The Signal Watch

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, 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.

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

TL;DR: Watching Movies 2026 - Nothing Matters, So Everything Matters

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

Back in December pal Howard shared an article from Substack about the changing nature of "the canon" of film appreciation/ studies/ best of/ what-have-you. It's a review of the publication, Sight & Sound, and their annual poll, with a desire to demonstrate the changing climate of what is considered "the best". Perhaps the notion is that if you liked a film thirty years ago, now it is less important to the voting body of Sight & Sound while other movies, new and old have made it onto the list, moving around the position of movies thought *the* canon once upon a time. And so it goes.

The article arrived around the same time I was pondering something quite different.

In 2025, I turned 50 years old, which gives me roughly 48 year of movie-going experience. My dad took me to see Star Wars in the theater during the 1977 release - wholly inappropriate for a kid that young, but I suppose my mom needed the afternoon off.* I went to film school in the 1990's. I've been discussing movies online without a thought of making a penny off my opinions and bad takes since 2003. Yeah, 2003, kid.

But here's the thing I was pondering this year: only genre freaks really care about film in a way that indicates love instead of weird gatekeeping.

While lists like Sight & Sound's list will be useful as lists of movies that you likely won't regret watching - I am sure each and every film is of value - who is this list for?

No, really. Who is it for?

Is the list for their parents to marvel at what they're doing with their lives? For their film snobs (I mean that lovingly, but also...) to nod along and also feel quite clever? Is it for the person who works 9-6 and then has three hours on the weekend that aren't taken up by chores?

Or, is it a bucket list of films to see before you throw off this veil of tears? Is it to guide one in making movies to see the marvels of the past?

Will these movies make you a better viewer of movies? And if so, what does that mean?

I want to be clear - mostly the list is not that crazy. In the Mood for Love is a fucking great movie. I own a copy. I do squint a bit that the #1 movie ever made according to the list (which is: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) as it feels like virtue signaling more than anything else. But whatever, I've never seen it, just read about the movie. But is it more impactful than Citizen Kane? Is Vertigo really better than Citizen Kane?

Who the fuck knows? No... Not you. You do not know. And neither do I.

It was during a screening of Re-Animator at Austin's Paramount Theatre that some of my thoughts on "what do movies mean to people" crystallized.

As the be-headed, zombified body of a mad scientist carried its own still-talking noggin toward a prone, nude Barbara Crampton - I cackled as a few hundred people lost their goddamn minds, screaming and shouting their approval as if their favorite song had been started live by their favorite musician.

When the movie ended, that same Barbara Crampton walked out onto the stage (celebrating 40 years of this movie existing) into a room that once again exploded, I pondered: are these the people best at going to the movies?

Then, that same week, I hoofed it back down to the Paramount for a screening of the much reviled Showgirls, this time hosted by the amazing Elizabeth Berkley. And just as Verhoeven's Robocop was misunderstood by many as just a particularly bloody cops-n-robbers shoot-'em-up when it came out, only to be reconsidered and seen for the satire that it is, Verhoeven's Showgirls absolutely deserves reconsideration as a mirror held up to our obsession with fame and lenses through which we deal with sexuality.

That night there was an audience there that not only got what Verhoeven was doing, they were there to celebrate Berkley - who, in 1995, took the brunt of the critical lambasting as the lead of a film people wanted to revile. And, God bless her, Berkley has survived all of it and found what it means to be an icon to a rabid fanbase who will turn up for her.

And that's what I saw that night - a whole lot of love for an insane movie and the woman at the center of that storm. Is this the best movie-going?

Because this can happen, there's a whole industry where stars of unlikely movies turn out for money their fans are willing to pay. Some folks do pics at Cons, sign things, etc... And others are now touring with movies, like Crampton did with Jeffrey Combs. I've seen Bruce Campbell with Army of Darkness and Cassandra Peterson for Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, among others.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City each Christmas you can go to either of two weekends of The Hallmark fan cons. Or go on a cruise with Hallmark stars.

And maybe I'm mixing up star power with movie power, but I also know that when the Alamo does its Weird Wednesdays and other events, those things also sell out. Eddie Muller does okay running the Noir City events around the country.

What's interesting about the film enthusiast communities is their "yes, and..." approach to the object of their affection.

Sure, people have things they like and like less and don't like at all. But if you're in the horror world, it's almost declasse to suggest that it's anything but personal taste to rank movies. People do it - it's clickbait after all. But there's more of an energy of folks finding what works for them good, better, best.

Meanwhile, the tone of the Sight & Sound article is much more "step off, Grandma and Grandpa, you were wrong! Here are the *actual* best movies!" This is, and always will be, just what people who see themselves as the elite of critical review are going to do. And whether their work speaks to anyone else but the snobs in the room is usually highly questionable. And, I'd argue, can start to look a bit self-defeating.

After all - if someone looks sideways at your list, there goes your credibility. You're inviting them to think you're just a pretentious asshole.

It *is* interesting when movies begin to no longer speak to younger viewers in the way they did to contemporary audiences. It can happen because the culture shifts hit what was considered a norm of the time - take blackface in a movie (and, yes, despite what you may see on social media, a *lot* of people were fine with it through the 1970's).

But, in my experience, the shift begins largely because the cultural and historical cues of the era in which the movie was made, that go unremarked as taken as part of common knowledge, are lost on the current group of viewers. And that can be inside jokes people of the time would have understood, or the import of, say, the Cuban revolution - and who all was involved.

I'm convinced It Happened on 5th Avenue hasn't been a more beloved classic of Holiday cinema because 5th Avenue has meant something entirely different to the last 60 or 70 years of people choosing movies, even if the story is largely timeless.

