Simon's Movie Reviews

  An American Werewolf in London (1981) is quite the strange beast. This is a werewolf movie from John Landis, director of comedy classics such The Blues Brothers and Trading Places , that is full of gore, gratuitous nudity, tension, and quite a few laughs. The movie’s tone is sometimes inconsistent, switching one minute from horror to self-aware comedy. However, it earns its place in the pantheon of horror thanks to one of the best werewolf transformation scenes courtesy of effects legend Rick Baker. I feel like I watched this movie in the wrong venue and with the wrong frame of mind. This is not a movie to watch by yourself on Tubi for free with commercial breaks. This is a movie to watch on the big screen with a midnight crowd after a few drinks. Some movies require the audience to be quiet, An American Werewolf in London needs an engaged and possibly drunk crowd to laugh at the jokes, the absurdity of the situation, and the bloody kills. Hollywood has a few weekends to fill this ye

  Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) is one of those movies that gets more relevant with each passing decade. Set in a (now passed) future in which Los Angeles is overrun with people and pollution, the story focuses on artificial lifeforms clashing with their human creators. As the chase for these lifeforms progresses, writers Hampton Francher and David Peoples imply they may not be so different from the humans chasing them. If this sounds topical in 2024, imagine how relevant it will sound ten years from now. When writing these amateur reviews, I usually try to think back on the first time I watched the movie and what I felt at the time. This is tricky with Blade Runner considering there have been five versions of the film released since the 1980s. I believe the first version I did see on TV was the original theatrical version with the narration to guide the audience since executives thought that was needed. I eventually disagreed and purchased the Final Cut on Blu-Ray to see the st