Musical Watch: Kismet (1955)

Watched:  05/14/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vincent Minnelli

A couple of months ago, I rewatched It's Always Fair Weather, and remembered Dolores Gray existed. The first time I'd seen the movie, she was my favorite part of the film. And, sure, I like a smile that makes Geena Davis' grin seem understated, but she was hilarious and her two numbers were fantastic.

My understanding is that: as a teen she was given a shot by Rudy Vallee, and became a nightclub chanteuse, headlining by age 18 or so.  There's a whole story about her getting caught as a bystander in a drive-by shooting as a young woman, but that she recovered and was back performing in night clubs in a couple of months, the bullet never removed.  

Gray's career was primarily on the stage, both in New York and London.  She played Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun for two years in the West End.  Back in the US she co-starred in a popular stage production of Destry Rides Again with Andy Griffith.  

Like many radio and stage performers, she'd have disappeared into the collective memory hole if not for her few movies.

Superman 2025: The New Trailer Hits

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Well.  There it is. 

We finally get an idea of the plot in broad strokes.  For comics-folk and Superman fans, we get the characters and literal from-the-comics stories getting referenced.  I'm seeing Action Comics 900 and All-Star Superman #12.  Maybe a dash of Dini and Ross's Peace on Earth (a great one-off if you can find it).  The take on Lex feels like Waid and Yu's Birthright, or else I'm projecting.

But, and stick with me, this feels like the Superman I look for in the comics and the Superman I occasionally get in TV or film.  It only happens when the creators don't get bogged down with being about their own internal mechanisms or veer off to just punch things (although I like that, too, from time to time).  

This is a Superman who is out there doing his absolute best in a world that is so (unnecessarily) complicated, doing the right thing is frowned upon when you don't ask for permission to save lives.  

Ya'll, from Action Comics #1, Superman was the fantasy of two guys who asked "what if you didn't have to ask to do the right thing?  What if no one could stop you when you tried to help?  What would that look like?  How would we react?"

In his first appearances Superman is seen busting into the governor's mansion to insist on a stay of execution for an innocent man.  An issue or three later, he's taking on weapons dealers trying to start wars, forcing them to the front lines - he is not asking anyone if it's okay.  Superman was intended to be a bit rogue-ish and outside the law, because it's never been too hard to see we build systems that don't benefit the people who need them to function, and certainly that was the case in the mid-1930's.   

Chabert Watch: Thirst (2010)

I need two tubes of Burt's Bees, STAT!

Watched:  05/12/2025

Format:  Fawesome

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jeffrey Scott Lando

ChabertQuest2025 is becoming a study in types of low-budget independent movies.  

This film is the "what can we shoot that's dramatic with a really small cast and give everyone stuff for their reel?" feature that's essentially a horror movie as people are trapped in a remote location and will be killed by nature.  Sometimes that is sharks, sometimes that is getting wedged between rocks.  Thirst (2010) is the desert.

I find these movies mostly deeply unappealing in a "your whole movie could have been an email" sort of way.  Watching a large group of people get picked off by alligators or sharks?  Sign me up!  90 minutes of a small group go through therapy and only one lives at the end?  I'll take a pass.  It's a predictable slog.

Usually the movies move slowly, are often melodramas at their heart (otherwise, why care about these victims?), and you spend the whole movie wondering why they made this and that bad decision.

Chabert Watch! A New Wave (2006)

Watched:  05/11/2025

Format:  Fawesome

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jason Carvey

I don't know if I've ever experienced second-hand embarrassment for my generation of film dudes this intensely before, but here we are.

I assume the name of the movie is trying to wink at the French New Wave, and the belief that this movie was somehow echoing that well established concept.  But I don't know what the filmmakers meant, and I don't want to come out of the gate too strong with how irritating that is as (a) a joke or, (b) way worse, if it's meant sincerely.  But it is indicative of how bad this movie is with comedy that I don't know their intention.

Arriving probably 7 years after the last time this movie might have been considered hep or cool in any way, like many first-time efforts, A New Wave (2006) doesn't know what it is, cramming in three movies or so here, but it sure is trying to work something out that's best left to therapy sessions for the writer/director and doesn't need to involve me as an audience member.  It's also a great peek at the post-Tarantino fantasies of LA filmmakers who all saw something they liked in Tarantino and thus wanted to put their own brand on lo-fi crime ideas.  By 2006, we're just saying it out loud, I guess.

That's paired with a view of women as "unobtainable, mysterious problems" that seemed to permeate film in both studio and indie flicks in this era.  

And none of it works.

Soderbergh Watch: Black Bag (2025)

Watched:  05/10/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steven Soderbergh

So, this was the movie I meant to watch in the theater, but we walked out.  And, given the film's style and the necessity of following every line of dialog, I am very glad we made that decision.

I am unshocked that a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender was very much my jam.

I don't want to get too much into the details of this espionage/ counter-espionage thriller.  Part of the joy is going in knowing very little other than that Fassbender and Blanchett are playing a pair of agents for an Mi6 sort of set-up, and seeds of doubt are planted.  

Gangster Watch: The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Watched:  05/09/2025

Format:  Criterion Disc

Viewing:  First-ish?

Director:  Raoul Walsh

Fun (likely apocryphal) fact:  This movie from 1939 is thought to be what coined the phrase "the roaring twenties" to refer to the 1920's.  Contemporarily, thanks to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the 1920's were referred to as The Jazz Age and, by others as The Plastic Age.  (There's a Clara Bow film of the same name I've never tracked down.)

