From Dusk Till Dawn (5 Stars)

"From Dusk Till Dawn" is a film that practically splits itself in half; a crime thriller mutates into a vampire siege, and the clash between its two central families sits right at the heart of that transformation.

On one side we have the Gecko brothers, Seth and Richie; criminals defined by chaos, instinct and a complete absence of moral restraint. George Clooney plays Seth as cool and calculating, a man who understands violence as a tool, while Quentin Tarantino makes Richie something far more disturbing; impulsive, erratic, and barely tethered to reality. Their family bond is real, but it's warped; loyalty exists, yet it's rooted in survival rather than care.

In stark contrast stands the Fuller family; a broken but fundamentally decent unit led by Jacob, a former preacher struggling with his faith after personal tragedy. Harvey Keitel gives Jacob a weary gravity, a man trying to hold his children together even as his beliefs crumble. Kate and Scott represent a more recognisable familial dynamic; tension, grief and affection all coexisting in an uneasy balance. Where the Geckos are united by crime, the Fullers are held together by something more fragile; the remnants of love and moral responsibility.

The early part of the film thrives on this contrast. The Geckos dominate through fear, forcing the Fullers into submission, yet there's a quiet sense that the balance could shift at any moment. The Fullers' decency becomes a kind of resistance; they endure rather than retaliate, and that endurance gives them a moral strength that the Geckos lack.

When the film pivots into horror at the Titty Twister, the dynamic evolves rather than disappears. Faced with a supernatural threat, the distinction between the families begins to blur. Survival becomes the common ground; Seth's ruthlessness suddenly has value, while Jacob's moral compass regains purpose. The Geckos' amorality and the Fullers' ethics, once opposed, now function as complementary traits in a fight neither family could survive alone.

What makes "From Dusk Till Dawn" compelling isn't just its genre switch; it's how that shift forces both families to confront what defines them. The Geckos, stripped of control, reveal flickers of reluctant cooperation, while the Fullers, pushed to extremes, discover a capacity for violence they would never have chosen.

By the end, the film suggests that family is less about moral purity and more about what people are willing to do for one another under pressure. The Geckos start as predators and the Fullers as victims, but the night reduces everyone to the same basic instinct; survive, protect, endure. It's in that levelling that the film finds its strange, blood-soaked unity.

Success Rate:  + 1.1

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Two Orphan Vampires (5 Stars)

"Two Orphan Vampires" is Jean Rollin's 18th film, made in 1997. It's one of his last films, but in many ways it's his most typical film. It barely pretends to belong to the horror genre, even as it trades in vampires, blood and nocturnal wandering. The action, if it can even be called action, is downplayed. The film is like an abstract painting, creating emotions in everyone who watches it.

The film follows two blind girls who live in an orphanage. What the nuns don't know is that they're only blind in the daytime. At night they can see everything in a blue tint. They sneak out of the orphanage to drink blood, sometimes human blood, sometimes animals. They're not vampires in the conventional sense. They frequently live and die. How often they remain dead varies, but they always claw their way back to the surface. Dying is a time of rest for them. They've lived for a long time. In the 15th Century they were worshipped as Goddesses by the Aztecs. In a single ceremony 40,000 men were laid out for them to feed, all of them volunteers. Towards the end of the film we find out that they're much older, and there are hints that they've existed since the beginning of time, before Adam and Eve.

Rollin’s pacing is always languid, but here it feels almost defiant. Scenes linger far beyond what mainstream storytelling would allow; conversations drift, actions feel ritualistic, and long stretches pass where nothing much happens in a traditional sense. Yet this isn’t indulgence for its own sake. The slow rhythm creates a kind of trance state, pulling the viewer into the same suspended existence as the protagonists; caught between day and night, blindness and vision, innocence and predation.

The two leads carry the film less through dialogue than presence. Their performances are deliberately stylised, almost affectless at times, which only adds to their otherworldly quality. They don’t behave like typical horror figures, nor like realistic teenagers; they exist somewhere in between, embodying Rollin’s recurring fascination with fragile, doomed femininity. There’s an undercurrent of sadness running through everything they do, as though their vampirism is less a curse than an extension of an already isolated existence.

Visually, the film is steeped in a muted, dreamlike atmosphere. Rollin contrasts the drabness of daytime interiors with the freedom of the night, where cemeteries, empty streets and shadowy corners become spaces of strange beauty. His usual gothic imagery is present but subdued, less about spectacle and more about texture and feeling. The result is a Paris that feels detached from reality; familiar, yet ghostly and removed.

