65 - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

    Set against the Civil war, The Man with No Name (here, nicknamed Blondie) competes with two other men to find a stash of $200,000 in gold that has been buried.
    I was hesitant to start this one up, since I saw the running time reaching a shade under three hours.  While I've enjoyed For a Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, the pacing on those was a little hard to take.  But I came out of this much more pleased than I expected.  I would easily consider this the best of the three.
    The plot is better arranged than the other movies.  It moves forward at all points, and there are some great setbacks that leave the outcome hanging.  Even though it runs longer, the filmmaking seems a little less indulgent than the other pictures.  There's one major standoff, with lots of closeups switching between characters, but it works better than the other ones.  It's a three-way standoff, and the tension is great.  In most standoffs, it's clear how things will play out.  In this case, we have no idea what's going to happen.
    The relationships between the characters - particularly between Tuzo (the Ugly) and Blondie (the Good) are much more interesting than the other movies.
    Beyond these aspects, I was pleased that there was a stronger subtext to this one.  None of the characters are particularly interested in the war that's going on.  They're all motivated by the big payoff.  There are no idealists.  Even when we meet a captain that's stuck fighting to prevent the confederates from taking a bridge, he seems to be sick of the conflict.  In fact, Blondie seems to express that he thinks that they aren't dying for anything useful.  That might seem like a shortsighted perspective, but it seems more appropriate in the context of the movie.

64 - Jaws

    A small island town has a problem with a large shark attacking swimmers on their beach.  Eventually, the sheriff and two others go out on a boat and hunt the shark.
    Another classic that I never put the time into watching.  I think I've seen the opening scene once or twice, but the pacing of the movie never made me feel the need to keep watching.
    It still plays a little slowly.  For a summer blockbuster, it's very restrained.  The story isn't especially complex, there isn't much action.  I'm not even sure if I could argue that it's a strong horror movie.  If anything, it plays out a little more like a Hitchcock thriller.  Very slowly building, a few scenes to build the tension.  The photography is very coy about showing the shark, which was out of necessity, but benefits the sense of tension.
    The real sense of horror in the movie is the poor leadership of the mayor.  He's portrayed as being kind of incompetent, but that only accounts for his first misstep.  As the movie progresses, he doubles, and triples down on his bad decisions.  He also makes an effort to absolve himself of responsibility.
    Perhaps I'd feel more strongly in favor of the movie if that aspect of the story had a concrete ending.  As it is, it's enjoyable, but I don't know how much I'd want to re-watch it.

63 - Revenge of the Nerds

    After a collection of nerds at Adams College are kicked out of their dorms, they struggle to form a fraternity, then to control the Greek Council in an effort to stop a rival frat from picking on them.
    An 80s classic.  I've watched this many, many times.
    It's hard to not identify with the nerds.  Gilbert is a bit more shy, but he's clearly less awkward.  Lewis is more outgoing, but he's also more annoying in his nerdy habits.  But his confidence is kind of inspiring.
    As I've gotten older, I've found a few things a little more unsettling about the movie.  The nerds set up a series of cameras in the Pi sorority house.  As funny as this sequence is, it's a little unsettling.  This leads to another bit that also seems unsetting - using the Pi pictures at the bottom of the pies they sell at the fundraiser.  ("That's my Pi.")  Within the universe that this movie takes place, it seems more acceptable.  This is a universe where the police refuse to take any action about a threat being thrown through a window.  And where a sorority sister, deceived into having sex with someone she didn't consent to, is so pleased with his performance that she immediately falls in love with him.  It's a strange world.
    I think it's a well-written comedy, and that the performances are very iconic.  Characters with very few lines - like Lamar - are able to define themselves with just a line or two, or a raised eyebrow.

