We’re at that odd time of the year where I’m burnt out from the horror movie and year-end seasons, movies I mean to see before awards parades I’m either not in the mood for or they haven’t been widely released yet, and I keep thinking “I should watch this old movie and have an existential crisis about how old I am” to knock some supposed classics and best-ofs off my queue. It’s probably a clue that I should actually knock out a book or do some creative things. Alas, the hurty head times are always lurking in the shadows demanding 2 hours of stillness, so here we are again.
Heretic
At first I thought it seemed a bit cruel that this featured two mormon ladies. Like, y0, we’re picking at the bottom of the barrel of society here. But, if it were two missionary boys, the movie would have ended when Hugh Grant held up an old Playboy and excitedly asked “who likes dinosaurs!!” Repressed Brother Smith had prayed for this day for years! Anyway, reminded me of a cross between Nefarious, Barbarian, and Men. Fine but not fantastic.
Red Rooms
True crime courtroom Batman. Interesting enough but best worked for me in context of cleansing me of lingering negativity towards emotionally intense French movies and/or Canada.
Things Will Be Different
RIYL low budget time travel movies. In this one the characters are already aware of the time travel, so, that’s new. Did not like the filming style. The ending felt off and made me feel like I missed something, which is altogether possible.
Anora
While not the same tone or level of violence, RIYL Tarantino movies. Absolutely do not watch this with stuffy or emotionally immature people. I feel like anything else I say would be a spoiler, but the synopsis of a sex worker meeting a rich guy whose parents aren’t about that shit is accurate. I’m curious to see how the Oscars treat this movie given its content. Otherwise, a very decent movie and caused me to tweak my early end-of-year list.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974
Well shit. Now I see all of the references in those Rob Zombie movies. Excellent set dec. Definitely in the “WTF” camp. Better than I thought it was going to be. But I’m still not much of a fan of slashers. Teenage me probably would have liked it more but I have since grown empathy and tired ears. (When they pulled up to the gas station, I swear the guy was going to scream “Pancakes!”)
Nightbitch
Mild horror drama about motherhood being a burden. If you’ve ever had to take care of a person, young or old, for an extended period of time alone, you’ll perfectly understand it. I lol’ed when she talked to the cat. The rating it has is fair considering who tends to rate movies. Meanwhile, I had CSS’s “Art Bitch” stuck in my head the whole time. Almost relevant!
Rumours
This was my punishment for not checking ratings for movies before watching them and believing the cast alone would make for a good watch. Maybe going in blind on movies is not the best policy. Either way, didn’t care for it. This was my first movie seen of 2025.
Turning Red
The talk about this movie 2-3 years ago led me to believe it was going to be about periods. It was actually just a general coming-of-age movie focused on a do-good teen girl learning to live in her own shoes and her family’s matriarchal culture. Decent, easy watch but I’m glad I unintentionally didn’t watch it when it came out because of the parent relationship here.
The Red Shoes 1948
Even 77 years of society and film later, this felt relevant. Men be menning. The long ballet scene was worth the watch.
Dressed To Kill
Pretty transphobic in the way Silence of the Lambs is but worth it for the lols brought on by the “what’s in this drawer?” scene and the lady sitting behind the son scene. Much nudity. Much horrible acting by the second lead woman (apparently she nearly won a Razzie). For 1980, it tried.
Double Blind
I stopped it halfway and forgot I was watching it, and when I finally picked it back up days later it didn’t make much of a dent. It’s not bad, but ultimately it came across as a middle-of-the-road mild horror. It might have been better as a TV episode than a movie.
Jaws
Well, I finally watched the whole thing. I’ve of course seen it in tiny pieces in culture, and one scene reminded me that I rode whichever Universal Studios ride that had a Jaws part in it, but whether I saw it as a young kid is uncertain anymore. It felt new… and it felt like 1975. The vet was an interesting character, the main dudes generally felt well-rounded, and the shark had a decent amount of realism even for 2025 standards (let’s be real, special effects peaked in the 80s before digital-everything took over and this movie contributed to that peak). But, brutal death aside, the sense of danger in movies in the 70s doesn’t compare to later iterations. But I saw it, finally.
Sunshine
This title doesn’t lead to remembering it well vs dozens of other space movies. I accidentally started watching Serenity first before I clued in that it was overly SyFy and I should check to make sure it wasn’t a TV movie and I was spoiling some TV show for myself. Indeed. Ok then, another day for that one. Anyway, in 2007 this would have made a dent, but today it mostly caused a strange feeling of realizing things that happened in 2007 now feel dated. It’s not committing any major temporal atrocities, but the small things added up and reminded me that 2007 was 18 years ago and omfg. What the fuck. Why? As for the movie itself, it’s about an earth-saving mission to the sun and a crew with evident brain damage with writing featuring plot holes and direction that reminded me of American Horror Story at times. It’s not terrible, if you like sci-fi with typical human idiots in it you’ll like it, and it had at least one interesting idea, but I checked out by the last third of the movie.
A Real Pain
Given the characters, this felt akin to a comfort movie for people with depression. It kind of just ‘was’.
Nosferatu
Talk about stylish. There are definitely similarities to The Witch, etc, which are hard to ignore. But this movie was the mopey romantic-era goth side of pretty. Kid me would have ate this movie up. I’ve never seen the 1920s original movie despite repeatedly planning to, so I have nothing to directly compare it to in terms of style or story, but as a standalone entity, nice job. Loved the shadow over the city scene. Thought of the movie Legend at least once, as well as The Keep, Fright Night, and Possession, and (of course) Night on Bald Mountain. I am definitely going to see this a second time. Will this hark the return of creepy vampires?
I’m presently planning to type here a bit more often as the social media landscape that I’ve been attached to most the last 15 years has grown stale at best. I’m very much not a fan of policy changes that discount LGBTQIA+ people or allow space to treat non-straight relationships as lesser. The inauguration and the subsequent corporate bootlicking that’s followed despite the president clearly associating with a nazi now fueled to the point of no longer hiding it has really put me off on associating with anyone or anything that’s complacent to this. We can deal with a bit of discomfort and inconvenience in divorcing ourselves from these entities and do better.