I watched this for the first time in years recently. It's funny how well this movie aged. Steven Spielberg often strikes me as the film equivalent of music producer Trevor Horn: things he makes are often marked by a certain glossy artificiality and obvious studiocraft, dusted down with stardust and childlike wonder, engrossing but as inauthentic and unconvincing, in their way, as Mr. Rogers's studio set. There's always a sense of effort, usually at "spectacle" (in scare quotes, just like that) and in Spielberg's case, usually some cloying emotional content, which there are traces of here although it's manageable.
So it's always been funny to me to call this a "horror" movie, which almost requires grit rather than gloss and authenticity to generate scares. But, Tobe Hooper directed, and if nothing else just about anything Tobe Hooper touches is going to have a few brilliantly scary scenes. I will…

A pleasant enough way to kill an hour and a half, with Charlize Theron as a gorgeous prom queen returned to her small home town to reclaim her gorgeous prom king, now happily married and with a new child, in a fairly pitch-perfect and nuanced performance s a clueless narcissist who remains steadfastly oblivious to what's really happening around her. Also stars Patton Oswalt as, surprisingly, a pointedly non-gorgeous Star Wars-loving nerd, which you may consider a plus or a minus according to your own tastes at this point.

Eh, this is all getting a bit Harry Potter for me. The first season was cool. By season 4, they actually do a decent job of retconning an overarching narrative for everything they've ever should (helped along by a disturbing digitally age-regressed heroine for new scenes of "her" as she looked as an 11 year old in season 1). I mean, it wasn't bad, I don't regret watching it, but there's a lot of good stuff on Netflix nowadays, and a lot of very grandiose high-concept fare, and I dunno, this isn't bad but it's comparably nothing to write home about, either, like it was 5 years ago. Also, as an IT guy then and now, I'm a little annoyed at the presence of laptop computers and the use of IP geolocation as a plot device in a show set in 1986.

Maybe the stupidest movie I've ever seen. A truly terrible, derivative slasher movie about a gorgeous cam girl staying at a cabin who keeps getting startled by unexpected gorgeous neighbors and handyman, spliced together for no reason at all except maybe to lengthen this to feature length with a fake reality show starring an unfortunately real Paris Hilton about a bunch of reality show dbags living in a house together. Then the end it suddenly tries to get meta, tying both stories together in the stupidest and least believable way imaginable, followed by a rap song about "hoes at the party". Also guest stars one of those plastic, hyperinflated '80s bimbettes as an ostensibly gorgeous sheriff.

Bartender in New Orleans finds a cell phone left at a bar, and supernatural things start happening. Well enough done, and builds creepiness effectively for the first half, but eventually goes off the rails, becoming hard to follow and seeming to just end rather than come to a climax. Too much weirdness with too little explanation. Cool weirdness, but ultimately, without understanding what's happening, it's completely unsatisfying.

Terribly miscast Jason Bateman—who doesn't have the range to be believable as a bully when he's just been acting like relatable Michael Bluth for the first half of the movie—in an otherwise ok thriller carried mostly by the strong performanmce of Rebecca Hall, as appealing as if Jenny Agutter was brought forward in a time machine from 1978, as his wife. Couple moves back to LA, reconnects with disturbingly eccentric childhood acquaintance (and writer/director) Joel Edgerton, who seems to have some sort of unhealthy interest in them. Secrets are revealed. Blah blah blah. Like I said, Rebecca Hall carries it. Does build well to a much more twisted revenge thriller ending than it ever lets on it's going to be.

About 2/3 of the way through this one as I write this and about ready to turn it off. So far the movie consists of Tilda Swinton looking like she's barely keeping together while being taunted first by random strangers, and then by a young son with a Hannibal Lecter-like ability to devise cruel ways to psychologically torture her. No sign of a plot yet, though. [Sat through it all. Kid to a teenager, gets more cruel and violent. This movie has nothing to say, it's more an impressionist piece, but so unpleasant that that doesn't redeem it. Spotted Steven Soderbergh's name in the closing producing credits, not surprised at all. I don't think I've ever liked one of his movies.]

maybe the lowest-budget, worst-lit and worst-recorded film I've ever seen. Looks like a student film... that's high-school student, not film school. How did they get Ice-T and Big Pussy from the Sopranos to make cameos in this piece of garbage? Something about trying to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared on the titular road, plus a little girl and biker dude running around in pancake makeup to indicate that they look scary. Nothing is really explained and it doesn't matter.

Another waste of what I'm assuming is an old Stephen King short story with some ideas that seem like they might have worked in writing, and could have worked with a movie production team that actually wanted them to. In this case, a couple driving through the heartland is lured into a field of tall grass by a crying child, and discovers they can't find their way back to the road. Also includes some time-looping paradox stuff that was really cool the first 5 or 10 times I saw movies use it, although in this case, with zero reason given for why people are moving through time at all, which I guess is kind of a first.

Abducted child torture porn. Two girls are girls, then they are abducted, tortured, killed. The end. Notable for 3 scarily realistic, intense, gory shots of first girl (2 alive, one dead), and what must be a laborious 10 minute scene of nothing but watching a shovel dig a shallow grave while a girl pleads offscreen. Does someone actually consider this entertainment?

