THE HOWLING

THE HOWLING, 1980 directed by Joe Dante is the story of TV newscaster Karen White (Dee Wallace) who after almost being killed by a serial killer that she had been tracking for a new story takes them very much needed time off at a secluded country retreat called "the Colony" beery deep in the redwood forests of California. She is played by weird nightmares and strange shrieks, rise and howling at coming from a nighttime for us outside her cabin. Her husband think she's just losing her mind and needs to relax but slowly she begins to discover things about the colony that are related to the serial killer that it almost taken her life at the beginning of the film. Her reporter's instincts to get to the bottom of the story prove to be much like the curiosity that killed the cat. She digs to deep and uncovers a dark nightmarish world or she must fight just to survive the lycanthrope's that hunt night.

This movie is at times a little can't be an odd but that's part of what makes a cult classic. The sex is a little overdone as is the case with most 1980s Hollywood horror films. The special effects are top-notch especially for the day and overall one of the best werewolf movies ever made.

The Last Samurai

The Last Samurai is the story of Civil War hero Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) who is hired by the Japanese government to train its new modern army and in order to defeat the samurai who have ruled that land for hundreds of years. Leading the samurai resistance is a kind, cultured, educated samurai by the name Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). Captain Algren becomes Katsumoto's captive after their first encounter in battle. Captain Algren is forced to spend the winter at the samurai camp where he is treated less like an enemy and more like a curiosity. He finds that the people in the village where he is kept our kind and generous beyond anything that people would see today. They possess a self-discipline unmatched in the world and they apply it to everything that they do. Eventually, he becomes friends with Katsumoto and learns what it is to be a samurai. After the winter is passed he is taken back to Tokyo and released unharmed from this point forward he dedicates his life to the way of the samurai even when it forces him to go into battle on the side of the samurai against the very men he had been training. For all those who have dreamt of the old days of honor and chivalry wishing they could have been alive when those things meant something and wondered what happened to it all this movie will be like a window back through time to the moment when the last flickering flames of honor and chivalry in the world were stomped out into darkness. Director Edward Zwick has captured in this film what it was to be a samurai and what it must have been like to be the last samurai. This film is truly poetic from its narration to its cinematography in the way that it captures a time in world long forgotten and lost.