Categories
Film

Like it’s 1993

I overshot the end of 2023, but I finally finished my movie marathon for 1993 (following 1967, 1968, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992). There were still quite a few films I was thinking of watching (I didn’t even get to Jurassic Park), but after 30 I felt like it was enough, especially since this year I still have 1984 and 1994 to get through. Below is the list of all 30 movies I watched, with links to all of the mini reviews I wrote on Letterboxd (and here’s the X thread). Next up, I’ll take a 1-2 month break, and then kick off 1984, which will be the final 80s marathon I do, since I kickstarted all of this with 1985, and so will have done the entire decade.

  1. Addams Family Values
  2. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
  3. Body Snatchers
  4. Carlito’s Way
  5. Dazed and Confused
  6. Demolition Man
  7. Falling Down
  8. Farewell My Concubine
  9. Groundhog Day
  10. Hard Target
  11. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
  12. M. Butterfly
  13. National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1
  14. Needful Things
  15. Patlabor 2: The Movie
  16. Robocop 3
  17. Sonatine
  18. The Age of Innocence
  19. The Dark Half
  20. The Firm
  21. The Fugitive
  22. The Heroic Trio
  23. The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk
  24. The Nightmare Before Christmas
  25. The Pelican Brief
  26. The Scent of Green Papaya
  27. Three Colors: Blue
  28. Tombstone
  29. True Romance
  30. Wayne’s World 2
Categories
Anime Film TV

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2023

I just realized the other day that I had completely forgotten to put up a post once I finished my annual horror movie marathon this past October (here’s the X thread to prove it), and so here goes. I still love doing this, the 6th year (666?) doing it, following 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. I’m impressed I managed to watch this much, considering that in October we had an 11-day trip to Japan, and also moved to a new apartment. Here then is the list of what I watched, with links to my mini reviews on Letterboxd for the movies.

  1. American Horror Story: Delicate
  2. Body Snatchers
  3. Castlevania: Nocturne
  4. Disco Inferno
  5. Five Night at Freddy’s
  6. Flashback
  7. Influencer
  8. Needful Things
  9. No One Will Save You
  10. Pariah Nexus
  11. Resident Evil: Death Island
  12. Smile
  13. Talk to Me
  14. The Blackening
  15. The Boogeyman
  16. The Dark Half
  17. The Exorcist: Believer
  18. The Fall of the House of Usher
  19. The Midnight Club
  20. Undead Girl Murder Farce
  21. Underwater
Categories
Film

Like it’s 1983

My latest year-based movie marathon (following 1967, 1968, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992) is done and dusted, this time for 1983. I capped it at twenty-five, which is a decent amount — there were still a few films I was meaning to watch (The Right Stuff, The Outsiders, The Meaning of Life, among others) but I felt like it was time to move on. Overall, it was a fun year to revisit, with lots of stuff I loved as a kid, and it was certainly a big year for Stephen King adaptations (Christine, Cujo, The Dead Zone) — and hey, it’s not every year you get two James Bond films. The full lineup was chronicled in this Twitter thread, but below is the full list, with links to my mini reviews on Letterboxd. Next up? 1993 of course.

  1. Christine
  2. Cujo
  3. Flashdance
  4. Joy Sticks
  5. Lone Wolf McQuade
  6. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
  7. National Lampoon’s Vacation
  8. Never Say Never Again
  9. Octopussy
  10. Private School
  11. Psycho II
  12. Return of the Jedi
  13. Risky Business
  14. Rock & Rule
  15. Scarface
  16. Sleepaway Camp
  17. Smokey and the Bandit Part 3
  18. Strange Brew
  19. Stroker Ace
  20. Sudden Impact
  21. The Dead Zone
  22. Trading Places
  23. Twilight Zone: The Movie
  24. Videodrome
  25. WarGames
Categories
Film

Like it’s 1992

We’re still 2022 for a couple of days, and I’m glad I was able to finish my latest movie marathon, for 1992, before year’s end — and now joining all of these other year-based marathons I’ve done in recent years: 1967, 1968, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991. As always, my list of movies to watch was quite a bit longer than what I ended up watching, but I usually stop when I feel like I’ve had my fill and that I watched the stuff that I wanted to watch the most (and sometimes there are movies that I watched not that long ago). So the final count for 1992 was nineteen films, which are listed below with links to my mini reviews on Letterboxd (and here’s the original Twitter thread, where I screwed up the numbering near the end). Next up, I’ll be looking to do marathons for 1983 and 1993 in 2023.

