Arthouse Watch: The World to Come (2020)

Watched:  07/19/2026

Format:  Library disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mona Fastvold

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

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

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

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

Watched:  07/18/2026

Format:  TCM with John Carpenter and Alicia Malone

Viewing:  First

Director:  Val Guest

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

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

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

Noir Watch: Angel Face (1952)

Watched:  07/16/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  Third?  Fourth?

Director:  Otto Preminger

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

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

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

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

Noir Musical Watch: Blues In The Night (1941)

Watched:  07/15/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Anatole Litvak

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

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

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

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

Dave Kendall Merges With The Infinite

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

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

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

Sam Neill Merges With The Infinite

Actor Sam Neill has passed at 78.

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

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

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

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

Happy Birthday, Mikaela Hoover

Hey!  It's a second Super Birthday today!  

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

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

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

Melodrama Watch: Written on the Wind (1956)

Watched:  07/11/2026

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Douglas Sirk

I've been pretty plain that - while I rarely think a Sirk movie is aimed at me - I think he's a good director and makes some interesting films.  He was considered the master of a certain kind of melodramatic "woman's film", and I don't generally mean the term melodrama in the derogatory sense.  They're simply dramas contained to the character's lives, focusing on the emotions they experience.  Rarely do the conflicts that drive the stories have consequence outside of the sphere of the main characters. 

But Written on the Wind (1956) is both the most melodramatic of his films I've seen in the way we mean the term these days.  It is big feelings playing out in a way that feels like an alternate pilot for TV's Dallas as much as anything.  

It is also the horniest of Sirk's movies I've seen thus far - a movie entirely about sex that cannot say the word "sex" and instead relies on cloaked language and imagery as subtle as a 95 mph fastball to the noggin.  For example:  when a certain character is in flagrante delicto at a motel room, in the foreground of the frame, an oil pump is hard at work.  

WWI Watch: Hell's Angels (1930)

Watched:  07/11/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Howard Hughes

Even back in film school I remember hearing or reading that Howard Hughes' production of Hell's Angels (1930) had been kind of out of control.  It took years to make as Hughes was, ahem, a tad OCD and then The Jazz Singer happened during the already lengthy shoot,  sound suddenly available during the middle of production.  Of course, Hughes wanted in on that.  

So - they had to fire one of their leads who had a serious Swedish accent and replace her with Jean Harlow, effectively locking Harlow in as sort of the first blonde bombshell.  I also was aware a few people died making the movie - and having watched this thing, I can see how that could have occurred.

What I did not know is that Hell's Angels is actually a very watchable movie and was not really what I was expecting.  

The plot sounds fairly simple on paper - a pair of brothers at Oxford, one a rule-follower and romantic, the other a bit more of a rake and nihilist - find that WWI has broken out.  One brother volunteers for the Royal Flying Corps, and the other is voluntold he's in the RFC.  Meanwhile, their German pal Karl is drafted into the Zeppelin corps.  

Happy Birthday, Rachel Brosnahan

Happy birthday to Rachel Brosnahan, our current Lois Lane, upon whom we can all agree is a pretty good idea.

We've been so lucky with our string of Lois Lanes over the past twenty years, and I love what Brosnahan did with the role, making it her own.  

Here's hoping she has a great year ahead of her.