166 - Nightmares

    An anthology of four stories, culled from unaired segments of a short-lived TV show, Darkroom.
    In Terror in Topanga, a lady goes out for cigarettes, despite warnings of an escaped murderer in the area.
    In Bishop of Battle, a young man is obsessed with reaching the final level of an arcade game.
    In The Benediction, a member of the clergy going through a crisis of faith is attacked by a truck during a desert drive.
    And lastly, in Night of the Rat, a family is terrorized by a massive rat.

    I've periodically heard of this movie for a long time, and I finally got around to finding a copy to watch.  For an 80s anthology movie, it's pretty good.  It's very tame - no real gore, only a modest amount of tension.  Production values are moderate, which is about right for being taken from a TV series.  The cast has some great familiar faces.  Emilio Estavez stars in Bishop of Battle, and his little friend is Billy Jayne!  Lance Henriksen stars in The Benediction, and he's a reliable performer.
    The first story is simple, but it's a pleasing start.  It's a common urban legend, but somehow, it doesn't play out the way I anticipated.  After the reveal, I was surprised that it was that simple.
    The second is campy, in the way that outdated impressions of video games are.  The ending isn't scary at all, but I think this reminds me more of the quality that Tales From the Darkside had.
    The third is really the weakest segment, but I don't think the story is at fault.  It's mostly the sound quality.  A lot of the dialogue is mixed very quiet, especially compared to the massive noises of the truck.  It's very annoying.
    The fourth story is actually one of the strongest ones, at least because it's unpredictable.  The same sound issues bring it down a bit, but there's a lot of novelty to be had with a giant rat, and it doesn't go with an obvious ending.  The effects are wonderfully dated, but they try to cover it up by doing some quick edits.

165 - Crawlspace

    A peculiar ex-doctor runs an apartment building.  He uses vents as a means of spying on his tenants, and eventually killing them.
    This is one of the strangest 80s movies I've seen.  It's not unusual in any particular way, but there's a very strange feel to this movie.  I'll see if I can explain.
    The movie is noteworthy for one main reason - it stars Klaus Kinski.  I mostly know him for his role in the 70s Nosferatu, which he plays incredibly well.  Otherwise, the picture looks like a mid-budget project.  There's this bizarre feeling to the script.  Like it was not quite done.  The entire cast - outside of Kinski - is acting in this weirdly amateur way.  Combined with the direction, I had this constant feeling like there was going to be a reveal that there was a movie within a movie.  The coloring supports this.  Everything is very vivid and well lit, which doesn't seem like the right approach to this kind of movie.  Even during scenes taking place inside the vents, there's plenty of light, and just a touch of shadow.  For a movie taking place entirely inside, in apartment living spaces, everything is way too clean.  Even the messy area of the villain's apartment looks like a strangely organized mess.
    The villain is another weird problem.  Some backstory is developed, but it pulls in two directions, and one of them is the clearly weak choice.  First, we hear about how he got in the habit of euthanizing patients that he thought were in serious pain.  Then he accidentally euthanizes a completely healthy patient (although why he had a completely healthy patient is never addressed).  He discovers that he has a taste for killing patients.  This is a good enough background.  The movie then makes this strange attempt to further deepen the character by turning him into a Nazi.  This doesn't really add anything, and is seems almost like a distraction.  If it were just hinted at, that would be great.  But they spend roughly an equal amount of time developing this backstory.
    The one thing I would like to point out is that there's a hilarious sex scene really early in the movie, around 10 minutes in.  It's not how it's shot, but the acting and the dialogue is great.

