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Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 16 of 35
--> Watch a movie directed by, written by, and led by a woman

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Lemonade Mouth is a Disney Channel movie that wound up on my Watchlist because I kept hearing about it in ing references. Granted, those references were from much younger people and in the same lost-at-sea way some of the earlier Disney Channel movies were to me. I knew I'd be about a zillion years past the sell-by date for the movie, but I decided to give it a shot. I mean, what even is a Lemonade Mouth... and why? The world must know.

In case you also weren't a hyper kinetic 12 year old in 2011, it's about a bunch of teens in detention who form a band named Lemonade Mouth. They hit it big, but not without teenage romance, drama, and trouble with the parental units.

Yeah, the film has the usual overlit, hyper-colorful, toothless, fangless feel of most Disney Channel originals... but I enjoyed it anyway. Yes, it's ideas of teenage rebellion have no claws and nobody goes on a cocaine bender or blows up corporate art to demonstrate their alleged anarchist tendencies. About as fight-the-system it gets is speaking truth to power if power is the principal who places sportsball above the arts. And, hey, I like that message... as tame as it is.

Also dig some of the pop/rock songs for what they are. I can see how they earwormed their way into young brains back in the day and became a thing they talk about when they talk about Lemonade Mouth.

Also appreciated the cheesy, schmaltz at the end of the big Battle of the Bands type thing. It didn't go as expected and, as corny as it was, it made me smile. Because I'm a chump, I guess.

So, yeah, I can't say I was impressed by the movie, but I didn't cover my eyes in shame. Sometimes randomly adding movies outside your demo can work out. Mostly.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 15 of 35
-->Watch a cult classic/movie that just seems bonkers

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Not as bonkers as I thought... and a lot more thoughtful and philosophical. It's a pretty short runtime that doesn't quite justify the length... but it is interesting and introspective.

It's about a disembodied hand trying to make its way across Paris to its body. In flashbacks (can a hand flashback?) it re its full self as a a boy and later young man as he lives his life and tries to romance a girl.

This is an odd film for sure... you gotta take it on its disembodied merits and just go with it. I don't think its odd hand on an adventure story really matters and feels more like an excuse to get people to watch it. The real story are the flashbacks and I guess they didn't think that was enough of a hook. Maybe they had a point.

It's a good movie as a story about a life and its a curious story about a wandering hand. I had enough of a good time with its thoughtful reflection and ultimate message.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 14 of 35
--> Watch the movie with the most beautiful poster

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Wow. Hot Take McGee on the prowl. Given its hugely positive ratings, I probably shouldn't even write a review for this flick. I totally bounced off of it... couldn't get into any of it. The art, animation, story, or screenplay. It's like I watched the Kirkland Brand version of the movie.

I shouldn't be too surprised. I bounced off quickly to the team's Secret of Kells a few years ago. But when I watched and loved Wolfriders recently, I figured maybe I'd gotten over my sourpuss diagnosis and would love this one too.

But, yeah, a fail on a big scale... and I still plan to finish Secret of Kells too. Argh.

Not sure what it was about the movie... I have no problem with stories of selkies and Irish folklore. I just didn't connect with these characters in this story.

Oh well.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 13 of 35
--> Watch the movie that is rated highest

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Paper Moon is a lovely piece of blunt force impact from li'l Tatum O'Neal. I can see why the Oscar went to a ten year old that year. That said, the actual impact of her tough girl act might have been lessened by all the little girls wise and tough beyond their years that have been written and performed in her shadow ever since. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed this film but I bet the performance had a HUGE impact (and shocked pearl-clutching) in 1973.

Casting such a button of a little girl as a cigarette smokin' doll who knows what she wants (mostly 200 bucks) and has no moral qualms about scamming the chumps was great. A road film about father/daughter con artists was so charming and enjoyable.

And the idea that both Papa O'Neal and his daughter Tatum played together in the same film was a masterstroke in casting. Even if he wasn't <wink wink> her actual film dad. I bet unrelated actors could have pulled it off too, but the idea these two already knew how to be father/daughter was terrific and sweet.

Part of me wishes there'd been an overarching story instead of a series of chapters. Sure, there's the overall story of them getting to know each other but a less serialized set of incidents might have been better. Not that I'm not giving it 4.5 stars or anything. It's still a terrific film.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Watched early as a Monday Mystery Movie Type Dealio.

Bring Her Back is the new movie from the apparent goofballs who made Talk to Me. Their pre-movie intro does not, in fact, represent the grimness of their productions. They also merrily spoiled aspects of the film while heaping praise on their cast. And maybe that spoilage might be needed for this rather unconventional flick that doesn't go out of the way to explain itself.

It's about a brother and sister who lose their pa and get put into the foster care system. The younger sister is mostly blind and the elder brother might have a history of violence. Their foster mom (Sally Hawkins) is slightly off kilter and already has an even more off-kilter foster child. Something is clearly up.

I was on the fence at first... undecided if I was going to go with a perfectly ok 3 until the film convinced me it was better than I was thinking. The issue is that something bizarre is going on and the film has no interest in explaining anything. So I was soft on it... until the weirdness and violence and gore coalesced into something unique, unexpected, and unsettling.

This is not the world's happiest fun time horror movie... I came away a little disturbed and fairly unhappy. It's a brutal, mean film that constantly puts its innocent foster kids into some bad situations. It had me genuinely wondering how they were going to survive each scenario, especially as it rammed its way into the third act.

The directors in their intro heaped praise on Hawkins (who deserves it) and toss out kudos to their actually vision impaired lead actress. Plus the rest of the young cast too. Everyone does a good if disturbing job... these kids might need therapy.

And the Philippou brothers prove their writing/directing bona fides by one-upping Talk to Me. Both films have a unique take on some classic horror tropes. I look forward to their twisty Aussie takes on more horror in the future.

I'm not gonna say this is an easy watch or a happy go-lucky horror comedy. Its dark and miserable and unpredictable in a way similar to - but quite different from - Talk To Me. I very much enjoyed it, even if I felt a little antsy about its pace and limited reveals in the first half.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 12 of 35
--> Watch a movie from the 1980s

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While The Year of Living Dangerously wasn't the lost slick 80s flick I thought it was, it's still a pretty good film. At least it succeeded in giving early Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver in the same flick.

It stars Gibson as a reporter in an Indonesia on the edge of political and military meltdown. He works with a local photographer (Linda Hunt) while meeting and falling for Weaver (not a bad job if you can get it).

The film is a little scattershot but when it hits, it hits pretty well. I just wish it moved a little faster and had more of Weaver in it. Linda Hunt is curious as a woman playing a man... I kept waiting for the dramatic reveal that he was a she. But this ain't that movie... I guess they were just going for acting chops and diminutive height, both of which she had.

I wasn't super engaged with a lot of the film and kind of kept watching out of duty. Happily there's enough good scenes peppered throughout that I can happily give it three stars and move on. Maybe Tequila Sunrise will be the 80s tinged Gibson film I thought this was gonna be.

Peter Weir Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 11 of 35
--> Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actors

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Sleepers is one of those movies I've been aware of since its release but I had no particular interest in it. That said, a flick starring Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Brad Pitt exactly matches the "movie that stars one of your favorite actors" Watchlist challenge prompt. Hell, if it were still the '90s, toss in Jason Patric, Brad Renfro, and Bully Crudup too (plus Minnie Driver). Everyone in this flick is great.

In case you don't know, it's half a coming of age story about four teenage tough guys in Hell's Kitchen in the '60s. They wind up going to reform school where the guards take advantage of them (ahem). Years later, they stumble across the worst of the worst guards and revenge is on the table.

I knew the rough outline and was genuinely surprised De Niro as a Catholic Priest wasn't the problem. That perked my interest for not going stereotypical... this was well before he took his career into comedy so my default assumption is he's a bad guy. I was pleasantly surprised.

Instead, we had to contend with Kevin Bacon in ick mode instead. I guess he'd played scumbags before and since then so I wasn't as surprised when he broke bad. Very bad.

So the movie was already surprising me and, when the revenge plot kicked in, it was not at all what I expected. I didn't see a twisty courtroom drama... i was expecting an elaborate murder plot. Turns out the murder was the easy part.

So I enjoyed the twists and turns and was a little surprised by the dirty ethics in the long run. Yes, violent lives lead to violent deaths but I was surprised at how casually amoral the film was about its characters in the long run.

So, yeah, years and years and years later, I'm glad I caught up with the movie. I was never opposed to it. It was just a flick that fell through the cracks. I guess you could say... I slept on it. Ba-DUM!

Barry Levinson Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 10 of 35
--> Watch the movie that was released the earliest

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The Lost World gets all the kudos for first timing a lot of stop motion dinosaurs, but it's a case confirming that modern FX films were not the first out of the gate as pure spectacle. There's so little to this movie beyond the visual FX that I was left pretty bored.

Though I'll also it to preferring these stop motion critters to the lizards with fins glued to them in the 1960s remake. These dinos really are neat and must have been gobsmacking one hundred years ago.

But there's so little actual meat on this film that I started to miss the cheesy 60s version with its cheesy technicolor 60s vibes.

I was surprised by the ending and how much Spielberg borrowed for his Lost World: Jurassic Park (which isn't based on this film or its original novel). I was much less impressed by the shrug of how it concluded its London adventure though. Did it even really have a conclusion?

Oh well... it's nice to get it off my plate.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 9 of 35
--> Watch a movie from the 2010s

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I'm genuinely surprised and disappointed in myself that this lovely, meditative flick kinda fell apart in the end. It had me in the first act but the longer it went, the less I thought it had to offer.

It's about a guy stranded on a deserted island. He has a contentious run in with an oversized red sea turtle as he tries to escape. They wind up having a curious friendship... the two of them and the best crabs in the whole damn world. I think it should have been restructured as the The Curious Crabs.

This is a silent film co-produced by Studio Ghibli but its not a Japanese anime. Ghibli and Miyazaki helped get this Dutch/French coproduction going which is a heartwarming story itself.

And the film has a thoughtful progression as it quietly follows this castaway through his early days on the island. There are moment of magical realism and flights of fantasy that are lovely... though there are some creepy implications as the story progresses. But maybe that's on me for looking at it too logically... still, what happens with the turtle is concerning if you put too much thought into it.

The final act didn't work for me. I see where it was going with its thoughts on aging, but I'd started to check out twenty minutes earlier. The film is a little too long for its limited story so when it got profound, I could just acknowledge it conceptually but not emotionally.

It's probably all a me thing though since most people love it. Fair enough. I thought it was just fine. It could use some trimming and I think it'd have earned a better rating from me. Oh well.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

This is going to be one confused ass confusing review... but looking at the ratings chart of this film on Letterboxd, that sounds about right. And it's not just because I don't know what to make of this movie, it's more I don't know what to make of my emotional response to it.

The flick follows The Weeknd (playing himself) as he... I dunno... has an emotional and mental collapse? Or something? And Jenna Ortega (not playing herself.... hopefully) as she loses her own damn mind. And when the two mental disintegrations meet, things get dark and they get transcendent. Or something.

To be open and honest about it, I'm of an age where parts of pop culture have become obscured. Specifically, music... I've lost track of what's popular and why, maybe sublimating those experiences with movies and books. I only take comfort in this because it's not uncommon as you age to let certain things go. I say this because I have to it to knowing very little about The Weeknd other than the instrumental of Blinding Light. So watching a movie about The Weeknd leaves me at a disadvantage. His fans will probably get a lot more out of it than me. And yet... I kind of adore this movie anyway.

A lot of this film is just pure vibes. It's not a film about logic or story - though it has some of those - it's more about whatever in surreal hell is going on in The Weeknd's mind to deliver a post-logic film. It's more about internal mental landscapes, emotions, sensation, and feelings.

And it's probably The Weeknd talking to himself about his musical output (hell, the film has a scenes that analyze his songs and their deeper meanings as it relates to his relationships). In that Jenna Ortega is here to torment him might just be a concession to the movie needing a plot... or maybe it's everything to do with his vibe and mental state.

There's a moment where he sings at the end of the film that both had me thinking his head was up his own ass and how transcendentally beautiful the moment was. How a sublime moment of pure vocal purity can change minds and change matter. It was beautiful. And yet was he patting himself on the back or was he letting the glow flow through him?

My feelings on the movie started at a simple 3 because, while I didn't get where the movie was going, I appreciated the sensory vibes. I was moved and confused. But when the final act's singing hit, I had to adjust the score up to a 3.5 for how it felt. But the real humdinger came when the credits rolled and I walked out of the theater. I felt something... odd. Weird. Transcendent. Thoughtful. A feeling I hadn't felt since Nicholas Cage's thought-filled movie Pig. That I'd experienced something uniquely powerful.

So I'm giving it four stars even though I'm not convinced it earns it. Part of me says this post-logic film deserves a lower score. And certainly how I've been rating surreal art house pics lately, I shouldn't even rate it that high. But I'm rating it higher... even though I couldn't defend the score logically or rationally. I can't argue the surreal mood I was in just out of the pic.

This is a special movie... though the kind of special might depend on dozens of factors in each of our unique brains. I wouldn't argue or even frown at lower ratings. But to me... I can't fight this feeling. I was moved and entranced and confused and sometimes a little antsy and frustrated. But I felt every one of those feelings.

I should probably listen to the Weeknd a bit more maybe?

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 8 of 35
--> Watch a movie from the 1960s

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I had pretty bleak expectations going into this 1968 Best Picture winner. I didn't know any of the songs and it's not exactly like I'm an Oliver Twist superfan. I was expecting a technicolor nightmare with 60's showtunes that would feel toothless while pretending to be tough. I was mostly right... but it got better as it got less musical.

So Oliver(!) is a musical recreation of Dickens' Oliver Twist... an all singing, all dancing bore full of excruciatingly unmemorable songs. Oliver wants more gruel, becomes a criminal, finds his true home, etc. Please, sir, I want less?

I'm sure these songs are the heart's true love for a lot of musical theater people but they just made my eyes roll. Every time someone burst into song, I'd settle in for excruciating boredom. I don't hate musicals - honest - but this was the kind of musical that makes people who kinda like them kinda hate them instead. Reasonable minds can disagree.

Only Fagen's villain songs perked me up. Probably because it was the only time the film felt honest. I can believe this guy is a scumbag who makes children pick pocket for him. All the rest do not feel like songs about the desperate struggling to survive the mean streets of 19th Century London. Like the set design and color, it feels artificial.

But at a little past the half-way point, most of the songs dry up and we largely get the story (or what I can of it). As a story about the criminal underworld in a pop saturated world, at least it's not boring.

So for half-saving itself from being a dreary musical, I'm not gonna bury it too deeply. But you tell me its Best Picture for 1968 and I'm sure a lot of people are still grumbling about what should have won that year.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Imagine my surprise sitting in the theater realizing this might just be my favorite film in this kinda same-y franchise. I guess taking fourteen years off and coming back with bigger and better splatter gives you ideas of how to twist the formula just enough.

So Final Destination: Bloodlines sets out to be the uber connective tissue of this whole franchise. Its opening carnage fest takes place in a Space Needle-like tower restaurant and probably unlocks a whole bunch of new fears in the audience. But this sequence turns out to be a vaguely defined dream of a modern college girl with a family that exists because Death didn't get her pregnant grandma back in the day.

As far as I can recall from my hazy memory of the later films, this is probably the first time all of death's victims are family. Not sure if that really adds much new to the formula as far as how or why folks die, but it did change the dynamic between characters. And at first I thought they'd made a huge mistake introducing so many characters in the middle of the flick, but it worked out as they managed to give them unique personalities. It was enough to make me care about them.

And the kills? Inventive and clever as ever... though now with ten+ years of new explodey blood bag CGI and the willingness to pump up the guts. A lot of "Eww! That was cool!" moments that outdo a lot of the earlier films. My favorite kill being a garbage truck that showed off what might really happen in a way I don't think I've seen in such gory detail before.

Tony Todd shows up for his final performance and it was bittersweet. I gather everyone making the film knew how sick he was and they gave him an apt and honorable farewell. Plus a final thank you credit.

The Final Destination franchise has never been my favorite horror series but most of the film are good enough. This one managed to eke past the original with great gory kills and a good cast of characters. It's good!

Final Destination Franchise - Ranked

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 7 of 35
--> Watch the movie you have been anticipating watching most

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I'd seen a couple YouTube videos giving (possibly ironic) praise to the movie Billy Jack, a film I'd never heard of before. It sounded like a pretty typical B action movie from the '70s. I decided to maybe give it a shot only to find out Billy Jack wasn't the first in a four film franchise; The Born Losers was. And, for some reason, that got me super interested in watching it.

It's about a Native American Green Barret returning home from Vietnam. And the biker gang who are harassing the town. Billy Jack mostly minds his own business until they push and push and push too hard.

I hope I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this movie feels like a lost 80s movie released in 1967. For a late 60s flick, it doesn't FEEL like one. There's something far more modern (assuming we ignore the fashion) as compared to other B movies of the time. And don't get me wrong, it's an exploitation flick all the way down... it just one that doesn't feel of its era.

That is, until its final act. We've waited the whole movie for Billy Jack to throw down and yet the ending is a whiff. I think its in line with other '60s era action/adventure movies at least. I was just hoping for more First Blood throw-down... this film is what would happen if Rambo put up with the asshole copes for an hour and a half and then casually snapped.

But until that point, I was highly enjoying this sordid tale of violence and machismo. I enjoyed Billy Jack as a character who wasn't going to be pushed around but also wasn't going to swing first. And I liked the brassy female lead who wasn't going to take shit from these Nazi bikers.

This is a solid, well acted B movie that can be forgiven its dud ending if you can its budget and 60s filming. Plus it was trying to do something with its stoic Native American, regardless of whether the actor looked Native American or not.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 6 of 35
--> Watch the movie that is the least popular

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I have no nostalgia for this film nor any knowledge of it until a LB friend recommended it. I added it to the watchlist out of curiosity. The director made the impossibly depressing Grave of the Fireflies so I was genuinely curious what he would do with a poppy cute anime about a little girl who finds a panda family one day.

But, yeah, this absolutely wasn't for me... or most adults without healthy doses of nostalgia. And I'm sorry but I can only rate a movie for what I thought of it and I hated it. Way too kid pop with no adult entryways.

It is interesting that, except for a handful of mostly forgotten Speed Racer episodes, this is the earliest anime I've seen. So not sure if its the age or just its kiddie tone that turned me off. I suspect more the tone but maybe there's something to be said for an evolving artform not being in its final form yet.

I'm sure there's worse Lego blocks to step on in the middle of the night.

Anime Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 5 of 35
--> Watch the movie that is rated lowest

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Why did I have Endless Love on my Watchlist? Because I got it confused with Love Story... another notorious romance (famous for the head-scratching line "Love means never having to say you're sorry"). But that movie starred Ryan O'Neal and this one stars some guy (and Brooke Shields). Only problem is, I'd already seen Love Story so what gives? I think it's because I ed Endless Love as one of four movies my babysitter and her friends loved back in the day... the other three being Saturday Night Fever, Grease, and Blue Lagoon. Weird... two Travolta and two Brooke Shields movies. I think I needed better babysitters.

Anyhow, "why am I watching this" was my mantra while watching it. I stuck with it because of misplaced movie honor and because director Franco Zeffirelli gave it some legitimacy. And curiosity about Tom Cruise's first screen appearance (and a little James Spader).

But ooh baby is this one terrible, misguided, baffling, head scratching movie. A love story where we don't even see the two characters meet cute. No, they are just starry eyed teens in love from minute one, and porking in the living room in the middle of the night (while mom ogles them from above).

A love story where the 15 year old daughter's parents are unsure how to deal with her 17 year old boyfriend sneaking into her room at night. How about punching him in the dick and throwing him down a flight of stairs? No? OK.

This flick is baffling in its decisions, especially in relegating Brooke Shields to the background while her Crazy Pants boyfriend gets into legal trouble, squabbles with everyone, complains, and sets houses on fire. "Love means never having to say you're a psychopath", I guess.

This might be some good fun with friends and buckets of popcorn to hurl at the screen. But lacking that, I had to suffer through an Endless Movie with the sneaking suspicion nobody making the flick realized how insane it was. Because it WAS nuts and I'm concerned they thought it was romantic.

I hated this movie so much. Made me wish I was watching Love Story instead. Or The Blue Lagoon.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 4 of 35
--> Watch a movie from before you were born

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I stumbled on this free stream on YouTube and thought it'd be neat to compare its adaptation to the 1939 film. Methinks I should have looked at the average rating because... wow... I don't think I've ever seen a silent film with such low scores.

In theory, it's based on the L. Frank Baum novel... but, if so, what were they even thinking? The '39 film isn't fully accurate either but at least its based on the book. I don't know what they were doing here... mainly just filming whatever the f they wanted and slapping Wizard of Oz on the poster.

I'm trying not to hate it just because it's not 1 to 1 the 1939 movie. I've read the first book in the franchise too and I'm trying to not to hate it for veering off into la la land there either. And certainly there's some built-in annoyance over in-name-only films, but this flick is just bad.

Just a lot of random hijinks (and watermelon racism) as whizzed up by someone who wanted to make a slapstick film. So there's a lot of hiding in crates because clever camera editing is fun. On the other hand, there's a real lion on set. That's cool. And some impressive stunts and then someone found a biplane so they filmed in the air too. Why not?

None of it makes much sense and its very boring, even by standards of 1920s silent films. I'm not even gonna give it a half star bump for its age. Or maybe I am <yikes>.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 3 of 35
--> Watch the movie that is the longest

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A nearly three hour epic about auto racing is gonna be a big ask. Will it put the races first, forgoing story and character or will it minimize the races and overload the story? Grand Prix does a little of both but probably too much humanity, not enough vroom vroom. And yet the vroom vroom is so good it almost excuses the boring hu-mans.

The flick is about three Formula One racers with different views on their crazy dangerous jobs. One is doubting, one is pushing, and one is just trying to stay out of the hospital. Vroom vroom.

Clearly this movie was made to showcase the races as the photography of the cars is a-maze-ing. Given that it's 1966, they are doing things more interesting and more visceral than anything today. And it was all real, all in-camera, no effects. They were inventing the cameras, forgoing rear-projection, clearly putting the actors on the tracks, etc. It's startlingly good.

The opening fifteen minutes at Monaco is wall-to-wall vroom vrooming. It spends so much time, I started to learn the the layout and dangerous curves of the track. They spend almost a minute and a half on a first person unbroken camera view of the race. No cut aways to save nervous stomachs. It's impressive.

And then there's the story which is... eh. There's character and movement but not a lot of momentum. Sometimes they were interesting, more of they were not. It was interesting to see a young(ish) James Garner. I barely recognized him without his aged face.

So I'm going with a good rating but if I was just rating the car-go-fast stuff, it'd be a 4.5 instead. But I have to rate it for how tired I got of these drivers. They were an impediment, the extneded runtime even more so.

John Frankenheimer Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Generic Title is a pretty mediocre movie that often tried to convince me it was good. Mainly through fairly obvious punched up dialog designed to make certain characters more fun. But the core of the film... not so good.

It takes place years after a possibly more interesting story about a pair of shadow operators (Kerry Washington and Omar Sy) fall in love... which is against the shadowy rules of this shadowy organization. He inadvertently comes back onto the radar of their former shadowy boss (Mark Strong) who sets his other shadowy agents onto them.

Generic Title is the wrong half of the story. Maybe if they told the backstory first and made this flick a sequel, it might have worked. All I know is that its pretty bland because we don't know or care about what we've missed.

It's a bland story as told through a family comedy action flick. There's a lot of "aww how cute" moments with their little boy and sometimes it genuinely works. Meanwhile, the shadowy boss seems generic at first until they randomly put him into scenes with quirky dialog to make him haha funny. Like he's suddenly in a totally different movie. It feels like a writer was brought on to breath life into a dull script but only punched up some quirky dialog but not the actual story.

Some of the action near the end of the film is good... until it keeps going and going (we could have gotten to the end without the boat chase, thank you very much). There's an early chase with a supercar that doesn't land at all... which is unfortunate because it's a slick looking vehicle.

So much of this film is trying to tell the second half of a possibly better story. So much of this film fails to land what it's trying to do. No, Generic Title is a misfire from the screenplay level up. It sometimes amused me but mostly it just bored me.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 2 of 35
--> Watch a movie from a director you haven’t watched anything from

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I was dreading Cavalcade as another 1930s Best Picture Winner because I figured it was just another olde timey showbiz movie. It wasn't. Not at all. It's more like Forrest Gump... 1930s edition. Sure, there are better comparisons than one to a beloved Tom Hanks film, but it's what I'm going with.

