31 - Logan's Run

    1976 sci-fi involving a future where no one is allowed to age past 30.  Logan is a "sandman" who kills those who try to escape.  Then he's tasked with finding a place where the runners go, so he becomes a runner himself.

    This was pretty successful when it came out, and I've seen several references to it.  But man, it's really kind of a disappointment.  The first half is pretty decent, but the second half gets silly.  There's a strange robot called Box, that seems to have just been hanging around freezing anyone it runs into.

30 - Groundhog Day

    Every time I see this, I always resist it a little at first, because of some of the more cutesy aspects of it.  But as I watch it, it's hard to feel like there's anything wrong with it.  The biggest problem with it is the way that it changes tone as much as it does.  Around the hour point, it moves into his string of suicide attempts, and that always feels a little too dark.

29 - Land of the Dead

    Romero's fourth living dead movie.  I watched this in the theater, and I don't know if I ever watched it completely a second time.  This was actually better than I remember.  The biggest problem that it had was that it felt too unfocused.  This time, that's still a problem, but not in the way I remembered.  This time, the problem is that I'm not sure what the message is that Romero is trying to get across.  There far too many "we're them, and they're us" lines, but I don't think that was the point.

    This time through, it was much easier to follow everything, and most of the story seemed very straightforward.

28 - Psych: 9

    A lady takes a night shift job that involves cleaning up filing after a hospital has closed.  Her job is set against her desire to have a baby, and a series of local murders.

    My opinion of this movie kept changing as I was watching it.  Sometimes I liked how unpredictable it felt, since the script did a good job of hinting in many directions without giving any concrete answers.  This approach worked pretty well for certain stretches, but I ultimately felt a little cheated by the ending.  When the supernatural is applied to a story, anything can happen, but here they actually used a supernatural explanation where it wasn't needed, and that brought the effectiveness down.  Plus, the last scene was really puzzling.

    And I really, really don't think the couple should even consider having a baby.  They can't get along, and they're constantly yelling at each other.

27 - Fanboys

    Four fanboys take a road trip to sneak into Skywalker Ranch to watch Episode 1 six months before release.  One of the guys is dying of cancer.

    It's a fun movie.  There's a lot of fanboy love in the project, and they got a whole lot of noteworthy people to appear.  I have some reservations about the use of Trekkies (or Trekkers as they're called in this) as an "enemy" for the main characters, but there was a certain charm to it all.  Sort of like a long episode of Big Bang Theory.

26 - XII (also known as Twelve)

    Moderately well done horror movie about members of a jury being hunted down by someone (the person they convicted?  It's not very clear.)

    The characters are broadly annoying and amateurish.  The photography is kind of nice.  The opening death was good.  And the last ten minutes or so is pretty good.  Otherwise, the movie could have been trimmed by about 15-20 minutes with no ill effects.

    There was something wrong about the main character.  I have no idea exactly what it is, but she doesn't have any sort of edge to her.  She seems wishy-washy.

25 - Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

    I've been looking forward to seeing this, but I needed to rent the DVD - there's enough whispered dialogue that I needed to have subtitles available.  It's an interesting movie.  It looks spectacular, the sets are fantastic.  The basement looks incredible.

    The plot has a young girl inadvertently setting a bunch of little goblin creatures free from captivity in a furnace under the basement.  It's a remake of a fairly well known made-for-tv movie from 1973.

    It probably would have been more effective in a theater.  There was one thing that I really didn't like.  The girl takes lots of pictures of the creatures.  One of the creatures has an arm severed.  Neither of these things are pointed out in an effort to convince the adults.  The ending of the movie seemed really dark, surprisingly brutal for the measured tone that the rest of it takes.

    And Guillermo del Toro's influence was really sort of pervasive.  I'd rather that he left some of his influence off it.  I'd rather that it maintained the other atmosphere, which reminded me of Coraline.

24 - Starship Troopers

    Seeing it now, it seems a bit more episodic than I remember.  It keeps on tacking on another section, instead of having a more unified, coherent plot.  To be fair, it's still a lot of fun.  The transfer for Blu-ray is really bad though.  There are many shots, especially later in the movie, that come across with way too much grain.

23 - X-Men: First Class

    The picture is less washed out than it was in the theater, but it does use an old-fashioned palette.  This time, it came across a little more heavy-handed than I'd like.  I still like it, but it felt like they tried to cram just a little too much into it.  I think they should have cut Emma Frost from it.  And besides the strangeness of having a different character called Angel, there's something about her appearance that really doesn't fit into the time period.  She should have been called Dragonfly.

22 - Splinter

    Horror movie about a parasite that infects humans and animals, and manifests itself with a bunch of black spikes, which come off in splinters to infect new hosts.

    A couple is carjacked in the woods by another couple.  They take the overheated car to a gas station, where the attendant was infected.  From there, it turns into a "survive the night" standoff.

    And it's really good.  For a modern horror movie, they did a very good job.  The characters are well drawn, and they didn't opt for the Night of the Living Dead "everyone dies" ending.  There's a genuine sense of tension through most of the movie.  What also pleases me is how well the budget was handled.  They skimped in the places that were appropriate - the credits look a little cheap.  The cast is pretty limited.  It's mostly a one-set movie.  In order to make their effects look more effective, the camera jumps around a lot whenever effects are in play.  While that's a little annoying, it seems like an easy way of preserving the budget.

21 - Reign of Fire

    I've come back to this movie a few times, and this might be the first time I've really recognized the flaws with it.  It's still a lot of fun, but it could have been a very good movie.

    In a future (2020) where dragons have been woken up, and have wiped out a lot of civilization, Christian Bale runs a refuge in a castle, where they try to survive.  Matthew McConaughey shows up as a military guy who wants to kill off dragons.

    The premise is fun.  The photography and direction is really good.  The effects are a little dated, but that's to be expected for a movie from 2002.  At least they aren't especially bad.  What hurts the movie is the script.  There's an extra polish of silly drama on top of most of it.  McConaughey tries way too hard to be intense, and Bale tries to match it.  Their performances wouldn't be bad at all, except that the script has that extra sheen on it.

    I find the ending of the movie a bit problematic.  The last act feels anti-climactic, and would have played better if they had explored the angle of finding the dragon egg rather than abandoning it.

20 - Dead Cert

    Peculiar English production.  The accents were thick enough, combined with some weak sound mixing, making it kind of hard to figure out dialogue.  A group of London mobsters have opened their club.  Some Romanian gangsters show up and try to buy it from them.  The short version is that the Romanians are vampires.  The movie turns into a tackier version of From Dusk Till Dawn.  There were some good scenes in this, or at least enjoyable ones.  Most of it was pretty dull though.

19 - The Bourne Identity

    A comfort to return to.

18 - Scream Bloody Murder

    An early slasher movie, from 1973.  It's presented in a 4:3, which is a little unusual.  There are a few noteworthy things about this.

    First, it moves incredibly fast.  Second, there's no sense of what is going to happen.  There's no exposition given, and it usually takes a little bit to figure out what's happening.

    Matthew, as a child, kills his father by driving a tractor over him.  Then he manages to jump off the tractor, and mangles his arm under it.  Matthew is put into some sort of institution, and his hand is replaced with a hook.

    The hook itself doesn't really make sense.  None of the characters mention it, and it isn't even used as a murder weapon most of the time.

    There was an edit early in the movie that I really liked.  One shot was pushed out of frame by a new shot coming in.

    There's also some trippy stuff.  Matthew tends to hallucinate that people are his mother, with some strange, ghoulish makeup.

    There's one thing that's been bugging me.  It isn't clear if anyone knows that he killed his father.  I assume that no one else knows, since his mother doesn't seem to care.

    The movie, despite being low budget, and having some silly dialogue, has some really creepy sequences.  Many of the scenes between Matthew and a victim are unbroken, and we have the awkward pacing, and some of the struggling comes uninterrupted with dialogue.  These sequences come across much more effective than most modern horror.  There's a scene where he's got a girl tied up in a chair, and he's feeding her dinner as he's eating.  She says she doesn't want more, but he wants her to finish all her food.  He casually tosses the line out "Eat, or I'll cut your tongue out of your mouth."  He sounds a little nervous, a little timid, but it comes across very believable.

