The Signal Watch blog

Epic Watch: The Odyssey (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 04:17:05 +0000

Watched: 08/09/2026

Format: Regal Westgate

Viewing: First

Director: Christopher Nolan

Well. I'm the last person you know to finally see The Odyssey (2026). All I can say is: You Oughta-See It!

Fortunately, you can't really spoil The Odyssey unless you haven't attended high school in a number of western countries. (An hour after I typed this sentence, Jamie, unprompted, offered up she doesn't think she read it, but she still knew all the story beats, but wasn't sure why. I assure you, I have not been, like, babe.. babe... and then Odysseus? He disguised his guys like sheep to get out of that cave!)

I'll keep it short, because enough has been said about the movie.

Yes, I liked it a great deal. I haven't read any version of The Odyssey in 35 years, but it hit the beats I remembered. So, check.

Yes, I thought the actors and acting were good. It's a bit nice that Nolan just goes and gets whomever the heck he wants, and he does have a little company of actors he reuses. I was honestly a bit surprised by Damon, who I generally like, but who i thought turned in an above-average performance for himself, which is a weird way of saying I liked his take. Anne Hathaway was also dialed in and did more to humanize her character than I thought possible. Well done, Anne.

I am unsurprised by the use of flashback as a narrative device and montage for effect. I have seen Christopher Nolan movies before. It do be like that sometimes with Nolan. Not sure why him doing the thing he always does was seen as so weird by some.

Upon reflection as I write this post, I have no particular nits to pick. I think Nolan bending the story a bit to reflect specifically upon the cost of war and the cost of following poor leaders, was something that resonated like crazy. We can become the enemy - the people from the sea.

Anyhoo... I don't know what else to say. There's a reason this movie has made a billion dollars. People generally like what the cast and crew did, and it's absolutely something you want to see in the theater while you can. (And for bonus points, over a 3+ hour movie, my theater was rapt.)

I was very sad to realize I've apparently lost the video I made in 1990 for a school project where my brother played the Cyclops in our Odyssey video. The effect was created by taping a hand-drawn eye to his face and wrapping him in a bed-sheet. I was running camera, but I did appear as a soldier in one scene and a suitor in another.

Catch-Up Watch: The Menu (2022)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 02:09:08 +0000

Watched: 08/08/2026

Format: Library DVD

Viewing: First

Director: Mark Mylod

While watching The Menu (2022), I kept thinking - this is a movie that wants to be a "fuck the rich" movie, but doesn't seem to want to actually say what the problem is.

For all it's aspirations, the movie only occasionally rises above any other flick where people are held hostage with increasing horrors inflicted upon them. It has lofty goals as a social commentary, of making poetic commentary about food and nourishment and art - And you've likely seen better. It's stylish and sets itself up as comment upon the exploitation and pretentions of the elite, but then has nothing to say about it beyond a college freshman ranting in their dorm room. Nor does it turn the lens back on those inflicting the damage - the cult-like crew of Ralph Fiennes' kitchen who have happily gone along with the plan that drives the movie, who had to know what they were signing up for if they wanted to work in Michelin star restaurants.

Which is a shame. This is top-flight talent stacked up in front of the camera. And I think, whether I think the movie is successful or not, they did great with what they had. Which isn't a lot - the supporting characters don't get enough time to give us more than a glance at them and their worst qualities so we know they deserve what's coming and we can feel fine about it if things happen to them.

After all, they are rich and are having a good time enjoying something we can't afford and barely understand.

But, yeah, Anya Taylor-Joy reminds the audience she can absolutely lead a movie, Nicholas Hoult nails the weirdness of the sycophantic foodie/ obsessive, John Leguizamo probably understands the actor with an iffy catalog pondering his next direction a whole lot, and I've never actually seen Ralph Fiennes be anything less than stellar. And, if I'm being honest, I watched the movie 95% just because of Fiennes and the fact I don't get to enough of his stuff. Heck, Judith Light, who seems better than ever the last decade, kills it with a quiet, tortured take on her role.

The set design is a choice makes sense. A brutalistic bunker of a restaurant where the walls and floors are spare concrete (yet this place has no echoes) and a single window looks out upon the sea. Split in two, one side is the dining room, the other the kitchen, where diners are invited to watch the chefs in action. It feels *likely* for this sort of thing, where the focus is food and reinforcing the notion that all of it came from the island.

A single door down a long hall, attached, leads to the one entrance, in or out (fire safety laws be damned - we have purees to plate!)

It's convenient for... everything. And a bit clever. I just wish I felt they did more with the cinematography.

There are three sequences in the film that feel like they're the product of producers notes.

Chasing all the men around the island, which goes nowhere but feels very of-the-moment in 2020
A full brawl between our lead (Margot/ Erin) and the showrunner/ hostess, which has no ramifications despite one of them dying
Margot finding a picture of our chef as a happy young guy making a cheeseburger (will it play in later? WHO CAN SAY?)

It's times like this - that feel for the most part like wasted time on screen - that I felt there was probably a *great* movie hiding under this very okay movie.

The odd thing about Hollywood making movies about the follies of the rich is that the people approving all of these productions, who make lots of money making them, are the people these movies are supposed to be commenting upon. Which is maybe why there's so little in the film about the specifics of why the rich are so burdensome to Chef. We know that these people take - but we're also told that the diners are *secretly* criminal and liars. But as we know, one need not lie nor commit a crime to take from others.

And why is it a revelation to the kitchen staff in the fanciest restaurant in America that rich people don't live like normies? Why have the people who are willing to pay for what they're making so vile to them that they decide to kill them? Maybe especially why kill the finance bros who've never been there before?

As a result of the wobbly reasoning, the actual meaning of food (in a movie about food) barely even registers as the metaphor the movie wants to declare. The movie keep asking "what is food?" and comes up with... nothing. If it is nourishment - nourishment of what? If it is art, what is it saying and why are we having the theatrics?

And if food should have meaning, don't the Finance Bros have meals that once brought them joy? Kraft Mac n' Cheese? What is the joy in cooking for others? Trying to connect the narrative lines about the chef losing his love of cooking and treating Margot's sneaky way out becomes a cheat code instead of having anything to say about anything.

And yet the movie insists over and over it's saying plenty. But rather than being about "those who give and those who take", it seems more about how someone's own clientele annoy someone so badly that the chef decides to form a mass murder/suicide pact.

It feels like there's the bones of something as unsettling as a Midsommar here, but maybe with more of a social point that would have landed like crazy in 2022, and instead it just feels like one part torture porn (my least favorite horror genre), one part a swing at satire that goes nowhere, and one part Ratatouille.

And there are great movies about food I've seen, and plenty I have not. For the polar opposite of this film, check out Babette's Feast. For a movie that plays in the same arena, put on your big boy movie pants and try The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Now, I'm making it sound like I hated this movie. I didn't. I just had the deep frustration of feeling like this movie was so close to being really good. Or, you know, maybe great (in my book. Some of y'all loved it, and respect). But I genuinely liked everyone in it, and didn't turn it off, so that's something, I think. It kept me wanting to see the end, which was actually a mix of really funny and a bit disappointing.

Anyway. I watched it at long last.

Gangster Watch: The Public Enemy (1931)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 18:02:11 +0000

Watched: 08/07/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First, as it turns out

Director: William A. Wellman

I was positive I'd seen The Public Enemy (1931) either in film school or a few years after. For your purposes - I had never seen this movie, and I am genuinely surprised by this fact. I do like a genre deep dive and this is a classic.

On reflection, I am positive I've seen Little Caesar (I remember the "is this the end of Rico?" bit), but far less so that I've seen Scarface. But I will likely give those a spin soon as those movies, along with The Public Enemy, were the breakout crime movies that basically locked in gangster pictures as part of the talkie-era.

The movie is Pre-Code, and I'm sure if I looked it up, sure seems like it would have helped drive the creation of the Code. There's some straight up sexual allusions in the movie, violence that surpasses what would come later, and despite the book-ends on the film assuring the audience that "this is bad! We're not glamorizing these people!" it's absolutely at least making a life of crime seem exciting while it lasts.

Tom Powers is a kid when we meet he and his pal, Matt Doyle. Tom is the son of a cop, but also a shady kid who is already trying to grift a little and a bit of a shitty guy. He's basically got a Fagan who is involving him in petty crime. Flash forward, and Tom (James Cagney) and Matt (Edward Woods) are given their first heist, which goes sideways.

Shortly after, with the passing of Prohibition, they get involved with moving hooch - and, yes, the movie makes no bones about painting Prohibition as a very stupid move and has no problems showing how crime thrives in a world where you cut people off from legally obtaining something they feel a right to. And we learned that lesson and never, ever did it again and that's why there's no organized crime today.

I am unsure if this is the movie that laid out the template for following young crooks up the ladder until they become top of the heap, things go sideways, and they meet their fall, but it sure is a thing. Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, and arguably the Godfather Trilogy follow the pattern. Mixing drama, melodrama, some romance and punctuated by violence - gangster movies kind of have it all. The stories are far from uniquely American, but they do speak to what was The American Dream and how it has a flipside.

Cagney would go on to play a weird mix of characters over the years, between being a song-and-dance man in stuff like Yankee Doodle Dandy, he also laid the foundations here of playing the sociopath who will feel almost zero remorse over turning his back on family itself as he considers their law-abiding, home & hearth ways small-minded. This is the same character made famous by squashing a grapefruit in a girl's face for just speaking up for what she wants.

no, Jimmy! Use your words!

More surprising to me was that what leads up to the scene makes clear Tom and Matt are living in sin with their girlfriends. Even in the grittiest noir, you rarely see this show up in movies. The girls always seem to have their own place.

The movie features Jean Harlow up front and center as the woman Tom falls for - and the part is smaller than I figured, but still key. In another supporting part is played by Joan Blondell, and you can tell both are stars.

Anyway, I was stunned by parts of the film. Yes, it's been copied and echoed for so long that in 2026 - this near century-old movie can feel a tad predictable but that's not a criticism. As watchable as this film is *now*, I can just imagine how it felt in 1931. It must have been really something. But it does have some genuine surprises and Cagney really is electric - a sort of perfect player for this new sound era where we're now caring as much or more about how people say what they say, and does it resonate for a broad audience?

It's always great to not just check off a classic from my punch list, but to actually really enjoy it? Pretty good stuff.

Coen Bros. Western Watch: True Grit (2010)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 08/06/2026

Format: BluRay

Viewing: Second

Director: Coen Bros.

Shortly after watching Supergirl, which was based on a comic that was clearly an homage to the novel and/or movies of True Grit, I decided to listen to the audiobook to better remember details and ponder the differences. After, I suggested to Jamie that she read through my paperback. The book is short, and Jamie reads about a book a week, I think.

And, lo, it came to pass that Jamie asked to re-watch the 2010 movie of True Grit, which I had not seen since the theater. Fortunately, I'd picked up the BluRay on the cheap at some point in recent years.

The Coens' work has often been homage. Miller's Crossing is Dashiell Hammett. Big Lebowski is Raymond Chandler stoned to the gills. A Serious Man is the book of Job. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is The Odyssey. But they have done straight adaptations, like The Lady Killers.

True Grit (2010) is most famous as a John Wayne film, but is a book by Charles Portis. In 2010, this version was well-received, I believe. I recall seeing it and liking it quite a bit, and was impressed with this young girl, Hailee Steinfeld, who played Mattie Ross, and recall I hoped she'd get more work. (spoilers: she did.)

As of 2025, I've also seen the John Wayne version. And that is a bona fide classic, which I enjoyed.

The Coen Bros., who love characters and who love mannered dialog, would have found the Portis novel to be a bit like catnip, I think. The voice of the narration is one of the most in-character first person narrations I can recall having ever read.

The story is of how 14-year-old Mattie Ross's (Steinfeld's) father has been killed by his own farmhand, Tom Chaney, while out of town to do some literal horse trading. Mattie goes to Fort Smith where she's to retrieve her father's body and bring it home, and maybe settle some of his affairs. However, upon learning that no one has gone to arrest Chaney (this is 1870's-era Arkansas, and Chaney has disappeared into the Oklahoma Indian Territory) she determines to do it herself by hiring a US Marshall.

Hearing he has "grit"/ is the meanest Marshall, Mattie hires Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a one-eyed drunk of a man. Meanwhile, she meets a self-impressed Texas Ranger also in pursuit of Chaney, named LeBouef (Matt Damon). The three pursue Chaney, having disagreements and incidents along the way. Chaney (Josh Brolin), for his part, has joined the gang of Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper, of course).

The movie does deviate from the book in how much LeBouef is involved. He's around much more in the book, but the movie is focused on the relationship between Mattie and Rooster.

What it retains is the particular dialog created by Portis, in character and a product of Mattie's own speech patterns as she relates the story of what happened. Thus, drunks and criminals speak in complete thoughts and refuse to utilize contractions, dropping a fifty cent word when a penny word would do. In the film, it's a strange effect but works nonetheless, suiting the Coens' sensibilities.

Relaying the tale years later, Mattie remains stubborn and sees the world through her particular lens of propriety. And, to that, while the John Wayne movie places Rooster in a position of leading man, the story does belong to Mattie. As to the notion of who has true grit - and the Coen Bros. ensure that there's no question - the answer is Mattie.

This was Steinfeld's breakthrough role, and there's no mystery why. She's a kid, and she carries a movie with names like Matt Damon and Jeff Bridges as co-stars. I've only seen her in so many movies - she's as great as anyone else in Sinners - and like Kirsten Dunst and a handful of others, it's fascinating to see her at this age and seeing what she can already do.

What the film does that the book can't - as it's from Mattie's self-serious perspective - is show she is, in fact, a child and where she very, very occasionally takes childish delight or makes clear her mistakes.

Another unspoken star of the film is Roger Deakins, the great cinematographer who brought so much to the Coen's work over their career. The landscapes of New Mexico double for the Indian Territory, and he creates a fascinating purgatory of the landscapes, a sort of twilight zone that shows the beauty but unknown quality of the space Mattie moves through.

The score is Carter Burwell, who is one of my favorite film composers - and he doesn't disappoint. And, hey, they pull in Iris Dement for the final moments of the movie. Pretty good!

Jamie pointed out that the world of the film is, oddly, smaller than that of the novel. And I think I agree. It's a product of the Coens not pushing Mattie's narration at us non-stop - using voice over very sparingly, which changes the tone and scope of the story as all we can see if what's in the frame.

And hats off to Elizabeth Marvel who appears in the final scenes as Mattie decades on and nails it in a few short lines of dialog.

If I have criticism, Bridges chooses a voice for Cogburn that takes the already tortured dialog put in his mouth and then plays it as a drunk, which can make for some challenging listening. But you basically get the gist, and I think it's a legitimate choice.

As True Grit is the seed from which we eventually got the 2026 Supergirl movie, it's an interesting exercise in seeing maybe why the story they chose to tell, pivoting the focus to Kara instead of Ruthye, doesn't make for a better story, and creates collisions in the themes and point of the story. I won't dwell on that too much, but Tom King and Bilquis Evely pulled off what they did through Evely's stunning storytelling art, and King's management of the themes - leading to finale that put a button on the story that the movie ignores for a standard movie ending meant to satisfy people who don't give a shit who the Super-family are and what they stand for.

I am aware that WB can't release a movie called "Ruthye and Supergirl" and focus on a character we'll never see again. And they can't show that the eventual death of their version of Chaney is also almost incidental and that the real story is what we learned along the way.

Music Watch: American Pop (1981)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 08/05/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Ralph Bakshi

Jesus. Wish I'd seen this 30 years ago.

Oddly, this movie was on TCM because it was a selection by actress Pamela Adlon, who was guest-hosting this film and Fame. I don't know much about Adlon, but I think we could hang based on her description of her movie watching.

A sweeping, multi-generational story starting with a turn-of-the-century Russian shtetl to the 1970's stages of American rock arenas, American Pop (1981) is a singular work of art. I'm kind of pissed at whomever told me in the 1990's that I didn't need to see it.

Anyone with a love of 20th century American history, particularly pop culture (see the tag line for this blog) should give American Pop a spin. It's a movie told in montage - but with mixed media, illustrated montage, combining cell animation derived from rotoscoped character work, stylized paintings, stock film footage, and more.

I saw the film crudely described as a "juke box musical", which doesn't do what it does any justice. Instead, the movie pulls you through a kaleidoscope of about 80 years, including both musical and entertainment stylings - the "pop"ular music of each era. It's the *voice* of those eras and what was going on, combing familiar songs with real life events, from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to the 1950's organized crime hearings on Capitol Hill, to echoes of the deaths of famed music stars on the 1960's.

The movie uses an incredible catalog of real music, which is how you get the "juke box musical" tag. But it's not just "and then Elvis sang THIS song!", it's commentary and reflecting on the times as they unfold, and what the various generations are experiencing. I've seen the Carol King musical, Beautiful, and it is the definition of a jukebox musical. And it's great! But American Pop is, I'd argue, more organic and manages to choose songs that really push the story along.

Prior to the showing, host Adlon and TCM host Ben Mankiewicz discussed the editing of the film, of the collision of images - and they're right. You don't see this sort of thing too often anymore. Editing has become a very A-B-C approach so we don't lose the normies in the crowd. But there's some brilliant work here.

The film crosses through four generations of the same family - the young Russian Jewish kid who falls backward into show business - vaudeville. His son, who has natural talent as a piano player but goes off to WWII. That man's son, who flees the New York suburbs to follow the path of the Beats and winds up writing songs for a Janis Joplin-like outfit. And, finally - that man's son, who finally gets a shot at stadium-rock stardom.

It's surprising how much both plot and character fit in the run of the movie. And the sheer artistry that fuels the thing - using the cartoonist and painter's palette to say a 1000 words.

Ralph Bakshi rarely made work with kids in mind, and we were certainly in a period of Bakshi leading the way in this arena, while also getting films like Heavy Metal, intended for a young-adult audience, or even The Wall and its animated sequences. Some of that folded into the early 90's animation boom in shorts, but by the time Bakshi's Cool World arrived - which is a chaotic and sometimes enjoyable mess - the Eisner-era of Disney had pushed the idea of animation for adults to the curb.

Anyway - maybe I'm ranking American Pop a bit too high. I don't know. But after being told it wasn't very good, I think I was in utter shock at what the movie does from all aspects - sound, animation, story... it's something else.

Music Watch: 24 Hour Party People (2002)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:10:19 +0000

Watched: 08/03/2026

Format: Criterion

Viewing: First

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Somehow in the past two weeks, I was in a group chat (in theory about Texas football) where the folks were discussing 24 Hour Party People (2002), which I'd never seen. Then, an artist I follow on socials was discussing it this last week. When I saw it was recently added to Criterion, I decided now was the time.

A while ago I took to watching some documentaries on YouTube (of varying professional quality) about bands I like, or liked once upon a time. And it became clear that while I am aware of bands and some of their music, I sure don't know much about what it's like to come up in the British music scene. You get a real feel for how small England really is sometimes with how the music scene there is treated like a popularity contest with winners and losers and how much bleed over there is between fan bases.

24 Hour Party People covers the rise of the Manchester music scene, from the mid-70's to the early 90's. I vaguely remember it coming out but in 2002, I was a busy bee. And, frankly, a small film about a music scene I wasn't that into wasn't the biggest draw.

However, this is an extraordinary movie. A sort of grimy, gritty and ultimately delusionaslly optimistic and romantic film with a real love for a brief moment in time and culture that already has been mostly paved over and forgotten except by a small portion of a generation. And, while I've enjoyed Steve Coogan before, this is the best possible deployment of Coogan.

The film tracks the rise and collapse of Factory Records, through the eyes of one of the founders, Tony Wilson. Factory was instrumental to the British post-punk scene and helped pave the way to where music would go, as well as music culture through their club, The Hacienda.

