140/2149. Cop Land (1997)
Sylvester Stallone is very good in this modern crime drama where the cops are the robbers. Of course it helps that the rest of the cast includes DeNiro, Keitel, Liotta, and about a half dozen other fantastic talents.

Commit crime and drink Coke!

142/2151. Foxy Brown (1974)
Pam Grier is on a mission to avenge the death of her government agent boyfriend, who was killed by a narcotics gang... after being tipped off by her own brother. There's some unintentional silliness in here, but the entire film is worth the climax.

Sell out your sister's boyfriend and drink Coke!

143/2152. Alligator (1980)
Foxy Brown's Pam Grier plays the title character In Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, where her love interest is played by Robert Forster. I mention that because by coincidence, Forster is the lead actor in this mediocre killer monster movie. And no one even drinks Coke in it! (The closest it gets is the one kid nearly eaten while wearing an "I'm a Pepper" t-shirt.)

144/2153. Matinee (1993)
I really enjoyed this heartfelt love letter to the creature features of the late 50s and 60s set during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I mean, I love movies about the movie business, I love atomic monster sci-fi films, and I love coming-of-age stories, so it's sort of tailor made for my specific interests. But I think everyone will appreciate John Goodman's conman with a heart of gold.

Watch movies and drink Coke!

More to come.

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Slate.com's culture blog, Brow Beat, has published a satirical article that is too perfect. (I'm so jealous. I wish I'd thought of it first.) I'm reposting just the start to whet your appetite.

Don't Prosecute Gotham's Supervillains for Their Latest Scheme

Any attempt to bring the Joker to justice is likely to fail or backfire.

By THE JOKER   JAN 12, 2021 · 7:47 AM

It's been a traumatizing couple of weeks in Gotham City, full of unthinkable violence and chaos. We've all seen the appalling footage: the exploding shark, the pier bombing, and the United World Organization building—until last week, a powerful symbol of the democratic hopes of the entire world—being invaded, vandalized, and defiled by the "United Underworld," an alliance of the city's most dastardly criminals: Catwoman, the Penguin, the Riddler, and even the Joker, the coolest supervillain of them all (although his role in the plot was very minor or maybe even nonexistent, from what I'm hearing). People across Gotham are frustrated and angered, and the vicious, unwarranted vigilante attack launched by so-called crime fighters Batman and Robin against the crew of a whimsically decorated Navy surplus submarine in Gotham Harbor did nothing to lower the emotional temperature.

Now it appears that Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara are planning to bring criminal charges against the ringleaders of the United Underworld. This is a grave mistake. Our great city should be looking forward right now, not dwelling on the past. A trial would only dredge up traumatic memories and evidence of the terror unleashed by the Penguin, the Riddler, Catwoman, and possibly others. Criminal trials should not occur in the heat of the moment, if ever, and I fear that investigating this shameful incident any further would only be inflammatory and incriminating.

...

Read the rest at
https://slate.com/culture/2021/01/impeachment-prosecution-batman-joker-penguin-catwoman-riddler-united-underworld-kidnapping.html

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So I was reading The Atom #18 (1962), which is a comic book about a nuclear scientist who discovers a cast-off portion of a white dwarf star and uses it to shrink himself down to a small fraction of his normal size, the better to fight crime with. (Why is a tiny person better at fighting crime than a full sized person? How should I know? I'm no nuclear scientist!)

Anyway, as I was saying, in issue #18, this happens:

I didn't think that was how flea circuses really worked, but everything else seems to check out.

The "true" explanation of what's happening here doesn't come until the end of the story.

Yeah, that sounds like real science. The weirdest part is that it is.

Well, at least the curative aspects of "protonic radiation" part. Proton therapy debuted as an experimental treatment for cancer in 1961, mere months before this issue went to press. It was originally used to treat cancer of the eyes, and has gained increasing acceptance for other cancers in the decades since. (Or, as The Atom demonstrates, maybe it's only causing doctors to *think* that they're curing something. Damn you, protonic radiation!)

There you have it: comic-book science is real.

(I didn't bother looking up using white dwarf material to shrink people. I'm confident it's solid. I do still lingering doubts about that flea circus, though....)

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Late in the season, I'm way off the pace for movies in 2019, and it only gets worse as we get to the end of the football season. I've only got two eyes!

Anyway, here is the final batch of movies watched in October:

186. (1625.) Ghost World (2001)
I think I really enjoy coming-of-age movies more when they are based on comic books. Fantastic stuff here, really. Especially that ambiguous ending.