17 - Chromeskull: Laid To Rest 2

    A sequel to Laid To Rest, which was a surprisingly memorable slasher.  I didn't think much of it when I first saw it, but the premise stuck with me better than most slashers do.

    The gimmick to this one is that the killer tapes all of his killings by a shoulder-mounted camera, and he wears a chrome-plated skull mask.

    There's more gore in this one, and a lot of it shows up very early, showing some reconstructive surgery on Chromeskull when things pick up at the end of the first movie.  While there isn't much in the way of a distinct plot going on, there is a lot of exposition given about Chromeskull.  It seems that he has an organization, which either he's leading, or it's existing to back him.

    The backstory seems more compelling than the actual horror.

    And this movie features a ludicrously inept police department.

16 - The House That Dripped Blood

    The last of these Amicus horror anthologies.  This one was my favorite of them.  The first one involved a writer dealing with one of his creations coming to life.  The second has a figure in a wax museum that a guy gets fixated on.  The third has a young girl with an oppressive father.  And the last one has a horror actor discovering a cloak that turns him into a vampire.

    The stories were generally interesting, paced well, and had some nice tension to them.  I didn't feel like I was waiting for them to give away the ending.

    These anthologies are enjoyable, and it's hard to explain why.  They aren't especially scary, they don't feature fantastic scripts or acting, and they're pretty dated.  But I think I like seeing them because they were cheap productions that squeezed all they could out of the budget.  The sets are really good.  They exhibit some clever effects work for the time period.  They don't come across as self-important or even trying too hard.  They feel like horror made by people who really enjoyed watching an unserious horror production.

    Also note - despite the title, there is NO blood in this movie.

15 - Private Resort

    The box for this movie is memorable - a shot of a bunch of women sunbathing.

    I've gotten halfway through this movie, and I feel the need to take some notes before I forget any of this.  There isn't much plot - two guys hang around at a private resort, watching girls.  One guy seems to be into a waitress, the other seems to be into some rich girl (I think).  There are all sorts of wacky hijinks.  None of it is too funny.

    But the movie is noteworthy because it has a young Johnny Depp in it.  And his character is surprisingly dislikable.  At one point, he gives his friend quaaludes in an aspirin bottle, so that his friend can give one to a girl.  It isn't very explicit, but it's implied that he's encouraging the idea of drugging her.

    For a movie that's nearly wall-to-wall girls in bikinis, with most shots centered right below the neck, and cut right above the thigh, it's remarkably un-erotic.  Most of the girls look roughly the same.

    Now that I've finished it, things get a little more fun toward the end.  It's a little annoying that they resorted to a karate-fighting grandma.  There's also a minimal character that is obviously trying to rip off Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times.  That's more of an annoyance.

14 - Tales That Witness Madness

    Another Amicus horror anthology.  I think I liked this one more than the other ones.  The first story involves a boy with an imaginary friend tiger.  The second has a guy riding an old-timey bike in the presence of a portrait of an old guy, which leads to the guy being transported back in time.  It's really strange, and didn't seem to make clear sense.

    The third story is probably my favorite of them.  A guy brings a chunk of a tree into the house as decoration, and the tree doesn't seem to get along with his wife (who was played by Joan Collins).  The last story involves a guy going through a voodoo (?) ritual that involves killing a virgin and serving her flesh to an unknowing luau party.

    Logically, the last story should be the strongest one, but it felt a little dull.

    According to wiki, this is not an Amicus production, it's just very similar because of the format, and since Donald Pleasence is in it.

13 - Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

    This silly name is actually an older Amicus production.  A horror anthology from 1965, it's very tame by modern standards.  No nudity, a minimum of blood.  A small amount of off-screen violence.

There are a few things that are noteworthy.  The cast includes Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Donald Sutherland, as well as Michael Gough, the guy who played Alfred in the Tim Burton Batman movies.  The stories vary in quality.  I lean toward the second story, the Creeping Vine, and the fourth story, Disembodied Hand.  The rest of them are pleasant enough, but not noteworthy.  It's nice to have an anthology movie that moves as fast as this one does.  With five stories, plus a framing device, the whole thing moves very quickly.

12 - A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss

    This was a BBC production, a three-hour horror retrospective hosted by Mark Gatiss, an English actor and writer, who seems to have much more work in the Dr. Who arena.

    It was a good retrospective.  He touches on many of the films that are noteworthy in shaping the genre, but he does toss in some lesser-known gems that were noteworthy.  He does seem a little jaded about the state of modern horror, but otherwise, he gives it a fair shake.

    There were two movies he talked about that I'd like to see, but Netflix doesn't seem to have them - The Blood on Satan's Claw, and David Cronenberg's Shivers.

11 - The Big Picture

    Kevin Bacon stars in a script by Christopher Guest, which reminded me of his more recent movie, For Your Consideration.  This movie is about a film student who wins an award for his short film, and winds up becoming a Hollywood phony until his project is cancelled.

    The humor is good, but sort of understated.  There are some conversations that are exactly as anti-artistic as we expect, but the problem is that they don't push the joke a step further.  In fact, the ideas are presented in such a way that we understand how they could be useful.  This is probably more accurate to the Hollywood system, but it feels sort of insidious.

    There are some really enjoyable gags, and movie plays nicely.  Probably should belong with a collection of other movies about making movies, like Living In Oblivion.

10 - Rushmore

    I watched the Criterion Blu-ray of this movie.
    I haven't watched this in a long time, probably since college.  This time, I showed it to Cathy.  I was a little uncertain about showing it.  It's a hard movie to explain, and some people really think it's a waste of time.  When I got my Dad to see it a long time ago, he really didn't like it, but my Mom reminded him of what it was like to be 15.  And that's what the movie's about; that original love that motivates us, but can't possibly turn out the way we want it to.

09 - The Echo

    2008 American remake of a Filipino horror film.  A recently released convict moves into the apartment where his deceased mother lived.  There are unusual sounds, and strange things happening.  It's hard to give more away without spoiling anything.

    It's a whole lot better than any summary would suggest.  The building where most of the action takes place is really nicely done.  The script manages questions very well.  While we know he's an ex-con, we don't find out why he was in jail until about 2/3rds of the way through the movie.  There are unusual touches, found objects and an annoying high-pitched tone on he left side of the mix, which I assumed were not meaningful, but the ending pulled them into the story and gave them a purpose.

    It's one of the more satisfying ghost stories I've seen.

08 - Almost Famous

    This was the directors cut, an additional 40 minutes in length.  It's not a movie I come back to too often, but it feels very comfortable every time I do.

07 - Secret Admirer

    1985 romantic comedy that somehow got onto my teen sex romp Netflix suggestions.  This is a surprisingly tame movie - there's a tiny bit of nudity, but there's something very disconcerting about the movie in a general sense.  It's actually written pretty well, and the plotting seems carefully thought out, so I never get a sense of "well that's unlikely."

    On the last day of school, the male lead gets an anonymous love letter in his locker.  He's convinced that it's written by the girl he wants.  As he pursues that girl, he interacts with the girl who actually wrote the letter, his friend.  The letter winds up being passed around, moving from his family to another family, and everyone who finds the letter assumes that it's for them, from someone else.  This would all feel charming if it were limited to high school relationships, but it starts messing around with two marriages, and somehow that feels uncomfortable.  They write their way out of the problem at the end, but in the meantime, it felt like the wrong kind of tension.

    Other than that, there were some good performances, although no one really stands out.  Somehow, Corey Haim was in it, and I didn't notice.

06 - Don't Let Him In

    UK Horror, with a small cast.  A couple, and a younger sister go away to the country for the weekend.  The sister brings along a one-night-stand on the trip.  There's a killer in the area, and things get tense.

    The first 70 minutes of this movie is actually pretty interesting.  It's written in a way that keeps us from being able to make clear distinctions about who is to be trusted.  Then the last 20 minutes of the movie turns into a very different, much more derivative horror movie, where the killer has the victim trapped in his lair, the victim escapes, and the killer pursues, leading to a showdown.

    Somehow, this movie only has a 3.6 on IMDB.

    I did realize something interesting as I watched the end; it didn't matter to me if the victim lived or died.  Or for that matter, if the killer would live or die.  This doesn't seem like it makes sense, but the quality of the movie is not dependent on the viewer caring about the victims or the killer.  When I watch The Shining, the tension of the situation doesn't depend on me caring about Wendy.  In fact, I really don't care for her.  Danny is mildly annoying.  Jack's craziness is the entertainment of the movie.  But suppose there was a different ending to The Shining.  Suppose that Jack caught up with Danny and Wendy, killed both of them, then figured out what happened, then killed himself.  Actually, blowing up the Overlook would be a pretty bad ending.  But I don't think my impression of the quality of the film relies on who survives at all.

