Longlegs (2023 film)

Category: Supernatural crime drama/horror

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I'm glad to see Nicolas Cage get some good press for the first time in a long time. He seemed to have gone through a period where he became known for taking part in low-budget/low-quality productions, for giving performances that reflected said production values, and also for issues in his personal life that drove him to become a caricature of himself. As someone who thought Con Air was the coolest movie for an extended period of time in the 1990s, it's good to see Cage be recognised for a role that generates some positive press about his name once again.

And who would have thought that a satanic panic horror film would be the thing that gets his career back on track? 

Let me run through the plot before I go into my thoughts on the matter:

Longlegs revolves around Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a junior FBI agent who displays precocious clairvoyancy and a knack for cryptology, who is brought in to help solve a series of murders in which numerous families have been found dead after the father of the family violently kills the rest of the family, then himself, and the only clue is a cryptic letter signed by Longlegs found at each scene.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991 film)

Category: sci-fi action

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I think categorising Terminator 2: Judgement Day merely as "the best sequel ever" doesn't do this movie justice - I personally think it's in contention for "the best film ever". Far from suffering from sequel-itis (the condition when a smash-hit original movie has a completely lousy sequel) it's not hard to conclude that Terminator 2 is better than the original Terminator movie.

Having come out in the 1990s, Terminator 2 was the talk at my high school for months on end - cool lines from the movie would get quoted, various scenes would get re-enacted, inopportune screams of "YOU COULD BE MINE!!!!" from the try-hard rock kids, and chuckles about what mischief we would get up to if we had the shape-shifting capabilities as this movie's antagonist. In short, Terminator 2 wasn't a movie - it was a social phenomenon!

In fact, when Channel 9 (the TV station with the local broadcast rights to T2) wanted to spoil ratings for a rival TV station - for example, if the rival station were broadcasting a sporting final or a season finale - Channel 9 would screen this movie as a way of denting the other station's ratings - a testament to this movie's pulling power.

And the result of that policy was that it gave me ample opportunity to record the movie on to my VHS for both myself and my friends. I watched this movie NUMEROUS times on the old CRT TV off of my VHS tape recording, and even then, the visuals were groundbreaking. The only hiccup is that on modern high-res screens and with the advance of CGI since the 1990s, some of the magic is lost in viewing in 2025.

But what made T2 so good? Let's get in to that after a run-down of the plot: