Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" Turns 40

If you weren't in middle school by 1986 or 1987, I don't care what you think about Frank Miller's four-issue series, The Dark Knight Returns.  Sorry, young reader!     

There was context to when the comic came out, an understanding of what was changing in media and culture and comics, and if you grew up on comics in the wake of Dark Knight Returns, it's like trying to tell people Revolver isn't a breakthrough album after all, or that Citizen Kane doesn't matter (which the internet is always more than happy to do, and seem quite foolish in the process).

I don't do this often - generally I'm a "hey, like what you like, but here's my opinion" guy.  But sometimes The Kids(tm) are just wrong, and I don't think you had to be there at the time - you can just have a reasonable knowledge of recent history, comics history and have read a book somewhere along the line.  And so, in this case, when I have seen 10,000 bad takes by bad take-havers, here is mine.

Mainstream superhero comics have some key years.*  

Tom Noonan Merges With The Infinite

Tom Noonan is one of the best actors I ever saw in a movie.  I've never gotten over his performance in What Happened Was...   

He was never a leading man, but every time he showed up, you were getting something new and unexpected.  Truly brilliant, even in stuff like RoboCop 2, or giving soul to Frankenstein's monster in Monster Squad.  And, really the perfect version of Dolarhyde in Manhunter.  

Over the years he retreated from big pictures and that's how we got What Happened Was...   We got other appearances here and there - he came in to one episode of Louie and blew the doors off.  But his days of playing types in big budget pictures was over.

But, man.  What a performer.  

Wise Watch: Mystery In Mexico (1948)

Watched:  02/17/2026

Format:  Sketchy Russian streaming site

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

I have no idea what happened here.  It's totally fine, but a major step down from Born to Kill.  But Mystery in Mexico (1948) is also a lot lighter - frothy, really.  It feels like a B movie at 65 minutes, with a mystery that is mostly an excuse to go to Mexico.  Which - I can blame no one for wanting a little jaunt to visit our neighbors.

Insurance company detective Steve Hastings (William Lundigan) has a colleague that has disappeared with a $250K necklace (that's 1948 dollars).  He follows the guy's singer sister, Victoria (Jacqueline White) down to Mexico City - and he relentlessly pursues her as a sex pest which means he's also there to help her when she gets into trouble.  

The film is a co-production with a Mexican studio, and has plenty of Mexican talent.  It does its bit to show off Mexico and Mexico City as a place of class and adventure.  But it feels super slight.  I get the feeling they were on a vacation and occasionally took breaks to make a movie.  

It's totally fine.  For some reason I thought Ricardo Montalban was in it, but with a 65 minute run time, at 30 minutes and no Montalban, I realized I was very wrong and a bit cross.  Montalban in this era was awesome.  Well, in all eras.

There's a few decent scenes.  Nothing to write home about.  

But Jacqueline White is in two of my favorite movies (Crossfire and The Narrow Margin), so it was nice to see her here as well.  (late edit:  White is apparently still with us at 103 years old!)

No real notes on Wise here other than that this is emotional whiplash after Born to Kill and really marks what I think of when it comes to Wise - he's a chameleon.  He gets what is needed, no matter the genre.  And this one mixes genres with the light-hearted detective and some real threats of violence.

Jesse Jackson Merges With The Infinite

Back in an era when the news media was functional, I was well aware of Jesse Jackson, his history and some of what he stood for.  From a young age, I understood Jackson was a young man who had worked alongside Dr. King, and who was carrying that mission forward.  As he would run for President every cycle, I was aware of the need for him as a voice to speak to issues impacting underrepresented Americans - running knowing his chances were next to zero, but including his messages in the hope of seeing those ideas shape the platform of the Democratic party.

Jackson was an unapologetic voice for rights and for those not represented by mainstream politics.  He could be challenging to the status quo, even antagonistic, speaking plainly about uncomfortable issues like race, socio-economics and the engines that benefitted from a more egalitarian society.  

While figures like John Lewis would follow political paths into office and effect change in those halls of power, Jesse Jackson remained involved via activism and media appearances.  He also led peace delegations and was seemingly omnipresent on the national/ international stage for much of the 1980's and into the 1990's.  

