In the Line of Fire (1993)

I had seen a few allusions to this picture, primarily back in the '90s. Perhaps it would prove no more of a classic than the same year's Cliffhanger. But it was one of the few titles on my Netflix list to grab me at the moment and not be too much like anything I'd seen lately. Besides, it was due to stop streaming soon.

Decades after not preventing the JFK assassination, Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) is still in the Secret Service. He and junior Agent Al D'Andrea (Dylan McDermott) investigate the apartment of a man (John Malkovich) who has reportedly shown signs of plotting a new presidential assassination. That man goes by multiple names but prefers "Booth" -- as he tells Horrigan in one of many hard-to-trace calls. Seems Booth is even more obsessed with Horrigan than with the commander in chief (Jim Curley), claiming a sort of kinship with an agent who got a raw deal but also taunting him for potential cowardice. As Horrigan struggles to find out who Booth is and when he'll strike, the chief of staff (Fred Thompson!) opposes the security measures Horrigan wants, because it's a bad look for the presidential campaign.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

A horror movie about making a horror movie? When I first heard about this, it sounded halfway comical, yet it clearly wasn't played for laughs. When I learned the focus more precisely much later, I became mildly intrigued.

In an assuredly alternate 1921, F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich again) is beginning to direct the classic Dracula knockoff Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Many of the people involved had expected him to be highly controlling but are perplexed by his secrecy, followed by his unusual process for dealing with the vampire's actor, Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe, in the role that got him into Spider-Man), whom they never heard of before. Schreck is creepily eccentric, but that just means he's an ahead-of-his-time method actor, right? ...Right?

Warm Bodies (2013)

See the pattern in my reviews of late? I've gone from a straightforward zombie movie to a semi-comedic one to an even less serious, if not more comedic, one. I'd been putting this off not simply because of the subgenre and some, eheh, lukewarm reviews but because the trailer seemed to give away everything. But maybe seven years after watching that trailer once, I could find it fresh enough.

The premises herein deviate from the norm to the point that "zombie" is almost misleading. Well into an outbreak, the protagonist (Nicholas Hoult) is a young adult shambler who can remember no more about his past life than his first initial, R, but still retains some semblance of personality for the nonce, as by collecting and playing vinyl records in a plane he inhabits alone. He feels bad about eating people, tho not so bad that he'd rather starve to a more complete death, and he dreads the day he'll embrace this identity in full. Also, eating brains both prevents the rise of a new zombie and allows him access to the memories contained therein. But apparently even before doing that to a certain Perry (Dave Franco), he takes a special interest in Perry's girlfriend, Julie (Teresa Palmer), and impulsively decides to help her survive. By and by, Julie can't help, y'know, warming up to him too.