57/2368. American Graffiti (1973)
I avoided this movie for years in part because I expected it to be the worst kind of nostalgia trip. It is indeed what I thought it was, but it also has a truly great cast, and the soundtrack is even better than advertised. I've got to give it to George Lucas, he really knows how to give audiences what they want when he wants to. (Which makes those later Star Wars movies even more baffling.)

Coke note: For a movie built on pure, distilled 1950s Americana, Coca-Cola is conspicuously hard to find. It only appears in a mini-golf snack shop intentionally obscured from the camera because it was obviously part of the actual snack shop and not paid product placement. (The "Frozen Coca-Cola" logo dates to 1969, an anachronism in a movie that takes place in 1962. Obviously.) What, did Coke want a cut of the box office?

58/2369. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Clearly the wrong lessons were learned from Ragnarok. The key theme of both the the A and B plots in this film are squarely focused on death, or more specifically, how to come to terms with surviving the death of loved ones. I think this is what makes the incessant, juvenile antics of Thor and company land so badly. There's just too much happening that's too heavy for the audience to enjoy casually tossed-off punchlines (mostly about destruction) and a badly underrealized visit to God City (which should be a movie in itself).

59/2370. The Hateful Eight (2015)
When I reviewed Django Unchained, I mentioned that it felt plodding. This movie moves half as fast, but since it is set up like a horror film (wearing the skin a Western), the slow pace is actually its strongest asset. (Perhaps because of Kurt Russell's presence, it becomes clear pretty quickly that John Carpenter's The Thing is the style template here.) The overriding theme in Tarantino's best work is the fluid state between trust and betrayal (the guy must have issues), and all roads lead here. Very good, I'd say; among Tarantino's best.

60/2371. MoviePass, MovieCrash (2024)
This is a documentary about how a company germinated by a good idea was killed by greed. It is a very American story, but it's clear even the filmmakers don't think anyone will learn any lessons from it.

61/2372. Scott Joplin (1977)
Billy Dee Williams plays the King of Ragtime in a period piece biography heavy on the syphilis. The movie is not great -- the director is unable to rise above its made-for-television feel -- but Billy Dee is.

More to come.

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56/2367. Denial (2016)
This is a courtroom drama about the libel lawsuit brought in the mid-90s against a Emory University professor by a British Nazi-sympathizing Holocaust denier. That's interesting, sure, but the reason I watched it was because I was a student at both Emory University and DeKalb College (renamed Georgia Perimeter College while I was there but is now a satellite campus of Georgia State University) in the mid-90s when the principle action takes place.

The 2016 film begins with an attempt at verisimilitude with establishing shots on Emory's quad in Decatur, GA (purporting to be 1994 and not doing too bad a job at pulling it off)...

...then follows our antagonist as he travels west away from Emory towards downtown Atlanta on Freedom Parkway (a road originally planned as the very controversial Presidential Parkway which was still under construction in the mid-90s)...

...then south along the Downtown Connector ("connecting" US Interstates 75 and 85) through the Grady Curve, so-called because Grady Memorial Hospital is just off camera to the right. (There's a giant neon Coca-Cola sign just off camera to the left.)

Side note: Turner Field, seen on the sign above, is also an anachronism. It didn't exist in 1994. It was originally opened to the public as Centennial Olympic Stadium for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games. After the Atlanta Braves abandoned it and moved north to Cobb County in 2016, it was sold to Georgia State University to become their football stadium and renamed again to Center Parc Stadium.

Side note 2: That billboard in the bottom right of the frame is advertising then-new (in 2015) news team of Sharon Reed and Ben Swann for WGCL CBS46 News. In 1994, WGCL was calling itself WGNX and after many years as an independent UHF station had just become the local CBS affiliate (after Atlanta's original CBS affiliate, WAGA, became a Fox station). Since 2022, WGCL has become WANF (for "Atlanta News First") but both Reed and Swann are long gone (in 2018 and 2019 respectively).

The antagonist must have been headed south down the Connector to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (called just the William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport in 1994 as former mayor Maynard Jackson wouldn't die and get his name added until 2003) because we next see him pull up to -- I had to Google Image Search this -- the Elmsbridge Civic Centre in Esher, England.

Google Maps tells me that Esher is a suburb of London, where most of the movie is set and filmed, so it's easy to see why the filmmakers would use it here. For the record, according to Wikipedia, the Civic Centre was constructed in 1991, so it is at least period appropriate!

However, in the very next scene, by means of movie magic, we're transported back to the States inside an unidentified lecture hall disguised as DeKalb College (by means of a banner on a podium)!

