I spent too many hours watching old Veronica Mars episodes in October, and as a result, I watched only 8 new-to-me movies. Here's the first four.

165. (912.) Jewel Robbery (1932)
It seems William Powell always played a debauched lawyer or detective, or a debonair con man or thief. As you can probably tell by the title, in this romantic comedy, he's the latter. Light on plot, this film was the date movie of its day.

166. (913.) Rendevous (1935)
Here William Powell plays a reluctant spy (who's a kind of con man) during The Great War. I spent the entire film thinking that Rosalind Russell's scheming society girl should have been played by Myrna Loy. That might have provided the extra spark this rather dull thriller needed.

167. (914.) Man of Steel (2013)
No, I didn't watch all of this movie. I just couldn't take it. It was worse than I thought it would be. The Kryptonese are assholes. Pa Kent is an asshole. The other kids in Clark's school are assholes. The kids who bully the kids who bully Clark Kent are assholes. Their parents are assholes.... All the conflict in the entire movie comes from people being assholes to one another. The filmmakers seem to have thought that in order to make Superman "good," every other character in the entire movie has to be an asshole. That's such a fundamental understanding of what makes the character of Superman great that it killed any desire I had of seeing how the actual plot was resolved. I hope Superman flew away and went to some Universe that wasn't populated with just assholes.

168. (915.) The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
Steve McQueen plays Paul Newman in The Hustler! Whoo-hoo! I didn't love this film, but I didn't find it nearly as terrible as The Hustler. That's probably largely thanks to McQueen, whose typically mute style (see also: Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford) allowed his card sharp to be a far more sympathetic character than Paul Newman's pool shark.

More to come.

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In April, it rained movies! The first of three parts begins now:

67. (814.) Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Tony Curtis plays a cad. The movie has a great cast and is surprisingly good given its laser focus on those who will do anything in pursuit of even the most meager tastes of power.

68. (815.) Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Why was this movie a box office failure? It's very engaging, even when the action gets ridiculously improbable — even more improbable than an enemy who can control time. Kinda. Sometimes — in the third act.

69. (816.) Ladies Who Do (1963)
A British comedy about cleaning ladies who commit insider trading but still fail to save their working class neighborhood from a ruthless developer. Amusing.

70. (817.) Pulp (1972)
Has any actor ever played more writers than Michael Caine? At least he's convincing, though so is Mickey Rooney as fallen Hollywood idol with mob connections. It's like a sarcastic Phillip Marlowe movie.

71. (818.) Mildred Pierce (1945)
Joan Crawford playing a devoted mother? Now, that's some great acting. (That sounds flip, but I did really enjoy this movie and Joan Crawford's performance in it. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes noir.)

72. (819.) The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)
Slow, boring, just plain not worth watching. Even Christopher Lee fans should avoid this.

73. (820.) Rango (2011)
A meta-textural, self-aware Western starring a chameleon with no name. I think if I had realized it was a Chinatown/High Noon/Leaving Las Vegas hybrid, I would have made an effort to see it sooner.

74. (821.) Madison Avenue (1961)
The protagonist (Dana Andrews) is an incredibly ambitious and egotistical ad executive. It'd be hard to cheer for him, but in Jerry Maguire style, everyone in his world is an asshole while his central character flaw is that he is incorrigibly honest. If there was one wrong note here, it was that Eddie Albert's character had the chance to be lampooned as a corrupted ladder-climber in the vein of All the King's Men. I think it would have made a stronger movie if less time was devoted to failed romances and more time given to the dog-eat-dog world of power players scheming to stab one another in the back. But that has always been my complaint about Mad Men, too.

More to come.

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Final five movies from October:

181. (718.) Being There (1979)
I have more than once heard this called one of Peter Sellers' best films, and it is. It is not, however, anything I was expecting. For a comedy, it's incredibly critical of human behavior, whether it be in our approach to politics, business, commercialism, romance... . We're really all just horrible people.