164 - The Odd Couple

    Newly separated from his wife, Felix moves in with his friend Oscar.  Their incompatibility raises tensions, as the pair attempt to work through their respective problems.
    When I was very young, and still sleeping in my parents bedroom, I grew accustomed to the music of the sitcoms that would be on as my parents fell asleep.  I usually heard all of Cheers, but then I would hear the opening for The Odd Couple, even though my parents usually shut the TV off at that point.
    And during high school, I performed in a Neil Simon play, Rumors.  I knew it was a comedy, but it didn't seem to be especially funny.  As I've seen more of Neil Simon's work, I've come to understand it a little better.  His sense of humor is usually a bit restrained.  He likes mining uncomfortable situations for humor.  The net result is a show that isn't hilarious, but is enjoyable.
    The Odd Couple is a much darker movie than I expected.  It deals with suicide, divorce, loneliness, and all of it is played out in a way that encourages cringing at the awkwardness of their situation.  I think I expected more of a lighthearted romp through a mismatched pair.  That's there, but it's not lighthearted.
    I found myself wondering what the material would be like if it were handled in a different way.  Playing the leads differently could turn things around.
    What stands out as one of the biggest weaknesses is that I really didn't like either of the leads.  They play the roles very well, but Matthau's Oscar sexually harasses a waitress pretty early on, and Lemmon's Felix is remarkably myopic about his own behavior.
    I'm glad that I saw it.  It's one of those classic comedies that established a solid tradition.

163 - Visiting Hours

    An outspoken newscaster is severely injured by a man who has issues with women.  While she's in the hospital recovering, he attempts to finish her off.
    The box art suggested a slasher kind of horror movie.  It came out in 1982, which is usually a good sign.  I start it up, and I'm pleased to find two notable cast members; William Shatner has a supporting role, and Michael Ironside is the villain!
    Michael Ironside is an actor who I best know from his role as the right-hand-man in Total Recall, as well as the tough teacher in Starship Troopers.  He plays a villain well, but I think this is the first time I've seen him as a lead.  And he's great!  I have no idea why he didn't catch on.
    The story itself is a little thin, but it plays out better than the summary suggests.  Much of the movie is taken up with the villain stalking a variety of people, and occasionally attacking.  His performance is reserved, but intense, but it works with the direction very, very well.  The audience is never fed information about what will happen next.  We can't predict what his plan is.  Since we discover it at the same pace, it makes for a genuinely surprising movie.
    There's also an unusual change in focus.  First, we pay close attention to the newscaster.  After she's in the hospital, we start to pay more attention to the nurse.  Then we have some worry about her family.  The variety of targets also serves to make the villain's actions harder to predict.
    It all ties together for a pretty predictable ending.  Along the way, we got a decent amount of character development, and a very solid middle for the movie.  I expected worse, but it's really not bad!

162 - Juan of the Dead

    A zombie crisis hits Cuba, and Juan decides to recruit some of his friends into running a business to kill zombies.
    I had read an interesting review of this some time ago, and it took a fair amount of time to track it down.  I'm a little wary of this type of title.  If the title seems to be based off of a pun, it's usually a bad idea.  I even thought that Shaun of the Dead was a pretty poor title, but the quality of that movie, combined with how much it references the original Romero movies, allows me to forgive that title.
    In this case, I don't think the title is warranted.  At least it communicates what the movie will be about.
    It's a pretty fun movie, but it's a little confusing for a viewer that is so isolated from what things are like in Cuba.  There are some steps that are really straightforward; throughout the movie, the zombies are called dissidents.  The newscasters try to pin the unrest on the US.  It's unclear how much the citizens actually believe this.  I am very uncertain as to the quality of this movie.  From what I understood, it was enjoyable.  But I could tell there was a whole lot I didn't understand, and I have no idea how more knowledgeable people would feel about it.
    There's a strange tone that settles into the movie, and it's hard to explain.  There are some scenes that seem unusually dark, with character actions that seem more cruel.  This is counterbalanced by some very lighthearted sequences, like a dance-themed fight.  When characters die, no one seems to be especially broken up about it.
    There's one touch that seems especially puzzling to me.  Near the end of the movie, Juan saves a little boy.  He sets the boy up with his friends, who are fleeing to safety.  It's a nice character moment, but the boy plays no role in the ending.  If this were placed early in the film, it would establish character for Juan.  Instead, it just seems like we must have missed a reason for the scene.
    Still, it's pretty good.  The political tone to it is interesting, and helps keep it fresh.  Still, there's remarkably little connection to the dead from Romero's universe.  The approach to the movie reminded me more of the Dawn of the Dead remake.

