Movie reviews part 1821 through 1823 in a series of indeterminate length:

167. (1821.) Reckless (1935)
This movie's script is, frankly, bad. (What starts as a romantic musical comedy collapses into bland melodrama based on current events with a preachy ending.) It seems the studio paired William Powell and his sweetheart Jean Harlow with the intention of overcoming that shortcoming. I don't think Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone could have saved it.

168. (1822.) People Will Talk (1951)
This anti-hypocrisy morality play could only work with someone like Cary Grant in the title role. Dr. Noah Praetorius' self-righteousness would be insufferable without Grant's impish charm.

169. (1823.) Lost in America (1985)
Albert Brooks and Julie Haggerty yell at each other across America. The comedy exists largely in what is not said, as the characters are blind to their own absurdity. It definitely has its moments, not the least of which is when the couple's RV travels through Atlanta and the delightful hamlet of Newnan, Georgia:

Thirty-five years later, Lagrange Street still looks like this on the way to Newnan High School. Of course, in 1985, that sign was pointing to I-85 Exit 8. They now call it Exit 41, which is just as well since they added an additional exit just up the road when they moved the hospital from Hospital Road to Poplar Road to accommodate the giant Summergrove residential community built on the east side of the Interstate back at the turn of the 21st century. They call the new exit 44, which is probably a better name than 8½.

More to come.

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As I type this, news is breaking that the Atlanta Falcons have fired head coach Dan Quinn. Now he'll have some time to watch some movies. May I make a few suggestions?

157. (1811.) King of the Roaring 20's: The Story of Arnold Rothstein (1961)
Arnold Rothstein was a notorious gambler who is widely believed to have played a significant role in the 1919 Black Sox scandal. This loose biopic barely touches on that, focusing instead on Rothstein's betrayal of his friends. It could only have been improved by casting someone other than emotionless David "The Futgitive" Janssen in the lead role and a much-too-old-for-the-part Mickey Rooney as his whiney best friend.

158. (1812.) The Lost World (1960)
Another misfire of a movie in which dull 1950s-style adventure (and outdated cultural attitude) meets zero-budget special effects. I actually feel bad for Jill St. John for having to be in this as one of two obligatory damsels in need of saving. (I also feel bad for her toy poodle, Frosty, who exists only for comic relief.)

159. (1813.) Loan Shark (1952)
George Raft goes undercover at great personal risk to take down the loan shark operation that killed his sister's husband. That sounds a little cliche, doesn't it? It is. But revenge flicks never have or need the most original plots. Everyone wants to see justice served.

160. (1814.) Wuthering Heights (1939)
Speaking of cliches, this is just a terribly sappy melodrama about a pair of star-crossed lovers. That sort of story never works! Seriously though, Laurence Olivier spends the entire film being a true asshat to literally everyone else on screen, *especially* the girl he supposedly adores. That's not love; that's domestic abuse. I cannot believe that anyone ever really enjoys watching this.

161. (1815.) Skyjacked (1972)
Thrillers in the 1970s always had very little plot and expected the audience to be entertained by constant threats to the life of their ensemble cast. I'd say the biggest name in this film (which, as its name suggests, is all about James Brolin's determination to hijack an airliner and escape to Soviet Russia) is arguably Walter Pidgeon, but Charlton Heston has the big role and faces the most danger (including the wife he is cheating on with a stewardess). For fans of the genre only.

Hang in there, Danny boy. There's more to come.

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In the Before Times, tomorrow would have been the opening day of the Georgia football season (vs Virginia at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff game).

That's not happening now. If Georgia does manage to have a football season, it won't start until September 26.

In honor of the COVID-19 modified 2020 season, I present my latest lawn ornament: On Ice.

Uga is always cool.

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It's election season, and the television is flooded with campaign ads.

I have repeatedly seen an advertisement for Kelley Loeffler's reelection campaign for her U.S. Senate seat in which a young black man extols her virtues not as an embarrassingly rich owner of a sports franchise and a stock exchange but as someone sympathetic to those less fortunate than her. Yet her supporter mispronounces her name throughout the whole commercial. (He says "loff-ler", yet she appears at the end of the commercial pronouncing her own name "leff-ler," almost like she is passive-aggressively correcting him after the fact.) Why would the Loeffler campaign air that? Could they not find a single person who could praise her who actually knew who she was?

