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Imagine if the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark were an entire movie. That’s basically what The Keep is, with a little bit of Hellraiser and a whole lot of Tangerine Dream added for spice. Its narrative doesn’t have the precision you normally see in a Michael Mann movie (in fact, quite the opposite), but it’s visually and aurally stunning, and who among us couldn’t use more Nazis getting absolutely annihilated by spectral light?

Figured I should watch/play this before it gets memory-holed next week, just to see what the fuss was about. It’s not the most mind-blowing entry in the series (at least of the ones I’ve seen), but it’s got some competent performances in it (Will Poulter is particularly good) and the interactivity gimmick is kinda fun, if not terribly original in its structure. I hope someone preserves this just from a digital history perspective, but I feel satisfied with what I got out of it from an evening.

Watched on Saturday January 18, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday December 10, 2024.

*as Stefon*

This movie has everything! An emotional narrative about friendships torn apart by fascism and forged by fighting it…thrilling action sequences…a healthy dose of raucous boob humor for comic relief…Nazis getting blown up in ridiculous ways…

Watched on Friday May 2, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 1, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 26, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 26, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 23, 2025.

Only took me 3 1/2 months after Christmas to finally watch this! This movie, while featuring some stuff I found fairly off-putting, does have a lot to recommend it. If you're familiar with the comparisons to Home Alone, be advised that the similarities pretty much end at "little rich boy vs home invasion." Here, the invasion part poses much more menace - the antagonist is not only a lot more willing and able to do horrific violence, but smart enough not to fall into every trap set for him. Precocious as he is, Thomas is still a frightened little boy facing a dangerous opponent who is bigger, stronger, and more durable, and even the advantages he has with a house full of gizmos and secret ages aren't always the equalizer one might expect them to be in a film where a child is the hero. It's a clever subversion of the "kid outsmarts clueless adults" trope, though it is more uncomfortable to watch a kid put through the ringer than say, a 33-year old divorced police detective.

Also, not being French, I was unfamiliar with the Minitel/TELETEL technology featured in this movie and which inspired the original title (3615 code Père Noël). It's a fascinating time capsule for that reason, not to mention how easily something like that maps onto more recent internet paradigms, which prevents it from feeling dated despite its technological specificity.

Don't even how I landed on this, but someone had ed it to YouTube, so I checked it out while I was doing some other task on the computer. It's not good by any stretch of the imagination - Short Circuit, as others have said, is the far superior version of whatever this is - but Charles Rocket does a serviceable job with an ill-defined character and it's hard not to enjoy Hoyt Axton whenever he's on screen. Also, I do love an android puppet head, though it has but 9 brief seconds of screen time, all of which are in the opening credits. They'd probably have gotten more mileage out of it if this had been picked up to series, but I appreciate this knockoff Terminator puppet for its brief moment. Also, found myself frequently chuckling at the pure cheese of the musical score, which sounds for all the world like it came from a b-grade Sierra Online game.

The cast alone is worth the watch. Seriously, it’s like a whole SVU season’s worth of guest stars packed into a single movie.

Watched on Thursday December 19, 2024.

Watched on Saturday November 30, 2024.

Watched on Saturday November 30, 2024.

Watched on Sunday November 10, 2024.

Feels like several episodes of the TV show with the ad breaks removed and edited into a single feature film. Which is to say, it’s narratively a hash, but still great fun to watch, especially if you like the TV show and extra-specially if you’re in some kind of delirium state (in my case, on a red-eye flight after having been awake for 22 hours).

Where have all the over-annunciators gone?

Watched on Sunday October 27, 2024.

Watched on Sunday October 27, 2024.

Watched on Saturday October 26, 2024.

Watched on Friday October 18, 2024.

Entertaining, though it feels like part of the story is missing and the male gaziness is definitely of its era. The apparent cheapness of the production is kind of charming, and the cast sells it well enough that it isn’t a distraction. Indeed, the acting is probably the biggest part of what makes this movie work. How else would a tavern scene shot with only closeups of two actors’ faces be believable?

Watched on Thursday October 17, 2024.

Watched on Wednesday October 9, 2024.

Watched on Saturday September 28, 2024.

Watched on Sunday September 8, 2024.

