Halloween in March, Kershner Exploration

I don't work, so I have a lot of dead time to fill and I like to set up little watch projects to work through over the course of the year to feel a little accomplished when I waste time with a film or show. The first couple months of this year were absolutely crazy, I was out of my apartment nearly as much as I was in it, so I didn't get much movie watching done let alone plan out projects. But I think I have some that are finalizing and that I will utilize this simple little blog to document.

Last year my two biggest projects were rewatching the entirety of the two classic slasher franchises, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. This year, I'm gonna do another classic slasher franchise with Halloween, watching all the Michael Myers films (sorry Halloween 3, though I do love you) through Resurrection in the early 00s. If I get through this quick, I might then add the Rob Zombie Duo and DGG trilogy. I will write my feelings on each of these films here as I watch them. I want to get a LITTLE bit more modern this year, away from all the 80s, so since I happen to own 7 of them on a used DVD collection I picked up for next to nothing, I thought I might do the Saw franchise cause I think I've only ever really seen the first three or so though I'm generally familiar with the plots of others (thanks Wikipedia).

A special project I got cooked out was motivated purely by curiosity. Irvin Kershner directed one of the consensus greatest films of all time in The Empire Strikes Back, and delivered entries in the RoboCop and Bond (unofficial) canons, but not a lot of people talk about the many films he directed in a long journeyman Hollywood career. So I want to, entirely for the first time, check out some of his non-franchise directing work and see what gems there are to be found!

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The Cabin in the Woods (2012) - Funny, Fun, and a Little Bit Insufferable

The late 00s and early 10s were a pretty good time to be somebody who loved cult horror films with a sense of humor. You had the likes of Trick r Treat, Drag Me to Hell, and my favorite at the time which was The Cabin in the Woods. Whether it was on pay cable or early streaming, the film became a regular fixture in the years I mostly just spent my time frequently re-watching the same movies and drinking far too much beer. Because of that, I’ve gone some years without watching it very frequently cause I got kind of burnt out on it in my 20s but I had this former Blockbuster rental Bluray copy that cost less than 2 bucks so I figured why not see how well the film holds up? The thing that hasn’t held up so well is how smugly in love with its own dialog and cleverness the film is in a way that immediately signals that Joss Whedon was a writer on it. There’s a certain too cute quality to a lot of Whedon’s projects that have made me not like them as much as other people do, sorry to ...

The Green Mile (1999) - Syrupy Collection of Great Character Actors

The Green Mile was a film that was in a regular rotation for my mom and stepdad when I was growing up, so I saw it many times in the late 90s and early 00s. My love of Stephen King mostly comes from my dad, who owned the first King book I ever read myself in late elementary school (Skeleton Crew) and numerous others I looked at on his shelf all the time and showed me miniseries like IT and The Stand. However, my mom contributed a little bit too with the likes of Creepshow and some of his other 80s adaptations and of course The Green Mile. So I figured why not revisit it since I own it? My biggest problem with The Green Mile is one I share with its spiritual sibling in The Shawshank Redemption which is that it is just very sentimental and sometimes even downright corny. Movies seemingly designed to make middle aged dads get in touch with their emotions by layering that syrup on thick. There’s a place for that and I understand why people really enjoy it, but it just simply isn’t ...

Titanic (1997) - A Tale of Two Movies, One Painful and One Great

The first time I saw Titanic I was just a little kid, and I bawled my eyes out and then once I dried up I begged to see it again so we sat through that extremely long movie twice in two days. Our VHS copy was well worn by the time we upgraded to DVD, we watched it regularly as a family in the late 90s and early 00s. It is probably a quite vital piece of media when it comes to my love and respect and awe of grandiose filmmaking even though these days I maybe only watch it every 5 years or so. So since my parents got Paramount+ through their cable and it was the only film on there that spoke to me when I was first glancing through their library, I figured why not see how it holds up? Honestly, every time I do revisit the film I spend like the first two hours being painfully reminded why it is so rare that I do. I grew up with a mom and older sister, a very female oriented household, so trust me when I say I’ve heard my fair share of really painfully written and delivered romantic ...

Blue Ridge Ben

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