A Bronx Tale
This movie about a young man's coming of age in the mafia-controlled Bronx in the 60s, set against the backdrop of the growing civil rights movement, has always been a…
Grace
Understated, character-based horror like they used to make in the 1970s, although with a fair share of visceral gore along the way, for sure. A mother carries a miscarried baby…
Burden Of Dreams
Les Blank's truly memorable documentary about the making of Werner Herzog's excellent "Fitzcarraldo", a historical adventure drama about an early-20th-century entrepreneur seeking access to rubber trees in the Andes who…
Hearts Of Darkess
For the Apocalypse Now fan: the "making of" documentary about the incredibly chaotic process that somehow yielded that masterpiece. And the documentary is nearly as powerful as the film. It's…
The Shining
Rounding out the list of favorite films I haven't reviewed because I haven't watched them since I started writing capsule reviews, but nonetheless felt need a mention in any list…
Apocalypse Now
This is a placeholder, just put here because no way am I going to let a list of favorite movies go on any longer with Apocalypse Now being mentioned on…
Blue Velvet
One more favorite I realized I didn't have something posted for. I think some of these big favorites, I've seen so many times, I don't even watch them anymore, hence…
Deliverance
Realizing now that a few of my absolute favorite movies aren't mentioned here, so just quickly filling in some blanks. "Deliverance" is a big one. Come on, you've never heard…
Drag Me To Hell
It just struck me that I've never posted a review of this perennial favorite of mine. It took 25 years, until this movie, for Sam Raimi to redeem himself to…
Relax, I’m From The Future
Totally fun sci-fi comedy. Rhys Darby, who I always liked in "Flight Of The Conchords", is a hapless time traveler stuck in our time and just looking to enjoy his…
After
After a meet-cute on a bus, immediately before it gets into an accident, a couple wakes up to find the town empty and an ominous storm moving in on the…
Big Dark Energy
A home-made video assemblage appearing to consist of old IBM training films, desktop screensavers, and a bunch of apparently whatever other stock film or video footage the director, credited as…
Limetown (TV series)
This single-season mystery/thriller series starred Jessica Biel, who sounds like she's been practicing her diction to good effect, as a Public Radio journalist doing a series investigating the disappearance of…
Within
Paint-by-numbers story about a family moving into a house that was the scene of brutal slayings, and things quickly start going bump in the night. Initially, despite being one long…
Self Quarantined
Well, this was a little different, and for the most part kind of entertaining little indie flick. A trio of women from Atlanta take a vacation in the woods during…
Reflect
Strictly amateur, seems to be full of non-actors, and a nonsensical storyline, as 5 annoying gorgeous woman from LA have apparently been offered thousands of dollars to go to Sedona…
Earth Over Earth
Good swing and a complete miss. Starts out for at least half of it seeming like that rare decent indie flick, as a couple on a technology-and-sex-fast in the woods…
Effigy
Technically well-made but incredibly slow and tedious Swedish "horror" art film. Something about a translator and a homeless guy and a lot of grainy video montages over discordant violin sounds.…
Pollen
This movie required the most suspension of disbelief of any movie I've ever seen. I don't know where to begin. It's a "workplace horror" about a badly picked-on and bullied…
Unholy Song
A weirdly sort of entertaining zero-budget flick about a bunch of low-rent people in northern California who, bear with me, play a cassette tape and accidentally free a witch who…
Fawn
They've got to stop making zero-budget first-person-shooter "found footage" crap about groups of 20-year-olds investigating some bullshit.
Puzzlehead
This is a low-budget indie movie that should have been way worse than it was. In a dystopian urban future that visually resembles our dystopian urban present, a scientist invents…
Dark House
This has got to be a student film, and by a not very skilled student filmmaker. Less than an hour long, and utterly aimless, with no production values or acting…
Antihuman
An very European art film, wherein people visiting an abandoned asylum talk endlessly about "serious" subjects over discordant music for two hours, occasionally interrupted by silent, admittedly visually gorgeous but…
The Quantum Terror
Bottom-of-the-barrel amateur-home-movie-level crap, but at least it tries to have a sci-fi angle. Or something. Basically these kids explore the sewer looking for a missing girl and encounter a bunch…
The Barge People
A new setting for a clichéd setup: a captivity/pursuit flick set in part in the long barges that travel the canals that criss-cross the English countryside. The villains are a…
Dead Night
Movies like this exactly are why I created a category "Je nais se quois/Flawed Gems". Definitely not a great movie, but certainly original, after a fashion, and ultimately, I thought,…
Anonymous 616
Have you ever seen the movie "Funny Games"? It might be my least favorite movie of all time: pointless brutality, and nothing more, presented as entertainment, as home invaders torture…
Spiral
Well, this movie put one over on me. Starts off with a bunch of guys having a reunion for a bachelor party in a fancy rental house, which logically promised…
Bleed With Me
Low key thriller about two women and one of their boyfriend on vacation in a cabin when the more high-strung of the two starts getting even more high-strung and having…