Election (1999)

Once I saw this title on the menu, I decided it should be my first viewing after Election Day. The advertising didn't appeal to me, especially the poster showing a tiny man's head in a girl's mouth, but the movie itself has some enduring clout, including reportedly being Barack Obama's favorite political pic.

High school civic teacher Jim (Matthew Broderick) has complicated feelings about busy, ambitious A student Tracy (Reese Witherspoon): He resents her for having had an inappropriate relationship with his now fired and divorced co-worker, Dave (Mark Harelik), but also fears that he will make the same mistake, especially if she becomes the student government president and thus spends more time around him. He persuades injured football star Paul (Chris Klein) to run against her. Paul's sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell), bitter at him for dating her female love interest, Lisa (Frankie Ingrassia), then enters the race to thwart him. Amid this havoc, Jim turns out to be in much more danger of straying toward Dave's ex-wife, Linda (Delaney Driscoll), who is also a friend of Jim's wife, Diane (Molly Hagan).

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000)

I ignore most direct-to-video movies, but this one caught my attention via YouTube ads, and it turns out to be pretty popular. Having watched just a little of the Batman Beyond TV series, I had some idea of what to expect. And this wouldn't be the first time I counted a Batman animation among my Halloween season viewings.

In an unspecified future, when a cane-needing Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy) publicly resumes his leadership at Wayne Enterprises, he could swear he helped bury a dead Joker (Mark Hamill) about 40 years ago. Yet the party crasher before him looks and sounds exactly the same -- not even any older. Unable to explain this, Bruce wants to dissuade his successor, Terry McGinnis (Will Friedle), from continuing to be Batman. But somehow the Clown Prince of Crime must know both secret identities, because he heads for Bruce while his minions (including one with a Halloween theme, incidentally) go after an uncostumed Terry....

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

A quarter century ago, I saw the second half of this thanks to my roommate. I felt like I'd seen enough, but more recently, I've wanted the complete picture. It was one of the most popular Netflix horror offerings I hadn't seen in full and one of the last influential and arguably great works of Francis Ford Coppola, with only The Rainmaker for competition since.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the Romanian count (Gary Oldman) gets help from suspicious English lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) to move to England. Dracula sees a picture of Harker's fiancée, Wilhelmina Murray (Winona Ryder), and is strongly reminded of his own bygone wife. He sees fit to let his harem restrain Harker by exsanguination while he goes off to court Mina, in addition to satisfying his infamous other appetite. When Mina's friend Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost) exhibits strange physical and mental symptoms, fiancé Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes) reluctantly turns to the expertise of Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), who quickly determines the cause....

28 Days Later (2002)

The series got a threequel this year, so I thought I'd finally give the original a go. Had I known that Danny Boyle was directing, I'd've braced for more grossness, but whew, there's no excrement scene herein.

Animal rights zealots release a chimp from a lab, ignoring a warning that it's "infected with rage." After the titular period, courier Jim (Cillian Murphy, younger than I'd ever seen before) awakens from a coma induced by a bicycle accident to find that the hospital and, indeed, London are almost completely abandoned. The first people he meets have the rage plague, but holdouts Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley) rescue him. Later connections include Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his teen daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), who relay a report of a military outpost. It exists, but whether it's the salvation they need is another question.

The Black Cauldron (1985)

When I read Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three, it didn't make me want to read the immediate sequel by this title. And by all accounts, the adaptation from both novels was one of the worst Disney animations. Nevertheless, I got curious to judge for myself. Besides, I wanted to break up my October viewings with something gothic yet ostensibly family-friendly.

Adolescent Taran (Grant Bardsley) longs to be a warrior but must settle for assisting old Dallben (Freddie Jones) in the care of spoiled pig Hen Wen. The job gets less boring when Hen Wen panics over a prophetic vision, readable by means of water and magic. The ancient undead Horned King (John Hurt) has learned of Hen Wen and sent minions to coerce her to reveal the location of a legendary cauldron that can reanimate his skeletal army, enabling world domination. Taran tries to take the pig where she won't be found, but it wouldn't be much of a story if he succeeded.

