It Follows – GringoPotpourri

I love movies from all decades, and the fact that a movie was filmed in black-and-white is not enough to prevent me from seeing it. Those old Universal monster movies, starring Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, and others, are especially re-watchable. Favorites include “Bride of Frankenstein” and “The Mummy,” the latter of which is leagues better than this past summer’s Tom Cruise misfire of the same name. It wasn’t long ago that TCM aired the original “The Invisible Man,” starring Claude Rains as the title character. The special effects during the moments when Rains removes the bandages over his now-transparent face are phenomenal, and I can only imagine how horrifying that must have been to see on the big screen in 1933.

Of course, “The Invisible Man” is tame by today’s standards. Few horror films made before 1970 hold up today as viable scary movies, which makes it interesting that, when I published my first top ten list on this subject four years ago, I declared Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” released in 1960, to be the genre’s all-time best. I did make sure to include a couple of old movies in my latest top ten list, although the oldest one, 1973’s “The Wicker Man,” is still four decades newer than “The Invisible Man.” On a more contemporary note, one of the entries, “Get Out,” was released just seven months ago!

Enough explaining! Below is my latest list – the fourth in a series – of great horror movies, ten at a time:

Continue reading “Still Another Ten Great Horror Movies (#31-40)”

Although there are good movies every year, it seems that we have a banner year for cinema roughly once every two or three years. 2014 was one of those years, with “Birdman,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” “Whiplash,” and “The Imitation Game” being just a few of the year’s stellar releases. 2012 was another; “Lincoln,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Amour,” “Skyfall,” “Django Unchained,” “The Avengers, “Wreck-It Ralph” and one of my personal all-time favorites, “Cloud Atlas,” were among that year’s better releases.

2015 cinema, as a whole, wasn’t nearly as memorable. We had another Bond movie, another Tarantino film, and the first true sequel to “The Avengers”…yet none of these films were quite on par with their predecessors. Sure, a small film called “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens” continues to slay box office records like Kylo Ren’s lightsaber as it plunges through _____’s stomach, but I wasn’t as taken by its unoriginal story as some fans were.

Still, I’ve been on a major movie-watching kick of late. I have finally seen most of the 2015 releases that interest me, and I’m fairly certain that I’ve caught up on the majority of Oscar contenders. (I will find out for certain once the nominees are announced next week.) There certainly are enough good films to compile a top ten list, something I am wont to do. Here goes…without spoilers!

GringoPotpourri’s Top Ten Films of 2015:

Continue reading “Top Ten Films of 2015”