Sometimes controversial, Jackson's vision for how to get to that better world sometimes seemed myopic, but he did have understandable goals.  He certainly had his moments deserving public scrutiny, but it's also hard not to see folks with their own agenda amplifying any blunder he might have had.

During my last years of school, I saw Jackson speak on campus (on the steps of Main) at the University of Texas at Austin, I believe during the Hopwood Decision era. It was kind of amazing to see him in person leading thousands of people.

Jackson remained active well into the 2010's, but was no longer who the press ran to for soundbites.  His legacy of activism and work as a voice for Civil Rights has already inspired generations.  

Kids Watch: Godzilla vs Kong (2021)

Watched:  02/16/2026

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  3rd?  4th?

Director:  Adam Wingard

What I learned is the power of friendship.  And the power of a right hook to knock someone through a skyscraper

-my nephew, aged 10

Today was the day I knew was coming since Jason and Amy told me they were pregnant.  Today, I watched a Godzilla movie with my nephew and niece.  And, I am proud to say, The Boy was into it.  

Robert Duvall Has Merged With The Infinite

Actor Robert Duvall has passed.  He was 95.  

Gen-X and older have a place in their hearts and minds for Duvall who starred in *something* we loved along the way, and was key to why we loved it.  He has 146 credits listed on IMDB as an actor, 14 as a producer and 5 as a director.  

Like most folks my age, it was his turn as Tom Hagen in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.  But swiftly after, it was Apocalypse Now, Colors, The Natural, THX-1138, MASH and countless others.  

Duvall has a weightiness to his performances, a believability that served him well in parts like Tom Hagen, but also sold the absurd (see Lt. Col. Kilgore) as real.  Truly one of the greats of his generation - and part of why we were so lucky to get that cast and crew on The Godfather to begin with.  

I admit, there are large parts of his filmography I've never seen - I read Lonesome Dove instead of watching it, for example.  But that's going to happen with someone with so many credits, almost all of which people will say were solid.

He'd obviously slowed down, but he still has one more credit as in post-production even now.  

Here's to one of the greats.  

Fantasy Watch: Red Sonja (2025)

Watched:  02/15/2026

Format:  Kanopy

Viewing:  First

Director:  M.J. Bassett

Jim had been rec'ing this movie at me for a while, and the man knows me well.  

Heads up - most people are going to dismiss this movie, and that's fine.  And maybe my reasons for saying "this is kind of cool" won't add up, but here we go.

I have no idea what the budget was for Red Sonja (2025) but it's certainly not a $150 million.  So, this is a movie that does a lot of "you get the idea" hand waving with FX and sets, etc...  that was part and parcel of exactly this kind of movie when it was starring Brigitte Nielsen and making me stay up way too late on a Saturday in middle school.  And, in fact, I'm kind of wondering if we lost something about the charm and allure of those movies when all they had were talent in front of and behind the camera, where a movie would sink or swim based on story and characters.  And cool ideas.  We couldn't just smother everything with CGI.

Stupid Valentine's Watch: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

they tried to combine the "Love, Actually" poster design with an Apatow design

Watched:  02/14/2026

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Glenn Ficarra and John Requa

Two time stamps on Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) stick out for me.  

The first was that I had my first chuckle at 22:00 and change.  In a 2 hour movie.  This did not bode well for the "comedy" I'd put on.

The second was that I paused the movie to do something thinking there was maybe 10 minutes left and there was still 54 minutes of movie, and (a) I could not believe how long this movie felt and (b) I had the passing thought that this was the sort of movie critical milksops like Owen Gleiberman used to wet themselves over in the 90's.  Movies that think they have something to say, some poetic statement about life and love, but are just absolutely hollow and maybe kind of rotten inside.

Gleiberman, then plaguing Entertainment Weekly, gave it an A.*  

When people say "what happened to romantic comedies?" - this is what happened to them.  We decided what rom-coms needed to be were bleak melodramas starring Steve Carrell as a sad sack who keeps taking hits someone thought were funny, but just seem kind of sad, really.  Yes, we all liked The 40 Year Old Virgin, but that was a movie where he was surrounded by really funny people and managed by Judd Apatow.  Here, he's just miserable for two hours.  

