43/2613. Up Periscope (1959)
A dull WWII movie with James Garner. For what it's worth, the dullness is not Garner's fault; there's just too much dead air masquerading as "suspense."

44/2614. L'Avventura (1960)
This is one of those movies that critics say you should see before you die, but reports say the first audiences to see it walked out on it. And they were right. Sure, it looks great and plays with some cinematic and storytelling structure concepts in unique ways, but the end result is that the audience spends two tense hours with some horrible people who know they are horrible people yet still being being horrible and resolving nothing. The ultimate lesson is don't do any of this. Not an enjoyable experience.

45/2615. Orion and the Dark (2024)
What can only be described as a Charlie Kaufman film for kids (because it is) has plenty of subversive surreality but has softened too much of Kaufman's uniquely signature metatextural navel-gazing for its younger audience. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. It's just a lesser Kaufman work.

46/2616. Downhill Racer (1969)
Every possible sports cliche is in this action movie which is really a character study of the kind of damaged person who succeeds in the world of cutthroat sport. In hindsight, it's a very interesting counterpoint to The Candidate, which I'm sure is no coincidence as it was made three years later by the same director and star. Personally, I think The Candidate is Redford's best work (leveraging his charisma to make a point about the corrupting force of politics), but I admit that's because I prefer my satires sharp enough to draw blood. Your mileage may vary.

47/2617. T-Men (1947)
This is a crime drama procedural with noirish elements including most notably the beautiful chiaroscuro cinematography. I would argue that it's not quite true noir because the protagonist is a straight cop who walked into his noirish situation with eyes open, but that feels a bit like picking nits. Remember, kids: crime doesn't pay (but neither does being a cop).

More to come.

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40/2610. The Naked Gun (2025)
Do you remember how they used to say that Airplane! ruined Leslie Neilson's career? Will this do the same for Liam Neeson's post-Taken money train? In any case, it's a worthy successor to the Zucker/Abrams/Zucker originals (superior, even to 33-1/3), but it stuck in my craw that this movie that does not shy away from poking many other influences with a sharp stick never mentions the fact that it's core plot is essentially the same as The Kingsman.

54/2624. Take This Job and Shove It (1981)
It so happens that I watched this about a month before David Allen Coe died, and I'm glad I did so that I had that mental reference when reading his obituary. The film suffers from a weak budget and some rather obvious re-editing, presumably to make a messy script work, but I'm happy to say it's plenty of fun as a silly working-class comedy of its era.

Although Take This Job and Shove It is drenched in beer, there's still time for the Pause that Refreshes! I suspect the Coca-Cola soda fountain in the background of one of the protagonist's many internal struggles between his professional and personal ideologies was already installed in the shooting location as opposed to paid product placement, but much of the plot is made of the cultural value of American brands (which I found somewhat ironic in an age where Budweiser is owned by a Belgian conglomerate), so it's possible that this obvious bit of background imagery could be intended by the director as an intentional, somewhat subtle in the context of the film, reinforcement of the Good Ol' USA.

41/2611. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
TCM airs this all the time, so I finally made myself watch it. I'm glad I did. It's very good, an atypical Scorsese movie that proves he's capable of so much more than just gangster films.

Speaking of questionable product placement, there's no way that the Coca-Cola Company approved their IP being used in a gory death scene, which reinforces that the dead man being a lazy Coca-Cola delivery driver was probably a choice by Scorsese to dramatize the pitfalls of the commercialization of the American Dream, a key element in spurring Alice's Campbellian hero's journey of self discovery. In other words, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a (bloody) Coke!

42/2612. Operation Crossbow (1965)
A pre-cursor to the formula perfected by The Dirty Dozen, the Brits and Americans work together on a suicide mission to scuttle the German rocket program. Sophia Loren gets top billing for a small and completely pointless part that exists only to attract (and, I'm sure, disappoint) her fans.

More to come.

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35/2605. Odd Man Out (1947)
I read that Roman Polanski, Sam Peckinpah, and Gore Vidal considered this to be among their favorite noir movies, but I agree with some of its contemporary critics that after a fantastically engaging start, it loses its way as it staggers (and then crawls) to its unsatisfying (but necessary?) conclusion.

