The Signal Watch

"Big Trouble In Little China" at 40

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Just listen to the ol' "Porkchop Express" and take his advice on a dark and stormy night, alright? When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, looks you crooked in the eye, and asks you if you paid your dues; you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: "Have you paid your dues, Jack?" "Yes, sir, the check is in the mail."

Apparently this week marks 40 years since the release of one of the greatest films ever made, Big Trouble In Little China.

From the previews, I'd been mildly interested in what I saw, and then saw the flick featured in a movie-FX magazine I leafed through in B. Dalton at the mall (did I buy the magazine? I did not). Probably they were discussing the big red ape monster and the eyeball guy, and maybe some lightning FX, and that was enough of a sale for me.

So, within a week or so of the film's release, Steanso and I hit the Showplace 6 in North Austin and watched the movie.

I was also a kid who thought Buckaroo Banzai (also seen in the theater) was a perfectly reasonable movie for a kid to love.* I saw They Live in the theaters twice. So apparently a certain kind of movie that would become a cult film was unironically on my radar. But I was also happy to go see *everything* for a long, long time.

I knew the movie was breaking movie rules in that it *felt* weird. But that disconnect made me laugh. Our muscle-bound action hero was incompetent, our villain was kind of goofy and pissy, and the sidekick was clearly actually the hero. I very much understood Gracie Law as a Lois Lane-type that the movie showed a certain self-awareness with that I found very funny.

At the time, the name John Carpenter meant nothing to me. That would come when JAL showed me Halloween when I was 14 or 15. And I suspect this movie is where the whole Kim Cattrall thing originated, because I doubt it was from Police Academy, which I saw way, waaaayyy too young. And I'd not see Mannequin til the last decade. But you can't convince me Gracie Law is anything less than an ideal romantic interest.

The supporting/ co-lead in Dennis Dun's Wang Chi was straight up cool, if a little dorky about love (which circles back and becomes cool). He was clear the cool-headed leader, and paired with weirdo mystic Egg Shen (80's movie staple Victor Wong) made for an en excellent guide for Kurt Russel's Jack Burton as he enters a world us big, dumb guys were not prepared for (but we are happy to help a pal in a pinch).

Of course James Hong - one of Hollywood's most versatile talents - killed it as David Lo Pan, in both modes.

I loved Jack Burton as a kid, but REALLY appreciate him as an adult. I don't know that I had properly seen a movie where the lead was so out of their depth before, and where it was played for laughs.

I'm not saying I've been everywhere, and I've done everything. But I do know this is a pretty amazing planet we live on here. And a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we're all alone in this universe.

The movie has magic, and martial arts, its own mythology, monsters, iffy FX, and was, to me, plenty funny. What's not to dig? And it's just this side of being what you expect it keeps your attention. I remember friends complaining Jack knocked himself out in the final fight, and I was just like "yeah... that's... that's the joke, man." But it was also a real bellwether of whether people grokked the movie.

There were a number of years between when I'd watched it over and over on VHS and then someone in college bringing it up, and me saying to Jamie "you've never seen it?" and making her watch it. Not sure she's ever taken to the movie in the same way.

I am well past the point of being objective about Big Trouble in Little China. If the movie is *good* or *bad* is purely a matter of taste and probably when you first watched the flick. I've seen it an alarming number of times, and it's one of those movies that if I put it on cable, I'm in through the end.

But, by gum, it gave me the hero I needed.

*I was in college doing research for a film school class before I found out how horribly that movie had done at the box office.

Franken-Watch: The Bride! (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:20:25 +0000

Watched: 07/01/2026

Format: HBOmax

Viewing; First

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Before release, I was really looking forward to the release of The Bride! (2026).

As many know, one of my favorite movies is The Bride of Frankenstein. This ranking is followed immediately by Frankenstein, and I tend to think of them as a two-part movie as much as a pair of individual movies. I still re-read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from time-to-time. In 2018, I celebrated the 200th anniversary of the book's publication by visiting a sort of display at the Lilly Library at Indiana University.

The Bride! was released with what I'd consider a serious marketing push - a rarity these days. And then the reviews hit and word was not good. And then people I know saw it and were unenthused, and so I decided to wait for streaming.

I am sad to report that this was the right call.

Here's what I think.

Maggie Gyllenhaal not only directed The Bride!, she also wrote the movie and produced it. Ie: this was pure Gyllenhaal. And maybe this movie should have been workshopped a lot more before it went before the lens. Maybe try it on as a play or give it a polish with additional writers. Workshop it.

We tend to get very precious about our thoughts and ideas, and this feels *extremely* precious about those things.

The movie is less a story than a series of *ideas* that become increasingly less coherent over the movie's runtime. It is a series of cinematically conceived sequences that are stitched together - Frankenstein'd, if you will - into a single movie.

The film takes place in the 1930's, but a 1930's that's whatever Gyllenhaal wants it to be (and that is fine). One part post-prohibition Chicago, one part Americana fantasy. Mary Shelley exists as a narrator and possessing spirit. The monster is played by Christian Bale, who is having a ball. Seriously, he's doing good stuff here. Our star is Jessie Buckley, who is very famous and I've never seen her in anything. She's asked to swing wildly between personalities, and does great. She and Tatiana Maslaney should hang out and compare notes.

What Gyllenhaal feels to be artful in its bombastic approach instead lands as awkward and a bit silly. I should not openly cringe at lines like "here comes the motherfucking bride!" but, boy, did I. And when you open on a clunker like that, it feels like you just tripped on your grand entrance.

Put down as a list of things that happen, I don't think we have what's essentially a bad plot or a story that shouldn't have occurred. There's just a sort of feeling that Gyllenhaal's reach has exceeded her grasp. The message is clearly going to be "women live in a bad world and bringing them back from the dead to be someone's partner will illustrate that". That is, after all, the message of The Bride of Frankenstein, where the idea is teased and then pulled out as essentially a punchline at the end of the movie (spoilers). As it was the 1985 film The Bride. And, most recently, DC Comics and now DC's animated series of Creature Commandos that features The Bride as a lead.

All of which make the same points as this movie, but without a highlighter and Powerpoint deck of a series of events.

There's a love of cinema in the movie, especially of classic cinema. Movies are pitched as how Frankenstein, who has been alive for over 100 years and is from Switzerland, experiences humanity. And he has a taste for Fred Astaire-like musicals starring an actor played distractingly by Gyllenhaal's brother, Jake.

But, man, combining Frankenstein and "Puttin' on the Ritz" in a movie in 2026 seems like absolute madness - especially in such an uninspired and pointless scene. I could not begin to fathom why Gyllenhaal (a) put this sequence in the film at all and (b) why she insisted on taking "Puttin' on the Ritz" back from Mel Brooks.

I guess - stop reminding me of other movies that make me think about other things? Why show me White Zombie if you don't want me to think about White Zombie and whether it was ever in 3D?

Gyllenhaal has, for reasons that defy logic, named one main character Myrna Malloy - I assume after Myrna Loy, who was a huge star in the 1930's. Which complicates the fact the big-boss sleazy villain is named "Lupino", which makes me think of Ida Lupino, who was not a comic book villain mobster and was, instead, a producer and director in an era where that practice for women was all but extinct.

Clearly Gyllenhaal had done some reading about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (nee Godwin) - which is a *fascinating* topic all unto itself. The Godwin family is a gothic story all unto itself, and is a prismatic look into what was happening on the fringes of British society of the era - that not all views were in line with the rank and file.

More importantly, Mary Shelley's mother, who died just after Mary was born, had been a dedicated women's rights advocate in the 18th century. Her father was a politico himself - and an anarchist, and basically raised Mary as a feral intellectual. One assumes Mary Shelley was just stewing in some interesting philosophy from her youngest days before she ran off with Percy Shelley when she was about 16. Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, the two men Shelley spent time with in Europe, were famed raconteurs and at least Byron was a bit of a rake.

All of which the movies assumes as some sort of pre-knowledge, and does nothing to highlight that for the audience. The radical feminism of Mary Shelley's mother and father is imagined to have been imbued in their daughter, who - from beyond the grave, spins a story of how The Bride inspires women to become bad-asses - a storyline that goes nowhere. Just as the storyline about the big mob boss goes absolutely nowhere and could be entirely cut from the film to probably greater effect.

The film has aspirations of the film itself as a sort of living thing. Our characters appear on screens at the movies they attend, acting out their scenes like movie-heroes instead of as the wretches they are, breaking walls down.

How meta is this story? I do not know. In real life, - Mary Shelley is an author who wrote a fictional book, but in this story Shelley seems to have written a book she knows is fictional But then, our events take place in a world where Dr. Frankenstein created a man and people know about what he did.

So did Mary write a non-fiction story? Or is this story hers in the afterlife where she literally puts words in mouths? Is she deathbed hallucinating? I don't know. I *think* we're to understand that the shadow Mary sitting in the dark (played by Jessie Buckley, who also plays The Bride) is real and speaking to us, the audience. And maybe the story we're watching is not real - it's her latest narrative where she breaks in and her voice emerges through The Bride. If true, it's Gyllenhaal speaking through Shelley speaking through The Bride.

I suppose I don't need clarity exactly, but it would be nice to know and/ or care.

So the movie becomes about the possession of a young woman by Mary Shelley so that she can tell the story she dared not tell with her original novel - in which Victor Frankenstein refuses his creation a mate, and instead scatters her bits.

I guess... I just felt this movie was trying to be too many things. It steps on its own ideas and messages. It exists in a world that's a cartoon 1930's version of America, and relies on the audience knowing a little about a lot of things - but if you know too much, it starts to kind of fall apart.

Even during the mad science scenes of the film's first third, it feels more like a college play production of someone doing something based on having seen stills of Frankenstein or Bride of Frankenstein rather than someone who replicated those sequences out of deep knowledge. So it never feels *mad*. It never feels like they truly went there - they just used some props that felt they were in the basic spirit of a Frankenstein movie. And that's kind of how the whole movie feels. Kinda/sorta there - and you can see what they're going for - but it feels like a Dunning Kruger version of those things.

If you're going to borrow from some of the most famous books, movies, etc... maybe make sure you're saying something *new*, or at least not just repeating what has come before but far less eloquently and economically. If you're going for the crown of Bride of Frankenstein, better not miss. And this one ricocheted and hit the shooter in the butt.

For a movie I think felt free to let its freak flag fly but actually worked: Poor Things.

Ann Blyth Merges With The Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Somehow I missed this last week, but - Ann Blyth, who had one of the top 5 smiles to ever hit the silver screen, has passed at the age of 98.

I became aware of Blyth at the same time I became aware of the sheer magnificence that is Joan Crawford as an actor rather than a punchline when I watched Mildred Pierce back in college. In what is her most enduring role, the lovely Blyth played the absolute worst person as Crawford's b of a daughter. She is *stellar* in this movie.

The only other movies she starred in I think I've seen are Brute Force (great prison movie. Check it out.) and Kismet, which is worth seeing some time just for the visuals.*

But, once you've seen Blyth's Colgate smile, you do not forget it.

Blyth was very generous with TCM and was interviewed by Robert Osbourne. Here's a tribute TCM released.

*and by visuals I mean Blyth and Dolores Gray

Happy Birthday Terri Nunn

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:33:00 +0000

Hey! Today is singer Terri Nunn's birthday! That's fun.

Saw her sing with Berlin in like 2018 or 19, and she was *amazing*.*

*amazingly hot

TLDR Super Watch: Supergirl (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 06/25/2026

Format: Regal

Viewing: First

Director: Craig Gillespie

It is probably worth noting that while a great IP to slap on thermoses and t-shirts, Supergirl is maybe the least consistently written mainstream character in comics. So there is no "right way" to write Kara Zor-El.

I've read my fair share of comic books starring Supergirl over the past few decades. I've read Silver-Age, Bronze and Copper-Era stories. I read 90's-00's Not-Kara Supergirl by Peter David. And was one of people who was flipping out when they brought Kara back in the mid-00's. Aside from giving New 52 Supergirl a pass, I have pretty complete runs of pretty much everything since the 2005 reboot. I heartily recommend the current series by Sophie Campbell as one of the best comics I've read in a while. I own a copy of Action Comics 252.

I've seen the 1980's Supergirl movie at least three times - including on VHS as a kid. I watched the entire run of the CW TV show. Am familiar with various incarnations in live action and animation. (I have an affection for almost all of those takes.)

I am not a Supergirl PhD, but I feel pretty well oriented. So, there's my bona fides.

