61 - Wayne's World

    Again, as an adult, I've found that Mike Myers just isn't terribly funny.  But Dana Carvey is fantastic.  In fact, just about everyone other than Mike Myers is still very enjoyable.  But he hams it up so much, it doesn't play right.  I also found it really peculiar that Cassandra and Crucial Taunt would choose to audition for a record contract by playing a cover.  And they didn't even make the cover their own, it's pretty faithful, if uninspired.

60 - Crank 2: High Voltage

    I went in expecting it to not be as good as Crank.  And it was actually worse than I expected.  The premise was actually decent: this time, he has an artificial heart, and he has to periodically get some electricity to recharge it.

    But the movie doesn't work.  It starts off acceptably, but it gradually moves toward a sensibility that detracts from the tone of the movie.  There are too many efforts to repeat the successes of the first movie, but they lose the atmosphere.  As as result, I actually felt a bit bored during this one.

    They also did a little bit more character development, but they really screwed that up.  I shouldn't come out of it thinking that the hero is more of a jerk.

59 - Crank

   An assassin gets injected with a drug that will kill him, but he can extend his life by keeping his adrenaline going.

    For an action movie that was fairly cheap, ($12M) it's incredibly fun.  It moves along at a frantic pace, and everything feels almost like a very violent comic book.  The hero isn't exactly supposed to be a likable person, but it's hard to feel like he's bad at all.  The movie reaches several points that feel like they are a live action cartoon.  This works very well.  I'm probably going to get Cathy to watch this when she has a chance.

58 - The Prestige

    A Christopher Nolan film about two competing magicians, set against the rivalry between Edison and Tesla.

    It's an interesting movie.  I was happy with the twist at the end, since it felt telegraphed just enough.  I would have liked to see it with subtitles though.  And on Blu-ray, since there are so many dark shots that it would have really helped to clarify.

57 - Wayne's World 2

    I think it hasn't aged as well for me, because of two reasons.  First, I watched it a whole lot in the past.  Second, Mike Meyers is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is.

    But I still really like things like the setup for the Village People sequence.

56 - Eden Lake

    A couple go on a short vacation to a lake in the woods.  They run afoul of a group of hoods, who ramp up their harassment, leading to torture and so forth.

    This was a seriously disturbing movie.  I had a hard time watching it, especially during the first half.  During the second half, I thought it was going to even out a little, since it seemed like it would turn into a revenge movie.  It has a bleak ending.  Really bleak.

    While I don't have much difficulty with watching horror in general, I have a hard time seeing bullying in movies.  (I have Punch-Drunk Love on my desk right now)  There was another movie that I had heard great things about, The Girl Next Door.  Once I started watching it, I had to abandon it.  I can't handle that type of cruelty.  Here, I forced myself to watch it.

    After watching this, I reordered my Netflix queue.  I don't think I can handle more horror right now.

55 - What About Bob?

    It's been awhile, but the movie plays better than I remember.  I know I liked it a lot when I was younger, then the last time I saw it, I felt it was a bit more disturbing.  This time, I think I appreciate Bill Murray's performance much more.  The role is in all of the little things he tosses in.  It's hard to imagine the role being played by anyone else.  Dreyfuss is solid, and I think I noticed more careful development of his character through this, so his attempt to kill Bob isn't as far fetched as it seemed.

    The music reminds me a lot of a few sources - Danny Elfman, the theme for Brain Donors, and the theme for A Fish Called Wanda.

54 - The Frighteners

    This is the first time I've watched the director's cut, and it's really fun.  The effects have dated a little, but they still have the right amount of charm.  The extra material is similar to the rest of the movie - a lot of comedy, a bit of horror, a bit of mystery.  It's great.

53 - The Bourne Identity

    Watched it again, this time with Cathy.

52 - The Empire Strikes Back

    As good as ever.  The sound seemed more interesting than I remembered.  And I think I spotted a few additions to cloud city, mostly with a bunch of small ships flying around.

51 - The Children

    A British production.  a pair of siblings bring their respective spouses and children together for the holidays.  Some illness spreads through the children, making them want to kill adults.

    It's a really creepy movie.  Many things are left unexplained, but we get exactly as much information as the adults do.  (With the exception of some strange, fast cut bits that are supposed to have something to do with the insanity manifesting in the children.