62 - The Sting

    After a con results in robbing the wrong guy, a mentor con artist is killed.  His protege decides to put together an elaborate con to make things right.  He enlists the help of another skilled artist, as well as deals with some local police on his trail.
    Currently #96 on the IMDB top 250, and I'm not positive why.  It's a good movie.  It's very well made, it's unique, it's influential.  The performances are remarkably great, especially Paul Newman during the poker game.  And the story is enjoyable, but I don't feel like the structure is up to par with modern styles of telling the same type of story.
    When you first see Ocean's 11, or almost any other heist/scam movie, the audience is played in a much more comprehensive way.  We understand only as much as we're supposed to at any given point, and we get a string of reevaluations that put everything into place.  With The Sting, we actually stay on top of things for most of the picture.  We know exactly what they're doing, with the exception of one specific point, which allows for a final reveal to play out.  This is an effective one, but I suppose I'm just letting my expectations get the better of me.  I was hoping for more than one payoff.
    I'd never say that it's bad, and I'm sure that this structure influenced most of the modern movie heists that I hold dear, but it just doesn't reach the same peaks. 

61 - The Bank Job

    A group of small-time crooks get a tip about an insecure bank in London, where a criminal has some blackmail materials stashed in a deposit box.  Their robbery ties together the London prostitution scene, government employees, the royal family, and corrupt, and clean, local police.
    When I put this on my queue, I only knew a few things about it.  I knew it was a heist movie, and that Jason Statham was starring.  I assumed it would be a little more action-heavy.  I also wasn't expecting it to be especially great.  But it is.  It's actually a very good movie.
    The story is fascinating, even though it's a little off.  After reading up on the actual robbery, this is a bit more speculative than I would like.  But the way this story is structured is amazing.  The audience has no idea what's happening for a big chunk of the opening, even though we can follow individual scenes.  As things progress, we start to understand how everything fits together.
    This is another one of the powerful elements of this movie.  Once we understand the scope of the situation, we're identifying with the robbers, but we feel as helpless as they do.
    There isn't much action in this.  In fact, I think I would put one scene, very close to the end, as being an action scene.  But the rest of the movie is just a well-done heist movie.
    Let me specify that.  The heist only takes up about the first half of the movie.  The rest of the movie is about figuring out how to get out of the situation that the heist put them into.
    Solidly great movie.

60 - Summer of '42

    The memoirs of a 15-year-old summer vacation on an island, where he hangs out with some friends, tries to learn about sex, seduce girls, and pine for an older lady.
    This is a damn good movie.
    It's an important one, too.  I believe that this movie paved the way for most teen sex comedies, but handled the material in a way that was just far, far classier than any modern teen sex comedies.  The writing is perfect.  It comes across as being accurate, so much so that it's easy to cringe at how awkward the teens are at flirting.
    The other conversations - just the dialogue between the boys - are incredible.  The follow the sense of teenage logic, but they're littered with the truth about a 15-year-old's focus.  They are extremely sexual, but very poorly educated.  It's very charming.
    The story is bittersweet.  And it's hard to say that it has a concrete meaning.  But, as I've gathered from reading up on the story, it's just an account of his first "adult experience."  This makes us try to remember when we had that same experience.  (To be honest, I don't think I had a specific one.  I remember that there was a summer that I realized that I no longer found a lot of childish things funny.)
    The best comparison I can think of for this movie is Love Story.  I was really impressed with that the first time I saw it, but I never felt the urge to re-watch it.

59 - The Mummy

    A mummy is inadvertently resurrected, and proceeds to try to resurrect his love, who was also buried 3,700 years prior.  He needs to use a descendent of the original though.
    The original Universal horror movie, I found this to be an unusual production.  It's horror, but it doesn't seem to be especially tense.  The mummy doesn't even seem to be especially threatening, just awkward.  But it's not especially dramatic either.  By modern standards, I'm not sure what type of movie it was.
    Regardless, I found this more watchable than Dracula, probably because there's a stricter focus on keeping the story going, and the script makes better sense.  Then again, the movie does have a strange problem; it keeps trying to emulate Dracula.  This makes a lot of sense.  There wasn't as much information about what it was that the public liked to see in movies, and they knew that Dracula was a hit, so they felt like it needed to be aped.  This shows up in specific shots, as well as a scientist character that seems to play things a lot like Van Helsing.
    There was one real standout in the production, and that's the female lead - Zita Johann.  Her appearance is really noteworthy.  Huge eyes.  Her deliveries are interesting as well.  She stands out as not being quite as hammy as most of the cast.