Also - This doesn't happen very often, but I am unsure if I've seen this movie before.  

It sure seems like I would have seen it.  It's entirely up my alley.  And when Cagney introduced Gladys George's character by name, Panama Smith, I had my first moment of pause, thinking "wait... have I seen this?".  Because George sure looked familiar and then the name is kind of unforgettable.  Panama Smith.  (It's also insane this was not Eve Arden when this role feels like it should be Eve Arden).

Superman 2025: Relatable

One of the common complaints hurled at Superman is that he's not relatable -  as the superior alternative is somehow being a billionaire with rodent-inspired vehicles, who runs around on rooftops and karates super good, as this is apparently something we all do.  

But what is more relatable than a dog-owner trying to get a dog to be good?  Especially when the dog thinks all attention is good attention?

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Chabert Watch: The Brooke Ellison Story (2004)

Watched:  05/08/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christopher Reeve

I'm gonna be straight up with y'all.  I am so grateful for a good movie at this moment in ChabertQuest 2025.  Several of the past few have been making this journey less than ideal.  

The Brooke Ellison Story (2004) is a movie I was aware of in 2004 when it came out, but completely missed as an A&E TV movie that came out during a time when I was working insane hours.  As one can guess it entered my awareness because it was directed by Christopher Reeve, who passed just two weeks before the film aired.

And, of course, once I knew about the real Brooke Ellison the film was based on, when she'd pop up in in the news every once in a while, I was reminded I'd heard of her because of the film.  But because it was a TV movie, once it was gone, it was kind of gone, so I didn't know much about it.  

The film is an adaptation of the book written by the real-life Brooke Ellison and her mother, Jean Ellison.  During her middle-school years, Brooke was hit by a car which left her a quadriplegic and living on a ventilator to survive.  She wound up going to Harvard (the thing I did know).

I didn't know, for example, that the movie stars Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and John Slattery as Brooke's parents.  But, holy smokes, is this one of those places where a movie found the right director and cast.  What could have been a saccharine movie about a family with pluck overcoming adversity manages to work because it's not about a can-do spirit and a song in your heart winning the day.  It's about the million steps you have to overcome, from regulations that make no sense, to insurance shenanigans to those who think they know best - at least at the outset. 

TV Watch: Righteous Gemstones gets its benediction

I find it amazing that when we're discussing the best stuff on television, it's so often wildly depressing stuff or puzzle boxes we all know are going to have endings that do not deliver.  I guess it feels good to feel bad.*  And I like a good drama, too.  But as my 9th grade English teacher, the great Ms. Fort said to me "life is tragedy or comedy.  There is no in-between."  Ms. Fort was a smart, smart lady, so I've always believed it.

And because I think comedy holds an equal place to tragedy, and I feel I learn as much from what makes me laugh as what makes me bummed out, I'm sad to see HBO's Danny McBride helmed series, The Righteous Gemstones, come to a close after four seasons.  

At the same time, I understand- get out while the getting is good.  The responsible thing to do is leave people wishing there had been more, while also properly closing things up.  

On Sunday, The Righteous Gemstones finished its fourth and final season, closing the door on less than forty episodes and one of the funniest, most vulgar and profane shows I've seen, while somehow including stellar storytelling, genuine character moments, shockingly heartfelt beats and - underneath it all - somehow managing to sell religion and faith as an option better than any actual televangelist.

Barely Chabert Watch! Anything Is Possible (2013)

Watched:  05/07/2025

Format:   Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Demetrius Navarro

This journey through the career of Lacey Chabert (just live action work, and only movie-length material - we have to contain this somehow) has become a study of the work of someone who is truly a working actor.  

Sure, Chabert is a star.  Even if she'd never been in anything after Lost in Space, I'd remember her as a young actor.  If Mean Girls had been her last role, we'd all definitely still know her.  But Chabert started in movies as a child (and we'll get to that), and her current role as the face of Hallmark and Christmas movies was not a foregone conclusion.  She had a lot of work that was clearly putting food on the table, and that's kind of what we've been watching for a bit.

And so we find a movie here from 2013 in which she barely appears. It's one of six films she had released in 2013, and one of ten projects - as she voiced cartoons and video games (she's the default voice for Zatanna at DC Entertainment).  But I'm betting she was in and out of Detroit - where this movie seems to have been filmed - in about three days.

This movie is very independent, very well intentioned, and very much not my thing.  It is also less about Chabert's character, who book-ends the film, and a vehicle for real world child prodigy of the piano, Ethan Bortnick.*  Based on the age of the child star and editing timelines, I am guessing it was filmed in 2011, and finally found distribution in 2013.  

Chabert Watch! Tart (2001)

I don't make the posters, I just post them

Watched:  05/05/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director/ Writer:  Christina Wayne

Watching Tart (2001) feels very much like when you're a middle-class kid with middle-class experiences and you get stuck in a conversation with someone your age who has no idea that they're upper-class.  You mostly sit there in polite silence as they have no idea that every sentence coming out of their mouth is dripping with privilege, classism, and unearned self-pity because Mumsie and Daddy left them behind and went to St. Bart's for two weeks, during which time they were left with a stack of money, a huge house and just the butler and maid, and it was so unfair and they better get to go to (insert place middle class kids never heard of) next year!