161 - We Are What We Are

    After the mother of a secretive, cannibalistic family dies, the rest of the family tries to keep their traditions together, even as local authorities get suspicious.
    This is an American remake of a Mexican movie.  I haven't seen the original, but based on what I'm reading of the original, they're fairly different.  I think I like cannibal movies.  There aren't a huge number of them, but I have a real appreciation for Ravenous, and I find it an interesting concept in horror, mostly because it's the sort of thing that could be reasonable.  Cannibalism out of necessity is very different than cannibalism by choice, but it's still an interesting distinction.
    This movie is shot well.  It's a dark and gloomy movie, but it's rarely too dark.  And the coloring is really nicely done.  The town has been dealing with a flood's worth of rainstorms, and the picture communicates that idea very well.
    The pacing of the movie is fairly slow, but it's probably more effective if you don't know that the movie deals with cannibalism.  I found myself wondering how the movie plays out if you have no idea what to expect.
    I'm a little uncertain what I thought of this.  I liked the strangeness of the family, which doesn't come across as insane or bloodthirsty.  Much of their dialogue suggests that they view this as a religious duty, and they feel obligated to perform it.  This approach forces the viewer to keep re-evaluating their impression of them, which does help the pacing feel more natural.
    Where the movie takes some missteps is partly technical - most of the father's dialogue is nearly impossible to figure out.  Occasionally, he shouts, which can be understood.  Most of the time, he mumbles in a deep voice, and it's very hard to tell what he says.  Other than that, something about the ending didn't seem right.  I don't want to give it away, since I didn't see it coming, but it left me feeling like I must have really misunderstood the messages that a few of the characters were giving.
    So I might revisit this movie.  Not soon, but probably a few years from now.

160 - Kick-Ass 2

    Chris D'Amico, who was Red Mist in the first movie, returns as The Motherfucker, intent on having his revenge on Kick-Ass, and becoming the first real super villain.
    I read the comics of Kick-Ass 2 as they were coming out, and I was amazed at how brutal it was.  I couldn't believe that they would make a serious effort to adapt it into a movie.  There was some really cruel violence, including some rape, and children being slaughtered.  They eliminated most of this, and much of the violence is actually toned down from what is in the comics.  This is a good thing.  The comic was really difficult to read, and it only works because it doesn't force the reader to linger on things the way that movies can.  Plus, in the comic, a dog is killed.  That doesn't happen in the movie.
    In a weird way, I liked this one a bit more than the first.  It still has some problems, but I find the spread of heroism very inspiring.  I mean, I'm a lazy guy, but I like to think that if I had the means, I would help people as needed.  It's a joy to see the variety of people that get drawn into being a hero.  There's only one real villain.  Most of his army is fighting only because they're paid.  This changes our perception of them - they're mostly just easily compromised, driven by greed.  After The Motherfucker is defeated, I would have liked to see some of them just abandon the fight because they weren't going to get paid.
    The message that comes out at the end is mostly that the benefit of superheroes is that they influence people to be everyday heroes.  It's a nice message, and we get a nice hint of what that's like.
    There are a few weaknesses to the movie.  One of them is the change in direction that Mindy's storyline took, compared to the comic.  (I might be confusing this with her storyline in the Hit-Girl spinoff title.)  The resolution to her school subplot isn't especially satisfying, because this sick-stick thing doesn't fit in.  It's too much of a fantasy element.
    As much as I like the music cue from 28 Days Later (In the House - In a Heartbeat) the use of a ripoff version in this soundtrack was distracting.  It shows up many times.  I think I counted about three, but there may have been more.  It's a weirdly bold piece of music to copy, especially in such a complete way.
    Both Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2 really bother some people, and I understand their problem with it.  It's not something that can be argued against.  The movie takes place in the real world, but it also includes substantial elements that are not part of the real world.  This requires the viewer to hold two contradictory ideas in their mind at the same time.  I suppose that years of reading comics has allowed me to do that.  But I also know other comic fans that can't handle these movies.
    We are supposed to be horrified by the violence in these movies, which is the way it should be.  In a way, these movies are more responsible than your standard action fare.  I guess that might make some people uncomfortable.

159 - This is the End

    A bunch of celebrity friends are attending a party at James Franco's house when the apocalypse happens.
    A very entertaining comedy, but I can't help but notice how indulgent the movie is.  By that, I mean that there are plenty of scenes that don't advance the story, but are only there to generate laughs.  I have the impression that the whole movie was lots of fun to shoot, even though the effects work in post production must have been a bit more grueling.
    But the fun of it shines through.  You don't need to have a close knowledge of the actors, although I think it helps to know what kind of character Michael Cera usually plays.  The cast has a lot of fun, because they're all playing ridiculous versions of themselves.
    I actually wonder about if the movie is intended to point out the amount that audiences tend to imprint actors with the characters they play.  This movie does a marvelous job of forcing the audience to break that connection.  If I were to run into Franco, or Seth Rogan in the street, I wouldn't assume that they are anything like their representations in this movie.  Then again, I don't know if I could separate them from their work on Freaks & Geeks.
    The movie does run a little long, but it's still pretty solidly good.  I actually lost more interest as we learn more about the apocalypse, which is unusual.
    A bit of a spoiler here, but I really liked the design of the devil.  Or, what I assume is the devil.  How they handled the extra heads was really clever.

158 - Madhouse

    A horror movie star finds himself dealing with a killer who dresses as his character and kills people surrounding him.
    Starring Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, it's pretty fun stuff.  To make it even more fun, it's an Amicus production.  They put together a series of horror anthology movies that I watched awhile back (Dr. Terror's House of Horrors?)  They're like Hammer, but tighter paced, and less gothic.
    The actual story is pretty good.  Price's lead is a bit mean, but it makes sense, since he's had a pretty rough time, with his girlfriend being killed, and him being the prime suspect.  What's more fascinating is the way that the movie pads things out in a way that doesn't get annoying, but usually would.  There are clips inserted into the movie from earlier productions, all involving Vincent Price, that are framed as being his earlier movies.  This makes sense.  And they use these clips carefully.  They cut between the clip and original material briskly, which doesn't give the audience the sense that they're just trying to fill time.
    There's a peculiar supporting character that is very into spiders.  Something about the tone of these scenes didn't feel right.  It played into the plot nicely, but I guess it just seemed a little outlandish for the way the rest of the movie was playing out.
    The one complaint I would have is that the ending seemed obvious to me.  I knew who the killer was almost immediately - or at least sooner than I think I was supposed to.

157 - Disturbing Behavior

    A new student in a small community finds that the popular social clique seems to be comprised of kids who have had some behavior modification done to them.
    This came out in 1998, and it is stereotypically nineties.  There's a soundtrack packed with no-name grunge-pop-rock bands, all of which are pretty forgettable (although Harvey Danger had a hit with Flagpole Sitta).  The dialogue - particularly, the dialogue for Gavin Strick - is completely silly.  His monologue introducing all of the cliques at the school is sort of a cliche now.  Overly witty, obviously prepared remarks, and it just comes across as massively fake.
    The story itself is a variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  There are some nice twists to the formula.  First, the kids had been through a procedure, which involves some kind of an implant, along with some conditioning.  Thus, the original is still there, and there's no replacement person.  Second, the treatment doesn't result in normal behavior all the time.  They get unusually aggressive to people who haven't been modified, and they tend to flip out when they get aroused.  This is a pretty fun angle to play with, and it fits nicely into the normal horror movie tropes.
    It's not a bad watch, especially for a 90s horror movie.  I think it would make an excellent double-bill with The Faculty.  Sadly, The Faculty is much more fun, partly since it flips the idea around, and has the teachers being turned into evil beings.

