86/2518. Hi, Nellie! (1934)
This movie has a weird structure. It's mostly a light comedy, with a haughty newspaper editor supposedly being taught a lesson by being busted down to the lonely hearts desk. There's less misogyny on display than you might expect (unusual for the era), and there's also a big story to break. I enjoyed it.

87/2519. Blondes at Work (1938)
Fourth (of nine) Torchy Blane movies. Hard-nosed newspaper reporter Torchy breaks a lot of rules (and laws) in this one as she races her detective fiance to break the story of a dead department store magnate. Enjoyable as all the ones that came before it (in no small part because of Torchy's mischievous irresponsibility in determined pursuit of a headline).

88/2520. The 400 Blows (1959)
This French film is much lauded, and I get it. It's incredibly modern in its sympathetic presentation of a much disturbed adolescent who is treated very poorly by the self-absorbed adults in his life. I wish I'd seen it at 14.

89/2521. Torchy Gets Her Man (1938)
Sixth (of nine) Torchy Blane movies. (I skipped 5 because Torchy isn't played by Glenda Farrell in that one.) Here the dramatic tension comes from the audience knowing more than Torchy or her fiance about the counterfeit ring they're chasing. Plus there's a police dog that only answers to German commands. Who doesn't love dogs?

90/2522. Torchy Blane in Chinatown (1939)
Seventh (of nine) Torchy Blane movies. New York's Chinatown doesn't have as much to do with the story as the title would suggest. Instead, Torchy (and her fiance) are on the hunt for a Chinese gang that implies supernatural force to extort money from a family of art collectors in possession of ancient Chinese family jewels. It's all a bit far-fetched, and the mystery is incredibly easy to crack. Still fun.

And since we've already covered three Torchy Blane movies, let's just skip ahead a bit and get to

96/2528. Torchy Blane Runs for Mayor (1939)
Eighth (of nine) Torchy Blane movies, and the last one to star Glenda Farrell. To tackle a corrupt political racket, Torchy does, indeed, run for mayor of New York on a campaign platform that would probably still work today. Not my favorite, but still worth the watch as Farrell's last Torchy.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: movies

Movies! Government shutdown edition:

81/2513. The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
Yet another coming-of-age movie about how hard life is for adolescents, especially ones who were raised by trainwreck single mothers and whose best friend is dating their insufferable brother. I can't say the script sparkles, but the lead acting of Hailee Steinfeld sure does. She's awesome in just everything.

And she drinks Coke!

82/2514. Washington Story (1952)
Not a great title (I just now had to Google it to remember what it was about), but it is a pretty accurate one: a newspaper woman out to make a name for herself as a muckraker falls romantically for an impossibly sincere Congressman. As you watch, you can actually *see* Hollywood trying to make nice with McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee.

83/2515. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)
I certainly remember this being released, and I was very aware at the time of stories about the difficulties of making Apocalypse Now. So I might have seen this before, back in the day. But now I've seen enough movies and studied enough about all the personalities involved that I can only say... Coppola was insane to even have attempted it, and it's a miracle that film turned out as well as it did.

84/2516. Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015)
Other than the fact that it predicted life in 2025 too accurately for comfort, there's really nothing good to say about this sequel, the unfunny story of bad people doing awful things to everyone. (Is the whole thing improvised? Rob Corddry really needs to be kept on a short rope.)

85/2517. Staten Island Summer (2015)
So, Colin Jost wrote a movie that must be loosely based on his life, and it feels like he wants it to be Caddyshack but for community pools. Worth a watch only for the all-star cast, mostly a bunch of Jost's SNL castmates doing ambling comedy bits to fill holes in a weak central narrative.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies snl

Maybe I should slow down these movie reviews, as I've really found it hard to find the time/desire to watch a lot of new-to-me films in the past few months. Fortunately, I got way ahead back in July, which was when I watched these, so try to pretend along with me that these are recent watches.

76/2508. The To Do List (2013)
The always surly Aubrey Plaza stars in this raunchy coming-of-age sex comedy from the female point of view. The cast is chock full o' SNL alumni, so I'm a bit surprised I didn't know about it earlier. Everyone is funny (especially Bill Hader), and I fully endorse it.

77/2509. This Side of the Law (1950)
Right off the bat, a lawyer hires a drifter to impersonate a dead man and settle his estate, and of course it's obviously a trap. (I've seen Fletch.) The real question, and the reason to watch, is to see how everybody (anybody?) survives all the double crosses. Not bad.

