#37 Executive Action 1973

★★★½

Quite an amazing little JFK conspiracy movie, showing one version of the assorted conspiracy theory, filmed in a semi-documentary style, and cutting in actual news footage, with the script directly addressing the many inconsistencies surrounding the events around that day.

Quite a thrill, with some letdowns by some of the characters being poor actors (in particular the guy playing Jack Ruby), but if you can overlook this, fine entertainment.

29/37 first watches (78%)

Excuse me, diebitter. I can't but help notice your objectivity, not to mention an absolutely exquisite taste in fine cinema. Have you reviewed Elf by any chance? Yes, the one with Will Ferrell.

I don't remember reviewing it, but here's a mini review:

A fine addition to the Christmas roster of movies, with bags of charm and a decent number of laughs. The third act is a little weaker than the first two as the drama is a little contrived to feel organic, but it holds the interest throughout, and is perhaps Will Ferrell's best movie to date.

4/5

#38 The Tin Drum (The Director's Cut) 1979

★★★★★

My favourite German movie, this watch of the Director's Cut included material I'd never seen before, and integrated into the theatrical cut seamlessly.

A weird and wonderful movie, mixing the painfully realistic (dead horse's head wriggling with fat eels, a character being killed by a bomb) with the fantastic. Also, a fantastic central performance from David Bennant as Oskar, with well orchestrated direction and scripting to keep you in the dark with what might happen next.

A masterpiece.

30/38 first watches

#39 Gamera 2: Attack of the Legion 1996

★★★

A fun Kaiju, with a terrific new(ish) suit for Gamera that looked particularly badass. The nemesis in this, Legion, is part bug from Starship Troopers, part Alien Queen, and has some nifty powers. Indeed, Gamera seems to have acquired the ability to turn his front arms into wings, and fly about like a jet.

While the monsters were on and fighting, it was fun, but whenever the humans had plot to deliver, it was mostly completely pointless, illogical (I blame the dubbing not matching the story and plot properly) and boring.

31/39 first watches (79%)

#40 Network 1976 (first watch)

★★★½

Whilst a fine film, it has not aged as well as some. The subplot involving the relationship between Dunaway and Holden is tiresome in the extreme, and the message involving the communists getting a TV show and turning into crass capitalists is broad to say the least, but Finch as Howard Beale, and some of the scenes around him (in particular a brilliant scene involving Ned Beatty) remains terrific.

Where once it was prescient and telling, it now seems, in an age of sensationalist rolling news, to be merely quaint rage for the sake of it against the tide of "progress".

32/40 first watches (80%)

#41 Mamma Mia! 2008

★★★★

The more times I see this movie, the more it entertains me. It's the little things mostly. The big things I like about it are Abba's bulletproof songs, and Streep's performance (though I like all the older actors and actresses). But it's the little things...Brosnan's singing being so bad it's otherwordly, Julie Walters' scene stealing, Brosnan's hilarious proposal, and two touching songs...slipping through my fingers, and Winner Takes It All.

It's cheese, it's camp, it's poorly edited, but hell is it fun.

32/41 first watches (78%)

#42 The Mouse That Roared 1959 (first watch)

★★★½


Fun movie, would make a nice double bill with Dr Strangelove, with its Peter Sellers, and gentle poking of fun at international politics. Enjoyable.

33/42 first watches (>75%)

#43 Only Lovers Left Alive 2013 (first watch)

★★★★½

A fine piece of art, which makes up for a lack of narrative by giving us rich characters and themes. This has several themes, but the most obvious one is how art can sustain the spirit, when all else has gone. Hiddleston and Swinton are mesmeric and superb as the lovers who love down through the centuries, who are supported by both their memories (or nostalgia at least) and by what they do in the here and now.

Most intriguing is the back-story they hint at... for example all the vampires seem to be English, and they talk about past days when bodies floated in the Thames, yet they take pains to avoid even stopping over at London... Why?

Would definitely like to see more of this world. Clearly more Anne Rice than Twilight, thank goodness.

34/43 first watches (79%)

#44 Demolition Man 1993 ★★★½ (rewatch)

A very fun last gasp of the 80s-style action movie, with Snipes jokering it up, some very witty scripting and scene-setting, and fine action set-pieces. Sandra Bullock is also pitch-perfect delivering her unknowingly funny cultural clangers as she tries to come to grips with the book-knowledge of the 80s and 90s, and there's a lot of fun all round to be had (the Schwartzenegger library...).