One change I am excited about is a growing diversity in who our ~~gatekeepers~~ conscientious reviewers might be. I am a boring, middle-aged white guy, and while I won't entirely agree with eye-rolly social media takes that me being a boring guy means my opinion doesn't matter, what I will agree with is more voices equals more things to consider. Heck, when I was growing up, I don't remember any female movie reviewers on TV. No women! That's insane! Add in our own ethnic diversity in this country, not to mention a variety of socio-economic backgrounds, and maybe moving the pieces around of what makes for a good film makes some sense.

But I am still not sure that a room full of people congratulating themselves at being good at movie-watching and everyone else is dumb is, in any way, useful.

The biggest challenge I think is really the approach to movies.

Are you looking to "win" movies?

You can't "win" at movies. You can't see everything. And you can't even have an informed or thoughtful opinion on everything if you did lock yourself in a room and watched six movies a day.**

Nor do you get to say "I am the arbiter of what people like". Even if you are a fancy, long running periodical or magazine (and we all know how well movie magazines have been doing the last two decades). You just... don't get to. You never did. You may have been urbanely chuckling along to Stardust Memories, but someone was watching Maniac Cop and having a great time.

And while I'm depressed about the management of movies by clicks and algorithms pushing movies in front of people while movie marketing mostly seems non-existent unless you're a Disney franchise tentpole or He-Man, I do think we have more voices and that's fundamentally a *good*.

What a quick glance at social media will inform you is that basic media literacy across all media seems to have fallen off a cliff. OR - our algorithms, plus easy accessibility to the conversation, have shown us that a huge part of the population can't - and maybe never could - "read" a 2 hour movie if it isn't about people driving fastly and furiously, or with such a familiar, button-pushing narrative arc that it's spelled out like a Disney movie with a call-and-response of the movie's theme(s) uttered aloud.

And so it is that I think we are in desperate need of courses on media literacy, as much TV and film as literature. Very few people consume more books than they do TV shows or movies. And if we're going to do that, we do need a canon so we have a common point from which to discuss the form. And that's where we would start to run into issues. Because who is going to decide what that canon is? Folks who think the best movies are Mulholland Drive and Man With a Movie Camera? I'm not even debating if those movies are good or not*** - I'm just not sure that's how I'd explain how film and TV work to 15 year olds.

Honestly, selections from the AFI 100 is maybe the best place to start.

But just give people the tools. And don't kill that enthusiasm for story as told via moving pictures on a screen and accompanying sound. Don't look down your nose at the folks lined up for a midnight showing of a 40 year old horror movie or showing up for some camp classic that you don't enjoy. Heck, is anything more boring in 2026 than making sure you tell people you don't like superhero movies?

And remember the *joy* people get out of movies, and how it can be shared and passed around. It's okay to nod sagely at your Very Important and Deep Movie, but don't sleep on low-budget zombie movies that toss the rulebook out the window.

There's a wide world of ways to engage with movies/ film/ what-have-you, and either through sheer force of volume consumed or watching the most depressing and convoluted films doesn't make anyone the winner in a contest. But we can work to improve what people get out of the content they take in, better discern what that movie is saying - and that seems a desperate need we've ignored for way too long in favor of just teaching school like it's 1939 and we're still acting like those moving pictures are a fad.

* one of my earliest memories is having the shit scared out of me by a Tuskan Warrior

** I see this on social media, and all I want to do is call a helpline for these people

*** they are, it's fine

Failed Watch: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 25 May 2026 04:40:06 +0000

Watched: Did not

Format: Regal Westgate

Viewing: Didn't happen

Director: Doesn't matter

We'd had pretty good luck the past 2 of 2 times we'd gone to a nearby cinema to go see movies with first Project Hail Mary and then Sheep Detectives. I was looking forward to getting back to the cinema this summer with what looks like a good line-up of summer silliness and fun.

I purchased tickets to see The Mandalorian and Grogu this week for a Sunday afternoon matinee, figuring we'd avoid evening crowds and whatnot.

We had learned not to bother to show up at this theater til showtime as they have at least twenty minutes of commercials and trailers. So five minutes after start time we sat down - and, I will be honest, for some reason they'd inserted some Minions thing into the commercials and trailers, and assuming everyone loves the Minions is assuming *a lot*. They just make me weirdly sad. Like this is what is passing for funny now.

Anyway, all I saw of The Mandalorian and Grogu was the part up til the title sequence. So - like, the James Bond-like cold open that isn't exactly related but tells us what's going on these days with our heroes.

I kind of knew we were in trouble when, before the movie:

(a) a literal school bus of high school boys was in our theater - I think a sports team between baseball games or something

(b) and Jamie confirmed this - a different teenager behind us was commenting that they show things before the movie. As in - he had never been to the movies before and found this surprising.

Even as the movie started, he and his mother (and this kid was at least fifteen) were just having a full blown conversation. Like, okay, so the kid doesn't have any audience skills... but the mom?

Anyway, I shushed them. I looked back icily over and over. I finally said in a loud voice "can you not talk please?" and the mom and kid looked at me and kept going without missing a beat.

Knowing this movie was two hours, we walked out. I talked to a manager who - rather than thinking "hey, I should probably tell the people talking in the movie to shut up, they're driving away business and maybe wrecking things for other people" refunded us and gave us two passes. But I don't know why I'd expect anything different from the theater or the patrons.

Jamie did remind me how, pre-Alamo (we've been together that long) I was openly belligerent with people in movie theaters who talked and I yelled at them early and often. I'd kind of forgotten.

And I'll be honest - I don't really know what to do at this point. I don't care what's going on in other people's lives if I just dropped $32 to see a movie. If you teenager can't handle being in a a theater without discussing everything on screen - maybe movie theaters aren't in the cards for them. At some point you kind of have to consider others in crowds. Especially if they paid money to be there.