Watched on Sunday September 1, 2024.

Watched on Thursday August 29, 2024.

Deserves credit for stretching a budget of less than zero to the absolute limit, and somehow almost pulling it off. It looks like about 20% of this movie’s establishing shows to were filmed from the backseat of a moving car when nobody was looking, the main shooting location appears to be industrial ruins that makes you hope the cast and crew were up to date on their tetanus shots, and you gotta love the way the film tries to make things work that it absolutely cannot afford (like having a dummy head on visible fishing line stand in for a character in an establishing shot when that character is supposed to be a levitating head). Narrative coherence it doesn’t have, nor any sort of polish, but dammit, the fact that this movie shouldn’t exist but does is some kind of achievement!

If I were watching this in a theater around the time it came out, I might have fonder memories of this movie. Maybe my low opinion of this movie comes from watching it almost 90 years later on a computer by my lonesome, but without the energy of an audience to buoy it, the flaws as a narrative film are harder to overlook. Octopus features a few good lines/gags, is competently scored, and of course has an absolutely iconic makeup effect, but otherwise this movie is pretty incoherent. At least it was only 55 minutes (though it probably could have been less) and my curiosity about the aforementioned makeup effect's context has been completely satisfied.

Watched on Monday August 19, 2024.

Watched on Monday July 1, 2024.

Absolutely delivers on the title. As a viewer, you feel every one of those multi-hundred beavers.

Watched on Sunday July 28, 2024.

Watched on Sunday July 28, 2024.

If you enjoyed The Lighthouse but wish it were more like an Adult Swim series, you owe it to yourself to check this out. It’s brilliantly stupid in the best way.

Watched on Saturday July 20, 2024.

Solid and very watchable. Generally good chemistry between the two leads, and the villain (who is essentially a parasitic id) is pretty entertaining to watch rampage through LA like a more venal version of the Eggar suit from Men In Black. Points deducted for a musical score that punched me right in the misophonia and for being a little telegraph-happy. Also, I wish the filmmakers had been given the budget to show the villain actually body-swapping more than once - not every time, but at least one more good body horror moment would’ve been nice. Bonus points for featuring a talented dog actor, a surprise Danny Trejo cameo, a great climactic scene taking place in the same hotel as the video for the Steve Perry song “Oh Sherrie,” and an absolute banger of an end credits song.

Damn, this is a fun movie. It’s both reverent of the 50s genre movies it references, but also more than willing to dig into that toy box and get ridiculous with it. And despite being decidedly an 80s movie with 80s tropes (in addition to the 50s ones) it’s refreshingly non-homophonic for its milieu, which is no small thing. Hell, even Dekker’s follow up to this, which was ostensibly a film for kids, failed to avoid that pitfall, so credit where credit is due for sidestepping it here.

Watched on Wednesday May 8, 2024.

I being unimpressed the first time I watched this, but I put it on this weekend as a falling-asleep movie just for the hell of it and I kinda enjoyed it more this time around.

I can understand why scriptwriter Joe Haldeman may have been frustrated that Gordon quashed his ambitions to write a deeper movie. Far from being a thoughtful Cold War allegory, the tone of this movie is generally pretty silly - not outright comedy, but definitely campy melodrama where the main characters happen to be mecha pilots. Haldeman's vision would have been preferable if this were a big-budget epic, but for a shoestring production (which still managed to be the most expensive movie Empire Pictures ever made), I can understand why that may not have been top of mind. At least the actors make the most of the purposefully hokey material and leave no piece of scenery unchewed.

Speaking of scenery, it's pretty evident where most of this movie's budget did and didn't go. The design of the robots themselves is pretty good (tip of the hat to my man Ron Cobb), and some of the sets and costumes have a charming "cassette-futurist" aesthetic. Others look super cheap, specifically the flying car that appears in a few scenes and the literally paper-thin walls of the protagonist's apartment. Also, are we to believe that underwear is not a thing in the Robot Jox universe? Because the movie includes at least two scenes of characters getting into or out of their jumpsuits and both feature full dorsal nudity.

I think the first time I watched this, I was hoping for something along the lines of what Haldeman wanted, but on this second I can appreciate the movie for what it is - the cinematic equivalent of making toy robots fight each other. I'd emphatically rather watch this than any of Michael Bay's Transformers movies.

