What movies have you seen recently?

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Star Trek II and Star Trek Into Darkness, both theater. At the Star Trek II screening I won an old Start Trek comic in a William Shatner impersonation contest and I drank Romulan ale.

At home I watched The Mouse That Roared starring Peter Sellars and William Hartnell.

Frankenstein (2004)

Not to be confused with the other 2004 Frankenstein. That one was a three-hour adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel made for the Hallmark Channel. This one is loosely based on a Dean Koontz novel about detectives finding Dr. Frankenstein and his creature still alive in the modern day. Frank is up to some naughty stuff and the creature is trying to stop him. It's from the same guy who directed the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and Conan the Barbarian, but thankfully it's better than those.

Thomas Kretschmann (as Frank) and Vincent Perez (as the creature) are terrific. Parker Posey and Adam Goldberg are the detectives. She's fine. He's lousy. Michael Madsen is a serial killer they're after (one of Frank's creations), and he's awful.

The production values are terrific for a TV movie, but the story never gets going because they were saving all their ideas for a TV series that never happened. There's a subplot about Posey's autistic younger brother that goes nowhere and just pads the running time, and the cops visit people on the other side of town to get information when a phone call would have sufficed. And why isn't the creature ugly? He just has a scar on his face and looks like he needs a shower. At one point someone says he looks like he belongs in a freak show, but such a remark doesn't make any sense based on what we see.

It's well-directed, and Kretschmann and Perez elevate it to something it wouldn't have been otherwise. But it doesn't leave much of an impression.

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)

Neil Jordan's lavish adaptation of Anne Rice's 1976 novel which sees Brad Pitt's conflicted and solitary vampire tell his life story to Christian Slater's fearless reporter in modern day San Francisco. Includes a thoroughly creepy turn from a young Kirsten Dunst.

Slow in places, but let's face facts, it still dropkicks Twilight into oblivion.

The War of the Worlds

The 1953 film based more on the radio story than the book by H.G. Welles about Martians who invade Earth. Great film!

Catch-22

World War II movie about a man who wants to be ceritifed insane so he can stop flying missions. Strange movie that was rather hard to follow,

"Side Effects." Steven Soderbergh's most recent film, which stars Rooney Mara as a woman who kills her husband while sleepwalking as a side effect of her prescribed antidepressant, and Jude Law as her psychiatrist who is criticized for prescribing her this drug, but he is suspicious that the case might not be as simple as it seems.

Gangster Squad.

I've seen better movies with the same premise - L.A. Confidential, Mulholland Falls - but still enjoyable.
Historical spoiler - Mickey Cohen went to prison for tax evasion, not murder.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Not a big Trek fan, but it was very good. Simon Pegg is scene stealing and Benedict Cumberbatch is sneering and charismatic.

Wednesday, I went to the cinema to watch From Up on Poppy Hill.

Thursday, I watched The Host, Bullet to the Head, Silver Linings Playbook and Escape from Planet Earth 3-D at the local second-run cinema.

Then Friday, I went to a local cinema for a late-night screening of the classic 1982 slasher movie, Pieces.

I wish I could do this every week.