movies

Movie review - The Crow (1994)

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Halloween rewatch. Always forget the soundtrack and then it starts up and I'm sucked back in. Still the best, thank you Brandon. Rating: 5.0 out of 5.

Movie review - Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

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Somehow a first watch for me, though of course spoiled years ago. Still enjoyed it, though a bit long - was fun to get the "90s movie about the 70s&quo...

Movie review - Werewolf by Night (2022)

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Marvel comics writers are smart enough to know when you have a family of monster hunters named Bloodstone that the gem giving them powers should be called t...

Movie review - Crimes of the Future (2022)

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My first thought at the end was "well that was silly". Lots of very good actors playing silly little freaks. A meandering plot that failed to buil...

Movie review - Dracula (1931)

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An entertaining but extremely abridged Dracula adaptation, which to be fair is required for such a short movie. The cast are generally great, with Bela Lugo...

Movie review - The Vampire Bat (1933)

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It's got a bit of spooky to it, and I do love an early 30s movie, a short runtime (just over an hour), and a bunch of weird characters (complimentary)....

Movie review - The Rezort (2015)

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Some of the big ideas here were good, and the technical aspects as well for the budget. It started dragging for me just when the action picked up halfway th...

Movie review - M3GAN 2.0 (2025)

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The good: M3gan and Cady, the soundtrackThe bad: all the adult characters, the plot The ugly: the tech is even more fully disconnected from our reality, esp...

Movie review - Godzilla Minus One (2023)

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Really enjoyed this, very well made and gave me at least some feeling of postwar Japanese personal and national trauma before running it up against the lite...

Movie review - Attack the Block (2011)

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Did this movie popularize the blackest black the year before vantablack was created? Much to ponder. Either way, I liked it a lot. Rating: 4.0 out of 5.

Movie review - Violent Night (2022)

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Watched because the trailer for the sequel looked amusing. Good mindless violent fun, will add this to the Christmas rotation. Rating: 3.0 out of 5.

Movie review - Afterlight (2025)

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Some interesting ideas in these shorts, but quality is not great after the first. Particularly the CG is generally quite bad (some maybe AI?), even basic co...

Movie review - Being Eddie (2025)

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I guess it's interesting to know that Eddie is just a generic super rich guy these days, with literally all the trappings. Had to sit through a lot of ...

Movie review - Supergirl (2026)

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I'm fully biased coming into this movie. I really liked the "Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow" comic this was based on. Lobo is one of my favouri...

Movie review - Silent Night (2023)

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Boring. The "not speaking" conceit was an interesting idea, but it doesn't go anywhere interesting -- there are no situations where it's...

Movie review - Possessor (2020)

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I was interested in the world and where the plot was going in this film, but the characters didn't build in a way I connected with, and it was slow. Th...

Movie review - Ready or Not (2019)

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Another late first watch. I'd already gathered the broad strokes of the plot, and particularly knowing a bit about the sequel defused some tension, but...

Movie review - Companion (2025)

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I enjoyed this one. It had more fun energy (at appropriate times) than recent similar films, moved at a good pace, and the duration was perfect. High points...

Movie review - Donnie Darko (2001)

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Finally watched, glad I waited, if I'd seen this when it came out I'd have been insufferable about it for years and then had nostalgia glasses eve...

Movie review - Murder! (1930)

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Interesting only to see Hitchcock's filmmaking technique at the time, the acting and plot are telegraphed and dull. Rating: 2.0 out of 5.

Movie review - Clairtone (2025)

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An interesting but not overly nuanced history of a Canadian luxury audio brand I had only heard of in passing. Shout out to "Farewell to Nova Scotia&qu...

Movie review - The Crimes That Bind (2018)

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Convoluted but grounded Japanese police story where everything is way too personal for the main detective Kaga who just wants a snack (played by Hiroshi Abe...

Movie review - Wicked: For Good (2025)

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As expected, generally good but not particularly exciting. I kept wishing less famous actors had been cast. Also nobody is sexy in this movie including Jona...

Movie review - The Walking Dead (1936)

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The poster and tagline are both misleading, and I didn't know that I would call this horror. It's an interesting little gangster revenge noire wit...

Movie review - Dark City (1998)

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Truly astonishing I hadn't seen this before, it would've been exactly my thing in the 90s. Interesting ideas, good visuals, solid acting. I'v...

Movie review - Maigret (2022)

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I like the Maigret stories, they're very different from contemporary early 20th century British mystery stories. This film does an uninspired job of te...

Movie review - Antiviral (2012)

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Brandon continues the most important parts of the Cronenberg tradition - being super horny about unexpected fetishes, employing great Canadian character act...

Movie review - FREYA (2020)

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Ok listen, I found this because the link was in the director's profile on a dating app. Incredible targeted marketing campaign. But also this is really...

Movie review - No Ordinary Man (2020)

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Takes the story of trans jazz musician Billy Tipton as a starting point for a moving exploration of trans mascness. In many cases I complain films are too l...

Movie review - Wicked (2024)

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Pretty much what I expected, visually strong (though practical effects sometimes meh), musically strong (but Ariana did not consistently act her singing), a...

Movie review - Queens of the Dead (2025)

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A snappy queer found-family romp in a zombie apocalypse frame. It's not perfect, but if it was perfect I would not love it as much. Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Movie review - Parasite (2019)

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Finally watched. This is a good movie, the characters feel real and the plot was interesting. But it didn't transcend for me, the hype seems hyperbolic...

