October 2013

1. Brain Dead aka. Dead Alive (Peter Jackson, 1992/New Zealand) [Rewatch]

2. The Cremator (Juraj Herz, 1968/Czechoslovakia)

3. The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1953/France-Italy)

4. Kagemusha (Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1980/Japan-USA) [International Cut] 

5. Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013/USA)

6. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009/Germany-USA) [Rewatch]

7. The Keep (Michael Mann, 1983/USA) [Rewatch]

8. A Woman After A Killer Butterfly aka. Salinnabileul ggotneun yeoja (Ki-young Kim, 1978/South Korea)

9. Ringu (Dir. Hideo Nakata, 1998) [Rewatch]

10. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1922/Sweden) [Rewatch]

11. Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2011/Russia)

12. La tête contre les murs (Georges Franju, 1959/France) [Rewatch]

13. Macross Plus (Shinichirô Watanabe and Shôji Kawamori, 1994/Japan) [Rewatch]

14. Straight on Till Morning (Peter Collinson, 1972/UK)

15. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966/Sweden) [Rewatch]

16. Horrors of Malformed Men (Teruo Ishii, 1969/Japan)

17. Blue Rita aka. Das Frauenhaus (Jesus Franco, 1977/France-Switzerland)

18. Twixt (Francis Ford Coppola, 2011/USA)

19. Two Orphan Vampires (Jean Rollin, 1997/France)

20. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1982/USA) [Rewatch]

Honorable Mentions: Time to Leave (François Ozon, 2005/France); Mean Creek (Jacob Aaron Estes, 2004/USA) [Rewatch]; Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, 1974/UK); GenoCyber Episode 1 (Koichi Ohata, 1994/Japan); V/H/S/2 (2013/Canada-Indonesia-USA); Jack the Ripper (Jesus Franco, 1976/Switzerland-West Germany)

I love Brain Dead too much to not put it at my number 1. Forgive my blasphemy. But its a strong list of non-horror films in the twenty shown, including a film I saw at the multiplex I never even knew existed until just before seeing it, showing new movies can be great. As for horror, of course I completed Halloween 31 For 31 even with the delay that took place. What have I learnt from this and the other horror films I watched for Halloween? I could say "watch old horror films only" like a contrarian, but its a bit more complicated than that, especially since I saw V/H/S 2 (2013) and liked it. Frankly though, there has been a considerable drop in artistic quality in the sort of horror films that get wider attention; they're not interesting, for the most part, at all and the few gems are unconventional and neglected for a dull Chucky sequel. In fact all the horror films on this list are not conventional. Even Halloween III would have been a bizarre work to see, back when it was first released, for people expecting a Halloween sequel, which sadly did cause horror cinema to lose a potential franchise with a difference in favor for more regurgitation of Michael Myers. With a global bent for this year's series, this affirms this idea further, as I've seen some very generic films even from countries like Iceland, while the really interesting films are products of very distinct directors, very distinct source material like Japanese author Edogawa Rampo, and/or sheer bloody mindedness. Revisiting a film like Ringu, which kicked off a whole boom in Asian horror movies, you realise that even a source that eventually led to generic films could be so drastically different from its offspring, especially the film's slow, methodical, water obsessed tone.This month affirms that I need to be even more picky than I am with horror cinema. Why waste my time with something that looks generic just from the DVD cover when I could see more films by the likes of Ki-young Kim? If there was a poster boy for this Top Twenty list, he's up there because his film on the list was made independently by himself, ostracised from the Korean film industry, with the money his wife gained from her dentistry career. That's devotion.

