Viewings: October 2022

During the very twilight of the noughties, me and a fellow movie geek got into an epic nerd debate over our fave sci-fi film of 2009; he was all for that rancid Star Trek reboot, while your humble host was championing District 9. Thirteen years later and it turns out there was a far better contender out there. Pandorum is a neglected gem which I foolishly glossed over simply for its made-for-SYFY vibe and Dennis Quaid being in it. Well, it turned out to be a fantastic blend of mystery and sci-fi horror.

Another great film I appreciated this month was Brian and Charles. The latest example of Brits successfully pulling off awkward, offbeat and endearing comedies better than Wes Anderson's aloof efforts ever could.

Other fresh first viewings were: The Boys Next Door, Deadstream, Doppelgänger, Pearl, Some Like It Rare, Terrifier 2 and Vesper.

Also dug that Emmerdale 50th Birthday promo trailer. Had no time for any of the episodes, though.

 

Film:

Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

Doppelgänger AKA Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (Robert Parrish, 1969)*

Colossus: The Forbin Project (Joseph Sargent, 1970)

Horror Express (Eugenio Martin, 1972)

The Mutations (Jack Cardiff, 1974)*

House of Mortal Sin (Pete Walker, 1976)

Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)*

The Boys Next Door (Penelope Spheeris, 1985)*

Krush Groove (Michael Schultz, 1985)

Ghostwatch (Lesley Manning, 1992)

Ghosts of Mars (John Carpenter, 2001)

Dog Soldiers (Neil Marshall, 2002)

The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004)

Pandorum (Christian Alvart, 2009)*

Victor Crowley AKA Hatchet 4 (Adam Green, 2017)*

Brian and Charles (Jim Archer, 2022)*

Bullet Train (David Leitch, 2022)*

Dark Glasses (Dario Argento, 2022)*

Deadstream (Joseph Winter & Vanessa Winter, 2022)*

Don’t Worry Darling (Olivia Wilde, 2022)*

Halloween Ends (David Gordon Green, 2022)*

Hellraiser (David Bruckner, 2022)*

Mutant Ghost War Girl (Liu Beige, 2022)*

Pearl (Ti West, 2022)*

Piggy (Carlota Pereda, 2022)*

Some Like It Rare (Fabrice Eboué, 2022)*

Terrifier 2 (Damien Leone, 2022)*

Two Witches (Pierre Tsigaridis, 2022)*

Vesper (Kristina Buozyte & Bruno Samper, 2022)*

V/H/S/99 (Flying Lotus, Maggie Levin, Tyler MacIntyre, Johannes Roberts, Joseph Winter & Vanessa Winter, 2022)*

Television:

Mastermind - Episodes 1-7 (Bill Wright, 2022 / 2023)*

Doctor Who - The Power of the Doctor (Chris Chibnall & Jamie Magnus Stone, 2022)*

 

*First time viewings.

 

Dada Debaser Notes:

• Why is Blair Underwood playing Russell Simmons in Krush Groove while Russell Simmons is playing someone else in it?
• Gerry & Sylvia Anderson's production of Doppelgänger is both surprisingly mature and dark considering it's essentially a film geared towards a young audience. Definitely feel sci-fi has regressed a lot since then.
  
• Once scene from Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue appears like a dress rehearsal for that scene from Blue Velvet (1986).
  
• Adam Green's career went completely nowhere after all these years.
  
• There's an entertaining yet very skewered retrospective on Y.A Dystopia by the BFI. Possibly the effect of recency bias, but Vesper might be one of the better entries in this dead genre.
  
• One to mull over: there are now more awful Halloween films starring Jamie Lee Curtis than awful Halloween films without her.
• Letterboxd will always be a trash playground for film hipsters. Reading pseudo-intellectual babble over what's at best, a mediocre film by Argento, is comically pretentious.
  
• Can't believe Collider shared similar sentiments with me over the recent Hellraiser film.
  
• Quietly predicting Piggy being this year's Titane by all the poncey critics.
  
• John Carpenter had a particularly fashioned antihero in mind back when he made films.