The film is about a 30 year stretch of British history from 1899 to 1932. It follows a single family that doesn't age much as they endure a bunch of tragic history and not much fun! Unless you could the thrills of yet another war.

It reminded me of what "kids these days" might feel watching Forrest Gump without decades of Boomers telling them how great their time in the sun was. By which I mean Cavalcade hops, skips, and jumps through early 20th century history assuming you have familiarity with these historic events like Forrest Gump does with Boomer cultural touchstones.

For example, the Boer War... the film is all about that British war in its first act. What do I know about the Boer War? Something something South Africa. What do "kids these days" know about Ping Pong Diplomacy in the 1970s? Probably just about as much as the Boer War.

So Cavalcade has a unique twist that probably wasn't planned which kept me interested. Sure, the drama and melodrama was a little corny at times, but I found the way 1933 was talking about its recent history quite interesting.

On the film-making side, I was impressed by this film's montages of history, especially its extended WW1 sequence. Partly because it wasn't a World War One sequence because they didn't even have a WW2 yet. To the filmmakers, that was just another war. I also enjoyed the zeppelin air bombing of London... did that happen? I don't know! How fun. I know about the Battle of Britain... but that was in their future.

I found this almost two hour creaky black & white Best Picture winner better than I expected. Partly because it was interesting analyzing it in its historical context, partly because it was better acted and filmed that I was expecting. Not bad, 1933. Not bad.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 4)!... 1 of 35
--> Watch the movie that is the shortest

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Victory Through Air Power is absolutely a Disney propaganda film made during WW2 about WW2. It's an argument for dramatically increasing the reliance on air power AND spinning off the Army Air Force into its own branch of the US military (which happened in 1947... because totes this movie, obvs).

Its first half is an animated history of powered air travel which is kind of interesting itself since flight was only 40 years old at that point. So they had a different focus than a modern history of flight would have, I think.

It then speeds into WW2 which makes the film fascinating because the war was still ongoing. Unfortunately, it isn't all that interesting except as a curious artifact of history. The film argues to the general movie going public that the US must ditch the old modes of warfare because the Germans and the Japanese were leaning hard on air power themselves. And, sure, let's do that, I said 80 years later when it doesn't matter in the slightest. <shrug>

The disturbing thing is though, when they make their argument for how the US should wage war on Japan, they inadvertently make a great argument for dropping the atom bomb. The film knows nothing about the bomb... it just argues that attacking Japan from China, via hundreds of aircraft carriers with short range fighters, or via island hopping are all impractical. And knowing what the solution that ultimately ended the war... <tugs collar>. Yeah, victory through air power indeed.

This is an interesting historical artifact that leads with a pretty amusing history of airplanes. I was curious though to see what 1943 was saying about 1943. Worth watching, if the idea interests you.

👀👀🎬📽️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️👀👀

My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 4)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

I watched Lilo & Stitch in theaters back in the day and was satisfied. It's never been my favorite Disney animated film, but its sweet and amusing... with some very "me" kind of nitpicks.

With the live action remake coming up, I figured I should rewatch the original. I don't many details so how else am I gonna get my righteous indignation on for whatever changes they make?

So, yeah, I didn't many details. For example, I'd forgotten all about its clambake Elvis fixation. The King had his blue Hawaii period but it left me wondering if he's that big a deal in Hawaii or if this is just a fixation from the Mainland writers and directors?

But the most gasp-worthy problem I have with the movie is Stitch. I can see what they were trying to do with the little monster, but it feels - even with his guns and destructive habits - a little too Disney friendly. I wanted a more insane alien menace and got one that's more about lip service psychosis. But, then again, what the hell am I even thinking... it's a Disney cartoon!

I also wasn't impressed by the sci-fi aliens side but that's kind of like being mad at the leaf-cutter ants at the beginning of The Lion King. Kind of missing the forest for the trees.

Anyhow, this rewatch changed very little. It barely ekes into the 3.5 range because, as we all know, ohana means family. And by that repeated thread, even cynical me finds the beating heart of this harmless flick.

Plus, hey, Hawaiian representation is always a good thing, even if placed awkwardly between an Elvis-certified peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwich.

Of all the reasons to rent what looks like Generic Zombie Movie #583, it being almost two hours long is one of the stranger ones. But, yeah, here's another zombie movie that doesn't sound like it's moving the needle, but I was curious why it was so long. Figured they were either trying to say something unique or were blinded by their own hubris.

So, yeah... its ten years after the apocalypse and a well-armed man and his end times adopted daughter try to survive the zombies. These are fast running rage zombies... with their unique angle being they smarter than the average bear. They aren't very good with interpersonal communication, but they plan and strategize their kills.

And... yeah... it's a relatively low budget zombie flick without a ton of ambition, but you can see it trying. I've seen far worse zombie flicks. This one is pretty episodic story, following the characters from one location to the next, fighting zombies, meeting other survivors, etc.

It's an ok-to-mediocre film... if you really love zombie films, you might extract something out of it. Not its originality as its largely playing in the same sandbox, but maybe in its slight ambition bump due to a slightly higher than average budget.

I dunno... it's not very good but its not very bad either. They had a slightly bigger budget than your average low budget zombie flick and used the cash to tell Generic Zombie Movie #583... now with smarter zombies!

Zombie Movies - Ranked

Well, I heard this sequel to the anime Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters was better... and I suppose it is. But I think its only better in that I was prepped for bad by the first one so it could only improve. In theory.

The flick picks up after the bulbous flatulence of Planet of the Monsters with our stranded landing party having lost their first battle against a mostly immobile Godzilla. They have met the new human residence of Earth and they have to figure out what to do next. They settle on mining metals that used to be part of MechaGodzilla... which sounds like a particularly bad idea to me.

To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum, "Now, you are going to have a Godzilla in your Godzilla movie?" Yeah, even by the limited standards of the first film, Godzilla is barely in this flick. I suppose, to be charitable, the title is City on the Edge of Battle and not, say, City Actually in a Battle." So... truth in advertising?

The first hour is one long babble fest, just like the first film. Maybe a little more interesting due to more factions and twists. So that adds some interest. But mainly we're just listening to more endless philosophizing and no actual giant monster fightin'.

The final twenty minutes give us, again, a mostly immobile Big G who can barely work up enough effort to fight anything. These flicks misunderstand what's so fun about Godzilla... stompin' cities, fightin' other kaiju, and getting peppered by pissant human weapons.

So, yeah, whatever. It could have been worse. It could have been the first movie. As it stands, it feels like an even bigger waste of time but at least it's maybe 10% less boring. Yippie skippie.

Godzilla - Reiwa Era Films - Ranked
Anime Films - Ranked

Summer of 69 pretends to be a super raunchy sex comedy... but it evolves into a gentler, if a little daft, heart-felt buddy comedy. It's almost like the title is designed to be misleading (also of note: it doesn't take place over the Summer nor does it cram in that Bryan Adams song).

The film stars lonely and awkward Sam Morelos who is desperately in teen love with a boy. The high school's mascot tells her that his favorite thing is 69 so she vows that she'll 69 him... sexually. To do so, she hires a local stripper (Chloe Fineman) to teach her everything about sex.

This premise is a little goofy and unlikely, tbh. And that includes its bizarre and unconvincing ending routine (which is, at least, awkward funny but I don't see how they pull it off). So I spent most of the movie thinking it was kind of nonsense while enjoying it anyway. It helps that it has the stink of a female Risky Business... and they go ahead and acknowledge it.

The two leads - Morales and Fineman - grow a sweet and huggable rapport. It's a platonic rom-com, basically. Which includes the usual big reveal that risks everything... which I usually roll my eyes at. But it's in-character, in-plot, and it has a nice sentiment on resolution so I was ok with it.

And, yeah, I laughed a lot. Maybe I was in a good dopey mood or maybe the writing and delivery were just good enough to tickle my cynicism. I laughed... not uproariously... but often. And it helps all the comedy isn't just leaning on its raunchy premise.

So, yeah, for having winning charm and laughs, this flick manages its way to a low 3.5. It's good natured, sweet, and fun. Sam Morelos turns in a winning performance and I'd like to see more from her.

The audacity. The wishful thinking. The misguided lunacy. The plug-my-ears these songs are generic. There's so many accusations to chuck at this flick that it's almost tough to point out the volume of other wild-eyed adaptations of any Shakespeare play that already exist. But this film tries real hard to paint a target on its back... and I doubt it even realizes it.

Juliet & Romeo is the exact same story you already know, only now with her name first. It doesn't make this a Rosencrantz & Guildenstern like retelling that puts a riot grrl Juliet at the fore though. No, this is largely just the story you know, with just as much Romeo, only now with modern dialog and <gulp> even more pop songs.

One of those songs IS a girl power type ballad where all the female characters bemoan their place in this world. But mostly everything else is the same and not from Juliet's POV at all. Not any more than is already in the play, which doesn't lack for Juliet representation.

The one big change made is a weird desire to fill in the gaps that good old Willy Shakes left in his 500 year old play. For example, Romeo & Juliet meet at least twice before their first official meeting at the ball. So, you know, not love at first sight. Or if you've ever wondered why the apothecary had that poison on hand, well this flick spends a solid ten minutes explaining it... and there's a song! Because otherwise it wouldn't be "realistic", I guess.

All that's not as crazy and audacious as the new ending. It's hard to justify this change and it insults Willy Shakes and all the play's fans. I won't go into detail but it does circle back to my original paragraph above. This film was written by the kings of wishful thinking.

Because it pulls an It: Chapter 1... revealing at the end that this is, in fact, Juliet & Romeo Part 1 and we should all be waiting with baited breath for part 2. Yes. Part 2. Maybe that's when Juliet flexes her muscles and justifies the title change? I dunno... but it'd hard to get a sequel when the lovers are dead and rotting in a box.. Right? RIGHT?!

So... i didn't technically spoil anything except some sequel baiting... but you can probably fill in the blanks.

This is a pretty muddle-headed adaptation. In that it's just Romeo & Juliet with modern dialog is hardly the first time that's ever been done. In that they felt the need to "fix" Romeo & Juliet's plot holes might go a step too far. Adding pop songs out of a Disney movie? Maybe two steps. The new ending... we just took a long walk off a short pier.

Winter Spring Summer or Fall is a pleasantly low drama romance film... perhaps a little too low stakes but also that works for me. Probably could have used more such-and-such... just not sure what that such and such would be without going overboard. Yeah, I'm all the way mixed up.

It stars Jenna Ortega and Percy Hynes White who meet in their senior year of high school. She's super smart and heading for Harvard, he's taking a gap year. She has no room for boys.. but he's cute and persistent with floppy hair and smile.

I'm happy this flick is just a simple romance... that it doesn't have the usual generic gimmicks. Nobody is lying or hiding anything, there aren't hokey misunderstandings... just two pretty people slowly falling for each other.

But maybe it goes too hard at being soft and pleasant. There are misunderstanding and some inevitable drama... it's not totally cloying and toothless. But I got a little bored in the second half waiting for the machine to rotate back to the inevitable.

It's cute and charming though so I certainly don't hate it. Jenna Ortega especially brings her usual self to the role. I'm less familiar with White but he seems convincing too. It's worth watching if you want low stakes romance.

Nonnas is a movie that will work better for you if you have big family meals and/or an Italian upbringing. I think to the rest of us - or maybe just me - it loses something in the translation. Which isn't to say its not a good movie, but that it's a lot better in the nostalgia.

It stars Vince Vaughn as a guy who gets the idea of opening a restaurant that uses grannies - specifically Italian nonnas - as the chefs. Don't give the customer the best cuisine in the world, give them the best cuisine their families made for them. It's all about finding the right cute and argumentative old ladies (plus Susan Sarandon) and figure out how to make the restaurant work.

And it's a heartfelt, loving, and slightly schmaltzy movie with an ending you can see coming from a mile away. Because it's a feel good movie so it's hard to argue with predictability. You want to know where it came from and how good it is, especially if its got a sauce pan full of the best red sauce. Magnifico!

It's not my favorite chef life movie and I kept thinking what the life span of each of the chefs is gonna be for repeat business. Which I think is the wrong and more ghoulish way to think about it... not the intended message of the film. But I'm heartless that way, I guess.

The nonnas are well cast. I mentioned Sarandon who is doing her va-va-voom version of an old lady. She's ed by Lorraine Bracco who I've always loved and am slightly concerned she's playing an old lady now (time is the crucible in which we burn). And, hey, Talia Shire too... proving she still should have a place in Rocky/Creed movies.

