My Top 50 Movies Of All Time (At This Exact Point In Time.)

I probably should be doing about 50 other things at this very moment, but I saw this great top-50 list today and was inspired it to immediately answer it.  I made my list very, very quickly, so in plenty of ways it’s the most honest form a list like this could ever arrive in.  While the numbering is fairly [...]

Cult Classics: BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986).

Today we celebrate a great American.  Oh totally, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but also: John Carpenter, one of my very favorite filmmakers of all time.  Here’s something I wrote on February 11th, 2009:  I recently received in the mail the limited edition 2-disc score album for John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China.  It’s a [...]

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #20: CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954).

The Creature From The Black Lagoon is the last of the major Universal monsters.  Creature From The Black Lagoon was released in 1954, over twenty years after Universal introduced Frankenstein’s Monster, his Bride, the Mummy, the Invisble Man, and Count Dracula, and over ten years later than the Wolf Man (longer if you count the [...]

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #13: BLACK SHEEP (2006).

Note: This is the New Zealand horror-comedy from a few years back, not the Chris Farley/ David Spade horror-comedy from the decade prior.   To watch Black Sheep all the way through – what’s more, to enjoy it – you need to have been born with or developed a very specific sense of humor. This is a [...]

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #12: THE DESCENT (2005).

  As I watched The Descent for a second time, the one thought to which I kept returning was this:   Maybe there are some places humanity just doesn’t need to go.   For sure, the movies keep trying to make the case. In the movies, if you go into the ocean, into the woods, into [...]

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #11: DOG SOLDIERS (2002).

So I don’t think it’s too drastic to call Dog Soldiers the best werewolf movie of the new century. It may not even be much of a compliment: The competition for the title is pretty sickly. Dog Soldiers isn’t a great werewolf movie, but it is a good one, and that alone is hard enough to manage. It’s a [...]

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #6: TREMORS (1990).

Tremors begins with a man peeing off a cliff and ends with a freeze-framed kiss set to a Reba McEntire song.  Movies that commence with urination are a very limited sub-genre, best represented (appropriately) by Waterworld, and if movies concluding in Reba McEntire tunes are their own genre I’m not the guy to ask.  But these [...]

31 FLAVORS OF HORROR #1: FRANKENSTEIN (1931).

Of the classic Universal movie monsters, my favorites have always been the Wolfman and the Gill Man.  I love them all, don’t get me wrong – Count Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride – they’re all great.  It’s just personal taste: since I was a little kid I’ve adored animals, [...]

Now On DVD: THOR.

Hey, what did the beat-up boxer say when his trainer asked him how he was feeling? THOR! So Thor‘s out on DVD and Blu-Ray today.  My review was pretty funny, if I do say so myself.  And I do. “So myself.”  Anyway.  Thor.  Let’s go back there together, shall we?’ ______________________________________________________________________________ Here’s what I liked [...]

Cult Classics: ATTACK THE BLOCK! (2011)

One night in 1986, my grandmother woke my sister and I in the middle of the night with an urgency.  I was nine, my sister seven.  Grandma loaded the two of us into the car and drove us to the outskirts of town.  Half-asleep, I watched the deep-dark-blue skies as Halley’s comet zoomed into view.  The [...]