But I do think people have absolutely lost their fucking minds when it comes to basic etiquette. And the lack of shame when it comes to getting called out is mind-boggling. I've more or less lost all interest in going to anything where I pay money for a seat. Even live theater has been miserable a few times of late (I know the ushers are volunteers, but if you can't hear the full, loud conversations happening ten feet away, are you even capable of doing your job?).

On the way home, neither Jamie nor I could recall the theater providing any on-screen messages about "hey, shut up when the movie starts" as part of the lengthy pre-show, but it's possible that my brain had frozen to protect itself from Minions. And everyone was talking over the endless ads, anyway.

I'm tired of being told I'm expecting too much out of both movie theaters and their patrons, like I'm the problem for expecting a theater to have functioning facilities, to not have to watch 20 minutes of commercials after paying $32 for two seats to a movie. Or expecting theater chains to encourage civility in a shared space.

I am glad to get the refund - that was impossible at AMC and they chose to be hostile about it when asked. But I'm not sure what to do about two movie passes when I feel like...

I'm just done with it. I know I'm one ticket and don't matter, so I'm going to use my money elsewhere that isn't a 50% chance of making me miserable.

So, anyway, guess I'm not going to the theater anymore. 49 years was a pretty good run. Aside from Supergirl and Man of Tomorrow, I'll just be sticking to streaming and whatnot now.

Doc Watch: The Yogurt Shop Murders - Part 5 (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 24 May 2026 18:40:23 +0000

Watched: 05/24/2026

Format: HBOmax

Viewing: First

Director: Margaret Brown

Last year we watched the documentary series The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025), a multi-part doc that covered the unsolved murder of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas in 1991 and the 34 years of nightmare that followed for the families and for some of the accused.

I'll let you read that post and why the doc was impactful. And maybe a bit of why, as a local, it hit home.

Ironically - within about five weeks of the airing of the fourth and final episode, the City of Austin announced a positive ID on the murderer - Robert Eugene Brashers. Brashers was a drifter of sorts and is best described as a serial killer. Based on DNA evidence and ballistics evidence, it is pretty clear who committed the crime.

After three decades, the identification of Brashers exonerated the four teenagers identified by APD. Honestly, I further raised an eyebrow at the timing of this episode's release as just two weeks ago the City agreed to a $35 million dollar payout to the three surviving boys and to the family of the fourth. I doubt this will mean a sixth episode, but you never know.

Personally, I didn't believe we'd ever hear of a final answer regarding the culprit. The case had been so bungled and so much time had passed with investigators refusing to change their focus from the four suspects, I thought it a distinct possibility that APD just wouldn't place any credence on any other answers. Which is harsh, but.

Director Margaret Brown seems to have fired up all the engines again - which can't have been easy - and made her way back to Austin to continue the story she started. We revisit many of the subjects from the first four episodes and visit with one of the four suspects.

What spills out is strange and maybe not altogether surprising. And deeply human.

There is a sense of closure for the victim's families. Absolutely. At the time of filming, they didn't yet seem to have entirely grasped what the positive identity of the killer actually meant for the four suspects and how their lives had been ruined - not because of any horrific actions, but because of horrendous police work. But, still, you're glad for parents and siblings who can at last feel they know what happened, no matter how utterly strange. But it's clear, justice has become utterly muddied over the past few decades.

Brasher's life is looked into, and he committed similar crimes that we *know of* across the southern United States. It seems abundantly clear he was the guy - there's far too many details from DNA to timing of his placement in Texas to even witness testimony at the time of the murders that should have always pointed at a real, lone culprit.

The investigating detective who doggedly pursued the four teens *still* refuses to believe they weren't part of the murders. Like - the denial he's living in says nothing good for what he's like as a person, and if I were in jail because of this guy, I'd absolutely tell my lawyers to use this doc as exhibit A for a retrial.

Powerfully, one of the suspects, Forrest Welborn, speaks to Brown and we see what the real fallout is for him. This isn't resolving anything. His entire adult life has been shaped by something he didn't do, never falsely confessed to, never agreed to. It was all what other people said.

Sure, the payout will help. I guess. It's a cataclysmic miscarriage of justice, and that the city is willing to the payout is sort of surprising in and of itself.

But that's the thing - this is only over in that a single question is now answered. But how this went so wrong with the investigation, what could have been done correctly to find Brashers - an unknown who was mostly passing through town - is impossible to know. How and why the police refused to look elsewhere when even the coerced confessions make little logical sense is crazy.

Anyway - I was glad to get this closing chapter. I suspect my desire to get a check in three years from now - once some of the subjects get a chance to see the doc - is just exploitation.

But credit to APD for never really letting go, and letting someone entirely new pick up the investigation with none of the old prejudices and actually solve the fucking thing.

Too Much Title Watch: Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah - Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 24 May 2026 15:06:53 +0000

Watched: 05/23/2026

Format: DVD

Viewing: Second

Director: Shûsuke Kaneko

So, I've only seen this movie once before - and while I've long loved Godzilla, I didn't really do a deep dive into the filmography of our giant pal - mostly because of a lack of availability of affordable Godzilla flicks in the US - until COVID hit. At that time, affordability wasn't an issue and I picked up mostly every film just prior to lockdown. With lockdown - we dove in kind of head first, with no plan. Just grabbing movie based on which monsters were in them.

When I watched Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), it was in, like April 2020. So imagine the headspace we were all in.

Anyway - I think around this time was when I was trying to understand what the hell Toho was even doing in the 90's and 00's. And the answer is - it gets really confusing after Godzilla Vs. Destroyah. I have no idea if Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla vs. Megaguirus are in the prior continuity. They certainly are not tied to this movie, which came next.

There's a hard break in continuity with this movie, basically starting us over (again) as a direct sequel to the 1954 movie. Just as we'd seen in Godzilla Raids Again (1955) and Godzilla Returns (1984) and as we'd see in the movie following this one - Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla.