156 - Pacific Rim

    A rift between dimension has formed, opening into a crevice in the Pacific ocean.  Gigantic monsters come in periodically, and wreak havoc.  Mankind has put together giant robots, controlled by a pair of pilots, to combat these monsters.
    When this came out, there was a lot of really positive talk about it.  I was impressed, since the trailer looked like a cross between Transformers and Godzilla.  The fact that it was directed by Guillermo del Toro seemed like it had to be a mistake.
    So I went into this movie expecting that I probably would like it.  And it's very fun.  But it's only one viewing fun.
    When I first saw Skyfall, I remember being dazzled, but also kind of annoyed with the fight sequence set against the neon lights.  The majority of this movie is fight sequences set with neon lights and all kinds of glowing stuff.  Usually it's done in the dark, which just makes the contrast more stark.  However, the direction isn't as wildly flashy.  The cutting isn't too fast.  In fact, the direction is pretty enjoyable, especially since the action itself moves at a modest pace.  This is a side effect of playing with massive monsters and robots - the time it takes their arm to move to throw a punch is much slower than it would be with a normal-sized fight.
    The story is fun, but still a bit thin.  They introduce more stakes to the game by making it so that a pair of pilots need to effectively share their brains with each other in order to coordinate controlling a robot.  I like the idea of this, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny very well.  Their program has been in place for almost 20 years, and they still haven't addressed this problem?  Ignoring that, I mostly never felt like the mental coordination angle mattered all that much.  There was minimal character development.  In fact, I don't think I can remember the lead's name.  Even his relationship with his co-pilot seemed almost irrelevant.
    The monsters are fun, but they didn't have the same level of compelling design as the Cloverfield monster.  The joints on that one were much more nightmarish, and created an unpredictability of movement.  These monsters are mostly interchangeable, but one of them stood out, since it had some neat fins on its back.
    Yes, it's a fun movie, and remarkably wild to look at, but it just didn't speak to me the way a really solid action movie does.

155 - A Brush With Death

    Five girls go away for a weekend, and run afoul of a few characters, and cross paths with a peculiar killer.
    Netflix had a description for this;
    "In this chilling tale, a group of cheerleaders spends the night in a deserted farmhouse haunted by a dead boy who killed his brother decades earlier."
    After finishing this movie, I realized that this description is at best, misleading, and at worst, completely wrong.
    1.  We don't know if they're cheerleaders.  I don't think there's any reason to suspect that they are.
    2.  They don't spend the night in a deserted farmhouse.  They spend the night in a mansion, fully furnished, with all utilities.
    3.  The farmhouse (which does exist) is not haunted by a dead boy who killed his brother.

    I suspect that this last point may have been my mistake.  The sound on this movie is pretty weak, so there were sequences earlier that I had a hard time following.
    Ignoring the weaknesses with that description, I still have some impressions of the movie.  First, it's pretty low budget.  I've seen a few horror movies of this caliber, and they're really an acquired taste.  Even though I don't mind them, I don't think I could just watch them back to back.  The budget only manifests itself in the quality of the effects, the quality of the film stock, and so forth.  What really needed more work was the sound quality.  Early on, there's a scene where the girls are riding in a jeep, talking.  We can hear the wind, and it's clearly not intentional.  I actually do credit them though - they did a lot of work to reduce the noise during that sequence.
    The best thing that the movie has going for it is that the girls are actually pretty attractive.  Normally I don't notice this anymore, but most of them were very cute.  The only one that really stood out was Lily Vu.
    The story has some really annoying problems though.  There's a lengthy flashback sequence early in the movie that we think is important, but by the time the end comes around, I'm pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with the story.  A major character, and a very important one, is introduced at the end, and his existence just serves to confuse the audience.  While I understood it, and I appreciate the twist, it could have been handled in a way that doesn't make the audience feel like they missed something important.
    I can't recommend this, but if you don't mind passive horror entertainment, it's not bad.
    Oh, and the paintings.  I'm very impressed with the ones that filled in the negative space.  Nicely done!

154 - The Angry Red Planet

    A manned mission to Mars gets strange, as the crew gets trapped by an alien force, and deals with the strange Martian wildlife.
    This 1959 movie predates the moon landing by ten years - although the Soviets managed to land a craft in 1959.  What's remarkable about this movie is the broad optimism about the ease of space travel.  None of the astronauts seem especially scientifically competent.  There are plenty of bulky computers around, but most of the crew seems to work on paper.  Their monitors are peculiar.  There's a box on the wall labeled "Oxygen Consumption."  It has a green light, with the word "Normal" next to it.  There's a red light with the word "Excessive" next to it.  What would they do if their oxygen consumption was at an abnormal rate?  Luckily, we never find out.  Despite being prominent in many shots, it doesn't figure into the story.
    They have a clock on the wall, with a day counter above it, labeled "Days in flight."  It takes them 47 days to make it to Mars.  The estimates out there are that it takes somewhere between 250 and 300 days to make it from Earth to Mars.
    When they land on Mars, the light is all red outside.  When they walk around on Mars, they are filmed through a red lens.  They run into a large carnivorous plant that tries to capture the female crew member.  Later on, they run into this remarkable creature.