I have no idea where this last bit was filmed, though I suspect it is also in London. It doesn't match any hall I sat in off Emory's quad in 1993-95, and if there were any lecture halls like this on Perimeter's Clarkston ("Central") or Decatur ("South") campuses in 1997-99, I was never inside them. They never used wood paneling when concrete blocks would do.

That's just the first 5 minutes. The rest of the movie takes place in Europe. I never went to any schools in London or Poland, so for all I know, all those locations are perfect.

More to come.

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Not a great bunch of entertainment value here.

51/2362. The First Auto (1927)
This is a pretty simple story about a horse-lovin' man slowly coming to terms with the march of progress. The appeal is all the shots of early cars and how they did (and sometimes didn't) work.

52/2363. The Cheat (1915)
TCM played this as part of a tribute to Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa, but there's not really a lot to celebrate. Apparently, it was a bit of a sensation back in its day. Sure, Hayakawa's character is the sort of tall, dark and handsome slime that infatuated early movie audiences, but he's only taking advantage of the series of very poor choices that the white "lady" made herself in the first half of the film. Ick.

53/2364. Flirtation Walk (1934)
As much as I enjoy Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler in other, better musicals, this forgettable, fervently pro-Army melodrama is just too darn light on the music. I can say that it taught me that Flirtation Walk is the name of an actual landmark at West Point, so it certainly wasn't a total waste of time.

54/2365. Laugh and Get Rich (1931)
I recommend against this "comedy." Despite having the delightfully odd Edna May Oliver in a lead role, it's very much a couple of dull sitcom elements slow rolled into an 80-minute runtime. Snore.

55/2366. Sweet Charity (1969)
I don't understand most of the choices that director Bob Fosse makes with this movie adaptation of the stage show, but I disagree with most all of them, especially the obvious lip-synching. Everything that's worth watching here happens in the first hour.

More to come.

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47/2358. So Proudly We Hail! (1943)
The main narrative of this melodramatic romance is very dull (despite the male half being George Reeves), but the background situation of a group of American nurses trapped in Bataan as the Japanese war machine begins to roll through in the Philippines at the start of World War II is quite riveting. It's all utterly horrible, and from what I've read, reality was worse.

Side note: since this is Superman Month, it's probably worth noting that there is a recurring bit in this in which one of the American soldiers is repeatedly referred to as Superman. (Fun fact: it is NOT the character played by George Reeves.) The events are set in 1941, and Superman would have been only 3 at the time. (He was barely 5 when the film was released!) This was a Paramount picture, and Paramount was also responsible for the brilliant Max Fleisher Superman cartoon shorts that debuted in 1940. So the name-dropping here counts as brand synergy product placement! You! Ess! Ay!

48/2359. Crimes of Fashion: Killer Clutch (2024)
Sadly, Hallmark mysteries don't always hit the mark. All the characters in this whodunit act like idiots so that the romance between the protagonist, a fashion psychologist, and the French policeman can get more screentime. The conclusion is particularly ridiculous. What's the haute couture world's equivalent of "two thumbs down"?

49/2360. Mean Girls 2 (2011)
Speaking of two thumbs down: this made-for-TV cash-grab sequel is inferior in all ways to its predecessor, especially the script, cinematography, and editing. But also the casting, costumes, acting, direction, stunts, and setting. (It's Atlanta! Standing in for Ohio?) Even the title, which should have been "Meaner Girls." (In this case, they nonchalantly commit crimes.) About the only thing the movie got right was the product placement.

Mean Girls drink Diet Coke

Meaner Girls drink Coke Zero

50/2361. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Darker and less satisfying than previous instalments in this franchise, I would probably be hating on this movie if not for the scene-stealing Cosmo, a talking dog obsessed with being "good." Seriously, cut out the rest and just fast forward to the Cosmo scenes... or go watch this YouTube video.

More to come.

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42/2353. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
I'd call this Australian movie an exercise in expressionism, since the narrative is, shall we say weak, and the pace, shall we say languid? In other words, I found it both irritating and dull in equal measure. I'll not watch it again.

43/2354. One Bad Apple: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (2024)
Hannah the Baker is back, this time in a movie written by series star Alison Sweeny. I have to say, she's done a fine job giving us more of what we expect. This, the formerly titled Murder, She Baked series, remains my favorite recurring Hallmark Mystery series.

44/2355. Bullets or Ballots (1936)
Lawman Edward G. Robinson goes undercover to break up a criminal syndicate that employs Humphrey Bogart. It's not a particularly great work of art, but Robinson and Bogart make it watchable.