182. (719.) Blonde Venus (1932)
TCM presented this movie as something "shocking," but the only thing shocking about it is that the female protagonist goes back to her asshole husband after how he's treated her. You'd think the NFL produced this.

183. (720.) George Washington Slept Here (1942)
More Jack Benny. He's got a lot of great lines in an otherwise mediocre family-friendly comedy.

184. (721.) F for Fake (1973)
That Orson Welles knows and admits that this "documentary" of manufactured truths is the height of pretension doesn't exactly salvage this film, but it does make it bearable. (I would have sworn while watching the first 30 minutes that I'd seen this somewhere before. Art school? But the last 30 minutes I'm sure was completely new to me. But then, I did always fall asleep in class once the lights went out.)

185. (722.) Mr. Doodle Kicks Off (1938)
Joe Penner is to the 1930s as Adam Sandler was to the 1990s. Some funny stuff.

More coming in November.

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Last batch of August movies.

148. (685.) Pacific Rim (2013)
A truly beautiful monster movie with a terrible premise. I liked it, but I watched most of it without paying much attention to what people were saying. It has more than a passing similarity to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, another beautiful monster movie that doesn't make much sense.

149. (686.) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
I avoided this movie for years because it is a Tennessee Williams play staring Elizabeth Taylor. My loss. It was fantastic, though that was more thanks to Burl Ives' performance than anyone else's. I read online that it was Williams' least favorite adaptation of his work. That sounds about right. It's the only Tennessee Williams work I've ever enjoyed.

150. (687.) The Mating Season (1951)
A screwball comedy with a premise that's hard to swallow wherein a newlywed's mother is mistaken for his cook. I thought that some of the characters were unnecessarily broad, but the movie wasn't trying to expound on the human condition, just entertain you for an hour and a half. Mission accomplished.

151. (688.) Pickup on South Street (1953)
The failure of this film is in it's star, Richard Widmark, who plays the protagonist as an unlikable heel from beginning to end. Just because the villains are dirty Communists doesn't mean that the hero should get to be a runaway asshole.

152. (689.) Fired Up! (2009)
Cheerleader comedies always make money (box office lessone no. 1: sex sales!), so someone got the bright idea of making a movie about two guys pretending to be cheerleaders to get some girls. To say it's not a great movie is still probably over-selling it, but it beats watching a two-hour block of most sitcoms.

153. (690.) Nine Lives Are Not Enough (1941)
More Ronald Reagan, the star of the month! Reagan plays a charming reporter in this comedy/murder mystery that has absolutely no relation to its title. (It's almost like the studio had a snappy title, and they just pinned it to this script rather than let it go to waste.) Reagan is far better suited to physical comedy than the action and dramatic roles of the other films I saw him in this month.

That's it for August! Football has gotten in the way of movies in September, so next month's list will be much smaller.

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The other day I answered a knock at the front door to find a landscaper who said he had spoken to my wife. He was talking about my Mother. I wasted no time in correcting him.

When I was in high school, occasionally someone would see me with Mom and ask if she was my girlfriend. Mom was always flattered. I always assumed they were being disingenuous and gamely played along.

However, now that "girlfriend" has graduated to "wife," I've become the asshole male in every romantic comedy who disrespects the heroine. It's not that my Mom looks bad for her age (which I will not divulge here), but how can I look old enough that others would think I would be married to an AARP member? It's just a little gray hair, I promise!

So let there be no confusion: if you see me out with a woman on my arm, she's not my wife, she's my Mom.

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Movies, movies, and more movies! I'm up to 12 so far this month, so here are the first batch of 7.

79. (616.) All About Steve (2009)
This movie has a terrible reputation, and it's well deserved. Someone should have explained to the director and star Sandra Bullock that the audience needs to associate with the central character, not find her to be the kind of office mate you fear being trapped in an elevator with. Making all the other characters real assholes is not a substitute for a failure to create an interesting protagonist.