187. (1626.) This Gun for Hire (1942)
The original story of a hit man with a heart of gold! No, not really. He's actually kind of a jerk, but he does have a legit beef against some crooks worse than he is. Highlight here is Robert Preston as a crack-shot cop.

188. (1627.) The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Swedish silent film about paying for your sins in the afterlife. Great atmosphere if light on actual plot. Highlight here is the bit of trivia that the axe-through-the-door scene was the inspiration for a similar shot in The Shining.

189. (1628.) The Sheepman (1958)
Glenn Ford goes so far out of his way to play a cad that it's nearly impossible to accept that he would end up with town hot potato Shirley MacLaine in the end. Highlight here is Leslie Neilsen as a villainous cowpoke.

190. (1629.) Atomic Blonde (2017)
This very stylish action film wants to be John Wick, but the unreliable narrator aspect and resulting questionable reality are a detriment. Highlight is the 80s soundtrack.

191. (1630.) Here Come the Nelsons (1952)
This film uses a traditional sit-com setup, so it feels like a long TV episode. Highlight is that it is the first visual adventure of Ozzie and Harriet and family.

192. (1631.) The Dawn Patrol (1938)
Always-smiling Errol Flynn and his real life best pal, David Niven, leads their WWI flying aces into combat and inevitable deaths! Highlight is the chemistry between the leads.

More to come.

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At last! The final batch of movies watched in March:

59. (1288.) The Magnetic Monster (1953)
Mid-century cautionary tale about the unknown dangers of splitting the atom. It starts like a documentary, though it mostly plays like stale drive-in cliche. Not entirely terrible, but hardly a classic.

60. (1289.) Death Wish (2018)
Also not a classic. I've seen all the Bronson Death Wish movies multiple times, and none of them are quite as dumb as the movie Bruce Willis finds himself in. I'm not entirely sure whether this interpretation of Kersey was a bumbling idiot because the writer/director/studio wanted to downplay the danger of a self-appointed vigilante a gun or whether they just think most people are that foolish. *shrug*

61. (1290.) Johnny Handsome (1989)
A mad scientist gives a disfigured criminal a new face, but he can't fix his broken heart! No, seriously. Lance Henriksen, Ellen Barken, and Morgan Freeman play comic book villains, but this hokum comes across surprisingly earnest thanks entirely to Mickey Rourke. Not bad for a crime movie of its era.
(Footnote: early in the film, Henriksen is driving through the streets of New Orleans and a Coca-Cola storefront sign is visible out his rear window. As the sign clearly wasn't placed for the shot, I don't think it qualifies as product placement, so no screenshot appears here. But it is clearly a Coca-Cola sign so I'm still talking about it.)

62. (1291.) The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968)
Kurt Russell is the only actor I've seen in multiple movies so far this year. Here in 1968, he plays a pre-teen member of the title band (headed by Walter Brennan and Buddy Ebsen). Forty-seven years later, in 2015's Bone Tomahawk, he played an aging Old West sheriff. I'm glad he's still acting. In both roles he was great. This entire movie was pretty enjoyable, in fact, with good songs and a tight (if slight) story. There's a reason the Disney brand has been so strong for so long.

63. (1292.) Walkabout (1971)
Two children become lost in the Australian Outback and are saved by a young aborigine. Was anyone truly saved? Is the film being cynical, honest, or allegorical? It's like the Apocalypse, Now! of coming-of-age movies. The only thing I'm sure it's saying is that everyone goes through their own life alone. Honestly, I watch a lot of movies and rarely come across anything as weird and haunting as this. I'll remember Walkabout for a long time.

More to come.

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I have no idea how I managed to watch 16 movies in August. I feel like I spent all my time in front of my computer. But my database doesn't lie. Here are the first 8:

140. (887.) Point Blank (1967)
Say, I've seen this before! This is the movie that Payback was based on. Lee Marvin is always bad ass, but I still prefer Payback. It's my favorite Mel Gibson movie.

141. (888.) Miss Firecracker (1989)
This tale of disappointment in the last remnants of the Old South is part Tennessee Williams, part William Faulkner. It's billed as a comedy, but that's using the Shakespearean definition where "comedy" means a play in which not everyone dies in the end. It has its moments, but they were too few and far between.