This review may contain spoilers.

Counterpoint: Ernie Hudson was done incredibly dirty by this ending. There was no reason for his character to not survive, and honestly, if they were going to kill characters at the last minute maybe Peter Weller should have died trying to save him/destroy the monster, leaving Amanda Pays as the final girl who gets to KO the soulless executive. Would have solidified this film as Bechdel-ing, at least.

Surprisingly watchable and fun for a movie that cribs so blatantly from much better ones, due in no small part to the absolutely stacked cast, some delightfully gross puppets, and impressive production values. It’s definitely no Alien or The Thing or even Outland or Society, but if movies taking place in the deep ocean are a favorite sub-genre (no pun intended) of yours, more than likely you’re going to enjoy the 98 minutes spent with this one, as long as you’re not expecting The Abyss.

This review may contain spoilers.

Borden didn't know what knot he tied on Angier's wife's wrist which arguably caused her to drown because he didn't actually tie it - his twin did - but he can't tell Angier that, and that is basically the point from which everything escalates and spins out of control. Considering how much maiming, murdering, and violating of the laws of nature result from that one bit of withheld information, one could almost see this as an incredibly dark farce.

Watched on Saturday March 2, 2024.

Definitely a lesser film compared to Escape from NewYork, but not without its bright spots. I like how the premise fleshes out the idea of the area outside the alleged prison being an authoritarian nightmare, and the ending (no spoilers) feels satisfying in that context, even if the overall pacing and plot feel like a knockoff. Some fun performances from a great cast as well.

My biggest issue is, unlike its predecessor, the setting doesn’t feel nearly as well-defined. Sure, there are a few impressive set pieces and mattes, but they lack the specificity of EFNY’s environs, and tend to feel like generic post-apocalyptic sound stages. That comes across as a lack of attention to detail and makes this outing feel distinctly half-hearted. Also, cool that Pam Grier’s trans character is a badass, but the cartoonish way they pitched her voice down and Snake’s need to constantly deadname her are definitely unflattering artifacts of the era in which this movie was made.

Probably not one I’ll revisit as often as its predecessor, but I’m glad I saw it once.

Originally was going to give this 1.5 stars, but considering that I gave Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie that rating and somehow it’s better than this, I felt compelled to knock half a star off. I’d rate it lower, but the fact that this movie features a herd of invisible T-rexes and a boxing kangaroo is just barely enough to keep me from feeling depressed that I watched this.

Watched on Sunday February 18, 2024.

Watched on Friday January 19, 2024.

10 favorite movies about male friendships, though not all of them feature Canadians (but at least one does!). Like most of my lists, this is in chronological order of release year (alphabetical if two have the same year).

Honorable mention: Cast Away (2000) - Technically, Wilson is an inanimate object who never speaks, but one could make the case that the Tom Hanks' character interacts with the volleyball as he might with a male friend.

• A Boy and His Dog

  Yes, one of the friends is a dog. It's a talking dog, though, and more importantly for this list, a male dog, so it still counts.

• Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• Withnail & I
• Lethal Weapon 2
• Wayne's World
• The Big Lebowski
• Smoke Signals
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• Shaun of the Dead
• Stan & Ollie

10 favorite fantasy films released before 1980s. Sci-fi is on a separate list.

• The Wizard of Oz
• Münchhausen
• The Seventh Seal
• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
• Mary Poppins
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
• Charlotte's Web
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• Oh, God!
• The Lord of the Rings

10 favorite live-action sci-fi films released before 1980. Fantasy films will be dealt with on a separate list.

• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• Godzilla
• Forbidden Planet
• La Jetée
• X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Silent Running
• World on a Wire
• The Man Who Fell to Earth
• Alien

10 favorites with a specific location in the title, as in, if you told someone the location, a follow-up question probably wouldn't be, "Which one?" In fact, because you could use the title to place the film, you could argue that these movies are "found footage!"

...

...no, of course not. That's silly. I'll...I'll see myself out. Tip your waiters.

• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• Escape from New York
• Paris, Texas
• Chungking Express
• Fargo
• Mulholland Drive
• My Winnipeg
• Shutter Island
• Train to Busan
• Lake Michigan Monster

...black, bitter, and ever-so-slightly gritty.