Most importantly, I've read Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King on script and Bilquis Evely on art. That comic ran as an 8-issue series during 2021-2022. Considered one of the best comics put out by DC Comics in the past decade, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow pushes the modern take on Kara, really leaning into the notion that she is a young woman who has seen too much and done too much as a survivor of Krypton. And, perhaps more importantly, of Argo City.

The idea is that Superman is a refugee who arrived on Earth as an infant and was raised by the Kents, but Kara Zor-El is a refugee who left her homeworld as a teenager, knowing she was leaving everyone behind to die. She saw the face of her father as her capsule closed. She remembers it.

Oddly, the graphic novel shamelessly is structured much like the novel of True Grit, narrated not by the gunslinger, but the girl who has employed him - a girl of mannerisms and propriety. Both adapted versions of the book are good movies, but the Coen Bros. version rings truer to the book.

When it was announced that Woman of Tomorrow was the basis for the coming film, I did raise my eyebrows. It is structured as a multi-part, 8-issue episodic story, not a 90ish-minute film. It relied on deep Supergirl lore (see: Comet the Superhorse) and is as far from the plucky teen bursting from a rocket in Action Comics 252 as you're likely to see.

And it raised, in my mind, the question of "who will this movie be for?"

There are many audiences for Supergirl (2026). I suspect much of the audience for this movie, who do not read comics, who have not watched the CW show, who are not aware of the many, many, many version of Kara we've seen over the years - who understand Superman has a cousin who is a girl with blonde hair - will find this movie baffling.

It seems *unlikely* that many of those same people will not have already seen Superman from 2025. And if they found that Kara off-putting, I have terrible news. (I don't think people did dislike her, but it certainly starts as more-of-same.)

As a movie - without worrying too much about all those comics and shows and movies - Supergirl (2026) is a mess.

It's about 90 minutes of slogging through sci-fi environs as we peel back the layers of Kara's trauma while dealing with deeply generic villains and which doesn't seem clear about who or what Supergirl's powers are and how they work - something that Superman spent no small amount of time highlighting in ways delightful and clear. It boasts a power-pop-punk soundtrack that is there to grab young adults by the collar and scream "we made this for you!" It has a lot of neat make-up and masks (ie: practical FX) to fill out the oddly bland sci-fi environs that it never lets us linger on or see.

I've heard some people say the movie is too dark or murky - and that literally may be a projection problem at your theater, because I didn't think that was an issue (and there are some well known issues movie theaters deal with when it comes to projection). Even if I thought the imagery was oddly lifeless, the palette unnecessarily dull, and the art design lacked inspiration. the art by Bilquis Evely of the comic is tossed aside for lifeless, generic sci-fi templates like someone hit "Sci-Fi dystopia" in the AI backgrounds machine. Eat it, wonders of art.

It may also be one of the worst-edited movies I've seen in years. Ie: I was *thinking* about the editing during the movie and how confusing it was, sometimes breaking basic editing rules - which is a weird, weird thing to pay attention to during a movie. And it ruins things from really the first scene.

You may have also heard Milly Alcock is great as Kara, and she is. Just as I thought Eve Ridley's Ruthye was well acted. And Corenswet as Superman is really, really giving Reeve a run for his money between these two movies. Momoa is predictably good as Lobo, because in real life, Jason Momoa seems very much like Lobo. All they had to do was the make-up job.

The problem is that the movie wants for Kara and Ruthye's traumas to be parallel, and they are not. Ruthye saw her family cut down before her, and Kara saw the slow death of her bubble city as Kryptonite poisoning took hold. Kara lost her family through happenstance, Ruthye lost hers to cruelty - lessons about revenge being bad are motivation-free. If Kara wants revenge, as I said to Stuart - she needs to take it up with plate tectonics.

Our villain is a generic baddie, and why you're seeing comparisons to Mad Max. He is a mustache twirling Immortan Joe-type who simply revels in cruelty because he's a motivation-free bad guy. He and his buddies are so bad that for good measure they keep a character-free passel of female priosners around as breeding stock for their "culture". (This is a baffling choice by the movie - is it actually hard to find people who are willing to join a roving army of thugs and bandits? The movie tells you this is their *culture* as roving space pirates, keeping unwilling women who all stand around in a cage like county lock-up, and it makes absolutely zero sense even if you ignore the optics for what should be a family film).

The movie is defined more by what it does not want to be compared to than what it wishes it could be. It is not Superman, first and foremost - this Kryptonian has an edge, people! She's not all "gosh" and "gee" like Superman! Which... just makes her like every other generic superhero of the 21st Century and why Superman in Superman felt like such a breath of fresh air - and continues to feel that way in this movie.

It does not want to be Guardians of the Galaxy with its interplanetary travel and cosmic candy-colored landscapes and space pirates, but... y'all.. that's the fun of space movies. And so we get a weirdly monochrome palette where the color that pops most is *beige*. And it is a movie about chasing down space pirates - even if you try to say they are something else and borrow from a wildly popular Mad Max movie.

It is terrified of being True Grit for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, and it guts the meaning of the overall story while also knocking all the interesting stuff off of Ruthye, her motivations and her drive, while also repositioning Kara in ways that wind up muddying the narrative.

It does not want to even be a superhero movie - it is telling an origin story of how Kara decides to be a helper - and so it tries to keep superhero-ing to a minimum in favor of bar brawls (two!) and refuses to let Kara use her powers for reasons that I started to think were budget driven.

SPOILERS

As someone who *did* see Superman last year, I have a level-set on what a Kryptonian's powers are and what Kara should be capable of. And even with the handicap of "well, she isn't a practiced superhero" - the whole movie feels like it should have been over in like 20 minutes. Things don't make sense. You can't really poison Superman. So how does Kara get poisoned? Because the movie says so. But also - how does Kara not hear the sneaky people scheming? Does she not have super-hearing? We know she does. So why isn't she on alert? It's not like those people know she has super hearing and would speak freely two rooms over. When she's sneaking downstairs to listen in on them, why doesn't she float down the stairs?

How does anyone know she's Kryptonian? How would they know about Kryptonite? How would they get it and why would they have it if they knew it impacted Clark? He's not running around in this part of the galaxy. It's putting a hat-on-a-hat. We already know how this fight is going to go.

Speaking of - why is there even a fight? We watched Superman eye-laser 100 Iron Mans in the last movie in the space of 20 seconds. Why isn't Kara doing that? We know she has eye-lasers. And the movie suggests each of these Brigands/ space-pirates can at least *try* to go hand-to-hand with a yellow-sun-infused Kryptonian, so why are they all living like pigs on a freighter when each of them could be sitting like a king of at least *part* of a planet? Clark was picking up skyscrapers and having them collapse on him and shrugged it off. Surely Kara is close to that? And if she is - then... the Brigands...

And the final fight? It's one of the worst choreographed I've seen since parts of The Flash (a movie it seems to have partially borrowed it's aesthetic from in the dust storm). Just a mess that seems ridiculous when your lead character's whole thing is that she flies and has lasers.

Marvel has a lot of flaws, but one thing they've done wonderfully since the first few movies is make sure we have minimal room to consider these sorts of questions as a movie unfolds. They clearly run their script and pre-production past a panel of nerds to make sure those questions get answered before anything goes in front of a camera.

Supergirl does no such thing. It's a massive step backward for this sort of movie as it seems to do the 1990's thing of shrugging and saying "it's a superhero movie. You're thinking about it too much, nerd." And, yes, I absolutely am thinking about it. You've left huge plot holes in your film that make you look like a lazy filmmaker and prevent me from remaining caught up in your story. And once I've ticked the third or fourth thing, I am now just looking for those plot holes.

You are not making a stand-alone movie with Supergirl, you are making an adjunct to the movie Superman, and I have seen that movie. Y'all need to coordinate.

Oddly, the only writer listed is a person with no prior writing experience - an Ana Noguiera. Do I think Warner Bros. and DC let some random person write their would-be summer blockbuster? I absolutely do not. These screenplays pass through a dozen writers and it's impossible to know who actually had their hands on the movie. But someone has to take the fall, so why not Noguiera?

A positive is that the movie has taken the male gaze and chucked it out the window. This will drive much of the YouTube Incel-verse insane - what even is a woman in a movie if not framed as sex object? Supergirl of the comics arrived as a 1950's good-girl, and has gone through a variety of iterations, including the controversial 2005-ish relaunch edited by famed sex pest Eddie Berganza. DC has to go back regularly and push back on comic creators to remind them that Kara is not there to be drawn in a microskirt pouting.

Two last quick complaints - it is also a movie that thinks they're singing "Girl from Ipanema" in a bar on an alien world (do aliens not have Spotify and speakers?) and Kryptonians wear librarian glasses. The glasses absolutely floored me.

Adaptation

As an adaptation of the comic book Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, this is one of the worst adaptations of a book I've seen in quite some time. I know it's just using the body for materials, but still.

I never expected that Supergirl would stick to the comic's format of episodes, but I did think it would understand the point of the book and why that was a story worth telling. Like Snyder's Watchmen, the movie seems to grok some aesthetics and bad-assery, but makes changes along the way and in the finale that undercut what came before. In this case, it's to meet expectations of what bad-assery means while failing to understand what makes the El family truly super.

The Kara of the comic book is a world-weary hero who has all that trauma behind her and has already long-ago chosen to fight on the side of the angels, just doing it her way - and her way is different from Superman's decision to become a symbol. The Kara of Woman of Tomorrow is a person who takes action and knows she's making the barest dent in the universe, but she can help what's right in front of her.

This leads to Ruthye learning about grace through the stoic heroism of a flawed hero like Kara Zor-El.

But, the movie Supergirl... doesn't seem to understand that's the point of the comic. Which is weird, because Ruthye basically states the theme of the work in the final chapter, very specifically. That they changed the end how they did makes me wonder why adapt it at all?

What the comic understands is the grace of mercy. Ruthye decides not to kill our baddie because she's seen what killing is and does as she's crossed the galaxy. She has no taste for it and sees how it helps nothing. And just spawns more killing.

Does the movie need to do this? Absolutely not. But it also just goes for movie-friendly platitudes and movie-friendly cool stuff that are the empty calories of adventure films. Maybe coated in the right flavoring to make it seem like there's something there.

The movie tosses the notion of the grace of mercy aside and instead states that Kara will take a life. To be clear, this is an option!, but the story itself does nothing to build to that decision while also denying Ruthye of that which she's wanted.

Our movie Ruthye is told "revenge is wrong" - but not why - just that it's something she'll have to live with forever. Which is, frankly a wobbly argument at best when the killer has killed so many and will kill again and again given the chance - that seems like something that will stick with you and you will feel you did nothing to stop them.

And then - for reasons that will no doubt be a plot point in some other movie - Kara kills our baddie, undercutting everything she said. Keep in mind - this guy did not kill her family, he killed Ruthye's family - and if revenge is okay, all she did was take away Ruthye's blood debt. All Kara did was show us John Wick is right. If she's willing to absorb someone else's sin, killing an incapacitated man is a sharp right turn and feels driven by external forces for future stories and audiences craving blood from baddies.

In the comic, by the way, Kara puts Krem in the Phantom Zone for 200 years and then releases him after he's had time to really think about what he did and how he ended up there. The comic is aware that this may be worse than actual swift death.

I'd also point out - in the comic, Krem is just a guy. He's not even a Brigand at the start. He's just a shitty guy in the mode of a Sergio Leone villain who picks on farmers because he can. He kills Ruthye's father just because Krem is a shitheel and he felt like killing. He joins the Brigands when he finds out Supergirl is on to him. He is not winning any physical fight with Kara, and his final fight is with Ruthye, which works better on about ten different levels.

All of this makes me wonder: When next we meet Kara, who will she be? I have no idea, which is a very weird way to end a movie.

Stolen Punk Valor

Punk is a curious thing.

It's far more inextricably linked to fashion than anyone really wants to talk about, with bands like Sex Pistols and the Go-Go's basically forming from people shopping in certain shops and hanging out or working there. But these were not big chain stores in your local mall.

But punk was also a reaction to social standards and propriety - maybe sometimes boneheaded in its approach, but a rejection of both the square life and whatever the hippies had been up to. It pointed out flaws and reveled in them. It was, in theory, looking into the void and deciding to choose to live a certain way.

In the 21st Century, I now see toddlers in Ramones shirts, elementary school kids given hair dye and hair cuts that were reserved for a certain subset in the 90's, and "punk" essentially treated as a fashion object, kind of bringing it all back full circle while gutting the ethos for suburban cool-parent fashion.