Friday the 13th Watch: Friday the 13th (1980)

in

Watched:  02/13/2026

Format:  Amazon  

Viewing:  Second - but first since I was a kid

Director:  Sean S. Cunningham

So, when I was a very young kid, my friends who lived near us had (a) a VCR and (b) a sister in high school who rented Rated-R movies.  So, yeah, I saw this when I was 7 or 8.  I am pretty sure I saw it again in middle school, because I very much remember Betsy Palmer going murdery.  

I've never been a huge fan of horror movies where the main attraction is "the kills", and that's absolutely what this movie is.  It's just a lot of set-up (some might say too much set-up) and then people getting murdered by surprise.  

Sure, we get some set-up at the beginning of Camp Crystal Lake being a bad place where bad things happen, but the characters seem unaware of any of that mythology.  They're just going to the toilet and getting murdered there.  

Then, Betsy Palmer shows up as Jason's mom and blows the @#$%ing doors off for the last 1/4th of the movie.  She's great.  And, in fact, the last quarter of the movie is really good, which is how we got something like 9 sequels.  

Technically, I find the movie kind of interesting.  It's *so* voyeuristic, and effectively so, it's been spoofed and borrowed from, etc... to where you really can't do this anymore.  I think this would really speak to De Palma and kinda shows up in Body Double four years later.  Plus, there's some interesting editing - that shot of Alice's face over the lake is nifty.  

You can kind of see the line from Black Christmas to Halloween to Friday the 13th, and I'll argue, this movie does start feeling like a xerox of a xerox by this point.  ALl of the movies have a murderer sneaking around and unsuspecting young folks getting picked off.  And I can't say why this feels un-scary in comparison.  Black Christmas is *upsetting*.  Halloween works like a charm, in part because of Laurie Strode - and this movie just doesn't have that.  Sure, Kevin Bacon appears, but he's also dead pretty quick by comparison.  And we don't spend much time with our final girl (Adrienne King).

The version I watched was restored and looks better than any version I've seen previously.  It's really weird to see a movie of this vintage that is so clearly a B-movie shot on a shoe string with some occasionally iffy acting now looking as clean as anything new.  

I don't know the actual history of the box office or anything on this movie or this series.  I just wasn't watching horror during the period where these were coming out left and right and have no real nostalgia for these movies.  But I might watch the first few.  I've seen them!  I just don't really recall a lot.   But I think Jason doesn't even get the mask til the 3rd movie.  We'll see!

Noir Watch: Illegal (1955)

Watched:  02/13/2026

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lewis Allen

First, this movie has a terrible title.  I think we can all agree on that.

Second, this movie has amazing design for the titles.  Never mind that they don't fit the mood of the movie.

I feel like Joe Dante would approve.

Edward G. Robinson, the most surprising of leading men til Danny DeVito's star rose unexpectedly in the 1990's, plays a District Attorney for The City.  He's such a cracker jack, he tries his own cases, until one day he accidentally sends DeForest Kelly to the chair. 

The City does not mess around with swift justice.  Like, Edward G. Robinson only has time for dinner after the trial and already Kelly is a dead man walking.  Though Robinson finds out really as fast as one is like to do, he calls the prison just as the lights flicker.

Anyway - disgraced, Robinson quits his job and spirals into drink.  At the bottom of his lowly state he's recruited by a mob boss who wants an attorney on his side, but Robinson knows that once this guy gets his hooks in you, you're stuck forever and declines.  But after he gets involved in an embezzling case, he finds he's accidentally involved with the crook. 

As DA, he was mentoring Nina Foch who he's tried to not get romantic eyes for, pushing her to his investigator.  And Jayne Mansfield shows up as a plucky piano player (famously, she could very much play the piano and other instruments).  

Involved with the gangster, Robinson's desire to win cases takes over and he doesn't care much who he's getting off the hook, or what insane theatrics he needs to perform to win the case.  And the theatrics are insane, indeed.  

