The Midnight Meat Train (Ryuhei Kitamura, 2008)

5/10
I enjoyed the first half and was really curious to see where it went...but then almost immediately after two specific scenes halfway through (the sex scene and the "warts" scene) the movie stopped being realistic and just started being stupid and nonsensical. It almost felt like the second half was done by a different director. Anyway I saw it with a friend who'd read the original Clive Barker story and he said it was pretty faithful so I guess if you liked the story you'd the movie, but I thought it could've been a bit better. And the ending was so predictable.

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)

9.5/10
Great movie but I felt it was missing just that little extra that would push it over into being a truly perfect movie for me...although I have nothing bad at all to say about it really (well okay the "Harvey Dent story" was a bit rushed and I thought Bale's Batman was a wee bit over the top). Still, totally deserving of the hype it's getting.

Sukiyaki Western Django (Takashi Miike, 2007)

10/10
This movie was a fucking blast from beginning to end. It's a Spaghetti Western directed by Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q, etc) and the entire movie is done with Japanese actors speaking in phonetic English, with English subtitles. It's hilarious, the action is awesome, and the plot is surprisingly coherant. It's not a remake of Sergio Corbucci's Django but it uses similar devices (the name Django, the machine gun in a casket thing). Without a doubt the best Miike movie I've seen in a long time. Oh yeah, and Quentin Tarantino plays a sukiyaki-eating master gunslinger. Right on.

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

8.5/10
A touching, coming-of-age vampire movie from Sweden, probably released last year as well. Not much gore to speak of (though there's some) but a dark, gothic vibe from start to finish that sticks this one on the fringes of horror. The two 12-year old protagonists are fantastic and the story incredibly engrossing, although there is a distracting subplot that could've been done away with. In fact you could've chopped about 10 minutes from the movie and it might have boosted my score up even more. Sometimes it dragged a bit. But otherwise a pretty remarkable movie. Apparently JJ Abrams is trying to get this remade in the U.S. as well.

[REC] (Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza, 2007)

9/10
I love a good zombie movie and this is the best one I've seen in ages. It was made in Spain, came out last year, and has been getting rave reviews all over. I'm 99% sure an American remake is on the way, but it'll probably be dismissed as a Blair Witch Project/Cloverfield ripoff since it's filmed verité style (handheld camera). There were a couple of great scares and a real creepy atmosphere throughout, but it probably wouldn't work so well on DVD. See it in theatres if at all possible.

Mother of Tears (Dario Argento, 2007)

7/10
The final film in Dario Argento's "three mothers" trilogy, the first two being Suspiria and Inferno, with this one coming about 25 years after Inferno. Suspiria is an undisputed classic for me, Inferno was awful, and this one was an enjoyable improvement on that. It still wasn't a great movie but I think I liked it because I was expecting the absolute worst.

La Antena (Esteban Sapir, 2007)

5/10
An Argentinian(?) movie about a town that lives in silence because the evil Mr. TV has stolen everybody's voice. So they communicate with subtitles (which the characters can see and interact with) but now Mr. TV is threatening to take away their words as well. So the protagonist, his father, his daughter, his ex-wife, The Voice (a hooded woman with the only voice in the city, Mr. TV forces her to sing on television every night) and The Voice's blind son set out to stop him, recover everybody's voice, and get a set of eyes for The Voice's son. It came out in 2007 but it's a silent, black and white movie. It had a lot of promise but the story was plodding and the idea was kind of worn out spread over the course of a full-length movie. My friends and I agreed that it would work better as an hour-long feature.