All-Out Attack is trying on Godzilla as a horrifying antagonist again - or at least looking to turning a 15 story radioactive lizrd into something frightening after he'd maybe become a giant luchador.

Godzilla is a legend here - the youth are a bit suspicious about the stories of Godzilla's post-war rampage and many consider the 1954 attacks a legend.

But an American military sub goes down, and then a Japanese sub spots something spooky under the water. As the military and bureaucratic government consider the possibility of Godzilla's return (and are in denial) one military leader's daughter, Yuri, is off making television programming that ties indirectly to "The Guardian Monsters".

As signs start to show that *something* is happening, Yuri learns the legend of the The Guardian Monsters from a crazy old man of the forest, and she tries to tell her father about what she thinks is happening. Meanwhile, events across the country - earthquakes, mysterious cave-in's, etc.. suggest things are afoot. And, the mystery eventually explodes with the appearance of, and fight between, Godzilla and Baragon.

Like many Godzilla movies, humans are incidental to our giant monsters, just as humans will mostly be incidental to Mothra and King Ghidorah as they appear. The monsters are not fighting over the cities - they're fighting for the territory that is Japan. Humans just happen to live there. And sometimes that means Godzilla walks right through a hospital or Mothra lands on some people. It's certainly something we see in the Monsterverse films.

I think the thing that makes this more interesting is that it feels like a rough draft for things that will become hallmarks in the best 21st Century Godzilla films - Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One.

Godzilla will be seen as a force of nature
The Japanese government will be paralyzed by their desire to manage information and public relations, to the point it supersedes decision making - which must be done through proper channels so any wrong decisions will not embarrass the officials
Godzilla will be seen as spiritual payback for the sins of WWII
Big suggestion that the win at the end is temporary

The production looks a whole lot like a 90's Toho Godzilla movie. It simply does not have the cinematic sensibilities of a theatrical release feature film with cinematography, lighting, etc... That is until the monsters show up. And once they do - they look fantastic.

In the late 90's and 00's, Toho had really sorted out how to up their traditional man-in-suit action, model building, and sorted out how to integrate digital FX with their puppets. I may not love this particular movie, but I won't argue with how great the monster suits look or the overall vibe of how they make things like Godzilla's atomic breath look. Mothra doesn't look like a puppet swinging on ropes - she seems much more fully realized and placed into the frame in a buyable way. And we only rarely lose sense of scale.

This isn't my favorite design for Godzilla - I think he goes a little doggy in the face with this design, but overall, it's pretty good. He's not designed to look friendly - he's a big, radioactive dinosaur. But I think the other three looks phenomenal (even if I prefer the early 90's Ghidorah to this look).

The actual human actors in this are okay - but I really do like the star, Chiharu Niiyama. She's very buyable as the woman trying to break glass ceilings and frustrated by the patronizing world she's trapped in. And how she shows her mettle in her Godzilla coverage.

The problem is that I so prefer the two following movies about the JXSDF and Mechagodzilla, this just feels like a curiosity along the way - presaging better movies to come.

Espionage Watch: Patriot Games (1992)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sun, 24 May 2026 02:49:43 +0000

Watched: 05/23/2026

Viewing: First

Format: Amazon?

Director: Phillip Noyce

So, I don't really know how I missed this one back in the day. No idea. Harrison Ford. James Earl Jones. A Tom Clancy adaptation. Honestly, I think I was at a 6-week-long drama camp because that's how cool I was in high school.

But I have now seen Patriot Games (1992) and it's kinda fine. It's not my favorite.

Movies like these were prime dad viewing in the 1990's. Men in ties would look grim and look at technology and go to board rooms. They'd use real world issues and events and movements and tell a story that seemed wildly plausible, from a certain point of view. The Cold War was absolutely a wild time, and it showed up in big, thick books by Tom Clancy that dads read in business trips and sometimes they'd turn into a movie.

This movie pits a splinter group of the IRA against - very specifically - Jack Ryan. We met Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October as Alec Baldwin in 1990, but Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford, so I guess if you want even more money, you swap out actors. I am not going to try to make sense of the continuity. (Jack Ryan is now John Krasinski).

Anyway - I don't know if this movie makes any sense. And Jack Ryan in this movie is such a Mary Sue.

First - somehow this Not-IRA group seems to be ready to execute a cousin of the Queen of England when Jack Ryan single handedly rushes in and takes out the whole operation. Like - they have guns.

Ryan kills one of the Not-IRA guys and it's the brother of Sean Bean (so you know he's gonna die). Bean, for some reason, takes it super personal that Jack Ryan killed his brother and swears revenge. But - why? Like, Ryan was just trying to keep someone from getting murdered by masked gunmen. So, fair enough - Bean's character who is a professional killer somehow sees the death as an injustice.

He makes it abundantly clear this is all he cares about as he's sprung from jail - and somehow the rest of his crew of revolutionaries is like "stop being weird, but go ahead and use our resources to fly people back and forth between North Africa and Maryland trying to kill Jack Ryan, an American. Definitely perform terrorist activities on American soil near Washington DC. And get a body count going while you do it so you draw the eye of the CIA to what we're doing."

I kind of think none of this makes any sense and the head not-IRA guy would know they either cut Sean Bean loose or put him in a shallow grave. Dude is a massive liability if your group's aim is to get freedom for Northern Ireland by making England too freaked out to function.* Instead Sean Bean's revenge boner becomes some weird vendetta everyone gets involved in.

It seems like these guys were trying to lose.

Also, suddenly the not-IRA is *not* trying to kill Lord Guy Man. They're going to kidnap him? On US soil?

Sigh. I found this movie deeply frustrating. And this was on top of the movie making Jack Ryan The Best at Everything. He is the Best at killing not-IRA. He is the best at spotting not-IRA. He is better than the Counter Terrorism experts focused on the IRA at doing that. It's kind of ridiculous.