He's beating the pants off the DA with such frequency, they begin to suspect there's a mole and look at Foch, who is actually going to Robinson to chastise him for working for the devil.

SPOILERS

Turns out Robinson's investigator pal is also teamed up with the mob.  When his now-wife finds, Foch, that out, he may murder her to keep her quiet, and, cornered, she shoots him dead.  Now that's noir, baby!  

Robinson has to defend her, and things start spilling out.

Look, this wasn't my favorite movie.  I wasn't overly enamored of Foch, who comes off as a stiff.  It's pretty clear Mansfield is there because the studio knew this about Foch (see the above poster).  

In the end Robinson dies so that the Breen Office could be satisfied.  But all he was doing was his job - look,, winning a case is how this works.  And I get that we want a story about a good man who becomes corrupt, and how that could happen - and his last act of heroism (he is dying from an assassin's bullet in the last scene as he gets Foch off the hook).  But it just never feels as epic as the movie thinks it is.

And I get that they were trying to do something cute with the name "Illegal", but it's kind of indicative of how this movie works.  You can see what they're doing, but it's just not that exciting.

Robinson is watchable enough to carry the movie, but, yeah, this was just not my thing.  

Finland Watch: Sisu (2022)

Watched:  02/11/2026

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jalmari Helander

My mother's parents were both from Finland.*  So, growing up, I heard and saw the word "sisu" here and there.  Occasionally I'd see it printed on something, and upon trying to understand what it was, never really put it together.  It's funny, because Sisu (2022) starts by saying the term is "untranslatable", and then spends the runtime of the movie showing instead of telling.  And if you still don't get it by movie's end, ain't no one going to be able to help you.

It will not hurt to Google "Finland in WWII" for a quick synopsis of the rotten position Finland was in before, during and after WWII.  As a nation bordering the Soviet Union, who had tried to claim Finland almost immediately after the Communist take-over, After The Winter War of 1939-1940, Finland lost swaths of land but was not annexed.  Finland sided with the Nazis for several years of the war against the USSR, seeing an alliance as a chance to get the land back.  

In the end, they switched teams, forming an alliance with the Soviets and purging the Nazis from Finland (especially Lapland).  

But that's just the backdrop.

The movie is extraordinarily simple.  A former Finnish soldier, who lost everything (family, home, etc...) during the war with the USSR, has turned his back on people and World War II raging around him.  During the war, he was known as "The Immortal" - seemingly unstoppable and unkillable, and racking up a massive body count.  While war rages around him, he's out in Lapland digging for gold and hanging with his dog.

While riding his horse back to civilization with a coupleof bags of gold, he passes Nazis going back to Germany, the tail end of the Nazi occupation, and leaving with everything behind them burning.  Being Nazis, they begin to mess with our hero, and... then it's mostly a Tom and Jerry cartoon, with Aatami (Jorma Tommila) - aka: The Immortal - killing a whole lot of Nazis and liberating a truckload of comfort women, who are happy to join in on this revenge thing.

It falls in line with a John Wick sort of movie, where a plot is a pretext for action sequences, and the stakes never really get higher or lower than survival on either side.  And, as this movie is 85% blowing up National Socialists, it's hard to dislike.  

The "sisu" in question is Aatami's drive to wipe the map of every last one of these bastards, paired with his endurance to withstand their assaults.  

I was a big fan of Rare Exports when I finally saw it, and Jalmari Helander, the writer/director here, is the same brain behind this movie and its sequel.  He knows how to do *a lot* with what he has on hand - like... Lapland.  He also isn't afraid to swing for the fences with extremes, making most horror movies look tame in comparison to the havoc wrought by Aatami.  

The movie is a bit of a cathartic cartoon, and that's okay.  If the worst thing that happens out of this is we all learn the word "sisu" and embrace the concept, we're none the worse off.

 

*my grandfather was actually from the border of Finland and Sweden and spoke only Swedish until he immigrated to the U.S. and landed in a Finnish community.  In the US he learned both Finnish and English.  And married my Finnish grandmother.  It's also worth noting, my mother was a very late addition to the family, and my grandparents were born between 1898 and 1908, so everything was very old school with them.