Chabert Watch! Dirty Deeds (2005)

greetings ladies and gentlemen - I'll be your unnecessarily smug dope of a lead for the evening

Watched:  05/04/2025

Format:  Legitimately obtained video

Viewing:  First

Director:  David Kendall

I can't think of a movie where I've heard the soundtrack doing more heavy lifting than this weirdly soggy flick from the 90's/00's-era of dude-centric teen comedies that maybe peaked with American Pie.  But I wasn't a teen then, and I didn't watch most of these flicks.  

What's oddest about Dirty Deeds (2005) is that it *should* have been as straightforward as one could be.  It has a boilerplate plot of a guy who has to complete a punchlist of tasks in an academy/ academic setting - and he's a wildcard!  What should be a wacky, charming series of shenanigans with a dollop of heart is, instead, a clutch of unfunny incidents, some of which are straight concerning.  

But, yeah, 

Muppet Watch: The Dark Crystal (1982)

Watched:  05/02/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Jim Henson

I remember seeing The Dark Crystal (1982) in the theater as a kid and it absolutely blowing my mind.  

Fantasy films were certainly a thing for kids in the wake of Star Wars, and Henson was already everywhere, from The Muppet Show to Empire Strikes Back.  But all of those fantasy films, that were live action, always starred humans.  I mean, understandably so.  

But for 90 minutes, Henson and Co. managed to create a world that had not a person in sight, a world both grounded in physical reality and utterly fantastic.  Taking what he'd learned from his many years of shows, commercials, movies, etc...  and getting his feet wet with things as different as Sesame Street and Emmet Otter, and enlisting artist Brian Froud, he cooked up this world. 

Marvel Watch: Thunderbolts* (2025)

Watched:  05/01/2025

Format:  Alamo 

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jake Schrierer

SPOILERS for a new movie

I won't belabor Marvel's trials and travails, real and imagined, over the past few years.  We all know the narrative.  It's not one I necessarily agree with, but it's out there.  

Does Thunderbolts feel different from other recent Marvel stuff?  Yes. In some ways.  Mostly the ways in which you don't feel like this movie fell out of a Marvel continuity Mad Lib generator that requires you remember what happened in a movie in 2009. It does the continuity thing correctly - we've seen almost everyone in this movie before - if you watched all the Marvel stuff (and I have, minus the What If? shows).   They don't break that continuity and may refer to it - but I think the story itself makes sense without all that, as long as you listen to what the characters say about themselves. 

Our characters are from the Black Widow film (White Widow, Red Guardian), Ant-Man and The Wasp (Ghost), Captain America (Bucky) and Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Valentina, John Walker).  It's a good mix.  Plus, Bob.

Chabert Watch: Being Michael Madsen (2007)

Watched:  04/29/2025

Format:  Legitimately obtained video

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Mongillo

There's nuggets of a couple of ideas in Being Michael Madsen (2007) that are very good ideas.  Unfortunately, this was not the movie to execute on those ideas.  And you know you're in trouble from the very start when the faux-documentary alerts you it will be bleeping out *real* brand names for legal reasons (sigh) and then rolls like three quotes before the first shot of video.  

Yeah, this is a fake documentary - about a documentary that we will never get to see.  Or is it the documentary?  It's not clear.  I do know this movie is also a weird mix of wildly pretentious nonsense that believes it's very clever and maybe poking fun at itself for being pretentious.  But, hoo boy, it's kind of like when someone is being pretentious but isn't quite smart enough to actually pull it off, but they're Dunning-Kruegering their way into believing they're the smartest person in the room.

Chabert Horror Watch! The Ghost of Goodnight Lane (2014)

Watched:  04/27/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Director:  Alin Bijan

Goodnight Lane is a very real street in northwest Dallas, where the Ghost of Goodnight Lane (2014) takes place, and was filmed, at least in part.  And if there's one spooky thing in this world, it is Dallas sprawl and suburbs.

The best thing about this movie is that Billy Zane is having a good time.  He knows what this movie is, and he's just happy to be there and dick around.  And, really, this movie is just an excuse for the filmmakers to have a good time and make a low-stakes horror-comedy.  It is silly.  It knows it's silly.  It is critic and taste proof.  If you don't like it, that's kind of on you, audience.  And the fact this exists in this form is proof I don't know how movie-making works.

The Ghost of Goodnight Lane is weirdly full of B to Z list working actors out of LA.  I say this, because this movie has the vibe that it doesn't feel like it should have anyone in it but local talent from the DFW area.  But it has Billy Zane and Lacey Chabert.  And still manages to look like a movie shot by people playing with equipment more than a movie that came out in 2014.  Like, it's weird to see real actors in set-ups and with lighting I associate with movies made by folks usually casting their pals, just something fun to enter into horror film festivals.  

It's maybe not Ouija Shark bad, but... 

So I wonder about the proposition for getting the financing - provided our writer/ director didn't finance himself. Did they blow it all on getting who they got?  The FX?  Which are brief but pretty okay for what this is?

Coogler Watch: Sinners (2025)

Watched:  04/26/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Ryan Coogler

I guess Marshall is my "there's a vampire movie out, we're going" buddy.  And, really, Marshall was the ideal movie buddy for this one.  He's an avid music fan, a musician, and his rock sensibilities - when I met him in the early 1990's - were blues-based.  He's also a fan of vampire flicks, although I don't think I've convinced him to watch the Hammer vampire flicks yet. 

In addition, Marshall is well-read, and with an academic background in creative fiction, his critical analysis is always impressive.  But he refused to send me a blog post for this movie so that I didn't have to write one.  He is refusing me this one simple request, and so I am hoping if I butter him up enough with this high praise, next time, he'll do it.