Okay, honestly, that sounds like some pretty terrible coffee. But there are some great movies which fit that description! Here are 10 of my favorites.

• Kind Hearts and Coronets
• A Bucket of Blood
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• Repo Man
• After Hours
• Withnail & I
• Serial Mom
• Fargo
• Death at a Funeral
• Sorry to Bother You

10 favorite films where actors play multiple roles. Some are more universally acclaimed, some are the quality of performance in the dual role, and some are just such big swings I have to respect them (*cough* cloudatlas *cough*).

• The Wizard of Oz
• Kind Hearts and Coronets
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• Dead Ringers
• Face/Off
• Adaptation.
• Cloud Atlas
• Us
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

• King Kong
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Planet of the Apes
• Altered States
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
• Babe: Pig in the City
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes
• Kong: Skull Island
• Nope

10 favorite movies that absolutely need a bathroom break (unless you're some kind of human-camel hybrid who never needs to pee).

• World on a Wire
• Stalker
• Amadeus
• Ran
• The Last Temptation of Christ
• Heat
• Saving Private Ryan
• Downfall
• Boyhood
• The Hateful Eight

• Rebecca
• Harvey
• Marty
• Carrie
• Birdy
• Akira
• Amélie
• Mandy
• Emma.
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

10 Favorite ing characters in horror films

• Rosemary's Baby

  Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet

• The Wicker Man

  Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle

• An American Werewolf in London

  Griffin Dunne as Jack Goodman

• C.H.U.D.

  Daniel Stern as A.J. "The Reverend" Shepherd

• Night of the Creeps

  Tom Atkins as Det. Ray Cameron

• Pet Sematary

  Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall

• The Frighteners

  Jeffrey Combs as Milton Dammers

• House of 1000 Corpses

  Karen Black as Mother Firefly

• Train to Busan

  Ma Dong-seok as Sang-hwa

• Mandy

  Bill Duke as Caruthers

Okay, under 100K views hardly makes something "forgotten," but I like alliteration, dang it!

• The Court Jester
• The Absent-Minded Professor
• The Music Man

  I'm SHOCKED this has fewer than 100k views, frankly.

• The Secret of NIMH

  To be honest, this could be a difficult watch, especially with the wee ones - there is some traumatic stuff in here, and if you do watch it you'll probably want to check in with them afterwards in case they're scared or upset.

• Flight of the Navigator
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

  This film is a hard PG, so certainly take that opportunity to discuss it afterward. There's nothing in here that you wouldn't see on a trip to any major metropolitan art museum, but 18th Century Europe does have its eccentricities that may need to be contextualized. If you're feeling particularly ambitious, you could also use the topic of Sarah Polley's experience on making this film as a jumping off point to talk about child labor and the hazards thereof.

• Fly Away Home
• Shaolin Soccer
• The Painting
• The Kid Who Would Be King

10 favorite films where, for whatever reason, the characters spend most of the runtime sweating buckets.

• A Streetcar Named Desire
• 12 Angry Men
• Inherit the Wind
• Cool Hand Luke
• Wake in Fright
• Body Heat
• Do the Right Thing
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
• In the Heights

Taut thrillers (105 minutes or less.)

• The Night of the Hunter
• Duel
• Sisters
• The Parallax View
• Fargo
• Perfect Blue
• Hard Candy
• Get Out
• Upgrade
• How to Blow Up a Pipeline

• Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
• Bye Bye Birdie
• The King of Comedy
• Otaku no Video
• Last Action Hero
• Perfect Blue
• Galaxy Quest
• Big Fan
• I Know That Voice
• Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made

10 Favorite anthology movies.

• Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
• History of the World: Part I
• Neo Tokyo
• Do the Right Thing
• Chungking Express
• Memories
• Happiness
• Traffic
• You, the Living
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

10 Favorite film adaptations of stage plays/musicals.

• Dracula
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• 12 Angry Men
• The Music Man
• My Fair Lady
• Cabaret
• Amadeus
• Little Shop of Horrors
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch

10 favorite horror movies from the 1980s. One per director - otherwise, this would have been a Carpenter-heavy list.