The film is told with a 4th-wall-breaking, Coogan-as-Wilson-narrating-to-the-camera style. It is genius and hysterical. Wilson is an unreliable narrator, and sometimes he's called on it in the movie by real people who were there appearing and saying so. Not much catches me by surprise in movies these days, but this sure did.

I barely listened to Joy Division or New Order in my youth, and Happy Mondays were sort of a One Hit Wonder on this side of the pond (and after purchasing their cassette, not really my bag).

But it's a story of rock and roll excesses and what faith in the music - a sort of belief in "authenticity" that became passe and then mocked by subsequent generations. And, maybe this movie is both a pro and con argument for what it means to believe in the art first and foremost, signed in blood. Literally.

Stylistically, the movie is a montage, moving between film stocks, through styles, moods. It uses real archival footage here and there (Sex Pistols and Siouxsie). While it unavoidably falls into rock n' roll movie tropes in some ways - after all, things only go sideways so many ways with sex, drugs and rock and roll - the novel ways in which things go wrong can feel like a delight, even if this is only semi-fictional.

Mostly, Tony Wilson seems like someone you kind of think you should hate, but his unwavering belief in what he's doing is absolutely charming, even as you can see him accidentally laying landmines he'll walk over later.

This is one I'd certainly watch again, even if I'm lukewarm on some of the music. I guess when a movie is this charming in its own way, and refuses to take itself at all seriously, you of have to love it.

Spidey Watch: Spider-Man Brand New Day (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:45:12 +0000

Watched: 08/02/2026

Format: Regal Cinema

Viewing: First

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton

Look, I'm respecting that the movie-advertising is asking that we not discuss this movie publicly on social media, so I'm doing what I can here.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

No, really. Don't read this if you haven't seen the film.

Nope.

Keep walkin'.

Okay, you did this to yourself.

This movie isn't going to win over anyone who doesn't like superhero movies. If you're already crossing your arms with disdain just thinking about Spider-Man, move along. But if you have followed the Spider-Man movies, if you like Marvel - especially from the now long-gone pre-Endgame better age of Marvel, this one reminds you someone out there can still make it seem like these movies and this universe are coherent and matter. It's a reminder that at their best, these movies work best when there's an emotional truth, even if the story on paper is absurd.

And, indeed, this movie feels very much like what it is to walk into comics mid-stream at age 12 and have to run very fast to catch up from context clues, because this movie relies on knowledge of what is now nearly 20 years of movies (Bruce Banner/ Hulk), with the more recent movies (Thunderbolts*), with the Netflix and Disney+ TV shows (Punisher) and, of course, three different versions of Spider-Man movies.

In some ways, it's one long story unwinding the completely weird decision at the end of the last movie to erase everyone's memory of Spider-Man (something they do in the comics sometimes, and I always wonder how that's supposed to work on a practical level. Like, does Peter's yearbook photo just vanish? Does he no longer have a Social Security number?).

But what that decision did was *finally*, four movies in, give us a Spider-Man who isn't a middle-class kid with a particularly hot aunt who goes to college prep science school.

Personal Rant:

I *enjoyed* the prior three Spider-Man movies, but you could also feel that no one working on them wanted to deal with Peter Parker as an actual working-class loser. Instead, Peter was a special kid who went to a special school and had special best friends. Sure, he had challenges, but it wasn't "I need to buy Aunt May her heart pills, earn some scratch for web-fluid materials, keep Flash from giving me a wedgie and stop Electro". Those movies featured *a* Spider-Man, but it was not *my* Spider-Man.

If you aren't complaining about "the 'ol Parker luck", what are you even doing?

Now, there was a sea-change in Peter's world a few years into the comics when he graduated high school and enrolled at Empire State University. Now we had Harry, Gwen, MJ and a sort of buyable gang Pete was hanging around with where he ditched the nerd-togs and became a tad cooler. But the Parker luck dogged him right through his girlfriend getting tossed off a bridge.

Rant End

And this version of Spider-Man at least touches on that - a Spider-Man I haven't seen since Spider-Man 2.

Your blogger and Peter Spiderman after our 11:00 AM screening

While the movie flatly refuses to inform us how Peter is making a living (no Daily Bugle?), it is telling us what he's up to - and it's largely: being Spider-Man. Which is great. I get one of my favorite old-school Spidey villains in The Scorpion and even Tombstone makes an appearance. It makes the ongoing adventures of Peter feel a bit more lived in.

The past four years have seen Spider-Man taking care of his city while Ned and MJ made their way through MIT. They've returned to New York, are living as platonic roommates, and Peter has to deal with the fact they're back.

One bit I particularly liked was Liza Colón-Zayas showing up as Jean De Wolff - a cop on Spidey's side who also is trying to get him to take care of himself.

Meanwhile, a ghost-like supervillain is moving from body-to-body, and they're focusing on trying to take down Damage Control - a government agency that first appeared in Spider-Man: Homecoming and has made appearances here and there. They're who shows up to deal with the damage after super-battles, cleaning up the alien technology, collecting villains' equipment and basically dealing with a world overrun with supers, aliens and ninjas. Oh, yeah, for some reason a little faction of The Hand is here.

But, much to *my* surprise, the movies works as a backdoor introduction to mutants and the eventual inclusion of the X-Men in the MCU.

One late note: no agency in any movie these days isn't up to something nefarious. A reflection and refraction of the trust in institutions at an all-time low. At this point, we can just count on any big government operation in these movies actually having a secret agenda, and it's a little tired.

They blend in a bit of a story about Peter's DNA getting out of control as he leans too hard into the Spider-Man and not enough into being Peter Parker, and it has notes of Peter's powers doing the opposite of all this in Spider-Man 2 when he sort of loses his spider-mojo. Fortunately, the movie never turns into body horror and remains a threat but nothing that slogs the pacing - it's just... a very Spider-Man sort of concern.

What's shocking is how organic all of these pieces are. I mourn the loss of the Marvel that existed where each superhero was the only super in their movie, and they were special in that way, and had rich casts of supporting characters who were just... people, at least if we're going to bring in all of these costumed characters, the movie was smart enough to make sure whomever was there, Yelena, Bruce Banner, had a real narrative or emotional function.

So, was it any good?

Yeah, I think so.

You can't really judge these movies like anything else at the cinema, even movies with sequels. Spider-Man expands even beyond the films of the MCU to cut across two reboots that are, impossibly, within continuity. The character is part of the rich tapestry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which has exploded and expanded across dozens of films, a truckload of television and probably video games I've never seen.

Fortunately, I come pre-loaded with a background in funny books, and contextualizing in this sort of framework is no big whoop.

And, yeah, within the structure of the MCU, this is a phenomenal installment. But it's not exactly Citizen Kane, is it?

If the measure of these movies is whether they defy the nonsense of the premise - and in the case of this movie, the multiple, stacked absurdities - to get to that emotional core, then, yeah. I was all in. Peter's struggle to not lose himself in the grief over his past mistakes and what it cost others, to find what is essentially work/life balance as he uses work to cover his trauma, lest he literally lose himself in the job, is shockingly resonant. After feeling No Way Home was a neat trick but traded cosmic-level fan service for a story that got under my skin, I think Brand New Day sort of gets us back there. While also giving us a Spider-Man that feels more how Spidey should be.

It doesn't hurt that, visually, this movie is one of the best conceived Marvel movies in a long, long time. I want to write more about that, but feel like I'd need to see it again to do it justice. Just absolutely stunning stuff.

Also - someone confirm for me that they were re-using locations from prior Spider-Man movies - and not just from the MCU ones.

Marvel has done a great job of not taking narrative short cuts or leaving plot holes, and here that lands in MJ confronting Peter and saying she really has no memory of Peter - she has no love for him. How could she? And I look forward to seeing what Marvel and Sony do with these characters now. It both feels like a chance for less of a high school love story and more of an adult love story - but also, opens the door for Black Cat, etc...

I'm not sure what to say about the reveal of Sadie Sink as Jean Grey. There was definitely a ripple that went through the crowd at my screening. I was expecting a name actor with a shaved head to roll up in the post-credits sequence, but that didn't happen. But, yeah, Jean is the first X-Man, if memory serves. So, here we go.

Gimme Scott Summers, pronto.

Canon Watch: Addams Family Values (1993)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:50:44 +0000

Watched: 07/31/2026

Format: YouTube

Viewing: Unknown

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Absolutely one of my favorite comedies. And, why, 30 years later people still talk about Wednesday Addams.

Still, a movie where everyone is bringing something special.

No real reason to say much about the movie today, so I won't. But just give it a whirl and spot a pre-fame Tony Shaloub as a sailor in a bar, a Broadway famous Christine Baranski - just before she appeared in Cybill and was launched to media fame, as well as Nathan Lane as the desk sergeant, before Lion King made him a thing.

It's unbelievable Raul Julia passed a year later.

Jamie reminds me we did a podcast on Addams Family.

Monster Watch: The Black Scorpion (1957)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 15:46:29 +0000

Watched: 07/31/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Edward Ludwig

Yall... You're gonna be something less than shocked when I tell you that maybe a 1957 movie about kaiju-sized scorpions rampaging through Mexico is maybe not Oscar material. But I will say it is entertaining as hell.

The story is basically lifting Them!, which had just been a big success. But in this case, the volcanos that erupt throughout Mexico this time crack open the earth.* A pair of geologists, one handsome Mexican guy (Carlos Rivas) and one lantern jawed American (Richard Denning) race to the location to scout it out. En route they come across a police car that's been wrecked - like inexplicably shredded - food still cooking and an abandoned baby. They also find the police officer who is dead, his eyes wide open, and leaning against a wall.

With no idea what's going on, they head to the town with the baby, and everyone is in a panic. Cowboys are coming in from the local ranches reporting the cattle are turning up dead. Shit is bad, yo.

Spoilers: there are giant scorpions running around who escaped their underground layer and seem to want mammal flesh.

