As we near the end of 2019 — to which I offer a hale and hearty, “good riddance,” — I found myself looking back on my media experiences of the past year and realized I didn’t see many new films (or at least released-to-theaters flicks). To try and remedy that, I requested a movies from the library and had what turned out to be a strange and wildly imbalanced double feature of Ma and The Banana Splits Movie! Imma get into the former right now, but come on back soon for my take on the latter, as well as a review of Chromeskull: Laid To Rest 2!
My Favorite Newer Horror Movies Of 2018 Part 1
You didn’t think the 2018 review posts were over did you? Maybe everywhere else on this world wide web we’re all tangled up in, but not here! I was shocked to look back at my posts this year to see that I didn’t do a single Halloween Scene post which means I didn’t write about horror AT ALL in 2018. That’s ridonculous. So, I’m making up for that here with a list of 10 newer horror flicks I dug last year.
Continue reading My Favorite Newer Horror Movies Of 2018 Part 1
My Favorite Older Horror Film Discoveries Of 2018
In addition to making my way through a lot of films in the Great Chronological Slasher Franchise Project (which I will post an update on shortly), I also dug into a nice mix of purchased Blu-rays, gifted DVDs and streaming offerings in 2018! To my surprise and delight, I actually came across some movies that have become favorites easily making their way into my collection. You gotta hit that jump to find out what they are, though!
Continue reading My Favorite Older Horror Film Discoveries Of 2018My Favorite Film Experiences Of 2018
I haven’t done a lot of blogging this year, but, don’t worry, I’ve still been watching a ton of movies! I’ve even been keeping track of everything I’ve watched or read in a pair of Composition Note Books that I’ve (not so) cleverly dubbed Pop Notes. Thanks to them, I’m pretty confident looking back at the year and piecing together thoughts on some of my fave film-watching experiences (minus horror, which will get a list or two of their own). This one’s pretty long, so hit that jump and get into it!
Continue reading My Favorite Film Experiences Of 2018The 2018 Slasher Franchise Project Part 2
Here’s the funny thing about trying to tackle a big movie-watching project like this starting in September: the movies appearing on streaming change wildly when October finally hits. So, when it came to watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, I wound up running into a few problems. It wasn’t streaming anywhere for free, so I figured I’d buy a copy. The Blu-ray I grabbed on Amazon wound up not playing on my player, so I rolled over to FYE and got a DVD copy. This doesn’t sound like an epic journey, per se, but it took about a week! And now that movie’s streaming on both Hulu and Amazon Video.
This particular five pack of films all came out in 1986 and 1987 and features only one franchise kick-off accompanied by four part 2s. Only one of those sequels features the original director returning and only one could avoid the label of “bonkers” in my opinion. Let’s jump in.
Continue reading The 2018 Slasher Franchise Project Part 2The Great Hannibal Lecter Deep Dive
Do you ever get really excited about a deep dive, go full-boat into it and then wash out? Well, that’s kind of what happened last year when I found myself minorly obsessed with Hannibal Lecter and his exploits throughout television, film and, of course, the written word. I started watching the series, which made me read the books, while still watching the show (a very unique and interesting experience) and then the movies, but I petered out after seeing my third take on the Red Dragon story. But, I still wanted to get these thoughts out there, so here’s most of the original post I started sometime last spring.
For years, I’d been hearing great things about NBC’s three season-long series Hannibal based on Thomas Harris’ character made most famous in The Silence Of The Lambs. It ran from 2013-2015 with Mads Mikkleson starring as the title character and Hugh Dancy as Will Graham, a pure empath who FBI Behavioral Sciences head Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) brought back in from his teaching gig in an effort to help catch a serial killer. I decided to dive right into the series thanks to its presence on Amazon Prime Video and now have a new favorite show! Continue reading The Great Hannibal Lecter Deep Dive
Ex Libris: Hot Fuzz (2007)
In addition to continually checking out new or new-to-me movies this year, I’m also trying to make a concerted effort to go through my existing collection. To help narrow the search down — I have a comically large binder that I keep most of my DVDs and Blu-rays in — I asked Alexa to pick a random number between 1 and 26. She chose 8, so I did a little finger-counting and settled on the letter H. Being a well-organized geek, my flicks are in alphabetical order, so when I got to H, Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz practically jumped off the page at me. On one hand, Edgar Wright’s just the best and on the other, I realized I hadn’t watched it in just about a decade!
We Want Action: The Foreigner (2017)
When it comes to straight-ahead likeable action stars, few have done it better than Jackie Chan. He built up an incredible body of work before breaking through in the U.S. which meant that, for many of us, we could start off with something like Rumble In The Bronx and then go on to discover the Armor of God or Police Story movies. He’s even carried his unique brand of humor and still-impressive action into more recent films like the incredible Chinese Zodiac. However, thanks to a review Blu-ray of The Foreigner, I now see him in a very different light.
My Favorite Older Horror Discoveries Of 2017
All in all, I had pretty great luck with newer horror films during 2017, as I wrote about in a post last week. When it comes to older films, especially horror ones, I tend to have lower — or at least different — expectations. If a movie’s off-the-wall bonkers, but made with effort, I’ll probably love it. That accounts for about half of the movies on this list. However, I also discovered a few that I now very much consider new-to-me classics that I hope to watch again and again. To find out which ones, you’ve got to hit that jump!
Continue reading My Favorite Older Horror Discoveries Of 2017
My Favorite Action Movie Discoveries Of 2017
So far, I’ve looked back at my favorite blockbuster and newer horror viewing experiences of the year, so now it’s time to talk about action flicks! In 2017, I discovered some underrated movies in this department, saw some way more well-known ones, dipped into a few new genres and even marathoned the films of a particular 80s and 90s action icon!
Continue reading My Favorite Action Movie Discoveries Of 2017