Anyway - count me in with the people who loved Sinners (2025), and am excited about seeing it again.

SPOILERS

Chabert Watch! Mean Girls (2004)

Watched:  04/25/2025

Format:  Paramount+

Viewing:  second

Director:  Mark Waters

Back when we were doing the podcast, we should have done this movie as part of our "high school movies series".  Alas, we didn't get to it.  

But if you listened to those episodes, you would have come across my inability to access a lot of high school movies, largely because I felt they offered a false proposition:  that in high school, there existed a clique people aspired to join or who were a group to emulate or who had influence.  And that those people were varying levels of mean.

I have since learned:  no, man, that may have just been you (me).    Maybe because I moved to a new school and no one explained to me who was supposed to be "popular".  And if that was going to shake out at the first high school I attended, I missed it gelling as I moved away after Freshman year.

So, that was my context the first time I watched this.  I've kind of accepted since that some people very much felt in and out of groups in high school, and carry that feeling for life.  I think it's why everyone - if you ask them - will tell you how they were an outsider in high school, but the math doesn't add up.  You can't have 99% outsiders.  And I've never heard anyone say "actually, I was super cool in high school".

Noir Watch: Tension (1949)

Watched:  04/26/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  lol

Director:  John Berry

Whoops, I watched Tension (1949) again.

In my defense, it stars both Audrey Totter and Cyd Charisse and I really had no choice.

Chabert Watch: In My Sleep (2010)

"genuinely suspenseful"

Watched:  04/25/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Writer/ Director:  Allen Wolf

Oh my.  Spoilers.

This is an entire movie about a guy who should have done very obvious things when confronted with monumental problems.  But then we would not have a movie.

I get it.  This is a movie that started as someone's desire to create a "Hitchockian" mystery thriller, found a premise, and worked backward from there.  The premise no doubt started as "how do you tell a story about a guy who needs to solve a murder, but he may have committed said murder himself?"  Ah ha!  I saw cartoons. Sleepwalking.  Sleep driving.   Sleep sexing!  This guy does it all!

The first obvious thing - He kinda/ sorta begins to seek treatment for this condition with medication at the beginning of the film - but only after he somehow sleep-sexes his best friend's wife.  Btw, she's far from the first woman he's apparently had luck with whilst sleepwalking, we're told.*  Also: He's been driving.  He's been wandering around in his undies.  He is a mess.  He keeps waking up in odd places.  With 0% bodyfat.

After a birthday party, attended entirely by his married pal and women he has slept with (I mean... honestly... why?) Our Hero learns the best friend's wife was murdered and found by his father's grave.  Kinda sus.

Chabert Watch! Fatwa (2006)

love the US flag pine tree deodorizer.  Feels very 00's

Watched:  04/23/2025

Format:  Midnight Pulp

Viewing:  First

Director:  John R. Carter

An absolutely bizarre movie that sees the intersection of 

• the 1990's and 00's-era post Pulp Fiction crime flicks
• the success of shows like 24
• the belief that shooting on consumer video will lend an immediacy to the film (this is not correct)
• a first time director
• established actors
• unyielding pretentiousness

all in one neat package that winds up as one of those 90 minute movies that seems like it's been at least two hours, and so you check, and it's got another 30 minutes to go...  It's also one of those movies where everything seems very disconnected and then wants to make everything tie together in the last 20 minutes or so, but when put together, just starts stretching credulity way past the breaking point.

Fatwa (2006) is a post 9/11,  post fall of Iraq indie thriller/ political commentary.  It follows a desperate would-be terrorist in DC who is planning *something* - it's hinted at early on he's going to make a nuclear device using household objects.  He's specifically targeting a US Senator played by Lauren Holly.  (Holly is also an Executive Producer, but I assume that was her negotiating and more of a ceremonial role.)

Happy Birthday, Sheryl Lee

 

April 22nd marks the birthday of actress Sheryl Lee.  

Lee, through her relationship to both Twin Peaks series and the movie Fire Walk With Me has filled an inordinate amount of my brain space since I was 15.   

Lee, herself, only works in film sporadically these days.  Some ink was spilled when Twin Peaks: The Return hit in 2017, sorting out where she'd been and what she'd been up to.  She has some health issues that make acting a bit difficult, but she does do it.  

But I think wrecking me during Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me, and then devastating me during Twin Peaks: The Return was probably enough for one lifetime.  And when I think about her now - after we spent COVID pondering nostalgia and what made for the best of our generation - going through reunions of youth-friendly media, identifying Gen-X favorites, I don't really recall Twin Peaks getting included.  But in her way, maybe Lee's creation with Lynch and Frost, Laura Palmer, was the ultimate Gen-X icon.

Laura had loving parents, she had a house in the 'burbs, dressed in the clothes of a different generation, and as a youth of the era, still ran wild, unknown and unknowable, what she was up to only really discovered when she was no longer there.  And, of course, the scream of Laura Palmer/ Sheryl Lee when she returns to where she's told she belongs?  Someone else is there.  And she never quite existed, but went along to find out.  Middle-aged and displaced, being told she was someone she was not.

There's a parallel in there somewhere.

Sheryl Lee isn't Laura Palmer, of course.  But she did bring her to life.  And as she's never been one to hog the spotlight, she's maybe her own version of unknowable.  

But we're going to wish her a happy birthday anyway.