36/2606. Critic's Choice (1963)
Sixties sex comedies are not my bag, baby, and it doesn't help that Bob Hope and Lucille Ball don't really have any sexual chemistry. But it's a mild enough example of the genre to be an inoffensive way to pass an afternoon.

37/2607. Toy Story 4 (2019)
Purposelessness. Abandonment. Loneliness. Death. Toy Story movies go hard and are always worth the effort to watch (though my fingers).

38/2608. Two Weeks with Love (1950)
The A plot of this MGM musical with Jane Powell and Ricardo Montalban is fine, but "little sister" Debbie Reynolds steals every scene she is in, especially singing "Aba Daba Honeymoon."

39/2609. One Battle After Another (2025)
Now that I've seen this, Paul Thomas Anderson's recent Oscar feels more like a career retrospective award. I do not think this is his best work, certainly no better than Licorice Pizza or Inherent Vice. Full disclosure requires I admit that I am no particular fan of Magnolia or Boogie Nights, either, but I agree Anderson is a rare talent and I do not begrudge the industry eventually recognizing it.

For an underground militant revolutionary radio DJ, that's a pretty prominent Coca-Cola can.

More to come.

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As a child of the 70s, I have long considered myself a Star Wars fan, which is why I impulsively decided to follow the link to "The Best Star Wars Trivia Quiz Questions to See How Much You Really Know" at Mental Floss dot com. The quiz has 100 questions, only the first 19 of which are in the category "Classic Trilogy (Episodes IV–VI)." But that's about where my fandom ends, so I figured I'd do pretty well. And I'm happy to report that I did know the name of Han Solo's ship and Luke Skywalker's trainer on Dagobah. But then I got to question 15.

15. What is the Emperor called in The Emperor Strikes Back?

I know I'm getting old, but I don't recall a movie named The Emperor Strikes Back in the "classic trilogy." And I certainly didn't know the answer.

Darth Sidious

Again, I'm old now, but I do remember a Darth Sidious who was the Sith Lord master of Darth Maul and later (after Maul gets cut in half) Darth Tyrannus and later (after Tyrannus gets decapitated) Darth Vader. (As Luke's trainer says of the Sith, "Always two there are. No more, no less." By which he clearly means a top half and a bottom half.) Darth Sidious was the evil alter ego of Sheev Palpatine, the representative of the planet Naboo in the Galactic Senate who manipulated events to rise to Supreme Chancellor before disbanding the Senate and ruling the galaxy as Emperor. So, yeah, Darth Sidious and the Emperor are the same person, but technically speaking, since Sidious wasn't introduced as a character until the fourth Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace, no one called the Emperor that in any of the "classic trilogy" films, especially one that doesn't exist. (Point of fact: the prequels played so coy about Palpatine/Sidious's future as "The Emperor" that I have often wondered if Lucas expected contemporary audiences to be unaware they were all the same person.)

So I call bullshit. But what else should I expect from a piece of Internet clickbait in the post-truth culture in which we now live, where every major technology and media company has turned their content engines over to poorly curated supervised LLMs that "hallucinate" up to half their facts? The fault is clearly mine for expecting reality to live up to my fantasies of living in a more civilized age.

Happy May 4th to those who celebrate.

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While walking the dogs, I came up with a great idea for a blog post. I really thought it all out, too, paragraph by paragraph. But I made a mistake. Instead of typing it all up when I came back to the house, I instead sat down and played video games. As you can guess, now that I'm at my keyboard, I have no idea what it all was.

To be fair to me, I didn't go straight to video games. Before I played video games, I made a cup of coffee and a sandwich and moved seven boxes of comic books upstairs and watched Jeopardy!. Somehow, I can remember a lot of trivia, but I cannot remember what I was going to post right here.

If I'm being really fair, I should also admit that after I played video games, I then ate some sardines for dinner, drank another cup of coffee, watched Balls Up on Amazon Prime, and then sorted some comic books before I sat down here at my keyboard. One just shouldn't do that. Watch Balls Up, I mean.