I'll now mention - though I've lived in Texas my whole like, and I've dispatched a scorpion or two, I really don't know much about them. I think they eat bugs, because part of why you need to be zealous about pest control is that if you let bugs run around, it attracts scorpions. However, I am pretty sure they don't have binocular eyes and pointy teeth.

you will see this shot approximately 7000 times

But, hey, look, this movie has some great stuff. Namely, it has stop-motion sequences that are straight up murder-chaos. In a movie I kind of thought was for kids, a *lot* of people get killed. But the stop motion is absolutely top tier for the era, as well as how they made some other effects work. Yes, it's unfortunate how hard they go with the full-face close-up of their scorpion puppet, and less is more. But Overall, there's both way more in the way of stop-motion than I expected, and it generally works better than I'd anticipated.

The movie also has Mara Corday, who is kind of a special effect unto herself. And whenever the movie gets a little slow, they cut to Ms. Corday to keep the momentum going.

Is the movie good? No. Does it feature a lot of people running like hell from a 3 story scorpion? Fuck yes, it does. As well as scorpions straight up manhandling a train like someone was mad Godzilla got to trains first.

Anyway, yes, it has some of "why are they doing this? Why are we watching scientists all stand around?" stuff that confounds many movies from this era. But it also has scorpion fights and ends with our hero declaring he's about to go nail Mara Corday.

It's really something.

*one could argue there was a perfectly good volcano movie to be had here, but apparently not

TV Watch: Ride or Die

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Ride or Die was advertised as a light romp with the wacky idea that a housewife discovers her best friend is actually an assassin. Twenty years ago, this has Sandra Bullock in it, and is a 100 minute movie with non-stop jokes that makes its money back with re-runs on TBS. And, I'd argue, in the ads Amazon put out that was more or less what was sold. And, fair. The premise seems a bit of dark comedy. Enjoy.

But the show pretty swiftly makes it clear - forget the ads. This show has more in common with action-dramas of the past fifteen years than it does with late 00's-era comedies. Sure, it has great comedic bits, but imagine my surprise as the comedy was pushed further and further to the edges, the inescapable result of 9 hour-long episodes based in a world of assassins, mob money and betrayals.

It's not exactly The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but it isn't trying to be. Nor is it trying to be The Bourne Identity, John Wick or "a ballet of violence" for violence's sake. When violence does break out, it's not just goofy fun. People get very hurt and/or killed.

The big draw, was, of course, pairing Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham as two pals. Spencer - who has played a wildly diverse set of roles over her career - plays a very buyable character in the brilliant wife of a British MP - the secret brains of their family operation. But she uses her wits to, like, get to the piece she wants at the antiques sale before the other guys and plot out how to push through her husbands agenda in Parliament.

Spencer's husband, on the way to a gala, states he wants a divorce. At that same gala, Waddingham is tasked with assassinating a fixer (Ed Skrein). Turns out that fixer was tangled up with Spencer's husband and some very shady business.

Bullets start flying, and Spencer - evacuated by Waddingham - learns Waddingham is a highly trained assassin, and that's just, like, the set-up of the set-up. We have eight more episodes to go.

There's also plot threads including Waddingham's man-in-the-chair (Calam Lynch) and the daughter of their Q (Savannah Steyn) who wind up getting involved.

Unlike most of these country-hopping espionage-type movies, the writing grounds the characters in an emotional reality, even if the world itself feels about as believable as a Bond movie. Yes, there's a good multi-level plot about the Albanian mob, political corruption and a revenge story that dominates the back half of the series. But even that revenge is a reflection of emotional realities within the world of the show. In what could be a "yeah, it was fine" world of attractive women high kicking Eastern European men in the face, something I fully support as a genre, this one feels remarkably fresh.

Thus, the A-plot is really uncovering the challenges to the friendship of these two women and the not-so-casual discovery that everything Debbie (Spencer) believed about the two people she loved and trusted, was a lie with a lot of darkness under it. While Judith (Waddingham) feels the onlyw orld she's ever known was also built on a foundation of quicksand.

Spencer's character is more fleshed out than I expected. There's a whole character arc that never gets mentioned out loud that she's absorbed a lot from all those mysteries she doesn't particularly like reading - she's quick to employ tricks she read somewhere or comes to herself based on that craftiness. It's very clever.

I am unsure what the story is, but that's two major shows Waddingham has starred in where it starts with a simple enough premise and by the end you're totally pulling for her, and now that light comedy sure feels like a heartbreaking drama. I'm not sure I've seen anyone who can shift to heartbreak and vulnerability this well on screen.

We were definitely watching for the plot

SPOILERS

Over nine episodes, a *lot* occurs. Like a lot of these shows, it can wind up feeling like too much and not enough. And if you also know the genre, you can kind of assume a few things will happen which absolutely do occur. Example: our fixer was being way too handsome and uncharacteristically kind for what he was supposed to be to survive to the end of the show.

That doesn't mean there aren't surprises. I raised my eyebrows at the high body count of characters with speaking lines, even if the logic of why those people were killed makes sense. I was pleasantly surprised by many of Debbie's character decisions. And that the show all but sidelines Judith for two episodes recovering from an injury. Or that they even let a main character get that injured.

Overall, I enjoyed who the real villain was - Redback - and the full story that spilled out about her. Lots of theatrics to her plan that seemed at odds with a background in cooly efficient murder, but I think they justified it plotwise.

What I didn't buy was that Debbie would turn on Judith after the woman who was clearly a villain decided to just hurt Debbie and Judith's friendship. Like, yes, plotwise it works for the overall emotional story they're telling. Logically, it sure seemed like what would hurt Judith more would be to know she didn't save her friend. Making Debbie sad just didn't seem like the move of a crazed assassin - let alone how she'd even *know* that.

The final two episodes are thrilling, but rely entirely too much on one person guessing correctly exactly what another person will do, or even deduce. You can do one or two of those, but after your third "and they just happened to know exactly where to go... and that person planned for that", it just starts feeling like nonsense. Fun nonsense, but nonsense.

I think somewhere in the penultimate episode I grokked that they were setting things up for another season of the show, and I kind of wish they hadn't? It always feels ham-handed when the last ten minutes of a 9 hour show where everyone has arcs that have been activated and achieved start doing things for very obvious plot reasons rather than because we're getting closure on season 1. I kind of think - until you know you have a Season 2 guarantee, you need to introduce those flips in the first episode of the second season.

But, man, are there a lot of shows about not being able to trust the shady organization to which one has dedicated their life, always led by some old guy who has been lying for decades. And not once do these movies or shows ever have the highly competent super-assassin just do what they're good at and kill the guy in his bathtub, no muss, no fuss. It always gets raised to Batman-Villain level kookiness.

I'll also complain that the show got in its own way during a crucial scene where Judith picks Debbie over her own career and life. They should have just stayed on Waddingham and let her have that full 20 seconds in close-up. We don't need to be force-fed flashbacks of stuff we *just saw*.

So it can feel like the airplane is barely holding together as we come in for a landing.

Still, any landing you can walk away from, right?

At the end of the day, you're really showing up for Spencer and Waddingham, so I'm not sure how much to actually complain about my personal bugaboos listed above. I'm not sure, in a week, that's what I'll be thinking about when I think about the show. But if they can get the mechanics of the assassin/ espionage stuff sorted out, this thing will be unstoppable.

In the meantime, the two leads - and the supporting cast - are probably worth checking in for all on their own. The bonus of focusing so much on character and those interactions is that we get some stunning work - especially in a genre where people usually just stoically shrug off bullet wounds.

I do think it's very cool that two women - neither of whom previously played action stars - are leads in an action show that's apparently doing really, really well. So we will get that second season. And I'll be there, I suppose.

FUN FACT: When I looked up what a "Whiptail" before the show completely blew up, what came up was "nickname: lesbian lizard". It's apparently an all-female species of reptile from Mexico that breeds through parthenogenesis or something. But that nickname sure made me wonder what was in the original script.

Neo-Noir Watch: Tequila Sunrise (1988)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 07/27/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Robert Towne

Tequila Sunrise (1988) was, to me, the sort of movie parents would go see whilst leaving the kids at home in those heady days of "they have fishsticks and can work the oven." The film was advertised to adults, rated-R, and didn't look like a cop movie where our hero shot the place up and made jokes. So my interest was muted. Also, I don't remember having HBO when this likely aired and so I missed that window as well.

As a neo-noir, Tequila Sunrise feels positively old-school, like it should star Victor Mature and Richard Conte as opposite sides of the law who were boyhood pals and now find themselves at odds.

Wait, that's Cry of the City. Terrific film.

This film stars Kurt Russell as a cop who is on the verge of promotion to head of Narcotics for Los Angeles, but his boyhood pal, Mel Gibson, became a large-scale drug dealer, a bit of a legend in both drug-dealer circles and with federal law-enforcement. Gibson is semi-retired as a drug lord, wanting to be an honest businessman his son can respect one day. But nobody believes he's out, and they keep asking him for favors when all he wants to do is sell heavy farm machinery. (I mean, honestly - pretty good investment idea.)

His ex in film is played by Signal Watch 90's crush Ann Magnuson.

As the Feds close in (J.T. Walsh), using LA resources, Russell doesn't particularly want to bust his old friend, and in surveilling him - realizes what the feds think is some coded business operation at an Italian restaurant is actually Gibson hanging around because the manager is Michelle Pfeiffer.

However, Gibson has never made a move. But Russell does. Pfeiffer becomes entangled between the two as Russell believes Gibson is up to no good, and Gibson wants to know if Pfeiffer is helping Russell - but is still drawn to her.

Honestly, the plot gets unnecessarily convoluted - not so you can't follow it, but you can't help but think "there was a better way to do this". But we do get Raul Julia as a Mexican Commandant, and he kind of out performs everyone else on screen. Dang, that guy was good.

This movie wants to be slick and sexy, and relies mostly on hiring hot actors - did Michelle Pfeiffer ever have a bad hair day? - and it relies on them being charming as hell. And in that - it succeeds. But the story feels like a souffle that should have been left in the oven a bit longer. It just seems like there's a lot of threads and they barely hold together at the film's end. Smaller may have been better.