Another advertisement for current president Donald Trump's reelection campaign claims that if former vice president Joe Biden wins the election, the United States will go to shit. What condition are we in now? Uncontrolled pandemic, record unemployment, race riots, oh, my! If this shit show is the current administration's idea of greatness, I'll take anyone else, please.

I suppose it's some small comfort that Marjorie Greene isn't adverting over the air in the Metro Atlanta market in her run for the state House of Representatives. Greene has become infamous as a candidate so openly racist that state Republicans have widely disavowed her, which takes some doing considering that the current Republican governor ran on a platform of successfully befouling state citizens' ability to vote. Even Facebook has said Greene has gone too far in her most recent gun-toting ads. When you're too far afield for Facebook, it's time to stop auditioning for a government seat and start looking into some professional mental help.

That said, there's nothing new to watch between those campaign commercials anyway, so maybe I should just leave my television off until December. Being too aware of who's making the decisions that impact my life is bad for my own mental health.

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Mid-season update on Operation Fish Tank: the winless Miami Dolphins were on target in their quest for the first pick in the 2020 Draft until they ran into the one-win New York Jets. The resulting contest was a sad parody of what football is supposed to be.

Coach Brian Flores's season-long compromise between his competitive nature and his owner's desire for Tua Tagavailoa has been to score as many points as possible in the first half then stop playing after halftime. That strategy finally failed him. It's hard to blame him here, as how could anyone expect the Jets to be better at the same tactic? Both teams tried forcing a safety on the other, but the Jets' incompetence could not be overcome.

There are now 4 teams with one win, and the Cinncinnati Bengals lie alone at the bottom of the pile as the only remaining winless team. The Dolphins aren't even in second place among the tied-for-second teams. The NFL uses strength of schedule for draft tiebreakers, and the worst team with the hardest road is the Atlanta Falcons. (Echos of "28-3" continues to resonate.)

(UPDATE 2019-11-05: Oops. I misunderstood that tiebreaker. That should be the worst team with the *easiest* strength of schedule, which isn't Atlanta but Washington. Dolphins still in third, though.)

So here we are at the halfway point of the 2019 season, and it looks like the Miami Dolphins have scrapped all the talent on their team and endured a horrible, losing season... for the third overall pick. At least Atlanta isn't likely to take a QB, right? Right?

Way to find a way to lose at losing, Fins.

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Dad update: he's now in his third hospital in as many weeks.

First he had heart surgery in Atlanta to replace a malfunctioning mitral valve. He came home for a couple of days before shortness of breath took him to the emergency room in Newnan. They diagnosed him with atrial fibrillation, a relatively common complication, and sent him to Fayetteville to have a pacemaker installed.

Doctors say he should be fine. I agree. He's already proven that for a guy with a bad heart, Dad can really get around.

Meanwhile, this side-effects poster was on the wall of his third room:

A closer look reveals a very familiar "face."

EVEN IN HOSPITALS.

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In 1996, I was in the mood to watch a sad movie, so I asked my co-workers at the Chili's in Toco Hills for a recommendation I could take to the Blockbuster Video across the parking lot. Their suggestion was Two Moon Junction. I don't have a great memory of that film, but I do remember ultimately being disappointed by it. It was sad enough, I guess, but not in any poignant way. It's no The English Patient. (Which is just as well. I hated The English Patient.)

That's really the thing about movie reviews: it doesn't matter so much whether a critic likes or doesn't like something, it matters whether you and the critic like the same things. Therein lies the value of a film critic.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used to have a critic named Eleanor Ringel. (She still writes criticism for the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Why the Atlanta Business Chronicle runs movie reviews is another question altogether.) Ringel has long been my favorite critic because I know that anything she likes, I'll hate, and vice versa. She has the anti-Walter's taste in film. For example, she hates The Incredibles and loves Avengers: Infinity War. That's just wrong. Wrong, but useful. Compare Ringel to Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers, who earned his reputation by giving any blockbuster summer movie a great pull quote to use for their marketing. That's not useful.