Anyone approaching "Two Orphan Vampires" expecting tension, scares or even a clear narrative arc will likely come away frustrated. This is a film that resists those pleasures almost entirely. But for those willing to meet it on its own terms, it offers something rarer; a melancholy, dreamlike meditation on isolation, identity and the strange freedoms of the night. It’s less a story you follow than a mood you inhabit, and it lingers precisely because it never fully resolves into something concrete.

Isn't it romantic? (5 Stars)

When I first reviewed "Isn't it romantic?" in 2019 I said that it was a Netflix original film and would probably not be released on disc. Fortunately, I was wrong. It took a few years, but now it's available on Blu-Ray in the USA. Click on the image above if you don't believe me. It's region free, as all Blu-Rays should be, so you can play it anywhere.

It's a bright, self-aware romantic comedy that plays like both a parody and a celebration of the genre it mocks. Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson and starring Rebel Wilson, the film follows a cynical New Yorker who wakes up trapped inside a glossy romcom fantasy world after a head injury.

What makes it work is its willingness to lean into the clichés it's satirising; sweeping musical numbers, impossibly attractive love interests and picture-perfect cityscapes are all pushed to absurd extremes. Wilson carries the film with sharp comic timing, while Liam Hemsworth and Adam DeVine knowingly play into archetypes of the genre.

It doesn't completely escape the conventions it pokes fun at, and its message about self-love is delivered a little too neatly, but that's arguably part of the joke. Light, fast-paced and intermittently clever, it's an enjoyable riff on romantic comedy tropes rather than a full reinvention of them.

Success Rate:  - 0.4

Sagrada Reset Part 2 (4 Stars)

This is a direct sequel to "Sagrada Reset Part 1". It was released only two months later, which gives the impression that the two parts were originally made as a single film, but the four hour running time was deemed too long. In the film's chronology, the second film starts six days after the end of the first film.

In the first film Soma was brought back to life after her suicide was undone by her time travelling friends. That was two years previously. Ever since then she's been hiding at Haruki's house. She doesn't want anyone except for her closest friends to know she's alive, because it's important to her that events unfold the same way as they did when she was dead. Now it's time to reveal herself as the Second Priestess.

I didn't mention in my review of the last film that there's an organisation called the Bureau which watches over the people in the town with abilities. Supposedly the Bureau has been created to prevent misuse of the powers, but the Bureau's leader Urachi actually wants to remove everyone's powers and make the town normal again. I apologise, I couldn't figure out why he wants to do this. The films are too complex for me to understand everything after a single viewing. I can't help feeling that things have been cut from the comics that would have explained everything.

Soma's intention, and the reason she committed suicide, was to prevent the special powers in the town from being removed.

There was a character in the first film, Kagaya, that I considered so insignificant that I didn't mention him. He's Urachi's personal assistant, responsible for opening and shutting doors and carrying Urachi's diary. That doesn't sound like much, does it? Whatever Kagaya closes stays locked, and nothing can open it. In the second film it's explained that this is a time lock; any door he shuts is frozen in time. The second film shows that he can even freeze people in time.

51 years ago there were only three people in the town with powers; a married couple and their piano teacher. The woman could foresee the future, and the man could make the town a place where people would have powers, but only for a brief time. The man had an unspecified illness, and he would die within a year. His wife knew that if the townspeople had powers there would be a healer able to cure him. Shortly after the powers appeared in the town, they had a son: Urachi. When he was eight years old he asked his friend Kagaya to freeze them in time so that the powers in the town wouldn't disappear. I still don't understand why. Ever since then, for more than 40 years, they've been kept as prisoners. But now Urachi wants to free them.

My head hurts. The story is fascinating, but I just don't get it. As far as I can tell, the comics aren't available in English, but the animated mini-series based on the comics keeps close to the stories. Maybe I can buy them. I'll consider it.

Sagrada Reset Part 1 (4 Stars)

Sometimes I have problems rating a film. There's a lot that's positive in "Sagrada Reset Part 1", but it's difficult to follow what's happening. That's not because the plot is complex, it's because the characters are complex. They all have different powers, and whenever a character returns to the story after half an hour's absence I scratch my head and ask myself what his powers are.

