Month: September 2026

I watched just 5 movies last week:

• Theatre of Horrors: The Sordid Story of Paris’ Grand Guignol is interesting enough and reasonably informative.
• Dario Argento: Panico is an interesting beast. It doesn’t necessarily shy away from acknowledging that his later career hasn’t been quite as successful as his earlier films, but it doesn’t go quite so far as to really interrogate why that might be. For instance, aside from a brief clip from 2022’s Dark Glasses, I don’t think it talks at all about the (unfortunately often bad) films he’s made in the last couple decades. But it’s not an uncritical examination of the man and his career, and there are some interesting insights to be had along the way. (That said, there’s some question about how accurate the subtitles always are, and the streaming version I watched handled them very poorly.)
• In Search of Darkness could probably stand to be a little less comprehensive and impose some kind of structure or theme beyond “hey, didn’t they make a lot of horror movies in the 1980s?” Some of it’s fascinating and fantastic, especially when you’re hearing from the people actually involved in making these movies. But at four and a half hours, it’s very unfocused, and spends a little too much time talking about some films, or with some people, that I’d have gladly swapped out for more from Joe Dante, Barbara Crampton, or some others.
• All the Colors of Giallo is interesting, if a little dry, and less fun than actually watching some of these movies.
• Birth of the Living Dead is really just a DVD extra. It’s a really good DVD extra, but it does feel both a little too short and occasionally padded. More interesting, probably, would have been something like this, but expanding further into Romero’s career, or at least the later zombie films. Still, there’s a lot to really enjoy here, especially if you’re a fan of the original Night of the Living Dead.

I also rewatched For the Love of Spock, which I hadn’t remembered watching at first, but which is a lovely look back on the man’s career from the people who loved him. And I also rewatched Scars of Dracula, which is pretty bad. I don’t remember if it’s the worst of the Hammer Dracula movies, though I do remember not much liking the series until the semi-reboot that came after this one—and moreover, I didn’t much enjoy this re-viewing.

I watched 6 movies last week:

• I Love Boosters is wonderfully weird and biting and constantly and colorfully inventive.
• An unconvincing and dated melodrama, Madame X nonetheless offers an often very strong lead performance by Lana Turner.
• There were moments, even along the way, even when it was being a sly and well-observed comedy, when I was concerned that I wasn’t going to end up liking The Invite, when I was worried that comedy wasn’t going to be service of anything, or we were just going to watch these characters be awkward with one another. But as the movie went on, it took unexpected turns, revealed surprising depths, offered genuinely affecting performances, and I really liked it a lot by the end.

• Trapped sometimes feels like a weird mix of film noir and 1950s educational film, but it’s relatively short and leans more heavily (and more interestingly) towards the noir.
• The Christophers is a little slight—and there are moments, particularly close to the end, when it could probably stand to be a little less so—but stars Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel are good together, and there are moments of unexpected tenderness and humor between their characters.
• The Dr. Kildare movies are all a little hokey and dated, but, for me, that might be part of their charm. Dr. Kildare Goes Home is no exception, but it benefits enormously from having a single, simple story to follow and a couple of genuinely good jokes.

I also rewatched The Curse of Frankenstein, which is fun Hammer Horror, with a strong single-minded performance from Peter Cushing.

I also rewatched all three Guardians of the Galaxy movies, which are great fun, and probably still some of the best movies that the MCU has produced. James Gunn does rely on some of the same tricks, like unexpected needle drops to sell the emotion of a scene through music, but he’s very good at that. It was also a little weird watching the third one without any of the crossover stuff in mind. There are three years between the first two movies, but six between the last two, and a whole lot of plot shakes out in the Infinity War/Endgame movies, which I didn’t rewatch. (Though I did finally watch the Holiday Special, which came out the year before Vol. 3.) It’s not a weirdness that really affects the final movie, which remains a lovely end to Gunn’s short tenure at Marvel and to the little universe he created, but I’d have been completely lost if I’d only ever watched these and none of the rest of the MCU.

I watched just four movies last week, or maybe five, because Little Dorrit was originally released in two parts.

• Three Men in a Boat is charming, well cast, sometimes melancholy, and often delightful.
• At six hours, Little Dorrit is certainly long, but it’s full of such colorful characters and obvious love of the world Dickens has crafted.
• It’s not necessarily Agatha Christie’s best murder mystery—and there’s no good reason this adaption of it needs to be three hours long—but 1980’s Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is not without its considerable charms.
• Despite its problems, which are not inconsiderable, I largely enjoyed Supergirl, thanks largely to Milly Alcock in the title role. I give the movie credit for at least trying to give Supergirl a character arc, even if often doesn’t succeed, often looks washed out in a smudge of rushed CGI, and keeps playing its one trick of a fight scene set to an unexpected pop song too many times—until it completely stumbles over itself in the final fight. Woman of Tomorrow, while a phenomenal comic, is also perhaps an odd choice for the story they’re trying to tell here, in the context of the larger, now uncertain, DC movie universe. It’s not so much that the filmmakers make changes to that story—though, no offense to Jason Momoa, I’d have cut Lobo in his entirety from the movie—it’s that it’s not necessarily a story about Supergirl. That said, I enjoyed a lot about this Supergirl in spite of itself.

I also rewatched Carrie, which is really great—every inch an over-the-top Brian De Palma movie, but rooted in Sissy Spacek’s endearing performance. And then I rewatched the original Suspiria, which makes everything De Palma does look incredibly restrained by comparison. It’s delightfully ridiculous, such a masterful use of color and light and shadow, with such a bombastic but nevertheless perfect score. I think Deep Red is still my favorite Dario Argento movie, but this is without a doubt the quintessential Argento film and a weird delight.

I watched 6 movies last week:

• If you want to watch a purportedly groovy musical from the writer-director of The Quatermass Xperiment about dying aliens who kidnap Olivia Newton-John’s rock group to learn about vibrations or something, then Toomorrow has you covered. But it’s not a fun experience. As Kim Newman wrote in Offbeat: British Cinema’s Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Gems, “Toomorrow is inoffensive and has nothing to say, but remains a fascinating relic from that period when hopeless entertainment industry squares were trying to get hip and hook the affluent but disaffected youth audience.”
• Ashes and Diamonds is a stunning piece of work, so alive for a nearly 70-year-old black and white Polish film, and full of indelible images and performances.
• The fact that I find Dustin Hoffman’s Max Dembo so frustrating as a character in Straight Time is, I think, a large part of the point. I expected it take more to push him to the breaking point, but the fact that it doesn’t is maybe more important.

• Pillion is remarkably self-assured for a first-time feature, and surprisingly heartfelt, never inviting us to judge these characters even if we might not share their needs and desires.
• This Sporting Life is a remarkable film, one of the best examples of British kitchen sink realism, but oh man is it incredibly bleak.
• It’s difficult to look past the many offensive racist caricatures in The Mask of Fu Manchu, but if you can, you’ll find beneath that a desperately slow, often poorly staged and hokey melodrama, dated in lots of other ways, and only of passing interest because of the early (though not particularly good) performances by Karloff and Loy.

I also rewatched—and thoroughly loved—Sullivan’s Travels.