Damn good fun (BEEEP 1 credit fine..)

34/44 first watches (77%)

Roadwork by Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

Roadwork is to be found most often among “The Bachman Books”, and is often overlooked compared to the other 3 books found in that collection - Rage, The Long Walk and The Running Man.

It shares some similarities to Rage - Rage is about teenage anger and frustrations, whilst Roadwork is about middle age anger and frustrations, and indeed the lead characters react in much the same way - instinctively pursuing self-destruction without fully realising why. Rage and Roadwork do feel like two sides of the same coin.

The main character in Roadwork, Barton Dawes, is ultimately a sad and tragic figure, broken by the bad things life has thrown at him, and he’s more than a little mad, and more than a little self-obsessed, and seems to have lost the ability to empathise with those around him - especially his wife.

I can see why this book isn’t much talked about. Both Rage and The Long Walk have a touch of genius in their words, and their themes are electric. I don’t think Roadwork has the same level of genius, and reading about the angst of a middle-aged man just doesn’t have the same level of romanticism or rawness, really. Barton often feels he’s just self-pitying and that can be tiresome.

However, having said that, there’s a deep character examination here of a middle-aged man self-destructing, and King again writes a page-turner. And this has an apt and chilling finish that feels correct, especially from the pen of King’s darker persona, Bachman.

And I was moved by a very brief section near the end where Barton tells the story of the day him and his wife left their little son (now dead) at nursery, and walked away whilst he wails, and how it broke him up, even though he continued to walk because his wife continued to walk. Any parent who takes a kid to nursery for the first time knows that particular feeling of feeling like a betrayer….

It reminded me very much of a much later King work actually -- 11/22/63 -- both in writing style and tone - an inevitable sadness and feeling of coming disaster.

Roadwork - Richard Bachman

Roadwork is to be found most often among “The Bachman Books”, and is often overlooked compared to the other 3 books found in it - Rage, The Long Walk and The Running Man.

It shares some similarities to Rage - Rage is about teenage anger and frustrations, whilst Roadwork is about middle age anger and frustrations, and indeed the lead characters react in much the same way - instinctively pursuing self-destruction without fully realising why.

The main character in Roadwork, Barton Dawes, is ultimately a sad and tragic figure, broken by the bad things life has thrown at him, and he’s more than a little mad, and more than a little self-obsessed, and seems to have lost the ability to empathise with those around him - especially his wife.

I can see why this book isn’t much talked about. Both Rage and The Long Walk have a touch of genius in their words, and their themes are electric. I don’t think Roadwork has the same level of genius, and reading about the angst of a middle-aged man just doesn’t have the same level of romanticism or rawness, really. Barton often feels he’s just self-pitying and that can be tiresome.

However, having said that, there’s a deep character examination here of a middle-aged man self-destructing, and King again writes a page-turner. And this has an apt and chilling finish that feels correct, especially from the pen of King’s darker persona, Bachman.

And I was moved by a very brief section near the end where Barton tells the story of the day him and his wife left their little son (now dead) at nursery, and walked away whilst he wails, and how it broke him up, even though he continued to walk because his wife continued to walk. Any parent who takes a kid to nursery for the first time knows that particular feeling of feeling like a betrayer….

I enjoyed it, but it’s not among his classics, and I won’t be reading it again.

45 Give Me a Sailor 1938 (first watch)

★★★

Fun, lightweight screwball comedy, with Martha Raye in the lead and being a fine comedienne, ably assisted by Bob Hope. Odd little story, but Raye and Hope keep it chugging along nicely.


What is bizarro is that there's a plot point about Raye's legs making her a fortune, and her sister in this movie is played by Betty Grable, who might just have the most famous legs of the era.

35/45 first watches (78%)

#46 Phantoms 1998 ★★ (first watch)

Poor scifi horror that borrows liberally (alien, the thing, a touch of the black goo from X-Files) and doesn't scare or entertain that much. However, some of the ideas were really intriguing - like how the monster took the thoughts of its victims and, in effect, believed its own hype.

If you thing the alien facehugger would be made more scary by adding giant butterfly wings, this is the movie for you.

