Aimed at an international audience—and indeed, it was the first Mexican film to be nominated for an Academy Award, as well as Mexico’s entry in the 1960 Cannes Film Festival—Macario takes the form of a macabre fable about an impoverished peasant (Ignacio López Tarso) who is kind to a mysterious stranger on the Day of the Dead, and is rewarded with the power to heal the sick.
TCM has an overview. Rotten Tomatoes has a consensus critics score of 100%.
Hush is a 2016 horror film about a deaf/mute woman who is terrorized in her remote and isolated home. I watched it on Netflix.
trailer:
Rotten Tomatoes has a critics concensure score of 93%. Roger Ebert's site calls it "an old-fashioned home invasion thriller that works on its own modest terms".
Attack the Block is a 2011 comedy science fiction horror film starring John Boyega and Jodie Whittaker. It's about a teenage street gang who defend themselves from alien invaders on a South London council estate on Guy Fawkes Night. This is great fun. I watched it on Amazon Prime.
Monsters is a 2010 post-apocalyptic horror/science fiction film, where a NASA probe has crashed in Mexico leading to the appearance of enormous alien creatures that are now spreading. This is a great entry into the monster movie category of the horror genre. Plex has links to where you can see it streaming.
trailer:
Roger Ebert's site gives it a positive review and says, "It's based on characters, relationships, fear and mostly unseen menace, and although the movie's special effects are important, it's not about special effects." The Guardian calls it "a thrilling postmodern sci-fi film". Empire Online closes a positive review by calling it "sci-fi filmmaking at its best."
Let Me In is the 2010 American remake of the excellent 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In. This is a pretty straight re-make. I watched it on Hulu, but it's free on Tubi.
trailer:
The Hollywood Reporter says, ""Let Me In" achieves the rare feat of remaining rigorously reverential to its source material while emerging as a highly accomplished work in its own right. " Time Out gives it high marks and says, "perhaps the new film’s greatest coup is that it refuses to romanticise childhood loneliness". Roger Ebert's site has a positive review. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus score of 88%.
Mulberry Street is a 2006 horror film about a rat-borne plague in NYC that turns people into ugly, blood-thirsty monsters. I saw it through, but a lot of housework got done while it was on. I watched it on Amazon Prime.
Split Second is a 1992 post-apocalyptic science fiction action horror film. The cast is fun and includes Rutger Hauer, Kim Cattrall, Neil Duncan, Michael J. Pollard, Alun Armstrong, and Pete Postlethwaite. I watched it on Amazon Prime, but you can see it free on Tubi or Crackle. Big, dumb, splashy fun with Rutger Hauer. What's not to like?
Cold Skin is a horror film about a meteorologist who has come to a remote island to take his one-year position replacing the previous man only to find the previous man missing. I find this an impressive film, definitely re-watchable. It's more a tragedy than a horror film, if you ask me. I watched it on Amazon Prime. You can watch it free on PlutoTV and the Roku channel.
His House is a 2020 award-winning horror thriller about a Sudanese refugee couple who is placed in a house in an English town. They have a lot of history to deal with as they make their transition into a foreign culture, and the house plays an active role. It was interesting to see Matt Smith in this. I hesitate to call it horror, though I understand why they did. I watched it on Netflix.
The Passing is a 2014 horror short film. from IMDb: "A mysterious woman, a missing child and an ominous past converge on two detectives in this frightening tale."
Bird Box is a 2018 post-apocalyptic horror film starring Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, and B D Wong. I watched it on Netflix.
trailer:
Roger Ebert's site praises the "well-directed ensemble," "In particular, Sandra Bullock does typically solid work, buoyed by a great supporting cast that includes the should-be-a-star Trevante Rhodes, Jacki Weaver, Danielle Macdonald, Sarah Paulson, and John Malkovich".
1 BR is a 2019 horror film about a young woman who wants to start a new life in Los Angeles. She finds the perfect apartment only to find out the residents will do anything to make her join their cult. I watched it on Netflix.
trailer:
Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus score of 88%. Roger Ebert's site ends a positive review with this: "There’s a light at the end of the tunnel for Sarah, and seeing her claw her way to it is often fun, albeit in a gasp-inducing sort of way."
Godzilla vs. Hedorah (also known as Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster), the 11th film in this Godzilla franchise, is a 1971 Japanese Toho studios monster movie. I watched it on HBO MAX.
On My Way is a 2016 short horror film. from the description on the Youtube video embedded below: "While on his way to a Halloween party, a man drives through a town, slowly realizing it's gone insane."
The Perfection is a 2018 psychological thriller horror film. I watched it on Netflix. This has a heavy body horror component, which I didn't know going in. Horrifying, but them that likes it speak well of it.
and visit the bloggers who've decided to participate in this week's T Stands for Tuesday online gathering. I have a family birthday today and won't be linking up this week.
Latch is a 2017 horror short film about what happens when a boy dares his sister to play a game involving a chant and a match. In a closet. Sounds like harmless fun, right?