90th Anniversary of "The Bride of Frankenstein"

Today - April 22nd, 2025 - marks the 90th anniversary of the release of one of the greatest American films ever put to celluloid (created by and starring mostly Brits), The Bride of Frankenstein.  Not just a great horror movie, or horror-comedy, but a great film.  If you've slept on it, you're missing out.

Long time readers will know that Bride is one of my absolute favorite films.  I think I've watched it every Halloween for over a decade at this point, and had seen it numerous times before I started that habit.

If you've never seen it, it's short!  You should absolutely watch it.  But do watch Frankenstein first.  They're essentially a Part 1 and Part 2, much like the Godfather films.  

always cool when two dudes find common ground

Bizarre, hilarious, campy, frightening, insightful...  The Bride of Frankenstein has a bit of everything, including incredible set design and make-up.  It's still astonishing just to look at it nine decades on.  All this, and I think it has a phenomenal story with an ending you'll never see coming if your knowledge of The Bride comes from pop culture osmosis.  It's a shockingly modern film in many respects.

Anyway, I won't go on too long.  Even if you think you don't like old movies, I think this one is essential viewing.  

Also, shout out to Elsa Lanchester for making this look seem like a great idea.

Noir Watch: The Set-Up (1949)

we always stan Totter and Ryan

Watched:  04/21/2025

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  fourth?  fifth?

Director:  Robert Wise

It's been years since I watched The Set-Up (1949), and while reading Eddie Muller's new book, an updated Dark City Dames - a collection of bios of several stars of the noir movement, I was pondering rewatching it when TCM's Noir Alley showcase went ahead and programmed the film for last weekend.  

It's no secret we're fans of stars Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter, or director Robert Wise.  But because Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter aren't really household names, and it's a grimy boxing picture of its surface, I'm not shocked if you haven't heard of or seen this one.  

The film comes in at a taught, trim 73 minutes.  And, novel for its era, the movie unspools in an approximation of real-time - taking place in one night of crisis for an aging boxer and his wife, who can't take watching him get beaten every night.  Not anymore.

Horror Watch: I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

Watched:  04/21/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jacques Tourneur

I Walked With a Zombie (1943) is @#$%ing *great*.  Holy cats.  I'm mad at myself I took so long to see it.

Fun fact:  apparently I finished watching this movie on the 82nd anniversary of the film's release.  How about that?

More than a decade after White Zombie - an okay movie that I think drags - RKO put this one out.  It's considered part of a retrospective high point for RKO as Val Lewton was producing cheap and effective thrillers.  

Apparently the title is lifted from an article by journalist Inez Wallace who spent time in Haiti and met people who were basically without will thanks to drugs.  It also borrows a bit from Jane Eyre, one of my favorite reads from college days.

The movie is a Gothic mystery set on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian.  The beautiful wife of a sugar plantation owner has fallen into an odd stupor, able to be given commands, but she's otherwise lifeless, emotionless... mostly still unless directed to move around.  Frances Dee plays a nurse brought from Canada to care for her - and expects she's being asked to live in paradise, but like a character from Bronte, Byron or Poe - the husband of the "zombie" sees only death on the island. 

There's a riddle for what really happened.  Two brothers at war.  A mother who is remote from them.  

The location of the plantation leans into the history of the cruelty of slavery and the family's part in what happened, keeping the haunting figurehead from one of their slaveships on the premises, a tortured man impaled with arrows - a reminder of what they did.  Pretty wild as elected leaders are, in 2025, trying to erase slavery of all things from our history books.  The family has tried to make amends now in the mid-20th Century, seeing themselves as stewards of the history and the people here, not interfering, but making sure people are healthy and the plantation provides an economy.

Chabert Watch! Christian Mingle The Movie (2014)

Watched:  04/19/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First (and Last)

Director:  Corbin Bernsen

Job:  Ad company exec

new skill:  being brainwashed

Man: Jonathan Patrick Moore

Job of Man:  I don't know if I ever figured that out

Goes to/ Returns to:  Eventually goes to the Yucatan

Event:  several

Food:  Sushi

This is a movie about a mentally ill person who falls prey to a cult through a recruitment scheme posing as a dating site for Christians.  

Designed to be mistaken for a Hallmark movie, this infomercial for ChristianMingle.com (a very real dating site), our film - Christian Mingle The Movie (2014) - follows Lacey Chabert as a VP of Brand Management for a small advertising company.  She's unlucky in love, and is absolutely freaking out that, at age 30, she's still unmarried.  

The movie is written and directed by Corbin Bernsen, and so I have to lay a lot of blame at his feet, but also know he was having to make a movie for people who are maybe not really aware of how some of the things they wanted in their movie would play.  The film does have appearances by the eternally lovely Morgan Fairchild, Brian Keith, Stephen Tobolowsky, Bernsen, John O'Hurley and one actress I remember who was really pushed on us in sitcoms like 15 years ago.

On the surface level, it's a romantic comedy/ drama about a woman finding God while also finding a Good Man.  

On a meta level, this movie is essentially a warning shot to accomplished women who are being told they're a failure without a man.  Beware: you will have your entire life destroyed by people pretending good will but who will throw you away without batting an eye.

Noir Watch: The Steel Trap (1952)

Watched:  04/19/2025

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Andrew L. Stone

This one is a wild ride.

Look, I just like Joseph Cotten.  The man is a movie star, but also can be an everyman like no one's business.  And he was absolutely the right choice to be our lead.

He plays a sort of middle-management salary man at a bank, knows all the in's and out's, and is married to Teresa Wright (who played his niece in Shadow of a Doubt).  They have an adorable moppet of a daughter.  All is post-war happiness.  Or is it?