    While it starts a little slowly, and it establishes characters that come across as being kind of broadly unlikable, (the wiki summary describes them as yuppies.  That seems about right.) the movie takes a well handled approach to building suspense.

    I found myself much more fascinated with the way that they handled the issue of adults killing children.  It's still very taboo, but there's another movie - Who Can Kill A Child? - which covers similar ground, along with the Children of the Corn movies.  This one was more explicit in violence.  Still, very effective.

50 - Some Like It Hot

    I usually watch this at least every other year.  I know it well enough that most of it is about the performances.

    Seeing it on Blu was interesting.  I can see more of the makeup used on the guys, which makes a lot of sense.

    I think Marilyn is fascinating.  I can't tell how much of her role is acting, and how much is her reciting lines.

49 - Fear

    Ally Sheedy stars in a thriller about a sort-of psychic who helps the police track down serial killers, who comes up against a killer who seems to have the same abilities as her, only is more powerful.

    It's actually more fun than the summary suggested.  I still don't have much affection for Sheedy, but the movie is entertaining, it moves along nicely, and even though I disagreed with some of the choices, it didn't feel like it was overreaching.  I have no idea why she never pointed out a distinguishing characteristic - the killer has a tattoo on the back of his right hand.  She clearly sees this in her visions a few time, and never mentions it to the police.

48 - Dog Soldiers

    A group of soldiers participating in a war game scenario are dropped into the wilderness.  It turns out that there are werewolves in the area, and the soldiers hole up in a farmhouse to try to survive the night.

    I'm a little more split on this movie than I expected to be.  I hear great things about it, and while it played well, there were a few things off about it.

    The first half hour of it is pretty slow.  This might just be my problem, but hearing thick accents takes some time to get used to.  The lack of subtitles on the DVD contributed to this.

    But once the movie got going, it handled pretty well.  The best material comes in the last half hour.

47 - Dark Island

    A pretty cheap movie, involving an island where a biological experiment has taken place.  A crew is sent to investigate it.  The enemy seems to be an inky cloud, similar to the remake of The Haunting (or was it House on Haunted Hill remake?).  The premise feels vaguely like the setup for Resident Evil.

    The budget is evident, but they mostly handle that pretty well.  The movie is well lit, and the sound and pacing are both fine, making it so it's entirely watchable.  But the script is hammy, and nearly every person involved is acting as hard as they can.  Near the beginning, it feels more evident, since they go through some cliche character building moments, but no one seems charismatic or smooth enough to pull them off.  Not really worth watching, but I don't regret it.

46 - Star Trek: Nemesis

    I only saw it in the theater, and never got around to watching it a second time.

    The crew deals with a sub-class of the Romulan Empire, led by a clone of Picard, that plans on wiping out all life on Earth.

    But the plot doesn't matter exactly.  There's a lot of fun to be had in this movie.  Plenty more action than usual, and we get some noteworthy sequences - Data jumping through space, from one spaceship to another.  Two ships crashing into each other.  More space battle dogfights.  Picard using a laser rifle of some sort.  It's a lot of fun.  And there is a heart to it all - primarily the relationship between Picard and Data gets more time.

    But I did recognize some real problems.  Primarily, the core of the plot.  I have a hard time caring about Picard's relationship with his clone.  I have a hard time caring about the clone at all.  And there's some really forced stuff with Troi.  Ugh.

45 - The Orphanage

    The blurb for this movie is pretty vague, and it didn't sound too compelling.  "A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, where she opens an orphanage for handicapped children. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend."

    That doesn't quite explain it.  She doesn't actually get a chance to open the orphanage.  Her son disappears pretty early in the movie.  From there, it actually gets more interesting.

    The movie is shot well.  There are plenty of evocative shots, and it teases things nicely, so you're always left curious about things.  The story is good, but the plotting is peculiar.  There are a lot of symbols, which can be meaningless, but they appeal to our sense of attaching meaning to similar things.  The ending is very nicely done.  I only wish that the last scene weren't there.  It seems like it was done specifically to spell things out for people who weren't paying close attention.

44 - Alien³

    I had a general knowledge of the plot of this one, as well as key developments.  But I could never remember watching the whole thing.