    The story itself isn't terribly interesting, and there's a very Ed Wood-like ending message to the movie.  But for a period sci-fi monster movie, it's pretty fun.  It's remarkably watchable for the period.

153 - The One

    A cop finds himself facing a version of himself from another dimension, who wants to kill all the alternate versions of himself in an effort to become a god.
    Jet Li stars as both the villain and protagonist in this, which is a nice approach.  But somehow, the movie falls flat, and it's hard to explain exactly why.
    The sci-fi elements to the movie are generally well-done.  Something reminds me of Demolition Man (which I've only seen a bit of).  We open with an explanation that many dimensions exist.  We eventually learn that the ties between the same people in each of these means that if one of them dies, some sort of power transfer happens, and the remaining copies of that person become more powerful.  Somehow, this has given the antagonist the ability to run at 50 mph, and dodge bullets.  Logically, shouldn't the protagonist have the same abilities then?
    There's loads of action, plenty of special effects, many of the dealing with speeding up/slowing down time.  The fights lean toward traditional martial arts movies - which I haven't been a fan of.  The fights somehow seem a bit dull.  I wish I could say I knew what would spice things up, but it just doesn't seem interesting.
    I do have one specific complaint about the movie.  There's a really annoying aspect to several fight sequences.  They dump nu-metal music over these.  Disturbed, Drowning Pool, Papa Roach, Godsmack, Linkin Park… it's just terrible.  It instantly dates the movie, and it makes me want to tune these sequences out.
    The premise of the movie is actually pretty good, but it seems like they could have come up with a more interesting application for it.

152 - The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

    A bizarrely disturbed man has a fascination with the first Human Centipede movie, and sets out to create a full, 12-person centipede, despite his lack of medical knowledge or training.
    The first movie was a bit of a conflict for me, this one was a more extreme conflict.
    Again, the picture has a very fascinating lead.  The main character, Martin, is built in a way that is hard to look away.  He's huge, but he's short.  His hair is simple.  His eyes are bulbous.  When he's on camera, it's hard to look away.
    Again, the premise of this gets people in the door, but the actual content is a little lacking.  Learning about Martin was much more interesting.  His project to build the 12-person centipede (which only has 10 by the time two of the victims die) is a little strange.  He's clearly fascinated by the first movie, but we don't quite learn what the centipede means to him.  In the first movie, the centipede was mostly a medical triumph for the doctor.  He believed that the design was elegant, and that he was creating something beautiful.  In this case, it's hard to say.  Martin does seem to have a degree of sexual interest in the centipede.
    A massive spoiler here - the ending implies that the entire thing is in his imagination.  Martin fantasized the whole movie.  As much as that sounds like a terrible ending, it actually helps the movie.  It makes the unbelievable nature of most of the aspects of the movie make sense.  Martin abducts people by smacking them around with a crowbar.  I'd expect him to accidentally kill more of his victims.  He's a sloppy killer, killing people in a parking garage that he works in.  He's on camera, and he doesn't seem bright enough to cover his tracks.  He leaves big trails to him - like making calls to get the actors from the first movie, and he abducts one of them.  He kills his mother, and his neighbor, and a guy who was looking to lease warehouse space.  Making it a fantasy helps to excuse much of this.

    I don't think I can recommend this one to many people, if any.  It's much more packed with gore.  Most of that gore is pretty dull, and not terribly inventive.  There's only one spot of gore that actually shocked me, and that's mostly because it was completely unexpected, and it didn't advance his plot.  Plus, it involves a baby, and that's kind of hard to watch.

151 - The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

    A retired doctor has a compulsion to perform an experimental surgery, and he captures victims to participate in his project.
    The movie's reputation precedes it.  The reaction to the movie has been generally poor, but also a bit mixed.  I think I understand that.  It's an unusual movie, but not for the gore, or even the premise.  The premise gets people in the door, but it's the weird handling of the characters that give this movie a peculiar approach.
    The first characters we get to see developed are these two American girls.  They're annoying.  They aren't likable.  In fact, I get the impression that we're supposed to hate them.  So when they wind up captured by the villain, Dr. Heiter, we don't really feel bad for them.
    Dr. Heiter is a strange villain.  It's hard to feel bad for mad scientist types, since they usually have something that they're passionate about, and in this case, they're dealing with people who are completely annoying.  Dr. Heiter also develops through the movie.  He's erratic, but he also seems methodical.  He's brutal, but he also seems to like to relax.  His performance is what holds the movie together.  He's the reason to keep watching.
    The actual centipede aspect of the movie is mostly irrelevant.  It's a tool to make the characters unable to escape, and dependent on each other for survival.  However, it does work against the tension.  It's clear that if one of them dies, they're all going to die pretty soon afterward.
    The ending is just as hopeless as I had anticipated.
    I can't say that the movie is worth returning to.  It's worth a viewing, assuming that you can handle the premise, and assuming that you like horror movies.  I can't imagine returning to it.

150 - The Conjuring

    A family moves into a house, and finds that it's haunted.  They find a couple that works on cleaning houses of this kind of problem.
    Yep, the story is exactly that predictable.  It's not bad at all, but I just realized that this plot can apply to nearly any haunted house movie.
    There are a few things that set this movie apart.  First, it's set in the early 70s, and it's handled wonderfully.  It doesn't come across as campy 70s decoration.  It looks completely reasonable.  The only real signs are the cars being driven, and occasionally, shirts have a certain cut to them, and patterns that are just a bit dated.  Otherwise, the picture is nicely crisp.  It's good.
    The effects are generally great.  They aren't played in a way the focuses the camera on them exclusively, so it's kind of nice to see them being incorporated into the background.
    What the movie does best is something that I'm a little conflicted about.  There's a mythology that is built.  We get that the house has been haunted for a long time, and that the original inhabitant that triggered the haunting has effectively killed eight families between then and now.  I like that.  It draws me into the movie, and makes me hungry for backstory.  What bothers me more about it is that this is one of these "based on a true story" movies.  I hate that angle.  I think it was useful when I was 10, and seeing part of Amityville Horror for the first time.  Now, it just seems like a dumb way of trying to sucker people into being scared.
    Still, it was well played, and I'm glad to see that well done, if derivative, horror is still out there.
    This does remind me that I want to watch Insidious again.  But that might wait until next year.

149 - Life After Django Reinhardt

    A documentary on the following that Django Reinhardt has inspired, centered around a convention of sorts in France.
    As a guitarist, this is very entertaining.  As a documentary, it's not terribly interesting.  There's no particular story to the show.  It's mostly a collection of guitarists talking about how Django's music has inspired them.
    I've listened to a lot of Django, but I didn't recognize anything that was played, except for Minor Swing, which was used at the very end.  Every single guitarist I saw in this was amazing.  I've had a lot of respect for Django's rhythm players, since they move all over the place at a remarkable speed, even if they're just chugging away.

148 - Rammbock: Berlin Undead

    A man visits his ex-girlfriend to deliver her keys.  Once he arrives, some kind of a zombie-like infection takes over, trapping him in her apartment, with just a plumber's assistant.
    A fairly short German offering, but it's really pretty good.  For a limited budget production, the story is ideal.  The setting is restricted to one primary location, and I wouldn't be surprised if they filmed in a mostly-abandoned building.
    I think what's nice is that so many zombie movies focus on the threat that other survivors pose, and has people being more willing to turn on each other.  This one keeps people mostly pretty helpful.  The main character makes the effort to break into the adjacent apartment to acquire some sedatives to help another captive out.  He doesn't turn on the plumber's assistant as soon as things start to look desperate.  In fact, he makes an effort to ensure that the others can survive.
    In some ways, it's easy to say that the characters aren't reacting as extremely as we expect them to.  No one seems to flip out.  But that's a nice change of pace.
    I have one little problem with this movie, and that the tool that they find for keeping the infected away.  The Simpsons already did it.

