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118/2429. The Losers (2010)
Sure, it's a big, dumb action movie, but it's a big, dumb action movie based on a DC comic book, and the influence shows maybe a little too much. Actually, it puts me in mind of some video games I've played in the past decade. "Pop Will Eat Itself," said the band in the 1980s, and it remains a true statement. Meh.

119/2430. From Darkness to Light (2024)
This is a so-so documentary with little insight into its subjects, but that's okay because the whole thing is really an excuse to rescue large parts of Jerry Lewis's legendary long-lost The Day The Clown Cried for curious cinephiles who seem reluctant to accept that it was just a bad film that became an unfortunate casualty of wrongheaded (and possibly malicious) decisions in the movie business. As a bit of a movie nut, I loved it.

120/2431. Dear Santa (2024)
Speaking of wrongheaded decisions in the movie business, Jack Black stars as a demon pretending to be Santa Claus. The core of the film is what you might expect from a 90s black comedy aimed at mallrat teens over Christmas break, but it is badly underbaked. Looking at the dates of release and production, it seems to me that Paramount just gave up on this without trying to make it good and dumped its barely cobbled-together carcass into the wasteland of back-catalog streaming services filler. Too bad. There's a lot of talent involved, and with the right script doctor and editor (and more money than Paramount obviously wanted to spend), maybe this could have become a cult classic.

121/2432. Uptown Saturday Night (1974)
Speaking of cult classics, Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby hunt down a lottery ticket unwittingly stolen by gangsters in a blaxploitation film which was not particularly interested in exploitation. It's not great cinema, but it's not trying to be. It just wants to be a good excuse to see something lighthearted at the movies with friends, and on that level, it works.

Truth in Advertising Disclaimer: The setting in this screencap is neither uptown, Saturday, nor night.

And that's a wrap on movies watched in 2024. If you're keeping score at home, 121 is the fewest new-to-me movies I've seen in a year since 2016. I'm not entirely sure why the number is so low, but I did have a bit of a hard time with depression this year and watched far more familiar-to-me movies than usual, so that certainly cut into my movie watching time. The complete lack of must-see cinema in theaters couldn't have helped. Better luck next year, Hollywood!

More to come.

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Rereading the earliest 1950s Peanuts comics, I find it most interesting how bad many of them are. And that's not because the theme of each gag was often drenched in a deep, dark existential dread. That's not a bug, that's a feature of Charles Schulz's world. (For the best exploration of that topic, see: 3eanuts.com.)

No, the problem is a lack of characterization. It clearly took time, years, for Schulz to congeal the personalities of each of the strip's largely interchangeable characters into more realistic, relatable individuals that continue to strike such a chord with modern audiences three quarters of a century later.

Without good characterization, the strip above is just a child who can't stack blocks. That's not particularly funny. But in later years, conscientious and thoughtful Linus trying and failing to build a order out of chaos... that will always be Peanuts.

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Took my car to the mechanic, walked in the front door, said to the receptionist, "I'm Walter Stephens," and she said "I know who you are."

Which suggests that it's time I start thinking about getting a new car.

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Henry and Louis' first snow day.

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