7/2577. More Than a Secretary (1936)
I keep confusing this movie with Skyscraper Souls, which was the last movie I watched in 2025, probably because both are about a professional woman who falls for a cad. In this one, Jean Arthur gets her man, but he's really not worth it, Jean.

8/2578. Cinema Paradiso (1988)
A very well told story about the early life of a man who falls in love with cinema itself. I read there's a director's cut that adds a bunch of story about the man's later life, but that could only possibly make this worse. Sometimes less really is more.

9/2579. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Jean Arthur again (TCM's Star of the Month), here with Cary Grant in an adventure tale about the early days of flight. Very entertaining.

10/2580. The Love Light (1921)
Less entertaining. It's kind of a silent version of The English Patient if that movie had been duller and taken place in the shadow of a light house. The last reel, with its a kidnapping and shipwreck, may have been necessary for a "happy" ending, but as much as I dislike The English Patient, it certainly knows that some endings shouldn't be happy.

12/2582. The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
Not the one from the Golden Age of Porn. That's The Devil in Miss Jones. This one is a thoroughly delightful romantic comedy (starring Jean Arthur again) that is definitely worth watching. But be very careful when you're googling it at work.

More to come.

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Let's go ahead and put these three together:

6/2576. Francis (1950)
11/2581. Francis Goes to the Races (1951)
18/2588. Francis Goes to West Point (1952)

Once upon a time, one of my grandmothers expressed surprise that I'd never seen the Francis the Talking Mule movies. (Honestly, I don't remember which grandmother, and they're both long gone now so I can't ask. If I had to guess, it was probably Granny; she was a lifelong devoted fan of the "picture shows," even if she thought they got too coarse from the 1970s onward. In hindsight, I think she had a point.)

Thanks to TCM, I finally made the effort to watch the first three. (There are seven in all, but Donald O'Connor and Chill Wills are only in the first six.) I'm happy to report that these three are indeed quite enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed the talking mule providing secret assistance to the West Point football coach. The highest complement I can pay is that they make me want to read the book that inspired them.

More to come.

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Reset the numbers! Grab a Coke! Here are quick reviews of the movies watched by me for the first time in 2026, part one of many:

1/2571. The Pirate (1948)
You just know from the moment that Gene Kelly's arrogant actor is introduced that this film is going to struggle landing its complicated love triangle, but it does all right for itself, specifically because the Nicholas Brothers show up at the climax to do a great dance routine and make you forget about the silly melodrama. Those guys could dance.

2/2572. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025)
Inferior in most ways to the original, but everyone involved seems to know it'd be foolish to try to top a classic and instead trusts the audience to be satisfied enough with hanging out once again with old friends. I was. (Bonus points for surprise performance by a Beatle!) Thanks for all the laughs, Rob Reiner.

3/2573. The Bad Guys (2022)
Perhaps I've played too many role-playing games and watched too many heist movies, but I don't think a movie could be any more predictable in structure. To its credit, the target audience is children, and invention isn't really the point here so much as fun visual style and the chummy camaraderie of the voice actors.

4/2574. Too Many Husbands (1940)
What a mess! This farce was later remade as My Favorite Wife which handles the material somewhat better by swapping the genders, prolonging the secret, and adding children. In fact, go watch that one. It's just better all around.

5/2575. The In-Laws (1979)
Generally speaking, I do not find Alan Arkin's trademark "comedically" exasperated film persona funny, and that held true for most of this movie as well. But the scenes in the diner and on the airfield really landed with me.

Parallel to the road? Hmm. What an odd place for a billboard.

More to come.

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Here at Wriphe.com, I don't actually keep track of every movie I watch, just new-to-me movies. I also frequently rewatch old-to-me movies, and sometimes I spot the Pause that Refreshes. These are some of those I spotted in the past year (in chronological order of release):

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

The Sting (1973)

Ghostbusters (1984)

Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

Waiting for Guffman (1996)

Zoolander (2001)

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

Yes, I know that's not a great screenshot of the original black Coke Zero can, especially considering that the product gets a better showcase when Scott intentionally overturns the Coke Zero that Gideon Graves offers him at the Chaos Theater. However, that black can really didn't photograph well in the dim light of the club. So this is what you get. But by all means, go watch Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to see if you think I made the right choice. I love that film, and so should you.

As always, a complete archive of my Coca-Cola movie screenshots can be found here.

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132/2564. Thunderbolts* (2025)
SPOILER WARNING: The villain in this movie is... depression. And it might be the best Marvel Universe movie I've seen in eight years. Make of that what you will.

133/2565. It Started in Naples (1960)
Given how much older one-note grumpy Clark Gable is than his love interest in this "romantic" comedy (Sophia Loren), I feel like it should have stayed in Naples.