In Red October, Jack Ryan was the actual expert and was asked to be there, and he plays a pretty straightforward role in the events as they unfold. He is not the Swiss Army Knife of plot management.

I guess I wasn't a huge fan, but it have Anne Archer, so that's a plus.

I know a lot of people told me they loved this movie back in the day. Sorry. It just didn't add up for me, even in a 1990's context.

*I won't get too much into the actual situation in Northern Ireland, but it didn't make sense to me then or now because Americans just don't grok Protestant/ Catholic violence. We reserve that for other non-Christian religions and we're kind of monsters in that regard.

TCM Host Confessions - what the hosts haven't seen!

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Fri, 22 May 2026 15:30:26 +0000

This is fun!

TCM hosts are admitting what movies they've never seen in a series called "Host Confessions". It started last night!

More from TCM here. They'll watch the film and discuss.

Movies include:

Bridge on the River Kwai - Alicia Malone
Blazing Saddles - Dave Karger
It Happened One Night - Eddie Muller
From Here to Eternity - Jacqueline Stewart
Rebel Without a Cause - Ben Mankiewicz

That's a good time.

Also, this gives me a chance to get Jamie to watch Rebel Without a Cause.

For the record, I've seen all of these. Call me, TCM. I'll host my own show, Monsters and Mayhem, on Saturdays. There's plenty I haven't seen so you can shame me regularly.

Crime Noir Watch: Vice Raid (1959)

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

Watched: 05/21/2026

Format: Amazon Prime

Viewing: First

Director: Edward L. Cahn

I had never seen a Mamie Van Doren movie, and didn't know this was one. I was getting on the elliptical and literally just threw on a movie and "Vice Raid (1959)" sounded like something I didn't need to focus on super hard. And up came her name.

And boy howdy, was Mamie Van Doren's mere existence the feature attraction. The movie essentially is doing the Tex Avery wolf for the first 2/3rds of the movie. I have never seen a movie that literally puts up a picture of the female star and then gives her measurements. This is a thing that happened.

The other interesting bit about this movie is that it's a 1950's movie about a prostitution ring that acknowledges what it's about using the word "prostitution". Pretty crazy for the era.

In our opening scene we find two vice squad cops, Whitey Brandon (Richard Coogan) and Phil Evans grabbing a guy - named Muggsy! - as he steps off a bus with a young woman from Dallas. Brandon shakes him down for trafficking, when Muggsy agrees to give Brandon and Evans the name of his boss and hand over the girl for a return trip in exchange for a head start out of town. But as Brandon puts the girl on a bus home, Evans tells Muggsy to run and then shoots him in the back before he can name names.

Evans is dirty! Who knows how far the corruption goes?!

Mob boss Malone (Brad Dexter - a personal favorite when he's playing heels) decides Brandon is too much of a problem and decides to trap him with his own methods. He brings in Carol Hudson (Van Doren), a hooker from Detroit, who gets arrested by Brandon and lies, saying he shook her down for money. Evans, being dirty, backs up her story.

Carol's sister shows up as Carol gives up hooking for being Malone's girl/ supervisor of the other hookers. It is a mess of a scene.

Brandon, without a badge and undeterred, decides to take down Malone and maybe Carol.

Was this movie good? It was entertaining, coming in at a tight 72 minutes. No wasted time here. It's definitely a true B-picture, and we don't have time or budget for things like "cinematography". Everything is well-lit and shot from one of three angles.

Van Doren is "not bad"-to-good! I liked her. Coogan was... fine? He just wasn't exactly Charles McGraw. Fun fact - he was Captain Video from 1949-1950.

This movie doesn't just talk about prostitution, it also has a scene leading up to sexual assault and uses the word "rape" which shocked the hell out of me for a 1959 movie. But I think by this point, movies were competing with TV and looking to see what they could do and say at the movies we couldn't show on TV.

I won't get into the politics of this, but it sure is handled about as clumsily as you'd expect.

And that's kind of the odd thing about the movie. It wants to be edgy by being direct - and noir up to this point really couldn't be direct and wasn't direct. We didn't have hookers, we had dime-a-dance girls (read: hookers). There's definitely SA, but it's kind of off-screen. And I'm not sure what the answer is here, I'm just pointing out the difference between 1950 and this 1959 movie.

Anyway - not exactly a cinema classic, but I've definitely seen worse.

Catch-Up Watch: Badlands (1973)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:33:00 +0000

Watched: 05/20/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Terrence Malick

I'd put this movie off for about the past 20 years for absolutely no reason. I loved Days of Heaven. But somehow I just never hit play on Badlands (1973).

The movie, in its way, feels quintessentially American. A clashing of naiveté with cruelty and violence, embodied by our two leads in different ways - a baby-faced Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek (here playing 15 at age 23 or so).

The movie feels timeless and oddly universal, while de-romanticizing everything about the couple-on-a-crime-spree noir and neo-noir plotting. Almost like a response to 1967's Bonnie and Clyde.

The notion is that 25 year old near-drifter, Kit (Sheen), meets a deeply impressionable and lonely 15 year-old-girl, Holly (Spacek) and charms her - mostly just by acknowledging she exists. We've kind of all seen that one play out.

However, we get early signs that maybe Kit isn't quite right. Holly's narration gives us what she believes and her perspective - but it's at odds with what the camera sees or what we know. Though she depicts her budding romance as sweet and forbidden, we can almost immediately see Kit isn't what she says. He may even be killing animals as he goes along in his work day first as a garbage collector and then as a ranch-hand.

