Day: November 23, 2025

I watched 9 movies last week:

The Life of Oharu
The Terror

Copyright HAG ©2009

 Omen
  • Roger Ebert called The Life of Oharu “the saddest film I have ever seen about the life of a woman.” And he isn’t wrong. The movie arguably lays that sadness on a little strong, visits a melodramatic amount of suffering on Kinuyo Tanaka’s Oharu, but as Ebert notes, it’s “all told as a sad memory of fate,” and is incredibly affecting because of that.
    • There is a sort of confused dreaminess to Roger Corman’s The Terror that isn’t uninteresting, but that’s probably just an artifact of its incredibly stitched-together production. It started out as a movie to be made in two days. It eventually took nine months and only feels like a movie made in a weekend.
      • Not everything about Omen works, much less works together, but it’s bold and exciting filmmaking telling stories I haven’t seen before.
      Little Woods History of the Occult The Woman in Cabin 10
      • Brian Tallerico argued that Little Woods “could have been a truly great movie” if only it “had trusted its two leading ladies just a little bit more.” It’s a strong enough debut film, but with performances that are even stronger.
        • I’d heard History of the Occult described as the movie that Late Night With the Devil was trying to be. I do think this earlier Argentinian version plays with the similar format in more interesting ways, and does a lot more than just get the period detail right, but I’m not sure it’s a better (or worse) movie because of it.
          • The Woman in Cabin 10 is a passable suspense thriller, at best. Keira Knightley is good, but she deserves a lot better, as does the audience.
          The Creeping Flesh Call Northside 777 Good Boy
          • The Creeping Flesh describes itself as “More frightening than Frankenstein! More dreaded than Dracula!” Which is, of course, not even close to being true. It’s an interesting, well-acted, but muddled and slightly cheap-looking horror diversion.
            • Call Northside 777 is surprisingly compelling for a movie that’s just Jimmy Stewart’s newspaper reporter following up leads on a cold case.
              • He is, it has to be said, a very Good Boy. Of course, the movie around him isn’t perfect. Its story and characters are thin, and it doesn’t resolve in anything like a satisfying way—though, spoiler warning, the thing you’re maybe worried about happening doesn’t happen—but it’s a clever and effectively scary experiment in perspective. And Indy the dog is, no lie, absolutely incredible.

              I also rewatched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which I think I liked a lot more on this second viewing. Of the six vignettes, I think my favorites are “The Gal Who Got Rattled” and “Meal Ticket,” but there’s a case to be made for all of them.