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I watched the film "Nightbreed" last night. It was written and directed by Clive Barker and based on his novel "Cabal". In the film, a Canadian city is being terrorised by a vicious serial killer who targets families, and a young man named Boone (played by Craig Sheffer) is convinced by his psychiatrist (played by David Cronenberg) that he, Boone, is the killer. In fact, as we learn early on, the psychiatrist is the killer. Tormented by guilt however, Boone attempts suicide and winds up in hospital where he learns about a legendary city called Midian where "the monsters live" and all sins are forgiven. Boone goes there and finds it is a huge cemetary the size of a city, but beneath the cemetary is the real city populated by creatures known as Nightbreed. After nightfall Boone is attacked by a vampire-creature who bites him, but he manages to escape straight into a police ambush where he is killed. However, something in the creature's bite has the effect of raising people from the dead. I remember reading the book years ago and it was pretty good. The film is very imaginative and the creatures are very well-done, but it does suffer from bad pacing (it was cut by half an hour by the studio). Also the conclusion is very much set up for a sequel, which never arrived. David Cronenberg is very sinister as the psychotic psychiatrist. Fans of the film, may be interested to know that clive Barker is attempting to create a restored "director's cut" for DVD release.

This afternoon I went to the cinema to see "Jarhead". It's directed by Sam Mendes and based on an autobiographical book by Anthony Swofford, and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Swofford, a young US Marine who is sent to Iraq to be a sniper, during the first Gulf War in 1990. However in the desert, he finds himself facing an endless round of training and boredom as he and the rest of his platoon wait for orders. Add to that the constant suspicions he has of his girlfriend back home. It was a good film, and interesting. It is quite slow at times though, because basically it's a war film mostly about waiting for a war. Jake Gyllenhaal is good and there are some striking visuals, in particular the burning oil wells in the desert.

This post has been entirely about movies. Sorry if it bored anyone but I haven't really done much today!