Olympics are here, so that will put a short-term stop on movie watching. Sports might not be greater than movies, but they are definitely more immediate.

83. (1942.) The Detective (1968)
I prefer Sinatra the actor to Sinatra the singer, and the more Sinatra films I see, the more that preference grows. His character here, in this neo-noir police procedural dealing with topics of homophobia and systemic corruption, seems like a real human being: flawed, perhaps, but relatable. That's no small feat for a man whose public persona was one of ultra-machoism. (By the way, this movie was based on a book series that also spawned Die Hard. So it's weird to think of Sinatra and Willis playing the same character at different points in his career.)

84. (1943.) The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
A documentary about the later life and assassination of the first openly gay San Francisco city commissioner. I didn't know enough about him before, and his death is a true American tragedy story.

85. (1944.) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
This is the only Alfred Hitchcock film that he remade later in his career, and its astonishing how alike and different the two movies are. I can understand why many of the changes were made (the second is a better constricted plot), but the first one is leaner. I don't know which one I like better.

86. (1945.) The Celluloid Closet (1995)
As a movie buff, I really enjoyed this documentary about how gay characters and themes have been expressed in movies through eras when American society was less accepting and often downright hostile to them. Personally, I never really gave any thought to homosexuality on screen until I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show in high school. Just because I didn't see it doesn't mean it wasn't there.

87. (1946.) The Perfect Score (2004)
The first pairing of Captain America and Scarlet Witch! Chris Evans and Scarlett Johannsen are not at their best in this very forgettable MTV-produced by-the-numbers teenage comedy, but the dumb script doesn't ask much of them beyond being pretty faces. (I might even have liked it if I had seen it at 14.) Take the paycheck, actors.

More to come.

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First panel: @PresVillain via Twitter.com
all other panels: Action Comics Annual #3 (1991)

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My Memorial/Independence Day yard art:

And a closer image from his inside stand (each painting so far has it's own foot so that it can be displayed in the house between visits to the yard):

I created Captain America about two feet taller than Santa Claus because he's someone everyone should look up to. (Santa Claus, on the other hand, is a dirty socialist.)

Happy Memorial Day!

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Art by Jack Kirby and Chick Stone, words by the actual President of the United States:

So brilliant, I wish I'd thought of it. But the credit belongs to twitter.com/PresVillain.

But wait! The joke works even better if you know the original panel from Tales of Suspense #66 (1965), written by Stan Lee:

Don't worry, Captain America survives, but by the end of the issue, he's heiling Hitler. Stupid disinfectants.

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Movies watched in July, part two:

125. (1354.) Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
Should I have seen this before now? Yes. But boy, howdy, am I glad I didn't. At least Robert Vaughn got a paycheck.

126. (1355.) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)
I was told that this sequel was better than its predecessor. Maybe it is, but it's hard to tell when the bar is so low. Maybe I'm getting too old for this shit.

127. (1356.) C.C. & Company (1970)
A run of bad movies continues with this biker exploitation film notable only for its inclusion of "Broadway" Joe Namath. Namath plays the "best" of a band of idiot bikers fighting over Ann Margaret. (They make a good couple. Neither can act.) The movie starts with an extended sequence of Namath stealing promoting name brand products in a grocery store. I only mention that because this:

Coke supports your right to ride. (But keep it clean.)

128. (1357.) Incredibles 2 (2018)
I didn't find this quite as satisfying as the original, but I still really, really enjoyed it. I will be watching it again.

129. (1358.) Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
There aren't a whole lot of Eastwood films I haven't seen, and now there's one less. It's hard to sum up this road / bromance / heist / revenge / adventure / suspense / dramedy film in one sentence. Instead, I'll just show you the good stuff:

The Daisy Wagon is proud to serve Coca-Cola to children.

130. (1359.) Countdown (1967)
Robert Altman directed this very un-Robert Altman-like fictional depiction of the first man on the moon. There's too much talent in front of and behind the camera to make a film this boring.

131. (1360.) Captain America: Civil War (2016)
I had avoided this for years because I didn't like the first two. It was as bad as I expected. I admit that the fight between the heroes at the airport was great fun. It's a shame the fun was sandwiched between a contrived premise and a moronic ending.

More to come.

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For the past month, it's been Guardians of the Galaxy this and Wonder Woman that. For a bit of a reality check, please recall that this is what super hero movies looked like 50 years ago:

from the 1967 JC Penney Christmas catalog

Ah, the good old days. When super heroes were just for white males and even officially licensed products looked like Chinese knock-offs! 'Merica!

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It's a sad day when a Family Circus comic strip speaks for my inner monologue.