Nonnas is a perfectly warm film that many will find a lot warmer than I did. And other, more jaded people will roll their eyes harder than me. I think I'm in the middle, not having the same experience with grannie's cooking at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But that's my loss.

Britain and the Blitz is a short Netflix documentary that feels like it needed to be a long Netflix documentary. It contains interesting footage and small stories but its not deep enough to breath or inform.

It's a little over an hour long doc about the Battle of Britain and how it affected the folk on the ground. Which is a big topic no matter how narrowly you focus it... and an hour just isn't enough time.

But I think the reason the film exists is all the colorized updates of old black & white archival footage. And some of that's pretty good... but other shots looked off. It's uneven and inconsistent... which is the same thing I can say about the stories they follow.

I'm not sure it taught me anything really about the blitz. I'm hardly an expert on it but the only people who would learn anything are those who know absolutely nothing. And they won't learn enough either since it provides a bare-bones overview of what's even going on.

It's not a bad film and its nice to see some quality footage enhanced... but it's also a huge wasted opportunity to really dig into all the nuance behind living under the bombs of the Luftwaffe.

Clown in a Cornfield begs the question: where are the scarecrows? Are they going to bring this up in the next meeting of Horror Icons Anonymous? I think the clowns co-opting the cornfields is reason for a dialog - even a debate. But, hey, I guess the argument is everyone fears a clown, and the last film scarecrow we got, Mia Goth kind of humped instead.

Anyhoo, Clown in a Cornfield winningly stars Katie Douglas as a new girl in a small fly-over town. She immediately makes friends with the non-stereotypical local teens and soon they realize they are being stalked by killer klowns (not from outer space).

My immediate reaction to this film was how much I liked the characters. How well they were written and how they weren't falling into the standard issue buckets of teen fodder. I especially liked Douglas and her relationship with her movie dad. it helps I didn't actually want all the characters to instantly die. Note to slasher screenwriters: sometimes every victim doesn't need to be a piece of shit.

The film is funny and winning and falls down a tiny bit by having a "kids these days" generational angle... but its not enough to hurt it. I chuckled throughout (and so did my audience) at some of the gags, character moments, and the energetic kills. As a slasher (or slasher-adjacent) film, it got the balance right.

In that the film doesn't stray too far from what it is, it surprised me only in that the actors/characters are solid. Everything else is good, no arguments from me, but not amazing or revelatory or whip smart.

Clown in a Cornfield still rubs me wrong that it doesn't have scarecrow representation, but a good cast playing relatable characters was good enough. Nice kills, a couple surprises, and just a generally good time. It's enough.

This review may contain spoilers.

In my recent rewatch review of 28 Days Later (in advance of 28 Years Later), I was on the Hot Take Brigade, especially in that I liked 28 Weeks Later a fair bit more. On this rewatch, I'm happy to confirm my stance has not changed. 28 Weeks - whether it's actually a good sequel or not - is a very good zombie apocalypse film. Yay.

It's also a much bigger budget - and more polished - film that might lead some to be grumblypegs that it betrays the indie spirit of 28 Days Later. Fair enough... if nothing else, 28 Days is a deliberately grungy film while 28 Weeks feels slicker, more corporate even. But I still dig it.

One of the reasons why is right from the start: introducing Robert Carlyle as a piece of shit protagonist. It was daring and surprising to open with him and immediately blast into an infected attack that leaves our name brand actor fleeing from his wife, letting her die to save his own skin. That's a pretty daring flag to fly. Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it.

And then instead of retreading the original film, it posits what if the American military swept in to clean up and help repopulate London. A zombie movie where all the zombies died of hunger (because they aren't the undead... they are just rage virus fueled living humans). The whole scenario was unexpected and introduced what I see now as a different take on a zombie film.

I praise World War Z for being what you can do with a normally low-budget genre if you feed it Brad Pitt levels of budget. But 28 Weeks Later kind of did it first... on a slightly smaller scale, but still a logical reflection of what a bigger budget and ambition can deliver.

It's also funny the film has a nebulous understanding of character and protagonists. Most films would stick with Robert Carlyle but he's actually taken off the board pretty early. You'd then think they'd spend more time with hero sniper Jeremy Renner or doctor Rose Byrne (both of whom I'd forgotten were even in this film). But it's really the kids who take story focus... and I was worried they'd turned the movie into Jim Henson's Rage Virus Babies but, no, they aren't the heroes, they are the package.

I'd normally call this flexible protagonist thing a script problem but, you know, I rather liked the unconventional take. It sure makes it harder to guess who lives and who dies.

I also enjoy the increased availability of rage monsters. I though 28 Days Later did far too little with its zombie outbreak... but this flick solves it and increases the load of blood 'n gore. I especially loved the helicopter slaughter... even if I'm pretty sure that's not how a helicopter rotor works. Pshaw... maybe it defies physics and engineering, but it doesn't defy my iration for creative human delimbification.

It's not a perfect film as there's some pacing issues in the middle... I kind of wish I could get it to four stars, but even my special appearance as Hot Take McGee doesn't go that far.

So, yeah, 28 Weeks Later remains my favorite of this two film franchise. For now. We'll see what 28 Years Later (and its planned sequels) add to the charm and the gore and the splatter. I'm looking forward to it.

This review may contain spoilers.

With 28 Years Later coming, odds are vanishingly low that I really need to rewatch the original. But I figured I'd use it as an excuse to revisit it anyway. Because, you see, Hot Take McGee here never really liked 28 Days Later all that much. Heresy among indie fans, Danny Boyle fans, and zombie fans alike, I know.

I saw the film on its release in 2002 with all the existing buzz about it being an amazing film. That it was so inventive with its low budget, early digital cams, and the filming around an empty London so amazing. Part of that was true, but I still came away from it underwhelmed and even a little bored.

So perfect for a rewatch to see if I can bump up that sco... oops... backfire! I liked it less this time.

Back in the day, I thought the film unoriginal. Even the idea of oops waking up in a hospital after the apocalypse had been done before (Hi Day of the Triffids). And the idea of fast zombies wasn't new either... Return of the Living Dead would like a word. And infected with "rage" was ok if you ignore non-zombie monkey-spreading films like Outbreak. And, above all, the idea of finding the military only to have them try to steal all the women... done before (looking at you Night of the Comet amongst others).

This time, all the above is true though maybe I rolled my eyes less. But I definitely noticed how few actual infected there were in a movie about an entire city overrun by fast-acting zombie. Not to mention the very annoying mix of shaky cam and low frame rate. Great soundtrack though!

The finale with the soldiers (hey, it's Christopher Eccleston pre-Dr. Who!) was at least something. The third act had some pretty good moments when everything went to hell (finally!).

28 Days Later remains a bit of a stinker for me... even more so than the first time around. I'm disappointed by that... I was hoping time and the fact all the unoriginal ideas would be less of an issue. Or, at the very least, I could come closer to the high scores from all ya'll. I'm a little depressed about that. But, hey, at least I'm the weirdo who liked 28 Weeks Later more... so on to that!

Danny Boyle Films - Ranked
Zombie Films - Ranked

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 35 of 35
--> Watch a movie directed by, written by, and led by a woman

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Based on how great director Naoko Yamada's other two films were - A Silent Voice and The Colors Within - I was very disappointed in this film. Those other two were full of deep characters and deeper emotional depth. These characters were very surface level with missing emotional nuance... until the third act.

It's about two teen girls in high school band... one outgoing and one introverted to the point of emotional collapse. They are good friends, bordering on (if not going over to) love. They are not always at the same stage of their friendship which causes tension.

The film features a fairy tale called Liz and the Blue Bird and the analogy between that book and these characters isn't exactly subtle. It's so surface level, it floats above everyone like a thunderstorm. It causes the flick to almost totally collapse under its subtle-as-a-sledgehammer storytelling.

It's so frustrating that so much of this flick is wasted time. But its final act takes what I thought was going to be obvious basic (and kinda boring) storytelling and makes it nuanced. It doesn't do exactly what it looks like it was gonna do in the first two acts... and it ends with a quiet understating that not everyone is on the same path at the same pace.

It's a low 3.5, but it hit me pretty hard in that finale. It's still not on the same level as her other work, but it's a lot better than it was serving up to start.

Anime Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 34 of 35
--> Watch a movie from before you were born

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"Well, that's your problem right there": The Movie.

During WW2, the German military turns over the still-beating heart of Frankenstein's Monster to the Japanese. They bring it to a lab in Hiroshima. Godzilla ain't the only guy in town to get a glow-up from the a-bomb.

Yes, that premise is altogether goofy. I loved it. I mean, sure... makes total sense. Allies during the war, immortal heart exposed to the atomic bomb, and voila, giant invincible Frankenstein. What's not to... well... ire? Is that the word? It's goofy, that's for sure.

And it also quickly runs out of steam when a still growing Frankenstein boy sees one too many groovy rock 'n roll teens and escapes the lab. Soon he's bigger than your average caveman teenager and the military is called in to take him down.

This ain't in the Godzilla OR the Gamera universe so where did a second random kaiju come from? I mean, other than the fevered imagination of a screenwriter who needs MC 50 Foot Frankenstein to throwdown with something. It loses a LOT of the humorous drive in the middle act but settles for a pretty decent - if utterly random - kaiju big battle at the end.

Not the best, but smile-worthy.

Frankenstein/Frankenstein Adjacent Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 33 of 35
--> Watch the movie that is the most popular

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I felt like I was the only person to not watch Roma when it was new on Netflix back in 2018. So I wasn't surprised it got picked up as "most popular" film when I was building round 3 of this Watchlist Challenge. I really should have watched it back in the day... but sometimes everything aligns against a movie.

The film is set 1970 Mexico City and, in the tradition of Y Tu Mama Tambien, manages to avoid all the usual cliches of a Mexico-based film. I gather must of this is a slice of director Alfonso Cuaron's own memories of growing up middle class. It specifically features Cleo, a family of six's live-in maid and her daily life in a family that loves her.

I didn't know where this movie was going and it was sure in no rush to get there. For a slow flick focused on tiny details and extended sequences of "nothing" happening, I was surprisingly into it. I guess that's the difference between some rando just pointing a camera and Alfonso Cuaron creatively and knowingly pointing his camera. You can't argue handsome black & white, incidental story beats, fine acting, and attention to detail.

I wasn't always so patient with it but I can see how every beat was necessary to reach the cover art of the film. A life affirming moment among found family. This film has heart, it also has patience.

Alfonso Cuaron Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 32 of 35
--> Watch a movie from the 2020s

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I figured I was designed to enjoy this film... or any flick involving the mystical magical act of sleep that so often eludes me. So what a disappointment I bounced off this one hard.

It's a South Korean film about a husband and wife where he is starting to have a severe case of sleepwalking... or sleep other things that start to get dangerous. And since they have a baby on the way, they seek out medical assistance... and later supernatural assistance.

The film is fairly slowly paced but it uses that to let us get to know this couple. I appreciate the effort to make us care. That's not my problem with the movie.

My problem is that they started with a premise - dangerous nocturnal wanderings - and then tried to figure out "and then what?" in a way that didn't interest me. They could have done anything and ultimately went with just a possession story that pretty much left the sleep part in its wake. A movie called Sleep that stops being about sleep really didn't keep my attention.

So I'm very low on the ratings where everyone else is high. That's probably because I love sleep (that's where I'm a Viking!) and sleep related stories so much. There aren't enough of them but I've seen a zillion ghosty possession stories. And this one dragged it out for too long and then had a shrug of an ending.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 31 of 35
--> Watch the movie that is the longest

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When I sorted movies on my Watchlist by length and The Great Ziegfeld popped up, I groaned. I've made a choice to wrap up all the Oscar winning Best Pictures and I'm down to ten or so enthralling pics, this being one of them. So I had to watch it, but I wasn't looking forward to it.

And for good reason. A three hour Best Picture from 1936 that's about puttin' on a show and romance and oh my god does it ever end?

The sick, sad thing is, I rather enjoyed the first half hour and was thinking I'd misjudged the film. But as it plods along, sure we're super into the romantic life of some dude, i kept hoping it would switch over to the musical numbers. And when it did, I was hoping it'd switch back to the romance. Or the business dealings of putting on a show. Or anything but what I was actively watching.

Some of the sets are impressive for the musical numbers... and we get to to see them as they songs go on forever. But, hey, they looked good. That's something.

I have considerable disdain for mucking about in this flick that's only ed for winning an Oscar. There's better song 'n dance movies from this period... and better romances too. Next!

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Fight or Flight is a perfectly ok dumb energetic action flick. I was entertained and that's about it. I'll honestly have forgotten it in a couple weeks unless musing over Bullet Train... which I've mostly forgotten about too.

Josh Hartnett plays a washed-up operative tasked with boarding a plane to capture a mysterious hacker. Nobody knows the identify of the hacker... but that doesn't stop a veritable army of other assassins, rogues, and agents from infiltrating the plane too.

Bloody in a fun, overkill sort of way. The blood splatters somewhat unconvincingly but certainly energetically through stabbing, shootings, and chainsawing. It's a kind of chuck logic and coherence aside and just have fun on a decent budget.

It was fun to see Hartnett go at it with Katee Sackhoff on the ground as his handler. Two good actors slumming it a little in a nonsense but fun action spy flick.

And... yeah... that's about all there is to say about that.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 30 of 35
--> Watch a cult classic/movie that just seems bonkers

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I'm shocked I liked this bonkers movie as much as I did. When I hit play on the degraded, scratchy YouTube video, I was hoping to get it to a solid 3 based on its folklore creature (the reason I added it to my watchlist in the first place) being so damn weird... but then I realized the film - despite its many low to no budget flaws - is actually pretty creepy.

It's about an American woman visiting Indonesia to learn more about their dark magic/folklore. She meets a cackling witch (if you can't have fun doing your job, what are you ever doing here?) who tricks her into becoming a leyak, a kind of Indonesian vampire.

Did I say vampire? Every vampire should be able to pull this off. The leyak detaches her head from her body, flying into the night with her organs and entrails still attached. It seeks out unborn babies to suck their blood.

The special effect is pretty bad and is mostly just a fake head with guts hanging off it. But everything in this film looks bad and is probably helped by the scratchy low-fi transfer on YouTube. The practical makeup effects during transformations are at least pretty good and goopy.

Much of the acting is bad and certainly the English dub is hilariously canned and the witches laughter gets kind of funny and the end fight borrows more from supernatural kung-fu films. There's a lot wrong with the film but, acknowledging and looking past that, its supernatural trapping are legit creepy. There's more to this flick than I expected and I genuinely, unironically enjoyed it.

Also, if those hopping Chinese vampires can be added to my ranked list of vampire movies, then so too can a leyak. I declare it so.

Vampire Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 29 of 35
--> Watchlist Shuffle

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As the second film in Park Chan-wook's Vengeance trilogy, I'd seen Oldboy years ago without realizing it was part of a thematic series. Circling all these years back to the first film, I was expecting to be punched in the gut, sliced open, and hollowed out. Watching Mr. Vengeance, it didn't have the power of Oldboy... but what it does have is quieter, eerier, and more haunting.

It IS about vengeance, specifically a "kind" kidnapping designed to help someone with a kidney transplant. But since you can't trust a kidney thief (as I've always said), our hero is left having to find another way to pay for surgery. Things go wrong leaving multiple graves to fill.

There's so little dia this film that I was lulled into thinking it wasn't going to slug me in the face. And a strange thing happens half way through where my expectation of "Mr. Vengeance" shifts to someone else. And a bit back again until you realize there's only one kind of revenge and it doesn't matter who you are.

While nothing nearly as traumatizingly messed up happens like in Oldboy, a lot of casual f'ed up stuff happens almost incidentally. When a person is killed or injured, the quiet tone of the film never shifts. You are left just an observer of something that feels incidental but is quite horrific.

I didn't feel gut-punched at the end of the film, and yet I sat there entranced, introspective, and haunted. This movie IS traumatizing but in such a casual, naturalistic way. I'm surprised the guy who made Oldboy started out his trilogy so quietly.

Park Chan-wook Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

The Surfer is a movie in two parts, both annoying in their own ways. It stars Nicholas Cage as a dad trying to rebuy his childhood home on the coast of Australia. He wants to take his kid surfing but the locals are like, "yeah, nah mate". So he hangs around the parking lot for a long, long time.

The half of the movie that's about a straight-laced businessman frustrated by the young tuff surf goons is annoying because it feels forced and scripted. There's no logical reason for Cage to hang around and the longer the film goes on, the more arbitrary the things he does to make the situation more miserable feel. It's dumb on both a character and script level and it annoyed me. It didn't bore me, but it made me roll my eyes constantly.

It also made me wonder what is this movie even about... constantly! It's not fun when you can't figure out WHY things are happening and what's the point of it all. Just go home!

But eventually it starts to become clear ("clear" being a subjective word here) that there's something more internal going on. That there's a metaphorical scenario that we're being asked to interpret. Only... I'd checked out by then. Whatever they were going for in Cage's sun-addled brain was irrelevant to me. I didn't want to play their reindeer games, constantly trying to put two and two together to understand what's really going on.

On the plus side, the film has a definite, deliberate, and unique visual language. It goes for a aggressively sunny, bleary-eyed interpretive look, a surrealism that I could appreciate on a craft level.

But that's not enough. I hated the experience of watching this movie. Maybe at a much shorter length that didn't feel like it was constantly spinning its wheels while waving a magic wand, asking me to dig it, maybe then I'd have tolerated the tedium.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 28 of 35
--> Watch a movie from a director you haven’t watched anything from

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I suspect it's safe to say this was a weird one. Absurdist anime in a unique visual style and story location. It's full-on absurdity that lends it charm and made me shrug and just go with it.

It's the kind of time that could only exist on a drunken midnight revelry of a college town. A girl in a red dress is on the town and up for drinks as she runs across every form and version of man. Meanwhile, an older boy is trying to catch up with her.

But also underwear. And the crazy world of the Sophist Dance. And a late stage absurdist musical that made me giggle harder as it kept going. Sometimes I'm not even sure what was going on... but whatever it was, it was certainly visually and mentally arresting. Maybe these moments were a cultural touchstone I was missing or maybe the screenwriter was just letting the screwball flow through him.

I'm not sure much of this cacophony has a deeper meaning... at least until the end where we get a bit about germ spreading being a form of societal unity. Which, hey, makes about as much logical sense as anything else.

I wish the final act was as gonzo weird as the fist two but it puts up a valiant effort. But in their attempts to pay off the storylines, yeah, it kind of settles into an abstract logical finally. It's ok but not nearly as much boundless fun as when the film is just on full overdrive.

Anime Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 27 of 35
--> Watch a movie from the 2000s

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Lust, Caution might be more ed for its explicit sex scenes... which is both fair and unfair. Just whittling it down to sex ignores a solid spy thriller full of great writing and acting. I was impressed by how engaged I was with a rather lengthy and casually paced film. I was never bored and that surprised me a great deal.

The film is about China under Japanese occupation and a theater arts student who gets involved in the resistance. She's used as a honeypot to get close to a rich collaborator so the men can assassinate him.

The lovely Tang Wei makes a huge impression as our lead. She's cute and adorable and willing to go places that apparently hurt her career. Weird all that sexuality was peachy keen for Tony Lueng, her screen and bed partner. Curious. Anyhow, the performance is more than just explicitly pearl-clutching... she's damn good playing her motivated and doubting character.

I'm not sure which version of the film I watched as nearly every streaming service isn't very clear on what they are streaming. The Microsoft store version I rented said it was NC-17 but the splash screen says R... but the runtime matches other versions that either claim to be the version seen in theaters or the cut-back R rated version.

I was engrossed by the film and I doubt I missed much if, indeed, I watched the "wrong" version. Nothing I loved about the film required editing for content. It's a genuinely good spy drama with great actors doing fine work.

Ang Lee Films - Ranked

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 26 of 35
--> Watch the movie that is the shortest

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Hot take incoming given this film's Letterboxd average and the reputation of its director, but I didn't have any feelings for this one at all. Didn't hate it, was a little hum-drum but not aggressively so. It just kind of feels like J-Horror on auto-pilot.

It's about a chef in Japan who begins to hear a mysterious chime... and others hear it as well. The result is indiscriminate murder and suicide.

I get it, it's a low key, atmospheric horror movie where society begins a slow crumble into pointless madness. It's a theme in other J-Horror films and I like the concept, but this one just felt too much like trying to hit that eerie, unmoored angle and doing nothing else.

But maybe it's a me thing... you're saying that people are killing without any motivation and it leaves you feeling unmoored? Sounds like a Tuesday in America! Har-de-har-har.

I'm all for more of this, but maybe not this in particular.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Rosario is a horror movie you've seen before, though perhaps different in its Hispanic representation. Though with dark religious representation like this, maybe we should just leave the possession to the Catholics.

A Mexican-American professional gets a call that her abuela has died so she hops across town to be with the body until the ambulance arrives. She immediately realizes she's ignored grandma for too long as evidenced by the mounds of dark religious mojo piling up in every corner and closet. And a demon... can't forget the demon.

There's so many red flags that its hard to imagine any sane person would stay in this apartment. Things happen that you just don't shrug off. And, to be fair, there's a sequence where she runs but bad weather forces her back. Fine. And the film plays with our expectations and suspicions about the neighbors to justify keeping her isolated.

It's all just excuses to justify a fairly short but super predictable film about hauntings and demons and all that fun stuff. None of it done super well and often in so much darkness, it's hard to tell what you're even looking at. But it does occasionally fall into enough of a creeping vibe that it's so sad the rest of the movie doesn't hold up.

It's not a terrible movie... it's mostly watchable but a little too old hat... and the end just sucks in a way too many B horror movies try to have their cake and eat it too. Love the look and appearance of a religion you don't see much on film... but it'd be better if it wasn't represented by such a generic spook show movie.

Another Simple Favor is the sequel to a movie I apparently really enjoyed from seven years ago but have almost no memory of. And reading my review, I can see why I enjoyed it... it sounds like fun! So I just dove into its unexpected sequel hoping for the best. It was slow going (and long) but it worked out.

The film stars Anna Kendrick doing her usual quirky comedy gold. Apparently after the events of the first movie, she wrote a book about it. But Blake Lively's character is fresh out of jail and demands she (Kendrick) be her maid of honor at her wedding in Capri.

Just like the first film (based on my review), they continue with the gimmick of a serious (if soapy) murder mystery with everyone melodramatically acting up a storm while Kendrick wanders in from a different movie. While everyone else is dead serious, she bring her energy and goofy personality instead. And she's funny with some great line readings and asides.

But the movie is way too long with too many red herrings. It takes awhile to finally lay out its twisty crazy fun plot... and up to then, I was a little bored and wondering how they were gonna fill the time. I'd laugh on occasion but genuinely thought I was gonna slap a much lower score on the flick. But, yeah, its crazy soap opera twists with Kendrick doing her non-serious thing was very funny.

So, yeah, it's a bit rough and overlong but it proves itself out in its second half. Wish it was stronger throughout, but given my giggles and chortles, I'm giving it a 3. And I'd love if they turned this into a Knives Out-like franchise where Kendrick can be our ongoing sleuth wandering cluelessly into new and even more inventive crimes. Maybe more focus though next time... stay crazy but don't overwrite it.

Even though I've never been down on the MCU of late, I still feel good in saying that the MCU is back (baby). If Marvel can take another C list team and turn in a solid, exciting, and funny entry in the franchise, then surely they've found themselves again.

Thunderbolts* unites a number of B and C listers into one antihero team. Yelena, Red Guardian, Ghost, US Agent, Bucky, and Bob (!?) are brought together in a plot that has Val (Julia Louise-Dreyfuss) cleaning up her past by ridding herself of loose ends. Those loose ends don't agree with her plan and team up to fight back.

This is a very good film with solid dialog, jokes, and action with a great set of characters, most of whom get enough screentime to shine. That said, it feels more like Black Widow 2 with more focus on Yelena (and Red Guardian). And I'm fine with that since I have the same level of adoration for Florence Pugh as much of the internet. She's funny and warm while also in a dark place... very Eastern European of her. Get this girl some vodka!

I liked the villain and how Yelena relates to him. These two actors have great rapport and her connection to him made me love Yelena even more. I especially liked his layers (love the shadows!). The only problem is that, unlike the other characters, we don't have any history with him and the film would have been stronger with more screentime. It would have leveled up our emotional attachment to his twists and turns.

The final act is steeped in the power of self-respect, friendship, and empathy more than it is rock 'em sock 'em action. That makes it very different than the films of franchise past. I liked the choice even if it felt a little to introspective for a superhero film. I could see its direction, I was just expecting something different from an anti-hero team.

