Noir Watch: The Man I Love (1946)

Watched:  07/06/2026

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Raoul Walsh

Why lie?  I watched The Man I Love (1946) again to watch Ida Lupino in terrific dresses and with great hair.

The unintentionally funny thing to me about this movie is that her character, Petey Brown, says "honey" to everyone in the exactly the way my grandmother from Perth Amboy, New Jersey did.  It feels honest.

I don't mind a good melodrama, and while this is certainly at least noir-adjacent, if not full-noir, it's a melodrama at heart.  

I think I did a pretty good write-up of this movie in 2022, so no reason to re-do all that work.  Almost every thought I had watching the movie this time that would go in a fresh post, I covered there, including not at all being subtle about my big movie crush on Lupino.

But this is also a family with genetics that made sisters out of Lupino, Andrea King and Martha Vickers.  That's some good DNA.

Anyway - fun to rewatch.  AND - apparently this is the *extended* cut.  There's a whole scene I don't believe I recalled where Lupino sings "My Bill" - which had been lost.  And it's a terrific sequence.  

Mer-Watch: Splash (1984)

Watched:  07/05/2026

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  third at most, likely second

Director:  Ron Howard

I have no memory of re-watching Splash (1984) after seeing it in the theater back in 1984.  So, this may be the second time I've ever seen it all the way through.  

My only real memory of the movie was that the effects were neat, the movie was very sweet and John Candy was funny.  Check, check and check.  All still true.

I was honestly pleasantly surprised re-watching this movie for the first time in adulthood.  It plays like a very old-school comedy concept - I can see Cary Grant declaring, "But, Madison - you're a mehr-maid!  And I can't even swim..." - livened up with some grade-A 1980's comedy talent.  

While I am aware that I have long been partial to John Candy, he's hysterical in this as Tom Hanks' philandering, irresponsible brother.  Eugene Levy plays a Warner Bros. cartoon villain.  And back in this era, Tom Hanks' comedy sensibilities were weirdly organic and tone perfect.  And there's a million bits that supporting characters get to do.  That secretary is just...  that's comedy gold.

I realized quickly - I really don't think I've seen many Darryl Hannah movies, but as Madison, the Mermaid, she's absolutely game for anything  and while funny things kind of happen around her or because of her, she gives a terrific, physical performance.  

Honestly - I think the movie is probably ripe for a re-view.  A lot of stuff from 1984 is in the canon, and I'm not sure most folks think much about Splash.  

Yeah, if you came here looking to see me drag Splash, I kind of won't.  It's made to be a pop crowd pleaser, and in 1984, it was.  It's occasionally a tad raunchy, it has some adult humor, but the lines were a lot blurrier in 1984 when I saw this aged 9.  

It's not perfect, sure.  What is?  I'm just surprised by how game Ron Howard was at this point in his early directing career for some straight up zaniness.  He always seems like that in *other* people's work, but in his own?  It's been a minute.

And not for nothing - but Splash is weirdly close in themes and even scenes to Shape of Water, which gave me a wee chuckle.  

Texas Watch: Paris, Texas (1984)

Watched:  07/04/2026

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Wim Wenders

As a forewarning, I really don't have anything new or novel to say about this movie.  It won Cannes in 1984 and is one of those movies that gets discussed *a lot*, I guess.  But I've avoided those discussions because I'd never seen the movie and was fundamentally avoiding spoilers.  

I haven't seen that many Wim Wenders movies, but of what I've seen - I've been a fan.  Paris, Texas (1984) should have been a slam-dunk for me, but I just never got to it until after our mid-day Fourth of July activities ended and before we put on fireworks from New York.  A couple of years ago,  I'd watched the beginning  - just the first 45 minutes of a lengthy runtime as Wenders movies tend to go, and had no idea where it was going.  Which - fair.  

Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell and Natassja Kinski - it's a movie that reminds you that a deeply compelling movie doesn't need FX, a cut every two seconds, a needle-drop every ten minutes or fifteen subplots.  That's not to say Paris, Texas is representative of movies in 1984 - one of the years that defined the modern movie.  I'm not really sure it points to much more than what was happening in independent film in the 1980's that would inform indie movies for the next fifteen or twenty years.  Character driven, mood driven, and trying to show something about the human condition.

"Big Trouble In Little China" at 40

Just listen to the ol' "Porkchop Express" and take his advice on a dark and stormy night, alright? When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, looks you crooked in the eye, and asks you if you paid your dues; you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: "Have you paid your dues, Jack?" "Yes, sir, the check is in the mail."

Apparently this week marks 40 years since the release of one of the greatest films ever made, Big Trouble In Little China.

From the previews, I'd been mildly interested in what I saw, and then saw the flick featured in a movie-FX magazine I leafed through in B. Dalton at the mall (did I buy the magazine?  I did not).  Probably they were discussing the big red ape monster and the eyeball guy, and maybe some lightning FX, and that was enough of a sale for me.

Franken-Watch: The Bride! (2026)

Watched:  07/01/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing;  First

Director:  Maggie Gyllenhaal

Before release, I was really looking forward to the release of The Bride! (2026).  

As many know, one of my favorite movies is The Bride of Frankenstein.  This ranking is followed immediately by Frankenstein, and I tend to think of them as a two-part movie as much as a pair of individual movies.  I still re-read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from time-to-time. In 2018, I celebrated the 200th anniversary of the book's publication by visiting a sort of display at the Lilly Library at Indiana University. 