Shove it up your colons, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War.

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I've been running this here blog for years, and while doing some housecleaning the other day, I discovered that one of my all-time favorite movie clips somehow got lost in one of several server relocations over the years. So I uploaded it to YouTube (which is 3 years younger than this blog) for all to enjoy!

Reb Brown will always be my Captain America!

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When I saw Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, I hated it. For an action movie, it's ugly, plodding, and there is far too much talking. It's more video game than movie. I disliked it so much that I vowed on the spot not to watch any sequels.

Fast forward to this year as several of my friends insisted that the sequel was far superior to the original, correcting most of its predecessor's flaws. Naturally, I resisted, at least until my father and I were looking for something to do one evening last week. So now I've seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Let me leave no doubt about what I thought: I hated it, too.

165. (702.) Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Just like the original, it takes far too long to get moving. So many — too many! — characters are introduced, briefly sketched out, then forgotten about for the next hour. I know that the last film considered character development to be optional, but that doesn't mean that this movie needs to devote its first hour to correcting that mistake. We also don't need to see minor characters in their own action scenes just so that we can judge how much trouble they are going to be for our hero later. The good Captain spends forever moping about the past, but I can't really blame him for that. He doesn't seem to be the focus in his own movie.

The Black Widow is around because the Marvel movie universe only has one female hero. And if you have Black Widow, you have to give her screen time (and a potential romance!). Ditto Nick Fury. Ditto Falcon. Ditto Sharon Carter, Maria Hill, Crossbones, Arnim Zola. Captain America is a supporting character in his own movie!

Instead of watching Captain America and his giant supporting cast battle AIM or the Flag-Smasher or the Serpent Squad (although we do get a tete-a-tete with an inexplicably durable Batroc the Leaper), we have to wait for a conspiracy to develop slowly within SHIELD, the movie's fictionalized NSA analogue. This turns good guys into bad guys and bad guys into good guys and, aw, who the hell cares. Captain America is no spy! The man wears a bright red, white, and blue costume and carries a metal shield that definitely will not fold up to be hidden in a briefcase. With Captain America, what you see is what you get. So by all means, let's squeeze him into a movie about the ethics of spies!

Speaking of spies, the worst part of the movies is the Cold War cast-off Winder Soldier. This character is in the title of the movie, but don't let that fool you. He's not important to the plot. He only takes up space so that Captain America has something personal to fight for when the spy movie devolves into a disaster movie. It's not enough to devote 2 hours to the juxtaposition of Captain America's antiquated 19th-century morality against the ethical quicksand born of Cold War gamesmanship and muddied by post-9/11 paranoia. No, for Captain America to have to make the hard choice between defending the public welfare and securing personal liberties, he has to fight his own family! What a cop-out.

Most of these flaws could probably be overlooked if the movie was fun, but it simply isn't. Like everything DC is making these days, it takes itself far too seriously while ignoring illogical character behavior. It doesn't help that there are as many locations as there are characters — seriously, there are scenes in three different character's kitchens — all apparently a thin excuse to justify why the other Avengers aren't called for support between action set pieces. Given that so much time is spent on character development, there's not even any suspense that Captain America and all of his friends won't live to save the day for capitalism! Yawn.

So I made a vow and I broke it. Shame on me. But I will not make the same mistake again. When Captain America 3 comes along, I'll spend my time on something entertaining instead.

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It was announced last week that the upcoming (2016!) Batman and Superman movie has a title. And it's terrible.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

The two characters are household names. They've made a movie called Superman and a movie called Batman. Both of those moves were huge successes. That's why we're getting a film about the formation of the Justice League of America that uses the names of two of its founding members and an unwieldy subtitle. I wonder if Warner Brothers thought that Marvel was making a mistake calling their movie The Avengers instead of Iron Man v Captain America: Destroy New York?

Perhaps the studio felt compelled to squeeze a subtitle in there so that they could make more Batman v Superman movies. Hollywood knows that people are stupid and easily confused, we need some way to differentiate all the Batman v Superman movies that Warner hopes to stuff down our throats:

Batman v Superman: Darkseid of the Moon
Batman v Superman: Luthor's Big Day Out
Batman v Superman: Et Cetera
Batman v Superman V

Besides the title's ham-fisted pretentiousness, I don't even like what it is suggesting. Was there was no justice before Batman fought Superman? Was one or both of the characters so out of line that they needed a good beating from the other to find the moral path?

Ugh. None of that sounds like something I want to see. If I'm in the mood to see an amoral Superman in a fight, I'll turn on my VCR to watch Christopher Reeve fight himself in Superman III again.

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