Automated Attack Monkeys, Scalpel Mines, & Acid

Pretty much agreed with all of this, especially your take on Masks. A wonderfully well-made, intelligent, thoughtful film, but thoroughly unpleasant.

Brothers Grimm was very good, especially Terry-Thomas' dragon dance, and it also wasn't *completely* historically inaccurate in its depiction of the brothers (far less so than, say, the Danny Kaye Hans Christian Andersen film). Yes, the film portrays Wilhelm Grimm as being more an affable clown figure who is only interested in collecting stories and telling them to small children, rather than a respected philologist who collected folk tales as part of an effort to try to define a distinctly German national character, but at least it did acknowledge that they collected the stories rather than wrote them, and that they were academics.

(And, y'know, dragon fights, dance sequences, swooping Cinerama shots of mountains, stop-motion animated elves...)

Shadow Of The Cat was great as well, in a Poe-esque kind of way, and it was a real shame you couldn't go to that, as it was apparently the first time it had been shown in about 40 years, from a print they thought was seriously damaged (but luckily was OK). Worth watching just for the fact that the cat which causes the deaths of almost the entire cast is just a plain tabby house-cat that is clearly someone's pet -- its complete lack of sinisterness actually makes it all the more sinister.