79/2511. Eurotrip (2004)
When this came out (in the wake of the success of the filmed-on-the-University-of-Georgia-campus Road Trip), someone told me it wasn't very good, so I didn't watch it. Now that I have seen it, I have to say that A) while it's certainly no Road Trip, I wouldn't call it unwatchable (though I also wouldn't blame anyone for not watching it), and B) while many of the sex jokes have not aged well in the decades since release, that's par for the course for sex comedies of any past era. What we put on screen says a lot about contemporary culture, and it would be a mistake to call the mid-2000s a "more civilized age" even considering the state of modern political discourse.

Dammit, man! She's a diabetic!

80/2512. The MacKintosh Man (1973)
Paul Newman (under) plays an undercover agent who has to rout out Communist traitors in Ireland. Underwritten and dull, it is not among legendary director John Huston's best works.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies

70/2502. Professional Sweetheart (1933)
Yes, the title of this pre-Code film is suggestive of prostitution, and star Ginger Rogers plays a radio personality who is, shall we say, not exactly the darling girl she plays for the public. But the title actually refers to the gullible rube the show's sponsors hire to grease contract negotiations with their temperamental singing sensation. The best thing about this melodrama is, of course, Rogers.

71/2503. Pie to Die For: A Hannah Swensen Mystery (2025)
Once a delight, this Hallmark mystery series is experiencing some terrible diminishing returns. The guilty suspect is obvious from the start, and everything just drags on. And seriously, enough already with the mother mugging for the camera to create "comedy" moments. You're embarrassing yourself.

72/2504. Krush Groove (1985)
Hollywood's fictionalized version of the Def Jam Recording story is mostly after-school special morality play built around stellar musical performances by Run-D.M.C., The Fat Boys, Sheila E., Kurtis Blow, and LL Cool J. If nothing else, it's a great time capsule of its era (even if Russell Simmons looks nothing like Blair Underwood).

Coca-Cola: The taste of the hip-hop generation!

73/2505. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024)
This feels like yet another example of a movie made by a studio who felt compelled to make a movie with their intellectual property to appease the lawyers without really having any interest in spending the money to make it right. Sure, it has the appropriate tone and gags for a shorter Looney Tunes cartoon, but it plays out much too slowly and none of what makes it on screen sparkles. This would have bored me even if I was a kid.

74/2506. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011)
Jenny Slate is too good a comedian for this (work it, girl), David Cross is clearly just taking a paycheck, and don't even get me started on why they hired Amy Poheler, Anna Faris, and Christina Applegate to play the Chipettes if their signature voices and personalities were going to be opaque to the audience. The target demographic is obviously pre-teens, and they can have it.

75/2507. Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print (2025)
This anthology documentary of the early years of Ms. magazine feels like a television series they couldn't sell so they crammed into one movie. That's not a complaint so much as an observation. I actually liked it quite a bit.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies

Remember the plastic bag in American Beauty?

Too much doomscrolling had put me in bad spirits before the boys and I took the Jeep for a drive out to their daily play date with CeCe when we came across a black vulture trying to cross the lane to reach a roadkill armadillo carcass lying on the double-yellow line. The hungry vulture would get almost close enough to touch its meal before a car would approach, sending the wary scavenger skittering back to the relative safety of the grassy shoulder. Something about watching this Sisyphean task vastly improved my mood. That's pretty much the story of everyone's life.

Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it.

Comments (2) | Leave a Comment | Tags: cece movies walter

65/2497. Black Eye (1974)
This is very much a mid-70s "neo" noir. It's even easy to imagine Gene Hackman or James Garner in the title role if it hadn't been dipped in the trappings of the blaxploitation genre. It's not perfect, but it's not bad, either.

66/2498. The Cleaner (2025)
It's not Daisy Ridley's fault that this is a mediocre Die Hard knock off. She may be the best thing in it. It's just a very shallow action thriller with some very confused James Bondian antagonists. Yawn.

67/2499. Love Me (2024)
Maybe think of this as a dumber Wall-E where all of humanity is dead. I'd probably like it more if I could get over the typical Hollywood bullshit about technology being functionally immortal. But it's also a typically Hollywood bullshit romcom dressed in sci-fi trappings, raising questions it has no interest in actually answering. So that's two strikes. I do, however, enjoy Kristen Stewart, who (largely) succeeds at making her character sympathetic while working with a script that doesn't seem to understand (or care) what "self-awareness" is.

