...that was Harvey Keitel wasn't it?

Yes. He was in the original one. That's the one I was referring to. Nick Cage did another film prefixed by that title too.

139 Onibaba

4.5/5



An amazing exploration of sensuality, war, death and sex with a lot of heavy symbolism - a big dark hole down which men disappear forever; a large white tree that a woman wraps herself around in a massive fit of sexual frustration; long grass whispering and hiding all sorts of amoral behaviour; becoming something other than human when you only live to indulge the senses.

This film joins my small list of movies that I believe are actually film versions of primal nightmares. The other films in the list are Repulsion (the ultimate single woman's nightmare); Rosemary's Baby ( the ultimate married woman's nightmare); and Deliverance (the ultimate men being afraid of other men nightmare). This I think is the ultimate 'woman as death' nightmare, where the women both figuratively and in one case literally feed on their victims.

The sound design of the hissing grass, the bombastic music at tense or dramatic times, and that dark, dark hole (Ringu was surely referencing this movie), and the thoroughly amoral tone (sweating, naked bodies, constant whispering grass) about war as a way to live, profiting only by death and looting the dead.

Loved this movie, will be watching again and again over the years. It might even be a 5/5, I need to think about it some more.

140 Atlantis: The Lost Empire

3/5



I really found it hard to get into this movie. I wasn't sure who it was aimed at (this was definitely not a good movie for little kids and they would have been bored and antsy by about half-way through), and I didn't find any of the characters particularly engaging until near the end of the second act. It seemed too adult for any intended audience, and the audience it was probably most suitable for wouldn't be watching a "Disney" movie...

However, it did pick up significantly in the third act, so wasn't a total loss. I found the animation/CGI interesting, and it seemed to be a mix of styles including anime, studio Gibli (one character's drawn style could have come from, say, Porco Rosso), Tartakovsky and some others, and was the most undisney of Disney movies, apart from some of the twee character interactions.

141 We Need To Talk About Kevin

4/5



What would it be like to have to raise a kid who is a psychopath? To live among people who vilified you for the actions of your child? To blame yourself, and be in fear that people will confront you with your fears every minute of the day?

It's a very difficult subject, and front and centre to this movie. Very well acted, directed and written, it has a central coldness in tone that is probably unavoidable, but isn't helped by the nonlinear nature of the presentation. I felt more at ease with this difficult subject when the narrative stayed linear, but even then it was disconcerting.

A fine movie, one that would make a good double bill with Stoker, but by no means an easy watch.

142 The Emperor's New Groove

4.5/5



BOOM, BABY!

An excellent Disney animated feature, this time going for the out and out comedy, and completely succeeding, and definitely funnier than the vast majority of comedies.

Hilarious characters and situations (I do love Kronk and his own theme tune, and his angel and devil moments), and even with all this, it has a lot (and I mean A LOT) of heart.

This just gets better and better with each watch.

143 Lilo and Stitch

4/5



Another really great kids' movie from Disney, with some excellent universe-building to give the story context, but some wonderful stuff on earth too. All the main characters are three dimensional, but best of all is Stitch, who isn't quite the usual cuddly Disney creature. He can be downright scary when ,the lights are out and he's looking at you in that disconcertingly direct way, where you can't tell if he's not thinking at all, sizing you up, or wondering what you taste like.

Some great music too backing up the action, very, very enjoyable.

144 We Are What We Are (2010)

3/5



An everyday story of a dysfunctional family who happen to be ritualistic cannibals...

The film has all the elements to work and be great, with nice camerawork, acting and tension, but it's lack of proper setup or explanation, even through indirect dialogue gets frustrating in the end, and ultimately you really don't care about these people. It felt like it could have been so much better if the script had had a little more work.

145. Miami Vice: Brother's Keeper (the pilot

4.5/5



Well, as I watched the first half, I couldn't help thinking 'this really isn't as good as I remember it'. Then we saw Sonny Crockett lived on a yacht. With an alligator called Elvis. Then we saw a judge with a pump action shotgun, a clerk with a magnum, Sonny getting it on with a work colleague, and a bad guy in a dress.

So 80s, it hurts, in a good way.

I rate it Awesome++

Did you Manns "Thief" on criterion as yet?

Its a treat.

146 Carrie (1976)

4/5



Basic and crudely-drawn in places, this is nevertheless raw and powerful stuff, raised immeasurably by the performances of Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. The rest of the acting talent, excepting Travolta, is at best average.

It's like an edited highlights version from the novel, with actually not that much changed up to the blood/prom incident, and Spacek is terrific in the speechless avenging angel role, covered in blood and raining hell down on the tormentors.

After the prom incident, things are different from the source, but some of it is fine, I understand movies need to keep up a narrative drive that isn't so pressing with books, but some of the changes are ridiculous - in particular what happens to the White's house at the end.


Some of the parts that bothered me...I was quite shocked how much some of the sound cues were direct lifts from Psycho. I was also a little uncomfortable with the soft-focus, lingering on what was meant to be high-school girls showering naked (though the fact they were clearly in their twenties meant it wasn't THAT uncomfortable).

Overall, powerful and raw horror, made so much better by a few key performances.

No, I really need to see that.

147 Carrie 2002

1.5/5



Very poor version with very little to recommend it. The best things by far are two performances, that of Carrie, and her mother. In addition, it's actually nice to see high-school kids played by more age-appropriate actors, however....

It looks massively cheap. The version I saw looked like faded video, and I have no reason to believe it was done on film. The main nastiness has been mostly homogenised into TV-movie bland, and apart from some decent practical effects in some scenes, the special effects are quite poor. There's a scene early on where stones are raining down on a house, which more like a mini-version of Armaggedon. Sheesh. The main bad-guys, Chris and her boyfriend Billy Nolan aren't effective, and it just feels bland bland bland.

148 Carrie 2013

3.5/5



Not as bad as some say, and suffers from the same strengths and weaknesses as its previous versions - they've cast well for Carrie and her mother, but the rest of the characters just aren't effective or striking enough to really amp up the drama. I will say they also cast Miss Disjardin quite well in this one though.

I have no problem with this story as a remake - I think it's actually a good, simple and raw story that suits being remade or reworked every generation or so - but I do hope that next time they actually cast and write the secondary characters better.

Moore's version of Mrs White was interesting, she wasn't as strident as either the book or the previous movies, but she was slightly more insane - the self-harming was probably the only genuinely gruesome element to the movie.

Finally, this was supposed to be closer to the source than De Palma's first take...come on, it was clearly an update of that movie, and not the source material. Who are they trying to kid?

149 Masque of the Red Death

4.5/5



I saw this before as a teenager, and thought it was deliberately overwrought and contrived just to fill the running time, and I had that general opinion of Corman's Poe cycle.

However, I watched The Haunted Palace for the first time not too long ago, and thought it was wonderful, and thought maybe it was time to give the whole Corman/Price cycle another chance.

Watching it again, I realised I was totally wrong. It is weird, vivid, a mashup of pulp and existential horror that's works superbly, and apart from Witchfinder General, I think this might be Price's best performance as the black-hearted Prospero.

I loved the garish colours and the very fine set design and rather good costuming, and I particularly liked the Red Death and his brethren.

A fine film, and a classic of horror.