The story takes place in a Japanese town called Sakurada where almost everyone has special abilities, i.e. superpowers. They only retain their powers as long as they remain in the town. As soon as they leave, they lose their powers, and they don't get their powers back even if they return.

Suspend disbelief.

Most of the characters in the film are schoolchildren aged 14 to 16.

Haruki is a girl who has the ability to reset time up to three days. Everyone goes back in time, and she doesn't even know that she's done it.

Kei is a boy who has perfect memory. He never forgets anything he's seen or done, not even he smallest details. This means that when Haruki resets time, he's the only one who remembers what happened before the reset, so he's the ideal partner for Haruki.

Tomoki is a boy who can send a voice message to anyone at a scheduled time, whether it's the past, present or future.

Yoka is a girl who can change the shape of anything. She can also make others do her will.

Eri is a girl who can make anyone forget something when she makes eye contact. Usually she makes the other children forget how to use their powers. Kei is the only one who can resist her.

Sasano is an old man who can create portals with a Polaroid camera. Either he uses his pictures himself, or he gives them to others. Anyone who rips a picture goes to the time and place where the picture was taken, but he can only remain for ten minutes.

An unnamed priestess can see the future.

Sakagami is a boy who can copy the special power from one person to another, but only as long as he's touching both of them.

Now you can see why I have trouble remembering everything. And these are only the major characters. There are other children with other abilities. 

There are confusing plots and subplots. I'll just mention the most important one. Kei's girlfriend Soma died two years previously. It was too long ago for a Reset, and Sasano wasn't there to take a photo. So how do they get her back? It's a confusing mixture of the abilities, used in a specific order. I can't even remember what they did, I'd have to watch the film again to figure it out. But the biggest shock is that (unknown to anyone) Soma committed suicide, because she wanted to be rescued after her death. That's a risky plan.

After watching the film I read up on it. Sagrada Reset began as a comic book series. Ah ha! That explains everything. In comics many characters can be included, and it's easy for readers to follow them, especially if they're introduced one at a time. The film is obviously made for people who've read the comics.

I might watch the film again. I'll understand it better next time.

Wakanda Forever (3 Stars)

This is the 30th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's a big disappointment. It's so mediocre. Maybe my three star rating is too generous. In its favour, the CGI works well, and the images are pleasant, except when Prince Namor is on the screen. (Do they even call him "Prince" in the film?) 

The film wasn't just necessary, it's a mistake. "Black Panther" was a brilliant film, and there should never have been a sequel after the death of the great Chadwick Boseman. "Wakanda Forever" smears dirt over his memory. I just put the film back in my shelf. I doubt I'll ever take it out again.

Success Rate:  + 2.3

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The Escapees (4 Stars)

In one of his most understated films, Jean Rollin trades gothic horror for something more intimate; a drifting, melancholic tale of escape and fragile connection.

The story follows Michelle and Marie, two women who flee a psychiatric institution together and form an immediate, almost instinctive bond. Their journey unfolds less as a conventional narrative and more as a series of encounters, shaped by mood, landscape and the constant tension between freedom and vulnerability.

Central to that journey is Sophie, the pickpocket who helps facilitate their escape and becomes an essential third presence. Sophie brings a harder edge to the film; she understands survival in a way the other two do not, and her pragmatism both sustains and subtly undermines the fragile, almost utopian world they begin to build together.

Equally important is Louise, a commanding figure within the dockside underworld. As a bar owner, she represents a very different kind of power; rooted not in escape, but in control. Where Michelle and Marie drift, Louise is anchored; she navigates the same shadowy spaces with authority and confidence. Her presence broadens the film’s perspective, suggesting that life on the margins is not only about vulnerability, but can also offer its own forms of dominance and self-determination.

Visually, the film is pure Rollin; empty beaches, decaying buildings and quiet, in-between spaces that feel detached from time. The pacing is languid and at times aimless, but that is part of its charm. This is a film that prioritises atmosphere over plot, emotion over structure.

"The Escapees" may frustrate viewers looking for a tight storyline, but as a mood piece it is quietly absorbing; a wistful, dreamlike exploration of freedom, survival and the fleeting bonds formed in the spaces between.

We see Louise on stage singing several times. Here she's accompanied by an unnamed man played by Jean Rollin. Louise is played by the actress Louise Dhour. She appeared in three of Rollin's films, and in each film her character was called Louise, even though they were three different people. There were rumours that she had an affair with Jean Rollin. They denied it, but it didn't stop people whispering.