But Holly has never known kindness, and Kit shows her that. Her father (Warren Oates) seems emotionally detached from her, but aims to ensure she's marriage material (this is the 1950's). When Holly's father learns of their coupling, in a rage and to teach her a lesson, he shoots her dog

Kit, undeterred, claims Holly and destroys the world behind them. Heading first into the wilderness in a sort of idyll, and then out across the west, sometimes ignoring roads altogether as they head towards mountains that never seem to get closer. And with a mounting bodycount along the way.

It's dreamy but not as ethereal as Days of Heaven, and feels far more *honest* about how these things happen when they happen. The characters are not geniuses, they're just drifting around in the universe. Holly thinks maybe she's found love and Kit thinks maybe he'll be a legend - leaving clues behind like a vinyl disc of his recorded voice playing on repeat outside a burning home.

That's not to say that Holly isn't a bit off herself in that way that Sissy Spacek carried so well in Carrie.

Malick's films are often heralded for their specific tone, pacing and visuals - something I'm aware of despite having seen only one or two of his movies prior to this one. Malick wrote and directed and even appears in the film. His use of photography is film school content. And while I feel like the visuals are consistent, the movie also has three separate DP's (one is Tak Fujimoto!) which kind of suggests something about Malick's processes at the time. That had to have been a hard shoot. No wonder Martin Sheen cratered between this and Apocalypse Now!.

But, yeah - despite what Netflix will tell you, film is a visual medium. And the eye of this movie grabs you and doesn't really let go til the last frame. Stunningly gorgeous in the bleak landscape of the Badlands, it's well worth a review for anyone thinking how to handle their rural film. Stunning vistas that reflect the story back on itself, and do a lot of heavy lifting where dialog and VO aren't filling in all the details. Just gorgeous stuff.

I was stunned to find out that the music used was intentionally imitated for True Romance in Hans Zimmer's score. It seems a mismatch of themes and ideas and robbing someone else's gold - almost like doing so meant they didn't quite grok Badlands but wanted to borrow some the lightning this movie has.

The other day I was just saying to Jamie that whatever past that people imagine they want America to return to with Mom and Apple Pie is completely imaginary. Any time you look up anyone you look up events or figures from the past - it's always far messier than we want to discuss. This film is loosely based on/ can be compared to the real life, 1958 rampage of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate - who killed 11 people inside of about 10 days - for more or less no reason.

And that's Kit. He makes up reasons, he tells Holly lots of things about why he did what he did, and she's guileless enough to buy it - parroting back what he says. Even when we kind of guess from the tone of the VO that Kit is not making it out of all of this alive. But Kit keeps insisting they're having fun - something Starkweather did as well.

There's a fame-hungry void within Kit, and the last we see of him, he's the happiest he is in the whole movie - just thrilled at the attention.

Like I said, very American.

The movie may comment upon the falsity of criminal-lovers-on-the-run as we see it in movies but it's also part of a mini-category of noir, which is often lover-on-the-run, either innocent or guilty. So, anyway, we're slotting the film as neo-noir.

I've written 3000 posts tagged "movies"

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Tue, 19 May 2026 01:16:00 +0000

I just noticed I have a very large, round number in my blog stats.

I have tagged 3000 posts "movies".

Oh, yeah, by the way, if you look at this blog:

every post has some metadata associated with it, enabling me to tag the post to categorize it. One of these tags is "movies". You can find the "topics" at the foot of all posts. I also do things like "Movies 2026" or "Superman" to make it easier to find those posts. It's how I know what were my "First Viewing" movies when I do end of the year tallies.
you can also view the cloud in the left menu bar visible on desktop, and it will give you an idea what topics we're covering.

But, yeah! 3000 movie posts.

Not all are reviews - some are just general movie discussions or movie news or whatever. I am unsure how many times I've written up a movie, but can sort of guess. I started labeling movies by "year seen" in 2012, and aside from a year or so when I didn't do that, you can see the numbers.

Suffice to say, it is a lot.

Still waiting for my sweet paycheck.

I am, of course, nowhere as cool as Bernie Mac

I'm mostly excited because I normally miss those big milestones and only notice them when I'm at like 3017, and would feel "well, the moment has passed".

If you're wondering about percentages, I have something like 5,570 total posts, give or take a few. So it's not all telling stories in the dark around here.

Ovis Aries Watch: The Sheep Detectives (2026)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Mon, 18 May 2026 04:46:45 +0000

Watched: 05/16/2026

Format: Regal Westgate

Viewing: First

Director: Kyle Balda

The Sheep Detectives (2026) was not at all what I expected. And that is, as it turns out, a pretty good thing.

Now, don't get me wrong - I was looking forward to what I thought the movie would be: a goofy play on detective fiction but with, you know, a lot of sheep puns and some wacky celebrity voices. That seemed plenty for a matinee Saturday movie.

Instead, I got an oddly moving movie that I suspect speaks more to some realities of being a living thing - and which illuminates the ways we (people, not sheep - you may need to stretch here, concrete-thinking reviewers) deal with pain and death. And, yes, from the mouths of CGI sheep.

This will go over poorly with some. They may have been looking for a movie where sheep fart, or some may feel that this is a poor vessel for considering our relationship with trauma and death, and what we lose when we don't look the inevitable in the eye.

I'll argue that The Sheep Detectives is a storybook for adults. It feels, perhaps most like Babe - as per a nursery rhyme world of barn animals who are, in fact, telling a story that feels oddly much more compelling and with more to say than you'd think at first glance.*

The look of the film leans into a mix of the British cozy mystery paired with the pastoral imagery of the meadows - occasionally tilting into the shadow and menace of mystery and thrillers when called for.

Sure, the movie is likely for all ages, and I'm not saying the youths won't get it. But it's a non-threatening framework inviting all ages - especially adults - as it discusses and shows some things - many of them via sheep - that speak to very real human behavior. Choosing to *forget*/ to ignore the bad thoughts to stay happy has its very real cost in this world. Ignoring the inevitabilities of life for fairy tales doesn't help and instead makes us victims. It ponders our unexamined prejudice. And reminds us that sometimes we need to leave our world we've known to seek truth.