58 - Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned

    A few guys have a bachelor party at a small house, which is invaded by vampiric/demonic strippers.
    Another movie from a 10-movie DVD set, it was hard to avoid watching it, especially with a title like this.  It's a cheap movie.  Real cheap.  But it's actually got some good stuff going on.  The opening credits are clever.  There's a very Evil Dead-like quality to the action.  It's sleazy, but still very dark.  Lots of sexual gags.
    The premise isn't strong enough to carry an entire feature, which is obvious once the action starts.  There just aren't enough victims, and there are too many vampires.  Plus, the location is small enough that it's not the sort of thing that can be dragged out into a defense movie.  Despite these problems, the movie overcomes them very well.
    It does this by using a string of developments that happen later in the movie.  There are a few reveals that push the story into a more in-depth direction than the audience would suspect.  After establishing that they're dealing with vampires, they go for the head vampire.  Despite the limited cast, there was a pleasing explanation, and a more philosophical reveal after that.
    There are some technical issues - the lighting is terrible at night.  There are bizarre, poorly done CGI effects.  Some sequences seem to have a greenish tint.  At least the sound was good enough.
    The one element that I think dragged the movie down was the fiancee.  There's an effort to play her for laughs, but she's just way too annoying.

57 - How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

    A musical covering a window washer's meteoric rise in a fictional company.
    A very well-known title, but I was surprisingly ignorant of the story.  It's very fun.  We never learn what it is that Worldwide Wicket does, and no one seems to do any work, but there's no problem with starting someone in the mailroom and then promoting them to being a junior executive two hours later.
    There is a bit of fat that could be trimmed from this.  I found the romantic subplot to be a distraction.  There's a lot of good humor to be mined, and the romance just made me think of how awkward and forced that was.
    The songs are usually nice, but unremarkable.  I don't think any of them have stuck with me very well.  I suppose that the two most memorable ones are "A Secretary is Not a Toy" and "The Company Way," which was more charming because of the excellent writing for that song.
    One other enjoyable note - Robert Morse, who plays the lead, looks a whole lot like a version of Dave Foley, especially when seen from a distance.

56 - Darkon

    A documentary about a massive live-action role-play organization, with a focus on a specific conflict event.
    For some reason, I'm unable to improvise acting.  This is really peculiar.  I think I can do it, but only after I've already constructed a large enough narrative in my head.  I've done a small amount of acting in high school, and I felt reasonably capable when I did that.  But I participated in a murder mystery dinner, which turned out to be a terrible experience.  I had nothing to offer in terms of playing the role, and I felt frustrated by other people sticking to their roles so firmly.
    So the result is that I find it completely fascinating that people are able to do this kind of world-building, especially on such a massive scale.  World building tends to fall apart as more people participate, but it sounds like they manage to keep things fairly grounded.  Most of the people involved are distressingly normal.  The one token nerd they include is remarkably well spoken, and very self-aware.  He doesn't embarrass himself.
    What makes the documentary interesting isn't how interested the people are in their project - it's how invested the viewer gets.  I found that the last two battles weren't just dramatic stagings, but I was genuinely curious about how they would play out in terms of the net effect on the Darkon world.
    I could never participate in this kind of activity, but that isn't to say that I wouldn't enjoy the combat.

55 - Frenzy

    A man with a mild violent streak is mistaken for the necktie killer, a man who rapes his victims before strangling them with a necktie.  A series of coincidences make him the prime suspect, as the killer murders his ex-wife and his current girlfriend.
    I didn't go into this one expecting much, but this is one of the better Hitchcock movies.  His direction is skillful, there's an appropriate balance of tension, menace, and dark humor.  It's actually cut a little shorter than most of his movies, but it still covers a lot of ground.  It's a distinctly working-class movie.  All of the characters - even the police - are fairly blue-collar.
    One thing that stood out is how explicit the movie is.  There's more nudity in this than I've seen in any other Hitchcock movie.  This lends a certain credibility to the story.  We are dealing with rape and murder, so it makes sense to have some of this portrayed, otherwise we don't fear the killer.
    The characters are very nicely defined.  The protagonist has some serious faults, and it helps make us a little wary of him until we find out who the killer is.  The antagonist is reversed - he hides his manic nature very well, and puts on a good public face of charm and happiness.