Cotten begins realizing how easy it would be for him to rob his own bank.  There's no femme fatale pushing him to do it - he just realizes he's clever enough to pull it off, and people trust him enough that he won't be found out til he's already out of the country.  It's basically asking the question of "why am I playing by the rules if the rules aren't doing me much good to really get ahead?"

And, so he waits til no one is looking at the end of a Friday and clears out the vault.

What follows shows up in movies like Quick Change where the heist just will not play by your carefully sorted rules.  So for about an hour we're watching every conceivable foul-up get in his way as he has to gaslight his wife (who he is taking with him, telling her he's on a business trip) to get them both on a plane.  In a way, it's almost painful as the issues mount up.

By nature, I'm a planner.  Jamie is well aware, my least favorite thing is a surprise, maybe even a good one, if it's going to throw off my schedule.  I am *much* better about this now than I was ten years ago, where I'd just lose my shit if things got off schedule.  So in a way, this movie seems designed to make me crazy.

We were warned by Eddie Muller in the intro that the writer/ directors of this movie are famous for having some bizarre and far-fetched set-ups, and this is certainly one of them.  There's no ticking clock at the outset of the movie - our hero just decides he needs to rob this bank NOW instead of just planning it out and re-working the plan until he's got a clean getaway planned.  

Ie: for a movie all about planning the perfect heist, what actually occurs is nothing of the sort.  And we get to watch Cotten spiral into being a real jerk as the walls he created close in.

Anyway, it wasn't my favorite movie.  But it did have a unique ending - that ends just before I'm pretty sure the whole thing would have blown up in his face, anyway, so - as they say - you get a happy ending depending on when you leave the story.

Chabert Horror Watch! Scarecrow (2013)

Chabert completes negotiations for her Hallmark contract

Watched:  04/19/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sheldon Wilson

A movie with a pretty good idea behind it, this movie has an okay first half hour or so and then throws away all of that goodwill in the bin by becoming a movie where things keep happening, but nothing really resolves itself.  And I can't tell if that's intentional - like a joke on the part of the writers - or laziness or sheer incompetence.

It's not even clear, based on what we saw before, that ten seconds after the credits role, that our Final Girl isn't going to get killed.

What's most weird is that the description of the film on IMDB - from the producers, I'd guess - is not what actually happens in the movie.  There's elements of that, but that's not really what happens.  I almost feel like this was a description of the script at some point but then they made a different movie through rewrites.  

A group of high schoolers is going to spend their day of Saturday Detention (ala The Breakfast Club) on a farm "disassembling" the famed scarecrow from the old Miller farm that's part of the town's annual Scarecrow Festival.  But the movie opens on two horny teens sneaking onto the farm first, planning to spook their pals when they arrive, and getting killed by our monster.  

The town has an annual Scarecrow Festival during which they have some game where they ritualistically "bury" the Scarecrow.  But it's essentially a small-town fall fest, I guess.  We never see it.

Superman 2025: Superman Day 2025

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Today is "Superman Day".  

The day commemorates the arrival of Action Comics #1 as it hit newsstands on April 18th, 1938.  

In years gone by, I might have written multiple paragraphs about what Superman means to me, but I'll hold onto that thought.  Nor will I provide a history lesson.  

What you should know is that Superman and Lois Lane arrived in one shot, echoing sci-fi and pulp-crime characters of the time, and somehow becoming more than the sum of their parts.  There's been plenty of iterations, and there will be more, across comics, movies, television, radio, video games and peanut butter bottles.  But today we're here to get jazzed about Superman as a concept so we all plan on going to see Superman.  

The reality of the matter is that this day is really Warner Bros. working hard to turn the wheel of the Superman ship after letting it steer a bit rudderless in the public's eye for decades.  It's work to rehab the idea of Superman for the average human with $20 to spend at the movies, and get people excited for this summer's new Superman movie when the last outings were not widely loved.

And that's okay!  Getting people excited for a movie, especially when you're giving them a version of that thing they've never seen before, is a challenge.   If they didn't try, I'd be more concerned.

This Saturday Night: "The Set-Up" on TCM's Noir Alley

Hey!

This Saturday (and with a replay Sunday morning), TCM is playing The Set-Up from 1949 on their signature film showcase Noir Alley.  

Why watch?

• People tend to think of film noir as detectives and trenchcoats and dames in slinky dresses.  This movie is the opposite of all that, and is still decidedly noir.  A working class story about a washed-up boxer and the woman who loves him.  
• An older boxer is losing fights, and on the night of what could be his final bout, his own manager has taken a pay-off to throw the fight, but hasn't told our man.
• Robert Ryan, a noir staple and dynamite as an actor, stars as the boxer who can't close the door on his career.  
• Audrey Totter is at her best in this movie.  Usually cast as the bad girl - and terrific in that position - this time she plays the tormented wife.  She's absolutely heart-breaking.
• The movie is directed by Robert Wise, who did every genre in Hollywood and always brought in a great picture.  

I don't usually make recommendations, but this one is a favorite.  If you have a chance to see it via Noir Alley on TCM or otherwise, now's the time to give it a watch.

New Fantastic Four Trailer Drops

I really wish Jack and Stan were here to see this.

