Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

Doing another maxi-list because I was on vacation in Florida meeting sol_se's parents (they like me, they really like me!).

Movies in italics are ones I've seen before.

Cronos (1993)
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
White Christmas (1954)
El dia de la bestia (1995)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
My Man Godfrey (1936) w/sol_se 
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) w/sol_se and her parents
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) w/sol_se 
The Twelve Chairs (1970) w/sol_se 
Invasion of Astro-monster (1965) w/sol_se and her parents
Dark Star (1974)
Soylent Green (1973)
High and Low (1963)
Day of the Triffids (1962) w/sol_se 

Cronos is exceptional, especially for being Guillermo del Toro's first feature. It's also sort-of kind-of a Christmas movie (the same way Die Hard is a Christmas movie).

Everything I have to say about TROS is here: https://twitter.com/Jetpack_Monkey/status/1209345740863991808

I watched Murder on the Orient Express as a way to cleanse my palate, post-Star Wars. It's a delightful, star-studded film that I enjoyed greatly.

Right around Christmas, I watched a string of classics, the weirdest of which is Day of the Beast, which is about the search for the Antichrist on Christmas Eve. I cried the most at It's a Wonderful Life, though. Every damn time.

Not a lot to say about the multiple films I watched while visiting sol_se and her folks, except they're all favorites, with the exception of Invasion of Astro-monster, which was kind of a dull disappointment.

Criterion Channel has a load of 70s sci-fi films running this month (and only this month), so I checked out Dark Star (weird, interesting, but not good, per se) and Soylent Green (which entirely hinges on its well-known twist).

I watched High and Low at the recommendation of sol_se's dad. It's very good, although not entirely what I expected. It's about one-fifth moral drama and four-fifths police procedural.

Day of the Triffids has two potentially great plots going for it: a post-blindness apocalypse and killer mobile plants. It wastes both of them and becomes kind of a boring trudge where stuff just happens.