68/2500. Surviving Ohio State (2025)
This documentary is largely just the testimony of several former OSU wrestlers about events that they experienced in the 1980s and 1990s backed up with documentary evidence, and damn, it's a gut punch. I've never cared for the arrogance of "The" Ohio State University sports teams, but how could anyone support an athletic department, an institution, that would do this to its own kids? (If you watch this, know that just this week, a federal judge ordered mediation between the university, which has offered a total payout of $60 million, and the subjects of this film to be conducted by the same man who negotiated Michigan State should pay $500 million for similar circumstances. So expect more news to come in February 2026.)

69/2501. A Minecraft Movie (2025)
The similarities between this and Napoleon Dynamite were obvious even before I looked up the credits and saw that it was made by the same writer/director. I admit that a whole bunch of the specific jokes were lost on me. I've only played a couple of hours of Minecraft, and this is aimed squarely at the game's hardest-core community. Therefore, I found it just an okay movie experience, but I can understand why it was a such a big hit with the target audience.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies

It's once again time for the annual Little League World Series, and as usual, ESPN loves to share the favorite foods, celebrities, and school subjects of participating 11 and 12-year-olds. One of them says he would spend lottery winnings buying the Boston Red Sox, which would have to be one hell of a jackpot. But it was another one that really got me thinking: when asked who he most wanted to meet, his answer was "my future self." Damn, kid, that's a monkey's paw wish if I ever heard one.

What tween is going to be satisfied with their adult form? Every pre-adolescent kid I ever knew thought they were pretty close to perfect, and why shouldn't they? Childhood is a responsibility-free zone, our parents live to tell us how great we are, and teen literature YouTube videos^[1] are full of stupid adults who crash every party, stamp out all the fun, and make stupid decisions that ruin the world. That last bit is far more accurate than most "adults" would care to admit.. Allow me to point out that the Hippies grew into Yuppies. Logan's Run may have a point.

So what happens when a kid looks at their future self and realizes that they "sold out"? In Back to the Future II, Doc Brown is careful to keep Marty away from his future self, who has become a corporate tool and a total loser. That's ironically funny to the audience, sure, because Marty spent the first movie being such a cool, confident teen that he made his dopey father cool by association; to see that Marty eventually becomes his father is obviously his worst nightmare^[2] and good dramatic structure. But if Cool Marty met Middle-Age Marty, as Doc Brown would say, that probably is going to result in the destruction of the entire universe. Or at least the local galaxy. In either case, Cool Marty's self-confidence is going to be badly shaken.

Obviously, I think I'd probably be a disappointment to my younger self. Sure, I have a better control on my temper, much stronger purchasing power, and I've read a whole bunch more books. However, I'm also bald, worried about my health,^[3] and live in a basement. I'm sure I didn't have exactly lofty expectations—I never wanted to be particularly rich or famous so much as I just wanted people to recognize how wonderful I am and then leave me alone—but how satisfying could it have been to learn that mentally I'll be largely the same anti-social, anxiety-riddled, selfish prick I was in the 7th grade (now with temperature-sensitive teeth and extra poodles)?

So do yourselves a favor, kids. When ESPN asks you who you want to meet, just say Shaquille O'Neal. Everyone loves Shaq.

^[1] According to the Associated Press, in Oct 2024 only 14% of school-age kids read books for fun anymore. I don't know what the percentage was back in my day; I've seen unqualified statistics that suggest it may have been closer to 50%, but I have doubts it was that high. Judging only by my own experience and how excited my coterie of friends always got for the Scholastic Book Fair, I'm inclined to say it was closer to 100%. But we didn't really hang around the baseball playing crowd.

^[2] Every kid's worst nightmare? Just me?

^[3] Seriously, the most memorable scene for me in Beverly Hills Cop is Billy telling Sarge about the concerning amount of undigested red meat in the bowels of a 50-year-old man. I'm trying, Billy. I'm trying.

^[4] Sorry about all these footnotes. I may have become a bit conditioned because the book I just finished seems to average one footnote per page... for over 400 pages. That book, by the way, was Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, which is nonfiction anthropology about exactly what it says on the cover. Twelve-year-old Walter would *definitely* be disappointed in what I choose to read for "fun" these days.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: baseball dear diary espn movies walter

60/2492. South Pacific (1958)
I already knew I don't typically enjoy Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, so I had intentionally not watched this. I was right to be wary. The whole first act is people singing about how they wish they were in love, then two sets of them fall in love, sing about that, and suddenly and for no overt reason decide that they don't love love. And don't even get me started on the terribly ugly color overlays. I didn't even bother to watch the second act. Blech.

61/2493. The Undercover Man (1949)
I just had to Google this film to refresh my memory, as the title doesn't jog anything. And the reason for that is that the title is a little misleading: Treasury agent Glenn Ford doesn't really go undercover during his pursuit of the tax-evading Al Capone stand-in. It's not bad, but clearly its not particularly memorable, either.