• The Shining
• The Slumber Party Massacre
• The Thing
• Re-Animator
• The Fly
• Night of the Creeps
• Evil Dead II
• The Lost Boys
• Society
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man

• Soylent Green
• Zardoz
• Stalker
• Escape from New York
• Brazil
• Dark City
• The Matrix
• Battle Royale
• Snowpiercer
• Mad Max: Fury Road

10 favorite American movies that were nominated for the Palm D'or.

For my list of 10 of Non-English language movies which were nominated, see here.

For movies that are in English, but not American, see here.

• Marty
• Easy Rider
• The Conversation
• Thief
• Birdy
• Do the Right Thing
• Mulholland Drive
• No Country for Old Men
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Sicario

Ended up splitting this category up. These are 10 movies I like from the Palm D'or nominees list that are all in a language other than English.

For English but non-American movies, see here.

For American movies, see here.

• The Seventh Seal
• Fantastic Planet
• Songs from the Second Floor
• Oldboy
• Pan's Labyrinth
• Persepolis
• The White Ribbon
• The Skin I Live In
• Son of Saul
• Benedetta

10 Favorite non-American Palm D'or-nominated movies in English.

For my list of 10 of Non-English language movies which were nominated, see here.

For American movies which were nominated, see here.

letterboxd.telechargerjeux.org/sachertortoise/list/do-yall-got-ketchup-in-this-here-bistro/

• The Third Man
• Wake in Fright
• Walkabout
• Midnight Express
• Fitzcarraldo
• Moonlighting
• Paris, Texas
• The General
• Cosmopolis
• Mr. Turner

High tech, low life.

• Johnny Mnemonic

  I WANT THE CLUB SANDWICH! I WANT THE COLD, MEXICAN BEER!

• The Matrix
• Strange Days
• World on a Wire
• The Lawnmower Man
• Hardware
• Blade Runner
• Dark City
• New Rose Hotel
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• King Kong
• Sullivan's Travels
• Singin' in the Rain
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit
• Barton Fink
• Ed Wood
• Cecil B. Demented
• Mulholland Drive
• Be Kind Rewind
• Dolemite Is My Name

• The Gold Rush
• M
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Walkabout
• Silent Movie
• Eraserhead
• The Illusionist
• The Artist
• Under the Skin
• The Shallows

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• Big Trouble in Little China
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
• When Harry Met Sally...
• Wayne's World
• Dumb and Dumber
• Clueless
• Whisper of the Heart
• To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• My Fair Lady
• Midnight Cowboy
• Blazing Saddles
• Being There
• Altered States
• Fitzcarraldo
• Trading Places
• Paris, Texas
• The Karate Kid
• RoboCop

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Real Genius
• Europa Europa
• Paris Is Burning
• Strange Days
• Bound
• Fat Girl
• Whale Rider
• American Splendor
• The Farewell
• Fire of Love

10 favorite movies that were nominated for a Best Director Academy Award...but didn't win. Please note that I don't necessarily even think these films should have won in their year or were snubbed - I just like 'em is all.

• The Third Man
• 12 Angry Men
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Midnight Express
• The Elephant Man
• The Last Temptation of Christ
• Fargo
• Chicago
• Boyhood
• Mad Max: Fury Road

10 favorite movies which were nominated for a Best Director Academy Award...and won.

• Casablanca
• Marty
• West Side Story
• The Graduate
• Cabaret
• Amadeus
• Titanic
• Saving Private Ryan
• No Country for Old Men
• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

10 favorites which were nominated for best editing.

• North by Northwest
• Bullitt
• A Clockwork Orange
• Midnight Express
• Amadeus
• The Matrix
• Memento
• 12 Years a Slave
• Boyhood
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

Favorite Oscar-nominated animated films.

• Spirited Away
• The Incredibles
• Happy Feet
• Persepolis
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
• Kubo and the Two Strings
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
• Turning Red
• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Movies good for a 5+ hour flight.

• Seven Samurai
• My Fair Lady
• Hello, Dolly!
• Solaris
• World on a Wire
• The Right Stuff
• Paris, Texas
• Boyhood
• PK

10 great movies to watch during a 60-120 minute flight. Picked for their quality, short runtime, and lack of visual content which might draw unwanted attention from those sitting near you (I'm assuming you're using headphones for audio because you're not a sociopath).

• Duck Soup
• A Bucket of Blood
• The Atomic Cafe
• This Is Spinal Tap
• Paris Is Burning
• The Iron Giant
• Chicken Run
• My Winnipeg
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi
• My Octopus Teacher

• The Gold Rush
• Five Easy Pieces
• Drunken Master
• Alien
• The Blues Brothers
• Tampopo
• Beetlejuice
• Pulp Fiction
• Heat
• Inside Man

• Cat People
• The Graduate
• Body Heat
• Blue Velvet
• The Lair of the White Worm
• Basic Instinct
• Batman Returns
• Bound
• Jennifer's Body
• Ex Machina

Some of my most famous works derived from pulp sources. Some are pulp themselves, done really well, some draw inspiration from them, but these are among my favorites.

• Double Indemnity
• A Bucket of Blood
• Cape Fear
• The Harder They Come
• Mad Max
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Re-Animator
• Hard Boiled
• Starship Troopers
• Mandy

10 gems of cinematic squalor

• Midnight Cowboy
• Eraserhead
• Stalker
• Moonlighting
• C.H.U.D.
• Withnail & I
• Hardware
• Candyman
• Joe's Apartment
• Son of Saul

• Cat People
• Carrie
• The Lair of the White Worm
• Single White Female
• Chungking Express
• Perfect Blue
• Amélie
• Mulholland Drive
• Under the Skin
• Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

10 films about the Jewish experience across time and space. Honorable mention to "History of the World Part One"

• Funny Girl
• The Frisco Kid
• Dirty Dancing
• Europa Europa
• The Harmonists
• A Serious Man
• The Rabbi's Cat
• Hannah Arendt
• Felix and Meira
• Disobedience

10 nocturnal favorites.

• Night of the Living Dead
• American Graffiti
• The Warriors
• Escape from New York
• Blade Runner
• Repo Man
• After Hours
• Dark City
• Collateral
• What We Do in the Shadows

• The Wizard of Oz
• The Jungle Book
• Planet of the Apes
• The Day of the Dolphin
• A Boy and His Dog
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Joe's Apartment
• Princess Mononoke
• Up
• The Witch

All of these are technically love triangle movies.

• The Graduate
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Blue Velvet
• Dead Ringers
• Edward Scissorhands
• Starship Troopers
• Being John Malkovich
• Vanilla Sky
• Shortbus
• PK

Films either dealing with a play, or using some sort of theatrical framing device (or both)

• To Be or Not to Be
• The Producers
• Cabaret
• Amadeus
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
• Waiting for Guffman
• Rushmore
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch
• Bronson
• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Part II - 10 more movie scientist performances which delight me.

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• The Invisible Man
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• Young Frankenstein
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Re-Animator
• Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
• Jurassic Park
• Splice
• The Martian

• Island of Lost Souls
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Altered States
• Ghostbusters
• Back to the Future
• The Fly
• Spider-Man 2
• Annihilation

Movies where dolls/toys take on a life of their own, some figuratively, but most quite literally.

• Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
• Corduroy
• Akira
• Toy Story
• Small Soldiers
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• Lars and the Real Girl
• 9
• Marwencol
• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Ten movies which futz with the timeline to great effect.

• Back to the Future Part II
• Groundhog Day
• Twelve Monkeys
• Lost Highway
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
• Run Lola Run
• Donnie Darko
• Predestination
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

10 Movies where, arguably, the primary setting is an office environment

• Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
• Nine to Five
• Trading Places
• Brazil
• Vampire's Kiss
• Working Girl
• Gremlins 2: The New Batch
• The Hudsucker Proxy
• Office Space

Ten films about writing and authors

• Sullivan's Travels
• The Shining
• Barton Fink
• Whisper of the Heart
• Adaptation.
• American Splendor
• The Lives of Others
• Julie & Julia
• The Sessions
• Hannah Arendt

10 iconic interrogation scenes from cinema

• Marathon Man
• Brazil
• Manhunter
• Basic Instinct
• The Matrix
• Shrek
• Oldboy
• Inglourious Basterds
• Kick-Ass
• Looper