Meanwhile, Debbie Harry of NY-based punk group Blondie has been a global fashion icon for going on fifty years.

By the way - I don't care if you dress your kids like Iggy Pop. It's just an observation. I never claimed any punk roots of my own. I was more into Buddy Holly than Johnny Rotten.

But Superman had some interesting statements on what *punk* is in the context of Gunn's DCU. If pushing back against norms and expectations and narrative and going one's own way, then we agree that, in Clark's case, "punk" means choosing every day to see the best in everyone and operate from that standpoint.

So it was curious that Supergirl decided to market itself with the admittedly cringey "Truth. Justice. Whatever." tag line, which reads more pouty 15 year old than anti-authority. It was a sign of where the movie's heart would be - a sort of weak-ass middle-finger to... your mom when she asks you to take out the garbage (that is not punk, that's just being shitty).

Kara of this movie has rejected Superman's optimism. She is, reasonably, dealing with depression and survivor's guilt through self-medication and running away from the only family she has, and someone who wants to love her. Compelling!

The movie really sold itself with 80's new wave/ punk which I found interesting, especially as they used the theme song from American Gigolo, "Call Me" in the trailers. And Blondie was a break out of the scene at CBGB's, starting as a punk band before becoming more mainstream and new wave ("Call Me" was not written by them, by the way. It's a Giorgio Moroder song if you want to know why it slaps as hard as it does. And I love Blondie.). By using Blondie, you're signaling a cool, sexy, punk aesthetic. By using "Call Me" you're telling me you can't use Google. The right choice here was "Atomic".

What Supergirl's marketing team was trying to position the movie as was anti-authority punkiness - but that never really happens in the movie. Getting drunk all the time and avoiding your upbeat cousin who just wants to go ride jet skis with you is not punk. And to set up Clark, who we just spent a whole-ass movie explaining why HE is in fact very punk, as the social norm? It feels very off.

So it's a weird thing. While I don't expect for Kara to rock through the cosmos blasting The Descendants, what the movie did instead is provide, like, covers of middling 00's-era pop punk acts. It is wiiiiiild. And distracting.

I don't blame Alcock or even Gillespie, but I think there's just not a lot there to grab hold onto for the marketing, for why a 17 year old would want to see this movie. So, they went with "she's edgy!" After all, she wears a Debbie Harry shirt through 85% of the movie, only donning the Super-togs at the end.

Why Debbie? We're never told. But she must love Blondie? Right? Well, no Blondie music ever made it into the movie. Which... what the fuck, guys...?

Anyway, it comes off as poseurish. Real Hot Topic/ "I bought this shirt at Target and don't know who the band actually is" stuff.

And we had a chance for Kara to show her own flavor of punk-ness. It just never happens. She just goes on a journey where she kills a guy because he's bad while dragging Ruthye with her and putting her in unnecessary jeopardy.

In conclusion...

I dunno. I can't even say it was fine or that I liked it. It felt like a movie rushed into production that grabbed the wrong source material and then didn't quite understand it.

I remain enthused about Alcock who is a genuine talent. Momoa is fine if Lobo is your thing (he's not and has never been mine, but this is far less stupid than Momoa as Aquaman). But I am concerned about what else is brewing in the DC Studios Universe is this is the bar for non-Gunn managed productions. It's a step up from Snyder's basement-boy take on superheroes, but it's hard to get excited if this is the bar.

Car Watch: F1 - The Movie (2025)

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

Watched: 06/21/2026

Format: AppleTV

Viewing: Second

Director: Joseph Kosinski

So, I watched F1: The Movie (2025) a year ago in the theater. It was an enjoyable movie that was about car racing and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer - so I figured I knew what I was getting, and I was right. And that is not a complaint. When I go to Chili's for dinner, I do not complain when the Old Timer with Cheese is the Old Timer with Cheese.

F1: The Movie stars a hot dude who is the best at what he does, but our hero is *also* a troubled rogue. In this way, he is Maverick from Top Gun. And, really, this movie is a scramble of beats from Top Gun and basic movie formulas of a certain era for which middle-aged men apparently yearn. F1: the Movie also features the bonus of being about an old gun fighter showing the new kid on the block what it's all about in order to really satisfy us aging movie-dudes.

That said: imagine - a movie where someone's age provides wisdom and experience as a thing of value instead of making them a blocker for our young hero and their crazy, new, and actually correct ideas?

But, yeah, a 50+ year-old Sonny (Brad Pitt) is winning races and being awesome in relative obscurity when he's called up to ~~Top Gun~~ F1. No Tom Skerrit here, we have Javier Bardem in suits that cost more than my car.

No one likes Sonny's crazy ways as he bucks the system and is seemingly indifferent to authority, but his actual effectiveness makes the sexy lady technical expert want to sleep with him (where have I seen that before?). After a tragedy with his partner, he comes back and ~~blows up MiGs~~ wins a race. Music swells.

If this were the final Bruckheimer movie, I'd be fine with that. What better avatar for Bruckheimer than someone living irresponsibly who just keeps showing up when everyone is pretty sure they should be dead from their actions 30 years ago? And seeing that guy disappear into the west coast sunset? Chef's kiss.

I know I'm kidding around, but the movie is *fine*. Was it worthy of being a Best Picture nominee? Well... I don't care. Sure. Why not? This is why we now allow 25 different movies to get nominated. And, movies like F1 that feel like the movies we grew up on but are now about older guys being rad gives the now crinkly old guys in charge a fantasy about how young men will look up to them and give them a thumbs-up of cool-guy approval (and while we're at it - a hot woman around 40ish will still think you're a viable sexual partner).

It's still a fun movie with clunky-as-hell dialog but neat racing stuff. Best to just sit back and enjoy it for the cheeseburger and fries that it is.

Marilyn at 100: Clash By Night (1952)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 20:17:40 +0000

Watched: 06/21/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: Second or Third

Director: Fritz Lang

I'm never going to get over having seen Barton Fink too many times in my younger years.

Plainly put, the character of Barton Fink is based loosely on the real-life play-write Clifford Odets, who went out to Hollywood to turn his plays about *the common man* into movies. So every time I see Odets' name on a movie, I kind of know loosely that this will be about the gritty lives of the everyman, and have very particular dialog tics. Also, I kind of wonder how full of shit this movie really is at its core - not something I generally care about.

Odets strove to capture a sense of at least emotional realism in his plays and movies, setting them not in penthouses and mansions for the New York elite attending shows, but writing plays that took place on the streets below among the working class, seeing their daily struggle as the real poetry. And I think there's something to that.

That this film came out of RKO in 1952 is a bit of an eyebrow raiser. But RKO had this script and they had Fritz Lang as a director and Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan on contract. And that's a great start.

Stanwyck, who could play literally anything, had hard-scrabble roots in Brooklyn, I believe. And when she's playing someone working class, I @#$%ing buy it. She is on fire in this movie as a woman, Mae, who fled her town, a sea-side fishing village in California and returns ten years later after her meal-ticket died (a married politician) and his family kept her from getting the money he left her.

She's tough as nails and not happy to be home, but she returns to her childhood home, now occupied by her brother, Joe (Keith Andes) and his girlfriend, Peggy (Marilyn Monroe) - a free spirit who works in the cannery.

Stanwyck immediately runs into a former neighbor, Jerry (Paul Douglas), a fishing ship's captain who is a, shall we say, simple man. Jerry lives with his aging father and a conniving uncle. His best pal is Earl Robert Ryan), a braggart who has a lust for life and a wife who is never home - touring as a burlesque dancer.

The basic gist is that Mae marries Jerry for what he represents, not because she loves him. He's safe and secure, he can provide for her, but he's not her intellectual or emotional match. However, Earl is there, dark and a bit dangerous and tempting.

Based on a play, the sets are limited, and the story mostly confined to a few blocks of the fishing village. The dialog is stylized - intended to sound authentic to someone's ear, so the characters often sound very specific, which is welcome, but you can almost feel the "this dialog is very important" vibe coming off the screen. And that's fine. It's just how it feels - not that I've seen a play like this in a few decades, but I recall them.

Lang really doesn't mess around, and while a far cry from his crazier stuff on the unlimited budgets he had in pre-Hitler Germany, he still knows how to tell a story. He's still operating at a high level visually as well as getting the most from his actors. But there's also no getting around the mannered performances as the actors bend to the script - with Stanwyck doing the best job of making it feel like natural speech.

The movie is essentially about what it means to find not happiness, but satisfaction, maybe - and therefore the long-term comfort that comes not from settling but seeing what's actually important. Which is a curious sentiment coming from Hollywood. The message is "yeah, you can chase your bliss, but where is that really going to get you? Sometimes you have to work for it, and it's hardly glamorous", which is a message I can get behind. I just wish it didn't play so close to a very dolled-up Jerry Springer episode, but there you are.

Monroe is also natural here, the younger woman who hasn't been out in the world - both in love with her guy Joe and admiring Mae for having gone out into the world. She's on the edge of being maybe a bit too wild (in the context of the movie) and Earl has taken a passing fancy in her as well.

Don't look for her to use her breathy voice here, or giggle. She's playing a part, but maybe one she understood well - a young woman from a tough background who sees the things she could chase, and she has opportunities just by existing. The ending of their arc is positively 1950's he-man stuff, but it also is the one guy in the film with any self-respect stating "yeah, you don't get to be with me if you're just waiting until something better comes along - so get out if that's your game" which, of course, makes her fall into his arms.

It is an interesting script as it does deconstruct the notion that chasing dreams and getting out of town is a good in and of itself. And it isn't particularly worried about anyone looking like a hero. But you will get a feeling that this movie walked so other movies would run.

I don't know that I ever got caught up in the movie - I felt like I spent the whole time thinking about the components of the movie rather than just focusing on the story. Which is a a bit unusual for me when it comes to a Fritz Lang movie, or one starring Stanwyck and/ or Ryan. But it felt like an exercise watching the movie as much or more than seeing the story deliver its message seamlessly.

This movie is often packaged in noir sets. I do not feel this movie is noir even with the team around it making it seem like it could be noir. This is a melodrama, and that's good enough for me.

TV Watch: Widow's Bay - Season 1

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 14:31:08 +0000

Right after it debuted, JAL texted me and said to check out Widow's Bay over on Apple TV. But it was a few weeks before I got around to it.

As you may have heard - Widow's Bay is a sort-of comedy about the residents of a cursed island off the coast of New England, founded during the colonial era. In the modern era, it's a fishing backwater where people kind of accept the horrific and unexplainable things that happen as a matter-of-course. And, in fact, those born on the island know they can never leave without a deadly misfortune befalling them.

The season follows the events as the island once again "awakens" - ie: the weird stuff escalates again. And all during a few days just as our non-native mayor, Tom, has finally managed to get people to visit the island as tourists in an effort to bolster the dying economy of the place.

I'll do my best not to spoil - but y'all know if I'm talking about TV it's because I'm either dragging something or I'm recommending it. Widow's Bay comes in as a solid: recommended

The ten episodes pivot through genre horror conventions in the best way, kind of starting off as Northern Exposure meets The Fog, with a hint of Parks and Rec sensibility as the show's creator was on that show's staff.

Like many shows, the pilot seems to be going one direction but the vibes of the show tilt a bit. It remain funny in a very off-kilter way, but it's a bit of everything. Horror, comedy, melodrama... In an unrealistic situation, the characters feel grounded (to me). I may not always love everyone, but I do love *people*, and the show is populated in a way that feels exquisitely what it is like to work in middle-management. Everyone around you has their own business going on, and you're just wrangling them. In this case, your people also just accept a creeping, Cthulian madness inhabits their home island.

Most of the show takes place after the pilot during a long weekend when people come as tourists - and there's a bottle episode, sort of.

Thanks to The Americans, I have an affinity for Matthew Rhys, and I am aware he's got a sense of humor - he appeared (albeit briefl) in Cocaine Bear like a champ. Seems like a good guy who wants to not just play dead serious roles. I'm also a bonafide fan of Steven Root, and there he is playing the true-believer on the island. Signal Watch fave Betty Gilpin makes a brief appearance. And others, but we know Gilpin's a draw.

My personal fave is maybe, possibly Patricia, played by Kate O'Flynn. I adore this character, who feels very, very much like some people I have known.

The show has a mythology, but it doesn't *insist* on its mythology. It remembers that's something we should get in glips and globs, and it's okay if we don't know everything - or even ever put it all together. That's the magic of horror. The scary/fun part is not knowing.* The mythology is the sort that - we have to know he past to know the present, and rather than have a dull 30 minutes of exposition, we get a fantastic bottle episode. Which really raises more questions than it answers.