In the continued interest of fairness, I'll say that I don't think this film's failure is entirely the fault of the underwritten script or the casting choices (although I find Mark Wahlberg only funny as a straight man making reaction shots, so I'd say it was a mistake to give him any jokes at all). Comedy, even puerile comedy, is built on subversion of expectations and timing, and this exceedingly puerile movie has neither. I expected better from Oscar-winning director Peter Farrelly, director of There's Something About Mary. My first laugh came at 41 minutes when the editor finally had the good sense to just leave Sasha Baron Cohen in frame while he was being silly. Sometimes the best editing is the least. For the record, my second and final laugh came late, at the well-telegraphed scene involving a vampire fish trapped in the urinary meatus of a penis. I don't know if it was a practical effect or CGI, but the absurdity of the situation definitely gave off welcome There's Something About Mary vibes. Finally.

So now you can see how I forgot what I was going to post. Could you remember five paragraphs after all that? No, of course not. No one could. At least the stream-of-consciousness dribble I wrote above is probably way better than whatever I had composed in my head. And, to paraphrase a much funnier movie, Brett Favre is the guy you should be with. I just want you to be happy, Mary.

52/2622. Balls Up (2026)

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30/2600. Angels in the Outfield (1951)
What's best about this cliched sports romcom isn't the heavy-handed treatment of religious freedom in America, but the fantasy concept that a young girl is so innocent that she can see angels and everyone else being so jaded that they cannot believe her. Won't someone please think of the children.

31/2601. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
What this movie lacks in narrative plot, it makes up for in nostalgic references. Of course it was a blockbuster.

32/2602. Project Hail Mary (2026)
Having read the book, Dad really wanted to see this on the big screen, so I took him to the only theater in town even though I really don't like it. Dad loved the movie, but I was lukewarm. I got hung up on the choices made by the directors: too many of the "science" decisions were really just blatant plot manipulation, and Gosling's character is too poorly developed, depriving the character of a more satisfying arc as he discovers humanity through his relationship with a magical alien. (I know Gosling is a good enough actor to play anti-social without being unlikeable. He can do anything.) Most people are (probably rightly) less critical of those sorts of nits, and I don't begrudge them their enjoyment of this.

33/2603. From Headquarters (1933)
A lightweight murder mystery staring George Brent. I really can't say as I remember any more about it than that, so there you go.

34/2604. Chicago (2002)
I had avoided this for years because I had a preconceived notion that none of the characters were likable. And they're not. But the musical numbers are pretty good, and the whole thing doesn't run on too long. Is it really Best Picture worthy? Well, looking back at movies released in 2002, I can only say there were pretty slim pickings that year.

More to come.

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24/2594. The Boys from Brazil (1978)
This conspiracy thriller is a spy film typical of its era, only with strictly television quality cinematography. However, the brutally violent ending with Doberman Pinschers (a breed with German origins, cleverly reinforcing the conspiracy) is definitely not. I didn't love it, but I was entertained.

25/2595. Palm Springs Weekend (1963)
Perhaps this is best described as Where the Boys Are in the desert... for Easter. With Jerry Van Dyke doing his best Dick Van Dyke impression. Watched with Mom, who spent most of the film complaining about what a fool she was to have once liked Where the Boys Are.

26/2596. Sugar & Vice: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (2026)
Diminishing returns continue diminishing this once delightful series. I know that these productions are limited by formula and actor availability, but I really should start avoiding the ones without Norman the dentist, Hannah's co-detective and former love interest.

28/2598. Dark Victory (1939)
Bette Davis plays a bitch with an incurable brain tumor, but it's a romance? And it was nominated for Best Picture? Yeah, that tracks. Hard pass.

29/2599. Dancing Sweeties (1930)
The title tells you everything you need to know: a couple of strangers get married for a dance contest only to learn that marriage is hard. It never tries to be deep, just a bit of melodramatic escapism for a generation that doesn't yet know what a television set is. And that's okay.

Coke is good for sore feet!

More to come.