134/2566. Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)
This documentary is about a pay-cable pioneer in California, but boy, howdy, would I have enjoyed watching what they broadcast: classic and esoteric films.

135/2567. Fitzwilly (1967)
I have mixed feelings about this. It's a little bit like a less believable Candleshoe (my favorite Jodie Foster film), but I did enjoy Barbara Eden and the sharp writing, even if I felt Dick Van Dyke was not quite right for his part as the con-artist butler. (David Niven would have been great!)

136/2568. The World of Henry Orient (1964)
This delightful outsider coming-of-age film presses all of my personal buttons. (Hello, Paula Prentiss!) A traditional, romantic lead actor willing to lampoon his public persona would have been better in the title role (Peter Sellers is, as usual, playing too broad), but I guess they wanted a big name. (David Niven would have been great!)

138/2570. Skyscraper Souls (1932)
A melodrama of several sets of relationships set entirely inside one very, very large building. It's nothing to write home about. (William Warren is the building's amoral manager, and it's just too bad that David Niven was still in the British Army in 1932. He would have been great!)

That's it for movies I watched in 2025. Next time: 2026, now in progress!

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127/2559. Honey Don't! (2025)
Reminiscent of the earliest Coen brothers noirs like Blood Simple with the subversive comedy of Fargo, this movie has no particular message but a wryly amusing story of messed up people trying to make their way through a terribly fucked up world. I liked it.

128/2560. The Last Station (2009)
What a cast! The film aims to present the final days of Leo Tolstoy, which is probably best described as a story of messed up people trying to make their way through a terribly fucked up world.

129/2561. The Dark Angel (1935)
A British melodrama (based on a play) probably best described as a story of messed up people in love. At least in this case, it was the horrors of The Great War that messed them up. I thought the two male leads looked and behaved too similarly and got really confused in the third act if only because I'd already seen Love Affair and Sleepless in Seattle so it was too easy to anticipate the finale.

130/2562. Hey There, It's Yogi Bear (1964)
This was the first feature length Hanna-Barbera animated movie, and it was distributed to theaters by Columbia Pictures. I didn't know there were any, and I was surprised to find it's actually quite entertaining, especially the jaunty musical numbers, especially "St. Louis."

131/2563. The Man Called Flintstone (1966)
The Flinstones meets Get Smart in a movie that is slightly worse than either of those shows, mainly a fault of the need to maintain a single silly and dull plot for over an hour. Audiences must have agreed, because this was the last (of two) feature length Hanna-Barbera animated movie released by Columbia Pictures.

More to come.

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121/2553. Saturday Night (2024)
Just like Unfrosted, I very much enjoyed this obviously fictionalized semi-historical story, an "inspired by true events" tale of the first Saturday Night Live episode determined to squeeze in as much of the early show's lore as it can manage. Think of it as a worthwhile celebration of the founding of an American institution.

122/2554. The Willoughbys (2020)
A Netflix suggestion I'd never heard of. It has the feel of a film adapted from a children's book, though as I learned, the source is a YA novel, not an illustrated art book. It's cute.

123/2555. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
This story has exposition, rising action, and then the animated equivalent of an escape from Cloud City. I've often defended Empire Strikes Back as having the best world-building of any Star Wars film, but maybe I've been overly kind to its ending. This film has a similar structure (with a somewhat stupider set of villains), and I found the lack of any plot resolution very, very irritating.

124/2556. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
A triumph of style over substance, by which I specifically mean plot and art design over characterization. The entire human race faces extinction, and all the potential victims are kept at such arm's length from the audience, it's hard to give a shit that their pocket universe is set to be pruned by a purple giant who eats babies. It's a crime that FF are presented as icons, not the endearingly dysfunctional family of charismatic, relatable people that sold bunches of comics in the 1960s.

125/2557. 'G' Men (1935)
The film that gave FBI agents their nickname is worth watching only because Jimmy Cagney (as a former gangster turned federal policeman) is always worth watching.

126/2558. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
Friend James described this movie as "2% fight in a minivan in a forest and 98% not worth watching." I might adjust those odds slightly in the minivan's favor, but only slightly. It really is just a bunch of nostalgic fan service for preexisting Marvel stans. (And seriously, you'll never convince me that anyone has ever really liked Gambit.)

More to come.

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One last word on this Christmas season: this year, I attended a 2025 community theater loose adaptation of A Christmas Carol as a play, watched the 1938 MGM film version on TCM, and then read Charles Dickens' original 1843 book on Project Gutenberg to check how the others deviate.