Ie: this is a show about characters reacting to incredible events. Not cogs in a mythology machine that is not nearly as cool as the showrunner or network thinks it is. And so characters react as characters/ people will, in ways that are unique and often very funny even as the show doesn't put a sitcom lens on it to elbow you in the ribs and say "funny, amirite?" While meanwhile Kate O'Flynn is turning in an all-timer funny performance. Or Matthew Rhys grappling with the locals as the reality of what his job may actually be kicks in.

Anyhoo... point being, I enjoyed this show immensely and look forward to another season.

*I know there's an audience who thinks it's "cool kills", and I am not part of that audience

Marilyn at 100 Watch/ Noir Watch: Niagara (1953)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 06/16/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: Second

Director: Henry Hathaway

I had only seen Niagara (1953) once before, back in 2012. I recalled specific images, but was aware that I couldn't recall the actual ending.

On a rewatch, I can see why. The movie really cruises along to the last act, and then loses much of the appeal the film has carried up to that point.

Marilyn Monroe, in her first starring, top-billed role, stars alongside Signal Watch fave Joseph Cotten and the lovely Jean Peters. Monroe plays the wife of Cotten, who knows she's too young for him, too vivacious and who has started running around with a younger man behind Cotten's back. Cotten thinks something is going on but can't prove it.

They're staying in some cabins overlooking Niagara Falls on the Canadian side, and have fallen into a malaise. Jean Peters shows up with her husband, (sigh) Max Showalter, on a delayed honeymoon. They meet Monroe, who is made up and dressed to make Jean Peters look positively plain-jane by comparison - a tremendous feat.

While out touristing, Peters sees Monroe making time with someone not her husband, but says nothing to her or her own husband. But she does develop sympathy for Cotten.

Things go sideways when Monroe and her lover set in motion a plan to bump off Cotten.

You will hear that this is the movie that made Monroe a star - and it is the movie where Monroe's appeal became *a thing*. She's not playing someone unaware of her effect on men, and the results of how the camera sees her are explosive. She's been in the frame before, but now she's all you can see. Movies never really recovered from Monroe in 1953 - in which she'd release this, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire.

In Niagara, she plays a straight up noir bad-girl/ femme fatale. Rare for Monroe, who most often was, at best, cast as someone caught up in events but wasn't the instigator. And she's good. That she was not allowed to play this near as often as the sexed-up daffy girl is a crime.

This movie may be entirely about how hot Marilyn Monroe is, and how that's a problem, but she's also not exactly the lead. She's *a* lead - but Jean Peters is our focal character, playing a Mid-Western housewife trying to keep/ get her husband's attention. They're on their long-delayed vacation/ honeymoon, which will be utterly ruined by Monroe and Cotten.

You also can't say enough about the cinematography of the film. Shot in technicolor at its peak, it still uses the carving of light and shadow we know from film noir. Cinematographer Joe MacDonald would also photograph Peters in Pickup on South Street this same year, and that's one of the most noiry-noirs ever filmed.

Not every shot in Niagara is a masterpiece, but you can tell the places where MacDonald had a chance to work with Hathaway as a director to make *art*. And those scenes will stick with you. And, yes, shooting Monroe like a special effect is *actually part or the story*. In a lot of ways, its Hitchockian in the way the movie is about what we see.

But, it's a strange movie in that it swings between this beautifully shot, thoughtfully constructed film with interesting psychological layers, and then can feel ham-handed in other parts. I'd argue the last fifteen minutes or so feels tacked on by the studio and if you find meaning in it beyond "thrills!" I fear I may overreach in my interpretation.

Jean Peters in a publicity shot

SPOILERS

I'd argue it's a hell of a film up until the point where Cotten murders Monroe and then is stuck in the building with her over night So, yes, the point at which Monroe dies is where I think it falls off, because now the tension is cut by more than half. We've taken too much off the table.

What Peters knows, what she won't say, even her own feelings about being married to Showalter's eager-beaver goof of a breakfast cereal marketing man who may be a disappointment - as she sorts through what Monroe is up to with Cotten... that's something.

There's something interesting bubbling with Peters' character Polly - but she never voices it. And it starts with Peters saying she's on a honeymoon and Showalter saying he's planning on doing a lot of reading. Ie: Peters is maybe relating to Monroe's character's sexual appetites but lacks the ability to express it. They could have cast someone with less sex appeal that Peters herself - but... did not.

I have to believe the movie intentionally cast Peters, who did play sexy in other films. There's no evidence without being a jerk about it - but I have to believe they cast Showalter with Peters in order to create a contrast against Monroe and Cotten's wrecked relationship. Ie: Showalter is a nerd. A good husband figure, but a bit clueless and focused solely on his career, taking Peters for granted.

Peters, in turn, isn't given much to play other than "ideal 1950's woman" when it comes to her actions and dialog. She's nurturing with everyone, agrees readily with her husband, helps care for Cotten, ignores her husband openly ogling Monroe, etc... As the film progresses, she is the audience's eye and becomes a bit of a detective. When she does learn what is going on - she actually wants to cover for Cotten, whom she knows killed Monroe's lover in self-defense. And, frankly, she seems like she's ready to cover for him after he bumps off Monroe. They have a shared understanding of *something* - connecting during that scene where she works to repair his hand, something Monroe refuses to do.

So why does the movie devolve into a goofy boat chase at the end? Other than there were rules about needing so many chases in a movie and we need some ACTION? And the movie itself admits that shouting "scuttle it! scuttle it!" is maybe the worst dialog we've heard in a film.

If the falls themselves at the end are a metaphor, and I suppose we could find one, then seeing Peters and Cotten both pulled by the same current toward their doom is something. And we've previously established Peters is a 'hang out in the still waters' kind of gal. So, I guess Niagara is the rushing power of sexuality leading to doom? Oh, 1950's.

I mean, earlier in the film, Showalter says he's never seen colors like those lights under the falls before. Dude, you sad, sad man. Scuttle it, indeed.

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie a great deal. Which is something I'd remembered from the first viewing. I do think those last few minutes kind of lose their way, but at a tight 90-ish minutes, and to see Monroe blossom into her full powers, it's definitely worth a viewing.

I also want to point to that cinematography, because holy cow.

G Comics: Godzilla vs. Texas

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Finally got around to actually reading IDW's Godzilla vs. America: Godzilla vs. Texas one-shot.

Was I pleased? You know I was.

If I recently complained about a lack of local specificity in media where the story unfolds in Texas, I will not be repeating that here. In fact, the bigger problem for this comic is that Texas is gigantic, and the stories themselves are pretty location-specific. Even chronologically specific. And Texas is too big for one slim comic.

The two covers are spectacular. Cover A is by Matt Frank who, I believe, lives here in Austin, or did live here. I met him twice. Very nice fellow and I'm glad he seems to be doing well. And I love that he seems to have drawn Godzilla roaming across Texas, heading North up I-35, if I had to guess. Maybe somewhere south of Kyle.

Cover B is by Sam Lotfi and depicts Godzilla heading East down the Colorado River toward downtown Austin.

That bridge is the Pennybacker Bridge that crosses the river/ lake and is a major Austin landmark.

Anyway, commutes will be borked all morning, so check in with Erica Brennes on KXAN for the traffic report.

Story 1: Deep in the Podcast of Texas, story and art by Matt Frank

For a very long time, Austin has suffered as the homebase of Alex Jones and his former online toxic bog of InfoWars.com. Some of us have known he's a cretin since the early 90's, but never mind.

This one sees Godzilla appear in Corpus Christi and walk his way up from Corpus to Austin, passing along I-37 to I-35 - ie: up through San Antonio and San Marcos - to our state's capital. Of course, even as reality in the form of Godzilla comes his way, our podcaster is in denial - spewing conspiracy theories.

It's a very on-point story for those of us who just want to throttle the brain-wormed nimrods who make their living insisting the sky being blue is a lie and selling protein supplements.

That it ends with Godzilla sliding in to nap in Lady Bird Lake is just icing on the cake.

Story 2: Crude, story and art by Devin Kraft

A story mixing oil production, the oil economy and Godzilla coming for Hedorah in Ft. Worth. It's an artfully told story about the rich and powerful getting their comeuppance.

If you like Hedorah, and I do, then this is a great way to see him repurposed in the context of Texas, where oil and energy have fueled the economy for a 100 years, everything else be damned.

Story 3: Godzilla vs. Tex-Mech, story and art by Joe Eisma

The goofiest of the stories, this is probably a nod to Big Tex, the giant animatronic cowboy that welcomes you to the Texas State Fair, but which is not held in copyright by either IDW or Toho.

Instead, we get a mustachioed robot with two laser guns fighting G in Dallas.

Story 4: You Missed It!, story and art by John Lucas

This one felt written especially for yours truly.

In the 1990's, Godzilla stumbles into Austin. He wanders past locales I myself used to hit. The Black Cat on 6th Street, The Backyard - an outdoor venue. The unspoken thing is that Godzilla has nothing to rage against in Austin - it's just folks listening to music and enjoying themselves. This is back when celebrities were getting in trouble with the law for playing bongos nude in their living rooms.

Goji slips into Lake Travis where he goes to sleep, re-awakening today, 30ish years later.

Seeing how Austin has changed into a paved-over modern city full of content creators, overpasses and general dip-shittery, Godzilla just decides to level the town.

Same, Godzilla. Same.

If there's an issue with the comic, it's that Texas is a big state. There's no story on San Antonio's River Walk. No story in *Houston*, which would be the ideal Godzilla stomping ground. Can we get Godzilla in the petroleum plants of Pasadena? Wandering through the Woodlands?

Surely Lubbock could use a visit. Godzilla in El Paso or in the Valley would be a whole scene. Our guy checking out Marfa would be a kick, lumbering through Big Bend...

Still, I enjoyed the hyper-local vibe of the stories. But clearly we need Godzilla to return to the Lone Star State.

There's a hardcover edition coming in February, and I'll likely pick it up.

Noir Alley Watch: Blackout (1954)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 06/14/2026

Format: TCM on Noir Alley

Viewing: First

Director: Terence Fisher

A Hammer Noir from 1954, Blackout is a British produced and London-set film that I am mostly glad I watched with Eddie Muller's commentary. It is... an oddball movie, certainly, feeling like it zigs and zags as to what the movie is about or is even doing, which is absolutely a way to keep an audience guessing.

I'm not a fan of star Dane Clark, who I've only seen a couple of times. I won't get into ad hominem attacks, but he's not my cup of tea as a compelling person to watch on screen. Here, he's sort of an American - but maybe not? Who is down to his last shilling in a London hotel bar.

Up walks Belinda Lee. who looks like a Robert Maguire painting come to life, and offers him a job, even though he's nearing "blackout" drunk. Lee is... something else, so who can blame him for taking her up on the offer? Especially when the job pays 500 pounds and is to marry Lee.

He wakes up the next morning in a stranger's apartment, is told he just turned up there by an artist Maggie (Eleanor Summerfield), and sees a huge portrait of the woman he thinks he married. He wanders out into the street to find Lee's picture beside that of her slain father.

For the film's remaining runtime, he has to dodge the cops, figure out who is playing him and why, and whether Lee and he ever actually got married.

There's a few sequences that are quite good. According to Muller, this is famed Hammer director Terence Fisher's break, and the general quality I associate with Fisher shows itself from time to time.

For some reason there's a whole sojourn in an old neighborhood where we meet Clark's mother that feels completely separate from the rest of the film, and is the best bit. There's also what seems a twisted and very dark ending - that the movie instead tosses into the fire to give the audience a happy ending that leaves the whole thing on a false note.

Lee is amazing on film - just one of those actors who the camera loves. Muller lets us know we likely don't know her because she worked in Europe and died very young in a car accident.

I'm not sure I liked the movie too much. Normally I'd like a movie that winds and twists, but here it feels like one of those exercises where you hand a story off every few pages to someone different who has to pick up the story, while doing their own thing.

My feeling is that this one won't stick with me very long, except for a few images here and there. I've certainly seen cheaper and worse, but this one just felt like the B picture it really was - but worth seeing to see Fisher's work at this point, and what was happening in British noir.

Hallmark Texas Watch: Texas Two-Step (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 02:31:06 +0000

Watched: 06/14/2026

Viewing: First

Format: Hallmark Channel

Director: Eva Tavares

Regional specificity is hard.