142. (889.) Ant-Man (2015)
This was better than any movie remaking Iron Man has any right to be, but it's still not great. Hint to filmmakers: don't use fake science to explain your hero's powers if you're just going to contradict your own explanation at your movie's climax.

143. (890.) The Beginning or the End (1947)
The Amazing True Story of the Birth of the Atomic Bomb! Except that a lot of liberties have been taken with the story, including the addition of a character who dies from radiation poisoning after tinkering with the very same bomb that would go on to level Hiroshima.

144. (891.) One Way Passage (1932)
William Powell falls in love on his way to the gallows. Don't worry about his girlfriend, though. She has an incurable, fatal disease. Ah, romance movies.

145. (892.) The Racket (1951)
Robert Mitchum plays an honest cop hunting the head of a local criminal organization. It's good, but I kept expecting this movie to have a twist ending, like the Adventures of Superman episode "Crime Wave." (Turns out that episode came out 2 years after this movie. Coincidence?)

146. (893.) Ladies They Talk About (1933)
I think I have a crush on Barbara Stanwyck. Even playing the most lowly bitch &hdash; for 90% of this movie, she's truly a bad person who deserves her jail time — she's always tough, resourceful, and beautiful.

147. (894.) The Expendables 3 (2014)
When they say "a cast of thousands," they don't usually mean that's the sum of the ages of the lead actors. I didn't hate it, but Payback is still my favorite Mel Gibson film.

More to come.

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Movies for March, batch one of three.

43. (790.) Twilight of Honor (1963)
This courtroom drama owes a debt to Anatomy of a Murder, although it flips the guilty parties. It takes its own sweet time getting to the payoff, but that may be my impatience and over-familiarity with the genre as opposed to any fault with what is otherwise a pretty potboiler.

44. (791.) The Dictator (2012)
Here's a moment you didn't see in this film's trailer: trying to break into a United Nations function, the title character gets stuck on a rope outside of the building. In order to lose some weight to get off the rope, he evacuates his bowels onto the sidewalk below. If that sounds like your kind of humor, you can have it.

45. (792.) A Man for All Seasons (1966)
No scat humor in this deadly serious exploration of the ironclad morality of one doomed man. A great film.

46. (793.) Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
I'd never seen any production of this play. What a mistake I've made. I was humming "Tradition" for a week.

47. (794.) Trial (1955)
Murder, racism, illegal immigrants, Red Scare politics... if you can name it, this film probably has it. If you like courtroom dramas, you'll like this.

48. (795.) Jennifer's Body (2009)
I seem to remember critics savaging this film, but it's not really all that bad. Yes, it could certainly use a little help — most notably a tighter edit that cleaned up some weirdly disjointed context issues — but so far as teen slasher horrors go, it's enjoyable enough. I'd watch it again for Amanda Seyfried alone.

49. (796.) Klute (1971)
I'm no fan of Jane Fonda, and I'm afraid that's a prerequisite to enjoying this very boring and predictable whodunit. She won an Oscar for this portrayal of a damaged New York call girl. (Is there any other kind?) I'm sorry, but I'm just not impressed.

50. (797.) The Window (1949)
Five years before Alfred Hitchcock's great Rear Window, the same concept was covered here. Structurally, the biggest difference between the two movies is that the young protagonist here doesn't have the support of a Grace Kelly, but he's no Jimmy Stewart, either. In summary, I say see Rear Window instead. (It turns 50 this year!)

More to come.

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Third of three sets of 8 movies from September. (Almost done!)

167. (474.) Three Ages (1923)
Buster Keaton's first movie as writer/director/producer/actor. It's pretty darn funny. This Buster Keaton guy might have a career.

168. (475.) The Maiden Heist (2009)
Sometimes movies don't try to be anything more than a polite diversion from reality for a couple of hours. This is one of those. Let's call it a "gentle caper film." Charming in its own way.

169. (476.) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Widely called the first horror film, this movie isn't so horror-able as it is just plain weird. If you've never seen it, give it a look. I think you'll be satisfied.

170. (477.) Vampyr (1932)
This is another early silent horror film. Story is sacrificed for atmosphere, but why weigh down visuals this creepy with complicated plot? Again, if you haven't seen it, you might want to take a look.

171. (478.) Lifeboat (1944)
I debated whether to put this movie on my list. I was convinced that I had never seen this Hitchcock film, but while watching it I began to wonder otherwise. It was familiar and predictable. Did I see it and forget about it? That seems unlikely. Maybe I half watched it while doing something else. Maybe I'd seen parts of it. In any event, I'm sure I've never given it my full attention all the way through, so I decided to add it to the list of "new" movies. As for whether I liked it, yes, I did.