  1. A Few Good Men
  2. Alien 3
  3. Army of Darkness
  4. Basic Instinct
  5. Batman Returns
  6. Bram Stoker’s Dracula
  7. Freejack
  8. Hardboiled
  9. Man Bites Dog
  10. Once Upon a Time in China II
  11. Patriot Games
  12. Police Story 3: Supercop
  13. Reservoir Dogs
  14. Strictly Ballroom
  15. The Last of the Mohicans
  16. The Lover
  17. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
  18. Unforgiven
  19. Wayne’s World
Categories
Film

Like it’s 1982

As I was preparing my annual “favorite media” post, I just realized that I forgot to post a recap of my 1982 movie marathon, which I finished in September (joining 1967, 1968, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991). It was a pretty fun year I think, and I quite enjoyed a lot of these. Below, a list of the films I watched, with links to my short reviews on Letterboxd — and here’s the Twitter thread.

  1. 48 Hrs.
  2. Airplane II: The Sequel
  3. Blade Runner
  4. Creepshow
  5. E.T.
  6. Evil Under the Sun
  7. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
  8. Firefox
  9. First Blood
  10. Friday the 13th Part III
  11. MegaForce
  12. Night Shift
  13. Rocky III
  14. The Thing
  15. Tron
Categories
Film

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2022

This year marks my fifth year doing a horror movie marathon in October (following 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021), and it was also unfortunately the shortest one as I had to deal with personal issues during the majority of the month, which affected my movie viewing — in fact, I watched almost half of these in just the last few days. But it was still fun to do (here’s the Twitter thread I did), and although I just list the movies I watched here (with links to my mini reviews on Letterboxd), I also watched two horror-themed TV series: Midnight Club and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (I still have a couple of episode to watch on the former, and was disappointed in the latter, and kinda stopped watching during episode 6). So here’s what I watched, and I’ll now be taking a break from horror for a while to focus on doing my 1992 movie marathon before the year is over.

  1. Barbarian
  2. Bodies Bodies Bodies
  3. Halloween Ends
  4. Hellraiser
  5. His House
  6. Pearl
  7. Raven’s Hollow
  8. Resurrection
  9. Sissy
  10. Studio 666
  11. Terrifier 2
  12. Tragedy Girls
  13. V/H/S/99
  14. Watcher
  15. Wendell & Wild
  16. Werewolf by Night
Categories
Film

Like it’s 1991

It’s been quite a while since I’ve shared a new year-based movie marathon post — since September of last year in fact, for 1981 (joining 1967, 1968, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990) — and it’s one that I ended up aborting earlier than expected, in the sense that there were quite a few more films from 1991 that I had originally planned on watching (at least double what is listed here), but I just somehow lost the drive (maybe partly due to the move to Shanghai happening), and I was starting to really get the itch to head back to the 80s, which I did for my current 1982 viewing marathon (which I’m chronicling in this Twitter thread). But despite bailing out early, I still wanted to share the dozen of films I watched from 1991, with links to my mini reviews on Letterboxd.

  1. Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey
  2. Cape Fear
  3. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
  4. Lupin the Third: Napoleon’s Dictionary
  5. Omen IV: The Awakening
  6. Once Upon a Time in China
  7. Point Break
  8. Roujin Z
  9. Silent Mobius
  10. The Last Boy Scout
  11. The People Under the Stairs
  12. The Silence of the Lambs

Categories
Film

The Films of Zhang Yimou

In April of last year I wanted to watch Zhang Yimou’s Shadow, one of his newer films that I hadn’t seen et, and at the time I decided that I would start by doing a massive re-watch of his work. During my university years, when I made a switch to studying History, and then veered into Asian Studies, his films had a very strong influence on me. It had been ages since I had revisited his films, and there were a few (more recent ones) that I had missed as well. It took me longer than expected, as I took a long break at some point, but today I finally capped this movie marathon of 17 films with Shadow. The ones I didn’t get to watch I just wasn’t able to find ways to watch them — there are a couple of older (lesser known) ones, as well as a few films from the last decade, including three films he has released since Shadow, which came out in 2018. I hope to be able to watch these as well at some point. But for now, you can read my mini reviews that I posted on Letterboxed via the links below — I also shared them all in this Twitter thread.

  1. Red Sorghum (1988)
  2. Ju Dou (1990)
  3. Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
  4. The Story of Qiu Ju (1992)
  5. To Live (1994)
  6. Shanghai Triad (1995)
  7. Keep Cool (1997)
  8. The Road Home (1999)
  9. Happy Times (2000)
  10. Hero (2002)
  11. House of Flying Daggers (2004)
  12. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005)
  13. Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)
  14. The Flowers of War (2011)
  15. Coming Home (2014)
  16. The Great Wall (2016)
  17. Shadow (2018)

Categories
Film

Thrillin’ and Chillin’ in October 2021

As I’ve been doing for the past three years (2018, 2019, 2020), I devoted October to a lot of horror watching. The main change this year is that I’ve decided to focus only on films, whereas in past years I’d also include TV series (that said, I still watched some horror-related shows, like Midnight Mass and Brand New Cherry Flavor). The final number is lower than previous years, and I blame video games for that, especially the 30+ hours I spent playing Far Cry 6. So below you’ll find the full list of the 23 films I watched, with links to the mini reviews I wrote up on the Letterboxd website. It was good fun, and I’m sure I’ll be doing it again next year.

  1. A Quiet Place Part II
  2. Candyman (2021)
  3. Carrie
  4. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
  5. Halloween Kills
  6. Malignant
  7. Nightbooks
  8. Old
  9. Omen IV: The Awakening
  10. Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
  11. Phantasm
  12. Prisoners of the Ghostland
  13. Saint Maud
  14. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
  15. The Forever Purge
  16. The Neon Demon
  17. The Night House
  18. The Nowhere Inn
  19. The People Under the Stairs
  20. The Silence of the Lambs
  21. Titane
  22. Vampires vs. the Bronx
  23. We Summon the Darkness
Categories
Film

Like it’s 1981

It certainly took a while (most of this year), but my latest year-based movie marathon (previously 1967, 1968, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990) is now done. 1981 was certainly an interesting year, and there was a lot more I wanted to watch than in 1980 — in the end I capped it at the 24 films you see listed below, but there were still a few more on my list, but I just felt like it was time to move on. The other thing that happened this year was that I stopped doing my mini write-ups on this blog, and instead started doing them on the Letterboxd site — so all of the films listed below link to those reviews, which have the bonus that I give them a star-rating as well. So if you’re curious to see what I thought of all these films, I invite you to click through the titles, and you can also follow me on Letterboxd for all of the movie reviews I share there (since I started using the site, I now review every film I watch, not just the ones that are part of my movie marathons). And in terms of marathons, what’s next? Well, that would be 1991, which I will kick off soon.

  1. American Pop
  2. Death Hunt
  3. Excalibur
  4. Escape from New York
  5. For Your Eyes Only
  6. Friday the 13th Part 2
  7. Halloween II
  8. Heavy Metal
  9. History of the World Part 1
  10. My Bloody Valentine
  11. Night Hawks
  12. Omen III: The Final Conflict
  13. Outland
  14. Porky’s
  15. Raiders of the Lost Ark
  16. Scanners
  17. Stripes
  18. The Cannonball Run
  19. The Decline of Western Civilization
  20. The Evil Dead
  21. The Funhouse
  22. The Howling
  23. The Road Warrior
  24. Time Bandits