54 - Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home

    A probe travels to Earth, sending out a signal, and turning all the power off around it.  Kirk and crew figure out that it's looking for humpbacked whales, so they travel into the past to find some.
    I know that I've seen most of the Star Trek movies, but this is one that I had never seen all of.  And man, it's great.  Even though it's very unpopular, I've never thought that Wrath of Khan was as spectacular as the reviewers claim.  It's good, and it's a lot of fun, but it didn't seem as ambitious as I like my Trek to be.  What I like about this movie is that it has a wider scope than most of their movies.  We see a bigger picture of Starfleet.  We see what things are like on Earth.  We see their hearings.  There are more casual aliens, more like Star Wars.  We see more of ships flying in atmosphere.
    There's a lighter tone to the movie, and despite being as fun as it is, it also has a stripped-down feeling to the script.  We don't have a villain to be annoyed with.  It's the crew identifying their problem, then having an adventure in solving it.  The fact that the crew isn't on the Enterprise is kind of a treat.  It gives them some problems to overcome, but it also serves to emphasize just how tight-knit the crew is.
    It's easy to feel dismissive of an entry as lighthearted as this one is, and some aspects of the story are silly.  Plus, the probe looks like a giant space burrito.  But it's a solidly enjoyable movie.

53 - From Russia With Love

    Bond tries to acquire a cryptography machine.  His efforts are being manipulated by SPECTRE.
    I haven't seen many of the Bond movies.  This is the oldest one I've seen.  And it's really, really campy.  I'm not positive what I was expecting, but this was remarkably tame, but also very dated.
    The action is surprisingly dull.  There are a few fun moments, but they mostly come toward the end - the motorboat chase, the helicopter attack.  The gypsy fight is fairly interesting, but it isn't as fun as it should be.  There's some especially weird bits.  Like the last scene, when Bond is attacked by an agent posing as a maid.  She has a poisoned spike on her shoe (which just looks a lot like the Spider-Man villain Tarantula) and she just keeps trying to kick him.  This is one of the most awkward fight scenes I've seen.
    What makes the movie watchable is how strange it is to see Bond acting like this.  He's overconfident.  He's playful, but very in-charge.  He does slap women around a bit.
    What disappoints though, is the lack of any particular development for Bond.  I don't feel like Connery had an opportunity to act.

52 - Paranormal Activity 3

    Dealing with the childhood of the sisters detailed in the first and second movies.
    The formula is effectively the same as the other two - some mild creepiness for awhile, which ramps up to a dark ending.  This one isn't quite as enjoyable as the first two, but it does change up the experience a little.  The effects in this one are great.  They come across as very natural.  This movie also makes a bigger step toward explaining the larger plot - why these girls are being haunted, and exactly what it is they're being haunted by.
    There's a touch more humor to this one.  I can't quite place it, but the kids seem to be more fun than I expected.  Not as whiny.  The one person who comes off poorly is their mother, who seems to refuse to believe anything, and won't watch any of these occurrences that appear on video.
    Like the other Paranormal Activity movies, I don't think I'd bother to watch them more than once.
    This made me think about The Blair Witch Project.  I was more enthralled with that the first time I saw it, but I found it nearly unwatchable on the second time through.  I don't think the problem was that the scare was gone, but it was that there wasn't anything happening through most of the movie.  With these, things are happening.  And the handling is a bit more masterful.  This is more evident in the inclusion of the camera on the oscillating fan base.  This is an incredibly simple idea, but it pays off wonderfully.

51 - 13 Eerie

    A group of forensic students are set in a wilderness environment to analyze cadavers in a 'natural' habitat.  It turns out that the area they are set in was where some experiments took place, resulting in some strange, zombie-like creatures stalking the students.
    I had read a pretty positive review of this, so that may have heightened my expectations.  It's pretty well-made for being a limited-budget affair, but it's still got something wrong with it.  I'm having a hard time pinpointing it though.
    The kids are under-developed, but that's not much of an issue.  They seem serious, which is actually more enjoyable than the normal sexy-teens-in-the-woods.  They don't over-react to the slaughter, which is really pleasing.  In particular, I liked one scene where two of them are hiding in a small building (a van?  It's hard to tell.) and one of the zombies is wandering around poking at their structure.  Neither of them gasps in horror, they don't have to cover the other's mouth.  They are clearly worried, but they are also in control of themselves.
    The zombies are big, tough, brutal things.  They seem to be partly rotten, but still huge and powerful.  They are able to break up through floorboards.  It's hard to say how fast they are.  Some of them seem pretty quick, other ones seem to be a little more lumbering.  In either case, they don't seem especially frightening.
    There is one main point of contention that I have with the plot.  The professor who has organized this event seems to be reluctant to believe anything.  If he's keeping radio contact with his students, wouldn't a break in that contact be enough to warrant checking in on everyone, and seeking out anyone who didn't check in?
    Still, this was pretty modestly good.  Not great, I'd never seek it out again, but it wasn't terrible.