Chabert 90's Watch! Lost in Space (1998)

Watched:  04/16/2025
Format:  Prime

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Stephen Hopkins

As Lost In Space (1998) concludes and 1990's-style "electronica" kicks in, complete with dialog samples from the film, you can find yourself missing your glow sticks and rave-ready mini-back-pack.  And you will also hear Lacey Chabert declare "this mission sucks".  

It does, Lacey.  It really, really does. 

It's maybe not a great sign for a movie that when the heroes are all killed in a fiery explosion in what becomes a divergent timeline, we cheered.

Back in March of 1998, I was at FAO Schwarz in Manhattan, and there was a huge, pre-release push for Lost in Space (1998) which was coming in just two or three weeks.   They had a life-size robot and toys with the display type I thought Star Wars would get (I underestimated).  I found this guy's web-page about the 1998 display that he wrote in 2006.  That robot kinda convinced me:  this movie will rule!

Anyway, the trailers were fine.  And after seeing the toys and the robot, I bought into the look, the chance to refresh an older property - that I had never actually seen.  The casting, which included William Hurt, Gary Oldman, Mimi Rogers, and Heather Graham, was insane. Matt LeBlanc of Friends fame also starred, and that was fine.  The movie also, of course, starred a teenage Lacey Chabert, which hit me in no particular way in '98 as I'd never seen Party of Five.   

It's been 27 years since I've seen the 1998 movie of Lost In Space - which I last saw on April 11th, 1998*.  But I have now completed the trilogy of Chabert vehicles that had the word "Lost" in the title (see also The Lost and The Lost Tree).  And, curiously, each film represents a different sort of bad.  A Lower-budget, silly and derivative studio pic with The Lost, a microbudget flick trying and failing to do supernatural thrills with with The Lost Tree, and - as Stuart put it - bloated 1990's studio excess, with Lost in Space.  

Classic Watch: The Godfather Part II (1974)

Watched:  04/13/2025

Format:  4K disc that failed, and then streaming

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Francis Ford Coppola

Well.  What do you even really say about The Godfather Part II (1974)?  I mean, really.  If you're looking for insight into this movie, is The Signal Watch really going to crack the case on this one?

As we'd done with Godfather, we broke Part II into two nights of viewing.  Jamie hadn't actually seen this one (I have no idea how that happened, and neither did she), and it was a delight seeing her wrapped up in the movie.  She can weigh in down in the comments with her reaction, but it was very positive.  

We had plenty to say about the impact The Godfather had on us back when we were a youth watching movies aimed at adults circa 1990.  In an era when the common wisdom was that the sequel was always worse and a money grab, watching the then-16 year old The Godfather Part II was a revelation of what was possible when you have the ground work of a classic.  Honestly, one of my reactions watching the movie is anger that it doesn't seem like many filmmakers have even tried to take apart these two movies and see what makes them work and try to one up them.

Chabert Watch! The Lost Tree (2016)

Watched:  04/13/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Brian A. Metcalf

Woof.

The Lost Tree (2016)?  More like "lost me 30 seconds in".  Amirite?  Where are my Lost Tree bros?

To me, the thing that is most interesting about this very not-good movie is less the movie than digging in a bit to how Hollywood works/ worked.  It's famously a town of hustlers, and for a brief while in the late 90's and through the 00's, thanks to the power of indie film, some of that got celebrated as we had breakout films like Swingers.  But since Ed Wood got his hands on a fog machine, genre has also been a part of indie film made for no money, but hoping an idea and a performance will carry the day.

That does not happen here.

This movie is a mess from the start.  The camera-work is maybe not the best, and shot on consumer video as near as I can tell.  The audio in mostly fine, I guess, but the soundtrack/ score is doing some Olympic-class lifting, desperately trying to convince the viewer something is happening, and we're not just watching a dude wander around by himself in an empty cabin or an open field for insanely long stretches.

I will be honest and say:  I watched this movie and I can describe what happens in it, but if there's a story here with a point or an ironic twist, I am at a loss.  

Horror Watch: The Body Snatcher (1945)

Watched:  04/12/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

So.  I love Universal Horror.  This is where we get Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, et al.  But, gosh darn it - those RKO horror films are good.  I was basking in how well done I found The Body Snatcher (1945) when I realized it was directed by Robert Wise, who I consider one of the best directors ever produced in the US, but who doesn't ever seem to get named among the greats.  But this is my blog, and here - Robert Wise reigns supreme.*

RKO's horror flicks are more "creepy tales" than relying on monsters and Jack Pierce make-up.   There's nothing supernatural here, no super science bringing beings to life.  It's more about the darkness in people, and that's where I think this movie works astoundingly well.

Anyway - I also learned some interesting history!  So, for twenty years or so, I've been aware that back in the day, it was hard to come by cadavers for medical schools, and so they'd, uhm....  pay dudes to steal bodies.  If you were near a medical school, there was an absolute chance that you were going to be dug up and dissected.  What I found out thanks to this movie is that ground zero for this practice getting particularly grim was in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Look up the Burke and Hare murders.  This shit is wild, yo.

But it turns out that if your business is selling bodies for fun and profit, it's easy to turn living people into bodies.

Anyhoo...  our movie finds a promising young medical student about to drop out of school as he can't afford it anymore  At the same time, a(n attractive) woman and her daughter come to see the school's headmaster to see if he'll perform surgery to help the daughter walk again.  The cab that is taking them there is driven by our man, Boris Karloff, who also happens to go dig up corpses by night and sell them to the school's headmaster.