    Ripley, still asleep after Aliens, winds up stranded at a prison colony on a planet that seems to be otherwise deserted.  An alien begins stalking the prisoners, and Ripley takes charge to help them deal with it.

    I was struck by how dated many of the effects shots looked.  I know that some of the shots in Aliens haven't aged well, and Alien has some shortcuts.  But this movie looked great… except for the shots using a CGI alien.  There's another problem, but it's hard to explain.  The movie doesn't feel like it has that much tension to it.  I'm not sure why that is.

    There are a lot of complaints about how it undoes the happy ending of Aliens, but it never occurred to me at all.

43 - The Dead

    I first read about this movie about a year ago, on AICN.  It's a zombie movie set in west Africa.  Two guys try to make their way to a refuge.

    I'm not as overwhelmingly positive about this movie, but there was something I liked about it.  It was a very natural pacing, and it felt less like a movie and more like a document of a person's experience with a zombie problem.

    The dead aren't the same as they are in many other movies.  They seem less motivated to kill the living unless they get very close.  It's also a pretty bleak movie.  It's photographed well.  But I also had some real problems with some of the editing, but that seems to have been limited to the first 20 minutes or so, and was probably done to save time.

42 - Alien

    It's been a long time since I saw this.  I've watched Aliens countless times, almost every evening during a summer.  But I had only watched Alien once, and it was a pretty long time ago.

    It moves more slowly than expected, but most of the weaknesses there could be overcome with some better work in the first 20 minutes.  Many of the shots of the landing craft seem like they barely move at all.  But once the story gets going, things feel better.  For the time it came out, it was really unique. We've gotten used to what Geiger's alien looks like, but the strangeness of the design feels more obvious in this one.  Even if it still comes out looking distinctly like a guy in a suit for several shots.

    My biggest complaint is the sound mixing.  There's a lot of dialogue that sounds unintelligible.

41 - Pathology

    A gifted pathologist in an internship joins a group of other pathologists in a game of who can commit the most clever, and most difficult to solve, murder.

    I think the idea of this movie is really pretty enjoyable, especially because it easily reaches a point that the protagonist has a hard time escaping, which forces the viewer to speculate about how they would get out of the situation.  And the ending was handled very well.  Reminds me a little of EC Comics.

    There are a few problems.  First, we don't see a development of the characters sliding into their game.  We join them while they're already engaging in it.  Second, there's a huge amount of needless sequences trying to equate death/blood with sexuality.  Yep, there are lots of movies that traffic in that idea, but this just seems like it exists to pad the movie.  And to show off Alyssa Milano.  I actually do like how distant the main character seems to be, and it seems fitting.

    And it was a pleasure to see John de Lancie again.

40 - Air Force One

    A bunch of terrorists hijack Air Force One and hold it hostage in exchange for a prisoner.  The president gets in the action and reclaims the plane.

    I only saw this movie in the theaters, back in 1997.  I didn't remember much of anything about it.  Then it got mentioned on the AV Club, along with a musical remix.  I felt the urge to see it.

    It's a little weird.  It feels like everyone is playing it as a stage play sometimes.  Then it changes up to being this over-the-top action movie.  I think I'd have more respect for the movie if the last half hour was cut out.  That last half hour just makes the movie drag.  Ultimately, it's pretty silly, and the grandiose patriotic moments are annoying, combined with a score that feels jingoistic in a way.

39 - The Haunting

    I first saw this early in freshman year of high school, and never since then.  I remembered it as being very effective, even if the dialogue was a bit clunky.

    Two men and two women stay in a haunted house as paranormal investigators.  Strange things happen.

    The story has been borrowed from in a variety of other works, including Krubrick's version of The Shining, I suspect.  The pacing is a bit dated.  Hearing the main character's voiceover thoughts seemed more dated than usual.

    While it didn't scare me this time, I was struck by how clever Robert Wise's direction was.  There are a whole lot of very interesting shots, and he keeps on switching up his style to keep the audience on edge.  I'd really like to see this in a theater, since the movie relies on the audience paying attention.

38 - The Skeleton Key

    I saw it once about four years ago, and I was impressed then.  This time, it just reinforced how well written it was.

