30/2600. Angels in the Outfield (1951)
What's best about this cliched sports romcom isn't the heavy-handed treatment of religious freedom in America, but the fantasy concept that a young girl is so innocent that she can see angels and everyone else being so jaded that they cannot believe her. Won't someone please think of the children.

31/2601. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
What this movie lacks in narrative plot, it makes up for in nostalgic references. Of course it was a blockbuster.

32/2602. Project Hail Mary (2026)
Having read the book, Dad really wanted to see this on the big screen, so I took him to the only theater in town even though I really don't like it. Dad loved the movie, but I was lukewarm. I got hung up on the choices made by the directors: too many of the "science" decisions were really just blatant plot manipulation, and Gosling's character is too poorly developed, depriving the character of a more satisfying arc as he discovers humanity through his relationship with a magical alien. (I know Gosling is a good enough actor to play anti-social without being unlikeable. He can do anything.) Most people are (probably rightly) less critical of those sorts of nits, and I don't begrudge them their enjoyment of this.

33/2603. From Headquarters (1933)
A lightweight murder mystery staring George Brent. I really can't say as I remember any more about it than that, so there you go.

34/2604. Chicago (2002)
I had avoided this for years because I had a preconceived notion that none of the characters were likable. And they're not. But the musical numbers are pretty good, and the whole thing doesn't run on too long. Is it really Best Picture worthy? Well, looking back at movies released in 2002, I can only say there were pretty slim pickings that year.

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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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.

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25/2457. The Search (1948)
Montgomery Clift turns in a great, naturalistic performance here in his first starring role as a young American G.I. trying to help a war orphan in the ruins of Berlin. It's a very good movie. In fact, by focusing attention on the orphans and their broken world (similar to but less humorous than 2019's Jojo Rabbit), it manages the rare feat of being anti-war without glorifying the violence.

It seems unlikely Coke gave this production any money, but If the filmmakers really wanted to hide the product, they could have used a bigger towel.

26/2458. The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
Most of the entertainment value of this comes from watching motion picture studios entering the talkie era figuring out how to create the musical genre in real time. It fails as a whole, but it does have its moments. (Buster Keaton's crossdressing mermaid dance, sadly, is not one of them.) Jack Benny is the highlight as one of two Masters of Ceremonies.

27/2459. Flow (2024)
Yeah, Oscar got this one right. It's captivating. Definitely watch it with your pets: even Henry enjoyed watching it. (More accurately, I think he enjoyed listening to it. The soundtrack is all recordings of real animals.)

28/2460. Forbidden (1932)
This early Frank Capra is pure dreck melodrama without any of the audience-pleasing uplifting treacle that would become the director's trademark. I've often pooh-poohed Capra, but this could easily be my least favorite Capra film. (No, I did not know it was Capra when it came on, or I might have just turned the TV off.)

29/2461. Naked Acts (1996)
Watched on TCM in February before our Glorious Leader outlawed Black History, this is a mid-90s indie about an aspiring actress (imagined as the child of a Pam Grier type) who has body issues and a lot of baggage as she confronts the expectations of a male-dominated film industry. The budget is low and the talent is clearly raw, but the script is good and the finished product very watchable.

More to come.

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Want to know why Louisiana would willingly violate federal law to require the 10 Commandments in all kindergartens? The 1991 Chick tract Sin Busters has the answer:

Declaration of Independence writer and third president Thomas Jefferson may have written that Congress should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," but that's just because he was part of the evil world system!

God bless the real America!

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Once upon a time, they called it the Blockbuster Bowl. However, corporate America being fickle and football bowl committees being greedy, it has since been sponsored by Carquest, MicronPC, Mazda, Champs Sports, Russell Athletic, Camping World, and Cheez-It (which had previously sponsored a different bowl now sponsored by the mortgage lender Guaranteed Rate). In 2023, the new tenant is Pop-Tarts. What makes the Pop-Tarts Bowl significant isn't the string of consumer product sponsor changes but its weird connection to America's real favorite pastime: eating.

A few years ago, Duke's Mayonnaise bought the rights to turn the annual Continental Tire / Meineke Car Care / Belk Bowl into the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Duke's big, attention-getting decision was to replace the bucket of Gatorade traditionally dumped on the head of the winning coach with a giant jar of mayonnaise. It's exactly as gross as it sounds. When I see it, all I can think is, "Oh, those poor eggs!" (For the record, I never think, "Oh, those poor gators!" Gators got it coming.)

Pop Tarts saw Duke's made-for-TikTok moment and raised. Their mascot this year is a Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tart which emerged at midfield in a giant toaster. Throughout the game, the Pop-Tart posed for photos with children, danced with cheerleaders, and made finger guns at the officials. Then, when the game was over, he climbed back in his toaster only to slide out of a slot in the side... where the winning team ate him.

[To be clear, the players ate a giant Pop-Tart decorated to look identical to the mascot. At least I really, really hope that's what happened. I'd link here to a video of the event in question, but that's exactly what Kellogg's wants me to do.]

I'll be the first to admit that I like both football and Pop-Tarts as much as the next red-blooded American. (My favorite is Brown Sugar and Cinnamon, but the box in my pantry is Frosted Cherry because they are very marginally less malnutritious.) And I regularly eat barbecue at restaurants with smiling pig mascots on their napkins. But if you spend four quarters giving your mascot a personality, I'm not okay with putting it in the oven and eating it, even if you claim "it wants it" — that's a mental illness, Kellogg's! I'm a red-blooded American, not a fairy tale witch in a gingerbread house.

Eat up kids. And clean your plate. Ethiopia is full of starving cannibals.