50 - Topaz

    A difficult plot to explain.  A French intelligence agent working with the US government is sent on a mission to Cuba.  Upon his return, a KGB defector warns him of a spy ring in the French government.
    I've already covered about half of the movie there.  This is an unusual situation, where a good story doesn't make a good movie.  The problem is that this story spans so much geography, and political players, that it comes across as being much more convoluted.  For a movie that's about 2:22 long, this shouldn't be an issue, except that we feel like we're thrown into the situation with a bunch of people who already know what's happening.
    Hitchcock didn't do too well with this picture.  The music seems weirdly inappropriate for the subject matter.  There is at least one sequence that seemed like he was repeating his approach from Rear Window.  He still has serious problems with shooting outside.  And I was particularly annoyed with the stock footage that he used.  Maybe this stuff looked more acceptable when a production was universally grainy.
    There are still a few good sequences.  One of his opening shots is really beautifully done, if a little rough, when the camera follows a family out of their house and over a fence.  And the shot when a lady in a dress is shot is wonderfully handled.  But otherwise, this movie is probably the weakest one I've seen from Hitchcock.

49 - Phantoms

    A pair of sisters arrive in town, when they find that the whole town seems to be mostly deserted.  Most people are missing, a few bodies are laying around, and there are a few mutilations around.  After finding the sheriff and a few others, they try to figure out what's going on.
    As I watched this, I started off liking it.  It seemed like a fun kind of mystery, almost like a darker X-Files episode.  Then at a certain point, I found myself mentally listing the other movies that it reminded me of.  That list kept growing.  IT, In The Mouth of Madness, The Langoliers, and so forth.  It's a strange movie, and it had a lot of Lovecraftian elements, but it seemed more annoying than it should be.
    This could be attributed to a few weak points.  Characters are dull.  It's hard to care about any of them.  The photography is mostly dark, and there are a few sequences that seem to have been shot on video.  Lastly, there's a massive problem with using strobe lights.  I honestly don't understand why this is happening during the last third of the movie.  It's annoying, it's hard to tell what's happening, and it doesn't add to the tension or horror.
    I had some mixed feelings about the development that explains the first half of the movie.  In some ways, it works, but the more time I invest in thinking about it, it doesn't seem to be the right direction.
    The horrific elements were modestly enjoyable.  They reminded me a little of In the Mouth of Madness, but they didn't reach the same heights as those ones.
     I also have no idea why this movie is titled Phantoms.

48 - Dolores Claiborne

    Dolores, an older maid, is accused of murdering her elderly employer.  Her daughter returns to the hometown, as they explore the situation that led to the death of her father, as well as the death of the employer.
    Stephen King movies tend to suffer from the same problems as his books - they start off very well, but they tend to devolve into absurdity during the last act.  This is one of the real exceptions to this rule.  I've never read the book, so it's hard to claim that it plays out the same way.  But this story has only one mystic moment in it, and it's easy to dismiss.
    What makes this movie so special is how wonderfully it's put together.  Things move a little slowly on occasion, but we keep on learning just enough to keep the movie feeling like a string of discovery.  There are dark aspects to the story.  Murder, abuse, corrupt authority.  None of it feels forced.  It all unfolds in a natural way.  Ok, sometimes characters seem a little too witty for their own good, but it's worthwhile.
    It's a solid two hours.  I often find myself re-engrossed each time I see it.  Something about the story is ephemeral - I remember the details for about a day or two, then forget most of them in time for the next viewing.  I think this is the third or fourth time I've watched it, and it always feels like a rewarding experience.
    There's a sense of horror to the story, moreso than The Shawshank Redemption, but with a similar sense of ease to the end of it.  We feel like justice has been served, even in the face of low odds. 