Worst film or work? There were two things I gave up on again, but one, the anime TV series Highschool of the Dead (2010), will be attempted again at some point. It'll be a messy experience to get beyond a single episode, with its gratuitous animated images of schoolgirl's underwear and breast physics like plastic bags full of tap water, and that was just the first episode before I gave up, but I want to be an anime completionist, especially for horror anime as it isn't as common as I wish it would be considering the flexibility animation could provide. Worst work I got through? Unfortunately Jess Franco made Bloody Moon (1981); for every great film of his I'm seeing, it feels like there has to be a terrible one to balance out the discrepancy of enjoying his films too much. Cosplay Complex (2002), a terrible anime so bad I'm not actually going to review it on here, its fetishes no way near as bad as the pandering, lazy tone of the whole thing in general. The Filipino film The Killing of Satan (1983), for the Halloween project, was the worst film of the whole series of reviews, slapdash to the point its no longer entertaining. Nude Nuns with Big Guns (2010) showed what true offensiveness in films is, laziness making it truly offending because it feels like the creator(s) are grasping for straws with the most base content without any daring or intelligent transgression to it. And it managed to make the concept of looking at beautiful naked women, for a heterosexual male like myself, a numbing experience with no real physical engagement to it, and on a serious point, probably the discovery for me of what it really feels like to see human sexuality turned into a produce with no humanity to it, especially on such a cheap looking film. Your libido will die of boredom before you get to the issues of sexism. The real worst film though, from the year of my birth, was Houseboat Horror (1989). Wait for the review of that one...

61 Works Watched In October

15 Rewatched Works

46 New Works Seen

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1. http://www.forafewmoviesmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/deadalive_01.jpg

2. http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4335729664_7bd097a763_o.jpg

3. http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/the-golden-coach/w448/the-golden-coach.jpg

4. http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e189/drunkenmaster42/Kagemusha.jpg

5. http://nextprojection.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Prisoners_2013_1.jpg

6. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Inglourious-Basterds-3.jpg

7. http://wondersinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/thekeep11.png

8. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3rzvs40WLgSv2bVHEjKjZSH_Pz1QpADtxHJPlhF_vXyTEPlOkr3tXw5piU8WCxI_3rqlN4aZ4FHTZKpLbiFHEiToGluDF-ZiF0Xuw1xRtWDGQwrhYD2Sko1u_1zdDraqcwBg6N3ShZuI/s1600/KB02.jpg

9. http://www.squabblebox.co.uk/admin/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Ring.1998.BluRay.720p.x264-MySiLU-007.jpg

10. http://classixquest.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/hax1.jpg

11. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI0lk4_tK39t7xEoCwMLCJCaCOaZQUnrnUYmnPboCV6zO169jVz3k2PmLO13fH0gWdakdK6SmMPVrUyweZGyPsrGrPQpNCmC4vrxQ7vlZS6h4dJTwdT-vG5GdZnBIeyyNB_T_dFTBHfVQ/s400/vlcsnap-2012-08-25-15h00m52s54.png

12. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6qs1VR3Rdb8T6ZDSfa_CPH1r7_7ULBw6t5rX4GHyfUAlRlxvWfEmcw3OwgwlQ8BNT3e60OPnR0_tZOfubBj_3V7gGIzy6O3Wkx37pk7c-hvEYpAGqiSubWbtqfGYtwPOQlnlH15VKGrY/s1600/la_tete_contre_les_mursPDVD_035%252520.jpg

13. http://www.yukianimereviews.com/images/macrossplus11.jpg

14. http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6192/6041055562_4df2cd6431_z.jpg

15. http://lisathatcher.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/persona6.jpg

16. http://theuraniumcafe.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/horrors_of_malformed_men-16.jpg

17. http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/lobby_cards/blue_rita_glc_01.jpg

18. http://image.toutlecine.com/photos/t/w/i/twixt-twixt-twixt-2011-19-g.jpg

19. http://admin.highdefdigest.com/picture/original/32954

20. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvbScp72NRDCzrY4SP_0PsKCAjDrG-VMxSogMO7wjIHQaxcnhItQxZgxvNUXL-AxkXh9bbr9hC8yo-ifz27ZEfsgHNstVABTonKHfREEWll90qXK5Aj3l6Q3KWjKvMAAcmVKZ1vje9ofvt/s400/halloween+3.jpg