Dirty Harry (1971)

In the middle of 2020, this was a film that came up between some friends and myself, specifically with regard to the notion of “copaganda”, given Harry Callahan’s proclivities. I was in line with this emphatic reconsideration myself, but since I already owned it, as time went on I thought perhaps it was wiser to […]

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Classic films often leave me questioning what the hell I’m going to say about movies with such unimpeachable reputations, or the ones I’ve seen dozens of times myself. Do I have anything interesting to say even as an individual? You know: forget whether I have some unique insight—I don’t expect that much from any movie—but […]

The Driller Killer (1979)

That whole slew of “implement-based slasher movie titles” that seemed to start (maybe?) with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and continued with things like The Toolbox Murders and Nail Gun Massacre and then the increasingly ludicrous Microwave Massacre always struck me as pointlessly exploitative after Texas Chain Saw. Not that I watched them, I, like […]

Dead of Night (1945)

I love a good horror anthology, in almost any medium. I grew up being scared out of my gourd by Tales from the Crypt (the 1980s/1990s HBO adaptation) and Tales from the Darkside (the series, with its skin-crawling intro, but also the movie). I later grew into Creepshow, Twilight Zone: The Movie (horrific realities aside), […]

Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)

It was Kim Morgan’s essay in Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Kill or Be Killed that made me aware of this movie. Her essays are so good¹ that I really wanted to see the movies she wrote about, so I started collecting them—but this one may well have stuck out more than any other at […]

Deux Jours, Une Nuit [Two Days, One Night] (2014)

Once again, DVD Profiler’s movie pick told me what to watch–I don’t think I knew a single thing about this movie when I bought it, nor when I put it in the player today. I just decided that I’d get better momentum out of it just plowing forward, totally disregarding whether I was “in the […]

Django (1966)

I try to keep the online film club somewhat on their toes, keeping things mixed in terms of genre, reputation source (I do still aim for positive reputations on the whole–but is it arthouse-positive? Cult-positive? Mainstream-positive? Who knows!), and decade of production/release–but it was perhaps the most whimsical to pull out this 1960s cult western […]

Dèmoni [Demons] (1985)

I’m far from seeing a majority of Italian horror, though I’m familiar with many of the names, and have touched on quite a few of them: Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Soavi, and at least knowing the names Cozzi, Deodato, and D’Amato. Mario’s son, Lamberto, though, I’d only seen in assistant directorial and similar roles […]

Doomsday (2008)

I’d seen Dog Soldiers but not The Descent when I decided to see Doomsday in theatres (why did I never notice Neil Marshall’s “D” fascination here?). I remembered broadly enjoying it and not agreeing with the negative sentiments that seemed to follow in its immediate theatrical wake, while having the separate feeling that one particular […]

Delicatessen (1991)

Not entirely sure, but I believe this might be the most well-regarded of the Jeunet films I’d not seen (having caught Amélie rather early on, but not particularly falling in love with it), his debut co-direction with Marc Caro has been on my watch list for ages and ages, but I’ve only now finally gotten […]