Anyone who is capable of separating what they like from why they like it can be a critic. Sadly, that's too high a bar for most. I mean, it's fine if you like Aquaman, but you have to be able to explain why for anyone else to find value in your subjective opinion. "It was a fun thrill ride" is not a helpful blurb if my idea of fun is an episode of NOVA about the construction of medieval cathedrals and yours is watching idiots eat Tide PODS® on YouTube.

For going on 8 years now, I've been obsessively tracking on this site the movies I watch. I do that mostly for my own benefit, though I do try to put what I've watched into some context of why I did or did not enjoy it. If that helps anyone else find a movie to watch, great. But stay away from Two Moon Junction. It's not good.

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Mom has now joined the ranks of such immortality as the 1990 announcement that Atlanta would host the Olympics, the 1946 Winecroft Hotel fire, and the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank. In other words, she's on the front page of today's The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

At least the back of her head is.

There's a bit of a story to this picture. Mom was in Macon in the middle of last week with her sister. While my aunt was attending her business conference, Mom decided to venture into downtown Macon to see the sights. She was headed for the Tubman Museum, but when she saw a sign informing her that the lot she had parked in was reserved for the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, she decided that she had to go there instead.

She called me that evening to tell me an AJC reporter had taken her picture. He had singled her out for the honor because of Mom's unparalleled distinction of being the only person there. The hall, it seems, was in the middle of changing several exhibits, and Mom was the only patron in sight.

For the record, she enjoyed her visit to the hall, and has encouraged me to go next time I'm near Macon. Now that it's part of my family history, I just might. I hear it's on the verge of a revival.

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I was planning on going to a professional football game this weekend when the Atlanta Legends played the Salt Lake Stallions at Georgia State Stadium on Sunday. But now I will not be doing that.

Not because I've got other plans or because I couldn't afford tickets. No, I will not be doing that because the Alliance of American Football has taken its ball and gone home. The league "suspended operations" yesterday, which is a euphemism for "went out of business."

Unlike previous off-Broadway versions of the NFL, I had been enjoying the AAF games. I loved their tweaks to the usual NFL rules. (No kickoffs. All extra point attempts had to be 2-point conversions. Referees for the referees.) Alas, it was too beautiful to survive. By which I mean, obviously, the NFL had to kill it.

The Alliance had been struggling for capital since they started play in February. Attendance and television numbers were actually very encouraging, but behind-the-scenes backing was not. The nail in the AAF's coffin was the NFL and NFLPA refusing to play ball and allow young, signed NFL talent to crossover and make the AAF a true developmental league like the World League was in the aughts. I can't say as I blame them. There's only so much money to be made from professional football, and right now, they have it all. Why should they share if they can get away without? (Capitalism Rule #1: Business ethics is an oxymoron.)

Anyway, I'll be free this Sunday afternoon. Maybe I'll take in a movie.

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Mom woke me up at the crack of 11AM yesterday, and we went to watch a Civil War re-enactment. Specifically, we went to see "The Battle of the Woods" at historic Brown's Mill battlefield in Coweta County, Georgia.

The site is famous for a short battle that took place there in July 1864 between Federal forces led by Brigadier General McCook and Major General Wheeler's Confederate cavalry. Wheeler's ambush led to a rout, and over a thousand Union soldiers were captured at the cost of only 50 Confederate lives. The battle has been credited with forcing General Sherman to abandon his strategy of cavalry raids in favor of a more direct siege of Atlanta. Call it a slow-burning pyrrhic victory.

Not that I knew any of that before yesterday. The Civil War isn't exactly a particular interest of mine. It's not exactly in Mom's wheelhouse, either. She was just looking for an excuse to go for a walk in the woods in some unseasonably cool weather.

Anyway, describing what we saw yesterday as a "re-enactment" is not entirely accurate. There were men in period-appropriate clothing with era-appropriate weapons all right, but they weren't really re-enacting anything specifically, at least not while we were there. (We got there a little late.) They demonstrated their weapons, military drills, and medicine, and they answered a lot of questions from the crowd, so it was more like an interactive lecture.

Even though I was groggy from sleep deprivation, I admit it was interesting to see history in action. And it certainly makes you stop and wonder at how things have changed in the past 154 years.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some sleep to catch up on.

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