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KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #43: THE FRENCH DISPATCH (co-wri/dir by Wes Anderson, USA)

I must say that I’ve always been a big fan of Wes Anderson. I haven’t seen every single one of his movies, but of course I adore Rushmore, like everybody else, and Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs I thought were just absolutely wonderful. The Royal Tenenbaums never quite grabbed me like it did many others, but I greatly enjoyed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which is one of his more polarizing films.

All this is to say that I am not new. I am familiar with his somewhat arch style and boxy, square, fussy production design. But…

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Craig Hammill Comment
KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #42: LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (co-wri/dir by Edgar Wright, UK, 2021)

I saw the trailer for Last Night in Soho some months back, and I’ve been gagging to see it ever since. Could it possibly live up to the trailer? Would it be one of those situations where the trailer is a perfect short film unto itself and adding a whole film around it actually lessened the experience then added to it?

Pfft, don’t be silly, Edgar Wright wouldn’t…

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KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #40-#41: HALLOWEEN (2018) & HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021)

We’re in the homestretch. Two more, and Jamie Lee Curtis is back from the dead. Again. Please, please be good.

Miramax still existed in 2018? The worm had yet to turn, huh.

It starts out in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, with Michael Myers having been there for forty years, and…they are about to transfer him, having not learned the main big lesson of the ten previous Halloween films, never ever transfer Michael Myers.

But if he has been there for forty years…does that mean that they again retconned everything after the first Halloween II? The great H20 never happened? This is crazy. But, open mind, open mind, let’s try…

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Craig Hammill
The Uncanny Body Horror of David Cronenberg by Craig Hammill

David Cronenberg’s body of work is one of the most fascinating in its tension of a creative spirit constantly pushing itself in new directions while always somehow being true to its initial spirt and obsessions.

In Cronenberg’s now 50+ year career (his first movie STEREO was made in 1969), he’s moved through very noticeable phases. His initial…

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ODE TO FRENCH FILMMAKER HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT by Craig Hammill

Tonight we screen famed French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot’s horror suspense thriller LES DIABOLIQUES (1955). The legend goes (and it very well may be fact) that Clouzot had beaten none other than Alfred Hitchcock by mere hours to option the source novel and the resulting masterpiece so infuriated Hitchcock (because it was as brilliant as Hitchcock knew it would be) that Sir Alfred immediately optioned the novelists Boileau-Narcejac’s D’Entre Les Morts which became Vertigo.

So in that weird cosmic way that never quite makes sense to us mere mortals…

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KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #33-#35: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)/Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)/Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

“We’re not talking about any ordinary prisoner, Hoffman! We’re talking about evil on two legs!”

Okay, so, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers takes place a decade after Halloween and Halloween II, when, as you remember, Michael Myers gets shot 13 times, including twice in the eyes, and also gets exploded and burned to death on camera, mask and all. Dr. Loomis, who set the explosion, totally exploded in that explosion. No more Michael, no more Loomis, definitely the end forever no take backs.

Now here we are, ten years later, and Donald Pleasence has top billing! Can we but hope that he is the twin brother of the exploded Dr. Loomis? I fear ‘tis not to be. And, when it comes back down to it,

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