Not so bad. Small movie with a primary cast of just two people (three if you include the corpse) consisting mostly of an increasingly creepy autopsy in a small-town morgue. Unfortunately, after two acts of nicely increasing creepiness, goes a little too far over the top in the third act. But still an okay view. Very well-executed for what it is.

The Blair Witch Project in Ireland, with ghosts instead of a witch. Not bad actually, kind of creepy for a cheapo shitty first-person-filmed movie.

She's a ghost. She wanders around a house. Doesn't sound like much but actually kind of a pretty cool movie. Kind of leans towards being an arthouse flick, but in a good way, without overbearing pretense. Poetic, slightly dreamy, original and self-assured. A spirit goes through the motions of her life before being contacted with by a medium trying to help release her spirit.

English future dystopian zombie flick. Either the best home movie ever, or the lowest budget BBC production ever. Nothing but intense (seemingly shakespearian??) actors being intense in the woods or narrating intensely. Impressive, in that solid, low key BBC drama sort oF way- more dialogue and character than action.

All the cringeworthy, painful embarrassment* of 90210 and sheer greasy self-involved repugnance of Sex And The City. Halfway through the first episode I was gripped by a paralyzing fear that outside my life and your life, the world actually is really like this. (*until you add Chris O'Dowd. And then it actually exceeds the cringeworthy, painful embarrassment of 90210.)

Not a bad one. That guy who was one of the McPoyle Brothers who's everywhere now goes to his country home and gets tormented for past crimes by a cover of witches. It's still "Into The Dark", but it's an ok one, with exceptional costume design.

Netflix Original. Evil pharma company markets a new antidepressant that just happens to be made from a virus that was bioengineered as a military weapon, but it's ok, because it only turned the test rats into zombies at 20,000 times the suggested dose. What could go wrong? I was actually slightly disappointed because it was cancelled.

Vacationing couple is held captive in a high-tech vacation house where a mysterious booming voice forces them to learn etiquette. Vaguely tries to do for gender politics what "Get Out" did for race politics, and fails pretty badly.

A good film which emphatically does not seem at all like it's going to be a good film. What starts out seeming like a run-of-the-mill b-movie cheap shit thriller about disappearing kids and an urban legend about "the tall man" who abducts children in a Pacific Northwest town turns out to be something quite a bit better than that. I wouldn't give it an A, but it's a solid B+, an actual story with a genuine plot, and definitely winds up original rather than the derivative, cliched rehash it really, really seems initially like it's going to turn out to be. I'm probably a little more enamored with how it fooled me into lowering my expectations than I ought to be, but, I am. It doesn't happen that often.

Quiet post-apocalyptic zombie drama finds Martin Freeman carrying his baby through an australian wasteland full of carrion and infected people, with an aboriginal girl in tow. Not even really a horror movie or thriller, just a drama. Martin Freeman gives a quiet, intense performance that's a credit to him, having adventures and misadventures trying to find somewhere safe to bring his child. Worked for me. Wikipedia says it's a tribute to The Road and I can see it.

(not to be confused with the excellent 2007 horror anthology film of the same name) Boring-as-wallpaper hipsters track a hacker through the desert or something and wind up getting held prisoner and questioned interminably in Area 51. If the this film had been as interesting all the way through as it started to get in its third act, instead of two acts of turgid indie tedium first, and then kept going, I probably would have thought it was pretty good.

Empty, banal torture/capitivity porn. Male victim this time, english moors this time. Yawn.

Donal Logue covers "Psych" without the "fake psychic" gag.

Turgid pacing in the first half nearly kills this sci-fi outing. An acceptable second half, with truly beautiful visuals, is still not quite strong enough to be worth waiting for. An alcoholic who resembles my long-lost friend Greg Van Ness is selected by a scientist to save the world from an incoming gamma ray burst by first having mind control devices implanted into him, and goading him (much too slowly) into an accident that gives him god-like powers. I googled afterwards, turns out this is the first directorial outing from a guy who did visual effects on a bunch of big, cosmic superhero movies. Makes sense. The VFX are great. He should do music videos.

As Kat Dennings's likeability is to Jay Baruchel's, and Los Angeles is to Vancouver, so is Dollface to Man Seeking Woman. Which is to say, it's pretty good, entertaining enough.

Had opportunity to re-watch this, and you know, I like this movie. Not sure what I can say that hasn't already been said. Meryl Streep in an iconic performance she modeled partly on Clint Eastwood's ability to command attention by speaking softly, plus Anne Hathaway, who to me has always been an entertaining-enough sort of "everyperson" actress, one of very few prominent stars you see regularly who isn't annoyingly Hollywood-y. A refreshing example of how you can make movies with female casts that are emphatically not chick-flicks, and pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors, all without preaching, moralizing or ever forgetting that the main objective is just to be a good movie. Now if they could just make these about something besides the fashion industry.

Chris Pine and Piper Perabo in an alright post-viral-apocalyptic road pic where everybody who's not in hazmat suits is gorgeous, if you like post-viral-apocalyptic road pics or Chris Pine or Piper Perabo or films where everybody who's not in hazmat suits is gorgeous.

Basically, "Open Water" but on the ocean floor instead of the surface, and without Open Water's hints of artistry, but it's still well done enough to pass muster if this sort of thing is your cup of tea, which it is mine. If you enjoy these kinds of bare-bones survival thrillers, you'll enjoy this alright. I did.