I Am Legend (2007)

Warner Bros. packaged this DVD with The Book of Eli as a "double feature." I had never seen such a set before; the two movies are unrelated, not involving any of the same actors, the same director, or even the same production companies. They just came out a few years apart and center on a lone Black man in a post-apocalyptic America, each with someone claiming to have been guided by a mysterious, potentially divine voice toward a cause for hope. That's about where the similarity ends. IAL actually merits a horror classification.

A scientist (Emma Thompson) reengineers a virus to cure cancer. It appears to work beautifully at first but quickly mutates, killing 90% of the world's populations and turning 9% into "Darkseekers," who are like fast zombies with the appearance and light allergy of vampires. Colonel Robert Neville (Will Smith) volunteers to remain in a cut-off Manhattan as the only known uninfected human survivor, accompanied by his dog, Sam, as he hopes to find a way to give the Darkseekers his immunity before he succumbs to either them or insanity from isolation.

Perfect Blue (1997)

This was one of the last items on my Netflix queue before the disc service discontinued. Once I saw that it was replaying at a local theater, I leapt at the opportunity. In truth, I'd been putting it off before, because people warned me it was grittier than the cover made it look. But anime fans deem it a classic, and I had enjoyed director Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, and to a lesser extent Paprika.

In her early 20s, Mima (Junk Iwao) gets tired of being in a pop trio and takes up acting instead. Her agent, Tadokoro (Shinpachi Tsuji), nabs her a role on a mystery TV series, with increasing airtime. Some fans are displeased with her career shift, and hostile messages are followed by substantial violence against people involved. The prime suspect is a freaky stalker known as "Mr. Me-Mania" (Masaaki Ōkura), but he's not the only cause of trouble in Mima's life. Under stress, she starts to imagine her pop persona as a separate, impish being out to supplant if not kill her....

The Book of Eli (2010)

As I worried about not having enough creepy movies for the month, I happened to find this DVD on a giveaway shelf. Sure, the movie's not a horror or thriller, and even "sci-fi" would be a stretch despite the future setting, but it certainly depicts a world we would not prefer to the present.

Nobody says directly, but evidence suggests that the ruins across America are due to nuclear war. It must have been religious in nature, because people subsequently destroyed every Abrahamic tract they could find. After 31 years, some regret that decision, even if literacy has become as scarce as soap or fresh water. Loner Eli (Denzel Washington) has found the only copy of the KJV to his knowledge, and he believes that a voice has told him to take it westward, where it will be duly appreciated. Gang leader/de facto mayor Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman) will stop at nothing to get his hands on it, up to and including threatening his mistress's daughter, Solara (Mila Kunis), who wants to run away with Eli.

Train to Busan (2016)

This was one of the most popular recent horror movies I hadn't seen yet. I would have saved it for later in the month, but I was in something of a hurry to find a Halloween-appropriate movie, and this was the main one left on my Netflix list.

In Seoul, Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) has devoted more of himself as a fund manager than as a husband or father. He reluctantly agrees to take young daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) to Busan so she can spend her birthday with his ex-wife. But news reports of random riots turn out to have been an understatement: Everyone who gets bitten turns just as berserk, and one such victim boards their train....

Elio (2025)

As has become all too common for Pixar, this gets mixed reviews. From what I gathered, the strongest complaints pertained to earlier plans to gay-code the 11-year-old protagonist; people either resented the change or thought it wasn't complete enough. I decided that the best approach was to forget all about the reported rough draft while watching.

We don't know how Elio Solís (Yonas Kibreab) lost his parents, but he doesn't cope well, and caretaker Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) expresses so much frustration that he assumes nobody on Earth wants him. He repeatedly tries to signal for aliens to take him away -- and finally makes contact, via Olga's Air Force equipment, with the Communiverse, akin to a galactic UN. Believing that Elio leads Earth, the ETs beam him up and send a shapeshifting doppelganger back. But under the circumstances, they will not let him stay on as an ambassador unless he can talk envious warlord Grigon (Brad Garrett) into not taking over the Communiverse. Elio's best hope lies in Grigon's friendly young son, Glordon (Remy Edgerly).