Louise Dhour died on 27th December 2010, only 12 days after Rollin himself. Was it coincidence, or brought on by grief after the death of her lover? I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

General: My Top 100 Films

Today I updated my top 100 films list for the first time in 18 months. By that, I mean that I updated it on my web site. I have a list on my computer that I update frequently. In the list I'm showing below, I've put the position in brackets that films had in my original list in 2021. It's mostly slight adjustments, but it's still interesting, to me at least. Please leave comments telling me what you think is too high, too low or missing. I'll take all constructive criticisms seriously, but at the end of the day, tastes differ. I'd be overjoyed to see comments with your own top 10, top 20 or any number.

1. (1) Lost Highway (1997)
2. (2) Donnie Darko (2001)
3. (3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
4. (4) Tag (2015) (Japanese)
5. (5) The Matrix (1999)
6. (6) Terminator 2 (1991)
7. (7) Terminator (1984)
8. (8) Spider-Man (2002)
9. (10) Supervixens (1975)
10. (9) The Wall (2012) (German)
11. (–) The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
12. (12) Jurassic Park (1993)
13. (14) Faster Pussycat Kill Kill (1965)
14. (15) Kill Bill (2003-2004)
15. (20) The Life of Pi (2012)
16. (–) Bicentennial Man (1999)
17. (11) Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997)
18. (21) The World's Fastest Indian (2005)
19. (17) I know what you did last summer (1997)
20. (16) The Last Circus (2010) (Spanish)
21. (19) Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) (Chinese)
22. (24) Inglourious Basterds (2009)
23. (18) I still know what you did last summer (1998)
24. (13) Batman (1966)
25. (23) Spider-Man 2 (2004)
26. (22) House of Flying Daggers (2004) (Chinese)
27. (27) Witching and Bitching (2013) (Spanish)
28. (33) Basic Instinct (1992)
29. (32) 800 Bullets (2002) (Spanish)
30. (28) King Kong (2005)
31. (29) The Truman Show (1998)
32. (25) Downfall (2004) (German)
33. (41) Jackie Brown (1997)
34. (30) Cold Fish (2010) (Japanese)
35. (49) Night Train (2009)
36. (26) Pleasantville (1998)
37. (37) Dark City (1998)
38. (36) Triangle (2009)
39. (31) Mars Attacks (1996)
40. (59) Scream (1996)
41. (35) Django Unchained (2012)
42. (43) The Red Violin (1998)
43. (39) Deadpool (2016)
44. (47) Tommy (1975)
45. (51) Evita (1996)
46. (34) Ed Wood (1994)
47. (40) The Door (2009) (German)
48. (42) Love Exposure (2008) (Japanese)
49. (44) The Ninth Gate (1999)
50. (38) Deadpool 2 (2018)
51. (–) Run Lola Run (1998) (German)
52. (46) Thelma and Louise (1991)
53. (54) Falling Down (1993)
54. (74) Young Frankenstein (1974)
55. (60) Scream 2 (1997)
56. (62) Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
57. (61) Reservoir Dogs (1992)
58. (53) Death Proof (2007)
59. (56) The Raid 2 (2014) (Indonesian)
60. (69) Tragedy Girls (2017)
61. (52) Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
62. (79) The Walk (2015)
63. (50) Pulp Fiction (1994)
64. (45) Phone Booth (2003)
65. (55) Adaptation (2002)
66. (71) Enter the Dragon (1973) (Chinese)
67. (65) Ip Man (2008) (Chinese)
68. (57) Summer in Orange (2011) (German)
69. (73) The Legend of 1900 (1998)
70. (85) We are the night (2010) (German)
71. (88) The Shining (1980)
72. (83) Monster (2003)
73. (66) Ip Man 2 (2010) (Chinese)
74. (58) Flowers of War (2011)
75. (81) The Green Mile (1999)
76. (97) Iron Rose (1973) (French)
77. (48) Legend of the Fist (2010) (Chinese)
78. (63) The Gift (2000)
79. (–) Mulholland Drive (2001)
80. (–) IT (2017-2019)
81. (77) John Rabe (2009) (German)
82. (68) Lock, stock and two smoking barrels (1998)
83. (67) Snatch (2000)
84. (64) From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
85. (–) Barbie (2023)
86. (93) Spider-Man 3 (2007)
87. (72) Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)
88. (70) Gladiator (2000)
89. (78) The Paperboy (1994)
90. (75) The Virgin Psychics (2015) (Japanese)
91. (90) The Mummy (1999)
92. (–) Barb Wire (1996)
93. (98) Kick-Ass (2010)
94. (86) Dark Water (2002) (Japanese)
95. (–) I, Tonya (2017)
96. (–) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) (Chinese)
97. (–) Pearl (2023)
98. (–) John Wick 2 (2017)
99. (–) John Wick 3 (2019)
100. (–) River (2023) (Japanese)
     

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There are 13 new films in my list. In case you're interested, these are the 13 films that were knocked out.

(76) The Man who would be King (1975)
(80) Perfume (2006)
(82) Little Nicky (2000)
(84) Gloomy Sunday (1999) (German)
(87) What to do in case of fire (2001) (German)
(89) Azumi (2003-2005) (Japanese)
(91) Wie Feuer und Flamme (2001) (German)
(92) Attack of the 50 Foot Centerfold (1995)
(94) Titanic (1997)
(95) Mad City (1997)
(96) Leon (1994)
(99) Rush Hour (1998)
(100) Bella Martha (2001) (German)

Sigh... all of them still deserve to be in my list, but I don't want to kick anything out.

Bicentennial Man (5 Stars)

Netflix Thursday #47

"Bicentennial Man" is a film that was made ahead of its time. When it was released in 1999 it seemed faintly embarrassing, yet it has aged into something quietly fascinating, commonly being called a cult film. Directed by Chris Columbus and starring Robin Williams, it was initially dismissed as overlong, sentimental and tonally confused; a family film that strained toward philosophical seriousness without quite earning it. But in the age of contemporary AI, its reputation has shifted. What once felt naive now feels oddly prescient.

The film, loosely based on Isaac Asimov's novella "The Bicentennial Man", charts the 200-year life of Andrew, an android who evolves from a household appliance to something approaching a human being. At the time, this arc was framed largely as a Pinocchio-style fable; a machine who wants to become "real". Today, that premise lands differently. The question is no longer abstract. With the rise of machine learning systems and conversational AI, Andrew's journey speaks directly to contemporary anxieties about consciousness, identity and rights.

One reason the film has become a cult object is precisely because of how unfashionable it once was. In 1999, audiences were primed for sleeker, more ironic science fiction; the same year saw "The Matrix" redefine the genre with cyberpunk cool and philosophical edge. By contrast, "Bicentennial Man" is earnest to a fault. It takes its time, embraces melodrama and leans heavily on Williams' gentle, increasingly restrained performance. That earnestness, once a liability, now reads as sincerity. The film is not trying to be clever; it is trying to be humane.

And that is the key to its afterlife. Modern AI discourse is often dominated by fear; job displacement, surveillance, loss of control. "Bicentennial Man" approaches the subject from the opposite direction. It asks not what machines will do to us, but what it would mean for a machine to join us. Andrew's desire is not to surpass humanity but to belong to it; to love, to create, to die. The film's central provocation is quietly radical: humanity is defined not by biology, but by experience, vulnerability and mortality.

There is also something newly poignant in the film's incrementalism. Andrew does not leap into consciousness; he inches toward it over decades, through small acts of creativity and self-modification. In an era when AI progress is rapid and opaque, this slow, legible evolution feels almost comforting. It suggests a continuity between tool and personhood that modern systems, with their black-box complexity, often lack.

The film's flaws have not disappeared, but these very flaws are now considered its strengths. The romance subplot used to divide critics; how could a woman possibly have a romance with a robot? But today there are common news stories of people forming relationships with online chatbots, which contributes to its cult appeal. The film is marked as a sincere attempt to grapple with big ideas within a mainstream framework; something increasingly rare.

Ultimately, "Bicentennial Man" endures because it asks a question that has only become more urgent: if a machine can think, create and feel, what, exactly, is left to distinguish it from us? In 1999, that question felt speculative. In 2026, it feels uncomfortably close.

What was once a misfire now plays like a time capsule from a more optimistic technological imagination; one that believed the endpoint of artificial intelligence might not be domination or disaster, but a quiet, hard-won recognition of shared humanity.

The film has returned to the public eye through being revived by Netflix. For that we can be thankful. The DVD releases from the turn of the century are now difficult to find. On Netflix the film is in HD quality, even though it's never been released on Blu-ray. Discerning fans are clamouring for a Blu-ray or even 4K release.

Success Rate:  - 1