Gigi (1958)
[3] What a shitty Best Picture winner Gigi is. It's a musical about an unhappy playboy (Louis Jourdan) and an unhappy debutante (Leslie Caron) who fall in love, but then out of love, and back in love, and out, and…
Basic Instinct (1992)
[8] Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Soldier of Orange) directs this sexually super-charged Hitchcockian thriller about a San Francisco detective (Michael Douglas) investigating a seductive writer (Sharon Stone) about a murder case that plays out similar to one of her novels. As…
Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut (1990/2014)
[8] See review of the Nightbreed theatrical cut here. Clive Barker's Nightbreed was originally released in 1990, dumped onto a handful of screens by the studio and barely marketed. It was a financial failure, and for the director it was…
Nightbreed (1990)
[8] Nightbreed, directed by Clive Barker and based on his book Cabal, wants to be a sprawling horror-fantasy epic for the ages. But the multifaceted story is told so quickly and haphazardly in the studio's cut of the film, the…
Creepshow (1982)
[8] George Romero directs an anthology from Stephen King in this homage to colorful horror comics of the 1950s. All five tales are pretty good. In Father's Day, a deceased patriarch comes back to life to torment his heirs. Then…
Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
[7] This decent little horror anthology produced by Bryan Singer serves up four tales of Halloween fright. Each of the stories feels like a small-town myth, the kind that haunts a community for generations. I particularly liked the one about…
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
[6] Reviled in its initial release for lacking any appearance of Michael Myers, truth is Halloween III ain't that bad, it's just mis-titled. It plays like an expanded episode of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, centered around an oafish hero…
Mystery Date (1991)
[4] Ethan Hawke stars in this action comedy about a shy high school boy whose older brother sets him up on a date with the girl next door. While Mystery Date starts out like a John Hughes movie, it quickly…
Earthquake (1974)
[5] Earthquake is one of many disaster films that came out in the early '70s -- the kind where a rag-tag team of waning celebrities band together to get thrown around for a couple of hours. In this one, Charlton…
The Letter (1940)
[4] Bette Davis stars as a woman charged with murder. She claims it was self defense, but opposing counsel discovers a letter that threatens her verdict -- a letter she wrote to the deceased on the day she shot him...…