Over at Alex on Film I’ve added my notes on Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, both the 1934 and 1956 versions. Critics have fun debating the relative merits of these two films. Personally, I don’t see any comparison. The original holds up well. The remake is a bad movie by any set of standards I can think of.

Hollywood is on a real remake binge. I think mainly because they’re out of original ideas, but also because big budgets demand projects with immediate brand recognition and because there’s a general sense out there that CGI makes everything better. Hence the remake of Total Recall (1990) in 2012 with Colin Farrell (notes just posted on Alex on Film). They shouldn’t have bothered, but I guess there was money in it. What really surprised me was finding out that the remake was partially filmed in my hometown of Guelph, Ontario. I didn’t even recognize it! Which made me wonder why they even went there . . .

They’ll figure it out.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve just completed the second round of my notes on zombie cinema, taking the genre from 1990 to the present day (with the ’90s being a rather thin decade, just before the twenty-first century take off). Purists can complain all they want about what constitutes a proper zombie film, but I allow for any virus with zombie-like symptoms, and so include films like 28 Days Later and The Crazies. I also include my notes on The Purge, because even though that isn’t a zombie or zombie-virus movie it shares the same structure.

For the most part, these movies aren’t very good. Indeed, going over the list I can only see a handful of films that I would recommend seeing: Rec, Pontypool, The Horde, and Shaun of the Dead. None of these are American productions. I’m not sure if that means anything.

I suggest that 2007 may have been the year of “peak zombie,” as what we’re getting now tend to be domesticated, overblown, or parodic zombie films. The genre feels played out to me, but will likely keep going for a while based on how well it seems to suit the zeitgeist. You can see Part One of the Zombie Chronicles here.

Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Return of the Living Dead III (1993)
28 Days Later (2002)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Land of the Dead (2005)
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)
Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005)
Fido (2006)
Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006)
Diary of the Dead (2007)
I Am Legend (2007)
Rec (2007)
28 Weeks Later (2007)
I Sell the Dead (2008)
Quarantine (2008)
The Horde (2009)
Pontypool (2009)
Rec 2 (2009)
Survival of the Dead (2009)
Zombieland (2009)
The Crazies (2010)
Exit Humanity (2011)
Juan of the Dead (2011)
Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)
Rec 3 (2012)
The Purge (2013)
Warm Bodies (2013)
World War Z (2013)
Zombies (2014)
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)
Dawn of the Deaf (2016)
The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
The Night Eats the World (2018)
The Dead Don’t Die (2019)
Little Monsters (2019)
Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
28 Years Later (2025)

And things are just getting started!

Added my notes on Night of the Living Dead (1990) over at Alex on Film. This kicks off The Zombie Chronicles: Part Two (see Part One here), taking in zombie movies from 1990 to the present. It’s also a very good movie in its own right.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve just finished watching The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011). The first two are both classics. The third was a bad idea, but inevitable. There’s something depressing about an inevitable bad idea, isn’t there?

Don’t worry. They’re still out there.

Over at Alex on Film I’ve just completed the first round of a survey of zombie movies, from the beginnings up through the 1980s. And by “zombie movies” I mean movies that don’t necessarily involve the living dead but which in some ways fit what has become, at least since Romero, a certain mythic structure. Here’s the list of reviews (and if you’re interested in related book reviews, see my notes on Glenn Kay’s Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide and Corey Redekop’s Husk). You can see Part Two of the Zombie Chronicles here.

White Zombie (1932)
Revolt of the Zombies (1936)
King of the Zombies (1941)
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
The Body Snatcher (1945)
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)
Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)
The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974)
Rabid (1976)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Zombie (1979)
City of the Living Dead (1980)
Day of the Dead (1985)
The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

Added my notes on Un Chien Andalou (1928) and L’Age d’Or (1930) over at Alex on Film. It’s hard not to envy Buñuel a bit. It was easier to shock the bourgeoisie back in the day. I mean, back in the day when we still had a mass bourgeoisie. Of course you can still be a radical, but the propertied classes are both more powerful and angrier than they were. Taking them on isn’t as much fun, or as safe.

Added my notes on The Birth of a Nation (1915) over at Alex on Film. This is a movie that is justifiably both praised and vilified. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. It was the first cinematic blockbuster, and that’s an artistic form that doesn’t encourage sensitivity of thought or feeling.

How is it possible that I watched La Dolce Vita (1960) this morning, for the first time in at least ten years, and when I went online just an hour later I saw that Anita Ekberg had died? These things only happen in movies.

Is that clip art? In 1961?

Added my notes on Reptilicus (1961) over at Alex on Film. This is one of those very, very bad movies that is actually kind of fun. Plus it’s a Danish monster movie. How many of those have there been?