I decided to do a rewatch of the extended editions of the greatest trilogy filmed.

On a whim I decided to do a rewatch of The Quest for Fire.

It has been a very long time since I have watched it and man . For decades I have seen the movie get period and be butt end of many jokes, but wow it is really a great movie.

I has it all, a desperate quest, heroes, love interest, comic relief intense battles, mysticism. It is an impressive timeless movie.

Finally I have started to watch The Substance.

I am only about 30 minutes into it and it s pretty wild.

Elysium, pretty good sci-fi action film with a nice aesthetic.

The Fall Guy, another action movie with cool stunts. Emily Blunt puts on an odd accent/voice but I kinda love it :)

Kiki’s Delivery Service, one of my favourites from Studio Ghibli and watched it with my kids.

This was a heavy Brit week for me with a few from India thrown in.

• Wicked (2024): Half of a musical needing its ‘part 2’.
• The Life of Chuck (2024): Thanks to y’a’ll for recommending this. Poignant.
• Sita Sings the Blues (2008): Animated. Indian tale of Sita, wife to Ramayana, as told by modern people trying to remember the details and interspersed with the 1920s Annette Hanshaw singing.
• Good Bye, Lenin! (2003): German. East German mom wakes from coma after Berlin wall falls, so son pretends they’re still divided.
• Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (1970) Zhi qu wei hu shan (智取威虎山): Recommended for historical reasons. Details here.
• Pyaasa (1957) प्यासा (aka Thirst): Indian. Highly Recommended. Director Guru Dutt also stars in his own most-celebrated film (see also Paper Flowers).
• Don (1978) डॉन : Bollywood singing/dancing crime thriller with Pauper/Prince motif except with a crime lord instead of a prince. Pretty good for what it is.
• He Ran All the Way (1951): beautifully shot, tense, but so much melodrama.
• Any Wednesday (1966): Flick about cheating exec tries for funny but is cringe.
• Crooks and Coronets (1969) aka Sophie’s Place: Telly Savalas is a crook who likes the Brits he’s supposed to rob. Okay, but skippable.
• Inside Out (1975): Skippable Comedy/Thriller where crooks try to steal Nazi gold. Telly Savalas, Robert Culp, James Mason, and so on. Yawn.
• From Beyond the Grave (1974): Brit ghost-y shorts tied together by Peter Cushing’s curio shop. Good for its (now-dated) type.
• Die! Die! My Darling! (1965): Brit thriller/camp fave. Tallulah Bankhead is a strict religious crone grieving her dead son and so she takes his once-fiancee captive.
• When The Wind Blows (1986): Animated. Elderly British couple chat and prepare their cottage as nuclear war begins. Well done. Mildly recommended.

From Dusk til Dawn 4/5: Regal is doing throwback horror all month and this was my first. It’s crazy how quickly the tone shifts but it is crazy fun. Also I want to hear the conversation where QT convinced Selma Hayek to pour booze down her leg into his mouth

Army of Darkness 4/5: More goofy horror but the original Evil Dead movies are just so much fun. I love how deadites are just shitty assholes, it’s so much funnier than a serious villain

The Matrix 5/5: What’s there to say? It’s incredible, I love every moment

Death Becomes Her 4/5: More horror camp this week, and I hadn’t seen this before. At first I was trying to understand why these women were fighting so hard for Bruce Willis then I got that this movie is crazy. This movie walked so The Substance could run

The Mastermind 1/5: This was a mystery movie Monday dud. Some audience reviews as the movie ended “what the hell?” (x3) “that was the worst movie I’ve ever seen” “you know, maybe we should know what movie we’re going to see before we go in”. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, there’s some funny moments and it is very deliberate. Unfortunately they’re deliberately telling a dumb story. Watching a guy make progressively shittier decisions as his life unravels around him requires him to be compelling in some way, or the audience has no reason to care. His wife seems to aggressively avoid being in the movie which is weird considering she seems to be a co-conspiritor in the scheme. It’s frustrating, slow, long, and dumb. Which are bad ways to describe a movie

Finally caught Enter The Void by Gaspar Nöe. Insane visuals and maybe the most stream of consciousness editing possible. Still below Irreversiblé in my ranking, though second overall by Nöe I’ve seen.