36/46 first watches (78%)

#47 The King of Comedy 1982 ★★★½


In turns funny and deeply uncomfortable, this is in some ways the progenitor of uncomfortable comedy you often find in mockumentary type comedies like Spinal Tap and The Office, it's a lot of fun watching Rupert Pupkin slowly get himself deeper and deeper as he lets his fantasy life get outside of his own head.

Enjoyable but creepy, but the tensest scene was watching Sandra Bernhardt trying to get it on with a tied-up Jerry Langford - I was laughing and cringing at the same time.

36/47 first watches (77%)

#48 The Guest 2014

★★★★

Rock solid action thriller taking a lot of cues, especially music, from 80s tech-noir, whilst still being bang up to date. Very enjoyable, with Dan Stevens as a great lead/protagonist/antagonist.

#49 Gamera: Revenge of Iris 1999 (first watch)

★★★½

This was a lot of fun. Outside of the monster stuff, the dubbing was pretty good, and there was some entertaining characters (one black-clad gothy scientist guy who was channelling Jack Nicholson/Vincent Price was particular amusing, if ridiculous), and the music/sound design was cool. The monster stuff did have an epic feel (shaking cameras when Gamera roared and stomped and the camera was a close-up), and despite some dodgy CGI, it entertained. I also liked the Iris design. It's kind of funny it ends presaging the next movie...which didn't happen.

38/49 first watches (77%)

#50 The Inbetweeners 2 2014 (first watch)

★★★½

fun, crude comedy, and actually a more filmic installment than the previous movie. I laughed out loud several times during the movie, because it had both laughs and disgusting scenes that were too gross not to laugh.

Very enjoyable.

39/50 first watches (78%)

#51 House of 1000 Corpses 2003

★★★★

I thought this was rather enjoyable, borrowing liberally both from the old 'weird family in a weird place' trope that probably started with The Old Dark House, made its way through Spider Baby, and then on to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, and from movies that explore all sorts of media to disorient and confuse (like Natural Born Killers). I enjoyed it way more than I thought I was going to, it felt fresh and exciting in some respects.

40/51 first watches (78%)

I actually never got much further than the Bachman Books when it came to Stephen King. I thought of those 4 - The Long Walk was the most memorable.

Indeed it was, an excellent piece of writing.

To Kill A Mockingbird - by Harper Lee

Not much to say really, a beautiful piece of writing giving us an insight into a rich and authentic world that's haunting and lovely. A privilege to read.

When I have to deal with people now, I will do my best to always consider 'how would Atticus Finch handle this?'

#52 The Old Dark House 1932 (first watch)

★★★★

Hahaha oh wow, I've been meaning to see this movie for decades, and finally caved and bought it.

It was goofy as hell, with nutty dialogue and situations, but a lot of fun. It, like movies such as Night of the Living Dead, or The Mummy 1932 is the granddaddy of its own genre - the weird family in a weird house. It spawned softer version of itself for the next decade (Cat and the Canary for example) and parodies (the best being The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case, but also Arsenic and Old Lace), and then went on to influence more extreme versions of itself (Spider Baby, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, House of 1000 Corpses), and it's a genre still going strong (for example, the recent We Are What We Are and What We Do In The Shadows)

Fun, but nuttier than squirrel ****.

41/52 first watches (79%)

#53 The Devil’s Rejects 2005 (first watch)

★★★½

Whilst I preferred the movie before this one, this was fun, if you're not adverse to ultraviolence. There were a few scenes that were a little grim, but mostly it was fun watching these hillbillies raing hell. Also, Rob Zombie does have some talent in framing, cutting, and in sound/music design, so that gave it some extra enjoyment.

42/53 first watches (79%)

#54 Dredd 2012

★★★★★

This was fantastic. Watched it in 3D on my newish TV, and it blew me away again, like it always does.

I think this is probably my favourite movie of the last 20+ years.


42/54 first watches (78%)

#55 Gilda 1946 (first watch)

★★★★

classic and classy noir/erotic thriller, with a great turn by the two leads, Glen Ford and Rita Hayworth. Her 'put the blame on Mame' is one for the ages.

I didn't quite understand some of the character motivations to be honest, and it bothered me through much of the running time, but in the end, it really didn't matter. This is more about style and mood than logicality.

43/55 first watches (78%)