Just a note to let you know that I’m back updating at Alex on Film, for how long and how often I’m not sure. I just don’t watch as many movies as I used to. And you do get to a point where you start repeating yourself, a rut which is made easier to fall into by how repetitive and formulaic the movies are. But I’ll keep posting notes for a little while longer anyway.

I also noticed that my traffic to Alex on Film is now experiencing another surge, akin to what I got from the Chinese bots a year or so ago. I think I had over 6,000 visits yesterday alone, which is quite high. I don’t really care because none of it is real, but it does have the unfortunate effect of making the traffic reports that WordPress gives me meaningless. I don’t think there’s any way of stopping it though, even if I cared enough to try.

With more on the way.

Over at Alex on Film I just posted my notes on Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in a franchise that has made loads of money without ever being good. I know some people have a soft spot in their hearts for the first movie, but even at the time I found it overrated and on my most recent re-watch I wasn’t any more impressed. As for the rest of the line-up, I never thought the series went downhill but only stayed on the same level. And as I say in my most recent set of notes, they’re all bad in the same way. Here’s the list.

Jurassic Park (1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Jurassic World III (2001)
Jurassic World (2015)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

Bill Skarsgård. Not going anywhere for a while?

Over at Alex on Film I just wrapped up my notes on a trio of movies about rich psychos who trap car thieves in specially designed automobiles: Captured (1998), 4×4 (2019), and Locked (2025). Watching them, I couldn’t help but think of what Hitchcock would have made out of such a set-up. He liked challenges like pretending a movie was shot all in one take, or setting a whole film on a lifeboat. Alas, none of the directors involved in these films made much out of the idea, either in terms of generating suspense or having a political message, even though each makes gestures in that direction.

Over at Alex on Film you can read my annual awards for the movies of the year. Not much to choose from this year as November-December were really rough and I didn’t watch many movies. Oh well.

This is an index of some of the vampire movies I’ve reviewed over at Alex on Film. I’ll keep adding to it as I go along.

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)
Dracula (1931)
Vampyr (1932)
Mark of the Vampire (1935)
Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
Son of Dracula (1943)
House of Dracula (1945)
Horror of Dracula (1958)
The Brides of Dracula (1960)
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
Orgy of the Dead (1965)
Planet of the Vampires (1965)
Daughters of Darkness (1971)
Requiem for a Vampire (1971)
Dracula’s Dog (1977)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
The Hunger (1983)
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
From Dusk till Dawn (1996)
John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998)
Underworld (2003)
Underworld: Evolution (2006)
30 Days of Night (2007)
Let the Right One In (2008)
Let Me In (2010)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
Afflicted (2013)
Morbius (2022)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
Renfield (2023)
Nosferatu (2024)
Sinners (2025)

Over at Alex on Film I’ve posted my picks for the best (and worst) movies of 2024. Since I only watched one 2024 movie that I thought was really good things were kind of predetermined.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve added my notes on Maxxxine, which (likely) brings to a conclusion Ti West’s X trilogy. I liked the first film, X, and really liked the second, Pearl, but Maxxxine struck me as a weak way to wrap things up. Still better than most of the new movies I see, but a disappointment all the same.