I watched 8 movies last week:
- Them! is maybe the quintessential 1950s sci-fi monster movie.
- The 1976 remake of King Kong billed itself as “the most exciting original motion picture event of all time,” which is really saying something—especially since most of that is decidedly not true. I don’t think the remake an embarrassment, and probably would have been less so before the special effects (and that final act at the Twin Towers) became so dated. But it’s also nothing all that special.
- Gene Siskel once said that he enjoyed Switchblade Sisters at first as a campy “cultural artifact” but thought it got old by its third act. I’d agree with the first part, but argue it gets old only a few minutes into its first.
- Kes is kind of a heartbreaking movie.
- The bad dubbing and over-the-top acting in Fist of Fury holds only so much charm for me, but the fights themselves are a lot of fun.
- The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is maybe a little too screwball a comedy at times, and can almost become exhausting, but it’s also very funny—and it’s fascinating the hoops it has to jump through, given its basic premise, to stay within the Hays Code.
- For reasons even I don’t understand, I’ve watched all of the Resident Evil movies, and the only thing I could tell you about them with any certainty is that they are very bad. So I didn’t have great expectations for the prequel/soft reboot, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, but oh boy, did I not expect it to be quite this bad. There are so many characters who wander aimlessly in and out, and not a single one of them is worth caring about, and this may actually be one of the worst structured movies I’ve ever seen. It’s apparently full of Easter eggs for anyone who’s played the video games—I never have, making my decision to watch the movies even more baffling—but it would almost have to, when it’s trying to cram two-plus games into a single hour-plus adaption. I really did not enjoy this.
- Mystery at the Wax Museum doesn’t have that big of a mystery, but it does have a wax museum, so I suppose that’s not false advertising. It’s not great, and I found Glenda Farrell’s performance a little grating, but the early Technicolor horror has its charms.
I also re-watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which really holds up.
