2023 Over

Another year. Another 150 movies or so. Bunch of tat, bunch of ace, the usual blend. Lists;

10 Best Films I Saw On A Big Screen

1. Beau Is Afraid

I'm sorry Mr Scorcese, but you were beaten out by a frazzled non stop three hour anxiety attack that never ceased building on it's own outrageous invention every step of the way. Just the bit where Phoenix walks into a stage play that becomes his reality could be film of the year on its own. Amazing.

2. Killers Of The Flower Moon

Scorcese revelling in every aspect of his visual craft allowing the story to elegantly unfold on screen at its own pace to powerful effect. Idiots complain about it's length, if anything it could have been longer.

3. Oppenheimer

Nolan pretending to make a worthy film, but it's still just all his usual narrative tricks and fascinations with time, Excellent.

4. Infinity Pool

There's sights in this film that I never thought I'd watch on a big screen with a paying audience. The craziest rich people go crazy movie since Society.

5. Godzilla -1.0

A genuinely affecting story and some of the best Godzilla fucking shit up scenes ever all in a movie that has the feel of a live action studio Ghibli flick! Doesn't seem possible, but it is! I saw it.

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Sometimes you just want something that has oodles of style and a bouncing hip hop soundtrack. This is the best one of those this year.

7. Pearl

Ti West and Mia Goth prove themselves to be no flash in the plan collaboration with this excellent prequel follow up to X. Roll on number three.

8. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3

What the fuck's going on over at Marvel? No idea, but this one was ace.

9. Talk To Me

Stood out from the overcrowded mass of cookie cutter horror that gets shat out by the film studios due to its use of humour and creeping undertone of nastiness.

10. Asteroid City

Wes Anderson at his best.

5 Notable Small Screen Gems

1. Pink Flamingos

Joefest continues to offer up a dazzling gluttony of insanity but the best of this year by a margin was John Waters' trash classic. Utter depravity communicated in arch camp, an incredible thing to see on the Joefest screen.

2. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves

Of all the modern films I watched this year, whether streaming exclusives or filtering down from the big screen like this one, this was the stand out due to the irreverence with which it treated its source material - taking the piss in exactly the right way and highlighting what is so great about an RPG.

3. Venus Of Ille

In all the old Italian cinema that I continue to gorge myself on, the Di Leo movies Blood & Diamonds and Killer Contro Killers both stood out strongly but pipping them to the post is Bava's final movie, a gothic masterpiece in miniature showcasing all of his talents.

4. Magic Cop

It takes something these days to make the old jaw go slack, but the action pieces in this that splice cool mystical bullshit with Hong Kong cinema acrobatics were just awesome. Such a great movie.

5. Messiah Of Evil

It still amazes me that films can still pop out of nowhere and be incredible. This mix of Lovecraft and Romero has been around since the seventies, not heard of it till about a year ago and it's incredible. How does that happen?

5 Things That Wasted My Time

1. Cocaine Bear

There's a lot of just bland old crap swimming round the bottom of the end these days, it takes something to stand out as truly awful and really sink below the rest of the turds in the pack. This does it, like a fucking lead turd.

2. Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts

As I watched, so many questions rose in my mind. All quite desperate questions, that really required an answer. Why is Optimus Prime such a whiny bellend? Why does the hero cry over the death of his new best friend and then wear his corpse? Why do the animal transformers even have robot forms if they never use them? The answer ended up being because this film is utterly, utterly shit.

3. Dungeonmaster/ Demons 3

I purposely watch a lot of old bollocks, and I'll give grace where appropriate - I wasn't expecting Blackenstein to be a classic. But these two are the absolute nadir of this kind of crap, meandering badly put together offal dumps on celluloid, can't win 'em all etc.

4. Wonder Woman 84/ The Flash

Never mind what's going on over at Marvel? What in the flying fuck is going on over at DC? Everybody appears to have entirely lost sight of how to put together a movie without entirely fucking it up.

5. Predestination

In the world of Sci-Fi there's mad shit, and there's 'what the fuck were you thinking putting me through that pile of piss you arseholes?' mad shit. This one's the latter.

The Passions Of Carol

A high-brow hardcore pornographic adaptation of Charles Dickens classic. The highlight was the ghost of Christmas past showing Miss Scrooge how when she was younger her best friend stuffed a dolls arm up her fanny but left the little hand sticking out like it was waving for attention. And that's enough Christmas for me this year.

Game Over [36.15 Code Père Noël/ Deadly Games: Dial Code Santa Claus]

An outright oddity, which when you're stood in the field of psychotic Santa movies is quite the achievement. It's so full of conflicting ideas that it's difficult to settle on whether it's a good film or not. And I think that this is a good thing. But then I'm not sure that it is.

Black Christmas

Apart from being about a killer stalking a sorority house at Christmas, this fucking awful shit bears no resemblance to the original film. This time round the fucking awful killer is the Patriarchy, represented by a frat boy rape cult who get their power from a statue that has been torn down because it was of a racist who hated women and the fucking awful message appears to be that surviving rape once is a good thing because it gives you the skillset to avoid it again. Fucking awful.

Black Christmas

Straight up remake of the original, but with all of the police investigation aspect removed entirely to make room for flashbacks that explain that the killer is a man with yellow skin who was raped by his mother who gave birth to a daughter who also has yellow skin, and is a man, and is also the killer. Not as good as the original.

Black Christmas [Silent Night, Evil Night]

A remarkable early slasher, notable for both the fact that it never reveals its demented killer setting it apart from all the Italian Giallo preceding it and the police presence are actually helpful in trying to solve the mystery as they investigate, setting it apart from nearly all the American slashers that followed.

Campfire Tales

This set of Tales is an anthology of four narrated by a homeless person to a group of children camping in the woods. The first three stories; a hooked killer killing people, weed is bad because you'll rot and die and an evil Santa tearing the still beating heart of a murderer from his chest are pretty good, but unfortunately they only take up the first half of the film with the rest given over to some shitty pirate story that's clearly been filmed down the local beach.

Escort Girls

Not the naughty Christmas Eve sexploitation romp that's promised, instead it's a lot of dour social critique soaked in misery, racism and abuse.

Tales Of The Third Dimension in 3-D [2D]

Anthology movie with segments linked by a talking skeleton showcasing the worst possible 3D effects, the first two stories are shit, but then everything is saved by a gloriously unhinged final Christmas story.

Velvet Buzzsaw

Some good ideas spoiled by an entirely disjointed delivery that couldn't decide if it wanted to be art satire or a horror movie when it had plenty of space to be both.

Cuento de navidad [A Christmas Tale]

Misleadingly titled, there's no reason for the main antagonist to be dressed as Santa, but they are, so it's apparently not a mean spirited, sub Stephen King, kids adventure but a Christmas story. I call bullshit on that.

Godzilla Minus One [Gojira -1.0]

An absolutely superb Godzilla movie, with the beast comfortably straddling both old and modern interpretations of itself whilst pounding his way through a compelling story of post war Japan. Just excellent.

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo

A teeth grindingly British retelling of Hansel & Gretel, only this time the wicked witch is Shelley Winters bringing her full array of staring madness as a benevolent rich lady who throws Christmas parties for orphans.

Santa Claus: A Horror Story [Santa Claus: Serial Rapist]

Soft porn levels of nudity combined with meandering pontification on theology in attempt to suggest that all the tits and fanny on display is actually highbrow. It's really not.

There's Something In The Barn

Aims for Gremlins but doesn't even manage to surpass Critters. And to make matters worse it looks like it was edited with a trowel.

Bad Santa 2

A miserable attempt to replicate the first film, too many years later.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes

Charlotte explained to me that she really liked it because if you are really in to The Hunger Games then there's tonnes of cool references to the story, and if you're only a casual watcher then there's still plenty of references to get. I can reliably inform that there are no references for watchers who just could not give a fuck about The Hunger Games.

The Night Of The Devils [La notte dei diavoli]

An extended version of the Wurdulak story from Bava's Black Sabbath that revels in its Italian Gothic stylings and goes admirably freaky at the end.

The Edge Of Everything

Contextualises some of Ronnie's wankier behaviour whilst giving a clear idea of what it's like trying to live in his headspace and where some of that wankier behaviour comes from. Fascinating stuff.

23 Seconds To Eternity

A feature length compilation of all the short films and music videos from The KLFs music making days, so no million quid burning etc but a clear demonstration of what The KLF* is about nonetheless.

*Also known as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, furthermore known as The JAMS.

The Killer

I didn't like it but I can't seem to put my finger on why. Charlotte said it reminded her of documentaries that she had to watch in History at school and would have preferred to have had a desk to put her head on and sleep.

The Marvels

Fun bit of Marvel comfort food. No heavy demands on the viewer just goodies, baddies, cats, explosions and silly jokes. Om nom nom etc.

Resident Evil: Welcome To Racoon City

Characters that have no back story, but that do have clearly stated first and last names, move from location to location shooting things until it all ends and you can go do something far more meaningful with your life.

Five Nights At Freddy's

I'm sure if you understand the many internet pages of lore about this, or if you love the zillion video games that this sprang from, or if you're twelve you'll love this. I'm none of these things, it's shit.

The White Dog

I know there's a heavy exploration of whether racism can be unlearned going on here, but this dog keeps on killing people as other people obsessively try and cure it. It's a fucking dog, just put it down. In fact we should do this with racists too.

The Murder Secret [Non aver paura della zia Marta/ Don't be Afraid Of Aunt Martha/ The Broken Mirror]

Utterly ludicrous trash approximation of a Giallo that just can't help but be entertaining for all the wrong reasons.

Mother Of Tears: The Third Mother [ La terza madre]

I know it must be hard to create a second sequel to a movie. Even more so if that movie is one that defines your entire career. And even more so if you're trying to do this thirty years after the first movie. And even more so if in the intervening thirty years you've entirely forgotten how to make a good movie. And even more so if you're insistent on casting your daughter who just cannot fucking act in the main role. And yet with all of that in mind it's still difficult to see this film as anything other than an unfortunate skidmark on a great director's career.

The Brain

For a film called The Brain this is actually very stupid indeed.

Magic Cop [Qu mo jing cha]

Absolutely superb Hong Kong action comedy that's jam packed with more of the endlessly entertaining Mr Vampire mystical nonsense. Not sure why tricks with incense sticks is so entertaining, but it really is.

The Ark Of The Sun God [I sopravvissuti della città morta]

Unbelievably dull. Everything just slipped straight off your brain as soon as it passed through your eyes. Couldn't even tell you what happened, or whether that scene on the poster is actually in the film or not.

Messiah Of Evil

 Romero/Lynch/Lovecraft/King.

Killers Of The Flower Moon

A master at his peak flexing every part of his storytelling skills to deliver an epic. An excellent movie.

Dark Waters

There’s enough neat stuff here that this could have been amazing, but everything is so incoherent I had to have wikipedia open to be able to follow the plot and the sound mix is so excruciating I had to mute the last twenty minutes and watch with subtitles.

Il Demonio [The Demon]

A few moments of interest to be had in an otherwise dull film about superstition in southern Italy.

Freaky

Silly fun that’s entirely made by Vince Vaughn’s completely unwavering commitment to playing a teenage girl.

Wonder Woman 1984

A really bad movie with twenty minutes of utter dogshit tacked on to the end.

Arena

Some fairly decent special effects and a lead actor that isn’t shit meant that I enjoyed this.

Friday The 13th

I watched Friday The 13th on Friday the 13th and this time round I couldn’t help but now see it all as Bava pastiche, which made it even more ace. And Mrs Vorhees was still ace and baby Jason still made me jump even though I knew exactly when it was going to happen. Ace.

The Dungeonmaster [Ragewar]

An astonishingly bad film. I mean I know I watch some shit, but this genuinely made me question what the fuck am I doing wasting my life watching pure bollocks.

Il sogno dell'altro [The Dream Of The Other]

A far better example of how to exploit meagre TV studio sets to compellingly tell an old fashioned spooky story than the preceding three entries in the series but still entirely dwarfed by Bava’s episode.

The Creator

A tour through a visually resplendent fully realised world, following a drab and uninspired narrative. 

The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar

Leans hard into its title in that it’s simply a narrated story and it’s wonderful. Anderson’s other Dahl adaptations are a treat too, not sure why all this wasn’t an anthology movie.

A Haunting In Venice

Did a good job at pretending to be a horror film at the start, did a better job of insisting it was a whodunnit movie by the end.

Till Death

An unnecessarily elaborate revenge thriller that begins with the enactor of the revenge shooting himself in the face which made me question why you would meticulously plan such a complex revenge scheme that you could never know the outcome of. But then I did have to watch his revenge play out and out of the two of us, I think he got off lightly.

Trilogy Of Terror

A superb anthology clearly influenced by both Bava’s Three Faces Of Fear and the litany of Amicus productions about at the time. So we start with an edgy tale, go into something with a psychological sting to its tale and then end with all the budget being spent on a monster that causes mayhem. King.

Cellar Dweller

All over the place and in too much of a rush to end, which is a shame because it’s great fun.

Il diavolo nella bottiglia [The Bottle Imp]

A Robert Louis Stevenson story presented in the style of the most woeful art student theatre troupe you could possibly imagine.

Clearcut

Presents itself as a fairly standard native American eco revenge flick, and is extremely enjoyable when watched as such. But then the penny drops that something else is going on and the whole thing elevates. Excellent movie.

La mano indemoniata [The Possessed Hand]

Essentially a theatre play performed before a camera, complete with over emphasised acting flourishes and sets made of cardboard. Saved by being a neat little tale performed with gusto by the players.

Lokis, The Manuscript Of Professor Wittembach [Lokis. Rekopis profesora Wittembacha/ The Bear]

Understated to the point of being utterly lifeless and gruelling to endure.

Sympathy For The Devil

Twists the wrong way.