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19/2589. Vice Squad (1953)
Another day-in-the-life police procedural with hints of Dirty Harry. Edward G. Robinson plays a police captain willing to play a little dirty if it gets a cop killer off the streets. I liked it very much.

20/2590. The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
You know those movies where the girl who is supposed to be "ugly" just has a bad hair cut? Literally this. To be fair, it's supposed to be a fantasy for romantics, which I am not. But c'mon, try a little harder, Hollywood.

21/2591. Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023)
This does not get great critical reviews, and I get it. Plenty of people claim to love The Enchanted Cottage, and comedy is extra subjective. But this is funny. It's not after an Oscar. The silliness is the point. And I enjoyed it.

22/2592. The More the Merrier (1943)
I'm usually lukewarm on screwball comedies and romantic farces, and I'm especially tepid on Joel McCrea, but Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn are once again as delightful as they were in The Devil and Miss Jones. It's a winner.

23/2593. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)
I repeat once again that I am a sucker for coming-of-age stories, especially ones that feel so relatable to my own era, when I read this book. I'd've liked it even without Rachel McAdams. (But I also did like Rachel McAdams.)

More to come.

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Yeah, I read the reviews, which is a significant part of why I waited so long to see it. Now that I have, let's talk about

27/2597. Babylon (2022)

I adore writer/director Damien Chazelle's La La Land. I like old movies. In fact, I probably prefer them. I'm familiar enough with their work to recognize the pastiches of Clara Bow and John Gilbert and Ana May Wong. I've read Hollywood Babylon and Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks. This movie is aimed squarely at people like me. And I didn't care for it.

The narrative, scattered as it is, is at its core the same story as The Artist or, even more explicitly, Singing in the Rain. But it actually has more in common with Citizen Kane, by which I mean Chazelle has reworked the legends of sordid Hollywood stories into a stylish (and mean-spirited) fictional history morality play. And like the epics of yesteryear, it's also too long, containing too many shots that seem to be in there just because someone didn't want to admit to wasting the money they spent filming them. Here you really feel the length because of how uncomfortable it is to spend time with any of the scenarios or characters. Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie are the stars, but the minority characters are more engaging, if only because the racist system pushes them out before it can grind them down.

To be clear, Babylon is impressively well made (even if by its nature it can't help but feel derivative), but its core problem is that it was made for an audience of one. It feels as if Chazelle is exploring for himself whether the Hollywood Magic is a Faustian bargain, and his ultimate answer, appropriate for someone the film medium has already made a star, is an unsatisfying "yes and no." If anything, the real lesson here is that just as you can't make a war film without glorifying war, you can't criticize Old Hollywood by repeating all its worst excesses.

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13/2583. Kitty Foyle (1940)
Ginger Rogers is Kitty Foyle, a muddle-headed girl who falls for the wrong man and continues doubling-down on her bad decision. Ginger is very good even if her character is irritating. (The Wrong Man is played by Dennis Morgan, who I never much care for, so you'll excuse me if I was against him from the beginning.)

14/2584. The Big Combo (1955)
A film noir police procedural is right up my alley. This doesn't disappoint, especially with Lee Van Cleef playing a rat-like heavy in a homosexual-coded relationship with a fellow mobster. Good stuff.

15/2585. The Harder They Fall (2021)
I'm not sure why they unnecessarily borrowed the names of a bunch of real-life Black Wild West characters for what otherwise feels like a Van Peebles Blacksploitation Western. But whatever. It's still a lot of fun (at least until some third act shenanigans aiming for misguided pathos).

16/2586. Greased Lightning (1977)
First off, let me say that there's a briefish Coca-Cola drinking scene in the middle of this very loosely adapted biopic staring Richard Pryor and Beau Bridges, but I did not get a screenshot at the time. I'll try to correct that next time I see it's coming on TCM, which seems to run it about once a year. It sticks pretty hard to the traditional sports movie cliches, so if you like that sort of thing, you'll probably like this.

17/2587. A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
Maybe because Kirk Douglas is in this stylish tale of love and betrayal, it kept reminding me of The Bad and the Beautiful. I liked it, especially Linda Darnell (who was the love interest in Zero Hour!; if you know, you know).

More to come.

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