Happy 11th Blogiversary To Me

Hi All! Think I’m a day or two late on this. But I’ve been doing this 11 years now. 11 years! Spinal Tap would be proud!

Well, things are absolutely terrible life-wise the past two years but I try to keep things going here as movies (watching them, posting about them, keeping a diary of them, making lists of them… god I’m a nerd) are my form of escapism. And I need a lot of that at the moment!

Time is short so I’m going to do what I did for my blogiversary last year & just list my Top Ten Lists For 2023 So Far as it’s nearly the end of the year anyway. Only been to the cinema a few times, so this is mainly movies “released in the U.K. for the first time in 2023 that I actually managed to watch”. So, yes, most big cinema releases are sadly missing if they aren’t streaming yet.

FYI – all my lists & my movie diary & reviews are also on my Letterboxd profile here.

So here are My Top Ten Movies Released To U.K. Cinemas Or Streaming Services In 2023 That I’ve Seen So Far:

1. Barbie – 8.5/10
2. Close – 7.5/10
3. Air – 8/10
4. No One Will Save You – 7.5/10
5. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 – 7/10
6. Totally Killer – 7.5/10
7. Linoleum – 7.5/10
8. Love At First Sight – 7.5/10
9. Knock At The Cabin – 7/10
10. Missing – 7.5/10

I’ve seen much better older films this year than 2023 releases. Seen so many decent ones that I need to make this one a Top 20. So here are My Top Twenty Older Release Movies Seen In 2023 So Far:

1. The Swimmer – 8.5/10
2. A Woman Under The Influence – 8.5/10
3. In The Mood For Love – 8/10
4. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof – 8/10
5. La Haine – 8/10
6. Tenebrae – 8/10
7. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc – 8/10
8. Lamb – 8/10
9. Petite Maman – 8/10
10. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978) – 8/10
11. Stray Dog – 8/10
12. Blow Out – 8/10
13. Last Night In Soho – 7.5/10
14. Something Wild – 7.5/10
15. Man With A Movie Camera – 7.5/10
16. Brian And Charles – 7.5/10
17. Fall – 7.5/10
18. Possession – 7.5/10
19. Elvis – 7.5/10
20. A Hard Day’s Night – 7.5/10

The full list of absolutely everything I’ve watched & read this year is here if you’re super bored or want to see what terrible movies I ranked the lowest (Under The Silver Lake. And I’m only halfway through it but think that Beau Is Afraid will be another contender for the biggest piece of shit I’ve seen this year. Yikes…).

Thanks to those who are still around here & reading my ramblings & putting up with me taking ages to reply to comments. I’m so glad you’re still here! I always appreciate hearing from people, old & new. 🙂

Watched, Read, Reviewed: July 2023

Ugh. Have I not posted my July Roundup yet? Sorry! Life is sucky at the moment. 😦

Here’s my ranking of what I watched in July. I got Mubi in August, so I’ve seen a lot of good movies this month which I’ve already reviewed on Letterboxd, so I may post those here this week…

MOVIES WATCHED IN JULY (ranked best to worst):

Barbie – 8.5/10

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978) – 8/10

Air – 8/10

Possession – 7.5/10

The Big Boss – 7/10

The Way Of The Dragon – 7/10

The Long, Hot Summer – 7/10

Tetris – 7/10

Broker – 7/10

Kickboxer – 6.5/10

Game Of Death – 6.5/10 (8/10 for the Bruce Lee footage)

Watcher – 6.5/10

All The King’s Men – 7/10

Game Of Death II – 6.5/10

Nimona – 6.5/10

The Greatest Beer Run Ever – 6/10

They Cloned Tyrone – 6/10

Ghosted – 5/10

Movies Rewatched In July:

Titanic – 8/10

Juno – 8/10

BOOKS, TV, MUSIC, MISCELLANEOUS IN JULY

TV SHOWS WATCHED

And Just Like That…: S2 E4-7 – God I hate this show so much. At least they brought Aidan back, the only character who isn’t an asshole.

BOOKS READ

Um. Don’t think I read any in July? Things are a bit tough at the moment to manage anything beyond movie-watching with earphones in the wee hours when everyone else is asleep…

BLOG PLANS FOR THE COMING MONTH

None! Catch up on posting reviews of what I watched in August, I guess. Saw some good ones! And some Argento!