137/2569. A Christmas Carol (1938)

Mostly, the key differences are the heavier emphasis on Bob Cratchit and Fred and the costume design of the spirits, but also the visual adaptations tend to leave out Scrooge meeting his own corpse. (The Ghost of Christmas Future goes hard.) These days, corpses aren't very Christmas-y.

I have never cared for Scrooge's abrupt change of heart, but Dickens clearly isn't much interested in how Scrooge became a miser or why he suddenly gave a shit about Tiny Tim so much as he's selling that kindness and charity are the only way for a society to become a community. "Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset." I do not personally enjoy the Christmas season, but I don't think Dickens is wrong.

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I got into a polite disagreement about the relative merits of Breakfast at Tiffany's with Friend Ken, who admitted he has never much enjoyed movies from the late 50s through early 70s. Breakfast at Tiffany's aside, my uncultured friend is not entirely wrong. Obviously things did start to go a bit stale as the American Studio System died a slow death, but that doesn't mean there weren't movies worth watching in the 1960s. For example:

1960: Inherit the Wind with Tracy and Kelly taking turns stealing scenes. The Apartment deserves its Oscar for its sharp script, but I still prefer to watch (and listen to) The Magnificent Seven.

1961: Judgment at Nuremberg is still topical, as evidenced by the fact they just revisited it. I'm particularly fond of Murder, She Said, a fantastic whodunnit with a great theme. Of course, I hear Breakfast at Tiffany's is also pretty good.

1962: To Kill a Mockingbird. If you don't like that, we can't be friends (although I cannot tell you how many times I've watched The Music Man and Gypsy).

1963: Lilies of the Field has Poitier at his best, but I'm a sucker for Charade (which is not a Hitchcock film; his 1963 effort is The Birds which I also like very much).

1964: The Umbrellas of Cherborg is simply brilliant (best movie of the decade?), and if you like musicals, also A Hard Day's Night. Everyone has already seen Goldfinger, right? The template for all action spy movies to come.

1965: Bunny Lake is Missing. Yes, it's a lesser Otto Preminger film, but I'll take lesser Preminger over the likes of The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago any day.

1966: A Man for All Seasons won Oscar for a reason, but the tide is turning from the hackneyed films of yesteryear and there are a bunch of films from '66 that have entered enduring classic status, including Batman and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

1967: Hotel. I just love it. Actually, there's a lot to love about '67. I'm especially partial to In the Heat of the Night and the original Peter Cook/Dudley Moore Bedazzled, but you could throw a dart at most movies released this year and not come out too badly.

1968: The Phantom Tollbooth, because I grew up with it and was idly thinking about Subtraction Stew just yesterday. And while this is the year of Bullitt which stands up really well as an action film, I'd recommend The Swimmer as a hidden gem.

1969: Putney Swope is well outside the envelope of what came before it, but so are so many of the films of the year. I've seen quite a few movies from '69, when the cultural turmoil of the decade really starts to creep into almost everything, and I don't enjoy most of them, including the ones you're probably thinking of. I did, however, enjoy If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium and Z.

That's nothing like a complete list of worthwhile '60s movies, but the only way to find out what you'll really like is to start watching. Good luck, Ken.

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Netflix month continues!

116/2548. The Electric State (2025)
The amazing CGI visuals might actually be the film's core weakness because the shallow plot and cliched characters (and disinterested actors) just aren't strong enough to support the emotional weight inspired by the shattered remnants of a world destroyed by consumer culture. It very much feels that the creators never fully bought into the End Times Capitalism their film visualized. I must mention that the robot's Alamo, an abandoned shopping mall in the middle of what is supposed to be the Sonoran Desert, was fittingly filmed in the now-demolished North Dekalb Mall where I shopped and worked throughout the 1990s.

117/2549. The Happytime Murders (2018)
Contemporary reviews for this film weren't kind, but as a fan of buddy-cop crime movies, SNL-style humor, and Muppets, I was fully on board. Comedy is always very subjectively received, but I think it works.

118/2550. Unfrosted (2024)
Normally, I'm no fan of historical fiction, but hysterical fiction, sure. Recommended by friend Randy (who was always a Seinfeld fan), this fictional history of the creation of the Pop Tart is, I'm happy to report, a darn funny movie, especially if you are already familiar with the history of the era. And what a cast!

119/2551. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)
This one put me to sleep. Not that it's bad, but I felt it was a little slow to develop in obvious directions. I certainly enjoyed the original shorts, but none of the longer films has held my attention long. Maybe I've seen all the Wallace & Gromit I need to see.

120/2552. Fixed (2025)
Okay, full disclosure: I've never been as admiring of Genndy Tartakovsky's animation as many of my art school peers. I was encouraged by the cast, but this is like a dumber, less self-aware or artistically engaging Fritz the Cat. I did not finish it and would encourage no one else to start it.

More to come.

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