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121/2130. Yesterday (2019)
Something about this romantic comedy, something I can't quite put my finger on, made it really hard for me to watch. And I didn't decide it was worthwhile until the scene with "John Lennon." Maybe it was because the whole thing takes place in a nightmare alternate universe without Coca-Cola. It's a horror movie!

Come together. Right now. Over me.

122/2131. Two Guys from Texas (1948)
The joke here is that these fish-out-of-water stage comedians aren't *really* from Texas, see? The broad comedy of the Dennis Morgan + Jack Carson team did get a chuckle or two out of me in this one, especially in the Bugs Bunny short.

123/2132. April Showers (1948)
In this one, Jack Carson plays a mediocre vaudevillian who doesn't know... well, much of anything. The by-the-numbers melodramatic script, essentially a frame for an assortment of vaudeville-like musical numbers, doesn't do any favors for his "wife" and "son," either. But the film does have some value as being based on the real life story of the formative years of true comedic genius Buster Keaton.

124/2133. The Deep (1977)
Before watching this underwater pirate adventure movie (the sunken treasure is drugs!), I didn't like Nick Nolte, but I did like Jacqueline Bissett. (She and her white t-shirt are the whole reason I chose to watch this.) After seeing him boss her around like a soggy caveman for the duration, I still don't like Nolte.

More to come.

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99/2108. The In Crowd (1988)
Start with Hairspray, subtract the cynicism and commentary on racism, add a sexual predator father, and you get this! It's not without charm, especially scene-chewing VJ Joe Pantoliano and the "biker versus nerd" dance-off.

100/2109. Repo Man (1984)
When I was in high school, there were several boxes for movies on the "Cult Classics" row at Blockbuster that I looked at and looked at but could never bring myself to rent. Repo Man falls into that category and demonstrates how bad my decision-making process was in 1991. This is a punk-rock film that delights in subverting expectations.

Cars, beers, and Coca-Cola are the few brands in this movie pointedly populated with generic products.

101/2110. The Fearmakers (1958)
Dana Andrews comes back from Korea to discover that gangsters have taken over his PR firm to advance a Communist plot: lobbying Congress! The film wisely focuses on the tighter picture of Andrews trying to avenge his former co-worker and plays as a pretty entertaining noirish crime story.

102/2111. The Watermelon Woman (1996)
I enjoyed the half of this film that is a fictionalized biography representing how poorly Hollywood treated colored people in its early days (as if anything has changed), but the other half, a companion plot about the young, gay, black would-be documentarian's messy personal life felt like something I had to sit through to get to the good stuff. I suspect most viewers have the opposite opinion, and I do not deny that both halves contribute to a superior whole.

More to come (sooner than later).

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Has it really been three weeks since I last mentioned movies? Let's fix that!

25/2034. Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted by Murder (2022)
Oh, no, is the murderer a... g-g-ghost? No, Shaggy. No it is not. Mom solved this one in the first thirty minutes by simply identifying the least likely suspect. I'm thinking maybe this series is running out of steam.

26/2035. Viva Knievel! (1977)
Have I really not reviewed this movie yet? I feel like I have. And if I haven't, shame on me. It's everything you could want in a Dukes of Hazzard episode plus Gene Kelly in his single worst on-screen performance ever. (When you are being out-acted by a motorcycle stuntman, it's time to hang it up.) The perfect example of a movie so bad it comes out the other side.

27/2036. Free Guy (2021)
I liked it. The script and the director (and Ryan Reynolds) were aware enough of the hows and whys video games are made to maintain their strong satirical point amid the excesses and oversimplifications necessary in crafting a "blockbuster" comedy-actioner for mass market audiences. Kudos.

Gaming goes better with Coke!

28/2037. Mortal Kombat (2021)
This, on the other hand. I mean, it doesn't have an exemplary plot or action sequences, there's no significant characterization, the actors are made of wood, and the dialogue couldn't be worse. On the up side, it was helpful to be reminded why I don't play the Mortal Kombat games anymore.

More to come.

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We're nearly in 2021, and I'm a whole month behind on my movies list. Here's the first half of movies watched in November.

189. (1843.) I Died a Thousand Times (1955)
A gangster strives to pull off one last big job before retiring. The problem with this sort of film is that if you know anything about Hollywood of the era, you know how it is going to end before it even starts, so the journey has to be worthwhile. In hindsight, I don't think it was.

190. (1844.) Dead Reckoning (1947)
Here's Bogart once again trying to recreate the The Maltese Falcon with varying shades of success. A series of unlikely coincidences propel the plot in act two, but it sticks the landing with a very satisfying ending.

191. (1845.) Fools in the Mountains (1957)
Have you ever seen any of Jacques Tati's French comedies? (Pratfalls, sight gags, mistaken identities, etc.) This Norwegian film is much like those, but with sound, genderbending, and a romantic comedy vibe. Very enjoyable.

Of course I want.

192. (1846.) The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
According to Hollywood legend, seeing this film is what motivated a young Steven Spielberg to go into directing. It won Best Picture in '52 opposite some films that have earned better reputations over the years (High Noon, The Quiet Man). Yes, the train wreck is impressive, but for my money, the highlight by far is watching Jimmy Stewart commit to his role as a killer in clown makeup. Stewart is just the best.

Forget great; it wouldn't even be a very good show without a Coke.

193. (1847.) The Circus (1928)
Disclaimer: I don't know why, but I do not find Charlie Chaplin very funny. I think Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton are hysterical, and Chaplin is undoubtedly technically proficient bot in front of and behind the camera. But I quite literally fell asleep watching him fail to understand how clowns work. *shrug* Your enjoyment is probably proportional to how much you enjoy tramps.

More to come.

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