What spins out is not a monster movie, but more the horror of the young doctor-to-be realizing what is going on, and his own complicity in the practice, while Boris Karloff and the head doctor reveal how they've been entwined for decades in this foul business of grave robbing, and what sort of man is happy to make money doing it, and why doctors are desperate for it.

The movie also co-stars Bela Lugosi as a servant who wants to get cut in on the body business.  

There are some truly great scenes and ideas in this movie - some from the source material, a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, and others made up for the film.  It's wonderfully shot by Robert De Grasse - and one of those things RKO always seemed to know to invest in to make their movies look phenomenal.  RKO was no poverty row studio, but they knew where to spend money (until Hughes took over).

All of the stuff with the singing girl is great horror movie work.  Hats off to Wise.

Karloff and Lugosi are rock solid in the movie, but I also really liked Edith Atwater as Meg - the head doctor's maid and mistress.  A complicated role that has to emote and thread the story together, she nails it.  She looked super familiar and I figured out that 24 years later, she was the inn-keeper in True Grit.  

Anyway - I really don't care to spoil the movie, just add it to the list.  There's also some more Val Lewton produced movies from this era I need to get into. Karloff followed these with Isle of the Dead and Bedlam, both of which are held in high esteem, but I've not yet seen.

*Dude never made a bad movie.  Maybe instead of watching every Chabert movie, I could have made a point by watching every Wise movie, but here we are.

50

And It's Still Alright

Nathaniel Rateliff

It ain't alright, the hardness of my head

Now, close your eyes and spin around

Say, hard times you could find it

Ain't the way that you want

But it's still alright

Late at night, do you lay around wondering?

Counting all the lines, ain't so funny now

Say, times are hard, you get this far, but it

Ain't the way that you want

I'll be damned if this old man don't

Start to count on his losses

But it's still alright

They say you learn a lot out there

How to scorch and burn

Gonna have to bury your friends

Then you'll find it gets worse

Standing out on the ledge

With no way to get down

You start praying for wings to grow

Oh, baby, just let go

I ain't alright, you keep spinning out ahead

It was cold outside when I hit the ground

Said, I could sleep here, forget all the fear

It will take time to grow

Maybe I don't know

Hey, tonight if you think about it

Remembering all the times that you pointed out

Say, the glass is clear but all this fear

Starts a-leaving a mark

Your idle hands are all that stands

From your time in the dark

But it's still alright

Chabert Watch! The Lost (2009)

Watched:  04/11/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bryan Goeres

Here's my theory:  the writers came up with the ending for The Lost (2009), and then had to work backward from there.  Desperate to keep anyone from guessing the ending, they kinda screwed up what you need to do with a mystery, which is leave clues that make you realize "oh, yeah, it was kinda there all along!"  But, nope.  They hid it so well, and the twist is so out of left field, you're just sort of left shrugging.

Not that anyone was invested in the prior 85 or so minutes of the movie before the twist ending.  

This is an oddly misogynistic supernatural thriller/ psychological mystery wherein Lacey Chabert plays a young woman in a Spanish insane asylum.  Three years prior, she seems to have set a mansion on fire as well as someone inside.  As a student, she was living in the guest house.  She looks pale and spooky as she watches it all burn, and maybe has psychic powers.

The movie is kind of badly shot.  The audio is poorly mixed, and not helped by Assante mumbling his way through the dialog so badly we turned on subtitles.  Also, a good portion of the cast is Spanish and not hitting every line in a way you can hear.  So when Dina Meyer shows up enunciating, it's a trip.  

Armand Assante, who I've only ever seen in Judge Dredd, plays a psychiatrist who examined Chabert briefly 3 years ago before saying "she's nuts" and leaving her in the Spanish psych ward.  Why she did not come back stateside, I am unsure.  Chabert's sister is Dina Meyer, who basically blackmails Assante into going to take a look at Chabert again.

Noir Watch: The Narrow Margin (1952)

Watched:  04/06/2025

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Richard Fleischer/ William Cameron Menzies

I've only mentioned this movie twice on the blog from what I can tell.  Once in 2010, and once in 2018.  That seems nuts, because I'm sure this was more like the 5th or 6th time I'd seen The Narrow Margin (1952).  

Personally, I love this movie.  I'm shocked I didn't get to it during the podcast.  I think SimonUK and I talked about double-billing it with the Gene Hackman-starring remake, which I still haven't seen.

The movie is pretty straightforward.  It's an RKO flick, so it's a bit more rough and tumble, a bit sexier and sassier, and the sense of danger a bit higher.  There's a whole backstory to the movie that stars Howard Hughes being out of his mind and thinking Jane Russell should really be in everything and also not getting how his own movies work.  You can look it up.  Today is not the day I make this a film history blog.

Clem Burke Merges With The Infinite

Blondie's social media has alerted folks to the passing of Clem Burke.

Longtime readers will know Jamie and I are Blondie fans and have seen them a couple of times.  

I say this not lightly - Clem Burke was likely the best drummer I've ever seen live.  Some of that (a lot of that) was technical proficiency, but no small amount of it was that he was having a party behind his drum kit. The man always seemed to love what he was doing.

I confess to following him on social media and going down a COVID-era YouTube hole a night or three just watching him play across the years and sometimes with different bands.  

If you never paid particular attention to Clem, (1) shame on you, and (2) here's a bunch of Clem Burke across multiple bands, and (3) Gerry shared this so I'm sharing it.  

If you want to just listen to Clem Burke in context and songs that are NOT Dreaming (which may be my favorite) here's a favorite:

and another:

Maria:

ah, heck.  Here's Dreaming.