62/2494. Playtime (1967)
This movie, essentially a silent pantomime comedy on an amazing city-sized outdoor soundstage, is truly a masterpiece. I'd say it's too gentle and self aware to be called satire (but it does have thorns!), so let's call it a brilliant parody of the aggressively impersonal "modern" world. Like all Jacques Tati films, it's a must watch for anyone who enjoys the art of cinema.

63/2495. The Phoenician Scheme (2025)
This puzzle box is easily the most Wes Anderson Wes Anderson film yet. This thing has so many layers, and I'm confident each layer has multiple meanings. I'm sure that many people who aren't totally enamored with Anderson's unique style (Philistines!) are chilled and irritated by the opaque artifice of it all, but I've thought about the symbolism of the characters, dialogue, and design elements for days. Wes Anderson films bring me joy.

64/2496. Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary (2024)
I thought I knew what "yacht rock" was, but now I really have been schooled. This genre has some very specific boundaries in both time and space! Good music, though. (And kudos to the original musicians who participated despite some obvious irritation that their music may have become a bit of a punchline.)

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: movies

55/2487. Murder in the Fleet (1935)
You might think that a battleship would make for a tightly locked room murder mystery, but the bigger mystery might be how so many people got on-board this ship! Sadly, the reveal hinges on an insane killer who was only pretending to be sane earlier in the film. It feels like a cheat because it is.

56/2488. Bullet Train (2022)
There are several mysteries on board this Tarantino-inspired Brad Pitt action vehicle, the foremost of which is why are so many professional killers on the same train? Honestly, I found the plot and characters more satisfying than the action, which often feels too cartoonishly CGI. To be clear, I enjoyed it. A lot, actually. But the later it gets, the more outlandish it is, and as I've made very clear, my suspension of disbelief only stretches so far.

57/2489. Run & Gun (2022)
This is one of those low-budget Tarantino-inspired films that really doesn't know what it wants to be. There are a couple of clever ideas at the core of the script, but those are let down by the technical imitations of... just about everyone involved except maybe Richard Kind, who really acts as though he's in an entirely different movie.

58/2490. What Happens Later (2023)
Meg Ryan and David Duchovny are the stars of this could-have-been-a-play, but my favorite character is the magical PA announcer of the fantasy airport the protagonists are trapped in. The film is not as insightful or engaging as it wants to be, but it is charming.

59/2491. Masterminds (2016)
What was I doing in 2016 that I missed this movie? Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Ken Marino in a comedy directed by Napoleon Dynamite's Jared Hess? Yes, please! I'm happy to report that it's exactly as stupid and funny as I wanted it to be.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: movies

Today, Friends Ken and James dragged me to a movie theater to watch

78/2510. Superman (2025)

It's the first time I've seen Superman in a theater since Superman Returns (which I really, strongly dislike). And I have to say... it's okay.

To explain why my rating is more-or-less "meh," may I remind you that a few years ago, there was a then-new movie adaptation of the book Emma (which I really, strongly love). But the reviewers for that movie kept harping on how accurate to the Jane Austen source material it was, which, in hindsight, only proved that they themselves weren't particularly familiar with the source material. Maybe they read the Cliff's Notes version.

This Superman is kind of like that.

Sure, it's got a lot of silly comic-booky elements, but it really is a typically James Gunn script that isn't particularly interested in being accurate to any characterizations, stories, or even costumes that have ever appeared in the pages of any DC Comics. (Particularly Krypto. I just couldn't get past Krypto being a shaggy, simple-minded dog. In the comics, he is neither, and, as much as I love dogs, this movie never gives me a reason to forget that. And don't even get me started on the character assassination of Supergirl in service to what must have been a Superboy and the Ravers fanboy in-joke.)

All the reviews for the movie, both good and bad, praise both Lois Lane and Krypto. I certainly agree about Rachel Brosnahan, who was as underused as Lois always is, but I find it surprising that more aren't singling out Mister Terrific being terrific (in a modern take of a blaxploitation superhero). There are several moments where it actually feels like his movie and I am there for it.

But I recognize that all of the things I have to complain about are more a feature than a bug of these sorts of blockbuster movies, especially in the superhero genre. Gunn's muddled plot moves real fast and hopes you wont notice that nothing really lines up, a fact that Gunn himself lampoons with a final post-credit scene. If that sort of tongue-in-cheek metafictional humor floats your boat, this is definitely for you.

Even though Superman often seems superfluous in his own movie, it still is the best live-action Superman film in 40 years. Take that however you will.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: friends james ken movies superman