05 - Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

    A strange Christmas movie, set in Finland.  An organization has uncovered a mountain which is a giant tomb for Santa.  After Santa is unearthed, it turns into a horror movie of sorts.  There's very little horror to the movie, but the tone is dark, almost like most of the movie is a horror movie setup.  Then the last ten minutes takes a strange turn to make this into a lighter movie.

    Still, it's an unusual movie, and I'd say it's worth seeing just since you won't see anything else quite like it.

04 - Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

    A pair of backwoods southern guys run into a group of college kids in the woods, and a series of misunderstandings and accidents make it look like Tucker and Dale are trying to kill the kids.
    The movie is a whole lot of fun.  It feels kind of uncomfortable for a period of time, since we see how difficult it would be for the title characters to explain how they aren't responsible for the horrors befalling the college kids.  Luckily, the movie addresses those problems a bit later.

03 - Contagion

    I think I was interested in this movie when I saw the trailer, but not quite enough to see it in theaters.  It's an unusual movie, mostly since it never tries to be too action-packed, and there aren't many obvious efforts to make the situation more tense.  if anything, the movie takes a very dry approach to the problem of an epidemic.  We primarily get the perspective of the CDC, which takes the clinical approach.  They want to know how the pathogen is spreading, how long it incubates, and where it started.  We get a small amount of the public policy problems associated with this sort of situation, as well as the public reaction.

    The limited perspective, combined with the matter-of-fact presentation makes it an overall chilling movie.

    There was one subplot that I wished had a better resolution;  a blogger is peddling a fake cure that he profits from.  While the blogger is arrested, he makes bail, and that's the end of his subplot.  It's implied that he plans on encouraging people to boycott the vaccine.

02 - H.O.T.S.

    1979 flick involving a group of girls who want to get back at the girls from a mean sorority, so they form their own.  It took about 40 seconds from the start of the DVD for there to be nudity, which really sets the tone of this movie.

    It's mostly a bunch of hijinks, but there's something vaguely wholesome about this movie.  Sure, there's a fair amount of nudity, the whole thing ends in a game of strip football between the competing sororities, but in the meantime, the sorority gets a pet/mascot seal, and there's a bear that starts living in their attic.  There's also a useless subplot where some escaped convicts are trying different ploys to get into their house to search for money that was stashed away.

    It's fun.  And it's surprisingly kind - there are some girls that are clearly not intended to be attractive, but they aren't played for cruel laughs.

01 - The Social Network

    Technically watched it New Year's Eve.  This time, with Cathy.  A second viewing in such a short time actually did change my perception.  I felt a little more like it was obvious that the Winklevoss Twins didn't have a reasonable case.  And that actually makes Zuckerberg even more of a sympathetic character.  I also found Sean Parker to be less charming, and more slimy.  After reading more about him, he seems like a good guy though.

Movies from 2011

1 - Babysitter Wanted
    A girl answers an ad looking for a babysitter for a peculiar child, in a remote farmhouse.
    Marketed as a straightforward slasher, it's not especially good, but partly because it betrays the marketing.  The movie moves from reminding me of House of the Devil/Halloween, then takes a turn into territory for some modern suspense (like The Strangers or Funny Games) then turns briefly into a satanist horror, then over to a torture horror until things are concluded.  There are at least four fake-out endings, where the picture fades, then another tag is inserted to try to twist the ending a little.  None of them were needed.

2 - Pontypool
    The title doesn't do much for me, but this was surprisingly good.  The plot involves a zombie-like illness that is transferred by language.  I liked a lot of way the movie was built.  It's billed as being a zombie movie, but I'd actually say it's closer to 28 Days Later.  The action takes place (almost) entirely in a radio station.  The sound design is very well done, and listening to the production on headphones was very nice.

3 - Needle
    A derivative horror movie.  Not especially memorable.  It was made in Australia, but the accents aren't too strong.  It mostly concerns a box that allow for a voodoo-style method of killing a victim.  The one thing that I liked about this movie was that it didn't try to imply that evil survives at the end.

4 - Dark Night Of The Scarecrow
    A 1981 made-for-tv horror movie in the supernatural-revenge-from-beyond-the-grave sub-genre.  It was better than I expected.  The pacing was a little slow, and it felt a little padded.  But it was entirely watchable.  The cast is pretty decent, and it covered some interesting ground for a TV production.

5 - Devil (2010)
    I enjoyed this more than I've enjoyed M. Night's work in general.  I don't object to the premise of The Happening, but the idea was hurt by his efforts at self-importance.  That is a failing to this movie as well.  Most movies that deal with a devil character are a little less obvious when they use the religious aspects.  They don't dwell on characters needing to believe, or have faith.  Unless there's something special that's going to be said about the religious elements, all it does is offer a distraction from your story.  Devil had some decent promise, and it did a decent job of delivering.  There were a few things that I didn't like - the opening suicide only exists to bring the detective to the building.  That wasn't a worthwhile payoff.  The other thing is that it tried desperately to get going as quickly as possible.  As soon as the elevator stops, everyone freaks out.  And the villain is obvious from their behavior.  They try to avoid this with a little twist, though.

6 - The Bourne Supremacy (Blu-ray)

7 - Insane (2010)
    A Swedish horror movie that rips off Psycho for nearly the whole thing.  It's probably one of the funniest horror movies I've ever seen.  The script is hilarious.  The delivery isn't too horrible, and the filmmaking is technically fine.  The decisions are pretty poor though.  (Note - I found out a bit later that this was directed by the same guy who made Evil Ed.  It's a nice step above that!)

8 - 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
    The 1953 movie made (partly) by Dr. Seuss.  After seeing it again, I think I know why it flopped.  It's too scary and bizarre for kids, and not clever enough for most adults.

9 - Daredevil (Directors Cut) (Blu-ray)
    I like this movie, and I think it got an unfair shake on initial release.  I can see that the tone of the movie is unbalanced, and there are some sequences that really should have been toned down.  Nearly everything with Elektra is an annoyance.  But the movie is fun, for the most part.  The directors cut restores a storyline that makes the ending make sense.

10 - Predators
    A bunch of people are dropped on a planet that seems to be a hunting ground for Predators.  We aren't given much information when we start the movie, and it remains very mysterious throughout.  This could be an effective method, but it just makes me care less about the characters.

11 - Die
    A strange Saw ripoff, but tries desperately to draw attention to the ways that it isn't like Saw.

12 - Ticking Clock
    The clues from a variety of murders seem to implicate a 9-year-old orphan boy.  What would have been an interesting murder mystery is hurt by some obvious foreshadowing, and some on-the-cheap locations.

13 - Machete
    Born of the Grindhouse trailer.  Hilarious, very entertaining, and pretty well paced.

14 - Day of the Dead (original, Blu-ray)
    The picture is far better than I remember it ever being.  The sound has been cleaned up a lot as well.  The movie has grown on me a lot, especially as a result of it being more intelligible.

15 - Chain Letter
    A teen mystery-killer-slasher.  Had a little potential to be decent, but has the strangest ending of a horror movie that I've seen.  It's almost as if they just forgot to end the story.  At the end of the movie, we've been given a small hint as to who is killing, but no greater understanding has been achieved.  So, at the end, you're left wondering why you watched it.

16 - Virus X
    Cheap movie that involves a plot to mutate H1N1 to make a more contagious, more deadly strain, in order to sell a vaccine.  The whole thing is such a strange ploy that it's hard to take most of the movie seriously.  Plus, the characters are working in a lab that seems to be lit only by computer monitors.

17 - Bender's Game (Blu-ray)
    Better than the first time I saw it.

18 - The Edge
    A 1997 movie that involves three guys who survive a small plane crash, making their way in the wilderness while dealing with a wild bear. There's something unsatisfying about the ending.  But it's otherwise still a great movie.

19 - The Bourne Identity (Blu-ray)

20 - Tomorrow, When The War Began
    Australian production of a popular young adult novel series.  If I were younger - anywhere from probably 8-18, I would really, really love this movie.  As it is, it's not quite right.  There are lines that make me cringe.  The plot is mostly that there is an invasion of Australia, and a handful of teenagers who were out camping return to be guerilla fighters.

