Hot, hot, hot, hot, HOT mess. Not even going to address the grossly offensive last 80% of the movie. I will say I enjoyed the bits with Angie Dickinson and thought the whole museum scene was pretty great. De Palma clearly doesn’t give a fuck he’s lifted the entire movie from Hitchcock, and there’s something… Read More Dressed to Kill (1980)

I can understand the love for Peter Sellers here–he really sells the hell out of this, and my reaction to his performance evolved throughout the movie: from “huh, funny” to “what is happening” to “ok, let’s move on and do something” to “oh, maybe this is actually amazing.” In other words, it’s a one-joke movie… Read More Being There (1979)

There’s such a core of a good movie in here, but the bloat is intense. Granted, I think I inadvertently watched the director’s cut version–but it was at LEAST an hour too long. Tighten this up to 90 minutes and you’ve got something: the movie really plays with so much interesting stuff once the group… Read More Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Didn’t work as a romance for me, primarily due to Dreyfuss’ profoundly irritating performance–there’s a manic intensity there that could have maybe worked with a softer actor, but when the shift happens midway through the movie it just didn’t play for me. Gave me the creeps, honestly. It DID work for me during the first… Read More The Goodbye Girl (1977)

I like Ben Gazzara a lot, and loved him in this movie. He has a minor conversation at the beginning with a cab driver about growing up in New York and I thought it was so endearing. But this movie didn’t really come together for me–a little meandering, unfocused, and uninteresting. To me it felt… Read More The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

Oh, what a strange, interesting movie. Reminded me of The Virgin Suicides (what’s the word for “being reminded of something that came later and was clearly influenced by the earlier work?) in its dreamy evocation of adolescent female sexuality. Want to revisit again in the future.

Really didn’t do it for me. No emotion coming through, unpleasant throughout. Then I learned afterward Fassbinder was a terrible person, so this was a regretful watch.

Really delightfully bonkers. I would hesitate to call this truly “good,” even by horror movie standards (not to be a dick about it)–but there was certainly a quality to it that I really appreciated. Lots of fun, small details that create an atmosphere of mounting dread and was overall really engaging.