Movies watched in July, part one:

119. (1348.) The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Historic romantic fiction isn't my thing, but I was captivated by Bette Davis' commitment to playing Queen Elizabeth I, including a pretty severe haircut. Not bad. Not bad at all.

120. (1349.) The Petrified Forest (1936)
Having just watched Bette Davis command the screen playing a queen, it's shocking to see her as a mousy waitress in this crime drama made just three years earlier. Wow.

121. (1350.) Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016)
This animated film, while still taking full advantage of its medium, couldn't have been any more loyal to its source material if they had made it in 1966. Loved it.

122. (1351.) Batman vs. Two-Face (2017)
The sequel to Return of the Caped Crusader, this one pits Adam West against William Shatner. Yes, please. What a shame there won't be any more. (Rest in peace, Adam West!)

123. (1352.) High Society (1956)
The musical remake of The Philadelphia Story is not an improvement unless you enjoy watching Grace Kelly perform her comedic impression of Katherine Hepburn. The only way this is better than the original is when comparing songs, though only because the original had none.

124. (1353.) Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)
I hoped to extend the joy I experienced watching those other Batman, but no. Is this what Batman: the Animated Series would have been if it hadn't needed to be kid friendly? Thank you, network censors? By all means, go watch the original cartoons instead.

More to come.

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Time to finish reviewing movies watched in November.

153. (1212.) Thunder Road (1958)
Robert Mitchum stars in this movie written and produced by Robert Mitchum! All kidding aside, it's pretty good until the rather abrupt ending. I was especially happy with Gene Barry's role as a Treasury agent seeing as he was television's Amos Burke.

154. (1213.) Minions (2015)
I really, really wanted this to suck. Dumb, evil-loving henchmen shouldn't work as cute protagonists. But they do. And this movie was made for fans of comic book super heroics (like me). Minions is a lot of fun.

155. (1214.) Fantastic Four (2015)
On the other hand, Fantastic Four was not made for fans of superhero comics. Or fans of movies. Think Chronicle meets I Am Number Four meets the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still but much, much worse. As with most terrible movies, studio interference is widely blamed for this mess, but it's hard to imagine how anyone could mangle the iconic characters created by Lee and Kirby that launched the Marvel Age of comics badly enough that any part of this script was ever green-lit for filming in the first place. (I'm not in favor of the much discussed merger between Disney and 20th Century Fox, but if it finally gets us a comics accurate Dr. Doom, at least there will be one good reason to let the House of Mouse become the new AT&T.)

156. (1215.) Impulse (1974)
Do you like William Shatner? I mean the real Shatner, the canned ham who pushes the other actors off camera with his over-the-top delivery of... every... line? Then stop reading this and go see Impulse. He plays a deranged con man slash playboy slash serial killer. He attacks a bunch of balloons. He makes sexual innuendos with a hot dog. He treats Goldfinger's Odd Job like a pinata. HE HAS A DEATH SCENE. Seriously. This movie is like mainlining pure Shatner, and it feels soooo good.

More to come.

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Movie watching has ground to a virtual halt since football season started. Only eight movies watched in September! Here are the first four.

122. (1181.) Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)
This is the 21st-century equivalent of what the original 1960s James Bond films were: slick, fun, cool. There's a lot of violence and death happening here, but really no worse than watching an entire military base being gassed to death in Goldfinger. I admit I didn't care for it at first, but Colin Firth won me over with his take on a contemporary John Steed.

123. (1182.) Dead Man's Island (1996)
William Shatner calls his old flame Barbara Eden to his island retreat to solve his own murder! Which of the television-star studded cast is guilty? Was it Roddy McDowell? Or David Faustino? Or Potsy from Happy Days? Maybe I've read too many mystery novels, but I had this one solved quickly, giving me plenty of time to just enjoy how bad an actress Traci Lords was with her clothes on.

124. (1183.) Phantom Lady (1944)
Great noir. Really, really great. Ella Raines sparkles as the determined Girl Friday, and I will absolutely have to track down more of her movies.

125. (1184.) Of Unknown Origin (1983)
This is Peter Weller's first lead role in a film. It's terrible, but everyone has to start somewhere. Weller isn't the only rookie here. His wife is played by Shannon Tweed in her first film. And yes, she appears topless. That's how I knew it was Shannon Tweed.