The Cosmic "Mean Girls" Stars "Stranded on a Tropical Isle Movie" Connection

and no one ever saw these actors ever, ever again

When walking out of the theater for Send Help, the recent Rachel McAdams thriller directed by Sam Raimi, I confessed to CB that this movie had striking similarities to a recent Hallmark movie I'd watched, which starred Lacey Chabert.  In early January, I'd seen Lost in Paradise.  

Both movies feature someone in the corporate world landing on a tropical island where they kind of discover their true selves.  

I utterly forgot about the Rachel McAdams/ Lacey Chabert Mean Girls connection, perhaps because of the aforementioned Rachel McAdams face-blindness.  

Anyway, here's a whole article on the odd coincidence.  Heavy on the spoilers.  (Thanks, Paul!)

Signal Watch Reads: 1960's Austin Gangsters - Organized Crime That Rocked the Capital

Not too long ago, I read Jesse Sublett's follow up to this book, Last Gangster in Austin.  I enjoyed the book and determined to check out his first installment, 1960's Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime That Rocked the Capital.  

There's less of a clear narrative to this book than the follow-up.  That's not a product of poor writing or research with this first book - instead, there's a wider scope, more folks involved, and it takes place over a longer timeline.  All of that territory means you have to think in bullet points while adding some color.

In 1960's Austin Gangsters, Sublett charts the rise and fall of regional criminals in what was then the sleepy college and State Capital town of Austin, Texas.  

I listened to the audiobook version, which ran less than five hours.  Much to my delight, it was narrated by former Superman voice actor, George Newbern, who gets almost all of the Texas locations correct, minus one or two.*

Chabert Watch: What If God Were The Sun? (2007)

Watched:  02/07/2026

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stephen Tolkin

We're still working our way through the Chabert-a-Tron 3000, and this checks another box.  I think I've only found one more movie was released on disc, so after that... who knows?

A pre-Hallmark Chabert had such a weird career.  Maybe all actors have an odd, bumpy start, but this movie was made in the thick of the period where Chabert was doing a lot of roles in scrappy indie movies you've never heard of, but then she was getting good work in smaller movies like Reach For Me which feel like they're at least trying to do something a bit more meaningful.  

I'm not really familiar with the Lifetime Network oeuvre, but this movie is much more in line with Reach For Me than it is, say, Be My Baby or The Pleasure Drivers.  And, it's another one of Chabert's movies where she works with one of the greats.  This time, her co-star is Gena Rowlands.

The six degrees of separation with Chabert is bananas.

Wise Noir Watch: Born to Kill (1947)

Watched:  02/07/2026

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Robert Wise

In the world of film noir, there's movies that are a bit gritty, and then there's movies like Born to Kill (1947) that look around at the shadier movies and say "hold my beer".  

First - we don't talk enough about Claire Trevor.  Stunningly good actor who has been largely forgotten by non-classic film buffs, but who won an Academy Award the year after this movie for her remarkable role in Key Largo.  Trevor didn't just work in noir, but in noir - she's one of the most active women of the genre, and is who you give a role to when you know the character is going to get extreme and you need for them to still feel like someone you might know in real life.  She's also fantastic in Murder, My Sweet, Raw Deal, Dead End, and you might know her from Stagecoach.    

Here, she plays a woman seeking a divorce in classic 1940's fashion - by going to Reno for six weeks and then being granted her divorce.  As she's planning her return home, her neighbor is murdered by a jealous boyfriend, played by Lawrence Tierney.*  She doesn't know it was him, but she stumbles on the bodies but doesn't call the cops - wanting to stay out of whatever happened and just get home.

Welsh Watch: How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Watched:  02/07/2026

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Ford

Pondering how many Maureen O'Hara movies I'd actually seen, I noted I'd never seen How Green Was My Valley (1941), a massive Academy Award winner than got Best Picture the year Citizen Kane was nominated.  It's funny as not much changes with the Academy - a deeply sentimental movie with some good social points and dripping with nostalgia beat out a technical and narrative achievement that trades weepy for chilling.  