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep is a 1966 Japanese monster movie, a product of Toho Studios. It is the seventh film in the Godzilla franchise. I watched it on HBO MAX, which has a lot of these movies. It's available free on Plex.
and also available via Youtube through their YouTube Movies and Shows channel:
YouTube has it listed with a PG rating, and I can watch it without signing in; so if you get an age-restricted notice it's likely a result of settings on your end.
Invasion of Astro-Monster is a 1965 monster movie directed by Ishiro Honda and is a Japanese/American co-production. It is the sixth film in the Godzilla franchise. I watched it on HBO MAX. They don't have all of the monster movies, but they have a lot of them. It's also available free on Tubi
and via YouTube:
I'm able to watch this video without any trouble and without jumping through any hoops. This is not an age-restricted video, though some websites have a default of 13 years for accessing their site so you might have to sign in to some sites to view the video. Also, your own personal/work browser settings can be an issue. If you get an age-restricted notice on your end I'm not sure what's causing that, but it's not an issue with the "rating" of the video itself.
I don't understand why some people are getting age-restricted notices on this YouTube video.
When I click on it, it plays.
When I click on it at the YouTube site, it plays.
Rodan is a 1956 Japanese monster movie, a Toho Studio film directed by Ishirō Honda. This was Toho's first kaiju film to be shot in color. George Takei did some of the English-language dubbing.
via Youtube:
Here's a screenshot of a man involved in a discussion of global warming:
Godzilla Raids Again is a 1955 monster movie, the second of the Godzilla movies following the initial 1954 Gojira. I'm surprised it's not better known. It's quite watchable. You can see it in English here:
This video has an interesting history of the film:
The Bat is a 1959 mystery thriller starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Those two actors ought to make it worth your while to check out. This is the fourth film adaptation of the story. I watched it on Tubi, but it's widely available including on YouTube:
Do you know what it is to be poor? Not poor with the arrogant poverty complained of by certain people who have five or six thousand a year to live upon, and who yet swear they can hardly manage to make both ends meet, but really poor,—downright, cruelly, hideously poor, with a poverty that is graceless, sordid and miserable? Poverty that compels you to dress in your one suit of clothes till it is worn threadbare,—that denies you clean linen on account of the ruinous charges of washerwomen,—that robs you of your own self-respect, and causes you to slink along the streets vaguely abashed, instead of walking erect among your fellow-men in independent ease,—this is the sort of poverty I mean. This is the grinding curse that keeps down noble aspiration under a load of ignoble care; this is the moral cancer that eats into the heart of an otherwise well-intentioned human creature and makes him envious and malignant, and inclined to the use of dynamite. When he sees the fat idle woman of society passing by in her luxurious carriage, lolling back lazily, her face mottled with the purple and red signs of superfluous eating,—when he observes the brainless and sensual man of fashion smoking and dawdling away the hours in the Park, as if all the world and its millions of honest hard workers were created solely for the casual diversion of the so-called 2‘upper’ classes,—then the good blood in him turns to gall, and his suffering spirit rises in fierce rebellion, crying out—“Why in God’s name, should this injustice be? Why should a worthless lounger have his pockets full of gold by mere chance and heritage, while I, toiling wearily from morn till midnight, can scarce afford myself a satisfying meal?”
Why indeed! Why should the wicked flourish like a green bay-tree? I have often thought about it. Now however I believe I could help to solve the problem out of my own personal experience. But ... such an experience! Who will credit it? Who will believe that anything so strange and terrific ever chanced to the lot of a mortal man? No one. Yet it is true;—truer than much so-called truth. Moreover I know that many men are living through many such incidents as have occurred to me, under precisely the same influence, conscious perhaps at times, that they are in the tangles of sin, but too weak of will to break the net in which they have become voluntarily imprisoned. Will they be taught, I wonder, the lesson I have learned? In the same bitter school, under the same formidable taskmaster? Will they realize as I have been forced to do,—aye, to the very fibres of my intellectual perception,—the vast, individual, active Mind, which behind all matter, works unceasingly, though silently, a very eternal and positive God? If so, then dark problems will become clear to them, and what seems injustice in the world will prove pure equity! But I do not write with any hope of either persuading or enlightening my fellow-men. I know their obstinacy too well;—I can gauge it by my own. My proud belief in myself was, at one time, not to be outdone by any human unit on the face of the globe. And I am aware that others are in similar case. I merely intend to relate the various incidents of my career in due order exactly as they happened,—leaving to more confident heads the business of propounding and answering the riddles of human existence as best they may.
During a certain bitter winter, long remembered for its arctic severity, when a great wave of intense cold spread 3freezing influences not alone over the happy isles of Britain, but throughout all Europe, I, Geoffrey Tempest, was alone in London and well-nigh starving.
...
Because this blog does not consist of a single focus topic I chose the name Divers and Sundry where "Divers" means being of many and various kinds, and "Sundry" means consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds.
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