Recently Rated Movies #35: It's Showtime, Folks!

Ah, J-horror... little did I know that when I said "yes" to a free year of Showtime and its numerous offspring, that I would be opening the gates to a zillion Japanese ghost movies. Right now, our DVR is only full to about 46% of its capacity, and I have about 16 movies saved on there, of which about 10 are Japanese films of mainly supernatural intent. If you want to find out how I will be spending the next three days while Jen is slaving away at work for the holidays... that's pretty much how...

Of course, the main reason I said "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...", and then licked my chops in the manner of Foghorn Leghorn's weasel nemesis, was that I wanted access to the Masters of Horror series (the first season of which I have been renting; steadfast readers of this blog will have read many of my reviews for those discs already) and the series which almost made me slap down the bucks for the damn channels anyway: Dexter, based on the excellent novel (now a series of novels) Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay about a police forensics expert who just so happens to spend his off-duty hours as a serial killer who hunts, traps and kills... serial killers. I was turned on to the book by my pal Eggy, who remembered a similar plotline of my own that I described to her a couple years before. Talk about not getting on the ball; I'm still kicking myself for not seeing this through. Mr. Lindsay, however, did a far better job of it than I ever could have, so it's all for the best. And now I am able to catch up on all the Dexter episodes that I missed in this, its first season, as well as the second season of Masters, by storing them up from Showtime On Demand, also free with the package. Thus far, I am a little underwhelmed by the new Masters lineup, but Dexter is even better than I hoped... and getting stronger with each succeeding episode...

Speaking of Eggy, watching all of these Japanese spookshows reminds me that Eggy and I spent a swell evening with our pal Elle watching Ju-On, One Missed Call and Ringu, just before I left for California. I imagine that we would have continued having these evenings had I not moved, as I had just discovered via a theatrical trip to The Grudge that Elle and Eggy were more than eager to eat up these movies. Now, every time that I watch one on my own down here, I think of those guys.

Great... now I'm going to be sad, apart from the whole "missing everyone at Christmas" jive. Movies really hit me where it hurts...

The List:
Onmyoji 2 (2003, Showtime) - 6; Yogen [Premonition] (2004, Showtime) - 6; Kibakichi: Bakko-yokaiden (2004, Showtime) - 5; Kansen [Infection] (2004, Showtime) - 5; Gin Gwai 2 [The Eye 2] (2004, Showtime) - 6.

And yeah, before I get a post comment about it, I know The Eye 2 is a Hong Kong film. It's not on the list because I thought it was Japanese; it's on here because I watched it and rated it on IMDB. That's why my regular Recently Rated Movies feature exists...