More to come.

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Movies, July, Group 2 of 2:

101. (1160.) Spellbound (1945)
This is the Hitchcock movie from which Mel Brook's High Anxiety draws its most ardent inspiration. It's pretty good, too, though the third act had me asking "why isn't this over yet?" It's almost like there's a twist for twist's sake, a very un-Hitchcock ending.

102. (1161.) Baby Driver (2017)
I really wanted to see this, and it proved just as satisfying as I hoped, like one long music video/Steve McQueen action film mash-up. Highly recommended to fans of 1970s action films like The Getaway, Bullitt, or even Vanishing Point.

103. (1162.) Killer Fish (1979)
Lee Majors chose to make this film straight off the success of The Six Million Dollar Man, and I have no idea why he would do such a thing. It's a terrible film, a Jaws derivative made by people who really don't understand or care about character or dialog. Avoid this.

104. (1163.) White Comanche (1968)
On the other hand, William Shatner made this straight off the success of Star Trek, and who wouldn't want to see The Shat play good and evil half white, half indian twins in a spaghetti western? Must see for Shatner fans.

105. (1164.) The Mighty Quinn (1989)
Denzel Washington in the film that made him a star! Ok, maybe not (that's probably Philadelphia), but it's still an enjoyable, quirky crime drama set in Jamaica that marches to the beat of its own steel drum.

106. (1165.) The Age of Innocence (1993)
I suggest that this is among the best Martin Scorsese movies. The sets are amazing, the acting superb, and the cinematography second to none. Surprisingly, this film — which I understand is very loyal to Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winning book — reminded me most of American Psycho in its depiction of the hollowness of New York society (even in the 19th century). Totally worth a watch.

More to come.

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People keep telling me about television shows they enjoy and think I would like. I agree; I might like them. However, I am always reluctant to commit to any dramatic serialized production until it's over, as I'm really bothered when the story doesn't end well (or at all). That's part of what I like about movies: they're self-contained stories told in (generally) 2 hours. They're the short stories of visual media compared to television's novellas.

That said, let's review the first batch of films I watched in June.

78. (1137.) When Ladies Meet (1941)
This is the Joan Crawford remake of the Myrna Loy movie (though both are based on a play). The Myrna Loy version is better, much better. Crawford replaces Loy's dry wit with a melodramatic self-righteousness that is infinitely less charming.

79. (1138.) A Hologram for the King (2016)
Does this Tom Hanks movie have a point? It starts off like it does, with a surrealistic blast that put me in mind of Trainspotting, itself a harsh take-down of modern life. Then Hologram meanders through some dark, dark territory before eventually settling into a mild romance tale with the bland moral that humans are "all more alike than different." Yawn.

80. (1139.) He Walked by Night (1948)
This cheap crime thriller has some spectacular, high-contrast cinematography that exemplifies the best of mid-century noir. Jack Webb plays a crime lab technician, and this film's DNA is all over Webb's long-running Dragnet. Very good.

81. (1140.) Lassiter (1984)
No! Just no! Tom Selleck plays a cat burglar drafted into helping the London police steal diamonds from Nazi agents because . . . well, I still have no idea why. It's supposed to be part spy thriller, part crime story, part period piece, but none of it comes together. If you have the opportunity to see this, don't.

82. (1141.) The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)
William Shatner plays a defrocked priest confronting a pagan celtic demon in an airplane in this attempt to capitalize on the success of The Exorcist. There's a lot of silly here, and Shatner really comes delivers in the end. Thanks, Bill!

83. (1142.) Aeon Flux (2005)
This seemed . . . pointless. Don't get me wrong, there are some great visuals, but they don't do much to help a very mundane story about typical sci-fi issues like cloning, free will, faith, blah, blah, blah. The whole thing comes down to a bog-standard gun fight anyway, so I recommend you watch RoboCop (preferably the Peter Weller version) instead.

More to come.

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And now, the rest of the story movies from January.

8. (755.) Larceny, Inc. (1942)
I expected this to be a heist film, but it's really a crime comedy. Still, I wasn't disappointed. (Edward G. Robinson has great comic timing.)