21 - I Spit On Your Grave (remake)
    I remember enjoying the original, although I only saw it once.  This remake didn't seem needed, although I sort of liked the way it was shot.  The colors are nicely cold for a country setting.

22 - Scott Pilgrim V The World
    I'm conflicted about this one.  I liked the overall tone of the movie, although I feel there are two distractions.  First, labeling things should provide information that we feel is clever.  If you label things with exactly what was just said, it comes across as trying too hard to look cool.  The second problem is that I didn't identify with anyone in the movie.  The main characters seem difficult to relate to.  That shouldn't be a problem, but it somehow is.  There is a novel whimsical sense to most of the movie, that would make it compelling, but the lack of likable characters killed any chance for me sitting through the movie again.

23 - Hunter Prey
    An independent sci-fi movie that looks nice, although the costumes look very stolen from SW (in particular, they look like the elite clone armor).  The movie itself looks very nice, and the biggest weaknesses have to do with the script and the acting.  Everything seems a little hammed up.  The plot involves a prisoner being escorted when their ship lands in a desert.  The prisoner and the guards play a cat-and-mouse game.

24 - Three Men & A Baby
    It's been a long time since I saw this movie.  It's packed with 80s atmosphere - the outfits, the decor, the design of the apartment… even the drug plot reminds me of other 80s movies.  It's also a little startling to find that it was directed by Leonard Nimoy.  What's more surprising is that the pacing of the movie held up pretty well.

25 - Crush (2009)
    Australian production is a bit heavy on shirtless guy.  It's not too bad, although it's very slow.  The story is a little strange too - it starts off as standard stalker fare, but then the last third of it turns into a haunted house/revenge story.  I couldn't suggest anyone see it, except for people who enjoy weak horror like I do.

26 - Oceans 13 (Blu-ray)

27 - Iron Man (Blu-ray)

28 - Oceans 11 (Blu-ray)
    I thought I had seen this, but it turns out that I had only seen about a quarter of it.  The movie is actually better plotted than I thought, and we are kept in the dark about the nature of their plans, and figure things out as their target does.

29 - Weekend At Bernie's
    I know I saw this when it came out.  And I remember enjoying it.  But, then again, I was about 10 then.  This was such a weird experience to watch.  It's supposed to be a comedy, but it's hard to tell that.  There are jokes, but they're so poor, it's not possible to tell that they were intended to be jokes.

30 - Incredible Hulk (Blu-ray)
    This is the 2008 one, with Ed Norton.  This is my second time seeing it, and it held up pretty well.  It isn't wildly compelling, but it's still better than most of the Hulk material out there.  I've still never identified with the anti-hero aspect of him though.

31 - Hunger
    Looks to be sort of independent.  It's a semi-horror movie that involves a handful of people locked in a dungeon with plenty of water, a toilet and toilet paper, but no food.  They remain there for 30+ days.  For a setup that should have more tension, it's pretty dull.

32 - Vacancy
    Theatrically released horror movie with Luke Wilson leading it.  Was reasonably suspenseful, too.  The setup is handled well, with all of the obvious ways out of the situation addressed, and it's hard to think of how they could get out alive.  My one real complaint is one thing - at one point, we're led to believe that Luke Wilson has died.  There's a reveal that he's alive.  This was a bad idea.

33 - Murder Party
    Independent horror movie.  The idea is that a guy shows up to a Halloween party that intends to kill him for the sake of art.  It gets weird from there.  The sound is not mixed as well as it should be, and I had to pull the volume up to 20, when most movies range from around 5-10.  There was something unsatisfying about the climax of the movie, mostly because the impression of the main character was hurt.

34 - All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
    This showed up on an Onion AV Club segment about movies with delayed releases.  This movie has been released in most of the world, except the US.  I was a little puzzled by it.  It seemed like an especially annoying dead teen movie at the beginning, then slowly moved to being a slasher, and then in the last 5-10 minutes, there's a twist that is entirely unexpected.  The problem is that no explanation seems to be given for the twist, and it didn't add any depth to the experience - it just made me puzzled.

35 - Oceans 12 (Blu-ray)
    Worst blu-ray transfer I've seen.  I think I see the weaknesses in the movie now, but it's still not bad at all.  It's just not quite the same tone as the first and third movies.

36 - Misson: Impossible (Blu-ray)
    Holy crap, this is horrible.  I remember not minding it when it came out, but the pacing is all wrong, the action is hilarious, and it feels like they made the wrong movie!

37 - Punisher: War Zone (Blu-ray)
    Roughly as fun as I remember it.  The Punisher is a difficult character to translate for the screen.

38 - Pan's Labyrinth
    While it looks great, and kept my interest, I'm puzzled as to what the point was.

39 - My Soul To Take
    Another teen horror movie.  The soul of a killer is transplanted into one of 7 children born while the killer died.  It's needlessly complex, and there's a lot of suspicion that the plot will involve a silly twist.  But, it doesn't.  Forgettable.

40 - Batman - Dead End
    An 8-minute short film.  Light on dialogue, heavy on action.  It's mostly Batman and the Joker with some standard conversation, followed Batman getting caught in a fight with a Predator.  Then at the end, it's Batman caught between a fight between three Predators and some Aliens.  Worth seeing, for 8 minutes of entertainment, but has no substance.

41 - Inception
    I have no idea why people were confused by the movie.  For the most part, it's a clever sci-fi movie, and it reminds me of the idea of a big sting operation.  The personal story seemed to be a bit more in-the-way of the rest of the movie though.  With a little bit of work, this could have been trimmed down a bit, and made into a much more timeless movie.

42 - Deadline (2009)
    Haunted house, creepy tapes, and solitude for a main character are generally types of horror movies I like.  This movie was probably better than I thought, but I can't be sure.  There's been a trend in modern horror toward shooting movies darker and darker, and at this point, I can't tell what's happening for most of the movie.  Confusion can be a useful tool in creating atmosphere, but if I can't tell what happens for most of the plot, I can't be scared by it.

43 - Birdemic: Shock And Terror
    Popularity spread the rumor of this being a spectacularly bad movie.  It is.  But it's not anywhere near as enjoyable as The Room.  Birdemic is bad in a much more boring way.  The pacing is slower.  There isn't as much going on in the plot.  The sound is abysmal.  This last point is one of the biggest problems with the movie, since it renders some scenes nearly inaudible.  It sounds like none of the audio was compressed, making for a very awkward experience.  A sequence of a conversation between two people has two different sounds, depending on where the camera is shooting from.  There are scenes on a beach, which indecipherable.  The quality of the birds is already well known - they appear in the trailer.  There's a certain charm to the poorness of the movie though.  It's a tricky one to explain, but it has to do with the awkwardness of the dialogue, combined with some poor editing.  It makes every conversation sound like they're making awkward small talk.  The sound clips out at the end of every shot, which is both jarring, and hilarious.  During a round of applause, the clapping dies down, only to restart when a new shot begins.
    I could talk for a longer span about this, but I want to focus on a single sequence that really stood out for me, as being poor for a completely different set of reasons.
    The scene starts with a vietnamese girl in an orange bikini, in a motel room, laying on top of a guy.  We don't know either one of them.  They're sort of slowly making out.  There's a poster in the background for a 'save the Earth' type website.  The context, and appearance of the scene, strongly implies that this is a prostitute.
    Then the leading lady calls the girl in the motel.  It turns out that they're friends, and the guy on the bed is her boyfriend.
    This scene has a few problems that should have been obvious.  First, by shooting in a motel, you imply something.  Second, by casting the vietnamese girl (Mona Lisa Moon?  I suspect she was related to the director) and having her wear a bikini rather than something that suggested an intimate relationship, you imply something.  By not introducing the characters in another context first, it really confuses people.

44 - Horror House (2008)
    A very low-budget movie, but the sound was entirely acceptable, making the movie much more watchable.  I actually liked this movie a fair amount, up until the last act.  There was a tone to the whole production, and the whole thing seemed to be very aware of how low-budget it was.  Then the last act tried to take make the whole thing into a legitimate horror movie, and that somehow hurt my impression of it.

