The 4K Ultra HD release of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island is magnificent. The film has never looked or sounded better. I just wish I enjoyed watching it more.

There is nothing subtle about Mon Mon Mon Monsters!.

“When the Jews return to Zion
And a comet rips the sky
And the Holy Roman Empire rises,
Then You and I must die.

From the eternal sea he rises,
Creating armies on either shore,
Turning man against his brother’Til man exists no more.”
– THE OMEN (1976)

Crawl works. There’s not much else to say. Alexandre Aja has crafted one of the better thrillers of 2019, this nifty little creature-feature a bloody little aquatic home invasion hurricane blast that only gets better with each subsequent viewing.

There’s nothing peaceful or calm about Donnybrook, the darkness Tim Sutton’s film so intimately explores overflowing in a profound sadness that only grows in resonance as events build to their lethally tragic conclusion.

Outside of its Academy Award-nominated theme song (beautifully sung by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross), I will never understand the enduring appeal of 1981’s Endless Love. It is an anemic adaptation of Scott Spencer’s novel, and in my opinion is arguably the worst motion picture the great Franco Zeffirelli ever directed.

I Trapped the Devil isn’t going to end up on my end-of-year list of 2019’s best horror movies, but that doesn’t make it any less memorable or worthwhile. Writer/director Josh Lobo manufactures a consistently unsettling sense of building menace and dread, while actress Susan Burke delivers an outstanding performance in the middle of all of this discombobulating psychological mayhem.

Vice Squad is a product of its time. It’s an ugly film, one that digs into the muck and mire of the world it presents with almost gleeful gusto. All of which makes it easy to understand how Gary Sherman’s dramatic thriller has somehow stood the test of time.

The Wind is outstanding. Emma Tammi’s film has a delicately austere power that is poetically horrifying in its overall windswept magnitude.