You know what he’s going to do, right? Tear your soul apart!

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching the Hellraiser movies, minus the last couple. You can say I wanted to cut my losses.

It’s disappointing how the series never went anywhere. I loved the first Hellraiser, and was actually at the world premiere of the second. But later entries were just cash grabs for the limited cash to be grabbed from direct-to-video release, often injecting Pinhead into scripts pulled off the shelf that had no connection to the Hellraiser mythos. Here’s the line-up:

Hellraiser (1987)
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)
Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

Over at Alex on Film I’ve posted my thoughts on Glass, which completes the M. Night Shyamalan comic-book trilogy begun with Unbreakable and Split. These movies make a welcome antidote to the usual run of Marvel movies, but I don’t think Shyamalan had enough to say to cover three films. Glass in particular seems to just be putting in time, before coming to no very great conclusion.

Back at ya, Chuck.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching some of the Death Wish movies. It’s almost a complete list. I guess the first film is of some historical/sociological interest, and if you’re interested in the whole rape–revenge genre they might even be considered essential viewing, but I didn’t find much of value in any of them.

Death Wish (1974)
Death Wish II (1982)
Death Wish 3 (1985)
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987)
Death Wish (2018)

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching the films of Yorgos Lanthimos. Even though they don’t share many similarities, I was reminded of Denis Villeneuve in at least one respect. Both directors have, in my estimation, made one really good film (Villeneuve’s Enemy and Lanthimos’s The Lobster). Their other films fall more into the “interesting” category. Anyway, here’s the Lanthimos line-up:

Dogtooth (2009)
Alps (2011)
The Lobster (2015)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
The Favourite (2018)

A particularly well-preserved mummy.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve been watching a bunch of mummy movies. It was not time well spent, as mummies make dull movie monsters and few of these movies are any good. The 1999 Brendan Fraser vehicle is still a bit of fun though, and Don Coscarelli’s Bubba Ho-Tep is worth checking out. Aside from that there’s the classic 1932 film that started it all and the 1959 Hammer version. They’re OK. The rest you can pass on.

The Mummy (1932)
The Mummy’s Hand (1942)
The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)
The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
Pharaoh’s Curse (1957)
Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957)
The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy (1958)
The Mummy (1959)
Orgy of the Dead (1965)
Death Curse of Tartu (1966)
The Mummy’s Shroud (1967)
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)
Dawn of the Mummy (1981)
Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy (1998)
The Mummy (1999)
The Mummy Returns (2001)
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)
The Mummy (2017)

The stuff that dreams are made of.

Over at Alex on Film I just finished watching three versions of Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon: The Maltese Falcon (1931), Satan Met a Lady (1936), and The Maltese Falcon (1941). The last is the classic directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. It’s one of my favourite movies of all time.