45 - The Mystery Team
    A trio of Encyclopedia Browns work on solving a murder mystery.  It's a fun movie.  The premise is enjoyable, in a similar fish-out-of-water way as the Brady Bunch movie.  It's nowhere near as enjoyable, since the performances aren't uniformly great, and the script could have been polished up a bit to make the gags seem less recycled.

46 - The Fountainhead
    Ignoring the political and social implications of the story, as well as the background, this movie still is horribly dated.  The dialog is hilarious, paced too quickly, and comes across written, not delivered.  The direction isn't too bad - there's a heavy use of shadow that creates some interesting atmospheres.  Oddly, the aspect ratio was close to full-screen, making the whole thing seem a little claustrophobic.
    But on to the message of the movie.  Every single character in the movie is contemptible.  The only exception might be the judge, who delivers jury instructions in a single line.  Every member of the jury is a disgusting person.  The "values" expressed in this movie seem beyond reprehensibility.  At the end of it, I actually felt mildly sick.

47 - Spider-Man 2 (Blu-ray)
    Still holds up very well.  The helicopters during the ending looked very fake for some reason.  But I still have a strong emotional response to Spider-Man's heroics.  In particular, the train sequence, and when the lady early in the movie encourages him with "Go Spidey, go!"

48 - Dead Tone (aka 7eventy 5ive)
    A teen slasher, with a prank call motif.  Really pretty poorly done.  I still don't know what the killer's motivation was.  There were two scenes, back to back, which seemed to be endorsing condom use.  And there were three characters, two black and one gay, which seemed to just be stereotypes.

49 - Tropic Thunder (Blu-ray)
    Still holds up.  Certain gags don't play as well in the long run, particularly the drawn out ones (like the not-being-able-to-cry thing near the beginning) but the shorter jokes play out very well, and the performances are still very enjoyable.  I hope this movie retains a certain amount of popularity, since it seems like the sort of thing that should be discovered by later generations of moviewatchers.

50 - Star Trek (2009, Blu-ray)
    Still as good as ever.  I think the pacing could have been corrected a little though.  I'm mostly happy with it.  Some of the changes could

51 - The Burrowers
    The trailer for this was on some blu-ray I have, and it looked like the sort of horror movie I tend to like.  It's set in the old west, and involves a species of burrowing creatures that paralyze victims, bury them, wait for them to break down a bit, then eat them.  It's a pretty decent movie for a period horror flick.

52 - Hot Fuzz (Blu-ray)
    Each time I see this, I'm reminded of how nearly perfect the movie is.  It didn't play as well the first time, and I probably don't get many of the action references, but every time I see it, it plays better and I'm more impressed with the fantastic editing.

53 - Thr3e
    2007 suspense movie.  This was released by Fox Faith Movies, which means that this is supposed to have certain religious values or something.  It's got a lot of religious overtones, but there doesn't seem to be much value placed on them.  The plot is simplistic - a killer gives impossible deadlines to accomplish tasks.  The victims die as a result of being unable to accomplish those tasks.  There are a few twists to the end, and they all feel entirely unsatisfactory.

54 - Watchmen, Directors Cut (Blu-ray)
    The directors cut added a handful of interesting little things, none of which made the movie flow better, but it added further depth.

55 - Night Of The Lepus
    Well known for being a movie involving killer rabbits.  It actually involves killer GIANT rabbits. Started off acceptably, but it gets slower as it moves on.  It's hard to tell if it was intended to be scary at all.  Would probably have been better regarded if it were a made-for TV production.

56 - X-Men First Class (theater)
    Enjoyable, but I had some issues with the music.  And the print I saw may not have been projected as vividly as it should have been.

57 - Iron Man 2 (Blu-ray)
    Not quite as charming as the first, but still very fun.  Keeps my interest, and at least the slower sequences are still enjoyable to not bother me.

58 - Insanitarium
    Straight to video horror movie.  A doctor at an asylum is injecting patients with something that makes them go crazy and eat people.  A little under-written, and there were a few instances of conspicuous finishing lines (at least two or three attempts at a pun given when a character was killed off).  I didn't mind this one.  It could have been much better though, with another layer of polish to the script, and possibly changing the focus a little.  I was much happier with the ending than I expected, since it is hardly ambiguous - the infection escapes, and mankind is doomed.  The one problem I really had is the lack of an explanation for how the infection got around to as many people as it did.

59 - Dorm
    Chinese (?) movie about a ghost haunting a school.  Kind of nice.  A little slowly paced.

60 - Maniac (1980)
    I read a review of this that got me interested in it.  The cover had never gotten me very interested, but the movie is worth seeing for horror fans.  It has a young Tom Savini working on it, and appears as "Disco Boy."  The story itself is surprisingly interesting for a plot where very little happens.  The performance of the killer is very compelling, and I found myself more curious about the character than most slashers would allow.

61 - Heathers (Blu-ray)
    The picture is great for time time period.  The movie doesn't work as well for me as it used to.  I think I've let go of most of my high school problems, and I don't think I resented other cliques as much.  What I really don't like is the overly-witty script.  At the time, this was really clever, but now these types of scripts come across absurdly unrealistic.  Oddly, when I was watching this, I kept thinking of Juno, which I later noticed was mentioned on the cover as being influenced by Heathers.

62 - Multiplicity
    I come back to the movie now and then, and it's still very charming.  This time though, I felt like there was something else that could have been done to make the movie work a little more smoothly.  It slows down a bit at a certain point.

63 - The Adjustment Bureau
    A man encounters a shady organization that makes corrections to the world, to keep everything on a grand design.  Very good.  Very charming, clever, and I've really got a soft spot for Matt Damon for some reason.

64 - Identity (Blu-ray)
    I've seen this probably three times so far, and the ending has bothered me less over time.  The biggest problem with the initial viewing is that it's too easy to get caught up in the Motel storyline, and to ignore the other one.  That goes away with repeated viewings.

65 - The Horde
    A French zombie movie.  I read a fairly positive review of it somewhere, and put it on the Netflix queue.  There are a few things that are good.  The premise is good - a collection of people in a mostly-abandoned building that fight their way down and out through a bunch of zombies.  There are some shots that are great; shots with more zombies that movies usually have.  A guy on top of a car swinging a machete to chop away at zombie hands.  But the movie falls short in a few categories.  First, there's some really dumb dialogue.  There's an effort to make some cool expletives when things happen, but it just comes across as fake.  Second, sequences like the aforementioned machete swinging are cool, but it's hurt by the fact that we don't see any zombies without hands as the sequence goes on, despite seeing fingers and hands flying through the air.

66 - The Ninth Gate (Blu-ray)
    One of the only Polanski movies that I've enjoyed watching several times.  I like how vague the movie is.  There's very little exposition, and there's so many sequences where we just watch as the story happens.

67 - Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
    I enjoy this one more than the first one, since it's really pretty bad.  The script doesn't make much sense, the direction seems aimless, and even the fights seem irrelevant.

68 - Slices Of Life
    Indie horror movie, with three distinct stories with a wraparound.  The first story involved a nano virus turning people at a workplace into zombies.  The second had a pregnant lady dealing with being haunted by children she hasn't met.  The third had two kids running away and finding a house where a girl is being held captive.  The quality of the stories varied a little, but were uniformly interesting.  I think I liked the middle one the best, since both of the others had their weaknesses.

69 - Source Code
    I don't have too much to say about it.  I enjoyed it, although I didn't feel like the last third of it was worthwhile - all the tension had been sucked out.

70 - Daybreakers
    Could be seen as a sequel to I Am Legend, but is a bit more modern than that.  Could have been better, especially if the script were tweaked a little, but otherwise a pretty enjoyable movie.

71 - Insidious
    Haunted House/ghost story that came out a year or so ago.  It's actually much creepier than I expected, although only the first two thirds of the movie is very good.  After that, the efforts to explain things make the creepiness drift away.  There are still some great visuals, and for a movie that cost 1.5M, it's very high quality.  Some strange plot holes exist.  Like, where two of the couples children went when they moved.

72 - The Loved Ones
    An Australian horror movie involving a girl and her father kidnapping victims and torturing/lobotomizing them.  Fairly good, although I'm a bit puzzled as to why a subplot involving a guy taking a mismatched girl to the dance was included, since it didn't advance the story in any way.

