90's Schlock Watch: Twister (1996)

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.

Happy Birthday Kylie Minogue

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)

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.

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

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.

Failed Watch: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

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:

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

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.

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

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.  

Espionage Watch: Patriot Games (1992)

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).

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

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)

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.