642 - In the Mouth of Madness (1994) - 7.5/10 - Sam Neill stars as an insurance investigator sent to look into the disappearance of a popular horror writer. He discovers a number of crazy things that seem to indicate that the author's books are actually based on fact..or is he just descending into madness himself. Neill is pretty good here.
643 - L'Enfant secret (1979) - 3/10 - There are a lot of scenes with minimal or no dialogue. They linger far too long at times. The film is shot well, but I didn't care for the characters or their story or for the film at all. A woman had a child out of wedlock with an actor. There are drugs, a hospital visit, and so on, but none of it really is all that interesting.
644 - Emergency! The Wedsworth-Townsend Act (1972) - 7.5/10 - The pilot movie for the tv show is named after the law in California which allowed for paramedic training. The tv show helped popularize the movement. Prior to this, most ambulances and their crews could only transport patients to hospitals and administer basic first aid. My brother was a big fan of this show (and Adam-12 as well). I watched it on occasion during the later seasons, but it wasn't one of my regular shows. I thought the pilot movie was pretty good and I'll go on and watch the first season.
645 - The Night Stalker (1972) - 8/10 - Darren McGavin stars as Carl Kolchak, a Las Vegas reporter with an eye for the sensational who has been fired from a number of newspapers over the years. Young women start turning up dead with their throats ripped out and their blood drained. Kolchak thinks that the killer may think that they are a vampire. Kolchak also butts heads with police and other officials. The supporting cast is nice and this is a pretty entertaining film. I started reading the Kolchak comics over a decade ago, but had never seen the movies or tv show.
646 - The Night Strangler (1973) - 7.5/10 - Kolchak has moved on to Seattle. He''s only been there a couple of weeks when a few mysterious murders start showing up and signs point to a pattern that takes place over 18 days every 21 years. The film follows a similar formula to The Night Stalker, but is still very entertaining. It also sets the stage for the tv series that followed.
647 - Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974) - 6/10 - A woman is having trouble dealing with a breakup so she spends a lot of time in her apartment. At first she moves the furniture around and writes (and rewrites) a letter. Then she spends a ton of time sitting or lying on her mattress in the nude, eating sugar out of a paper bag. When she finally leaves she hitchhikes and gets a ride to visit her former lover. It was okay, but I got kind of bored with it at times, especially during the trip to visit the lover.
648 - Black Butterflies (2011) - 6/10 - This biography of South African poet Ingrid Jonker mostly takes place in the early-mid 1960s. She and her father disagree on many things and she is portrayed as being pretty unstable. The movie is a bit dull.
649 - Felice… Felice… (1998) - 7.5/10 - In 1895, photographer Felice Beato returns to Japan in search of the wife he left behind. Beato was a popular person during his earlier time in Japan, but finds that much has changed in his absence and he no longer fits in. The film is kind of slow and melancholy, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
650 - Secret Wedding (1989) - 6.5/10 - A man is found walking naked down a street in Buenos Aires thinking it is 1976. The police archives help fill in his past and he decides to return to his hometown and try to find the woman he loves. He finds her, but she does not recognize him and has issues of her own. He decides to get close to her as a friend. This is an Argentine/Netherlands film that won the Gouden Kalf.