73 - Limitless
    Guy finds a drug that allows his brain to function at peak performance, and turns his life around.  Most of the reviews complained about the movie being a waste of a good premise, but it actually felt perfectly fine to me, with one minor exception that happened late in the film, which I didn't think was plausible given the scenario.

74 - Apt Pupil (Blu-ray)
    Gets better every time I see it.  Most of the pacing problems have cleared up.  I still don't like David Schwimmer as Mr. French though.  He looks right, but he just seems a little silly.

75 - Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows pt 2 (theater)

76 - Beneath The Planet of the Apes
    A puzzlement.  The story departs so drastically from what had been established in Planet of the Apes, it seems like it may have been written by committee.

77 - Captain America (theater)
    Very satisfying.

78 - Fertile Ground
    Horror movie where the couple moves to a new house, she gets pregnant, and a lot of shining-esque things happen.  Really pretty dull.

79 - The Task
    A decent budget for a horror movie.  The story is a reality-TV horror setup, with the victims being placed in an abandoned jail.  There are surprisingly few scares, and the tension seemed low.  However, it is roughly as compelling as a reality-TV show is.

80 - Fantastic Voyage
    It's been a long time since I saw it.  It hasn't aged well.  The lighting and coloring keeps changing, which is sort of frustrating.

81 - X3: The Last Stand (Blu-ray)
    Gets better on repeat viewings, but the flaws of the movie are pretty obvious.  The plot is fine, but script needed to be polished up.  There are too many lines that make me cringe.

82 - Joyride
    Some guys traveling decide to use the CB radio to play a prank on a lonely trucker.  The trucker is a maniac, and stalks them.  I wasn't sure for awhile, but I have seen it before.  There's nicely managed tension throughout, and the music is classier than I would expect.

83 - The Hole
    2009 Joe Dante movie, which I didn't realize was directed by him until the end.  Really surprisingly good.  The pacing is good, the direction is interesting.  The lighting is interesting - the dark sequences are shot with a lot of blueish tint, and the daytime scenes are really brightly colored.

84 - Escape From The Planet of the Apes
    A good step up from Beneath the Planet of the Apes.  I think it's amazing that the movie got a G rating when there is some gunplay, as well as a chimp baby being shot (obscured, but it's still obviously being shot several times)

85 - Diary of the Dead (blu-ray)
    Better on the second viewing.  I don't like Romero's ear for dialogue, but the ideas in it come across less heavy-handed the second time through.

86 - Nine Dead
    Vaguely Saw-ripoff.  A little better than I expected.  The group needs to figure out how they're connected, and that drives the movie along.  There's very little work put into creating violence, and all of the death happens pretty quickly.  More of a mystery, but pretty good.

87 - The Mist (black & white, Blu-ray)
    It's a stressful movie to watch.  The ending is brutal, but I have a harder time with the zealot in throughout the middle of the movie.  Seeing people getting sucked into her cult is really difficult.  The movie is really far more interesting in black & white, it alters the tone that the movie has, and almost sets the whole thing into an alternate history.

88 - Wolf Creek
    I heard of this movie years ago, and the description I was given really made it sound pretty annoying.  I saw references to it in online discussion of The Loved Ones, and decided to watch it.  It reminds me of a few movies - things like The Hills Have Eyes.  The truth is, this movie is pretty weak.  It reminded me a lot of Tarentino's Death Proof, only less fun.  In fact, nothing of interest happens for the first half of the movie.  It's only mildly interesting.

89 - 127 Hours
    Good for a single viewing… I'm not sure how much a second viewing would be needed.

90 - Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Blu-ray)
    Has aged better than I expected.  The acting is also more nuanced than I remember, as a result of seeing it in this clarity.

91 - Satan's School for Girls
    Made for TV production from 1973.  Weird stuff happens at a private school for girls.  Despite the sleazy-sounding name, it's actually a very tame movie.  A very small amount of blood, no explicit violence, only implied violence.  It has a decent tension to it, but it's hurt by the pacing forced on it by being made for TV.

92 - Eight Legged Freaks
    A little slower than I remembered, but ultimately an enjoyable throwback to the 50s.  Appropriately tongue-in-cheek.

93 - Evil Ed
    I'm not sure if I can explain the plot.  A guy who edits gratuitously violent horror movies goes crazy and starts acting out his own.  Reminded me a whole lot of Bad Taste, but I felt like I was missing half the joke.  Otherwise, the picture quality really hurts the movie.

94 - Amadeus (Blu-ray, directors cut)
    This is the first time I've watched the director's cut, which runs about 20 minutes longer.  The added material changes the feel of the movie considerably - Salieri comes across darker than he was in the original cut.

95 - A Horrible Way To Die
    The title is pretty compelling to a horror fan.  I saw mention of the movie described as a mumblecore horror movie.  And that's probably about right.  Everything up until the last twenty minutes feels aimless and sort of disposable.  Then the last act gives a sense of tension and purpose.  The photography is weird, and pretty annoying.

96 - The Name of the Rose (Blu-ray)
    I don't know if I had ever sat through the whole thing, but it's a much more interesting story than I remember.  I remembered it being a mystery, but there's much more philosophical content than I thought there would be.

97 - When A Stranger Calls (1978)
    This came up a lot in the discussion following a NY Times article on the scariest movies.  I think I understand why it would be.  The first 20 minutes are incredibly tense, and the whole thing boils very effectively.  The rest of the movie is an interesting continuation of the opening sequence, but the massive tension is impossible to maintain.  The result is a little disappointing, but not horribly so.  The remainder of the movie feels like it could be a separate film, but it isn't.  It ties back into the setup nicely.  And Carol Kane has a very memorable face.  I kept thinking she was Bernadette Peters from The Jerk though.

98 - Grave Encounters
    A shaky-cam horror movie, although the setup is a bit more satisfying than usual - a pseudo-reality TV show about ghost hunting.  The movie does a good job of keeping the viewer satisfied.  The ghosts are unpredictable, and vary in how malicious they are.

99 - X-Men (Blu-ray)
    Surprisingly, it hasn't aged well.  Some of the effects don't look polished.  The direction varies a bit.  The first quarter is pretty solid, and written well.  But the writing gets weaker later in the movie.

100 - Thor
    I have some mixed feelings about it.  The story itself is fine, although not terribly interesting.  They handled Asgard far better than I expected.  But there were some script problems that were really a pain.  Too much of a reliance on some very dumb catch phrase lines, and silly readings that made me cringe.  Surprisingly little action as well.  Thor has never been one of my favored heroes, but this still came across as an acceptable effort.  (Finished watching on 9/19)

101 - Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
    Good, but needed to be reworked a little.  There's not much plot to fill the time, so the pacing needed to be picked up a little.

102 - Stake Land (Blu-ray)
    Remarkably good vampire apocalypse movie.  I'm not a fan of vampire movies, since I rarely get a sense of the horror of them.  This movie plays well, although it does drag a little in the second half.  The photography is great!

103 - The Long Weekend
    Aussie horror movie.  A pretty tame one, it's another one of the "nature gets revenge" stories, similar to The Ruins.  The characters are pretty dislikable, but I think that may have been part of the point.

104 - Wait Until Dark
    A blind lady deals with three guys trying to get into her apartment to steal something.  This also got mentioned as one of the scariest movies people had seen.  Not really.  In fact, even for a suspense movie, it's pretty tame.  It reminds me a lot of Hitchcock though.

105 - Roller Boogie
    On some lists of enjoyable bad movies.  It's a lot like Breakin 2, but it's actually pretty slow.  There are some good qualities though.  An interesting transition to raunchier 80s teen comedies.

106 - The Vanishing (original, 1988)
    Moved a little slow at first, but picked up some very compelling aspects.  Then the very end of it was just incredible.

107 - Don't Look Now (1973)
    I ended this movie really confused about what I saw.  It's hard for me to take Donald Sutherland as being anything other than crazy.  The sex scene was one of the strangest ones I've seen.  The wiki article presents a story that seems much more enjoyable, but the whole thing really seemed to bother me much more than I expected.

108 - Batman & Robin (Blu-ray)
    Needs to be watched in about 20 minute chunks, but wears thin if you watch for longer stretches.

109 - The Last Man (1964)
    Vincent Price stars in a very accurate version of I Am Legend.  Pacing is a bit slow, and the music is over the top, but still very good.

