2010's Watch: Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

Watched:  06/29/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Writer/ Director:  Drew Goddard

It's possible in fifteen or twenty years, this movie will be found and puzzled over as featuring folks who are now established stars, mixed with longtime stars.  Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) features Cynthia Erivo in what I will say should have been a break-out performance and her entree into film stardom, rather than waiting til Wicked.  Lewis Pullman is here.  As are Chris Hemsworth, John Hamm, Jeff Bridges and a not-50 Shades-ing Dakota Johnson.  

But this movie came out and tanked.  That's neither here nor there, but it has meant that it's not exactly on the forefront of people's minds as few eyes saw the movie in the theater and it's not found an audience on home video. 

What's odd is that Metacritic comes in at a mid-range-ish 60, and the audience score is a generous 71.  And yet... no one saw this.

However, maybe in the same way of The Last of Sheila from 1973, it will find an audience that will make sure it has a cult following.  Or not.  (I heartily recommend The Last of Sheila.)

Doc Watch: My Mom Jayne - a film by Mariska Hargitay (2025)

Watched:  06/28/2025

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mariska Hargitay

I don't watch Law & Order much, but for a while back in the 00's and 10's, SVU was the one I'd watch in re-runs.  And Mariska Hargitay was hard to miss as the ultra-driven cop, Detective Olivia Benson.  But it was probably in the 2010's that I figured out her parents were screen legend Jayne Mansfield and body builder Mickey Hargitay.  

Mansfield is the stuff of Hollywood Babylon legend, following a career path that feels one-part Monroe, one-part Jane Russell.  I've seen only two or three Mansfield movies, and she struck me as very good at what she did (I liked her a lot in The Burglar), but she and I don't cross paths much in my TCM viewing.  

Once I knew about her parentage, I also never could quite sort out Mariska Hargitay's domestic situation, as I couldn't believe she'd even been born when Mansfield died in a car wreck in 1967.  It seemed Mariska was a smidge older than I'd guessed (good genes, I guess) - but she was three at the time, and in the car when it happened.  But, due to her age when Mansfield passed, Hargitay didn't have memories of her mother, and she wasn't raised by her.  

The doc, My Mom Jayne: a Film by Mariska Hargitay (2025), is Hargitay coming to terms with who her mother was, learning who she really was away from the public, and embracing her relationship with the woman she never really knew.