I live in Austin, Texas which has, in the last two decades (and to my surprise), become a real tourist town. People come here and drink, eat some barbecue and street tacos, feel they've lived authentically Austin/ Texas and go home. And that's fine.

It's not just at Christmas that Hallmark likes to make movies about country life's superiority to city life. We do not require the yuletide season to insist that what you really need to do is give up your nice place in a city and your much-worked-for career track and do... something? in the country. Not when you can boff the guy from high school who is roughly doing now what he did at age 17. And, Hallmark - occasionally - likes to make movies specifically about people doing this in Texas.

While looking for World Cup Games, I saw Hallmark was debuting their latest "Texas" movie. And I watched it so you don't have to.

Texas Two-Step (2026) is a movie about a woman who must go home to "Blue Creek" from Austin/Dallas to check in on her aging aunt and her roadhouse country bar and grill.

It is a Hallmark movie. No need to get into the plot. It stars Heather Hemmens, who is generally better than your average Hallmark star. She is joined by Kayla Zander as her Best Pal. They both have terrific hair, tbh. Hallmark Hunk Brendan Penny also appears in tight jeans, if that moves you.

"Why do you say Austin/Dallas?" you ask? Because in the establishing shot of where Girl lives, they show stock footage of Lady Bird Lake here in Austin, and then cut to the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in Dallas roughly four hours away. You can see Reunion Tower and everything (as seen in "Detroit" in RoboCop.)

My suspicion is that the editor thought the Dallas bridge was the Pennybacker Bridge in Austin, but that bridge is nestled between the hills of West Austin spanning the Colorado River.

Even Godzilla knows:

he's headed for Casino El Camino

So I was very confused and thought the movie was saying this woman left Austin and drove to Dallas, but, no. The editor was just bad.

Look, my thesis here is that Hallmark could *easily* hire someone.... anyone... from Texas to just say "no". Like, bring in a Texan (not one of our recent transplants) to look at the language, look at the sets and art direction, look at your on-screen food, look at your stock footage... In fact, Hallmark, I will do this for a nominal fee.

First - everything in the movie is more generic cowboy America that could be literally anywhere in the US at this point. It lacks any Texas specificity, and for those who move here, our specificity is famously confounding and annoying.

Yes, generic Country & Western culture has spread everywhere, including cowboy hats, terrible pop country music, and too many trucks. But Texas is its own thing - neither Southern nor Southwestern. We have chips in the shape of our state. We think slapping the word "Texas" on anything automagically improves it. It is why when you say "if you hate your government, you should move" to Texas lefties, they just blink at you like you just said "you should remove your own leg".

So... In this movie - Where are the Texas flags? I kept seeing American flags, which, fair. But what I didn't see was the Lone Star flag prominently displayed. Which isn't required, but if you have the US flag, in Texas, it's highly likely you have the other. And, for that matter, a Lone Star beer sign or a Shiner Bock sign is just as likely in a bar.

My suspicion is that the roadhouse in the movie is based loosely on someone walking into Austin's Broken Spoke during a visit. Or getting a loose idea of a Texas dancehall - which would be larger. Maybe the writer visited Gruene Hall?

At some point, a character pours some sort of chip *out of a mason jar* and into a chip basket. And the chips are utterly unidentifiable and I assume some Canadian thing. Because, friend, in Texas we get our chips from a tortilla chip warmer and serve them up with a shovel. With a bowl of salsa.

We eat a lot of stuff that would be easy to get and feel authentic. Someone did figure out about biscuits and gravy, but we *never* actually see them. We just mention them. Tacos? Breakfast tacos? Migas? Never seen. The discussion around barbecue is insulting to a fellow Texan. But at least the tray of food looks relatively correct even if the actors are clearly not allowed to touch that food and I couldn't see the actual meat. And the Aunt character does mention kolaches, a real shibboleth of Texas everyday cuisine (and, yes, we know what we eat as a kolache is not the same as those in Europe. Everyone simmer down.).

The glassware is bizarre, but that's just a Hallmark thing. But nonetheless all looks incredibly wrong in a state where you goddamn better put a beer in a pint glass or just serve it cold in a bottle from an ice trough. We are not drinking beer from a mason jar at a bar.

All of the hats seem like they're felt or beaver instead of straw. Is this winter? I need to know.

As the movie was filmed in British Columbia, CA, there are no Hispanic people, which is just utter bullshit. Texas is 40% Hispanic. You are not going anywhere and not seeing Hispanic people. Our lead is Black, which is also part of Texas, certainly (once again my appreciation of Ms. Knowles for reminding the rest of the world of Texas' proud Black Heritage).

Edit: Apparently Kayla Zander, who plays the Best Pal character, identifies as Latinx. We'll take that win.

Realistically, our lead doesn't have much of a Texas accent (which... Texas has different regional accents, so good luck with that, anyway) as she's been in Austin for a while and I assume lost it here. Tragically, our lead actor also clearly cannot say "y'all" with any conviction, so that's cut completely from the script after the first scene.

In fact, no one ever says "y'all", which... what are we even doing here if we can't fake a "y'all"?

The film is called Texas Two-Step and features a scene with a Two-Step lesson in which they do not do the Texas Two-Step. A dance so complicated, it has two steps (I kid, it's a bit more than that).

To the film's credit, when they do have to fully dance, they're fine. Not enough spinning of partners, but fine. And I'm not sure that was the Two-Step, but as I did not truck with the country lifestyle in my younger days, my time in dancehalls is deeply limited.

True story - they built a Midnight Rodeo dancehall out in a stripmall near my folks' house when I was in college. At my mom's behest, one afternoon we went there to play pool, and some lady decided my *mom* was a problem, and tried to start a fight with her. Which... if y'all only knew The KareBear, you'd know: oh, right, there are no shortage of dumb, redneck reactionaries on the fringes of Houston and there's a reason The League skeedaddled just as fast as he could and continued avoiding dumbshit kickers ever since. Ie: I do not miss the Spring/ Klein area.

Somehow Hallmark always skips over the "drunk, violent, rednecks also live in these places" part of their idylls of country life.

The name of the place is also very not Texas. "Blue Creek" sounds like it would be a bullshit development outside of Cypress-Fairbanks in Houston. You want to give it a Texas name, it's either butchering some Spanish words or it's something goofy like "Flatbutte". There's kind of no inbetween.

I know Blue Creek is an imaginary town, but as they keep saying Austin is "the big city" where Girl has forgotten how to dance? (I assure you, you are allowed to scoot your boot here) - it would make sense if we knew how far this hole of a town is from Austin. Did she go to West Texas? The Panhandle? Crosstimbers? East Texas? It takes 16 hours to cross Texas - so I need some specifics!

They also set up the tavern in question as somewhere everyone knows... and there's a few of those. I think there's one also in Luckenbach or Shiner, Texas. But I don't pay that much attention. I was more of a Liberty Lunch guy back in the day. But generally those places don't rely on a house band - they're venues where stars want to play. Example: Kacey Musgraves just sold out three nights at Gruene Hall.

What did they get right? I mean - I've tried to throw them some bones. It's all stuff you'll see on Threads as people debate regional food. But it really feels like someone spent three days here and just ate their way around town when they wrote the script. But that didn't make it's way to the actual production.

It's nice they wanted to highlight my home state. But it is also a bit depressing that they can't be bothered to ask standard questions (ask me about the one where they were supposedly making Texas BBQ on what looked like a Weber Grill).

These things are pretty easy to fake. And it would just take someone a few Zoom calls.

Anyway, Hallmark, my contact info is on the blog. Ring me up.

Monroe at 100 Watch: How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:36:14 +0000

Watched: 06/13/2026

Format: TCM

Viewing: First

Director: Jean Negulesco

I'd always heard that How To Marry a Millionaire (1953) wasn't very good. In the end, it was not as bad as I figured, a nicety of someone telling you something is horrible which is just not great. But... eh.

The problem for modern viewers is that this movie was the spiritual sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and people generally see GPB first and this film second, and HtMaM just isn't anywhere near as memorable, funny or entertaining.

In my opinion, anyway.

The studio clearly thought this movie was a gold mine, and they were right. In 1953, this movie did better box office than Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and got pretty nice reviews. It seems critics were warming up to Monroe's sense of comedy, and they were already fans of Lauren Bacall (who isn't?), and Betty Grable (she's fine). It was clearly seen as a way to appeal to adult audiences in an era where TV was nosing in around the edges. A wide-screen, color feature with big stars, fun and kind of sexy with a lot of innuendo - and packaged a bit like going to a Broadway show.

On a budget of less than $2 million, the movie initially made $8 million worldwide, which made it a top earner for the year. To draw in those audiences with the new CinemaScope format, and went kinda nuts by insisting on including an unnecessary overture - essentially five minutes of an orchestra seen from maybe three shots.

It is both pretentious (oooo... this is just like going to the theatre!) and boring.

After a divorce from a gas station attendant (she says they always "send" her, and it is the weirdest kink of all time) Lauren Bacall teams up with two other models to also pretend to be rich and basically lie their way into at least one of them marrying a millionaire.

Some of the targets include an older William Powell, now 60ish and sounding not unlike one of my grandfathers. There's also, deep sigh, Cameron Mitchell as someone the girls mistake as a poor, but who is a zillionaire - probably a gag best saved for the last minute but revealed at the opening of the film, making some of the movie not make sense. We also have Rory Calhoun and everyone's favorite movie grump, Fred Clark.

It's all frothy camp and not to be taken seriously, an extended cartoon. Oddly, it is not a musical, so we're dealing with zero show stoppers and a plot as light as a dandelion in late spring. I don't know that the theme has ever entirely disappeared from the reality of any society - but here in the US it's become declassee to utter out loud, and to have a movie with leading women who are looking for easy street by marrying the wealthy is maybe not smiled upon in all corners.

This is a movie that wants you to think that blue cat-eye glasses are an unattractive addition to a blonde, and I can tell you with absolute certainty and merely by gazing over at Mrs. The Signal Watch, this is a damnable lie. But specs also do nothing to take away from Ms. Monroe.

It has some zany moments, but I am unsure I ever actually did much more than produce a vague smile.

Everything about the movie feels safe - there's no twisty logic like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or anything to make anyone feel off on their night out with the missus. Even the potentially scandalous Betty Grable plotline is anything but. And it's that safety that makes it all kind of dull, like a joke in Reader's Digest.

Fortunately - this is a movie that cruises on charisma and vibes, and that it has. So, it kind of survives in spite of itself.

80's Watch: Band of the Hand (1986)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 17:06:36 +0000

Watched: 06/12/2026

Format: Amazon

Viewing: Unknown

Director: Paul Michael Glaser

Back in the 1980's it didn't take much for me to think a movie was pretty, pretty good. We rented this when I was maybe 12, and we thought it was awesome. But I also have not seen this movie in this century. What I did know is that when this movie came up in conversation, people seemed to think it was quite bad.

I did try to rewatch part of this movie at some point in high school or college and was like "ah, yes. This is maybe not as good as 12-year-old me believed". But it isn't one that was popular to begin with, and did not become more popular over time.

The movie is essentially about an Outward Bound Intercept program that takes a sharp left turn and ends in a gang of troubled youth becoming remorseless killers with no future. Is this how it's pitched? Absolutely not. But in a practical sense - that's it.

We meet five youths who are in the juvenile penal system and see why they're there. Gang violence. Drug dealing. One guy who is already in there and who has tried to escape a dozen times. And a fellow who blows up his school and then kills his father whilst he's abusing his mother (a very young John Cameron Mitchell).

The five are thrown into the middle of the Florida Everglades, a place you really, really do not want to be if you don't know what you're doing, with a supposed Native American played by the very not Native American, Stephen Lang. Here, they learn to survive through cooperation and earn some "self-esteem" (man, there's a phrase we don't use anymore).

They then return to Miami in a half-way house - which is occupied by Haitian refugees and drug fiends. Drugs are being pushed by Laurence Fishburne in what is probably not a role he features in his clip reel of career highlights. In turn, Fishburne reports to Nestor (James Remar) who is one of our gang's former bosses.

Remar is also now bedding that guy's girlfriend, Lauren Holly in the most mid-80's wardrobe you will ever see.

Soon, guns are employed and a war breaks out between our boys and (checks notes) the biggest drug operation in the Southeastern United States.

Yeah, so supposedly our heroes are all 16-17. And it's a reminder of what was considered a child versus an adult in a pre-21st Century context (we were pretty serious about 18 meaning adult) and how porous the line was between teens and adults and how they interacted. But... the movie makes such a big deal out of the characters being juvenile delinquents, and then heavily arms them, I don't see why they didn't just make them 22 and getting their last chance inside an adult penal system. It would have made it make slightly more sense.