147 - Chillerama

    An anthology of four stories.  A giant sperm terrorizes New York.  A teen gets bitten by a were bear.  Hitler creates a Frankenstein's monster, framed against the last night that a drive-in theater is open.
    As I was watching this, I kept on feeling amazed that I hadn't abandoned it.  I've tried to clean up the description a little bit, but this is packed with juvenile sexual humor.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  If I saw this when I was in high school, I would think it was fantastic.  Somehow, I'm comfortable enough with sexual material that I didn't react correctly to this.  A lot of material just was ignored.
    There's an effort to be taboo, or at least in bad taste.  The story with Hitler is titled The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, and involves Hitler killing Anne Frank and stealing the secrets of creating life.  He assembles a monster from Jewish parts.  There's an abandoned segment, which is clearly intended as a joke, titled Deathification, which involves dramatic footage of people spraying crap - or using crap - in a variety of ways.
    The one segment that I seriously didn't care for was the second one, the Werebear story.  I liked that it made an effort to have musical elements, and that it was a nice fifties throwback vibe, but I just didn't care for their treatment of gay characters.  Normally I'm not too picky about this.
    Despite the ridiculousness of it, I enjoyed the framing device.  The drive-in had characters that were defined reasonably well, and there was something about the location that played well.  I didn't mind the zombie stuff (even though it involved neon blue stuff, and some of the turned people were just wearing what looked like glitter) but I thought that the sex-crazed angle to the zombies just seemed kind of dumb.
    It sounds as if I really didn't like this movie.  That's not true.  I'd never re-watch it, but I actually felt like I would have liked this, much like Kentucky Fried Movie or The Groove Tube.  As an adult, I still found an occasional laugh, just not as many as were intended.

146 - Sex Sells: The Making of 'Touché'

    A movie about a documentary filmmaker making a movie about a porn filmmaker making his last movie.
    I was more skeptical about this as I started it, but as I kept watching, the focus of the movie shifted.  The movie starts off as a broad comedy, and not a very clever one.  Gradually, a plot comes out, and takes more and more time away from the comedy.  This works pretty well, and it did make my feelings about it soften.
    The comedy is mostly pretty weak.  You can easily imagine that the writers thought "Oh, if we set this on a porn movie, there's all this humor to be mined from that.  We can make the production as hilarious and nonsensical as possible, it practically writes itself!"  These jokes are dumb, hacky ones.  I'm not impressed.  A lot of sequences early on seem to be based around the idea of fighting the public perception of porn.  Anyone watching the movie doesn't need to hear these arguments.
    But once the main story comes around, things get more interesting.  One of the young stars believes that she is the daughter of the older female star.  They've both worked with this same production house, but they've never done a scene together.  The young star uses the documentary filmmaker as a go-between to collect information from the older star, who is sick of being asked personal questions.

    I can't really recommend this movie to most people.  There's a lot of weak material that needs to be ignored in order to enjoy it.

145 - C.H.U.D.

    After several missing persons reports come in, as well as a report of a monster abducting a man, a photographer, a cop, and a bum get together to deal with mutated people-eaters living under the city.
    I remember seeing the box for this at the local video store growing up, but I never had the desire to watch it.  The title is silly.
    I wasn't as disappointed with this as I expected to be.  It has a few familiar faces.  Sam McMurray (who plays Neal's father in Freaks And Geeks) is a cop, and Daniel Stern (the lanky villain in Home Alone) is the heroic bum.  In addition to this, the movie has this feel to it.  It seems like a lost Roger Corman movie, only paced a little better.  Makes me think of Q: The Winged Serpent or God Told Me To.  In fact, I could imagine Michael Moriarty taking a role in this kind of story, making it a little more hard-boiled.
    There's also this environmental angle to this, which seems interesting.  There's a particular focus on the efforts of various agencies to cover up their responsibility through any means necessary.  I feel like this must be a reaction to something in particular, but I can't tell what.