#1,892: Dirty Harry
Here are some recent movies, including an inadvertent trilogy of films with doubt about ghosts:
The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Pretty satisfying. Almost everything I would expect a courtroom drama about an exorcism to be, I guess. B+.
Existence of the supernatural: [UNCONFIRMED]
Hereafter - Three intertwining stories of people dealing with the possibility of a spirit world. The main thing in one of these movies is that you're just waiting for and/or trying to figure out how they'll all eventually intersect.
Existence of the supernatural: [CONFIRMED]
Red Lights - I was so excited to see this one. It's from the director of Buried, which I liked, and here's the setup: Sigourney Weaver is a James Randi-like debunker, Robert DeNiro is a world-renowned psychic, and one of them has to be wrong. Sometimes a movie sounds so great , like Time After Time, (Jack the Ripper steals a time machine, and it's up to HG Wells to stop him!) that I wonder if I should just never see it, in case it's no good. Red Lights didn't go how I might have guessed, and maybe the first half was more fun than the second half, but I still liked it.
Existence of the supernatural: [REDACTED]
Also…
This Film is Not Yet Rated and We Are Legion: The Story of Hactivists - the former is about the secretive MPAA ratings board. The most fun, if morally dubious, section is when private investigators track down the identities of the raters. The latter is primarily about the organization Anonymous), and interviews the no-long anonymous anons who were arrested and punished for the actions of the group. I'm grouping the two movies together here because in both cases, they offer a pretty decent primer to the subjects, but if you're already familiar with either one, there's not a lot of new information presented. I do remember when Anonymous' Scientology protests were taking place, so I was surprised to see the film report that thousands of people participated. Maybe they were all down on L. Ron Hubbard Way, and not at the Celebrity Centre, which is located across from the UCB Theatre. My memory of it is of maybe 6 heavy guys holding their cloaks and masks and sweating like crazy, sitting on the sidewalk. I wish I'd gotten pictures.
The Nude Vampire - This is an italian horror from the 1970s, which doesn't feature much in the way of nudity, and no vampires at all, unless the one nude girl, who doesn't appear to figure into the plot in any way, happened to be a vampire and nobody mentioned it. I'll accept that as the answer, but if so, it's not an especially apt title. It's definitely no Big Fan or Constant Gardner.
Existence of the supernatural: [CONFIRMED]
Chernobyl Diaries - This sucks. Look through the website that probably inspired the movie instead. Or don't. Go fishing. Write a poem. Do what you want.
Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal - Press Your Luck was a fun game show where your money could get taken away by little cartoons called Whammies that were drawn by "Savage" Steve Holland, director of Better Off Dead. In 1984, a guy noticed that the patterns on the board weren't random, so all you have to do to win a lot of money is learn them and not stop on a Whammy. There you go. Whole movie. You are free to go about your day, citizen.
Dirty Harry - This was great! Sometimes, you see an old movie that was groundbreaking or influential in its day, and it's boring, or trite, because it's been so thoroughly ripped off. But not this one. This was great! A clear precursor to the Die Hards and Lethal Weapons yet to come. Can't wait to see the next 4 movies in the series!