You're going to go and bid on a bunch of stuff, right?

I really liked High Kick Girl. I'll write a little bit about it in just a second, but if you'd like to skip that and want to know if you should watch this film, merely watch the following trailer. If you like what you see in the trailer, then rent or buy this film, because the film delivers on the promise of the trailer.

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I saw The Expendables in the theater and I finally am reviewing it now on the day it was released on DVD.

How screwed up is that?

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I'm pretty sure this list is from 1998. The original list was hand written by me in an old notebook I kept. There are plenty of films from 1997 and 1998 and no films from 1999 on the list, so my deduction is it's from 1998.

This was a period of serious film-geekitude for me, so the list clearly reflects my interests at the time.

So, here's one sentence (or fragment) on each of those films. I'm trying to do this without much editing or research so expect to see some weirdness follow I linked to full reviews of the films where applicable if you want to follow up and see how my original appraisal and my later recollections match up.

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Drag Me to Hell is like watching Sam Raimi puke out the megaplex cooties he gained by working on the Spider-Man movies. It's not a classic on the level of Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness but it's got a lot of the key elements that made Raimi a real favorite around these parts. It's funny, gross, wild and violent. In other words, my kind of movie.

My biggest problem with it is I didn't actually like any of the characters. There's no Ash to pull for throughout. Instead we have the slightly unpleasant pair of Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) and Clay Dalton (Justin Long.) they're not the worst people in the world, but they're also not all that appealing. So when terrible things happen to them there's no emotional punch to back up the pure joy of Raimi's creative approach to horror + comedy + violence. Which isn't to say I needed this film to be Ran, it's just nice to feel something for the characters on screen from time to time, no matter what insanity is happening on-screen.

Still, it's worth checking out if just to remember why Raimi gained a cult following and why we should all celebrate his return to horror.