Amy
10 March 2019: The Hole in the Ground
Amy
2 March 2019: Appropriate Behavior
Amy
1 March 2019: Greta
Amy
27 February 2019: Piercing
Amy
25 February 2019: The Tenant

1 December 2018: Possum

I've got a feeling I'm going to like this one more & more as I sit with it, & hopefully find time to watch it again before the end of the year. It's quite Lynchian, & as such, contains some incredibly disturbing imagery & effectively unsettling sound design. And "Possum" itself? Jesus. H. Christ. If you can find a scarier monster this year than that thing, I'm not sure I'd want to know about it.

23 November 2018: Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald

Just like the last one, I went in not expecting much & left pleasantly surprised. Johnny Depp does a fine job here, to my absolute amazement. So does Jude Law. Eddie Redmayne’s super-shy shtick is wearing thin by a second movie, but luckily Jacob & Queenie are back to add some personality to the mix. Speaking of Queenie, I adored her storyline, & not just because it meant she was on screen longer (but thanks for that 😍). The most interesting aspect of the wizarding world to me has always been the political side of things, & this movie asks a lot of the questions I like to think about in terms of the magical vs non-magical people. Grindelwald is much the same as Magneto here, in that I can absolutely see why wizards would be attracted to his ideology. 

On the minus side, what was the point of Nagini at all if you weren’t going to let her do anything? And when will they stop wasting Ezra Miller’s talents & let him do something other than slouch & look downtrodden? Otherwise, good show, Jo.

10 November 2018: Halloween III

I watched bits & pieces on cable as a kid, but this is the first time I’ve seen it straight through. I just love the idea of people excitedly going to the theater for a new installment of Halloween & getting this. What a fun trick to pull. It’s probably not a coincidence that the bad guy in the movie loves playing pranks. 


Also, I really think John Carpenter’s strongest skill is as a composer. His score here adds so much tension to what is essentially a very silly story.

9 November 2018: Don't Leave Home

The premise is original, I’ll give it that. A decent little mystery, though the logic gets pretty iffy towards the end. There are some nice, creepy dream sequences, & the performance by the supporting female character was very effective. Pretty light on the scares overall, but I’ll take that over people in ghost makeup jumping at the camera any day.

5 November 2018: Suspiria

I was way too hard on it when I originally watched, probably because the thinness of the plot bothered me. Since then I’ve watched several more Argento films & they just served to confirm that I wasn’t a fan. Now that I’m older & wiser, & less a slave to the screenplay above all things, I appreciate how gorgeous it is. And while I’ve always loved Goblin, I tend to feel like their scores distract rather than enhance Argento’s films. Suspiria is the exception. I still don’t think it’s a perfect film, but it is undeniably beautiful, & ought to be experienced (or re-experienced) by every cinema aesthete.

4 November 2018: Suspiria

This is the kind of remake I want to see. What’s the point of slavishly rehashing a movie when we can still watch the original? It’s the same with cover songs - I want the cover artist to make the song their own. Isn’t the combination of an existing work of art & a new interpretation far more interesting? 


The only thing I didn’t enjoy about this remake is the score. Honestly, I think Johnny Greenwood would’ve done a way better job than Thom Yorke. The score may have gone better with the dreary color palate, but it had absolutely no oomph, even after Guadagnino starts to saturate the screen with lurid colors. His collaboration with Sufjan worked very well in CMBYM. This time, not so much.

28 October 2018: Halloween

The story was a little half-baked, & some of the dialogue got a teensy bit cornball, but those are my only qualms. It was fun & exciting, Jamie Lee was wonderful, & I always love seeing Judy Greer. I’d been worried about Danny McBride’s influence, but the few funny moments worked just fine. The wheel wasn’t reinvented, but I don’t think anybody wanted it to be. This shouldn’t give slasher fans any reason to complain.

15 October 2018: Hold the Dark

Not at all the movie I’d expected it to be. I was bracing myself for some kind of man v. nature adventure, but instead I got a crime thriller in the style of No Country for Old Men but much bleaker. Nice performance by Riley Keough & very effective action sequences, but the pacing is messy & the metaphysical stuff is half-baked. Seems Saulnier is better when he writes his own screenplays.

28 September 2018: Lizzie

Effectively turns the nursery rhyme character into a relatable human being. Unfortunately, most of the other people in her life, especially the antagonist, are caricatures. I felt for Lizzie. God, who wouldn’t? Us women were property back then at best, & if you’re queer?! Forget it. Her plight is heartbreaking enough. We don’t need her father to be the absolute worst person alive for this all to work. That aspect was way overblown. I spent the bulk of the movie screaming MURDER THAT SONOFABITCH ALREADY in my head. 

Also, I’m not so sure about the order events were presented in. Did the nonlinear structure benefit the movie? As of now I’m leaning towards no.

26 September 2018: The Devil's Doorway

Decent found footage possession flick set in a terrifying place - the Irish Magdalene laundries. There’s allllmost too many ghosts in white face paint jumping at the camera, but it’s made well enough for me to overlook them. 

If the Magdalene laundries are a new thing to you, & you want to learn more about them, check out the film The Magdalene Sisters. Talk about horrifying.