If looking into these notions feel juvenile, I would recommend looking at our current moment.

And I imagine there's someone standing with hands on hips who doesn't like that sheep did that while also helping to solve a murder. And to that person I say: you don't actually like movies.

I don't want to oversell The Sheep Detectives. It will not have changed my life. It is not a miracle cure that which ails you and the world. But to see a movie with such a good heart feels very welcome in this world - and too rare.

I understand that the film is only loosely based on a popular book with genuine philosophical underpinnings, and I do not know how this and that differ, but the movie comes by its swing-for-the-fences stance honestly. I think what it's trying to an incredibly difficult trick shot, and for the most part - it pays off and the movie is worth checking out.

The cast is expansive, featuring human players Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Molly Gordon, and may others. The voice actors include Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart, Regina Hall, Brett Goldstein, Bryan Cranston, Chris O'Dowd and several more.

Anyway, give the movie a spin. It's maybe a lot more to chew on than you would have expected from the trailers, while still being a movie with sheep puns as sheep solve a crime.

*I remember seeing Babe opening weekend and trying to tell people "no, the pig movie is awesome! You gotta see this thing!" and people staring at me like I'd grown a second head. And then award-season came.

Regret Watch: Bio-Dome (1996)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 16 May 2026 19:53:55 +0000

if seeing this make you feel white hot rage, that instinct is correct

Watched: 05/16/2026

Format: YouTube

Viewing: First - as it turns out

Director: Jason Bloom

Fuck this movie.

No, seriously. Fuck it right in the ear.

I only kept watching to see how much more I could hate a movie as it went along, and as it turned out, I found - lurking within myself - one of those mines that catch on fire and burn for a hundred years. My mine fire is fueled solely by my white hot rage for Bio-Dome (1996) and everything it stands for.

I was positive I'd seen this piece of shit back in the 1990's as the young lady I dated before Jamie was an unapologetic fan of Pauly Shore (she did have positive qualities lest you think otherwise, but it was probably a sign). However, the date of release was in the Jamie-Common-Era, so we cannot blame Anna, wherever she is now.

About twenty minutes in I realized - no, I'd seen the opening on cable or something and must have turned it off, realizing that this movie sucks donkey balls - and I then ejected it from my mind.

The crimes of Bio-Dome are especially egregious as this is the rare movie featuring former-actor turned international pop sensation Kylie Minogue, of whom I am an avid fan. Here, she is treated as someone to be manhandled by two dipshits. She must follow the 90's formula of being a beautiful, brilliant capable woman who, thanks to Stockholm Syndrome, falls for her antagonist. Which means in this film she must crawl all over Pauly Shore, and no one needs that.

The plot is that 90's rash Pauly Shore and perennial skidmark Stephen Baldwin are two slackers who date two hot girls from the local junior college (Joey Lauren Adams and Patricia Hill). After going to extreme lengths not to join their girlfriends for an Earth Day activity where they will clean up a park or something, they wind up driving around and wander into a multi-million-dollar research facility where scientists, led by William Atherton, will lock themselves in for a year. Rest assured, all of this set up takes 5x longer than necessary and sucks.

The door shuts behind them, and Shore and Baldwin are trapped inside. Of course two of the scientists are Kylie Minogue and a model I've never seen before or since. The other is a no-nonsense middle-aged lady (who then only gets two lines all movie) and an entomologist male who is treated like shit for no reason.

You can tell that whomever the dicks are who made this movie are the worst kind of assholes. Everything about it is basically exploitation.

It's exploiting a positive message about environmentalism while also basically shitting on science, scientists and environmentalists. It's so misogynistic, it makes your eyes burn - playing up the idea that only soft-brained women would be so confused as to care about the environment and us dudes should pretend to care about the environment in order to get laid - an idea it both spits on and then fully supports through the actions of the leads.

It is a movie without protagonists - which is a rare feat that should be studied by science - for surely the two complete assholes seen in our leads cannot be a protagonist in any way as they ruin everything they touch. They are not funny, they are not charming, they are not interesting, they are not worth watching or following. They are, at best, two characters in a better two-dude-bros-have-an-adventure movie the actual leads would shit on during the course of their better movie.

This movie is exploiting the notion of two dude-bros with their own language coming to a greater understanding through their adventure as popularized by Bill & Ted, while trying on the nihilism of Beavis & Butthead, but forgetting that for this to work, at some point you need to laugh at what is happening on screen.

This is a horrible mistake. Pauly Shore, when he does work, works as a single element of chaos. Adding a second Pauly Shore who is somehow stupider, and portrayed by the worst Baldwin - who is simultaneously so bad at acting he makes Shore look good at acting - just makes the movie the equivalent of watching the two stupidest guys from high school ruin everything for everyone else for 90 minutes. And they are never, ever funny. It's like watching inside jokes for morons for 90 minutes.

Beavis & Butthead manage to make the idiots thing work by merely moving through the world - but they're mostly ignored, or people deal with them expecting the bare minimum, which they, hilariously, cannot provide.

The humor in this movie doesn't work because it doesn't understand the basics of a BioDome, and the humor that could have come from, you know, that whole situation. When it does have ideas like "oh, the outside world has found out about the two dumb dicks in there and loves them" - it doesn't know what to do with that. Instead, it thinks what's funny are the dumb bits where the movie stops so we can see Shore and Baldwin talk to each other in funny voices.

Also - The plot of a film hinging on the idea that an experiment couldn't reset after three minutes is just fucking dumb. And was so fixable.

But also - the driver for Shore and Baldwin is that hey have hot, college-attending girlfriends and for some reason these girls find these two ugly dumbfucks appealing. Like, can't let go. And... why? They're fucking awful.

