Dirty Harry (1971 film)

Category: Crime drama

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It's the movie that put Clint Eastwood on the map and gave the western lexicon the phrase "Do you feel lucky, punk?", as well as spawned four sequels - the 1971 Don Siegel-directed masterpiece "Dirty Harry".

Now, filmmaking was a different beast back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so one of the curiosities for me when was to see how things were done "back in the day". It's also quite possible that this is the oldest movie I have reviewed so far for this blog (Editorial note - yes, it is. And by quite a margin).

But I gotta ask - how does this movie rank in 2025 with over 50 years of cinema to contrast it with? Let's find out after a plot recap!

Plot:

The movie starts off with an unnamed woman taking a swim in the sunshine in a pool atop a very tall building in San Francisco. Unbeknownst to her, a sniper is taking up position on an even higher building not too far away and has her in his sight. The sniper pulls the trigger and the woman bleeds out in the swimming pool.

Prey (2022 film)

Category: sci-fi action/horror

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You may remember in my Texas Chainsaw Massacre review that I opined that sometimes, you just need to leave well-enough alone. However, movie studios will do movie studio things such as squeeze more dollars out of an established IP, and so with that in mind, we get another entry in the Predator movie franchise - the 2022 movie Prey, directed by Dan Trachtenberg (who also did 10 Cloverfield Lane, which I think is a great movie in its own right)

Given that the most recent movies in the Predator franchise have been Predators and The Predator, let's see if a female-led Predator entry that highlights Native American culture can do any better.

The plot:

The story takes place in the Northern Great Plains (which is generally taken to be anywhere between Arkansas and Canada) and is set in the year 1719, thus acting as a prequel (of sorts) to the rest of the Predator franchise.

Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a female Comanche skilled in herbal medicine and tracking, but also wants to prove herself at hunting just like her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers). With her dog Sarii in tow, she spends a lot of time out in the forest honing her skills.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022 film)

Category: Splatter horror/remake of existing IP

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Sometimes you just need to leave well-enough alone.

Did the world really need ANOTHER entry in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series? Well, someone, somewhere decided we did, and this is the end result.

Now, given I haven't seen the original (though very familiar with it on a cultural level) I really have nothing to compare this to, so I suppose this 2022 remake-but-not-a-reboot-and-definitely-not-a-sequel is as good as anywhere to start.

The plot:

Dante, Ruth, Lila and Melody (Jacob Latimore, Nell Hudson, Elsie Fisher & Sarah Yarkin) travel to the (fictional) town of Harlow, Texas, in order to facilitate a bank auction of the properties there. The place is essentially a ghost town, far away from everything and has been left to fall into a state of disrepair, with Dante and Melody being propery speculators looking to gentrify the area for a profit.

Guna Guna Istri Muda (2023 film)

This movie marks the 50th I've reviewed for this blog!

Thanks to all my supporters - I couldn't have got this far without you :)

Anyway, back to the high-quality and definitely-not-sarcastic movie reviews!

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Category: Foreign language supernatural horror

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The title of this movie roughly translates to "Black magic from the junior wife", and revolves around a successful businessman who takes a second wife who then takes it upon herself to launch a campaign of supernatural terror against the husband and his first wife for being left out of the fortune.

Now, Indonesia does things differently - I mean, it is a different place, but can they make a good horror film? Let's find out after the plot!

The plot:

The movie starts off with three women in a gym, Angel, Mayang and one other person doing some sort of yoga or Pilates session, presumably to keep them fit and desirable. After the session, Angel and Mayang discuss Angel's new boyfriend. The third woman then goes to the bathroom and notices an uncomfortable itch around her crotch. She removes her leggings and sees maggots in her underwear, her scalp then gets itchy, skin peels off, her body breaks out in pus and goo, then she seemingly drowns in a deluge of something resembling bodily fluids.

The Watchers (2024 film)

Category: Supernatural drama/thriller

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The majority of reviews I read for this 2024 supernatural drama movie rated it negatively. However, I enjoyed this movie enough (for the most part) to come to a different opinion, putting me in the minority of reviewers who thought this movie was overall positive. But there two lessons - know when to end a movie, and when will people learn to not blindly trust their GPS?

The plot explained:

Dakota Fanning plays Mina, an aspiring artist who works a dead-end job in Galway, Ireland, and is asked by her boss to drive a precious Golden Conure parrot to a zoo in Belfast.

However, just like with Outback, the GPS is the movie's first villain as it leads Mina deep into a forest with no paved road in the west of Ireland when her car suddenly breaks down and the electronics stop working. As she walks around the forest looking for assistance (caged Golden Conure in hand), she first notices her car isn't where she thought it was and can't be found, and then she suddenly sees an elderly woman walking alone. She gives chase to the elderly woman who leads her to an incongruous box-like structure whose defining feature is a large one-way mirror in the front that allows the outside to see in, but the people inside to only see their reflection.

Nitram (2021 movie)

Category: Biographical drama.

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Nitram is produced by the same person that brought you Snowtown, Justin Kurzel. So you know it's not going to be a rom-com.

Even if you're not overly familiar with large swathes of Australian history, you probably already know about the Port Arthur Massacre, Australia's worst instance of firearm deaths and the catalyst for our world-famous gun laws. And just like with Snowtown, this movie is a 90% retelling - it tells the overall story, but changes some details.

Nitram (played by Caleb Landry Jones, and based off of the real-life perpetrator Martin Bryant) lives with his mother (Judy Davis) and father (Anthony LaPaglia) who clearly love and dote on their son, but his intellectual disability affects how he interacts with people and the world around him. And given this is the 1970s and 1980s, not much in the way of social support is given - you were expected to tough it out and hope for the best.

We see various interactions between Nitram and his parents that clearly show the struggle they go through to keep him out of trouble and them onto their sanity, as well as Nitram's father's attempt to secure a bank loan to buy a bed and breakfast on the Tasmanian coast that he plans to retire to.

Immaculate (2024 movie)

Category: Nun horror

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If you asked me even last week if I'd be eager to see Sydney Sweeney in a film, any film - let alone a horror - I'd have laughed you out the building. I mean, after her performance (if I could call it that) in Madame Web, who would have thought a nun-horror film would be the thing to sway my opinion?

But sway my opinion it did, and while I'm nowhere near becoming a Sydney Sweeney fan-boi, I can see her becoming an top-level actress if she can make some minor improvements to how she goes about her craft (something I will expand on later).

So the plot of this movie isn't TOO deep and meaningful, but interesting nun-theless (see what I did there?):

Like all good nun-horror films, we start with a flashback to a scene however many decades prior where a young nun in her convent/abbey/cloister sneaks into the bedroom of her Mother Superior and steals a set of keys. Said nun then runs towards the front gate and fumbles the keys as four hooded figures bear down on her. The nun is able to unlock the gate, but that gate is also chained and the chain has just enough slack to squeeze her body through. But right as she gets out, she slips and a hooded figure grabs her leg, pulls it back through the gate and gives it a twist to (painfully) ensure the nun isn't able to run anywhere in a hurry.