11-23-24 favorite movies
latest updates 11-23-24
favorite movies
animated films
(DC / Scooby-Doo / stop motion & rotoscoping)
comic book movies (live-action adaptations)
computer animation (CGI & Flash)
dystopian & post-apocalyptic films
holiday movies (mostly Christmas, but other holidays too)
horror: see scary movies
law enforcement (police, FBI, courts, etc.)
serio-comedy (aka dramedy)
miscellaneous
other films (meh, I dunno)
movies I want to see
Summer of...
tek's nostalgia: movies
because I can't go to a theater...
Introductory Notes
Item One: Ratings system
Item Two: Genres
Item 2b.: Anime & Cartoons (animation)
Item Three: Links.
Item 3a.: The A.V. Club
Item 3b.: Streaming sites
Item Four: MPAA Ratings
Item Five: Apologies & explanations
Item 5a.: I suck
Item 5b.: Opinions
Item 5c.: Memory
Item 5d.: Content
Item 5e.: Language
Item Six: Attraction.
For quite awhile I had a sytem of tiers for each category, but I eventually moved the categories into a system using frames, so all movies in each category will be on one page, basically. And the new rating system will use different numbers of "smileys" or "hearts," instead of tiers.
Okay, I'm probably going to keep coming up with different categories, and never be entirely happy with any of them. And I often won't even be sure which categories to put certain films in, but I'll do my best.
Most of my categories here are specific genres, or at least I try to make them so. However, I'm generally against considering animation a genre unto itself, cuz it just ain't so. Cartoons and anime can be made for any age group, they can be dramatic or comical, they can fit into any live-action genre you care to name. So why put them in their own categories, instead of spreading specific animated movies amongst the other categories based on genre? I dunno. Maybe just cuz I like them so much. I'm afraid I can't think of anything else to tell you.
On the line below the title, I'll try to provide links to both official and unofficial sites, for reference. These may include The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, TV Tropes (these links will occasionally be for the book or whatever a film is based on, rather than for the film itself), Wikia, and Wikipedia, whenever possible. (Note that Wikia eventually became "Fandom," but I still call my links by the old name. Also note that I may sometimes include more than one Wikia link, as wikis may be devoted to the film itself, or to a franchise or company of which the film is a part.) I may also occasionally include a link to a favored fansite. Official websites (by companies involved with a film's production, distribution, release, etc.) will sometimes be harder to find, particularly for older or smaller films. But I'll do what I can. Sometimes these will just be listed as "official website," other times I might call links "DVD site" or "theatrical site." (In some cases instead of "official" or "DVD," I may name the studio or company that distributes the film.) For some films, I may include links to reviews at American Film Institute (AFI), or Badmovies.org, or Bloody Disgusting, or Council of Geeks (and Break Room of Geeks), or Dread Central, or Great but Forgotten, or History vs Hollywood, or iHorror, or Kindertrauma, or Modern Horrors, or PopHorror, or The Templeton Gate, or Thrilling Detective. Also The Criterion Collection and The TCM Movie Database (though I don't include links to the latter for every movie it has a page for).
A.V. Club's Film section has countless reviews of countless movies. Normally I don't read them, let alone provide links to them in my reviews. But I started linking to the site's TV reviews probably in early 2016. Then one night in early 2017, I happened to come across a regular column that ran on A.V. Club from 2008 to 2013, called The New Cult Canon. I discovered this because of a review of a movie I had just watched, and was googling for links to include in my review. I decided to include a link to A.V. Club's review from the NCC column, and then to add links to any other reviews from that column, to my own reviews. I don't really expect to add links to any other A.V. Club film reviews to my reviews, just the ones from that column... but you never know. I might. Meanwhile, mostly this column makes me feel bad about how much I under-appreciate most cult films, and about how much I may over-appreciate some other films. But I do like providing alternate opinions to my own.
"Streaming sites" is how I refer to websites that rent and/or sell digital copies of movies. In some cases, a site may let you choose whether to rent or buy a movie, while in other cases it will give you only one option or the other. Sometimes you may have the choice of streaming online or downloading, and again, sometimes you may get only one option or the other. Sometimes there may be only one version of the movie available, and sometimes there may be multiple versions (e.g., rated and unrated; theatrical and director's cuts; dubbed or subtitled, if it's originally in a language other than English; etc.) I'll only link to one version, and that page may or may not have its own links to other versions, so you may want to do your own search of the site to find out if a different version that you'd prefer is available or not. Sites I'll try to provide links to in my reviews may include Amazon, Fandango at Home (merged with Vudu, and later replaced Vudu; I don't know if or when I'll change my links to say "Fandango" instead of "Vudu"), Google Play, Hulu (which can add or remove movies at any time without my knowledge, and has various add-on services I don't link to), iTunes (which in 2023 started redirecting to Apple TV, which I don't care for, so I won't bother deleting my old links, but from now on I won't include links to Apple in new reviews), Movies Anywhere (formerly Disney Movies Anywhere), Peacock, Vudu (replaced by "Fandango at Home"), YouTube, and sometimes other sites. For streaming sites I don't list in my reviews, check JustWatch.