110 - Halloween 2 (original)
    There's something that I like about this one, probably that it's a clear direct sequel, picking up immediately after the first one.  The direction is leisurely, with lots of long shots to build tension.  Otherwise, I feel like the hospital is both understaffed, and very small.

111 - The Naked Gun (Blu-ray)
    Doesn't feel quite as funny as I remembered, but it still holds a lot of charm.  Picture quality is clear enough that some of the sets were a little more obvious.  It seems that Leslie Nielsen really carried the movie.  The jokes were good, but his handling of them made them work very well.

112 - Halloween H20
    I saw this in theaters, but I didn't remember much about it.  Seeing it right after Halloween 2 really improved this one.  In Halloween, Laurie Strode is just hiding, and needs Loomis to help protect.  In Halloween 2, she's incapacitated for most of the movie, and even when she isn't, she's nearly incapable of doing anything.  In this one, she finally takes the fight into her own hands, and starts actively fighting back.  It's a pretty tame movie for a slasher, but in the appropriate context, it's satisfying.

113 - Burn After Reading (Blu-ray)
    Much better in a single sitting.  More toned down than many of their other works, it feels a little more subtle in how absurd the story is.  It's strange that the most likable character dies in the most violent way.

114 - Raw Meat (1972)
    This was listed as one of Edgar Wright's picks on the Onion's AV Club, it was one of the titles I hadn't seen.  I was surprised by how many of the movies on his list I had already seen - Don't Look Now, Who Can Kill A Child?, Carrie, Long Weekend (I've only seen the remake though), Asylum (a 1972 anthology horror), Dawn of the Dead, The Omen, The People Under the Stairs.  This was one of the ones that sounded interesting that I hadn't heard of.  For the time period, it's remarkably gory.  By modern standards, it's not incredibly so, but the camera lingers enough that it feels stronger than it is.  The story is fine.  Pacing is a little slower than I'd like.  Pleasance's character really bothered me though.

115 - The Others (Blu-ray)
    Has aged very well.  Still paced a little slowly, but the atmosphere is great, the script is very carefully written, and this being my 3rd or 4th viewing, it actually seems more complex than I remembered.

116 - Dawn of the Dead (1978, Blu-ray)
    The feel of the movie varies a little each time I see it.  This time, the picture really was drastically better, but near the end there were a few shots that didn't look right, like the source was much worse.  Still, the pacing gets better as I get more patient.

117 - Batman Begins (Blu-ray)
    Gets better every time I see it.  This time I noticed that Zsazz actually appears in a few scenes, including one where we can see two or three of his scars.

118 - From Beyond The Grave
    1973 British horror anthology.  Pretty decent, with a passable amount of tension.  The stories seem a little like a cross between Hitchcock and Lovecraft.
Not bad, but not especially memorable nowadays.

119 - Daughters of Darkness
    Very strange.  The direction is interesting, but the story isn't as explicitly explained as I expected.  The darkest points of it are some scenes of spousal abuse.

120 - Torture Garden
    It's a wilder title than it deserves.  It's another british anthology horror movie, from 1968, and it stars Burgess Meredith in the framing story.  The stories aren't bad.  They're a little less standard than modern ones, but they're still very tame.  The real highlight is a story that involves a piano killing someone.

121 - Dazed & Confused (Blu-ray, Criterion)
    I can't remember specifically when the last time I saw this was, but it may have been sometime late in high school.  I remember that it wasn't as funny as Fast Times, and that I felt like it was a bit too long.  I think I didn't care for the extensive focus on drinking and smoking pot.  As an adult, I found the movie much more interesting.  It jumps between being sort of lighthearted to having some fairly depressing scenes.  The overall impression is pretty positive though.  I still prefer Fast Times, mostly because the role that the school plays is more important.

122 - Panic Button
    2011 British production.  Has some good ideas, but has some unusual weaknesses.  Ultimately, very watchable, and the nature of everything is kept very mysterious until things progress pretty far.  A little similar to Saw stuff, but nearly no gore.  The violence remains very tame as well.

123 - Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings
    After a flashback sequence where we're introduced to the cannibalistic backwoods trio, we get two intercut sex scenes to introduce some characters.  They go off snowmobiling, and find the abandoned sanatorium that was the focus of the flashback.  After some wasting some time, the trio attack our oversexed college kids.  To be fair, there was at least one sequence that I liked, where the kids realize that they have the means of fighting back.  Sadly, the movie has a downer ending, which would be fine, except that I couldn't care less about these bad guys.

124 - Just One Of The Guys
    I decided that I wanted to see an 80s teen sex romp.  This one showed up in a list, and the premise seemed workable.  In practice, it's an unusual movie.  It has all of the normal trappings of an 80s teen movie.  The acting is similar, the script is similar…but there's something different.  I don't think much thought went into how complicated the movie is in terms of a message.  There are loads of male stereotypes, not as many female ones.  Still, entirely worth watching.  Billy Jayne (Mikey from Parker Lewis) has a great supporting role as the oversexed younger brother.

125 - Episode 2, Attack of the Clones (Blu-ray)
    I feel more conflicted about this movie that I have in the past.  There are some fun elements to it, but ultimately, Lucas just can't write this sort of thing.  In the deleted scenes for Empire, there's some extended Leia/Han dialogue, and what's interesting is that it sounds like that sort of writing showed up a whole lot in Attack of the Clones.  There was a lot of potential to make a compelling story, but it's ruined by the plotting and the dialogue.  On the other hand, it's more obvious that Lucas has a great eye for framing shots, and making artistically pleasing images, especially iconic ones.  However, he really needs some people to collaborate with in making his work "right"

126 - Across The Universe (Blu-ray)
    The movie needed a little trimming.  Mostly, things slow down around I Am The Walrus, and pick back up again with Hey Jude.  In between, Happiness Is A Warm Gun and Revolution are good, but the other songs seem to drag at that point.  I also felt surprisingly uncomfortable seeing the violence during the protests.

127 - The Entitled
    Canadian thriller.  A guy takes some hostages in an effort to extract ransom from their parents.  While it plays pretty straightforward for the first half, gradually things get more complicated.  Then the ending worked very well, and succeeded in raising the tension.  Pleasingly good!

128 - The Name of the Rose (Blu-ray)
    This time, watching it with Cathy.

129 - Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith (Blu-ray)
    While I still feel like this one is more entertaining than episodes 1 or 2, I realized one of the problems when the music came up over the credits.  There isn't the same sense of swashbuckling adventure.

130 - Episode 4, A New Hope (Blu-ray)
    Still a classic.  The alterations are strange - some of them are fine, but I'm more puzzled about why they didn't fix some of the color issues.  When lightsabers clash, the flash isn't the same as I remember.  It shows up as a green ring.

131 - Private School (also under the title Private School…For Girls)
    I probably could write a huge amount about this movie.  If I grew up with this movie, I would have absolutely loved it.  It probably would fit alongside Fast Times as one of my favorite teen movies.  As it is, it's just…. fascinating.  The movie starts out as a strange hybrid of Fast Times and Animal House, and it gradually incorporates more and more classics of teen sex movies.  There's a "serious" plot line that involves Phoebe Cates wanting to lose her virginity to her boyfriend in the "perfect" setting.  There are other characters that pair off.  There's a memorable sequence where a character goes horseback riding topless.  Then there's a lengthy sequence where the guys dress in drag to sneak into the girls dorms.  This, of course, ends with a sequence where one of the guys gets to hang around in the girls locker room/shower and watch all of 'em soaping up.  When Phoebe Cates finally has sex with her boyfriend, it's on a beach, after romping in the water, when they're back to being completely dried off.
    There are other sequences, like Ray Walson seducing the headmistress under false pretenses, leading to a car rolling off a ramp, into a pool.
    There's an aspect to this movie that hasn't aged right.  There's a strange amount of alcoholism from a parent, as well as a decent amount of sexual harassment.  That's really, really strange.  It's one thing if we see male students sexually harassing female students (or vice-versa).  In this case, it's parents of female students harassing their daughter's roommates.  Or a drunk guy pinching a teacher.
    I'll probably come back to this one.  It's really fascinating in a strange way.

132 - Trick R Treat (Blu-ray)
    I think this is the third time I've watched this, and it gets better every time.  The structure is really unusual, as everything ties together, and the time overlaps a whole lot.  This time I noticed how carefully it's written.  The photography is excellent.  It isn't especially scary, but it does tend to keep you guessing about what will happen next.