172. (479.) Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)
Midway through this noirish crime story involving Frankenstein-ian physics, the protagonist police chemist comes home and gripes that his wife should be giving him a drink, not some lip about how his daughter misbehaved that day. I found this super amusing, in part because the protagonist had exactly the same job as DC Comics' Flash character who debuted in 1956. Is that how Flash (Barry Allen) would have treated his fiancee Iris after a hard day of detective work? Probably, yes.

173. (480.) Detective Kitty O'Day (1944)
Kitty O'Day is no Nancy Drew. After all other suspects are murdered, Kitty turns to the one surviving suspect for help. Guess which suspect is the murderer? If you can imaging a 30-minute I Love Lucy episode drawn out for over an hour, you've already seen this movie.

174. (481.) The Farmer's Wife (1928)
It must have been evident to everyone that the director of this silent comedy — some nobody named Alfred Hitchcock — would go on to great things. The shots are held too long (typical of the silent era), but the blocking, pacing, editing, and camera work are otherwise all impressive for a movie of the era.

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The middle of three lists of movies for October.

241. Exporting Raymond (2010)
I must be the exception that proves the rule that Everybody Loves Raymond, but I did very much enjoy this documentary of the attempt to adapt the American sitcom for a Russian audience. Thanks for that recommendation, Randy.

242. Mean Girls (2004)
This was the movie that launched Tina Fey into the popular consciousness. It's not a bad teen comedy, but it's not an outstanding teen comedy, either. (Teen comedies, romantic comedies, and Frank Capra movies: if you've seen one, you've seen all of them.)

243. Blind Alibi (1938)
A sculptor interested in recovering some sensitive documents hidden in some art decides to pose as a blind man and buy a seeing-eye dog so that the museum will give him 24-hour, unfettered access to the museum collection. Yeah, it could happen.

244. Black Swan (2010)
Every shot in this film was a close-up of something, making the whole thing feel hideously claustrophobic. I thought this approach was odd in a movie set in the world of ballet, an art I typically associate with plenty of open space. I'm filing this in the category of "good movies I never want to see again."

245. Bewitched (2005)
The first of 3 television-to-movie adaptations that I watched this month (not counting the documentary mentioned above), and the least artistically successful of the three. This film spends so much time paying homage to the source material, it never really establishes its own identity as a separate story. It just sort of... is.

246. The Tuxedo (2002)
I caught this movie almost accidentally one night while trying to meet a deadline at work. Given its rather bland action scenes and broad humor, I would have expected it to be made for children except for the frequent sex jokes. Maybe it was meant immature adults. That's a pretty large audience, I guess.

247. The Great McGinty (1940)
A very enjoyable send-up of big city city politics. Highly recommended.

248. This is Cinerama (1952)
Cinerama was a precursor to Imax. This documentary promoting the concept leads with its strength, a roller coaster ride (specifically the Atom Smasher from Playland at Rockaway Beach, NY, which was dismantled in 1985) then limps through another hour-and-a-half of opera singers, landscapes, and tourist footage of Cypress Gardens (that closed on September 23, 2009, to be replaced by Legoland Florida on October 15, 2011). The film is generally booor-ring, but obviously I find the amusement park connections interesting.

249. Contraband (2012)
Mark Wahlberg stars as exactly the kind of character you expect to find Mark Wahlberg cast in a film that was somewhat better than I was expecting. There are no "good guys" in this film pitting bad guys against bad guys. I don't know if this is an endorsement, but I'm sure my father would like it.

250. I Spy (2002)
Ever seen Shanghai Noon? Replace Jackie Chan with Eddie Murphy, bring the movie into the 21st century, and you've seen this movie. I think it's weird that this movie is more like another movie than the television series it was based on, but I guess this is more loyal to the source material than Starsky & Hutch. Maybe Wilson should just stay away from tv-to-movie properties.

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NES Legend of Zelda + sex jokes = funny. Don't agree? Go away. You're reading the wrong blog.

If you haven't seen the Legend of Neil, go to Effing Funny and watch it. Now. I'd embed it here, but the Atom Films embed is a little squirrelly, and I'm not nuts about embedding auto-playing video. The only person who should get to yell at my blog readers is me. (And, yes, I did intentionally use the words "squirrelly" and "nuts" in that earlier sentence.)

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