After all - Joe (Stephen Lang's character) would seem *somewhat* less insane for recruiting legal adults rather than high-school aged fellows into a literal gun war.

This may also be one of the most problematic movies I've seen in some time when it comes to women and high school girls on film. It lands square in the grim n' gritty 80's and they want to push the envelope - but we have one speaking female role in the whole movie, and it's a 16 year old girl who is used for sex and seen as a prop, mostly. Her moment of empowerment is the same as that for the males - straight up murder!

I dunno. It's a product of its time in so many ways.

I haven't even gotten into how it's a Michael Mann produced film, and it sure wants to catch as much of his vibe as possible. It's got a soundtrack that has those Miami Vice vibes, Miami architecture, bizarre ideas about the drug trade and machismo flowing freely. But it all feels like someone doing a weird imitation of Michael Mann. The director is Paul Michael Glaser, who certainly knows his way around in front of a camera and would direct the Shaq-starring genie comedy Kazam, The Cutting Edge and The Running Man before finding steady work as a TV director.

Anyway, maybe best not to try to do Michael Mann?

The movie has one truly great scene, and it's John Cameron Mitchell buying items to make explosives at a hardware store, and his conversation with the guy behind the counter, Martin Ferrero, who you know as the attorney from Jurassic Park.

I think the crazy thing is - there's maybe a good movie in here somewhere if they recognized at all what teens are actually like and didn't devolve into a typical 1980's actioner. And didn't treat Lauren Holly's character entirely like shit. There's the raw materials of somethin interesting there if they teased out more about a guy who failed his unit in the military doing Outward Bound with some troubled teens and re-integrating them into society. But this ain't it.

Oh, did I mention there's Brujeria witchcraft in the movie for some reason? Because there is. You gotta wonder how many drafts this thing went through along the way.

But, yeah, also - it does end with them having extensive criminal records and having run away from their incarceration or whatever. I'm not really clear as to what the plan was here. I guess they're going full A-Team.

Waddingham News: "Ride or Die" coming to Amazon

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

Well, we'd be laying down on the job if we didn't keep you posted on Hannah Waddingham's coming releases.

July 15th, we can expect to see the release of Ride or Die, a multi-episode series on Amazon's Prime Video. It's a buddy comedy with Waddingham and the multi-talented Octavia Spencer - Spencer a normie and Waddingham is her best pal who, it turns out, actually works as an assassin.

They've released a trailer, and the show appears to be *exactly* what you just pictured in your head.

And I'm not complaining.

Anyway, don't say I didn't tell you in advance. And, of course we'll be watching.

Monroe at 100 Watch: Monkey Business (1952)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 04:25:37 +0000

Watched: 06/11/2026

Format: TCM

Viewing: First

Director: Howard Hawks

Not everything is going to land.

This movie had everything going for it. Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers star, Marilyn Monroe plays a major supporting role (just before she landed leads), Howard Hawks is directing, it has Hugh Marlowe, Charles Coburn and even the kid from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (an infinitely superior movie).

But I only really laughed at a few bits.

My real feeling is that this movie worked very well in 1952 and has aged badly through changing social conditions and what I'd guess is better versions of similar premises.

Monkey Business (1952) is a screwball comedy when the genre was running on fumes and a decade before it would be transmogrified into live action Disney films and Jerry Lewis vehicles.

Grant plays a chemist who is an Absent Minded Professor, so pre-occupied with his work that he fails to notice his own wife, Ginger Rogers, looks like a million bucks and is ready to hit a 1950's booze-fueled party. Honestly, anyone showing the symptoms Grant is displaying should see an elder-care specialist. But the point is - he's working on a formula that will make the user feel like they're young again - not just the energy, but as it turns out in practice, also mentally.

The film is called "Monkey Business" because Grant is testing on chimps*. A chimp gets loose in the lab and proceeds to mix in random chemicals that make the formula work (and which means we'll never replicate the formula and the movie can end).

Grant takes the formula and is suddenly feeling 20 years old again. As a "young man" in the 1950's, he gets a flat-top, buys a jalopy of a car, and drives around with Marilyn Monroe - his boss's secretary. He goes roller skating and swimming (with Monroe)! Ah, the folly of youth.

No sooner does he recover - the effects temporary - than Ginger Rogers downs the formula so Grant can observe someone who has taken the drug. She goes wacky - like a hyper 17 year old. She wants to dance!

If what Grant went through was a semi-dated stereotype, with Rogers we get someone who is reliving her wedding night. Which is a bit odd. She's clearly supposed to be scared of sex and it's a whole scene, but for both - I was wondering "did they retain their memories or not?" It's a bit confusing.

I think what's weird is that you get the feeling Ginger Rogers really *doesn't* love Cary Grant and it's only exposed through the regression. I *think* they were saying she's actually being flighty and emotional because women amitrite? but it reads more like she's been harboring feelings that he ruined her life somehow. Which.. okay I guess? Just saying - it sure feels like stuff that is going to send you to a marriage counselor, not just get swept under the rug.**

When she recovers, she acts as if there's barely any memory of what she did or said. Which leads me to further not understand this movie.

Then, later, both get a stronger dose of the medicine and become approximately 6 and 9. So its Ginger and Cary running around like obnoxious kids. Oh, and they do a racism about white kids playing Native Americans that is intended to be really funny and probably was to some people in 1952.

Monroe works the comedy when she gets a chance, playing a a goof and really diving in on some malapropisms and misconstruction of instructions and being very cross she isn't allowed to type.

It is weird to watch a movie where Ginger Rogers is the dowdy one.

This is a movie I suspect did inspire other things - from Freaky Friday to The Nutty Professor. Science gone wrong to hilarious effect, people acting the wrong age, not themselves, etc... It's very locked into the notion that naturally people change over time into staid adults.

I dunno, it just didn't really work. With the talent assembled, I imagine it fell apart at the script stage and never really recovered. So why make it? I don't know. But it's nowhere near as funny as Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire, or other movies with the above involved. Heck, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes blows this one right out of the water.

I suppose if you like this one, chime in and let me know how or why.

*I am the guy who will also fold his arms and mutter "chimps are apes, not monkeys"

**SPOILER - it does seem the pair end the movie remembering sex is a thing they can do, and all is well

Disney/Pixar Watch: Hoppers (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 06/09/2026

Format: Disney+

Viewing: First

Director: Daniel Chong

We don't get out to the cinema like we used to, and so it was that I missed Hoppers (2026) in the theater, despite what I'd call pretty good buzz.

It's an odd movie for Pixar, which is reeling from a few years of what I'd call unpredictable box office (which is just the industry these days). A few movies tanked, and then a few sold like hot cakes. If I was them, I'd be deeply unsure what to think audiences actually want in a film.

Hoppers is a weird movie. I don't mean the sci-fi concept, which is cute and fun. A young, plucky, adorably flawed girl, Mabel (Piper Curda) is doing battle with Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) who wants to build an overpass for his beltway through her beloved woodland glade. She figures out a wacky scientist (Kathy Najimy) and her team (Sam Richardson and Melissa Villasenor) have built robots and can transfer their consciousness into the animal-shaped bodies. This is done to observe species up close.

Mabel, of course, becomes a beaver and enters the animal kingdom and animal hi-jinks ensue. She learns about a royal system of sorts, a grand council of animal types, and she accidentally whips up an animal-kingdom assault on Mayor Jerry and humanity. Hilarity ensues.

Vaguely applicable moral lessons are learned, and we all have a good time making it to the film's end.

But it mostly feels like a lot of ideas and scripts were in battle with one another, and we wind up with a lot of funny ideas and concepts worked to the last millimeter, but those are scenes and sometimes just shots loosely stitched together into a plot that sorta hangs together, but also sorta doesn't. And it left me wondering if leaving the artists to go work out scenes on their own and bring them back for criticism in the sweat box isn't really working the way it's intended.

Sadly, I think, it's also a sign that Pixar is no longer leading. The character designs are derivative and uninspired for the humans - the folks who grew up on anime and Ghibli are now making the decisions and don't seem like they want to push the envelope. The animal designs are.. fine? The only stand out is Loaf, one of the beavers. This is the first Pixar movie I can recall really leaning into the herky-jerky character animation style I associate with Dreamworks product, relying on striking particular poses and making sounds. We're a fart short of a Minions moment.

I dunno. From the studio that brought us Wall-E and transformed animation for twenty-five years, it feels like something has been lost.

Let me be clear - the movie is *fine*. It's even *good*. But if you were expecting Coco or even the gorgeous fantasy of Soul, that felt so story driven and lyrical, you're going to feel like this is more of a general comedy animated film that could have come from any of the studios. Just, with a "hold my beer" attitude when it comes to upping the stakes in scene after scene.

But, yeah, it's cute and fun and there's worse messages than ecological balance = good.

Classics Watch: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 06/08/2026

Format: Amazon

Viewing: fourth, I think.

Director: Nicholas Ray

I didn't think I'd watched Rebel Without a Cause (1955) since the mid-90's - but here it is in 2012. I really need to start checking old posts to see what I've already covered here.

The first time I saw the movie I believe I was thirteen. My friend's dad saw us entering teen-hood and wanted to share a bit of the teen-culture he'd grown up with. The film had such an impact on the fellow, he bought the same car James Dean drives in the movie.

Rebel Without a Cause is, I think, one of those movies everyone knows but far fewer people have bothered to watch. Which is a shame. I think it's kind of a fascinating movie and it's remarkable it got made then, and now would be turned into a moist melodrama with someone muttering the theme of the film - which would be the title of the movie.

Here's my hot take: The last time I think anything remotely like RWaC got play was probably The River's Edge, which was 1986.

Likely anything similar to this movie which has since appeared is something I haven't seen - and easily could have been a TV series. I've never seen a Euphoria.

If you've not seen RWaC, then the River's Edge comparisons probably seem whack-a-doodle and you probably assume this is a movie about broody-James Dean rebelling against whatever they got while Natalie Wood plays a bobby-soxer who just thinks he's the most while her daddy thinks he's the wrong sort. But that ain't it.

The 1950's sort of saw the birth of the *notion* of a teen-ager as we still sort of understand it today. Pre-WWII, teens were basically young adults. Girls were marrying age around 15 or 16 in many communities (yes, in America), and boys were basically young men. College was not there for the vast majority, so you were moving from high school to your career. But the 1950's saw such a weird period of prosperity, teens were able to just... go to school. Maybe get a part-time gig. They were their own consumer group.

With idle time available, and psychology now a hot topic, we also invented "juvenile delinquency" as teens got up to no good and sometimes were involved in well-publicized violence (see some of the lyrics in West Side Story for what was in all the magazines about youth psychology).

Curiously, Nicholas Ray - who came up with the story and directed the movie - was looking further than the actual PhD's and congress who stopped at "it's comic books to blame", and looked at the environmental factors. Jim Stark (James Dean) has a pair of bickering parents featuring a spineless father who never give him direction - they just avoid actually dealing with anything. Judy (Natalie Wood) is growing up fast - and there's a whole unspoken thing going on that she's feeling rejected by her father - a father who is very aware of her sudden physical change into womanhood, but is played as him just being distant. And, speaking of unspoken situations - we have Plato (Sal Mineo) who is very, very clearly gay - but we aren't going to say that out loud in a movie in 1955, so it's played up as "well, he has no family". Oh, also, Plato may be completely nuts, too.

But I also don't think this is so much a movie about cracking the code on youth gone wild so much as acknowledging what young people may be going through. It's nodding to the headlines of the 1950's as the set-up for a perfect storm in which we see that adults failing teens is literally killing them.

We find our lead characters all in the same police station on the same night, passing through, not really acknowledging each other. Jim is drunk, and it's insinuated the cops think that Judy was out looking for male companionship - Ie: she's just a dirty tramp. And Plato was... killing puppies? Jesus, movie. I forgot that detail. So we know Plato isn't okay - but only we and the cops know this.

Yeah, some of the psychology feels a bit on the nose, but this is 1955. Jim is acting out because his father can't be man enough, Judy is acting out and maybe on the wrong path looking for boys because daddy rejects her. And Plato kills puppies because dad is gone and mom is off in Chicago (and he's gaaaaaaay).

But each kid's deal is illustrated in their interaction with the police - a detective offering Jim an open door to talk when he sees Jim's parents bickering for himself.

