Closely Watched Trains

A black-and-white Czechoslovakian film about men who work at a train station during World War II and watch women with more avidity than trains. I don't have anything to say about it.

Changeling

A frustrating (in a powerful way) look at early 20th-Century LA, run by corrupt police and its Gun Squad. A woman comes home to find her child is gone, the police do nothing and later return to her a boy. For the next hour and a half, Angelina says, "He's not my son," with varying degrees of volume and emphasis. (Angie here has two acting volumes: muted and LOUD.) No one listens, except a John Malkovichian pretentious pastor. The press is in the police department's pocket, and she is sent to the hospital as a crazy woman. Powerful stuff.

Then she's released, and the compelling stuff ends. The last fourth of the movie is a procedural tying up of loose ends: what happens during the police hearings, what happens to the killer. With all due respect, the story here is a corrupt police force ruining this woman's life. It's not the people who may have killed her son. That's a side story, tangential to what's good, and the ending drags down an otherwise great Clint Eastwood film.

Pineapple Express

The ever scene-ruining Seth Rogan witnesses a murder, and he goes on the lam with his drug dealer, played by James Franco. Franco plays perhaps the best stoner drug dealer I've ever seen. Every line he utters is priceless. And he more than makes up for Rogan's increasingly useless onscreen attempts at acting. This is a film to buy and memorize half the lines of.

Day for Night

A classic Francois Truffaut film about a filmmaker, played by Truffaut, making a movie. It probably lends itself better to essays by film studies students than short paragraphs by a fly-by-night online film critic, so I'll just leave it at that. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it.

Tokyo Gore Police

Do you remember when you saw "Robocop 3" and thought, wow, they should really remake this as a Japanese movie with an absurd amount of chopped limbs and blood splatter? And I mean, a Peter Jackson trying to outdo Peter Jackson amount of "Dead Alive" blood and severed limbs? And you wanted that film to have lines like, "I am an able eulogist"? Well, someone listened to you.

The film takes on the commercialization of violence, making the same points as "Natural Born Killers." It also emphasizes the transformative nature of people. One person has become (probably against his or her will) a chair -- I can't explain how. One woman's legs become a Venus Flytrap. Another person dressed like the gimp has swords for legs. A man's brain emerges from the top of his skull, two gun chambers protrude from his eyes, and he starts firing projectiles at the heroine (the woman from "Audition"). Basically, as the film goes on, it gets more and more -- for lack of a better word -- Japanese.

Frankenstein

Unlike Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," the 1931 film doesn't portray the monster as sympathetic and Frankenstein gets away fine. In other words, the filmmakers completely missed the point of the story, which is finding the monster in man and the man in monster. Perhaps this paved the way for other horror movies blah blah blah, but I'd rather watch the movies that are farther along that paved path.

Encino Man

I'm still satisfied by this story of weazing, grindage, weasels, and greasy and crusty people. Michael DeLuise was robbed for not getting an Oscar for his portrayal of Matt "Shoosh" Wilson.

In case it comes in handy during a Trivial Pursuit game, people like me who have seen five Pauly Shore movies in a row (including "Jury Duty" -- ouch) know that this is one of three collaborations between Shore and Brendan Fraser. Fraser appears briefly in "In the Army Now" and "Son-in-Law" as someone who eats a frog.

Friday the 13th

The original. Not the remake. "Jason was my son, and today is his birthday." What a great line. It's up there with the line from "Bloodsport," "Frank Dukes. Like put up your dukes, right?" The plot sets a low bar for a curse: Jason drowned, and then two counselors were killed. Three deaths = eternal terror? I don't think so. A burial ground, nuclear waste, something.

The ending raises questions. Is Jason real, or part of Adrienne's imagination? Did he kill the others, or was it Mrs. Voorhees? And why is Jason still a kid if he drowned 22 years ago? That's enough unexplained plot elements to justify a sequel. A sequel.

Audition

Not necessarily scary, but certainly twisted, and it does what good horror does: evaluates the fabric of society. The girl is scary. A movie critic once said, regarding "No Country for Old Men," that when Hannibal Lector has nightmares, he's thinking of Anton Chigurh. If I may elaborate on this, Chigurh's dreams are probably haunted by this freaky chick.

Stagecoach

Geronimo and his band of Apaches are out to attack the good white people on the western frontier. Good thing John Wayne is riding shotgun in the stagecoach. Hence the title, "Stagecoach." Given recent events, I found most interesting the character of the banker. In the eponymous stagecoach rides a banker who repeatedly iterates, rather forcefully, his opinion that what's good for banks is good for the country. Nobody should question the banks. And what is he doing in the stagecoach? He's fleeing the jurisdiction because he's ripping off the payroll deposit for the mine. Prescient.

Inner Senses

A Chinese ghost story. I'm writing this about a week after I saw it, and I can't remember a thing about the film. That means there are better ways to spend your time than watching this movie.

Poison Ivy 4: The Secret Society

Ahem.

They should have stopped at 3. Or rather, they should have made 3 first and stopped there. If they had to make a second, 2 was probably okay. The first should have been third, but only if they really needed to make it. This is well placed at fourth. Although, if they make 5, there's a good chance 4 should have been fifth, and 5 should have been fourth. Just watch 3.

Dorm

A Thai ghost story that has a promising beginning, with some cleverly done scenes of eerie freakiness. Then, almost inexplicably, it turns into a sentimental story about a dead boy's ghost bonding with a lonely boy at a boarding school. A tad incongruous, I would say.

Bloody Reunion

Students gather to celebrate a former teacher. Too bad there's a psycho on the loose who makes the reunion bloody. It's not just a clever title. A fair-to-moderate Korean horror film, with a twist at the end (as they all seem to have).

The Host

My second time through, I think more highly of this Korean monster movie. It's got horror, action, an insightful take on modern society in the midst of a crisis. Hot stuff.

Ringu

Not as scary as I remembered.