I had kind of associated this movie with Sea of Love and a few other Neo-Noir films from the era, and I'd probably rec Sea of Love over this one, unless you just want to see these actors at this point in their careers. It's not bad, but it doesn't feel essential - except as a "yes, I've seen 1980's neo-noir films" checkbox.

Happy Birthday, Hannah Waddingham

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:03:00 +0000

Today, July 28, marks the birthday of star of stage and screen, Hannah Waddingham.

This year has been pretty good for Ms. Waddingham.

She has starred in what appears to be a successful series for Amazon Prime, Ride or Die (our post on it will arrive after we've finished the series). Threads tells me many people did not know of her before, and... welcome to where I've been living since, like, 2021.

She's got a new season of Ted Lasso set to drop in August and a fanbase primed and ready. Her Fox show, Krapopolis continues on (I catch it once in a blue moon). And she's been announced as starring in one movie with Guy Pearce and a separate movie, promisingly titled Jason Statham Stole My Bike, with the eponymous action star.

And, she's lent her voice to an animated project by Sir Paul McCartney - coming soon.

Not bad.

Social media tells me she keeps popping up places like Wimbledon and at F1, and that seems like a pretty good way to live one's downtime. I believe she's also found a suitor who she can stand next to in heels, and that's got to be a bonus.

Happy Birthday, Hannah Waddingham!

Island Watch: Eden (2025) / The Galapagos Affair - Satan Came to Eden (2013)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:04:39 +0000

Eden (2025)

Watched: 07/25/2026

Format: Library Disc

Viewing: First

Director: Ron Howard

This is a movie about living in a place that's pretty good, but the place suddenly gets overrun by people who read an article saying the place was cool. Because the people who moved there, wrongly believing themselves cool (and therefore heirs to the cool place), bring their suckiness to the place - the transitive powers of their suckiness, large numbers and insistence on changing the nature of what made the place cool to begin with, make that place which was once cool now suck.

Eventually the place sucks so much, helped along with the participation of government stooges hoping for money and glamour, things in the place become straight up bleak.

In short, this is the story of Austin, Texas.

When Eden (2025) was released, reviews were kind of all over the place, but I was curious. I don't tend to think of Howard as a director who does grittier movies about sordid topics like sex and violence. The movie had a fascinating cast - Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Ana de Armas, Daniel Bruhl, Sydney Sweeney... A movie requiring minimal FX, and where shit gets very real as people scrape for survival in what is now an infamously inhospitable living. And turn on each other.

Based, in theory, on real events, I - being me - did not trust the movie in the slightest. Especially under the eye of Ron Howard, who I think has his issues as a director and storyteller. Howard isn't going to let some irritating truth get in the way if he's thought of a good cinematic arc or moment. But when the story gets this small, with only a few people involved and a lot of them end up missing or dead, we're not going to be able to go to Wikipedia and see what really happened.

What I do think he captured is that the three factions who all wind up on this desolate island in the 1930's, tens of miles across open water from other people, are all there for kind of insane reasons - and that is naturally going to cause conflict. He seems to have at least told a compelling story I can see as a play.

The cast includes a would-be Nietzschean philosopher (Jude Law) and his disciple/ lover/ work-horse (Vanessa Kirby), a naive family fleeing Hitler's Germany (Bruhl and Sweeney) who believe this will be a romantic tropical paradise, and - most of all - a woman claiming to be a Baroness (Ana de Armas) and her 2-3 lovers she's brought as manual labor.

While the arrival of the Wittmer's into the philosopher's solitary paradise is unwelcome, the Baroness is a force of nature - with both men and guns to enforce her will. And she sees this barren rock as the ideal place to build a resort for the ultra-wealthy. Ie; she's delusional, but through charm and sex has been able to bring along willing participants she hopes will attract more investment and she can just sort of be at the center of it all, letting the imagined riches flow to her.

Meanwhile, Rittmer, the philosopher, is losing his shit with these neighbors while poor Sydney Sweeney is just trying to make living in a cave work.

Eden was part of my Vanessa Kirby borrowed-from-the-library-DVD viewing

First - Howard is no idiot, and one thing he is able to always do is get great performances out of actors. I am utterly unfamiliar with Sweeney's work, but based on this, yeah, she's really solid. Am I shocked Jude Law goes hard? Or Daniel Bruhl? No. Does Vanessa Kirby kill in this? Yes, she does, as a true believer in the mission who suffers from MS and thinks this may be her cure even as she and Rittmer seem a poor match. Ana de Armas has the most challenging role as someone who, on paper, seems so absurd, you can't sort out why anyone would follow her to a second location, let alone a tropical island. But she does sell it - and apparently this is sort of what really happened?

It's an engaging film, absolutely. As the pieces fall into place and we learn who each person is, the explosion between the parties is more a question of when than if. It's a study of human nature, and does not come up on the side of "we're all basically good people inside" - especially people who had such disdain for human society they moved to a rock in the middle of the ocean.

But there are scenes that took me out of the film - namely the entire childbirth sequence - which just became so many things stacked on each other, it's was a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat. And, frankly, I thought kind of poorly shot in an effort to make it *tense*. It was here you could almost imagine Howard saying "now we're making a movie!". And, because it's Ron Howard, sometimes when he thinks something is important, he makes sure to all but stop the movie and have the characters say "and now for some messaging, please listen". Which, you know, given the rate of media literacy, maybe that's the right thing to do.

What surprised me was that the movie actually provides very pat answers, mixing and matching conflicting stories from the real incident, when it seems like a Rashomon approach might have better served the story and some form of truth.

Arguably, the movie and real-life-events are a petri dish of what many fantasize about and to which we ascribe various political persuasions. Are we really good at self-sufficiency? Or do we require the intervention of others? And what happens in a world without laws when the barest of force disrupts what we set out to do? Unshockingly, bodies start turning up.

But, dissatisfied with the answers of the film, I immediately put on...

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013)

Watched: 07/26/2025

Format: YouTube

Viewing: First

Director: Dan Geller / Dayna Goldfine

(I found the movie here)

Made over what had to have been years and years, this doc tracks the story of what may or may not have happened on the island in question, and - for context - pulls in residents of the nearby island Santa Cruz, which was maybe a bit more livable but still barely an outpost in the 1930's. Filmed during the digital camera age of the late-90's through what I'm guessing is the 00's, the doc makers interview the children of the Santa Cruz settlers - who are still there - about their families, growing up in such a remote patch. And, two of the babies born on the island to one of the families in question is still alive and well and shows the cave he was born in.

The doc confirms my suspicions that the residents of the island were perhaps more in touch with people coming by than is suggested - and relied on them a bit for survival. But also, the timeline of the events stretches over multiple years, not the year or so of the film.

And it's possible what actually went down is more fucked up than the movie thinks - which it tries to tie up with a neat bow.

What the doc confirms is how completely nuts the situation truly was with the "Baroness" - a woman who never was a Baroness, who was forcing a version of reality into being, kept a passel of male lovers (it seems much more than the 2 in the film), and was generally a real @#$%ing problem.

The doc basically lays out what the two on-the-record stories were, from Dore (the Kirby character) and from Margert (the Sweeney character), which point the finger at the other for the Baroness's ultimate demise, but admits "man, who can say?" Which I think, ultimately, is the better call. And that Rittmer died of food poisoning as an accusation of murder is certainly a big "I dunno. Maybe?"

Which is all you can really say. The circumstances are so alien and extreme, it's easy to kind of buy anything.

What is a little chilling that the doc doesn't really discuss except in elliptical terms is what the people settling the islands were condemning their children to. An island is not the same as moving someone across the country - no one is making money, really, by showing up on the islands, you're cutting them off from human experience and being able to even function in the outside world. So maybe it isn't a shock those who were raised there remain there.

Anyway, it's all interesting enough. Howard stuck close enough to the reality of the events as relayed that it doesn't feel like one need dismiss the movie outright - always nice. I suspect, because of the bizarre nature of the movie and its basis in real events, I'll think about the movie and the doc down the line.

Fun fact - in 1995, just before we started dating, Jamie went to the Galapagos. She didn't watch the movie and wasn't paying attention to the doc as I wrapped it up, but she heard one of the location names and declared "oh, I've been there!" to which I got to inform her "seems that's a crime scene", which I guess they didn't tell the tourists.

and, yes, Kirby is still a biscuit in this movie

Neo-Noir Watch: Sea of Love (1989)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 17:51:57 +0000

Watched: 07/24/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Harold Becker

Sea of Love (1989) is very much what I think of when it comes to the notion of Neo-Noir. Well, this and grittier stuff like To Live and Die in L.A.

This movie is just before we moved into the 90's and neo-noir = erotic thriller for a lot of movies. And I'd argue this movie probably put the notion of the erotic thriller into the skulls of some creators.

This is a cop-finding-a-killer movie, and that initially had me not terribly excited. But I'd always heard good things, and this movie has tons of talent in it that I dig, not least of which is Ellen Barkin. And I'll be honest - as big as Barkin is, I'm shocked she wasn't everywhere after this movie.

But, yeah, the movie stars Al Pacino as the cop hunting down our killer, John Goodman playing probably a full 15 years older than he was at the time (his adult daughter is getting married, and I think Goodman is 37 if he's a day in this movie). Michael Rooker is in a bit part. William Hickey shows up for a scene. Richard Jenkins plays a detective who is now married to Pacino's ex-wife. Christine Estabrook, one of those "that lady!" actors, appears. And a pre-fame Samuel L. Jackson appears in an opening sequence.

The movie also very much reminded me how, in 1989, I became hyper-aware of how we were living in a world owned by the Boomers (and they have not yet taken their foot off the gas on that one monetarily, politically or driving-us-over-a-cliff-wise).

Culturally, in 1989, Boomers were celebrating Woodstock's 20th Anniversary and relishing how great they'd been as a Generation just for existing. You know, real Millennial vibes. And movies were full of the soundtrack they grew up with on TV, commercials and in movies. Because Boomers grew up in the second real Mass Media age of television and coast-to-coast radio programming, you could put on something like Phil Phillips' "Sea of Love" - and that cultural touchstone of a single everyone had heard once a week since, like, 1959, could be turned into a haunting callback and clue in a movie.