I have changed my mind a few times about whether to include MPAA (or CARA) ratings in my reviews, but currently I'm thinking yes. So it'll take awhile to add this data to old reviews. Bear in mind that different countries have different ways of rating movies, but as I'm in America, I'm going with the American ratings. Of course, alot of movies are unrated. And alot of them have been released in different rated (or unrated) versions. So... I dunno; I guess some things I may not bother mentioning a rating for, if there are different versions (on the other hand I might possibly list it as whichever rating I happened to watch).
Believe me, there are a great many things about this whole project for which I feel the need to apologize. For example:
Yeah, I'm no good at writing reviews. The most useful thing you're likely to find here is what rating I give a movie, and I'm rarely even sure about that, so even that's probably not very useful. So why do I bother with this whole project at all? Two words: obsessive-compulsion. Though... some of my reviews are actually much better than others.
Of course, anything I have to say about these movies (including my ratings), is merely my opinion. You all are completely entitled to your own opinions. You may completely disagree with some or all of what I have to say here. I don't mind, and I hope you won't mind, either.
Since I don't trust my memory at all, I will generally try to refrain from making entries for many movies here unless I've seen them recently. Which is just as well, because I haven't the time for doing much work on this section of my homepage, anyway. So I'm afraid there are a great many movies I've seen in the past that I won't be able to write reviews of until such time as I rewatch them, which may be years off.
These pages will include movies which debuted in theaters or on video, to the best of my knowledge. For TV movies, please see my TV reference pages. For movies that premiered online, see web original films. I may sometimes be mistaken about where to put a film, but I'll do the best I can.
Some of my reviews contain swearing. I'm not too worried about that, especially since it pretty much only happens in reviews of movies that are not for kids. But there are other issues, such as ableist language (words like "stupid", "dumb", "crazy", "lame", etc.) applied to either characters or plots, that I have sometimes used in the past when writing reviews, which I now regret. If I ever see such things upon re-reads of my old reviews, I'll usually edit the words out, but I'm sure I won't catch them all. On another topic, I have sometimes referred to Asperger's syndrome, or used the word "Aspergian." This is something I don't do anymore, because of the name's ties to WWII-era Nazis, which I didn't originally know about. So if you see any mention of Asperger's in my reviews, please mentally amend it to "high-functioning autism."
I have often, in my reviews, put parentheticals next to the names of female characters, saying "who we like," in order to indicate that I find those characters attractive. This is just as true (if not more so) in animation as in live-action. It's something I've always had mixed feelings about doing, because I don't want to give the impression that I'm judging female characters based either solely or primarily on looks. But on the other hand, finding characters attractive can add to my appreciation of shows/movies/comics/whatever, and I feel remiss if I don't mention all that I enjoy about any given work of entertainment. (In real life, I hate attraction, but in entertainment... it can be nice, as long as there's more to the story, and to the characters themselves, than just that.) Nevertheless, I have finally decided (for reasons) to delete such parentheticals from all (or most of) my reviews, which is likely going to take quite awhile, considering how many reviews I've done over the years. And I may miss a few, so if you see such things, please just pretend they're not there. (On the other hand, I may occasionally, in some of my reviews, choose to include a mention of one or more characters being attractive, for some specific reason, such as their attractiveness being an actual plot point, or as a commentary on animation style, or... various other reasons.) But whether or not I specifically mention it, chances are almost anything I review has characters I find attractive. And while I don't believe there's anything inherently wrong with anyone (male or female) appreciating that aspect of entertainment, nor even with making innocuous, non-suggestive mention of such appreciation, the fact is we live in a world where such comments can quite reasonably be construed as objectifying, even when that is not the intent. And the objectification of anyone (male or female, but especially women and girls) is not a mindset I have any desire to perpetuate, even unintentionally. (It's kind of a fine line, because I also don't want to make it seem like attraction or attractiveness are things to be ashamed of or feared, but I expect it's best to err on the side of caution.)