The final sting that explains the * in the title is great... but not as great as the knowing headlines in the closing credits. And the end credit scene is a total winner, establishing the hazy new order of heroes before setting up a solid sneak at the next film(s). It left me looking forward to the future.

Thunderbolts is a really good film which uses its also-ran characters extremely well. Funny, warm, and with a different kind of final act. It's a great establishing film for what feels like the MCU's latest attempt at getting things back on track.

MCU Films - Ranked

Exterritorial is a Netflix Die Hard clone... where our hero must escape, infiltrate, exfiltrate, re-infiltrate, and generally wander around a US Consulate in . Which seems like it would be a particularly hard place to Die Hard in.

It's about a German ex-soldier who brings her six year old to the US consulate. But when the kid goes missing from the daycare, she isn't believed by security so she has to go all John McLain on their asses.

Never before has the security of a government facility been so lax. I have no idea by what logic this film operates where a wanted person just wanders the halls and has lunch at a busy commissary. Surely the security cameras are on, right? C'mon... we don't come to action movies for logic and reason, but they chose a high security government facility... at least pretend to understand how it operates.

The film also introduced some ideas about what's real and what's not... which is a problem when so much of the film (including her hacker best buddy who shows up randomly and solves her problems) feels like a fever dream of unreality. We're supposed to believe its real but the script kept trying to convince me otherwise.

It only runs an hour and forty but feels so much longer. There are a couple of pretty good hand-to-hand fights to liven things up but there's so much downtime, silliness, and bumbling plot elements that it drags the film down. I kept checking the clock and being baffled how they were going to fill another hour of this.

So, yeah, not a very good film on multiple levels, its believability being a major one. It's too long, too sodden, and just a slow, slugging mess with the usual dah-dah-DAH-dah generic action movie music.

The Rose of Versailles is a Netflix Japanese anime about Marie Antoinette, her female head bodyguard, and that pesky French Revolution. When it started, I wondered if they read far enough into the notes to realize it didn't have a very good end for dear old decapitated Marie. But I needn't have worried since I guess the "Rose" of Versailles isn't the Queen at all, though you'd be pardoned to think so by the first act.

And that first act delivers a starry-eyed Marie to where it looks like its going to be her story of decadence and eating cake (side note: as a kid, I thought "let them eat cake" was a pretty good idea!). The head of her security is an long-haired anime gal who we are to pretend looks like a dude... and eventually the film follows her travails as she tries to manage soldiers and not get hitched to some scrub her dad wants her to marry.

It follows her for most of this film... which is fine with me. And it might even have been interesting if everything wasn't deathly dull, full of the sappiest melodrama, and SONGS you can yawn to. Maybe this kind of overly-florid romance is exactly the kind of thing a subset of anime fans want... but if so, that's apparently not me. Or maybe it's just this very bad movie since I do like other romantic anime films I've seen (I'm hugging you now, Your Name, Whisper of the Heart, and A Silent Voice).

If you came for the French revolution, the final act contains some of it (call it Bad Day a the Bastille, maybe). But it doesn't go all the way and heads aren't rolling by the time the credits do. Oh well, I didn't come for the historical details, I guess.

This is simply a bad movie regardless of its medium. I have no doubts that the Japanese teams can do perfectly good European adventures... this just wasn't one of them. I appreciate the effort to decor up a very glam 1700s but not the story and characters they shoved into it.

Anime Films Ranked

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 25 of 35
--> Watchlist Shuffle

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I haven't even started writing this review (oops now I have!) but I suspect the text will not justify the rating. Because i have more cranky gripes about its length and pacing than I do compliments. And yet 3.5 is a perfectly cromulent score for such a well acted and thoughtful pic.

It's a French romance between a high school girl and a college girl (with blue hair... something something title!!). It's a pretty straight-forward plot structure with cute moments, arguments, and controversy from other people in her life.

And its also 3 hours long and this story has no reason to be. It could have told just as poignant a story without multiple scenes of children being taught... or if they just energized the slow, ponderous dialog. And yet I was still into it, even if every five minutes felt like ten. It makes no sense, I should crush the movie for being so lumbering... except its clearly an intentional choice and I wasn't actually bored (somehow).

The acting is great which includes the freedom and courage these actresses had in massive ugly crying complete with snot rivers. But also, yeah, pretty aggressive full nude scenes and explicit sex. Oh my, I think I've got the vapors! If this is what a French non-porn looks like, I'd hate (ahem) to see French PornHub.

Blue is the Warmest Color is a good, thoughtful, and somewhat sluggish film that gets by on telling a human story with all the human emotions. I just wish it were half the length... which I'm sure is not a hot take even among its biggest fans.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist (Round 3)!... 24 of 35
--> Watch a movie recommended to you by someone

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#Manhole is a familiar smelling single location thriller where a dude falls down a manhole and can't get out. Seems like a remarkably narrow scenario... how hard is it to climb out of a manhole? Or follow the tunnels to another point of egress?

The movie has the answers and while I certainly had a suspicious face half the time, credit to them for filling in the potential plot holes. It now just comes down to whether "man in manhole can't escape" is really enough premise to drive a 90+ minute movie. I'm unconvinced but maybe there's just enough there for a very tepid recommendation.

My main curiosity going in was why would a movie about a dude trapped in a manhole have a hashtag in its title? But it made sense since he is the owner of a magical cellphone that works under ANY condition, allowing him to crowd source his own rescue on social media.

There's too much downtime in between unlikely scenarios and even more unlikely plot twists. I guess it kind of works itself out in the end and bonus points for the hard-scrabble attempts at suspense and thrills.

It comes very close to a lower rating but I'll give it a bit of a for utilizing crowd sourced puzzles in a way that's believable. Put a bunch of internet sleuths on anything, they are bound to collectively stumble on the answer (and sometimes not). Pretty decent premise even with some doubtful elements and one miraculous cell phone.

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My Updated Shrunken Watchlist List (Round 3)
Full Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Rules from Nina.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Challenge 2025... Round 4! I'm pushing on since I should go sub-200 films on my Watchlist about half-way through. Assuming I don't add 20-50 more (sigh).

Challenge Rules as devised by Nina

Progress: 16 of 35
Started: 5/7/25

1. 8 1/2 - Watch the movie that was added first
2. Nighthawks - Watch the movie that was added last
👀 3. Grand Prix - Watch the movie that is the longest
👀 4. Victory Through Air Power - Watch the movie that is the shortest
👀 5. Paper Moon - Watch the movie that is rated highest
👀 6. Endless Love - Watch the movie that is rated lowest
7. The Quiet Man - Watch a movie from the 1950s
👀 8. Oliver! - Watch a movie from the 1960s
9. Force 10 from Navarone - Watch a movie from the 1970s
👀 10. The Year of Living Dangerously - Watch a movie from the 1980s
11. My Neighbors the Yamadas - Watch a movie from the 1990s
12. Lady Vengeance - Watch a movie from the 2000s
👀 13. The Red Turtle - Watch a movie from the 2010s
14. Corner Office - Watch a movie from the 2020s
15. Hairspray - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears
👀 16. Cavalcade - Watch a movie from a director you haven’t watched anything from
👀 17. Sleepers - Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actors
18. Carnage - Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actresses
19. Inside Llewyn Davis - Watch the movie that is the most popular
👀 20. Panda! Go Panda! - Watch the movie that is the least popular
👀 21. The Lost World - Watch the movie that was released the earliest
22. The Kite Runner - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears
23. Cosmos - Watch a movie from your favorite genre
24. Cimmaron - Watch a movie from your least favorite genre
👀 25. Song of the Sea - Watch the movie with the most beautiful poster
👀 26. The Born Losers - Watch the movie you have been anticipating watching most
👀 27. The Wizard of Oz (1925) - Watch a movie from before you were born
28. Johnny Guitar - Watch a movie recommended to you by someone
29. QT8: The First 8 - Watch a documentary
30. The Man Who Would Be King - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears

Bonus
👀 31. Lemonade Mouth - Watch a movie directed by, written by, and led by a woman
👀 32. I Lost My Body - Watch a cult classic/movie that just seems bonkers
33. She's Gotta Have It - Watch a movie by (one of) your favorite director's that you haven't seen yet
34. The Death of Stalin - Watch the movie at the halfway point of your watchlist.
35. Pulgasari - Watch a film from a country you've never seen films from

1. 8½

   Added Earliest

2. Nighthawks

   Added Latest

3. Grand Prix

   Longest

4. Victory Through Air Power

   Shortest

5. Paper Moon

   Rated Highest

6. Endless Love

   Lowest Rated

7. The Quiet Man

   1950s

8. Oliver!

   1960s

9. Force 10 from Navarone

   1970s

10. The Year of Living Dangerously

    1980s

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Truman Show
2. Dead Poets Society
3. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
4. Picnic at Hanging Rock
5. Witness
6. Fearless
7. The Year of Living Dangerously
8. Gallipoli
9. The Mosquito Coast
10. The Cars That Ate Paris

1. Rain Man
2. Wag the Dog
3. Sleepers
4. The Natural
5. The Bay
6. Avalon
7. You Don't Know Jack
8. Good Morning, Vietnam
9. Diner
10. Tin Men

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Final Destination Bloodlines
2. Final Destination
3. Final Destination 3
4. Final Destination 2
5. Final Destination 5
6. The Final Destination

1. Your Name.
2. Grave of the Fireflies
3. The Colors Within
4. A Silent Voice: The Movie
5. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
6. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
7. Whisper of the Heart
8. In This Corner of the World
9. The Garden of Words
10. Spirited Away

...plus 77 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Seconds
2. The Manchurian Candidate
3. 52 Pick-Up
4. Grand Prix
5. Seven Days in May
6. Ronin
7. Against the Wall
8. Black Sunday
9. The Island of Dr. Moreau
10. Andersonville

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Train to Busan
2. The Return of the Living Dead
3. World War Z
4. Re-Animator
5. Day of the Dead
6. Deadgirl
7. Night of the Living Dead
8. One Cut of the Dead
9. Final Cut
10. Pet Sematary

...plus 107 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My ranking of the Reiwa Era Godzilla films I've seen so far. This era starting in 2016 and (as of this writing) is ongoing.

1. Godzilla Minus One
2. Shin Godzilla
3. Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle
4. Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters

1. Steve Jobs
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. 127 Hours
4. Yesterday
5. Millions
6. Sunshine
7. 28 Days Later
8. The Beach
9. A Life Less Ordinary
10. Trainspotting

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Challenge 2025... pretty sure this isn't gonna be the only time through this challenge.

Challenge Rules as devised by Nina

Progress: 35 of 35
Started: 1/1/25
Completed 3/13/25
Covers ranked from best to worst.

Other Completed Watchlist Rounds in 2025
Round 2
Round 3

Original List (unranked)
👀 1. Bicycle Thieves - Watch the movie that was added first
👀 2. Shin Kamen Rider - Watch the movie that was added last
👀 3. Fanny and Alexander - Watch the movie that is the longest
👀4. Guinea Pig: Devil’s Experiment - Watch the movie that is the shortest
👀 5. Tokyo Story - Watch the movie that is rated highest
👀 6. Mars Needs Mom - Watch the movie that is rated lowest
👀 7. Run Silent, Run Deep - Watch a movie from the 1950s
👀 8. Tom Jones - Watch a movie from the 1960s
👀 9. Aguire, The Wrath of God - Watch a movie from the 1970s
👀 10. Thief - Watch a movie from the 1980s
👀 11. Ocean Waves - Watch a movie from the 1990s
👀 12. Dancer in the Dark - Watch a movie from the 2000s
👀 13. Hold the Dark - Watch a movie from the 2010s
👀 14. Secret Society of Second Born Royals - Watch a movie from the 2020s
👀 15. A Separation - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears
👀 16. To Be or Not To Be - Watch a movie from a director you haven’t watched anything from
👀 17. Staying Alive - Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actors
👀 18. Carol - Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actresses
👀 19. Paris, Texas - Watch the movie that is the most popular
👀 20. Crack in the World - Watch the movie that is the least popular
👀 21. The Thief of Baghdad - Watch the movie that was released the earliest
👀 22. Alucarda - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears
👀 23. The Taking of Deborah Logan - Watch a movie from your favorite genre
👀 24. The Ox-Bow Incident - Watch a movie from your least favorite genre
👀 25. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas - Watch the movie with the most beautiful poster
👀 26. Werewolf of London - Watch the movie you have been anticipating watching most
👀 27. Klute - Watch a movie from before you were born
👀 28. Bronson - Watch a movie recommended to you by someone
👀 29. RoboDoc - Watch a documentary
👀 30. Suburbia - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears

Bonus
👀 31. The Breadwinner - Watch a movie directed by, written by, and led by a woman
👀 32. Cruel Jaws - Watch a cult classic/movie that just seems bonkers
👀 33. Jack - Watch a movie by (one of) your favorite director's that you haven't seen yet
👀 34. Dirty Mary Crazy Larry - Watch the movie at the halfway point of your watchlist.
👀 35. The Eagle Huntress - Watch a film from a country you've never seen films from

Ranked List:

1. Paris, Texas

   Most Popular

2. A Separation

   Watchlist Shuffle

3. The Eagle Huntress

   From a country you haven't seen a movie from (Mongolia)

4. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas

   Beautiful Cover

5. RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop

   Documentary

6. Dancer in the Dark

   2000s

7. The Breadwinner

   Triple F (director, written, starring a woman)

8. Aguirre, the Wrath of God

   1970s

9. Bronson

   Recommended

10. SubUrbia

    Watchlist Shuffle

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Challenge 2025... Round 3! I was gonna give a couple weeks before launching a new round... but there just aren't enough 2025 films I haven't seen yet to fill the gap. So here we go again!

