Event Horizon (1997)

Event Horizon is essentially a haunted house movie in outer space. The spaceship is creepy, full of creepy noises, ghosts/hallucinations, and other blinking lights and other standard fare in haunted house movies. A lot of people either love or hate this movie, it was panned by most critics but it has a strong fan following. The film is set in the future and is about an innovative spaceship that went through a black hole and disappeared, only to reappear years later with its crew missing. A team of astronauts are sent to figure out what happened to the crew and salvage what they can from the ship, the ship's creator (Sam Neill's character) is 

among the salvage team. The new crew starts experiencing strange things on board the ship and they come to a dark conclusion on where the ship might have gone on its initial trip through the black hole (hell). The acting is what ties this movie together, both Sam Neill (Jurassic Park) and Laurence Fishburne (pre-Matrix) give wonderful performances, but the supporting cast although full of relatively unknown faces is also great featuring: Joely Richardson (Natasha Richardson's sister, and Vanessa Redgrave's daughter), Sean Pertwee (Equilibrium, and Dog Soldiers), and Jason Isaacs (The Patriot and Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter series). As the film progresses it gets progressively gory (they had to cut back in order to get an R rating). I absolutely love haunted house movies though and pretty much any twist on them, so this was interesting and enjoyable even if a tad too gory for my liking

at times. The pacing was wonderful, the film had a natural progression leading up to its climax at the very end of the film. The ending was similar to that of Carrie (1976), or Dressed to Kill (1980), or The Fury (1978). The CG is impressive by 1997 standards, but a bit dated by today's standards. It is also notable that the film has a similar feel to the first Alien (1979) film. I give it a 4.25/5; The film is featured in Rue Morgue Magazine's 200 Alternative Horror Films You Need to See. The film is also available to stream on Netflix. You can view the trailer below:  

Dean Spanley (2008)

This film is based on the novella My Talks with Dean Spanley by Lord Dunsany. It is set in turn of the century England among the middle to upper class and is about an English man who meets once a week with the town's new minister/priest who has an interesting stance on the concept of  reincarnation. The film was made in New Zealand and stars Peter O'toole in one of the better performances to come out of the latter end of his career, and Sam Neill as the Dean. This is very unique and I found it very refreshing. At first glance it looked like an intellectual film about people meeting to talk about reincarnation, but that's only the best description I can give without ruining the surprise of the film, even though that description isn't the most accurate. I feel this film is best to go in fairly cold to, in other words don't read much about it and only see the trailer if you must (you might be able to figure it out from there, but I wasn't), because the whole thing that makes this film so fresh and unique is best to discover on your own as the main character discovers it half way through. This film is full of wonderful quotes like "I wonder if one can be a dog and not have fleas." This film can be taken very seriously and analyzed very deeply (there's tons of symbolism) but it can also just be enjoyed superficially without thinking too deeply about things, it's really funny in parts, and very heartwarming without being corny or cheesy.  If you like Downton Abbey, I'd say give this a chance, but on that note you don't have to like Downton Abbey to like this (admittedly I'm not an Abbey fan). The film has an 85% critic approval rating and an 80% audience approval rating on rotten tomatoes.com, and I give it a 5/5.  You can view the trailer below: