Trick 'r Treat

This Halloween I watched the best possible movie to watch at Halloween.

Layer Cake

A film where stuff happens so that ten minutes later a character can explain why it happened whilst they paste in thick layers of convoluted backstory. Then the heavy handed editing slaps you about for a bit till more stuff happens.

Exhausting.

Suicide Club [Jisatsu sâkuru/Suicide Circle]

http://www.methodsunsound.com/horror-movie-review-suicide-circle/

The Sacrament

The glacial pace of Ti West perfectly married to the insidious dead-eyed creepiness of wayward cults. Would make for a stunning triple bill if it were sandwiched between Martha Marcy May Marlene and Red State.

The Last Witch Hunter

Over-inflated baby update: Vin Diesel's skin now exhibits a waxy, rubbery tautness, his face only capable of the briefest of smirks before snapping back to the look of fierce concentration required to will his flesh into holding under the strain of such immense levels of air pressure.

Crimson Peak

Del Toro once again smothers his sumptuous, visual flair in stagey, amateur dramatics that made me wish he'd go back to making Spanish language films instead.

The Bloodstained Lawn [Il prato macchiato di rosso]

A tale of aristocrats stealing the blood of society's riff-raff that would dearly love to be biting social satire rather than the hopelessly deranged nonsense it actually is.

Star Wars: Episode VI - The Return Of The Jedi [1997 Special Edition]

Despite Yoda's freakishness Empire clearly struck a chord that A New Hope did not, for on the following night the teenager insisted on watching Jedi. So it was my turn to huff and tut through the nonsense as Charlotte became captivated by soap opera dynamics and Ewoks.

As an added bonus Lucas' motivation for messing with Anakin's ghost became crystal clear, when she asked if that was meant to be vader, why did he look like that? I answered "That's what the prequels are about" and she is now insistent that we watch the prequels.

Damn it.

Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back [1997 Special Edition]

Still the best of the series by a long shot, even the special edition additions are non-intrusive, all given a fresh edge of hilarity by Charlotte's hopelessly over the top reaction of pure terror every time Yoda's puppet appeared.

Bone Tomahawk

Fucking boring western with some nasty bits at the end.

High-Rise

A distinctive retelling of Ballard's visionary dystopia told in Wheatley's unique cinematic voice.

Take Me To The River

Huge quantities of heavily loaded, tension filled dialogue give way to a slow burning finale of extreme discomfort.

11 Minutes [11 minut]

I was expecting something deep and profound, what I got was a microcosm of human existence that suggests that, at any given time in any given place, loads of random stuff is happening, which the more I think about it is actually incredibly deep and profound 

When Marnie Was There [Omoide no Mânî]

Ghibli's last is the usual masterclass in gorgeous animation but their recurring themes of lost spirits, rememberance and personal growth jar against the very English Gothic of the source material.

Assassination

I'm not familiar with enough Korean history to know how much of this kind of thing actually went on and how much of it is just thirties American Gangster tropes embedded in a Korean period piece.
I do know it started well, clipped along at a pace before the last 20 minutes dribbled out like a wet fart.

Enemy

Giant spiders are made unhappy by the collapse of Gyllenhall's wave function.

As Above So Below

Although it would make for a considerably more abstract viewing experience, I can't help but feel that this would have been greatly improved if they had used expensive computer technology to remove all the main characters.

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead [Død snø 2]

A forced turd drowned in a terribly misguided humour.

Them [Ils]

A supposedly true story about a young couple fending off a touch of home invasion, only their home is inexplicably a sprawling country estate that has been built just across the woods from a comprehensive sewer system.

Hotel Transylvania 2

Enjoyed it, but Samurai Jack was quite a while ago now and I can't help but see this sequel-that-nobody's-really-fussed-about as a waste of considerable talent.

Charlotte enjoyed it too. She doesn't give a flying fuck about Samurai Jack though.

Atomic: Living In Dread And Promise

An assemblage of existing film sources that tells us very little we didn't know about nucear threat whilst Mogwai provide an appropriate soudtrack.

Blood And Black Lace [Sei donne per l'assassino/Six Women For The Murderer]

Bava was no fool, he knew the best part of the popular yellow jacketed thriller novels of the time were their lurid covers. So he used the full force of his baroque mastery of light and shadow to create a sumptuous moving montage of them that formed the Giallo template and reverberated through over 50 years of Slasher cinema.