Shore and Baldwin are 28 and 30 in this movie, and it is unclear how old they're supposed to be. Thanks to a lifetime of whatever Shore was up to, he looks 35 here, so acting like teenagers is just a weird choice.

The two funniest people in the movie are William Atherton - who plays the lead scientist who goes nuts. And the late, great Taylor Negron who plays a Taylor Negron character, which is kind of inherently funny.

Oddly, the movie has Henry Gibson (utterly wasted), Roger Clinton (yeah, the President's brother) and Tenacious D just before they were a thing. And wasting that just makes me hate this piece of shit movie more.

But, yeah, it's a hateful movie made by hateful, stupid assholes.

In conclusion - fuck this movie forever and sideways.

You did Kylie dirty.

Golden Sci-Fi Horror Watch: Dr. X (1932)

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Sat, 16 May 2026 16:08:55 +0000

Watched: 05/15/2026

Format: TCM on DVR

Viewing: First

Director: Michael Curtiz!

I have felt that at some point I should watch every movie mentioned in Science Fiction / Double Feature, the opening tune from Rocky Horror Picture Show. And I've done pretty well.

This viewing of Dr. X (1932) checks off "Dr. X will build a creature", I believe, leaving only Tarantula. That said, the line doesn't at all describe the actual plot of Dr. X, but okay.

Maybe best described as a sci-fi-horror-comedy-heavy-on-the-horror, Dr. X sees a series of killings occur in the streets of New York, the link being they all occur on a full moon and with the same surgical instrument. The police investigate and determine the instrument used is very rare, and only purchased by a specific medical school run by a Dr. Xavier.

Shadowed by a determined reporter (Lee Tracy) the police meet each of the kooky scientists working on their research.

The school is out for the term, which means only the faculty remain, and we're introduced to them individually, a full pack of creepy dudes, all of whom seem like they could be our strangler/ cannibal/ stabber. Each of them shows some reason they might and probably aren't the killer. We have a one armed scientist (ruling out strangulation), a guy who is shown to be a known pervert for (checks notes) looking at what appears to be 1930's porn, someone who is vaguely German, and a guy with a bum leg.

Cleverly, the film barely shows us the face of the killer in an early scene, a distorted mug belonging to a brute and clearing the faculty of guilt. BUT DOES IT?

Dr. X, who is clearly a bit nuts, begs the cops to let him sniff out the killer if they're among his faculty. So, he makes them come to an old sea-side mansion, where he'll perform a series of psycho-physiological experiments by making his colleagues watch a pantomime of a murder while hooking them up to equipment - sort of a liquid based lie detector.

The movie co-stars Lionel Atwill as Dr. X, Fay Wray (looking smashing) as his spunky daughter, Lee Tracy as a jokester reporter, and a host of others we will not pretend anyone reading this has ever heard of.

The form for sound film is still settling in 1932, but setting mood via cinematography was sorted out much earlier. While Universal was perfecting Dracula's environs in 1931 and Frankenstein's castle by 1932, both in black and white, with Dr. X we're playing with two-strip Technicolor, splashing mysterious green light here and there and making for eerie and gorgeous visuals. I watched the recently restored version, and am now considering finding it on disc just to see these visuals again.

The transformation scene knows its being compared to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and so it leans into the craziness of seeing a man slop on putty to remake himself into the brute. What should seem kind of silly is instead grotesque and bizarre in a way movies wouldn't figure out again until maybe some Hammer pics or the 1970s. This is Michael Curtiz in the director's chair working with Max Factor, of all people, on make-up. And they really do make for some movie magic here.

It's also pre-code, which hit me over the head when we find out the killer is also a cannibal. Early movies went hard. But there's also the bit with the porn and a few other things - like the indication that our hero grabs Fay Wray's butt in the dark in the last scene (while wearing a joy buzzer) - that make you realize this is pre-code.

I already liked Mystery of the Wax Museum well enough, but I think I liked this one a tad more. But that may be because House of Wax was my intro to Vincent Price as a kid, and this was all new to me. And so fucking weird.

I love how Michael Curtiz just did *everything*. From silents he moved into some big studio pictures and did horror like this - but mixing it up. He did 6 pictures in 1932 alone. This was before he went off to do some of my favorite films with The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, The Unsuspected, Flamingo Road, The Breaking Point, and White Christmas. And there's a bunch he did I didn't list as favorites that are all great films I've seen. Like The Sea Wolf and The Sea Hawk (deeply unrelated movies).

Anyway - I recommend it! It's a good time and comes in at a brief 80 minutes or so.

On a speculative note - comics often got ideas from the pulps and movies. It's always fascinating to see something that became a staple of comics show up as some bit in a movie that got recycled by a comics creator on a deadline. And so I do wonder about Stan and Jack coming up with "Professor X" and his school of weirdos. You never know.

Rex Reed Merges With the Infinite

noreply@blogger.com (The League) — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:30:14 +0000

Film critic Rex Reed has passed.

Reed was one of the stable of popular film critics of my youth, occupying his own niche as what struck me as the New York branch of film criticism, where Siskel and Ebert were our reviewers in Chicago. I was unfamiliar with Pauline Kael until college, just for the record.

Reed appeared on television and in print as a movie reviewer. I confess, I'd read him occasionally, but as one of many voices. Still, he had a reputation as someone you should consider.

That said - Reed had plenty of well-documented gaffes - including an apparent psychotic break when Marisa Tomei won the Oscar. Like, I get his surprise, but doubling down and then tripling down?

Rex, my guy. Take the L.

In Superman: The Movie, he's working with The Daily Planet enough that he's chummy with Lois Lane. Really, the highest goal any of us could achieve. It's a fun moment in the movie, and adds to the Big City Paper-vibe of the first movies.