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.

Catch-Up Watch: Badlands (1973)

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.  

I've written 3000 posts tagged "movies"

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:

1. 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.
2. 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)

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.

Regret Watch: Bio-Dome (1996)

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.

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

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.  

Rex Reed Merges With the Infinite

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.

70's Watch: Corvette Summer (1978)

Watched:  05/12/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Matthew Robins

I will extrapolate from just my own experience and say I think a generation of kids grew up a little confused seeing actors from Star Wars in things that were not Star Wars.  While Harrison Ford shook off that problem and became one of the most important/ lucrative actors in Hollywood history, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill got hit with type-casting and mostly did other things like Broadway or writing.  It's not like Anthony Daniels became big in the US without a robot suit.

But we all knew that between Star Wars and Empire, Mark Hamill starred in something called Corvette Summer (1978).    

My first memory of this movie was seeing it playing on TV when I was a very small kid, and for reasons I didn't get at the time, my mom turned it off, which - years later - I would come to gather meant the characters said something over my head and she saw this movie was straying into grown-up territory.