A day or so later, Jim starts school, realizing he's neighbors with the cute girl he saw that night. But she runs with a crowd of toughs. And even there we see the chowderhead teen jostling that leads to bullying as "Buzz", Judy's boyfriend, tries to impress his crowd (which includes a very young Dennis Hopper) by hassling Jim - which involves switchblades: ie; that escalated quickly.

When they're interrupted, Jim and Buzz agree to meet at some bluffs for a game of chicken, and one of the more clever things happens in the movie. We see Buzz knows this is dumb, and that after the race, he and Jim will likely be friends. But then Buzz gets trapped in his car and goes over the cliff.

And then things get weird as everyone tries to figure out what to do.

If I have a criticism of the movie - it's that no one is particularly worried about poor 'ol Buzz except Jim, and even that is more of an issue of doing the right thing. His own girlfriend is smooching on Jim *that very same night*. His own friends are only worried about how this will impact them as they stole the cars used in the accident - and then harass Jim and his family to ensure that he doesn't squeal. It seems like an odd but necessary oversight to make most of the story take place in one day (also - this is the longest night ever, and we know it's close to Spring Solstice as they say it's Easter).

But what you can't beat are the vibes.

This movie gets that teenagers run on 95% emotion and 5% logic and it plays to those emotions. We're finding new love in the shadow of tragedy. We're creating family units through trauma bonding. Our parents do not get us (and, c'mon, we all have a little of that still lurking in our psyche).

Bullies are real and a threat to life and limb. No one knows what's going at home with other kids. It's bigger and darker stuff than even the kids realize and I realized watching the film at 13 and again over the years when I was proximate to teen-hood. Yeah, River's Edge is a stretch further and darker, but if you're expecting a CW show's worth of melodrama, look elsewhere. This movie treats the teen experience as a human experience.

Rebel Without a Cause is also a *gorgeous* movie - the colors popping in the way of the shiniest 1950 film stock and color technologies. The camera work is immaculate, throwing dutch angles on the debates, placing Jim's dad small in the frame as his son escapes to go off again. And that shot of Natalie Wood watching her two suitors race for the cliff is cinema gold (look at the ecstasy on her face).

The movie's legacy was huge when I was coming up. I assume the fact this was released post-mortem for Dean gave it an aura of tragedy teens would have gobbled up (I'd make comparisons to our fallen heroes, but y'all would get offended*). And, of course, treating teens as something other than silly people who will grow out of whatever thing they're focused on.

Dean's look from the movie has become iconic - and Hollywood has been looking to replicate that face and his unique acting style since 1955 when he died in a car accident.

But some of it has simply permeated film and culture - like three Back to the Future movies where Marty inexplicably worries about being called "chicken". Car races in Grease. And it made Teen Angst, something I personally was really good at, a thing.

The challenge of Rebel Without a Cause now is that the tropes have been echoed back so much through pop culture it will seem derivative. Because teen culture evolves and changes so rapidly, the lingo of 1955 will seem corny and harmless to the audience best suited to connect to the movie - teens. No cap.

I personally remember the first time we saw the movie the guy showing it to us stopping the film when Natalie Wood cries about being called a "dirty tramp" by her father. We were all laughing, as teens do, and my friend's dad paused to make sure that in that era, he might as well have called her a whore.

I'm not insisting people like this movie, but I find it fascinating. It was really swinging for the fences with what it was doing. This is years after he'd already done In a Lonely Place - one of noir's best and quietest films. He'd upturned gender roles in Johnny Guitar the year prior, and he'd make Cyd Charisse into a self-serving, shady mobster's moll in Party Girl not long after.

It's a film ahead of its time - pushing against the status quo in its way by insisting The (Suburban) Kids ARE NOT All Right. At the height of 1950's America, this was not the prevailing perception, and in reviews quoted on Wikipedia, you can see the point sail right over the heads of the reviewers who came in with beliefs, and pushed back against the idea that maybe the home is not always the ideal situation and a third party could be helpful.

Now, the notion that "maybe parents are people too and fail at times, and that has an effect on the kids" seems like SOP for media, whether it's a teen-soap with parental figures present, or whether it's a movie with a neglected lead who has to overcome things, we're willing to consider family dynamics in a way that does not always end at Daddy Knows Best.

But this movie sort of got there in a splashy way very early on.

Television Watch: Hacks Concludes

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 22:00:48 +0000

Apparently I've never posted about it before, but for the past few years, HBO's Hacks has been among my favorite shows.

The basic premise is that Ava (Hannah Einbinder), an up-and-coming comedy writer, seems to have a career on the slide when her agent, Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) teams her with his top client, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a legendary stand-up comedian, now in her late 60's. Deborah is fabulously wealthy from her long and lucrative stand-up career with side-businesses like a line of goods on QVC. She has a team surrounding her that is probably insulating her a bit from dealing with any unpleasantness, a daughter in her 40's, DJ (Kaitlin Olson), who is erratic at best - and has kind of seen and done it all.

Deborah is let go from her long-standing gig at a major Vegas Casino, and is adrift. She's a workaholic who defines herself by her career, which has been less than a straight line. She's a product of 20th Century showbiz and culture, and *could* just retreat to her mansion(s), but instead decides to pivot with the help of Ava, writing a new set.

The show starts as a collision of very-online-young-Millennial sensibilities and a highly-successful show-biz Boomer. Ava takes the moral grandstanding of lefty politics as a given, but though her proximity with Deborah begins to understand what it was that made her - from a horrendous divorce (which included her husband leaving her for her sister) to the shit women in showbiz, let alone comedy, put up with over the course of her career.

What could have been a preachy, treacly show, instead managed to find to co-stars with insane on-screen energy/ chemistry together.

Like a lot of people, I hadn't thought much about Jean Smart since a few 90's movie roles until she showed up on Fargo and absolutely ran away with the season in which she starred. I just thought of her was "the tall one" on Designing Women who was really funny in The Brady Bunch movie. But dear god... here's to late career renaissances.

Ava is played by Hannah Einbinder who is the daughter of SNL founding cast member Laraine Newman and writer Chad Einbinder. She is - if you ever see her stand-up, hysterical on her own.

There's also standouts like the pairing of Jimmy and Kayla (Meg Stalter) as Deborah's agents - and we can't really say about about about Stalter on this show. But it was, really, an ensemble show where it felt like everyone brought their A-Game. And maybe that's because it was such a character driven show, we got to see everyone have their arcs or play their important part.

It was perfectly filled with guest-appearances, from Christina Hendricks to Lauren Weedman (someone I've adored since her bits on early The Daily Show), to comedian Luenell... But I am not going to stop to list everyone who showed up. It would be insane.

You can read plenty about Hacks all over the place right now, but just trust that it has earned its reputation, and not because of cute weird plot stuff - although there was plenty of that. It really did let characters exist first, and then let the forces of the universe push and pull them, as well as let characters impact the universe.

In the heightened world of Hollywood, QVC and Las Vegas - it felt surprisingly grounded, lived in and believable. As it followed the growing relationship between two extremely different people, I never felt it hit a false note or something done just for television - these were things we believed these people would do and say.

And it got out on top. Five seasons, 47 episodes. The show did what it wanted and said what it had to say, and even as we rounded into a fifth season after four seasons of Ava and Deborah sorting each other out, it made a point of - so what does it look like when these two *are* at peace and what does that mean? What does it look like to have found a real friend and creative soul mate?

No one on the show was perfect (well, maybe Lauren Weedman's Mayor Jo who is my kind of gal) and everyone was a bit messy, including side characters.

And, honestly, if you've never watched the show - all I want to do is recommend it. And hang in there. It is not all people yelling at each other.* You will not always like the leads, or at least the decisions they make. You may wish they focused more on this or that as the show goes on. But as a show that speaks a bit to blindness of generational and lifestyle conflict, it's hard to think of one better in the past twenty years. Or as a look at two unlikely people finding each other, and both finding how hard all of that really can be when you have such different perspectives.

Be aware, this is an HBO show, so language is raw, there's an occasional boob... not one to watch with the kids. But it's been a delight from start to finish.

*maybe my least favorite critique of non-reality shows. But I suspect that showing actual conflict with a hint of truthiness to the fiction is a tad scary to people and jangles the nerves. Maybe that reaction explains how we get so many soporific procedurals, Hallmark movies, and two-note sci-fi and fantasy shows people obsess over.

Y'all can figure out why people watch any show with the word "Housewife" in it on your own.

Monroe 100th B-Day Watch/ Pride Watch: Some Like It Hot (1959)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 03:00:47 +0000

Watched: 06/01/2026

Format: BluRay

Viewing: Third? Second?

Director: Billy Wilder

Maybe one of the movies that I pray never gets remade,* Some Like It Hot (1959) is a wild ride of a movie that seems like it absolutely couldn't have happened on screen as a major motion picture in 1959, but... it very famously did. Whether audiences fully grokked the subversion of the film in '59, or even now, is something I'll need to dig into.

Starring Monroe at the height of her name as a draw, plus a young Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis - it's an oddball period piece about two down-on-their luck musicians who need to flee the mob after witnessing the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and - knowing there's a job for two women in an all-girl band - go full Bosom Buddies and hop a train to Florida.

On that train? Monroe and a full band of young women. The initial thrill of a sort of clandestine voyeurism as our two young men play a part in the behind-closed-doors world of young women becomes complicated even before they arrive at their destination. Joe/ Josephine (Curtis) is planning to just keep to himself and run the minute the train arrives, but Gerry/ Daphne (Lemmon) is looking to see what he can get away with, especially with Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Monroe).

But a conversation turns Joe onto Sugar, and the chance to make some money and have a safe haven for a few weeks keeps them in place at the hotel where the band is featuring.

Sugar is on the hunt for a millionaire, and Joe is ready to oblige, posing as scion of the Shell Oil Co. - by using a Cary Grant impersonation and a nautical themed wardrobe. Jerry/ Daphne meanwhile is dodging an actual millionaire, Osgood (Joe E. Brown).

And, of course, our gangster - Spats Colombo (George Raft sending himself up) - and his crew, including a personal fave in Mike Mazurki, happen upon the two in drag at the hotel. And things get nutty.

Directed by one of the greats, Billy Wilder, the film is both very broad and also a lot daring for the Eisenhower-era. It definitely plays with expectations and ends with our characters in places we didn't expect. By this point, we've had the Code in place for 20 years, and when queerness or cross-dressing were shown, it was for a huge laugh provoked by humiliation. Or, you know, Uncle Milty feeling a little lazy so he put on a dress for the chuckles.

And one *could* start there with the movie, because it lets us get "oh, there's Jack Lemmon in a dress" over with, let's us join in the "boy hidden among girls" wacky fantasy for a bit before it gets down to how the characters, who have had to become women, find out what things are like on the other side.

SPOILERS

And, of course, even as hints are dropped here and there - Jerry really does fully embrace his identity as a woman by the movie's end. Early, he chooses his own name, not just a cheap cover. he's happy to frolic in swimming attire. He seems to actually fall for Oscar during their evening - who proposes, and Daphne accepts, fully immersed in the illusion.

Daphne is not looking to get out of whatever Osgood is offering, he's saying all the reasons it won't work (to spare Osgood's feelings) even as Daphne remains in character- finally stripping off the wig and saying he's a man. To which Osgood replies "Well, nobody's perfect". It's a sort of perfect line and we're left to imagine where this is headed.

Wilder is canny enough to let people see what they want to see - if you think Jerry is getting out if his farcical situation, fair enough. But it's not my read.

It's a movie solidly about who we really are - people hiding their identities - and only Osgood is on the up and up. The scene on the yacht with Sugar and Joe both pretending to be upper class is an amazing bit of acting by both Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. Both are living out a fantasy, but which one is taking the lead is always in question.

Even Spats is playing his own bosses.

The movie doesn't start at a laugh-a-minute pace in 2026. I am sure I'm missing jokes and references - I mean some of the casting is even a joke. And it takes a while to realize that we're going to obey the law of stupid repetition until something like "Type O Blood" is a recurring joke.

But once the movie is cooking, I was all in.

There's plenty more to discuss, but I'll leave you to just go watch the movie.

This showed up in my algorithm - it's some Some Like It Hot birds for Pride Month. No, I didn't buy them, but it filled me with cheer.

*but would make a great play - and a quick Google search tells it was a show that started in 2022. Well, wow. I miss so much stuff.

Superman Movie - Catching Up On "Man of Tomorrow"

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 03:55:56 +0000

Today, James Gunn, Director and Writer of the next Superman film - Man of Tomorrow - released this still of Nicholas Hoult in some very familiar looking armor.