Movie review - I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

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This is a great doc. It does what it sets out to do, framing the history of Black civil rights in the US in James Baldwin's words and tying all of that...

Movie review - Crank (2006)

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"It's actively violent against everyone except white men, but...". Yeah, I'm not going to give that a pass. Rating: 0.5 out of 5.

Movie review - The Addiction (1995)

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A lot more lingering war crimes imagery than I was expecting. Aside from that I liked the look and feel, and the story was pretty good but went off the rail...

Movie review - Predator: Badlands (2025)

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I'm liking all the new Predator movies, but this is the weakest of the three. The plot and two protagonists work, but the constant action is a too repe...

Movie review - Nobody (2021)

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A better than average action movie, just don't think about the backstory. And a tight 91 min is priceless. Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Movie review - The Shadow’s Edge (2025)

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Solid action flick. Jackie Chan won't stop doing his own stunts, and Tony Leung Ka-fai is legitimately scary. And remember kids, cryptocurrency is untr...

Movie review - Strange Days (1995)

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There's good and bad stuff in this movie, but for me it's all overshadowed by the most vile fridging concept I've ever seen. Rating: 1.5 out ...

Movie review - Becoming Cary Grant (2017)

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Not knowing much about Cary Grant's personal life this was an interesting watch, it seemed an empathetic take on a complex man. Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Movie review - Monkey Man (2024)

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Action with a soul and cultural context, both current and historical. I liked it a lot. Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Movie review - Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)

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There were some interesting ideas here, but the execution was terrible across the board. An action comedy about Section 31? Someone should be sent to the ag...

Movie review - Fountain of Youth (2025)

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Incredible choice to hard smash into Oasis' Live Forever for the credits. Completely broke the dull fugue state the mediocrity of the rest of the movie...

Movie review - The Shrouds (2024)

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This was pretty incoherent, particularly near the end. Maybe a lot of scenes were cut? But great to see Jennifer Dale and Sandrine Holt, and all the Toronto...

Update on ratings sites

1 minute read

So apparently I got bored of doing the trailer updates… I’m still watching them, but there’s so few movies most weeks that I’m actually interested in it’s no...

Movie trailers - 2024 weeks 9 to 12

8 minute read

It’s been another month, let’s run down a bunch of trailers. I’m not going to bother linking each movie if I’m not interested, you can search for them yourse...

Movie trailer thoughts - 2024 week 8

1 minute read

Finally getting some more energy back to do random things now that days are getting longer, but still not enough to do a big post (or even watch a lot of med...

2023 holiday viewing

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So it appears that I’m only updating this blog these days around the holidays, and only about what I’m watching. Need to get better at that…

2022 Holiday viewing

3 minute read

A few quick thoughts about movies and tv shows I watched over the 2022 holiday break. There’s not all that much given how much time I had off, but that’s not...

Movie sites update

less than 1 minute read

I’ve recently decided to switch over my movie ratings from IMDB to The Movie Database. This is primarily driven by not wanting to feed yet more data or link ...

Movie Reviews - April 2021

4 minute read

Wow, it’s been a whole year since I wrote any movie reviews. You’d think that staying home in a pandemic would give me lots of time to do blog entries, but a...

Movie Reviews - April 2020

5 minute read

I wrote most of this post back over the past couple of months, but things got busy and I didn’t finish and post. But here we are now well into April and the ...

Movie reviews - August 2018

6 minute read

I’ve heard there’re people waiting for me to write more reviews, so I guess I better get moving.

Movie Reviews - July 2018

3 minute read

Yet another installment of movie reviews from my list on IMDB. Moving closer to current, but still almost a year back. Here’s the post where I explain how I ...

Movie Reviews - April 2018

4 minute read

Next chunk of movie reviews from my list on IMDB, still working on a fairly large backlog. Here’s the post where I explain how I rate movies.

Movie reviews - March 2018

3 minute read

Here’s the next chunk from my IMDB ratings. It’s been over a year since my last set of reviews, so none of these are particularly new, but here goes anyway.

Fall 2016 Movie Reviews

9 minute read

Time for another post of quick movie reviews that have accumulated. I’m just going from my TMDB rankings list, so there may be some there I watched earlier a...

Late 2015 quick movie reviews

5 minute read

I’ve been keeping a list of movies I watch in order to write reviews later, but for a while I haven’t had time/been interested. So instead of a bunch of long...

How I rate movies

2 minute read

I realized the other day that I’ve never explained the rating system I use for movies. It’s not all that critical, most people have a general understanding o...

Movie review: Divergent

1 minute read

I’ve got a bit backlog of movies I’ve wanted to watch but for whatever reason haven’t gotten to, so will be working on catching up in the next little while a...

Star Trek Into Darkness

6 minute read

This past Monday afternoon (a holiday here) our family went to see Star Trek Into Darkness at The Roxy theatres in lovely downtown Uxbridge. Here’s what I th...

Recent movies - May 2012

4 minute read

This would be movies I’ve watched recently, as opposed to movies that have come out recently, though most are relatively recent (past few years).

Movie - Body of Lies

less than 1 minute read

I recently watched Body of Lies. At a high level, it’s a movie about an increasingly jaded CIA agent in the Middle East (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his jerk of a...

Movies - Battle for Terra

2 minute read

I’ve decided to try and post more movie reviews, since it appears the only one I’ve actually posted here was in Jan 2009. And I do watch a few movies, and he...

Movies - Eagle Eye

1 minute read

Here’s my review of the movie Eagle Eye, which I’m giving a rating of 4/10. That rating actually decreased as I was writing this.