It is, in fact, embarrassing, that they have to have requisite lines about people saying "oh, yeah, I remember that song". My guy, you heard that probably every time you entered a Walgreen's back then. But I don't know how you make a movie about a song in 2026 and think everyone currently living has heard it as we've all gone down our personal algorithmic niches.

The movie has a *lot* of set-up and takes a while before Barkin even shows up, but once she does, the pay off is pretty great. And during that set-up - which includes a plan to identify the killer by placing a singles ad and then showing up for *all* of the dates, we get some commentary and a lot of insight into Pacino's Det. Keller, from how he is with other people (spoilers: bad) and his drinking.

But in addition to chasing down a killer, while it doesn't point to it with neon "here's our story" signs, the movie is about a guy realizing what's gone wrong in prior relationships and mending his ways for a specific woman who makes him want to change.

Some things in the movie don't quite make sense - but I'm chalking it up to the drinking. Pacino can't seem to remember that Barkin's character has a young daughter - and plans to ask Barkin to move in with him *immediately*. The case isn't even solved, which indicates our leads have only known each other for a few weeks when Pacino determines he would like for Barkin to move in with him.

And it's here that I talk about Ellen Barkin in this movie, because, yes, she's gorgeous - this is not news. But because she's really f'ing good. In other hands, I don't know how this role would work. She's utterly buyable as the woman who doesn't want to put up with bullshit, but also lets herself follow her animal attraction. And there's an unspoken bit that when Pacino is playing his role in the sting/ stake-out, she doesn't like him, but when he's himself, she can't keep her hands off. And there's a bit at the end where Pacino wonders how she could have been attracted to her ex, and you kind of want to say "you weren't exactly a bucket of flowers, my guy". But mostly, Barkin really sells the role, making you completely understand why Pacino is asking her to move in way, way too fast - she feels grounded.

I will admit, I was totally wrong about where I thought the movie was going - guessing a twist that would have been more of a mid-90's sort-of-thing. My guess was that John Goodman would turn out to be the killer, getting close to Pacino to find out what he knows.

Anyway, I had the experience of not being terribly into the movie at first, getting more interested and then genuinely digging it by the film's end. A movie absolutely for adults, and given movie treatment. Not in the way of a Netflix thriller you'd forget existed as the characters sleep-walk through a boiler-plate murder mystery and no one dares talk about, like, actual topics other than TV cop murder exposition in hushed tones.

Happy Birthday, Lynda Carter

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:58:14 +0000

Today is the 75th birthday of Signal Watch patron saint Lynda Carter. Big milestone!

I'm not sure what Carter has been up to this year. Hopefully she's off having a grand time somewhere.

Ms. Carter isn't just an actor, advocate and sometimes-superhero. She's also a singer and performer.

Here she is a few decades back with our friends, The Muppets:

He-Watch: Masters of the Universe (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:14:04 +0000

Watched: 07/23/2026

Format: Amazon Prime

Viewing: First

Director: Travis Knight

Well.

That was sure a He-Man movie.

I'm not particularly a fan of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the cartoon nor the toy line. In fact, when this movie was pitched, I wrote a whole long post about how weird I thought it was that a movie studio went all in on what I thought was probably a far niche-ier market for this movie than they were probably aware, and I wasn't particularly looking to spend my paycheck on watching the movie in theaters.

But as the movie approached, I thought "well, maybe I'll take the niece and nephew", but neither of them showed the slightest interest - and they'd seen the trailer. Something came up around the release date, and I thought "well, I'll go in like two weeks". But the reviews hit and were unkind, the audience stayed away in droves, and the movie was gone. And I was back to Plan A, which was to watch it streaming.

Meanwhile, my social media was ablaze with the "it's actually really good" assurances, and "all of you will say 'why didn't anyone tell me to see it in the theater?'"

So, I don't know what I was expecting, but at about the fifty-two minute mark Jamie fully tapped out and I put it on pause until after she'd gone to bed.

Pretty clearly, Mattel saw the billion dollars they made with Barbie and wanted a repeat. To get there, they wrote down key-words about Barbie and decided, if it works with Barbie - we can do it again! You can almost imagine the white board in the Mattel offices where they made a word cloud. "Self-aware", "funny", "doesn't take self-seriously", "nostalgia", "doesn't match expectations", "turns common conception upside down", "tries to make a point".

The result is a movie that is very self-consciously meta and desperately wants to be funny, but feels like a kid who saw someone else get laughs with a joke and tries to deliver the same joke, but flubs the timing and forgets part of the punchline.

I'd also argue that the conceit of the touchy-feely Adam just (a) never works as much as they think it does and (b) kinda undercuts itself completely with He-Man beating Skeletor to death with his bare hands by the end of the movie. Kind of like Supergirl, it's having its cake and eating it, too, with the finale. And from what I can tell, people would rather have their familiar-narrative buttons punched than see a narrative that comes to a coherent point.

Look, I'm just not nostalgic for the characters, but I do remember some of them (but clearly not enough of them). I just think the take was weird - for me. It wasn't camp, though I am sure people will apply the word (while being wrong online). Like Barbie, the movie acknowledges the absurdities of He-Man concepts - I mean, Mekaneck, fercrissake - and the cartoon, while also demanding the audience point and say "I got that reference". Which I assume many people between the ages of 49 and 53 might be able to do. This is a feature, not a bug.

me for the two hours of this movie

I just didn't think there was much more there. As a comedy, which the movie most assuredly is, I didn't find it very funny. The same jokes keep happening whether they're funny or not. In the end, the best part of the movie is probably (sigh) Jared Leto as Skeletor. But even that's odd because the goings-on at Snake Mountain were already pretty fucking funny back in the cartoon, and they just do that.

The guy who plays He-Man does great with what he's given - I guess he's Nicholas Galitzine who was very good in Sheep Detectives. But he can't save a role that starts feeling very tedious by the hour mark. Idris Elba is clearly enjoying himself. Camila Mendes has the thankless part of humorless girl warrior, which was always Teela. Alison Brie is actually doing a solid Evil Lyn from the cartoon, so no shade. I just wish they let her do more than be ~~hot~~ the girl who fights the other girl.

One also can't help but note the music, and... I dunno. Brian May was directly involved, and I wanted to love it. It just all felt so on the nose. Like, I get you're doing Flash Gordon, but I've seen Flash Gordon. And I'm the person who really, really wished they'd had May score John Carter. But it all felt very would-be-James Gunn-needle-drop but too obvious? Playing "Boys Don't Cry" when Adam is being sad about Eternia on Earth? Like... isn't that lazy? Isn't "Princes of the Universe" too much? As in - don't make me think of movies I like in your less good movie. (I should also mention there's also a complete rip-off of a James Gunn single-shot-group-fight-scene). But it just made me want to tell film-makers that maybe it's time we stop with needle-drops for a minute until we get better at this.

I'm going to wrap it up. I guess if we want to talk about the movie more in the comments, we can. I guess I was just underwhelmed by the whole thing. So, no, I am not saying "boy, why didn't anyone tell me this was so good?" I think it kind of landed where it needed to - a streamer I didn't pay extra for on a Thursday night.

Also, where the fuck was Stinkor?

Modern Western Watch: The Lusty Men (1952)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 07/21/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Nicholas Ray

The term "lusty" has not always meant "horned up". The dictionary definition just means "healthy" and "vigorous". Or, "Hearty", or, even "enthusiastic, rousing".

So, while Susan Hayward paired with Robert Mitchum may lead one to believe we're heading for "lust-ful" men, and we are, I think they just meant "these cowboys are hale and hearty".

After all, this is a movie about a young, married man (Arthur Kennedy) deciding to join the rodeo circuit in order to make money enough to buy a ranch and settle down. As it turns out, he wants to buy the boyhood home of veteran rodeo rider Jeff McCloud (Robert Mitchum). The new rodeo-man's wife, Susan Hayward, is reasonably concerned about this decision. After all, rodeo riders tend to get mauled by bulls, thrown from horses to grave injury, and more... It's not what she signed up for.

She was going to get married and live a quiet, domestic life. But she feels she has to support her husband if he's hell-bent on this plan, and so travels with her husband and Mitchum. And immediately finds out "this lifestyle is even worse than you figured".

One thing I started noticing maybe a decade ago is that no one in new movies is ever *poor*. If they are, it's a punchline or a period piece about scraping by on the frontier or something. Maybe sometimes it's something where people have to pull off a big heist or whatever and they're living a little fringey, but it's rare we get a movie where the accepted circumstances are "we're living paycheck-to-paycheck and so is everyone we know". Instead, everyone has a multi-room apartment at minimum, and without roommates.

I find this turn odd. Maybe the constant stream of Ivy Leaguers and third generation rich LA kids running movies don't really have a concept of the kinds of stuff that reflect folks in fly-over country. Maybe our belief we're all one day away from becoming among the folks getting bottle service at der klerb.

But this movie is about grabbing for a dream - actually finding that success - and forgetting what the goal was to begin with. That the best thing you can actually win is that shitty ranch in Bandera, where you and Susan Hayward can have a few kids and run some cattle. It's amazing how the idea of "making it" used to be - many films - "we're basically covering the bills".

I don't know that there's a lot new to The Lusty Men. Mitchum playing a stoic ex-rodeo man who is mostly hanging around hoping Susan Hayward will decide to run off with him (and since it's Susan Hayward, we know she won't) is not the most novel concept/ a bit predictable. The script is written as a series of plants and pay-offs, and what will happen with Jeff feels pre-ordained. And you can see where things are headed.

But that doesn't mean the dialog isn't sharp. The story is a good one, and it's well told, thanks to director Nicholas Ray and his cast. There's real rodeo footage cut in and it's a reminder that this story is fiction based in hard reality. In fact - we have both the Cedar Park rodeo coming up, and there's organized rodeo teams now. Locally, we've got "The Austin Gamblers".