9. (756.) Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013)
Larceny, Inc. was funnier. In my opinion, the only part of either Anchorman film worth watching is the broadcasters' fight. (What the hell is Harrison Ford doing in this?)

10. (757.) No Highway in the Sky (1951)
Jimmy Stewart plays William Shatner in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," except here the gremlin is metal fatigue. (Jimmy Stewart is never bad!)

11. (758.) She (1965)
This movie needed a better editor. If it had been about half as long, I wouldn't have had so much time to pick on the predictable plot or cheap effects (or Ursula Andress' acting).

12. (759.) Three Days of the Condor (1975)
I don't know why I'd resisted watching this before. Except for an inexplicable and completely improbably love scene mid-movie, it's really good. (Forget Redford: Max von Sydow is the highlight.)

13. (760.) The Out-of-Towners (1970)
Hated it. Gave up after a half-hour. It's only on this list so I don't accidentally watch it again. (This showcases everything I dislike about Jack Lemmon.)

14. (761.) Lights of New York (1928)
The first all talkie! Here's the plot: two rubes buy a barbershop that's a front for a bootlegger. Then the bootlegger kills a cop. Then someone kills the bootlegger as he's trying to get the barbers to cover for him. The cops accuse a barber, but then the bootlegger's girlfriend appears from nowhere and takes the blame. Stupid barber lives happily ever after! (Clearly, the producers were counting on character actor Eugene Pallette's deep, froggy voice to sell this turkey.)

15. (762.) California Suite (1978)
Neil Simon's thematic sequel to Plaza Suite is superior in all ways. Instead of standalone acts, the movie skips between the four stories. And all characters are played by high-quality actors. (But it's Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby who steal the show.)

As always, more to come.

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October movies, part 3 of 3.

192. (499.) Brief Encounter (1945)
This romance was a reluctant recommendation. I had read that it was an inspiration for both Billy Wilder's The Apartment and John Carpenter's Starman. That may be true, but I liked both of those movies far more than this one. I'm not very sympathetic to movie characters who lie or cheat, and these protagonists do both.

193. (500.) Movie 43 (2013)
I hadn't planned it, but Movie 43 was the 500th movie I've watched in the two years I've been tracking. I think it was better than some of it's reviews allowed, but it does rely heavily on the "shock" nature of some of its extreme content for laughs when many of its vignettes could have used a little more time on script rewrites. (For the record: just showing the audience breasts or shit doesn't qualify as a joke.) The "Homeschooled" scenario was the stand-out home run of the film, the true nugget of comedy gold in thus unpolished mess.

194. (501.) The Ringer (2005)
I get that this film was an excuse to bring Johnny Knoxville into a scripted comedy that could be as offensive as Jackass. and I'd be lying if I said it was all bad. But in hindsight, if I can't remember a single laugh-out-loud gag, I have to wonder about the wisdom of a film that that uses retarded athletes as a setup for a punchline.

195. (502.) Incubus (1966)
William Shatner's infamous Esperanto movie! This damn thing was shot like a silent picture, and most scenes go on far, far too long. Shatner loves to hear himself talk, even in made-up languages! The ending is enjoyable, if a little nonsensically forced. (I had a problem with two people falling in love in one afternoon in Brief Encounter. In this movie, they fall in love over the course of a solar eclipse!)

196. (503.) The Nitwits (1935)
This is a comedy with the plot of a crime drama. I had never heard of Wheeler and Woolsey, but they apparently made 21 comedy films together in the 30s. If Nitwits is typical of their comedy, the other 20 are probably worth watching as well.

197. (504.) The Walking Dead (1936)
This is a crime drama masquerading as horror. Boris Karloff comes back from the dead to extract revenge on those who killed him. It's a little like D.O.A. meets Frankenstein meets Final Destination.

198. (505.) I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
This is a romance with the trappings of a horror movie. Looks great, with a lot of spooky moments, but it's really about a woman doing what she can for the man she loves.

199. (506.) Cat People (1942)
A woman turns into a cat when she feels she has been betrayed. That's not fiction, it's a documentary! Seriously, though, this is widely regarded as a b-picture classic, and its easy to see why. There's an over-abundance of atmosphere, and withholding the truth until the end is just the right amount of mystery.

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My last batch of movies from July.