Upcoming Movies I Want To See:

Have missed so many. 😦 Really wanted to see the new Indiana Jones even though I know it’ll be disappointing. And want to have time to watch Babylon, M3gan, and Dungeons & Dragons which are now on services. And to binge about 10 to 15 more movies on my £1 Mubi month so I can cancel before it’s full price…

I’ll finish with a song from Air as it had a fantastic soundtrack of existing songs. Lots of Tangerine Dream & of course ’80s pop hits, so I loved it. Hard to choose which one to post as there were so many good ones used in the film. I’ll select the one they used from The Alan Parsons Project, Sirius, to make my buddy Film Miasma happy:

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978), Possession (1981) & Kickboxer (1989) Reviews

Almost done reviewing everything I watched in July. Here are three I enjoyed. I’ll try to review the final ones sometime next week, which were four Bruce Lee movies I binged while they were on services.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)

Directed by Philip Kaufman

Based on The Body Snatchers 1955 novel by Jack Finney

Starring: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright

Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia)
The plot involves a San Francisco health inspector and his colleague who over the course of a few days discover that humans are being replaced by alien duplicates; each is a perfect biological clone of the person replaced, but devoid of empathy and humanity.

My Opinion:

This was pretty great. It’s very much my type of story so I had watched the 1956 film years ago as a young sci-fi, Twilight Zone loving kid. Slightly prefer this 1978 version just because ‘70s & ‘80s films will always be my favorite but both are sci-fi classics with a brilliant underlying social commentary that can be applied to any modern time period. Think we’re due for another adaptation as the story is probably even more relevant to today’s emotionless, social media obsessed society. Could be fantastic with the right director (certainly better than the 2007 version I can’t even remember now or the 1993 one I didn’t even know existed). Clearly a timeless story ripe for an adaptation for each new generation.

My Rating: 8/10

Possession (1981)

Directed by Andrzej Żuławski

Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Heinz Bennent

Plot Synopsis: (via Wikipedia)
The plot obliquely follows the relationship between an international spy (Sam Neill) and his wife (Isabelle Adjani), who begins exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking for a divorce.

My Opinion:

Well this was a doozy. Wanted to see this for years as it’s a highly rated horror from my favorite era of the ‘70s & ‘80s. Man, I hated this at first. A married couple just SCREAMING at each other? Wow. Fun. But then it went absolutely fucking bonkers with body horror & gore & disgusting tentacled sex and I was like “That’s more like it!”. 

Can’t say this is gonna be a new favorite of mine, though. I’d never want to suffer through watching these two freaking the fuck out at each other for the first half of this movie ever again. But, being a fan of David Cronenberg & that type of body horror, I appreciated the crazy second half of this. I’d never actually read too much about this movie or seen many images so was quite surprised at how extreme this thing goes. I was expecting a more “artistic” horror based on the cool posters I’ve seen. Which it sort of is, but I don’t think the movie is quite as deep as it thinks it is. I do like that there can be different interpretations of the story (besides the obvious “break-ups suck”). There’s certainly some symbolism going on in this and, yes, I love that kind of shit & like spending time reading up on these kind of movies when I finish watching them. But, seriously, they really just wanted to make a movie with a pretty lady & some tentacle sex. 

Well, it’s a movie I’ll always appreciate seeing as it sure as shit is memorable & I’ll always choose memorable over boring. And I’ll probably rate it fairly highly & I can see it moving up slightly in my rankings of all the movies I’ve seen this year. But, man, watching the start of this thing was pure torture.

My Rating: 7.5/10

Kickboxer (1989)

Directed by David Worth

Starring: Jean-Claude van Damme, Dennis Alexio, Dennis Chan, Michel Qissi

Plot Synopsis: (via IMDb)
Kurt Sloane must learn the ancient kick boxing art of Muay Thai in order to avenge his brother.

My Opinion:

I’m loving watching these old JCVD movies that I completely ignored at the time. Amazing how many are the same damn story, too, just with inventive new ways to get him doing those sexy splits. This one is just Bloodsport again (although that one remains my favorite). This also has the stupidest yet sexiest dance scene I’ve ever seen in my life. Was wondering which film that was in! My life is now complete.

My Rating: 6.5/10

Check out this dance! So dumb. So sexy…