Halloween - I had forgotten just how good this is, and why I had long considered it to be my favorite movie ever made. Re-watching it for the first time in maybe 6 or 8 years reconfirmed that it hasn't lost anything, it's still so good. Just an amazing sense of impending dread, I love how Carpenter shows The Shape over and over and over, but the viewer still isn't any more certain about it than is Laurie. Story is compact and well-told, the performances are good (Curtis is still the best final girl by a massive amount and Pleasance is awesome) outside of the usual awful hackjob from Nancy Loomis (she's in like every Carpenter movie from around this time and she's terrible in all of them), even the child actor parts work well. Still my favorite movie, hands down.
Halloween 2 - 'k, so first, it's not a Halloween movie, and other than $, I'm not sure why in the hell Carpenter agreed to put the name on it, but well, there's always Season of the Witch to go a bit further down that route of course.
But... it's still mostly fun for what it is (which is not a Halloween movie). It's a dumb slasher movie set in a hospital after hours where the main characters whisper their lines like they think they're Christian Bale in Batman and the nurses ignore the newborn ward to get naked and let Michael kill them.
Speaking of, I sort of wish there was a more clever transition from The Shape to Michael Myers (former is still awesome, latter dumb but predictable).
Fine on its own terms but clearly a monumental step down from the original.