47 - The Invincible Iron Man

    Tony Stark deals with raising an excavation in China, which leads to resurrecting some guardians, Fin Fang Foom, and The Mandarin.
    Another Marvel animated feature.  This is the third one I've seen, and this is clearly the worse of them.  There are some serious problems with the structure of the story.  First, we see a variation of his origin, where he builds the armor in captivity.  Then when he returns back to America, we see that he had already built many, many variations of the Iron Man armor.  When he uses the armor, he seems to be seriously under-powered.
    The characters are poorly developed.  Stark doesn't have much personality.  When he does show a touch of character, later in the movie, he comes across as a whiny kid.  Which is strange for a guy who is supposed to be an adult.  The secondary characters are also pretty dull.  I suppose that Rhody and Pepper are developed about the right amount.  But Howard Stark is never anything other than a caricature.
    The technical end of this movie is annoying.  The animation borrows some anime techniques (at least, from the little bit of anime I've seen).  The action is clunky.  There's an annoying habit of doing some very cool animation, follow by doing some very cheap actions - like keeping a single frame of a character and moving the background to make them fly.  I don't usually care about this kind of thing, and I'm willing to overlook it, but in a story like this, and with a character like Iron Man, it seems disrespectful.
    The good thing about this picture was that they were willing to include Fin Fang Foom.  I've always liked the idea of a dragon existing in the Marvel universe.  The bad thing is that he was way too easy to defeat.
    I don't know what I was expecting with this one.

46 - The Great Outdoors

    John Candy's middle-class vacation is ruined by his uninvited upper-class in-laws joining him.
    I'm counting this as a first viewing, because I don't think I've ever seen the whole thing.  I associate this movie with Harry & The Hendersons, since I think they came out around the same time.  Beyond the time period, there's a similar feeling to the movies.  They're supposed to be comedies, but they haven't aged very well.
    This movie is at least a bit better than Harry & The Hendersons.  There's still some very broad humor here, but it doesn't seem to be as constant as it was in Harry.
    The Great Outdoors was written by John Hughes, and it has a few of his signature marks.  There's a dance sequence (even if it's during the end credits) and there's a romance.  Hughes has a particular way of writing dialogue for teenage romances… it's over-the-top in a certain way.  Overly witty, but just on the cusp of believability.  What makes this strange is that the romance in this movie isn't earned.  It's actually the most conspicuous part of the movie.  Their romantic plot boils down to this:
    1 - boy inadvertently pokes girl in the butt with his pool cue
    2 - boy trails her and tries to apologize
    3 - girl dismisses him.
    4 - the next day, boy sees girl working her job
    5 - despite being reminded that she isn't interest, girl agrees to meet boy after work.
    6 - somehow, boy and girl are now boyfriend/girlfriend
    7 - boy and girl kiss on a boat on the lake
    8 - boy misses his date with girl because his father is eating a challenge steak
    9 - boy somehow meets up with girl right before leaving, and she doesn't seem to care

    The only information we learn about her throughout the movie is her name, her job, and that she's sick of living in a tourist town.  To be honest, that's more than we learned about the teenage guy.  Now that I think of it, everyone in the movie is pretty two-dimensional, except for the two male leads, and to a lesser extent, their wives.
    So, I'm trying to think of the things that are good about the movie.  The core of the story - the conflict between John Candy and Dan Aykroyd - is actually pretty good.  (To be honest, the same subject matter was handled well in Homer Loves Flanders)  There are some nice emotional developments, even though they all happen in about 20 minutes at the end of the movie.
    I think part of what made this not work for me was just that the target audience was probably older children, like probably kids between 8-12.

     While the movie is technically good, there is one thing that I noticed - the lighting is really wrong in a few scenes.  Some of the outdoor shots are very obviously lit by a crew.  It's fine for it to be lit by a crew, but not in an obvious way.