119. (426.) The Rains Came (1939)
This movie is kind of a weird, unhappy romance with massive social inequality, death, and the destruction of India as the backdrop. Myrna Loy is the highlight, but the special effects of the earthquake and flood are spectacular even by modern CGI standards.

120. (427.) The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Imdb.com tells me that the 4th, 5th, and 6th installments in the Fast and Furious franchise all take place before this movie. That doesn't make a lot of sense, but then, none of these movies do.

122. (429.) The Bank Job (2008)
Caper films are always fun. Jason Statham films are always fun. Jason Statham robs a bank films are practically a cottage industry.

123. (430.) The Explosive Generation (1961)
William Shatner opens a dialogue about sex with *cough* 30-year-old high school students and it nearly destroys a small town. The sexual discussion in the isn't any more risque than you'd find in a "Dear Abby" column. The best part of the film is discovering that high school was exactly the same in 1961 as it was when I went 30 years later. Unfortunately, I did not have William Shatner for a social studies teacher.

126. (433.) The Falcon's Alibi (1946)
Another Falcon movie, this time involving murderous bootleggers. The more I see of these Falcon films, the more clear it becomes that this sort of thing was the Magnum P.I. of the 1940s.

127. (434.) The Twelve Chairs (1970)
Of the many films Mel Brooks has made, this is reportedly his favorite. It's a little less wacky or slapstick than his more familiar films, but just as good.

128. (435.) The Wolverine (2013)
I watched this in a theater (my first theater experience in 2013) just because it started with the word "the." I'd say it was the stupidest of all the films I watched in July, but I did also watch The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

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In the late 80s, I watched Marc Summers as the host of Nickelodeon's Double Dare. By the turn of the millennium, I was watching Marc Summers as the host of the History Channel's History IQ. Now I watch Marc Summers as the host of Food Network's Unwrapped. This progression pretty much sums up the aging process: messy childhood, know-it-all teenager, forced-to-cook-for-yourself adulthood.

(Note that I never watched Marc Summers as the co-host of Lifetime's Biggers and Summers. I simply refuse to watch anything on Lifetime. It's a channel devoted to the equivalent of after-school specials for housewives.)

You watch most television personalities play characters. Usually poorly. I enjoyed David Hasselhoff for his "portrayals" of Michael Knight and Mitch Buchannon. I'm fond of William Shatner for playing Captain Kirk and about one hundred guest star appearances, all of them equally way over-the-top. And don't get me started on My Favorite Martian / The Magician / The Incredible Hulk star Bill Bixby. (I'd recognize Bix before some members of my family.) But Marc Summers always plays Marc Summers.

I'm pretty sure that in another 25 years, I'll be flipping channels and still see Marc Summers, looking none the worse for time, hosting a show deep into my cable dial (maybe hosting the show You've Fallen: Can You Get Up?). It's a comforting thought, really. Some things don't change.

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I have a friend who is absolutely in love with Oscar Goldman, the eternally inappropriately sunglassed chief of the U.S. government's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and boss of United States Air Force Colonel Steve Austin, the world's only Six Million Dollar Man. Because of this man-crush, I'm frequently subjected to long marathons of Six Million Dollar Man episodes, one of the most boring shows known to mankind. As an unwilling participant in the misadventures of Steve Austin, I've learned quite a few things about how poorly the United States handles its scientific secrets and how world-famous NASA moon astronauts spend their free time.

For those of you who may not know, Col. Austin was chosen for bionic implants after he crashed a NASA test plane. Sure, we may have the technology, and technically we can rebuild him, but why would we want to? It's an expensive procedure to waste on a fellow who can't even properly land a plane. (By the way, $6,000,000 - six million with an "M" - in 1973 translates into nearly $30,000,000,000 - thirty billion with a "B" - in 2006 when adjusted for inflation using NASA's own inflation calculator. That's approximately how much money the world's second richest man, Warren Buffet, recently gave the world's richest man, Bill Gates, to spend on eradicating pandemic diseases. I suppose that no one told him that he could have purchased bionic limbs for the same cost.)

