Another roll-up of classic (here defined as Pre-2000) films I’ve watched recently. 

1921 – The Phantom Carriage – a pretty good morality play/thriller/ghost story about a carriage that carries Death to his scheduled appointments. More really about living people and their struggles with being good while they have the chance.

1955 – To Catch a Thief – A pretty great Hitchcock film I should have seen ages ago. Grace Kelly is amazing… Cary Grant ain’t so bad either… but together they are electric. 

1958 – Bell, Book, and Candle – New York witch-about-town Kim Novak puts the whammy on neighbor Jimmy Stewarts so he bails on his fiancé and falls in love with her. Pretty charming rom-com that surely inspired Bewitched (and, by extension, I Dream of Jeannie… and Wandavision).

1960 – Ocean’s Eleven – No thanks, I’ll stick to the Clooney version. This wasn’t half as cool as I’d been lead to believe… but maybe that’s the difference between being alive when these cats lived in pop culture and watching it in their shadow. 

1968 – Hour of the Wolf – a much better Ingmar Bergman experience than my kind of disappointed Seventh Seal watch. Wolf is a slow burn creep up on you flick that doesn’t feel like a horror movie at first… but reveals itself well in its second half. Even if you’re left scratching your head.

1974 – Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – early Martin Scorsese… and somehow the progenitor of the goofy Alice sitcom from the 70s. Ellen Busrstyn plays a woman just trying to get along after her husband’s death. A warm and moving flick. 

1984 – Stop Making Sense – Classic Talking Heads concert film. I’m not a concert film watching kinda guy and it turns out I don’t know as many Talking Heads song as I thought. But the performers have energy and David Byrne got some wiggly arms and legs so I more-or-less enjoyed it.

1986 – Slaughter High – a surprisingly decent ’80s slasher film… even if they couldn’t figure out how to light a set to save their lives. It’s not very scary but its charming in its corny comedy and decent kills.

1988 – Cameron’s Closet – a sci-if/horror movie I pretty much only knew from the VHS box art back in the day. It should have stayed that… not at all worth watching… a very lame, no budget movie that I was hoping would be an ’80s hidden gem.

1988 – Maniac Cop – A survivable horror/action film, a low budget 80s film with some visual and stunt ambitions but generally kind of sluggish and uninteresting.

1994 – Mosquito – I have no excuse… this was a bad film. Though it had pretty good practical giant mosquito puppets. 

1996 – Tales from the Hood – a far better anthology film than I expected. Not quite the trading in gangsta stereotypes I thought it would be. Probably one of the most consistently good (enough) anthologies where none of the short films were stinkers.

1998 – Rounders – Not exactly my forte… I don’t care about poker and I fear green felt tables so I didn’t get out of this what a bunch of my friends did back in the day. But it was still a pretty solid film about a topic that befuddles me. Was a trip seeing Baby Matt Damon again.