45/2356. The Sea Hawk (1940)
With Errol Flynn in the lead role, it's impossible not to say this is Adventures of Robin Hood on a boat. I didn't care for all the ship-to-ship B-roll action shots, and the climactic sword fight felt a little too staged, but the stuff in between is plenty engaging. Boy, howdy, did that Flynn have some screen charisma.

46/2357. A Biltmore Christmas (2023)
I joined Mom in watching this non-mystery Hallmark movie in part because it was filmed in (and sponsored by) Biltmore Estate, in part because it was made by people who clearly love Turner Classic Movies, and in part because Jonathan Frakes has a key role. I think in the right hands and with the right budget, this could have been better than a TV movie, but you know what you're getting you see the Hallmark Channel's name on the intro.

More to come.

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37/2348. Parasite (2019)
If I had realized that this was written/directed by the same guy (Bong Joon-ho) in charge of Snowpiercer, I wouldn't have bothered ever watching it. I disliked this so much, I had to bail after about an hour, deciding that I had already spent too much time with a bunch of characters whose life decisions constantly turned my stomach. I don't know understand how this won the 2020 Best Picture Oscar over the vastly superior Jojo Rabbit or Little Women or 1917 or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's dull and petty and just fucking awful.

38/2349. Wonka (2023)
A necessary palate cleaner. It's true that the songs aren't greatly memorable after you turn off the TV, but they're fun and colorful in the moment, and you certainly can't fault Timothee Chalamet's enthusiastic effort.

39/2350. The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Fred Astaire is mistaken by Ginger Rogers for a professional marriage-wrecker, but that's not as important as the singing and dancing. Yeah, Astaire and Rogers were both in Flying Down to Rio, but this is the first movie to really couple them for the full runtime. It's easy to see why audiences clamored for more.

40/2351. Inherent Vice (2014)
I'd call this a psychedelic neo-noir, and in the vein of The Big Sleep, I'm not sure it makes any sense. To be fair, it's not as strictly concerned with the big mystery as it is with how Joachim Phoenix's hippy detective fits into a corrupt, over-commercialized 1960s American society. Director Paul Thomas Anderson bakes in a lot of satirical humor (see also: Licorice Pizza and Boogie Nights). I was surprised that liked it as much as I did. (Is it time I finally watched Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood?)

41/2352. Mauvaise Graine (1934)
The English release of this French film retitles it Bad Seed, but Prodigal Son might be more fitting for this story of a spoiled child who runs away from home to steal cars. For the record, it's the first film directed by Billy Wilder, and while it's hard to draw a direct line from this to Some Like It Hot, his natural comedic touch still peeks through occasionally.

More to come.

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32/2343. The Last Emperor (1987)
This biographical fiction wants me to believe that poor Puyi was an ordinary victim of circumstance. The historical record is definitively not as forgiving. But I guess if you want China's cooperation so you can film in the actual Forbidden City, some sacrifices to reality have to be made.

33/2344. CrimeTime: Freefall (2024)
An actress from a popular crime drama moves back to her small town and immediately someone dies on her doorstep, driving her to try and solve the crime. The silly premise is not nearly so bad as the chemistry between the actors. The whole thing just feels artificial.

34/2345. La Samourai (1967)
Despite the title, this has nothing to do with samurai. It's really a movie about a day in the life of a French hitman who is betrayed and seeks revenge. And it's pretty darn good.

35/2346. Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)
You know how some movies have gratuitous nudity that exists just to lure people into watching them? Well, this is a documentary of the whys and hows of that sort of thing throughout Hollywood's 100-year history... plus plenty of gratuitous nudity to lure people into watching it. How meta.

36/2347. Watch on the Rhine (1943)
This melodrama is clearly intended as a warning for isolationist (or worse) pre-war Americans about how fascism corrupts society. It's a little heavy-handed, but given what we've been going through in the past decade, I'm willing to concede that maybe it needs to be.

More to come.

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27/2338. Guns Akimbo (2019)
Daniel Radcliffe's choice of offbeat roles continues to delight. He adds necessary empathy to this pretty dumb action film about a man who trolled the wrong guy on the Internet and ended up with guns bolted to his hands in an underground Mortal Kombat-style tournament. I look forward to where I might bump into Radcliffe next.

28/2339. Dear White People (2014)
As if you couldn't tell from the title alone, this is a very pointed comedic satire of race relations in the stuffier upper-echelons of higher education. It recognizes that there are no easy answers to society's stickier problems, which means the ending may not be the most satisfying. But it's certainly worth a watch.