Presumably, Austin's particular disfigurement was perfectly compatible with the potential bionic replacement surgery that the OSI had already planned for a future accident victim, but I'm really not sure why they chose Steve Austin. Austin is demonstrated, even in the pilot episode, to be a laid-back, sunrise-watching, skirt-chasing, self-indulgent pacifist. Hardly a prime candidate for the job of "patriotic super-spy." In fact, Austin will even lament the implementation of his bionics, calling himself "less than human." Steve, last time I checked, being faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive does not lower you to "less-than-human" status; laying in bed and complaining about how good you now have it does.

The good Col. Austin had both of his legs replaced with bionic limbs that could propel him at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. His new bionic right arm could lift several hundred pounds effortlessly. His destroyed left eye was replaced with a camera that could provide a 20x magnification. And all of these modifications were made without reinforcing his hips for the jostling of the extreme vibrations while running, his spine from the torque created while lifting cars, or his skull from the frequent "karate chop" knockout blows to the head that every thug, hitman, and Soviet spy would employ to incapacitate him. That's good medicine.

Most disturbing (and far-fetched) is the premise that these bionic enhancements are powered by self-contained atomic generators in the arm and legs. That alone should be a far more spectacular accomplishment than the bionics these generators power, but it is frequently played down during the shows. In a typical nuclear reactor, radioactive decay is harnessed to heat water for energy generating steam-powered turbines. This makes Steve either radioactive or full of hot air, maybe both. It's possible that since you never saw Steve water his legs, his generators were a new kind of atomic power unfit for anything other than making metal legs move really fast. In fact, I don't recall anything else during the run of the show using the power of these generators in any other way. Nuclear power was instead frequently shown to be a dangerous tool demonstrated by way of several near reactor meltdowns, missing atomic devices, and the destruction of the Bahamas via a nuclear warhead (detonated by Steve himself). Were we supposed to be subtly fooled into believing that Col. Austin was extra-dangerous because of his nuclear powered limbs?

Once fully healed, Steve Austin was put to work as a super spy in order to pay the government back for his new Top Secret "Security Clearance Level 5" super powers. (On a USAF Colonel's O-6 salary, which I estimate was probably slightly less than $20,000 in 1973, including his NASA and super spy bonuses, paying back those $6,000,000 would probably have taken a mere 600 years.) He refused the job at first and has to be tricked into dueling with the Russians for the location of a stolen American warhead. (I know it doesn't sound like something that someone can be tricked into, but Col. Austin does not list "Mensa Membership" anywhere on his bizarre resume.) Reluctantly, Steve agrees to be OSI's poodle, and soon found himself battling Russians, foreign terrorists, mobsters, assassins, robots, moonshiners, rogue archeologists, other bionic men, crooked cops, rockstar groupies, imposter Steve Austins, telepaths, mountain lions, earthquakes, aliens, sharks, and John Saxon.

As a secret agent, Steve reflected James Bond's frequent misunderstanding of stealth and low profiles. Col. Steve Austin, astronaut and college football star quarterback, was widely recognized throughout the world, destroying most chances for subtlety. I suppose that super speed and strength don't naturally lend themselves to guileful subterfuge, but then neither did Steve's fashion sense. (Button up that shirt, Steve!)

What little camouflage Steve did possess was often lost when Steve would capriciously reveal his enhancements to anyone within earshot. He simply couldn't resist the opportunity to jump over a 10-feet tall fence or race an automobile. Steve, here's a super-spy tip: using the line "I eat a lot of carrots," to explain away how you were able to read a car's licence plate several hundred yards away in the dark isn't going to stand up to any real scrutiny. Steve's indiscretion became so widespread, even Monday Night Football host Frank Gifford who supposedly played college ball against Steve Austin in the early 1950s was therefore naturally entrusted with knowledge of Steve's top secret enhancements. (Guest stars always found out about Steve's abilities. William Shatner, Farah Fawcett, and Gary Collins among others all were entrusted with some of the nation's most classified information. They were a trustworthy bunch, I'm sure.)

So Steve Austin was a lousy pilot and an incompetent spy. Based on the fact that the only female interest that he could keep was a fellow American bionic slave/spy, I'm guessing he was probably a poor lover, as well. In one episode, Steve even admits to a crippled boy that he fumbled a lot as a football player. It should be no surprise that Oscar sends Steve to the ends of the earth (which generally looked suspiciously like southern California) on pointless suicide missions; he has to be hoping that one day, Steve won't come back. I sure do.

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