Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

I heard good things about this as a return, though I also hadn’t seen the first sequel until this year (spoiler: I didn’t like it). I figured I may as well work it into my “series project” for the year, so here I am. 25 years after the close of the last film, Bill S. […]

日本黒社会 LEY LINES (Nihon Kuroshakai Rei Rainzu, lit. Japan Underworld: Ley Lines) [Ley Lines] (1999)

Takashi Miike’s Black Society Trilogy was probably one of the weirder choices for my “series project” in the end. I think it’s the only set I’ve been watching that’s linked thematically rather than as a narrative of some kind. This isn’t a bad thing of course, but it’s a little nudge against the comfortable familiarity […]

Riddick (2013)

As I noted after watching The Chronicles of Riddick, I never did get around to watching the sequels to Pitch Black. Number threes have not been doing me any favours lately, but I had a little higher hope for this one, given it was still in the hands of creator David Twohy, and the second […]

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

This is now the coldest of takes and I know it, but for years I planned to only own Halloween and Halloween III. When I took some movie posters home from my dad’s time running movie theaters (sadly now lost in a move sometime), I got a Halloween II poster in the bunch. I decided […]

Oh, God! You Devil (1984)

After the second Oh, God!, I was not looking forward to this at all. I expected a pandering, morally simplistic drag. I was not entirely prepared as a result. Bobby Shelton (Ted Wass) is an aspiring singer/songwriter, married to Wendy (Roxanne Hart), and represented by agent Charlie Gray (Eugene Roche). After the millionth failure of […]

The Enforcer (1976)

After Magnum Force, I was not enthused about continuing the Dirty Harry films. I’ve heard they decline precipitously from the first onward, and my experience thus far supported this. Still: I own the damned things, I’m going to watch them and see if they prove that commentary wrong. Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) continues to […]

Trancers III: Deth Lives! (1992)

I’ve always had such a weird relationship with the direct-to-video stuff. I never turned into the “Oh boy, So Bad It’s Good!” type (in point of fact, most of the time I actually hate hat approach). I never was so convinced of my own taste that I avoided it, but I also never accepted anything […]

Superman III (1983)

I bought the DVD box set of Superman movies 15 or so years ago, and I technically “watched” all five movies, but I know I was hardly paying as much attention as I might’ve (or maybe even “should’ve”). I remember that this one I realized I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen before that viewing and was very […]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Of the three big slashers of the 1980s—that is, the ones that went on to seemingly endless sequels—A Nightmare on Elm Street was, for a long time, the only one that held any interest to me. After all, it was inherently tied to the supernatural and the fantastic, which was able to wrestle with my youthful […]

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

In my review for the second film, I noted that I had heard there was a dip and then a climb for this series, but that I didn’t know where it occurred. When I started watching this one, I still didn’t know where or when that was supposed to happen, and could barely remember that prior […]