45 - Paranormal Activity 2

    The sister of the lead from Paranormal Activity has just had a baby.  The family - her, her husband, and her step-daughter and dog deal with a strange haunting.
    I wasn't sure how much I liked this one at first.  It seemed like it was effectively the same as the first movie, but with a baby.  Instead, once this one had a chance to develop, it was a fantastic idea.  It ties in to the first movie - most of the movie taking place before the events of the first movie, with a few minutes of material that covers a period of time after that movie has ended.
    The demon's actions seem even more puzzling here.  We get further clues about what has happened that makes them a target, but there's also a whole lot of material that remains unexplained.  We never learn exactly what possession by this demon entails.  We don't know quite what the demon's goal is.
    They've struck on an excellent formula.  These movies don't seem to be too difficult to shoot, and the movies promise the same things each time - high tension, with creepy payouts by making spooky things happen.  Things ramp up over the course of the movie, leading to a jump scare payoff.
    The effectiveness of the jump scare is a little mixed.  There were actually a few of them in this movie, but they all felt reasonable.
    I think I liked this one more than the first.  I liked the daughter more than the parents.  I think including the dog was a nice angle, and I'm impressed with the performance that the dog gave.  Like the first one, I don't think it's the sort of thing that I would re-watch.  But I'm very impressed with how well they tied the story to the first one.

44 - Planet Hulk

    After Earth's heroes deem the Hulk to be too powerful and dangerous, they exile him to an uninhabited world.  After the navigation goes wrong, the Hulk is made a slave on a desolate planet.  He fights his way through a Gladiator plot.
    I've seen a few of Marvel's animated features, and they're a mixed blessing.  It's great to see some of these lesser characters get a decent treatment, and it's really nice to see some of these stories get placed into a movie format.  But there's the flip side - the quality isn't especially fantastic.  The stories don't have many developments beyond the source material, and I feel like the existence of a story in this format means that it will never be developed as a better quality production.
    To clarify, there are some stories I really like with Spider-Man.  I'd be thrilled to see an animated production of the original Clone Saga storyline.  But I would be a bit annoyed if I saw an animated Death of Jean DeWolff movie.  That story really deserves to have a live-action big-budget production.
    That said, this is a pretty good one.  The story is solid.  There are some engaging characters.  It's a little padded for length.  Many of the fight scenes seem like there is unnecessary shots used to make them go on longer, and the movie actually runs pretty short.  It's about 1:21 or so, but the last seven minutes is credits!
    I find the Hulk to be an unusual character.  He's not exactly a hero, even though he occasionally does heroic things.  In this story, he's mostly selfish, with a few heroic actions to make him likable.  If they had extended the story a little, we might actually see an idea that is hinted at near the end - maybe if he has people who believe in him, and don't treat him like a monster, maybe he'll be a hero.

43 - The Possession

    A young girl picks up a wooden puzzle box at a garage sale, and after opening it, winds up possessed by a Jewish demon.  Her father and her family try to exorcize the demon.
    After setting those goals at the start of this year, focusing on watching older stuff, and broadening the genres a little, I think it's hurt my movie count.  While I like many of these older movies I've watched, and I find the experience interesting, I also have a lot to learn from these modern, cheap horror movies.
    This was a B movie.  It's intended to get the normal gross for a horror movie, and not much more.  This means that the movie is predictable.  It also means that it follows certain expectations of the time period.  And that's where we hit some interesting territory.  There are plenty of Ring (or Japanese) influenced elements.  There's the creepy pale girl with long black hair, concealing her face with the hair.  There are swarms of bugs (moths in this one).  There is a bizarre sequence that has a pair of fingers reaching up from a girl's throat.  These are creepy elements, but they seem like they've already become cliche.
    To make this Japanese influence even weirder, there's a Jewish angle to this movie.  I actually like this element a bit more.  I think there's a small sub-genre of Jewish horror (but the only thing I can think of is stuff involving golems).  It's nice to spice up a horror genre that has been almost exclusively Catholic since The Exorcist.
    For the most part, this movie is unremarkable.  It's interesting enough to keep my attention though.
    I did notice one thing that has been bothering me.  It seems like in every horror movie, whenever a pair of parents are involved in the story, they are always divorced, or at least estranged.  I think this was acceptable in The Hole, because their separation was a key aspect of the story.  There are a few other exceptions I can think of.  The couple in Stir of Echoes was married.  Vacancy has a newlywed couple.  I guess I just feel like making a couple divorced is a cheap way to try to build the characters.