There's no doubt Susan Hayward is lovely and a talented actor. She won at least one Academy Award, was nominated for more, and was an important star in her day. She brings a lot of presence to the few movies I've seen her in. No shade. She's just not my favorite. Who knows why? But I *buy* her choices. And in this film she's not overly concerned with being likable so much as relatable. She's the POV for everyone who thinks "wow, rodeo riding seems perilous - maybe someone should talk someone out of doing that".

And Mitchum is in a role where being cool isn't a bonus - and it works. There's a lot of subtext to what he's doing - not saying what he wants in any scene, but you always know.

Now, the film kind of starts in what is supposed to be Bandera, a town west and north of San Antonio, and our Young Rodeo guy is from Big Spring, which is one of those dots on the map out around Midland. But the story does move across the US between Ft. Worth and Southern California. But it made me pay attention that they named towns I'm aware are out this general direction.

The movie is a drama, at the end of the day - and lands on trying for kind of a higher-brow sort of story about choices we make, and the appeal of the spotlight - and at what cost. Not a bad film - this is Nicholas Ray after all, and he doesn't put out anything I'd think was "not good". Apparently well received, I don't know if it was a prestige picture, but it's certainly an A picture, and I think worth a spin.

Kaylee Hottle Merges With the Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:29:02 +0000

Hottle at the Godzilla x Kong premiere in 2024

This is a tough one.

Actor Kaylee Hottle, who I knew from two of the Legendary Godzilla/ Kong movies, has passed. She was only 18. Because she was so young, I know readers will be curious - she sustained injuries in a car accident.

Hottle played Jia, who was a main character in both Godzilla/ Kong movies, and Kong's connection to the human world. As a young actor, she was terrific. I have no doubt she would have gone on to do great things.

This is deeply sad and unfair to her family. Our deepest sympathies.

Late Edit: I didn't know Hottle was from a town just south of Austin and a student at Austin's Texas School for the Deaf. This just keeps getting sadder.

Arthouse Watch: The World to Come (2020)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 04:23:22 +0000

Watched: 07/19/2026

Format: Library disc

Viewing: First

Director: Mona Fastvold

I really liked Vanessa Kirby in last summer's Fantastic Four, and was aware she had a career a bit like Rebecca Hall. ~~Be foxy in things~~ After getting noticed in smaller stuff, do a mix of some big, silly crowd pleasers (Hall is in two King Kong movies and an Iron Man) while still doing smaller art films and some prestige pictures. Do all the things.

I happened to find two Kirby movies right off the bat via Austin Public Library, and so I've borrowed this movie, The World to Come (2020) and the Ron Howard flick, Eden.

The World to Come was not exactly a critical darling, but pretty close! It clocked in at a 73 on Metacritic. And I'm not surprised that, especially in the political climate of 2020 - the year of the movie's release - it did well. It got a lot of international attention. It's a period piece about forbidden same-sex love, and it is very sad, and that is absolute critic bait.

First - before we get to the rest - the performances in it are good to very good, and I say that with no small amount of amazement for reasons I shall get to forthwith.

Kirby is stunning in her general Kirby-ness, but also in the performance she delivers, which I think earned her some noms. Lead Katherine Waterston is very buyable as a woman grieving her lost child and married to a man so coded as having the 'tism, it feels like an LLM read social media to write the part. The man in question is Casey Affleck, who - at the time of the film's shooting and release, was probably hiding from Hollywood as he'd been very publicly #MeToo'd. Which may have led to him appearing in a British movie filmed in like Transylvania doubling for upstate New York in the 1850's. But do pity actor Christopher Abbott who plays the villain of our piece - for he is written like a red flag in 1850's garb and has to not twirl a mustache once.

The cinematography is lovely - the rural setting a fantastic backdrop, the interior lighting of the rustic homes handled phenomenally. Photog Andre Chemetoff does some stellar work here, and hats off. You can have a critical darling without this level of craftmanship, but it sure sells the idea this movie is good if it looks like a million bucks.

But, sweet Christ, is this movie plodding, ponderous, predictable and - its biggest crime - pretentious as fuck.

I can tell you exactly when I turned on this movie. It was when I had to turn on the Closed Captions not for the usual reasons, but because the dialog of the two characters - both the wives of farmers in 1850 - in speaking about raising hogs, used the word "asperity" as a punch line.

I'm 51. I read. I have two college degrees. I am fine with not knowing a word. I am also a movie-fan enough that I enjoy some stylized dialog. But it also needs to make sense in some sort of context - and dialog also needs to communicate the movie's ideas in a way that is clear on a first viewing.

The notion that folks in 1850-whatever all spoke like the letters of the best educated and thought-leaders of their day is a choice. And it's a choice I found tedious by the 30th minutes of the movie - it just feels like the third smartest person in your class who reads a lot really doing a flex.

That is - until when one of our two leads says something *daring* in the plainest possible language, and in close-up. You know, so you know it's *important* and *maybe deep*. Which you will know because of the serious beat the movie takes.

These aren't acting problems - our leads are working their asses off selling this dialog that is the floweriest of purple prose - these are script and directing choices.

The movie is also predictable. There's not all that much happening - and we know from the poster "forbidden girl/girl romance" is the plot. It will be doomed queer love - catnip for some viewers. But it takes absolutely zero work to know from the tone of this movie that Kirby is not making it out of this movie alive (SPOILERS).

Her character is portrayed as spirited and genuine and perfect and unwilling to listen to a word her husband says when he is, at every turn, portrayed as someone who has no problem killing things and is very direct about his expectations and how much it irks him she flaunts his wishes.

And it takes it's sweet time getting there. And when it does, it almost does it as a fake-out, just to really make it suck. We must have profound tears.

So, yeah, the movie a slow, meandering path to get to the point. Which is "things sure were not fair for women in olden times", and, movie, you are right. Things were also bad for people who had same-sex relations. You have cracked a book, congrats. Things were super bad.*

I would be curious how much research was done to get the movie written and made. Frankly, I haven't spent an undue amount of time researching the first-hand accounts of women in that region in that era (it does feel oddly remote for a state that had been established for 230 years and was well-traveled in the 1790's). But it feels like an oddly modern take at times, almost written more like 21st Century people forced into these conditions rather than people who would have known what they were signing up for.

I will say, I bought the romance between the leads - bought their connection in their particular circumstances. There's a story in there that, I think maybe stripped of some of the pretense, I might have embraced more. But it is also a movie that is more or less relentlessly bleak, and I'm not sure has anything particularly novel to say, so tries to make up for that in execution. And the execution just wasn't really my cup of tea.

And I don't know why. This should fit in neatly with films I have enjoyed. The one that comes to mind first is The Piano. But this ain't that.

There are, of course, a million jokes one could make about the title of this movie. Or at least three I've thought of immediately. But this is a class joint.

But, fortunately, Kirby was still hot, so it wasn't all bad.

*And it is baffling in 2026 when people keep voting to bring America back to 1850 when it will be very bad indeed for their children if not for themselves.

Sci-Fi Horror Watch: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 18:17:37 +0000

Watched: 07/18/2026

Format: TCM with John Carpenter and Alicia Malone

Viewing: First

Director: Val Guest

SimonUK kept suggesting The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) to me during the podcast era, and I can see why. I think mostly in England, but also among sci-fi and horror-heads in the US, the Quatermass media - of which there's more than you'd think - is considered foundational or classic. Thus, it may have inspired things like Doctor Who (which I confess I never got into) and there's no small amount of John Carpenter's early work in this movie.

And, in fact, I watched it because Carpenter is hosting two days of movies on TCM with Alicia Malone.

I'd also argue - Stan and Jack may have lifted the origin of the Fantastic Four from this movie in a small way. And if you know Jack, he was constantly reworking what he saw on the street, in movies and in culture right into his comics, so it wouldn't shock me.

The movie opens as a rocket crashes back to Earth in a field outside of London - an experiment run by scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass (a bizarrely cast Brian Donlevy in this movie). The rocket is intact, but as the door finally opens, only one astronaut emerges and the other two are missing. Our remaining astronaut is ill, unable to speak and seems disoriented.

Quatermass believes in science and achievement above all else, and while everyone else is freaking out about the missing astronauts and the crash, Quatermass is very much of the opinion that he got his rocket back and one-out-of-three returning ain't bad. However, it's clear something is horribly wrong with the astronaut, Carroon (Richard Wordsworth).

Carroon's wife is rightfully freaking out while everyone else around him is just, like, "yes, but science. He's fine." He is not fine.

SPOILERS

In fact, that's sort of not Carroon anymore - he's inhabited by an alien who is *changing* him. He's a lifeform not entirely unlike the one imagined by Carpenter in The Thing, that takes on characteristics of the lifeforms he touches as he consumes them. And consume them he does - usually just sucking out their life force, sort of draining them. But also leaving behind versions of the animals and humans that are basically an extension of the creature, a horrible, reproducing thing.

This movie is, in fact, my jam. I even like the weirdo casting of Donlevy as Quatermass - something that makes zero sense both in the context of the film and outside of it.

It's really well shot - really using black and white in a way maybe Hammer should have kept doing instead of relying on tomato-colored blood and variations on the Dracula set over and over. It's one of the most thoughtfully shot movies I may have ever seen from Hammer.

And the ending? Top tier. This was weird and great. And I dug practical FX throughout. Just top tier for 1955. Hammer was really firing on all cylinders. This is creeping terror, and the name in the US reflects that. This was released here as The Creeping Unknown, and that name is very on the nose.

Anyway - I get why various folks keep trying to remake this one, and I think *they should*. I think Comberbatch would kill it as a Quatermass.

Noir Watch: Angel Face (1952)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:14:49 +0000

Watched: 07/16/2026

Format: TCM Noir Alley

Viewing: Third? Fourth?

Director: Otto Preminger

I was a bit surprised I'd already written this movie up twice before, but here's the first (fifteen years ago almost exactly!) and here's the second (about eight years ago).

Y'all, I have been doing this *a while*. And, yet, no one has intervened. None of you are to be trusted with my welfare.

Still love this movie. It's all arcs and curves heading for the very particular, noir-perfect, ending.