133 - Stranger Than Fiction (Blu-ray)
    I actually felt more emotionally invested than I did the first time through.  He's a character without any real flaws, so it's hard to dislike him at all.  A boring life isn't a shame.  His heroic act is the sort of thing that charms me the way that Spider-Man does.

134 - Screwballs
    A Canadian teen sex comedy.  The Netflix description describes it as the "granddaddy of teen sex comedies."  This seems a little off, since it came out in 1983.  Interestingly, there's a note at the end that it was transferred from the best print of it - a 16mm print.  That might be why it looks like it came out of the early 70s.
    The movie itself is unusual.  I didn't mind watching it, but I didn't find it funny at all.  In fact, it seemed really weird.  Usually teen sex comedies include a plot that has something to do with a deeper message.  Hamburger:The Motion Picture could be interpreted as both an effort of overcome sex addiction, as well as an effort to accomplish something with your life.  Most teen sex comedies use a romance plot to show that there's something else out there.  This one doesn't.  This one is purely about sex, and nothing else.  And it isn't just the core males.  Most of the girls seem to be similarly fixated on nothing other than sex.  Most of the movie is very clearly broken into separate scenes, with a very minimal plot to join them.  A group of guys (which seems to include a few girls by the end) join forces in an effort for one of them to get to see Purity Busch's breasts by the end of the year.
    There's one character who is portrayed as not being focused on sex.  He has his picture taken with a stripper later in the movie.  Even the teachers are fixated as well.
    Maybe it would play better to the me from 7th or 8th grade.
    But to be fair, it was entirely watchable.

135 - Roxanne (Blu-ray)
    Just as enjoyable as ever.  On Blu, I could see the edges of the fake nose more clearly.  The big problem is that Roxanne doesn't come across as an especially desirable person.

136 - Isolation
    Irish horror production.  It's a little slow, and there aren't many surprises.  But the whole thing is reasonably compelling, and you remain curious about exactly what will happen.  The plot involves a genetically modified cow, resulting in a violent, spontaneously pregnant calf.  It turns into Alien on a farm.

137 - The Lost Boys
    I think I may have half-watched this during high school, since I remembered the dog chasing the lady down the long walk.  This isn't a very good movie.  Schumacher has a tendency to bring out some very hammy performances, and this movie is no exception.  Fright Night is a similar project with considerably more love for the material.  There's a peculiar focus on punchlines here, and the story seems rushed, with little time dedicated to character development.  I can't say that I hate it.  But it felt far more boring than horror movies normally do.
    But the guy playing sax at about 10 minutes in is the real highlight.

138 - Zombie Apocalypse (also under the title 2012 Zombie Apocalypse)
    An Asylum production that was aired as a Syfy original movie, this is not the worst zombie movie I've seen, but it's certainly the one that made me cringe the most.  It's more competent than Birdemic.  But it has some huge problems.  None of the characters act like normal people.  They make dumb decisions all the time.  There's at least one sequence where a substantial event seems to be taking place, and there's no followup.
    The effects are embarrassing.  The performances are embarrassing.  The zombies are embarrassing!  Some of them have these absurd masks that look vaguely like something from Halloween III.
    But, to be entirely fair, it was watchable.  I was able to get through the whole movie.

139 - Trekkies
    I wish this would get a blu-ray release.  I come back to it every few years, and it's still just as charming each time.  It's hard to explain the importance of the ideas that Star Trek includes, but this movie captures them pretty well.

140 - Tucker & Dale Vs Evil
    Very enjoyable.  The movie starts off as more of a comedy set against the conventions of southern-based horror movies.  During the middle it gets a little distressing, because it's hard to see how they'll get out of it with an acceptable ending.  And somehow, the ending worked.  Aside from that uncomfortable feeling during the middle of the movie, there's also the problem of the title.  I don't know what a better title would be, but this isn't the right one.

141 - Camp Slaughter (also known as "Camp Daze")
    This movie was just on the cusp of being watchable.  The short version of the plot is that a group of four modern teens wind up somehow being sucked back into a specific day in 1981 at a camp.  Campers are being killed off, eventually resulting in everyone dying.  At the end of the evening, everything resets.  It turns out that everyone in camp has been reliving the same day.
    It's hard to stress exactly how poorly done this movie is.  There are annoying camera effects.  Most of the movie looks like it was shot on video, although it was probably shot digitally.  Some shots shake just a little, although it's clear that wasn't intended.  The script is bad, but it's not bad in a way that makes me feel passive about it.  It's actually bad in a way that makes me feel kind of annoyed to hear the lines and the delivery.  The violence is weird, and for the most part, unnecessary.  Sometimes, the director likes to use closeups that call attention to how bad the direction is.  There's also a peculiar homoerotic undertone to the movie.  While this isn't bad, it becomes a problem because there's no payoff for it.  There was no purpose to including those sequences.
    As you probably know, I'm not picky, but I can't recommend this movie to anyone.

142 - The Broken
    Another After Dark Horrorfest release.  It's a decent enough plot, involving doppelgängers of characters killing the originals and taking over their places.  But it's not especially enjoyable.  The pacing is slow, and the lighting is dark nearly all the time.  I'm sure I will forget it soon, since I already am.

143 - The Pink Panther 2 (Blu-ray)
    Still fun.  It's a step down, but it has some gags that I still love - like the tape recorder/pen.

144 - Inception (Blu-ray)
    So far, I think this is the only movie that I watched more than once this year.  It actually gets better the second time, partly because I had subtitles on.  I didn't care as much for the plot line with Mal, but this time it felt more integral to the story.

145 - The Devil's Chair
    A cheap, but otherwise interesting British horror flick.  A guy discovers an odd chair in an abandoned building, and the chair kills the girl he's with.  The guy is committed to an asylum.  Years later, the nature of the chair is explored.  I'm not sure exactly what I saw, but it was reasonably compelling.

146 - Black Sabbath
    1963 Italian horror anthology, and very nicely atmospheric.  I love the sets!  The first story seemed a little weak, but after reading more about the movie, it turns out that there was a subplot that was cut in the American version.  The second story was good, but the pacing had to be tightened, so it seemed less believable that the main character would immediately profess to loving someone he just met.  The last story features a very creepy corpse.  While these are some vague comments, the stories are pretty decent, and move along very quickly.

147 - Frailty (Blu-ray)
    A man believes that God has charged him to kill demons, and he enlists his two sons in participating in these murders.
    I've always had some mixed feelings about the ending, since it comes down on the side of the supernatural explanation, which isn't as satisfying.  This time, I found the dream-like feel of the movie much more engaging.  Since most of the story is told in flashback, it feels more appropriate.  And the sense of horror is stronger over time, although not a terribly violent movie.

148 - Last Of The Living
    A New Zealand zombie movie.  While it started out in a charming way, near the end, I was a little puzzled about exactly what the tone was supposed to be.
    A pretty standard zombie setup, except that the three survivors are guys who are just spending their days goofing off, and mostly only venture out for food and such.  This was fun enough.  The zombies seemed ineffective though, and this was making me wonder how they could have infected that many people.  Then about halfway through the movies, suddenly the zombies are tougher, and seem to be faster.  There isn't much of an ending though.  If I were a 7th or 8th grader looking for a 'cool' zombie movie, I'd probably really like this one.
    One really big strength that the movie has is a whole lot of largely abandoned shots.  The opening sequence of the guy wandering through town without anyone around is nicely handled, even if it does seem like a low-budget ripoff of 28 Days Later.

149 - The Social Network
    I hadn't been overly interested in seeing this, but I'm glad I did.  While the movie doesn't paint a flattering picture of anyone involved in the creation of Facebook, I identify with Mark Zuckerberg in a certain way.
    While Facebook is the central part of the story, the point is more the way that we are motivated to achieve through heartbreak.  Zuckerberg is an awkward guy, but I understand it.

150 - Lost In America
    Albert Brooks comedy about a couple that decide to "drop out" and live out of a Winnebago for the remainder of their lives.  They got to Las Vegas, where their savings are gambled away.  The rest of the movie deals with them trying to get back on their feet.  There are a few good moments, but the movie is ultimately just too dark to be an effective comedy.

151 - Captain America (Blu-ray)
    Held up very well on the second viewing.  I think I actually liked it more than I did the first time.