This unleashed hordes of people who think they're clever and have never picked up a Superman comic, never watched a Justice League cartoon, walked down a toy aisle, etc... to flap their arms and ask if Gunn was ripping off any of the man franchises in which people show up in power armor, especially the video game I have never played, Halo.

Look, dumb dumbs, this armor first showed up in a comic in 1983. It's been adapted and changed by artist after artist since then - to the point where a few details remain common, but the general idea is that Lex, like Tony Stark, is constantly fiddling. And, by the way, not one of you blinked about all the armored guys in the *last* Superman movie, so what are we even doing?

There are many exhausting things about fans of just the comic book movies who never read any comics, but the "this looks like something I know already! You copied!" schtick is just the most tedious of the behaviors - right behind the boneheaded misogyny and racism.

The most idiotic part of the comments is that Gunn promoted the announcement of the movie with this image:

But I guess remembering things for a few months is too much to ask.

I still remember standing in Waldenbooks and looking at Superman comics and seeing the "war suit" for the first time and thinking it was cool as hell. And that was the early-days version designed by George Perez.

For a while in the comics, Lex has sort of a costume - that collared super-spy number with the jetpack.

I think of the armor as the next logical step from the 70's-comics-ish-ness of that look (which I love, btw. This was Super Friends Lex, after all). And this suit was kind of how we used the color wheel to make Lex Superman's opposite, visually, too.

And, as I said, that armor has had a lot of iterations. But it's never been in a live-action movie. It *has* appeared on CW's Supergirl show, however it was worn by the always foxy Brenda Strong playing (checks notes) Lex's mother Lillian.*

I have no real preference for any particular version of the armor. I don't even have one I dislike. When the Lexosuit shows up, we're just all happy to see it.

Lex from the JLU cartoon

Anyway, glad to see the suit showing up in the film. I feel like we've never had a Lex in a feature film who would make sense as the guy who would create this armor, but Gunn and Hoult's take is 1000% that Lex. After all, if you need to prove you can out-brawn someone, stop outsourcing your efforts and just do it yourself. A little of the 'ol 1A you can deploy yourself.

It's also a perhaps unintentional nod to how close Lex really is to our Tony Starks and Bruce Waynes in comic land. If he weren't such a heel, he really could save the world.

*Strong is only five years older than Jon Cryer, who was, frankly, an amazing Lex Luthor.

Marilyn Monroe at 100

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Today is the 100th birthday of Ms. Norma Jeane Mortensen, better known as Marilyn Monroe.

We're fans of Monroe here at The Signal Watch, and whether that's because of her film work - and she's terrific in most of the work I've seen, or knowing her as an icon of the 20th Century - I don't know. She was gone more than twenty years before I really understood who she was.. But even when it's a movie I don't love (see: The Seven Year Itch), or something far greater than I expected (Some Like It Hot, The Misfits), she is what they say, and few talents before or since have come anywhere near her place in the zeitgeist.

There's no one else left, really, from this era of film that I think today's young adults and youths would readily recognize. And even then, they may not even know she was an actress - she's simply a face on a t-shirt. I don't know. But she remains an icon, maybe an ethereal one at this point, but someone still seen as a sign of glamour. We can save our comments about how some trash celebrities try and tried to steal some of her light.

I think the oddest thing is how you can put anyone in platinum hair and cherry lipstick and try to make them Marilyn - but no one else is her. That's how oddly singular Monroe is. She had her competitors in her day - Mansfield, Van Doren, and even some like Joi Lansing or Diana Dors in the UK. And I'd never dismiss any of them, but you know what agents and managers are hoping to recreate. And in the past decades, we've had a few biopics and whatnot - beautiful actresses putting the dye in their hair, working on the voice... But it's never quite right, is it?

In addition to the movies, both well received and otherwise, Monroe might as well have her own designation in the Library of Congress catalog system, they've written so many books about her. She was a muse for Warhol, and even in the 90's, she was a staple for pin-ups in young men's rooms (ask me how I know).

To some extent, I think her fame has been to the detriment of the legacy of other actors. She made only 29 movies or so, and passed at 36 - other actors had 29 credits before they were 25. She was notoriously difficult on set. And I think it's fair to say there were talents who excelled hers, but who simply didn't have her inner spark. But even the Lana Turners with their own histories of scandal mixed with glamour are names for classic film fans, where Monroe is known by billions of people. We don't do a very good job of remembering the actors who came before.*

Enough time has passed that the revelations about Monroe's life - be it the drug abuse, the bad behavior on set, possibly sleeping with a sitting President - we can agree that happened, and still see the person underneath. A curious mind, someone with a lot of insecurities who tried to improve herself even as cameras flashed in her face non-stop. And, we can appreciate what has endured on film.

*it's a crime y'all aren't on the Jane Russell train, or that we don't talk more about Stanwyck

90's Schlock Watch: Twister (1996)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 30 May 2026 05:27:50 +0000

Watched: 05/29/2026

Format: HBOmax

Viewing: Second

Director: Jan de Bont

This clunker that has aged poorly in so, so many ways is about two absolute perverts who clearly can only become aroused when their lives are endangered by natural disasters. They are followed by a vast team of nameless people who delight in their kink, and seem to have no interior lives or external concerns other than bearing witness to the named characters' pursuit of their shameful desires.

Why this was not directed by David Cronenberg, I cannot say.

Our male lead has met a stable woman, a therapist, who he believes can save him from his shameful kink. Knowing this therapist will never join him in his thrill-seeking debauchery, he simply pawns her off on one of the sub-perverts.

Reunited with his fellow degenerate, scene after scene unfolds wherein Bill (Bill Paxton) and Jo (The Quarterback Princess, Helen Hunt) pursue tornadoes as threat to life and limb, delighting in the chaos. Both know the old thrills are not doing it for them anymore, and only when they strap themselves with leather to ride out an F5 tornado with no protection - the ultimate depravity - are their degenerate appetites satisfied.

I saw Twister (1996) in the theater a few weeks into its theatrical run. I was in San Angelo to see a childhood chum get married, we had some downtime and it was playing. I hadn't been interested in the movie as the trailers looked asinine, but word of mouth was great.

I will be honest and say: in 1996, I thought this movie was a crime against IQ's and cinema, and I'm not sure I'd be in a mood to better my opinion of it now. This is, after all, a movie that has evil, corporate tornado chasers and which keeps dragging Jami Gertz along for absolutely no plot reason. It's a post-The Abyss movie, so it thinks it needs a ragtag bunch of misfits in our group - but who are they and what do they do? There's never an explanation and we only ever see two of them doing anything other than rocking out or listening to their CB radio. And rooting for Bill and Jo to get back together.

I have terrible news that scientific research is either funded through government grants or its funded through corporate grants. We never hear how our heroes are funded (let's be very clear: universities do not give grants to researchers - universities are supported by taking half the money researchers bring in), who they're affiliated with, and don't understand anything about what's at stake for them. All we know is that we have "bad guys" who have newer, matching cars. I'd be more concerned that Cary Elwes is spending his grant irresponsibly on cars and matching outfits.

The entire mechanism of "Dorothy" is kind of stupid for the very reasons the movie makes clear. It forces you to (a) track down a tornado and (b) stand right in front of it. That no one thought to put a gyro on the balls is kind of wild - or a parachute or something. It clearly had never been tested. It's top heavy. The sensors are designed badly for their intended purpose.

I'm not even sure this movie really understands tornadoes. Or physics. Or house layouts. It just kind of does whatever feels good at any given moment, like see a semi-trailer full of fuel get picked up, but the Ford Ranger next to it is completely unaffected.

The dialog of the movie is 75% shouting for one reason or another. It's mostly just barked exposition over weather, often the exposition is utterly unnecessary, but if they didn't do that, no one would talk for long stretches.

The CGI, three summers after Jurassic Park, now looks worse than a Sharknado movie. Like - it is uniformly shitty. Which I kind of remembered from 1996, but in 2026 - I'm gonna just say this is not even charming shittiness.

The cast in this thing is insane. Paxton. Hunt. Elwes. Jami Gertz. Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Alan Ruck. Jeremy Davies. Lois Smith. Patrick Fischler. And there's a host of 90's "that guy" actors - like Joey Slotnick, Sean Whalen, Todd Field and others.

In 1996, I felt like a weirdo for thinking "this movie is dumb as hell" and this not being the common response to the film. And when Twisters came out a few years ago, people were psyched for it, like a new Jurassic Park movie was coming - but with air moving real fast.

In all fairness, I also didn't love De Bont's Speed as much as everyone else, either, and found his take on The Haunting to be just sort of embarrassing for all of us.

Anyway, it's been 30 years! Maybe when I'm 81, I'll watch it again.

Happy Birthday Kylie Minogue

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

Happy Birthday to pop music icon and occasional actor Kylie Minogue.

Kylie is having a good year! She wrapped up her international Tension tour*, she won Christmas with her poptacular song XMAS, and she has released a documentary on Netflix and I believe a concert film of the Tension tour is also set to debut on Netflix.

And she's re-releasing four albums on vinyl later this year (lil' heads-up for Jamie) including the much sought-after (by me) Light Years.

You don't really know what else she'll get up to - but maybe she'll get back in the studio for another album.

Anyway - happy birthday to Ms. Minogue. May she have a grand birthday.

*Yours truly was at an early date on the tour here in sunny Austin, Texas.

Noir Watch: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 28 May 2026 03:33:27 +0000

Watched: 05/27/2026

Format: Noir Alley / TCM on DVR

Viewing: Second or third

Director: Lewis Milestone

I'd been meaning to return to this one for years, but then it was hosted on TCM's Noir Alley by Eddie Muller and Ms. Rosie Perez. Fifteen years and a whole lot more Liz Scott and Stanwyck under my belt, and I imagine my view of the movie is a bit different now.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) is a twisted, black-hearted melodrama that is one of those movies that is likely to make one a real fan of Barbara Stanwyck if you weren't already (and I am). It's a movie with more twists and turns than you'd expect, while still delivering a finale that feels completely earned and the only way this could end.

In 1929, a young-teen named Martha Stevens - a daughter of the powerful Ivers family - is trying to run away from home with Sam Masterson - a dirty kid from the wrong part of town. They're caught and Martha is brought back to her domineering aunt, who seems to hate her while also needing to protect her - and not liking that Martha has a will of her own. Martha is paired with Walter O'Neil, a teacher's child, who knows he must go along with Martha for a chance at some of her fortune.

During a power outage and as Martha is about to once-again escape, something horrible happens on the stairs and her aunt is killed - definitely in part because of Martha. Walter, of course, sees the whole thing and help cover for her.

17 years later, Walter (Kirk Douglas) and Martha (Stanwyck) are married and living in the mansion when Sam (Van Heflin) returns to town. Before reuniting with Walter and Martha, Sam meets Toni (Lizabeth Scott) and the two click like no one's business.

But soon Sam is back meeting with Walter and Martha who think he could or will blackmail them. But old feelings resurface and Martha and Sam rekindle an old spark while Walter - who if he's cut out loses everything (and maybe that's okay?) - tries to run Sam out of town. Meanwhile, Toni, who thinks she's finally found someone who could care for her, is unsure what to do.

Van Heflin is a bit under-discussed* as an actor, and he's so good here. There are no real right answers for his character, Sam, just bad and worse options once he's reconnected with Martha, and Van Heflin plays it just right - a man who is smart, but maybe a bit impulsive, and has this girl from his past throwing herself at him?

Kirk Douglas is in an early role, and it's odd to see him cast as sort of the weakling, mentally and physically. But he pulls it off, reminding you he actually is a solid actor to start with. And manages to make Walter menacing in his way.

I'm on record as maybe not the world's biggest Lizabeth Scott fan. But she does have some roles that I think she works well in - and this is top of the heap. I completely buy her in this part.

SPOILERS

But Stanwyck has a juicy part and she absolutely sinks her teeth into it. Her Martha ~~Ivers Smith~~ O'Neil is many things and we even know what made her that way. She's a tempest hidden under the surface. And it comes out in fascinating ways. What she really wants seems to shift, but that's just the way she is - not letting in on what she really needs.

I'm just never, ever disappointed in Stanwyck in anything, and would maybe agree with Muller that she's about the best in American film.

This one is worth putting on and sticking with it. It's a shame it seems like it's mostly a genre-junky's favorite and isn't better known. I think folks would love it.

*the kids seem to not know what the word "underrated" means, so I'm not using that word right now