I'm still a huge fan of Mitchum in everything, and this is no exception - here playing the cat who thinks he can thread the needle, having his rich girl and his marriage-material, too (and it's likely this wasn't the first "other girl" she's put up with). He's just cool enough to make you think he's got the angles sorted, but he never really does.

Jean Simmons' femme fatale is really just girl who is smart as hell, but doesn't understand real-world consequences. And maybe really does just want to be loved?

In the post-film chat, Muller talks about the framing of the film, and every film student could stand to review how he uses space and moves his subjects around in it - something I did note while watching a few scenes. It's a brilliantly shot film on what I assume were studio sets.

But it's also worth mentioning how horrific the car accidents in the movie are - partially because both use convertibles with dummies inside, and the camera doesn't look away. With the right suspension of disbelief, it's really f'd up stuff to put on camera. We're essentially watching characters we've gotten to know die horribly.

And that's kind of the point.

Anyway, come for the scene where Diana meets Mary. That alone is pretty good stuff. As is Mitchum's last conversation where you realize - he has no idea what he's doing, actually.

Will I watch this again in another 7-8 years and be just as surprised this is my fourth write-up? Probably.

Noir Musical Watch: Blues In The Night (1941)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:33:00 +0000

Watched: 07/15/2026

Format: TCM Noir Alley

Viewing: First

Director: Anatole Litvak

So, this movie is super strange, and maybe in a good way, because it really swings for the fences. I am not sure it goes yard (it doesn't) but it's at least an interesting sac fly.

It's a mix of the "let's put on a show!" spirit of the movie musical and takes a turn down an alley into what would come to be known as noir. As the two collide, Blues in the Night (1941) can make for some strange viewing.

A group of guys tossed in jail for the moment decide to form a band - they want to play "the blues". They are not Black. But in the next cell are Black guys, who are singing the Blues. By 2026 standards, this will be the best performance you will see all movie.

Out of jail they head to New Orleans to pick up a trumpet player and his spunky wife, Priscilla Lane. Travelling by box car (and seemingly unbothered by what seems to be this "band" thing going terribly) they meet Norman Lloyd on the lam - he directs them to his club outside of New York City.

Here our troubles begin as it becomes clear Lloyd is a gangster, and our plucky hero, Jigger Pine (Richard Whorf), falls for The Wrong Girl - played brilliantly by Betty Field. She is absolutely the high light, character wise, in this movie - a character who is damaged and lashing out, because who ever did her any good?

Priscilla Lane and Betty Field demonstrate that there are two whole ways to be a main female character in noir

Why Jigger falls for Field is muy mysterioso - she may be foxy, but she's also clearly nuts. His prior insistence on keeping the band together through thick and thin immediately dissolves as he abandons the band and takes Field to a higher echelon of living, playing swank clubs.

But in short order, Field is picking up rich guys while Jigger's on stage and refusing to cover up her trysts. Terrible girlfriend, really. Field, you see, doesn't give a crap about our hero, she's in love with Norman Lloyd, and he'd given her the Heisman.

Things go side-ways for our hero he ends up in the looney bin.

I'll go ahead and say, if this unpleasant, shouty lady leaving causes you to literally lose your mind, she must be really good at something. And it wasn't singing.

There's a whole sequence where Jigger tries to train her to sing, and it... is kinda painful for everyone, including us, watching. But it's also my segue to mention that the movie has I think four montage sequences, and those, alone, are worth the price of admission. It may be a movie that feels bobbled together from other movies, but when they get to those montage sequences, it's hard not to get a bit impressed.

The movie winds up with a crime-thriller ending that feels deeply at odds with the first fifteen minutes of the movie, and it is a wild ride all the way. In some ways, it's a real WTF-is-next? sort of experience as the movie lurches around figuring out what it wants to do and be. And I suspect at some point there was probably a decent script, but this movie sometimes feels like it's two or three movies stapled together.

The result is that Blues in the Night feels plot forward, with too many characters, and no real resolution to fairly major bits. A whole storyline seems to be brewing for Pricilla Lane and her philandering husband, and is just chucked out the window 4/5ths of the way into the movie. Two of the guys in the band barely speak. It almost feels like half-way through writing, someone saw a good crime movie or something from the more realistic Group Theatre and decided "THAT'S what we should do", but failed to rewrite the beginning. And somehow... this went in front of cameras that way.

And, remember when I said it was sort-of a musical? It is. They keep stopping for numbers, the montage sequences are musical numbers. The title song became a pop standard that is still sung today - written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. Good stuff. And not the last time a song would be more popular than the movie that spawned it.

The movie does have some interesting casting. Priscilla Lane had already been in big pictures and would be in plenty more - she's in both The Roaring Twenties and stars in Arsenic Old Lace if you're looking for a name movie. After this, she's in Saboteur.

Jack Carson I know mostly from Mildred Pierce. Wallace Ford is in... everything. Along with Lloyd Nolan.

Elia "I name names" Kazan is in this in a cheesy supporting role as the guy who really wants to play music, not be a lawyer. His arc is done in the first ten minutes. After that, he's just there to ham up every scene.

Star Richard Whorf would only do a handful of movies in front of the lens and go on to direct a lot of television.

The much mentioned Betty Field was in a 1939 Of Mice and Men adaptation, would play Daisy Buchanan in the 1949 Great Gatsby and then get absorbed into TV. I had never heard of her, but she gives the great Ann Savage a run for her money as one of the most unpleasant femme fatales in noir-ish films.

I don't know if I'd watch this one again, though. The part I enjoyed - Betty Field - isn't in the movie enough to warrant that the time. But I guess if someone dared me to show them a deeply weird movie masquerading as a normal movie, I'd pull this one out.

The ending of the movie - which I think is supposed to be happy? - is almost unsettling. The band, now down a baby, led by a guy who needs a shrink, and jobless, jumps a train again and is back to hoboing like this is the best life imaginable.

I have never seen people who needed to more all go their own way for their own safety and happiness.

Dave Kendall Merges With The Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:48:44 +0000

As a kid stuck in the suburban sprawl of Austin and then Houston/ Spring, Texas, where music tastes skewed in such a fashion that AC/DC was literally playing on a radio station somewhere 24 hours-a-day, Whitney Houston was playing endlessly in mall sound systems and my classmates positively wet themselves for Garth Brooks - finding the music I liked was a part-time job.*

MTV had not yet pivoted to dumb game shows and reality TV, but during normal waking hours, you were more likely to see them play Warrant's "Cherry Pie" on a loop more often than anything I cared about. And then one Sunday night, I caught 120 Minutes, hosted by a guy who seemed like a true believer when it came to the kinds of music I was already kind of liking by 1989.

Dave Kendall's run on 120 Minutes - a show he conceived and produced - and which he would go on to host, lasted from 1989 - 1992. If you ask a lot of people, they won't recall 120 Minutes prior to Kendall, and will barely remember the show continued after he handed hosting duties off to Matt Pinfield. Once I was headed for college in 1993, I really didn't pay much attention, and then had no cable for a few years to even notice he was gone.

Kendall was British, which was a bit of a novelty, but seemed terribly on-brand for a show that featured far less in the way of big American hair-bands and more in the way of imports like Love and Rockets, Jesus and Mary Chain, Suede, Lush, Kate Bush, Sisters of Mercy and even The Cure, who I didn't see on MTV until 1989 when Kendall played the video for Pictures of You.** And I watched a lot of MTV.

He also featured plenty of other bands from the US, Australia and elsewhere. It's where I saw Pixies videos that wouldn't run in daytime, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails and plenty of others. It was where I first heard Cocteau Twins, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Radiohead and plenty of others.

Kendall wasn't a gatekeeper - we had plenty of those at the labels and in radio programming. I would argue he was an advocate who identified a taste for this music which was, at the time, not as popular as, say, "I Want To Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd. He seemed to care in a way I think other VJs, who were too exhausted from playing the same 15 videos all day, couldn't be bothered to do anymore. And he only had to do his show two hours per week.

He also got interviews with bands as they swung through New York, which was always a kick.

In the end, the 120 Minutes watchers entered into the creative arts, kept loving some of this stuff, and you'd think a lot of 120 Minutes music was mainstream at the time, and I assure you: it was off the radar for most of my fellow student at the KOHS - who, if they knew the bands - it was likely only from the shirts of a few people who went to shows. But now that music from 89-92 is in everything, like it was what your parents were listening to, Youths. It was largely not. Your parents were into a lot of trash.

I think you can credit Kendall in some ways with why these acts had a following as big as they received in the US. But also - it seems fitting that he bailed as host in the era when Alt-Rock was suddenly the hip new thing, and labels sought to cash in.

Here's to a guy who had an outsized and unknown impact at the time, and who was not given his proper due at the time or since.

* I'm no music aficionado, and I don't claim to have any particularly eclectic musical tastes. What I will say is that I was not a Top 40 guy by the middle of middle-school, but was as likely to be jamming to Buddy Holly as Violent Femmes or The Ramones. But a lot of what you'll throw at me from the era - I completely missed.

** I was well aware of their existence and had heard The Cure before this, but their video presence was limited on MTV until this time

Sam Neill Merges With The Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:58:15 +0000

Actor Sam Neill has passed at 78.

Neill was most famous for his role in Jurassic Park as Dr. Alan Grant, who made his way across the island with two kids in tow. I honestly think that role changed my opinion of what you needed for an "action hero".

I was also a fan of his work in Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World and Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness and plenty of others. Just this year I watched Possession.

He was also active on social media showing his farm, Two Paddocks, and maintained a clever, funny presence for years.

As big a movie as Jurassic Park is - and the subsequent sequels in which I think he appeared in two - Neil will be remembered for a good, long time. And rightfully so.

Happy Birthday, Mikaela Hoover

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 19:32:19 +0000

Hey! It's a second Super Birthday today!

Happy Birthday to Mikaela Hoover! She played Cat Grant in our most recent Superman film. You will remember her in that movie with blonde hair and glasses. She absolutely nailed the character in a few scenes, so... hats off!

Hoover also played Floor the Rabbit in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.

May Ms. Hoover have a terrific b-day and a fabulous trip around the sun.