29/2340. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)
This, on the other hand, should be watched by no one. To say that this is not my Aquaman is an understatement; I honestly hope it is no one's Aquaman. True story: I turned off the tv at the 2/3 mark when the bad guys killed Aquaman's father and kidnapped his baby because I thought that was the ending this movie deserved. Blech.

30/2341. Bangkok Dangerous (2008)
Nick Cage plays a cold-blooded assassin who can't keep his personal and professional lives apart as a job goes sideways in guess where. It's not great, but compared to Aquaman.... Damn, I hated Aquaman.

31/2342. A Little Romance (1979)
An antidote to bad action movies! This is a gentle coming-of-age romantic comedic adventure of two adolescents in Paris (and Venice) that any fan of Wes Anderson films will love. I sure did.

More to come.

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22/2333. Now, Voyager (1942)
Apparently, this romance was the highest grossing film of Bette Davis' career... and I can't see why. Just the right movie at the right time for weary World War brides, I guess. There's an argument to be made that it's a good example of how the Hollywood Hays Code censorship made mundane scenes extra suggestive by omitting context, but it's really just dull.

24/2335. Dicks: The Musical (2023)
Ok, well, speaking of the Hays Code, this satirical musical (in the vein of Rocky Horror) is its nightmare scenario. It's clearly looking for extra opportunities to offend everyday sensibilities, and it wildly succeeds. I found most of the songs very enjoyable, but there were several moments in which I cringed. I'm glad it exists. I might watch it again.

23/2334. Gilded Newport Mysteries: Murder at the Breakers (2024)
There's not a lot to recommend this improbable mystery set in the Gilded Age vacation home of Cornelius Vanderbilt. I recognize and appreciate that Hallmark Mysteries is trying new things (and grabbing at that sweet, sweet Downton Abbey-hungry audience), but this one seems miscast and poorly crafted.

25/2336. The Black Marble (1980)
Speaking of poorly crafted mysteries, this. (Well, it's more crime caper than mystery, as the audience is on the crime from the beginning.) I watched specifically for Paula Prentis, but her thin character arc is more ridiculous than the vainglorious dog-killing villain played by Harry Dean Stanton. And the extended climactic "chase" in the kennels felt like it took an hour. Pass.

26/2337. The Country Girl (1954)
If you have any doubts about Grace Kelly as an actress, watch this drama in which she is either a nagging wife or a victim of an abusive alcoholic Bing Crosby. The script is intentionally misleading, which is part of the fun. I can see the last scene as either hopeful or depressing, depending on your personal POV. Well done.

More to come.

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16/2327. The Racing Scene (1969)
James Garner narrates a documentary about a year in the life of his racing company. It's a lot like Grand Prix with the most dramatic moments edited out.

17/2328. Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975)
It would be easy to handwave away this innocent-black-kid-gets-shot-by-police story as an overly melodramatic mid-70s exploitation film if the same shit wasn't still making headlines.

Drinking pop is a key plot element that the Coke product placement team wisely stays away from.

18/2329. True Justice: Family Ties (2024)
It seems that Hallmark is leaning more into the procedural style mystery movie, which I suppose is fine for variety. Unfortunately, the plot construction follows the "last, least likely suspect" approach, so the murderer's motive is... weak. Oh well. As I've said before, I don't watch these things for realism.

19/2330. The Fake (1953)
An American insurance agent stumbles into a British art forgery scheme with just enough fisticuffs, romance, and plot twists thrown in so that all the boxes can be checked off. I enjoyed it in spite of its limitations, but all the cliche elements do tend to encourage eye-rolling.

20/2331. Adaptation (2002)
Brilliantly written meta-movie satire by Charlie Kaufman who uses himself as the fulcrum to demonstrate that Hollywood films are all a waste of time. It's no wonder the material attracted such an accomplished cast. (Kudos also to director Spike Jonze for getting himself out of the way so it seems all Charlie's film.) Even when it is completely predictable — seriously, the second half couldn't be telegraphed harder — it never goes quite where I expect. Loved it.

21/2332. The Girl Who Had Everything (1953)
What else do you give the girl who has everything but William Powell to play her father? Sadly, Powell is criminally underused because the studio is clearly more interested in the dumb, doomed romance built around Elizabeth Taylor. If I were in charge there would have been less Taylor, more Powell. (I suspect Powell thought so, too. This is the last movie he ever made at MGM.)

More to come.

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