Challenge Rules as devised by Nina

Progress: 35 of 35
Started: 4/14/25
Completed 5/7/25
Covers ranked from best to worst.

Other Completed Watchlist Rounds in 2025
Round 1
Round 2

Original List (unranked)

👀 1. The Circus - Watch the movie that was added first
👀 2. Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters - Watch the movie that was added last
👀 3. The Great Ziegfeld - Watch the movie that is the longest
👀 4. Chime - Watch the movie that is the shortest
👀 5. The Red Shoes - Watch the movie that is rated highest
👀 6. Abraxas - Watch the movie that is rated lowest
👀 7. To Please a Lady - Watch a movie from the 1950s
👀 8. The Guns of Navarone - Watch a movie from the 1960s
👀 9. Black Sunday - Watch a movie from the 1970s
👀 10. 52 Pick Up - Watch a movie from the 1980s
👀 11. Only Yesterday - Watch a movie from the 1990s
👀 12. Lust, Caution - Watch a movie from the 2000s
👀 13. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House - Watch a movie from the 2010s
👀 14. Sleep - Watch a movie from the 2020s
👀 15. Tommy - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears
👀 16. The Night is Short, Walk On Girl - Watch a movie from a director you haven’t watched anything from
👀 17. You Can't Take It With You - Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actors
👀18. Twixt - Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actresses
👀 19. Roma - Watch the movie that is the most popular
👀 20. Mars Needs Women - Watch the movie that is the least popular
👀 21. The Last Laugh - Watch the movie that was released the earliest
👀 22. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears
👀 23. Ring 0 - Watch a movie from your favorite genre
👀 24. The Wind - Watch a movie from your least favorite genre
👀 25. Under the Silver Lake - Watch the movie with the most beautiful poster
👀 26. Late Phases - Watch the movie you have been anticipating watching most
👀 27. Frankenstein Conquers the World - Watch a movie from before you were born
👀 28. #Manhole - Watch a movie recommended to you by someone
👀 29. The Atomic Cafe - Watch a documentary
👀 30. Blue is the Warmest Color - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears

Bonus
👀 31. Liz and the Blue Bird - Watch a movie directed by, written by, and led by a woman
👀 32. Mystics in Bali - Watch a cult classic/movie that just seems bonkers
👀 33. Knightriders - Watch a movie by (one of) your favorite director's that you haven't seen yet
👀 34. Old Yeller - Watch the movie at the halfway point of your watchlist.
👀 35. Ivalu - Watch a film from a country you've never seen films from

Ranked List:

1. Lust, Caution

   2000s

2. Roma

   Most Popular

3. Twixt

   Favorite Actress (Elle Fanning)

4. 52 Pick-Up

   1980s

5. Knightriders

   From (one of) your favorite director's that you haven't seen yet

6. The Red Shoes

   Highest Rated

7. Mystics in Bali

   Bonkers

8. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

   Watchlist Shuffle

9. The Atomic Cafe

   Documentary

10. Ivalu

    from a country you've never seen films from

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Honey, I Shrunk the Watchlist Challenge 2025... Round 2! Got through the list the first time in mid March so might as well go another round!

Challenge Rules as devised by Nina

Progress: 35 of 35
Started 3/13/25
Completed 4/11/25
Covers ranked from best to worst.

Other Completed Watchlist Rounds in 2025
Round 1
Round 3

Original List (unranked)
👀 1. In the Name of the Father - Watch the movie that was added first
👀 2. Space Battleship Yamato - Watch the movie that was added last
👀 3. Reds - Watch the movie that is the longest
👀 4. The Great Train Robbery - Watch the movie that is the shortest
👀 5. The ion of Joan of Arc - Watch the movie that is rated highest
👀 6. Foodfight - Watch the movie that is rated lowest
👀 7. Throne of Blood - Watch a movie from the 1950s
👀 8. A Man for all Seasons - Watch a movie from the 1960s
👀 9. Silver Streak - Watch a movie from the 1970s
👀 10. Evilspeak - Watch a movie from the 1980s
👀 11. Porco Rosso - Watch a movie from the 1990s
👀 12. Godzilla Against Mechagodizlla - Watch a movie from the 2000s
👀 13. In This Corner of the World - Watch a movie from the 2010s
👀 14. Krazy House - Watch a movie from the 2020s
👀 15. Now, Voyager - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears
👀 16. Alice in Wonderland (1915) - Watch a movie from a director you haven’t watched anything from
👀 17. The Shop Around the Corner - Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actors
👀 18. Margot at the Wedding - Watch a movie that stars one of your favorite actresses
👀 19. Life is Beautiful - Watch the movie that is the most popular
👀 20. Get Lamp - Watch the movie that is the least popular
👀 21. Girl Shy - Watch the movie that was released the earliest
👀 22. Holiday - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears
👀 23. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931) - Watch a movie from your favorite genre
👀 24. The Outlaw Josey Wales - Watch a movie from your least favorite genre
👀 25. Casino Royale (1967) - Watch the movie with the most beautiful poster
👀 26. Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S. - Watch the movie you have been anticipating watching most
👀 27. Criss Cross - Watch a movie from before you were born
👀 28. The Wasp - Watch a movie recommended to you by someone
👀 29. Reel Injun - Watch a documentary
👀 30. Incendies - Shuffle your watchlist and watch the first movie that appears

Bonus
👀 31. The Diary of a Teenage Girl - Watch a movie directed by, written by, and led by a woman
👀 32. Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl - Watch a cult classic/movie that just seems bonkers
👀 33. Rumble Fish - Watch a movie by (one of) your favorite director's that you haven't seen yet
👀 34. Fitzcarraldo - Watch the movie at the halfway point of your watchlist.
👀 35. The Battle of Algiers - Watch a film from a country you've never seen films from

Ranked List:

1. The ion of Joan of Arc

   Highest Rated

2. In This Corner of the World

   2010s

3. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

   Favorite Genre

4. Incendies

   Watchlist Shuffle

5. Reel Injun

   Documentary

6. Girl Shy

   Released the Earlest

7. Now, Voyager

   Watchlist Shuffle

8. The Diary of a Teenage Girl

   Directed by, written by, and led by a woman

9. The Wasp

   Recommendation

10. Throne of Blood

    1950s

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Both direct adaptations and spiritual/thematic films involving stitching together corpses and creating life through (mad) science. I have a feeling its not quite complete...

1. Edward Scissorhands
2. Re-Animator
3. Poor Things
4. May
5. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein
6. Bride of Frankenstein
7. The Bride
8. Frankenstein
9. Gods and Monsters
10. Son of Frankenstein

...plus 28 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Infinity Pool
2. Antiviral
3. Possessor

1. Gravity
2. Children of Men
3. Y Tu Mamá También
4. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
5. Roma
6. Paris Je T'aime
7. A Little Princess
8. Great Expectations

1. Bram Stoker's Dracula
2. Interview with the Vampire
3. Nosferatu
4. Only Lovers Left Alive
5. Sinners
6. Let the Right One In
7. Blade
8. Thirst
9. The Lost Boys
10. I Am Legend

...plus 147 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. t Security Area
2. Thirst
3. Oldboy
4. Decision to Leave
5. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
6. Three... Extremes
7. Stoker

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
2. Brokeback Mountain
3. Lust, Caution
4. Ride with the Devil
5. The Ice Storm
6. Life of Pi
7. Sense and Sensibility
8. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
9. Taking Woodstock
10. Gemini Man

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
2. Captain America: Civil War
3. Avengers: Endgame
4. Spider-Man: No Way Home
5. Avengers: Infinity War
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Iron Man 3
8. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
9. The Avengers
10. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

...plus 28 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
3. Arsenic and Old Lace
4. It Happened One Night
5. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
6. You Can't Take It with You

Sci-Fi x52 - 2025... a whole lot of more obscure sci-fi since I've seen a lot of the movies the prompts are pointing at. But that's ok... obscure needs love too.

Challenge Rules as devised by Michelle (Guyver Spawn)

Progress: 52 of 52
Completed: 4/25/25
Covers ranked from best to worst.

Original List (unranked)
👀 1. Seconds - Highest rated sci-fi film on your watchlist.
👀 2. Galaxina - Lowest rated sci-fi film on your watchlist.
👀 3. Time of Eve: The Movie - Watchlist Shuffle
👀 4. The World, The Flesh, and the Devil - Watch a sci-fi film before the 1960s.
👀 5. Robinson Crusoe on Mars - Watch a 1960s Sci-Fi film.
👀 6. World on a Wire - Watch a 1970s Sci-Fi film.
👀 7. Without Warning - Watch a 1980s Sci-Fi film.
👀 8. Frankenhooker - Watch a 1990s Sci-Fi film.
👀 9. The Man from Earth - Watch a 2000s Sci-Fi Film.
👀 10. Young Ones - Watch a 2010s Sci-Fi Film.
👀 11. Brian and Charles - Watch a 2020s Sci-Fi Film.
👀 12. Mickey 17 - Watch a Sci-Fi film released in 2025.
👀 13. Space Truckers - Watch a sci-fi film from someone else's challenge from last year.
👀 14. Not of This Earth - Watch a sci-fi film directed by or produced by Roger Corman.
👀 15. Invasion of the Star Creatures - Watch a sci-fi film with "Star" in the title.
👀 16. Paradise Hills - Watch a sci-fi film starring Milla Jovovich.
👀 17. Futureworld - Watch a sci-fi film by or based on Michael Crichton's sci-fi novels.
👀 18. Best Friend - Watch a short sci-fi film.
👀 19. Harbinger Down - Watch a sci-fi film starring Lance Henriksen.
👀 20. 2046 - Watch a sci-fi film from China or Hong Kong.
👀 21. Screamers: The Hunting - Watch a sci-fi film based on a Philip K. Dick novel.
👀 22. Justice League Dark: Apokalips War - Watch a sci-fi movie directed by a woman.
👀 23. Redline - Watch a sci-fi film from Letterboxd’s Top 250 Science Fiction Films.
👀 24. The Phantom Empire - Watch a sci-fi film directed by Fred Olen Ray.
👀 25. Godzilla vs. Megaguirus - Watch a sci-fi film with giant monsters or Japanese kajiu.
👀 26. 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus - Watch a film set in a future now in the past.
👀 27. Woman in the Moon - Watch a sci-fi film from .
👀 28. Shrouds - Watch a sci-fi film directed by David Cronenberg or Brandon Cronenberg.
👀 29. Dirty Computer - Watch a sci-fi movie from the Black Life on Film list.
👀 30. The Lost World (1960) - Watch a sci-fi film with dinosaurs.
👀 31. Delicatessen - Watch a french speaking sci-fi film.
👀 32. Terror Vision - Watch a sci-fi horror film.
👀 33. Mr. Nobody - Watch a sci-fi film with time travel.
👀 34. Making - Watch a sci-fi film directed by Roland Emmerich.
👀 35. First Men in the Moon - Watch a Space Opera.
👀 36. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie - Watch a sci-fi animated film.
👀 37. Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer - Watch a cyberpunk sci-fi film.
👀 38. Time Traveler: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - Watch a sci-fi film from Japan.
👀 39. Tau - Watch a sci-fi film with cyborgs or robots.
👀 40. Good Boy - Watch a killer animal sci-fi film.
👀 41. Salt and Fire - Watch a sci-fi environmental disaster film.
👀 42. The House with a Clock in its Walls - Watch a steampunk sci-fi film.
👀 43. The Day the Sky Exploded - Watch an alien invasion film.
👀 44. Quatermass 2 - Watch a sci-fi film from the UK.
👀 45. Red 11 - Watch a sci-fi film that is under 90 minutes.
👀 46. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) - Watch a sci-fi film with a mad scientist.
👀 47. Jin-Roh - Watch a sci-fi film based off an graphic novel/comic book/manga.
👀 48. Track of the Moon Beast - Watch a sci-fi film that was feature on MST3K.
👀 49. Next Gen - Watch a sci-fi film suitable for children (rated G or PG).
👀 50. Body Melt - Watch a film from the Disturbing, Controversial, Shocking, Bizarre and Messed Up list
👀 51. Never Let Me Go - Watch any sci-fi film of your choice.
👀 52. Komodo - I pick, you watch

Ranked List:

1. The Man from Earth

   2000s

2. Seconds

   Highest rated sci-fi film on your watchlist

3. Justice League Dark: Apokolips War

   Directed by a woman

4. Time of EVE: The Movie

   Watchlist Shuffle

5. Woman in the Moon

   German

6. The World, the Flesh and the Devil

   Pre 1960s

7. Next Gen

   For children (G or PG)

8. Space Truckers

   Watch a sci-fi film you haven't seen that someone else watched as part of last year's challenge.

9. The Shrouds

   David Cronenberg

10. Tau

    Robots and Cyborgs

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Fly
2. eXistenZ
3. A History of Violence
4. Eastern Promises
5. The Dead Zone
6. Dead Ringers
7. The Brood
8. The Shrouds
9. Rabid
10. Scanners

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. A Charlie Brown Christmas
2. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
3. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown
4. Happy New Year, Charlie Brown
5. It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown
6. Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown
7. Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin
8. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
9. Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!)
10. Snoopy, Come Home

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Day of the Dead
2. Night of the Living Dead
3. Knightriders
4. Creepshow
5. The Crazies
6. The Amusement Park
7. Hungry Wives
8. The Dark Half
9. Dawn of the Dead
10. Survival of the Dead

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies based on specific video game licenses ranked for their quality as movies, not their accuracy to the source material. Some of the lowest lows in cinema can be found here (but finally some are getting good).

1. Gran Turismo
2. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
3. Sonic the Hedgehog 2
4. Borderlands
5. Resident Evil: Death Island
6. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
7. Sonic the Hedgehog
8. A Minecraft Movie
9. Tomb Raider
10. Silent Hill

...plus 61 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Grave of the Fireflies
2. Kiki's Delivery Service
3. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
4. Whisper of the Heart
5. Spirited Away
6. Howl's Moving Castle
7. Ponyo
8. My Neighbor Totoro
9. From Up on Poppy Hill
10. Porco Rosso

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Bram Stoker's Dracula
2. The Godfather
3. Apocalypse Now
4. The Godfather Part II
5. Twixt
6. The Conversation
7. Tucker: The Man and His Dream
8. The Rainmaker
9. The Outsiders
10. Gardens of Stone

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. An American Werewolf in London
2. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein
3. Wolf Man
4. Wolfwalkers
5. The Wolf Man
6. Dog Soldiers
7. The Wolf of Snow Hollow
8. Werewolf by Night
9. Wolf
10. Teen Wolf

...plus 49 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Blackcoat's Daughter
2. The Monkey
3. Longlegs
4. Gretel & Hansel
5. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House

My ranking of the Millennium Era Godzilla films. Millennium being the Japanese films from 1999-2004.

I've seen others, including the recent American Monsterverse ones and a BUNCH of the ones from the Shoah Era (1954-1975) but I'm not ranking them since I was a dumb kid when I saw most of them. Maybe one day I'll marathon them and burn out my last brain cell.

1. Godzilla: Final Wars
2. Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
3. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
4. Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla
5. Godzilla vs. Megaguirus
6. Godzilla 2000: Millennium

1. The Great Dictator
2. Modern Times
3. The Gold Rush
4. The Circus
5. City Lights
6. The Immigrant
7. The Idle Class
8. A Day's Pleasure
9. The Kid
10. A Dog's Life

1. Annihilation
2. Ex Machina
3. Warfare
4. Men
5. Civil War

1. Grizzly Man
2. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
3. Encounters at the End of the World
4. Fitzcarraldo
5. Rescue Dawn
6. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds
7. Nosferatu the Vampyre
8. Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World
9. Salt and Fire
10. Cave of Forgotten Dreams

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Arrival
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Dune
4. Sicario
5. Incendies
6. Prisoners
7. Polytechnique
8. Blade Runner 2049
9. Enemy

1. Rashomon
2. Ran
3. Dreams
4. Throne of Blood
5. Ikiru
6. Seven Samurai

1. Marriage Story
2. The Squid and the Whale
3. Margot at the Wedding
4. De Palma
5. s Ha
6. White Noise
7. Greenberg
8. While We're Young

Intended for cheap horror films that exploit IP sliding into public domain. Will include some based on classic folklore that were never not in public domain but are new, familiar, cheap, and/or exploitative.

So Cinderella's Revenge is included but older movies like Jack Frost and a bunch of Santa horror are not. Yay! It's arbitrary!

1. Screamboat
2. Cinderella's Revenge
3. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2
4. Popeye the Slayer Man
5. Shiver Me Timbers
6. The Mouse Trap
7. Popeye's Revenge
8. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

1. Fury
2. End of Watch
3. Suicide Squad
4. The Beekeeper
5. A Working Man
6. Bright
7. Sabotage

1. Aladdin
2. Cinderella
3. Beauty and the Beast
4. The Jungle Book
5. Maleficent
6. Cruella
7. Snow White
8. Alice in Wonderland
9. Mulan
10. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not exactly an all-encoming view of Tyler Perry's films... a noticeable lack of Madea/comedies and some of his earliest efforts. I should do something about that maybe someday... <glances at watch> Maybe not now.

1. Good Deeds
2. The Six Triple Eight
3. Acrimony
4. Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor
5. Nobody's Fool
6. Tyler Perry's Duplicity
7. Mea Culpa
8. Tyler Perry's Divorce in the Black
9. A Madea Family Funeral

Horrorx52 - 2025... I wasn't gonna do it, but I built a list just to see if I could (given how decimated my horror watchlist was from 2024 Spooky Season). And I could.

Challenge Rules as devised by kynky

Progress: 52 of 52
Completed: 3/14/25
Covers ranked from best to worst.

<U>Original List (unranked)</U>
👀 1. Marrowbone - The most popular horror film on your watchlist.
👀 2. Exists - The lowest rated horror film on your watchlist.
👀 3. Cure - The most popular horror film you haven't seen that's not on your watchlist.
👀 4. White Dog - The horror film that's been on your watchlist the longest.
👀 5. Wolf Man - Released in 2025, theatrically if possible.
👀 6. Excision - A short that was made into a feature film
👀 7. Excision - The feature that relates to the above pick
👀 8. The Boogey Man (1980) - FREE pick #1
👀 9. The Devil's Rain - Happy Anniversary. A film released in 1975
👀 10. Skin Deep - ALTER short #1
👀 11. Invaders from Mars - Released in the 1950s
👀 12. A Tale of Two Sisters - Non English language horror #1
👀 13. Sharktopus - Made for TV
👀 14. Dolls - Bubblegum Horror
👀 15. Backcountry - Ecological Horror
👀 16. The Old Dark House - FREE pick #2
👀 17. 3 From Hell - Explore my collection
👀 18. Crimewave - Happy Anniversary. A film released in 1985
👀 19. Blood and Black Lace - Released in the 1960s
👀 20. Headshot - Any film screened at a Frightfest event.
👀 21. The Mutilator - Pick a film solely on its poster.
👀 22. The Toolbox Murders (1978) - Original.
👀 23. Toolbox Murders (2004) - Remake. (of the movie above)
👀 24. Conquest - FREE pick #3
👀 25. The Tenant - Released in the 1970s
👀 26. Monster on the Campus - Watch a film on physical media
👀 27. Mute Witness - Happy Anniversary. A film released in 1995
👀 28. Don't Torture a Duckling - Non English language horror #2
👀 29. Zaat - A horror film released in the year you were born.
👀 30. From.Beyond - ALTER short #2
👀 31. The Visitor - A horror film released in the year you turned 8.
👀 32. Lake Michigan Monster - FREE pick #4
👀 33. Dream Demon - Released in the 1980s
👀 34. The Lure - Romance & Horror
👀 35. The Initiation - Slasher: Classic era
👀 36. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Directed by a woman.
👀 37. Inseminoid - An Alien knock-off
👀 38. Mr. Vampire - Non English language horror #3
👀 39. Trauma - Released in the 1990s
👀 40. Fear No Evil (1981) - FREE pick #5
👀 41. Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack - KAIJU
👀 42. The J-Horror Virus - Documentary
👀 43. Maniac (2012) - Slasher: Revival era
👀 44. Sweet Home - Analog horror
👀 45. Dawn of the Deaf - ALTER short #3
👀 46. Haze - Released in the 2000s
👀 47. The Girl Who Knew Too Much - Non English language horror #4
👀 48. Resolution - FREE pick #6
👀 49. The City of the Dead - Cults
👀 50. Ænigma - Pick a film from someone else's list, based solely by the poster.
👀 51. Black Death - Released in the 2010s
👀 52. The Nightingale - Horror adjacent

<U>Ranked List:</U>

1. White Dog

   Oldest horror on watchlist

2. Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

   Kaiju

3. The Nightingale

   Horror adjacent

4. Wolf Man

   Released in 2025

5. Cure

   The most popular horror film you haven't seen

6. The Toolbox Murders

   Original

7. Excision

   Feature film that was based on a short film

8. We Have Always Lived in the Castle

   Directed by a woman.

9. Toolbox Murders

   Remake

10. Dream Demon

    1980s

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Devil's Rejects
2. Halloween
3. Halloween II
4. The Munsters
5. House of 1000 Corpses
6. 3 from Hell
7. The Lords of Salem

1. Out of Sight
2. Traffic
3. Kimi
4. Erin Brockovich
5. Contagion
6. The Limey
7. Black Bag
8. Side Effects
9. Haywire
10. The Informant!

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranked list of "screen life" films... which are similar to found footage films only without the fiction of the characters holding cameras or security cameras. Emulates mouse clicks, keyboard typing, and similar activities across multiple webcam devices.

1. Missing
2. Succubus
3. Searching
4. Profile
5. Unfriended: Dark Web
6. Host
7. We're All Going to the World's Fair
8. CTRL
9. Unfriended
10. Safer at Home

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Three Musketeers
• Monster Hunter
• Mortal Kombat
• Resident Evil
• Pompeii
• Event Horizon
• Death Race
• Resident Evil: Afterlife
• AVP: Alien vs. Predator
• In the Lost Lands

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Parasite
2. The Host
3. Memories of Murder
4. Snowpiercer
5. Mother
6. Mickey 17
7. Okja

I put off making a ranked list of Argento films because A) I hadn't seen enough of them and B) I sometimes don't "get" him. But maybe that's ok?

1. Tenebre
2. Deep Red
3. Phenomena
4. Opera
5. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
6. Dark Glasses
7. Trauma
8. The Cat o' Nine Tails
9. Two Evil Eyes
10. Suspiria

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Re-Animator
2. Space Truckers
3. From Beyond
4. Dolls
5. Castle Freak
6. Dagon
7. The Pit and the Pendulum
8. Robot Jox
9. Fortress

1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
2. Poltergeist
3. Toolbox Murders
4. Invaders from Mars
5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
6. Body Bags
7. Salem's Lot
8. The Funhouse
9. Lifeforce
10. Djinn

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

So many shark movies, so few on this list. But there are the ones I watched in full... not repelled like a sourpuss too cool to finish Sharknado. I should fill in the gaps (between the teeth) and really chew on more of these stinkers.

1. Jaws
2. The Shallows
3. Sharksploitation
4. Jaws 2
5. Under Paris
6. Open Water 2: Adrift
7. Meg 2: The Trench
8. Open Water
9. The Meg
10. No Way Up

...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.