Based on a popular 1939 novel, the movie retains the approach, like a memoir detailing the various incidents and threads that shape the decline of a mining community in Southern Wales presumably in the late 19th Century.  In addition to O'Hara as the sister in a family with five brothers, the movie's focal point and narrator is a very young Roddy McDowall, who slowly loses his innocence and idyllic youth.  We also have Walter Pidgeon as a pastor at the church, Donald Crisp as the father navigating the changes - sometimes well, sometimes less well.  And there's an army of people you'll recognize from The Quiet Man, part of Ford's company of players.  

First Watch: The Parent Trap (1961)

Watched:  02/05/2026

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  David Swift

So, The Parent Trap (1961) is one of those movies that gets so heavily referenced, I figured I was good skipping it.  Twins (Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills) are separated at birth, one goes with Mom (a radiant Maureen O'Hara) and one goes with Dad (Brian Keith) - and neither is supposed to know the other exists.  For reasons.

Kids meet at camp, figure out they're sisters, and swap places for a bit til it's time to reveal who they are and force their parents back together.  Wackiness ensues.  

After we finished The Muppet Show special on Disney+, the menu offered up this movie, and I mentioned I'd never seen it, and Jamie insisted.  I mean, it was not exactly a hard sell.  I'll watch Maureen O'Hara read the dictionary.

Anyhoo, my impression of the plot was largely right.  What I wasn't prepared for is the kind of dark sense of humor the movie has, and that it's even a little bawdy at times - for a live-action Disney movie from 1961.  It's really funny.

Yeah, I really liked The Parent Trap.  Who knew?

Up All Night Watch: Assault of the Party Nerds (1989) & Assault of the Party Nerds 2 (1995)

Watched:  01/17 and 02/04/2026

Format:  YouTube - Up All Night

Viewing:  First/ First

Director:  Richard Gabai

Rhonda Shear is back with an all-new version of her 90's show Up All Night, now playing on YouTube.  

Look, I'm not going to discuss these two movies.  They're B movies from jump, and proud of it.  One is a Revenge of the Nerds knock-off, and one is a movie about our lead/ director as now a private detective.

Of note - Linnea Quigley appears in both movies.  Troy Donahue appears in the first.  Burt Ward, Rhonda Shear appear in the second.

While both movies are exactly the stunning material you're used to from Up All Night, the Rhonda-starring Up All Night bumpers are the highlight.  Richard Gambai appears with both movies, but he and Rhonda do a bit of a retrospective and talk about their 90's glory days.  It's kind of interesting to hear about working in the fringes during that period.  

If the show seems like it's trying to figure itself out - in all fairness, Up All Night was also reinventing itself constantly over its 8 year run.  So it's just kind of whatever it needs to be at any given time.

The Muppet Show is back. Sort of. Maybe.

Mind blowing.  

We've all seen so many reboots or relaunches as they try to recapture the magic - including with The Muppet Show which has had Muppets Tonight, that weird ABC thing, and other specials and attempts - and if anything out there gets even partially close, we all cheer.

But, holy cats, is the new episode of The Muppet Show on Disney+ like a very real continuation of the original series.  Was happy to see all my old Muppet friends in their natural environs.  

Anyway, my social media is ablaze with people celebrating the mighty return of the show, which means you've likely seen it, or will.  And maybe Disney will let them keep doing this?  

Kudos to Sabrina Carpenter for being the ideal Muppet Show guest.  And Maya Rudolph for being Maya Rudolph.  

Loved it.  Will watch if Disney greenlights more episodes.  

Happy Birthday, Ida Lupino

Happy birthday, Ida Lupino, born this day in 1918.

She's actually British born, but fine, Google robot.

Western Watch: How The West Was Won (1962)

Watched:  02/02/2026

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Directors:  John Ford - Henry Hathaway - George Marshall

The word that leaps to mind watching How The West Was Won (1962) is "spectacle".  Really, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything else quite like it.  

It's a movie with an overture and intermission and exit music.  Its runtime is almost three hours.  There are three big directors!

It was shot for Cinerama - one of two movies ever shot in the format.  It's intended to be a nigh-immersive experience, with three sync'd 35mm projectors running in unison against a curved screen that surrounds you at about 140 degrees.  

Raimi Watch: Send Help (2026)

Watched:  02/02/2026

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sam Raimi

So, two things before we get started.

1.  Back in college, my movie buddy was CB.  We went to film school together back in the day and saw lots and lots of movies together.  Turns out, CB now lives very close to me, and for the first time in decades we were taking in a genre movie like it was the mid-90's all over again.  (I saw Dead Alive with CB, for example).  Shout out to CB!

2.  I have Rachel McAdams face blindness.  It's a serious condition.  Jamie thinks it's a funny game to ask me occasionally who that person is on TV or in an ad or whatever, and I never know who she is.  I have no idea why.  She's a perfectly lovely woman, but if I was the witness when she committed a crime, she'd get off scot free.  Sure, I'll recognize her here, but when she's in her next movie trailer, Jamie will ask me again who that actress is, and I will have no idea.

This is also the third movie I've seen inside of a month that was about getting marooned on an island.  January 4th, we watched a Hallmark movie, Lost in Paradise and last week we watched A Game of Death.  Love an unintentional theme.  

If you've seen the trailer, you know what this movie is about.

Amazon Watch: The Wrecking Crew (2026)

Watched:  01/31/2026

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Angel Manuel Soto

So, I was a fan of The Expanse, and I saw Frankie Adams - who played Martian Gunnery Sergeant Roberta Draper on the show - was in a new action movie with Jason Mamoa and Dave Bautista.  So, despite some negative stuff I'd seen online, I put on The Wrecking Crew (2026).  

Positives:  

• it does have Frankie Adams
• there's some bits about Hawaiian culture I didn't know
• you get to see Hawaii

Negatives:  

• this movie is terrible

80's Regret Sci-Fi Watch: Millennium (1989)

this is a movie about Cheryl Ladd's hair

Watched:  01/30/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Michael Anderson

So, in 1989, I was 14 and just started high school.  During the summer, at B. Dalton I'd picked up some Starlog-type magazine that had gone all-in on how we should all go see Millennium (1989) upon its release.  I knew who Kris Kristofferson was (I'm from Texas, he's from Brownsville), but not Cheryl Ladd, who was coming off a run of TV shows, etc... that I didn't watch.  She was a thing, but not so much of a thing to those of us exiting middle-school.

The magazine pitched the movie as a dystopian sci-fi epic with a robot, and, hey...  I was sold.  

flight attendant hair

Also, in high school one meets new people, and free from the shackles of knowing me in middle school, a lovely girl and I met, and decided to go on "a date".  What I now get in 2026 that I did not get in 1989:  I guess this girl really wanted to go out with me, because there was no way in hell she wanted to see this dumb-ass movie.*

Catherine O'Hara Merges With The Infinite

I don't know what it says about me that of the famous people whose passing I regularly note, this is maybe the third that genuinely upset me.  Like, tears, and whatnot.  

Doesn't everyone love Catherine O'Hara?

Part of that SCTV crew who went on to do some of the most meaningful work in media of the last fifty years, O'Hara has been everywhere, from Home Alone to Beetlejuice to, most recently, The Studio, to her masterful, beautiful turn as Moira Rose in eighty episodes of Schitt's Creek.  And, of course, all of her roles in the ensemble of Christopher Guest's movies, like A Mighty Wind and Waiting for Guffman.  

Absolutely one of my favorite performers, I am shocked and saddened that she's gone.

Anyway, the other two were David Bowie and Stan Lee.  

Wise Watch: Criminal Court (1946)

Watched:  01/29/2026

Format:  A shady Russian website

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

I have to assume this 62 minutes flick was a B-movie in the classic sense.  The term originated not to mean a cheesy movie, but the way movies *used* to work was that you would basically pay to enter the theater any time that night, and there would be the feature movie, or A-movie.  But there would also be cartoons, newsreels, etc...  and a B-movie.  And that generally meant a cheaper feature film that was not as full of stars, big sets, etc...  And usually it had a shorter run-time.  Some of those B-movies were very popular, after all - people were still trying to make something good.*

This movie feels almost like it should be part of a series, but it's not.  There are characters who we just know as "types", so the familiarity makes it feel like you've just walked in during the first Season 2 episode of an ongoing show.  The flick stars Tom Conway as a Matlock-like defense attorney who is prone to in-court antics that would more likely land him in jail than get his clients exonerated.  In fact, to prove one guy is not a credible witness, he fakes a breakdown and wields a revolver in court, threatening people.