    A young girl is hired as a hospice worker for an old estate on the bayou.  The patient is strange, and is trying to escape.  The house has no mirrors, and the lady of the house is peculiar.

    Without delving deeper, it's a nicely creepy movie, and it's fairly unconventional.  Worth seeing, probably worth seeing twice.  Photographed nicely, too.  But I wish it had been given a different title.

37 - Frozen

    Three friends on a ski trip wind up getting stranded on the chair lift at the end of a day of skiing, leading into a week that the slopes will be closed.

    In concept, this fits into a genre of man-v-nature thrillers, and it's easier to portray the movie as being a 'serious' movie.  This seriousness takes away from the enjoyability of this movie.  When I take it seriously, I'm more bothered by plot holes.

    In particular, there are wolves in this movie.  The existence of the wolves isn't a problem.  The fact that they attack people is.  After doing a bit of research, there are wolves in New England, but they don't seem to run in packs.  They've all been loners.

    They also aren't about to attack a live person who isn't posing them a threat.

    The characters don't seem too likable, but I'm not too concerned about that.  It's more of an annoyance during the first quarter of the movie.

    With some more careful handling, this movie could have been really good.

36 - House

    1977 Japanese movie, released by Criterion.

    I can't exactly explain this movie.  The plot involves a group of girls going to visit one of their relatives at a house out somewhere.  It's sort of a horror movie, and it involves the ghost/house picking the girls off.

    But it's probably the weirdest movie I've seen.  I've seen Un Chien Andalou, and that's not quite a movie - it's mostly nonsense, any meaning assigned to it is really up to the viewer.  This does have a plot, but the movie is so packed with strange photography, special effects, and lots of bizarre happenings, that it overwhelms you.

    It's worth seeing, at least for the novelty of it.  I can't say that I thought much of it as a film, but it was entirely worth it, at least to say that I saw it.

35 - Horror Express

    A 1972 Spanish horror movie, noteworthy for a few reasons - it has Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Telly Savalas.  Plus, it's in the public domain.

    A frozen specimen of a missing link is found, and is being transported on the trans-Siberian express.  A series of mysterious deaths follow, and things get progressively weirder.

    I used to watch this, since we had it on VHS when I was young.  I think the last time I watched it was probably around 8th grade or so.  It actually aged very well.  The story moves faster than I remember, and it's much more explicit in explaining exactly what's going on.  All of the dialogue was recorded in post, but it doesn't come across as fake as it could.  The Blu-ray is an interesting print.  It's a bit sharper, but it has a lot more other errors - scratches and blotches on the film.  Still, very fun.

34 - House

    2008 horror movie.  There's not too much horrifying about it, little to no blood, and very little tension.  But it's really pretty good.
    Two couples wind up at a strange house in the middle of nowhere, with a collection of odd residents (which reminded me of Rocky Horror in a strange way).  They are stalked by an enigmatic killer (although we never see that killer actually kill anything).  There's something very likable about this movie.  The colors are interesting, and the story gets really strange at around 35 minutes in.  I'm not entirely happy with the movie, since there are several unanswered questions, but it remains very compelling.

33 - The Cellar Door

    Summaries of this movie are kind of misleading, suggesting that it's more about a game of wits between captive and captor.  It's not quite that bright.

    A guy keeps a girl captive in a mostly wooden cage/box in his basement.  It's never clear what he intends to do with her, except that there's a gradual implication that he's just looking to make her into an ideal girlfriend.

    The movie starts slow, the middle is pretty decent, then the end of it changes into a very simple breakout and chase/fight movie.  The budget is low, and it's most evident early on.

    I did discover something interesting about it.  It was released as Broken 2 in Germany.  Broken was a similar premise, but was done very well, and was more about enslavement and the process of breaking someone to be a slave.

32 - Dark City

    I think the last time I saw this was a little after it came out on DVD.  It's less confusing than I remember, but that could be since I'm seeing the directors cut, with subtitles.

    It's not a plot I can summarize without giving too much away.  A guy wakes up at a murder scene, and he tries to figure out if he's the one who did it or not.  This leads to a strange problem with a bunch of creepy guys with fedoras and long black coats and no hair, who are messing around with memories.

    It's shot very well.  The one thing I didn't like is that the scene that explains what's happening is too explicit.