80. (617.) Laura (1944)
Fantastic film noir with a warped mid-movie twist. Recommended.

81. (618.) Doomsday (2008)
Less recommended is this reworking of Escape from New York. A highly contagious, completely fatal plague is threatening the world, so one badass government operative has to... oh, you know the rest. There's no logic or moral here here, just bad science fiction.

82. (619.) The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)
This journalist-coming-of-age-in-a-warzone trope really isn't the kind of movie I typically enjoy. I didn't really enjoy this one, either. It was well made (Linda Hunt was fantastic), but just not my thing.

83. (620.) Baby Mama (2008)
Tina Fey wrote some very clever comedy for SNL and 30 Rock, but the movies she's in tend to be very bland. (To be fair, she didn't write this.) Mildly funny, but not very memorable.
[UPDATE 2018-10-04: This just came up as a possibility in my TV guide, and I thought to myself, "Huh. I haven't seen that." So maybe "not very memorable" was an understatement.]

84. (621.) Lockout (2012)
Now this is how Escape from New York should be remade. Guy Pierce is perfect channeling Bruce Willis of the 80s. Loved it, loved it, loved it.

For the record, at this point, I started to watch the movie version of the Broadway musical Rent next, and I hated it. I didn't care for the music or characters, and didn't make it more than 30 minutes in before bailing. By my own rules, I can't say I've watched it, but no second attempt will be made. Ever.

85. (622.) Wanderlust (2012)
I know Apatow has to make the point-of-view of the "normals" in the film be the "truth" &mash; after all, hippies don't really drive box office sales — but Alan Alda's "maybe I missed out on something important" confession feels a little like a sell-out even to me. (Alda otherwise steals ever scene he's in with some great punchlines.)

More movies to come.

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Despite (or perhaps because of) my trips out of town in October, I still found time for 25 new-to-me movies. Like last month, I'll run through them in 3 posts over the coming weeks.

175. (482.) Sky Murder (1940)
The second Nick Carter, Master Detective movie. Even more predictable than its predecessor, but with an increased action quotient. They do make movies like this anymore.

176. (483.) The Manxman (1929)
Another silent Hitchcock film, this time a romantic drama. I didn't like it. There is really only one sympathetic character in the film, the other two leads were dumb assholes. I'm still not really sure which of the two men was supposed to be the Manxman, and I no longer care.

177. (484.) Number Seventeen (1932)
Another Hitchcock, this time more in the traditional suspense/thriller vein. Watching this, I became convinced that Hitchcock did it only so that he could investigate what he could get away with with stark lighting and shadows.

178. (485.) Adventures of Kitty O'Day (1945)
There are only two movies in the Kitty O'Day series, probably two too many. These would have worked well as 30-minute television episodes a decade later, but as feature-length films, there is just too much padding.

179. (486.) Family Plot (1976)
Hitchcock again, this time his last film. This one I really loved despite the weakness of its climax. Something about the look and feel of this film, its characters, its limited scope... it just all worked for me. I've read that contemporary critics were not big fans, so your mileage may vary.

180. (487.) Topaz (1969)
A Hitchcock spy thriller built around the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fascinating in its way, but too slow in all the wrong places. Enjoyable, especially as a fictional history lesson, but hardly one of Hitch's best.

181. (488.) Superman vs. The Elite (2012)
The comic that this animated movie is based on was fantastic. It showcases why Superman isn't an archaic moral concept (a story that seems to need telling at least once a decade). The movie is considerably less successful at delivering that same message. The "villains" aren't made villainous enough, and their heel turn doesn't even come until the last minute, too little time to allow the viewer to realize that they aren't who we should be cheering for. It seems that these DC animated movies are always a waste of time, vastly inferior to the material that they are based on.

182. (489.) All-Star Superman (2011)
I spoke to soon. I didn't like disjointed storytelling of All-Star Superman #1, so I didn't buy the rest, but this movie is the perfect bookend for fans of the Silver Age Superman. This is exactly the sort of thing that Grant Morrison, writer of the All-Star Superman comic, has made his bread and butter on in recent years. Finally a DC animated movie that captures the essence of its source material. Is this the exception that proves the rule?

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Tomorrow, my 20-year high school reunion will be held less than 2 miles from my house. I will not be going. Twenty years is a longer walk than I want to take.

I have exactly two friends from high school to whom I still speak, and neither one of them plans to attend this reunion either. That is not to say that I didn't have any other friends in high school that might be there. Some of them I stopped talking to because I am an asshole. (It didn't take much in high school to convince me that someone wasn't worth my time. Honestly, it still doesn't.) Others I stopped talking to because they were assholes. (I ended my relationship with one of my "best" friends when I heard that he and the girl I was dating at the time were having mutual oral sex. And yes, I'm still holding a grudge about that.)

I don't mean to suggest that there aren't people I went to high school with that I still remember fondly. What I do mean to suggest is that I don't remember any of them fondly enough to be bothered with going to a reunion to talk to them. I'm not in hiding, I'm just indifferent.

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While watching the Bulldogs lose the SEC Championship last week, I angered my brother by alienating his fiancée. Trey hasn't exactly told me that he's not talking to me, but I figured that he was mad because he wasn't answering my phone calls. I now also hear through the grapevine that I won't see him at all this Christmas, as he has chosen to avoid me and my mother this season. (From what I hear, Mom gets the blame because she did such a poor job raising me. Talk about holding a grudge!)

We all already know that I'm an asshole. Certainly, I resent that Trey won't spend any time with me now that he has a fiancée. I hadn't intended to insult her, but my resentment coupled with my natural anti-social behavior made me even less warm and fuzzy than usual. If that's even possible.

I know that I must be in the wrong. In a romantic comedy, I'm the character that starts out as a friend of the protagonist, but my reluctance to adapt to the circumstances resulting from the initial meet cute causes friction between me and the protagonist. My character becomes sidelined and eventually either A) comes to accept the new status quo, appearing cheerfully smiling as a member of the wedding party, or B) is revealed to be a sub-human wretch who gets fired from his job, falls into some dog shit, and is arrested in a comedic case of karmic mistaken identity for a child pornographer. Obviously, I'm working with my agent to land the part in script A.

So, I've been having a bad week. It's for times like these that I have a poster on my desktop. You know, that one with the cute cat and the motivational phrase? Yeah, this one:

Thank you, Frowning Cat. You always know how to cheer me up. And Trey and Melissa, if you read this, know that I am trying.

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I mentioned last year that DC Comics relaunched their entire line of comics and in the process re-introduced Batman as the kind of fellow who liked to shoot guns grappling hooks through the bodies of fleeing suspects. Skip ahead one year and things aren't any better, but at least DC has stopped pretending that this Dark Knight is the same as the one I grew up with.

In this month's Batman #0, Batman's origin is retold for the forty-five millionth time. More importantly, Batman's first appearance is now listed as "Justice League #1 (2011)" rather than the traditional (and legally more accurate) Detective Comics #27 (1938). I'm sure that if either Bob Kane or Bill Finger were still alive, they'd have something to say about this.

This means that this Batman didn't exist before I was 35 years old. Whew. Now I can hate this newfangled Batman worrying whether my own cynicism had turned on me, corrupting my hobbies into hate-bies. My Batman is still good. It's just this New Batman that's so damn wrong.

Could this steroid-chewing, anger-spewing modern Batman beat my Batman? Yeah, probably. New Batman -- and I am going to insist from here on out on calling this dark perversion of my hero "New Batman," using the same derogatory tone of voice I use when I speak of "New Coke" -- New Batman is an asshole without rules, ethics, or personality. He's not a clever detective so much as he's a dialogue-laden deus ex machina plot device. Worst of all, he's simply no fun anymore.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I still prefer a little comic in my books. So you can keep your New Batman of 2011, DC. My Batman of 1938 and I have better things to do.

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