Unless that's an approved method on the bar exam.  You lawyers let me know.

Chabert Watch: Be My Baby (2007)

Watched:  01/29/2026

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bryce Olson

One of the worst movies I've ever seen.  

Just amazing.

I found this disc for cheap a couple weeks back and have been putting this off because the reviews were not kind.  And for a long time, I was fine avoiding it, because it looked awful.  But here we are.

Be My Baby (2007) wants to be a particular kind of comedy about stunted adulthood and the world's most this-would-never-work scam.  It's entirely misanthropic til its confusing and unearned ending, and I cannot fathom how this got funding if someone didn't just have rich parents.

The script is a trainwreck starting with the concept.  The issues continue with the look and sound of the film - all very "student film" with awkward set-ups and occasional room echoes, etc... which do the movie no favors.  Completely flat lighting, etc.. Wooden acting.  Every take feels like "we're gonna get this in two takes and then we have to move on."  A product of a low-rent production.  Fine.  I've seen way worse.

But, my god, the actual story....

I don't know what was going on in Los Angeles from about 1995-2015, but the belief in the baseline shittiness of humanity that drives the whole premise of so many of these low budget movies is absolutely wild.

Wise Watch: A Game of Death (1945)

Watched:  01/27/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

Technically I should have watched The Body Snatcher (1945) next in my Robert Wise movie marathon, but I just watched that in April, so I'm going to save it for October.  It's a solid horror entry, so let's do that in the spooky season.

So, instead, I found A Game of Death (1945) on YouTube.*

Minimal surprises here, really.  It's an adaptation of the Richard Connell short story The Most Dangerous Game, which might as well be called "the most frequently adapted/ riffed upon/ re-done plot in movies".  

A wartime-era movie, it stars people who were not part of the war effort, and the only familiar face was Audrey Long, who will also be in the movie again in two movies when we hit Born to Kill.  Our lead is John Loder, who, honestly I simply don't recognize, but he's in Now, Voyager, so.  

I give Robert Wise and RKO a lot of credit here.  They don't shy away from the implications of the film, or how psychotic everything is, even if they give our villain an out - that he's suffering some sort of mental instability since he got crosswise with a Cape Buffalo that bonked him on the head.**

But the vibe of the movie is dark from the start as we watch a ship get tricked into wrecking itself, and swiftly realize it was intentional, everyone else is dead, and what our hero has walked into.  And what plans our villain (Edgar Barrier) has for the stranded woman once he offs her brother.  

The two servants are appropriately creepy, Gene Roth playing the cruel German henchman and Hollywood utility player Noble Johnson.  

The hunt sequence makes excellent use of someone's jungle sets, and Wise puts the camera behind the hunted in some visually striking sequences.  

All in all, the movie is fine.  It feels smarter than you'd expect here and there - allowing our hero to never be an idiot or be more than a step behind the audience and what it knows, and maybe a few steps ahead.  

The one thing I'd say that could have been hilarious would have been if when the villain gives our hero a knife before sending him into the jungle, if dude would have stabbed the baddie right there and proclaimed himself the winner.   I honestly don't know why he didn't.  

*I now have a policy of "it's fine" if I watch a movie on YouTube that has been uploaded by someone unofficial.  Look, the studios are refusing to make a lot of movies available via legitimate means, which means they've abandoned both the movies and the audience for those movies.  If they want money, they need to stop letting accountants drive decisions regarding access.  They can put the movie on YouTube as easily as MovieFiend668 or whatever

**I just recently watched a YouTube on how dangerous Cape Buffalo are - and they're responsible for an absurd number of human deaths each year.