The Bride! was released with what I'd consider a serious marketing push - a rarity these days.  And then the reviews hit and word was not good.  And then people I know saw it and were unenthused, and so I decided to wait for streaming.

I am sad to report that this was the right call.  

Here's what I think.  

Ann Blyth Merges With The Infinite

Somehow I missed this last week, but - Ann Blyth, who had one of the top 5 smiles to ever hit the silver screen, has passed at the age of 98.

I became aware of Blyth at the same time I became aware of the sheer magnificence that is Joan Crawford as an actor rather than a punchline when I watched Mildred Pierce back in college.  In what is her most enduring role, the lovely Blyth played the absolute worst person as Crawford's b of a daughter.  She is *stellar* in this movie.  

The only other movies she starred in I think I've seen are Brute Force (great prison movie.  Check it out.) and Kismet, which is worth seeing some time just for the visuals.* 

But, once you've seen Blyth's Colgate smile, you do not forget it.  

Blyth was very generous with TCM and was interviewed by Robert Osbourne.  Here's a tribute TCM released.

*and by visuals I mean Blyth and Dolores Gray

Happy Birthday Terri Nunn

Hey!  Today is singer Terri Nunn's birthday!  That's fun.  

Saw her sing with Berlin in like 2018 or 19, and she was *amazing*.*

*amazingly hot

TLDR Super Watch: Supergirl (2026)

Watched:  06/25/2026

Format:  Regal

Viewing:  First

Director:  Craig Gillespie

It is probably worth noting that while a great IP to slap on thermoses and t-shirts, Supergirl is maybe the least consistently written mainstream character in comics.  So there is no "right way" to write Kara Zor-El.

I've read my fair share of comic books starring Supergirl over the past few decades.  I've read Silver-Age, Bronze and Copper-Era stories.  I read 90's-00's Not-Kara Supergirl by Peter David.  And was one of people who was flipping out when they brought Kara back in the mid-00's.  Aside from giving New 52 Supergirl a pass, I have pretty complete runs of pretty much everything since the 2005 reboot.  I heartily recommend the current series by Sophie Campbell as one of the best comics I've read in a while.  I own a copy of Action Comics 252.  

I've seen the 1980's Supergirl movie at least three times - including on VHS as a kid.  I watched the entire run of the CW TV show.  Am familiar with various incarnations in live action and animation.  (I have an affection for almost all of those takes.)

I am not a Supergirl PhD, but I feel pretty well oriented.  So, there's my bona fides.

Car Watch: F1 - The Movie (2025)

Watched:  06/21/2026

Format:  AppleTV

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Joseph Kosinski

So, I watched F1: The Movie (2025) a year ago in the theater.  It was an enjoyable movie that was about car racing and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer - so I figured I knew what I was getting, and I was right.  And that is not a complaint.  When I go to Chili's for dinner, I do not complain when the Old Timer with Cheese is the Old Timer with Cheese.

F1: The Movie stars a hot dude who is the best at what he does, but our hero is *also* a troubled rogue.  In this way, he is Maverick from Top Gun.  And, really, this movie is a scramble of beats from Top Gun and basic movie formulas of a certain era for which middle-aged men apparently yearn.  F1: the Movie also features the bonus of being about an old gun fighter showing the new kid on the block what it's all about in order to really satisfy us aging movie-dudes.  

Marilyn at 100: Clash By Night (1952)

Watched:  06/21/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Second or Third

Director:  Fritz Lang

I'm never going to get over having seen Barton Fink too many times in my younger years.  

Plainly put, the character of Barton Fink is based loosely on the real-life play-write Clifford Odets, who went out to Hollywood to turn his plays about *the common man* into movies.  So every time I see Odets' name on a movie, I kind of know loosely that this will be about the gritty lives of the everyman, and have very particular dialog tics.  Also, I kind of wonder how full of shit this movie really is at its core - not something I generally care about.

Odets strove to capture a sense of at least emotional realism in his plays and movies, setting them not in penthouses and mansions for the New York elite attending shows, but writing plays that took place on the streets below among the working class, seeing their daily struggle as the real poetry.  And I think there's something to that.  

That this film came out of RKO in 1952 is a bit of an eyebrow raiser.  But RKO had this script and they had Fritz Lang as a director and Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan on contract.  And that's a great start.

TV Watch: Widow's Bay - Season 1

Right after it debuted, JAL texted me and said to check out Widow's Bay over on Apple TV.  But it was a few weeks before I got around to it.  

As you may have heard - Widow's Bay is a sort-of comedy about the residents of a cursed island off the coast of New England, founded during the colonial era.  In the modern era, it's a fishing backwater where people kind of accept the horrific and unexplainable things that happen as a matter-of-course.  And, in fact, those born on the island know they can never leave without a deadly misfortune befalling them. 

The season follows the events as the island once again "awakens" - ie: the weird stuff escalates again.  And all during a few days just as our non-native mayor, Tom, has finally managed to get people to visit the island as tourists in an effort to bolster the dying economy of the place.

I'll do my best not to spoil - but y'all know if I'm talking about TV it's because I'm either dragging something or I'm recommending it.  Widow's Bay comes in as a solid:  recommended

Marilyn at 100 Watch/ Noir Watch: Niagara (1953)

Watched:  06/16/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Henry Hathaway

I had only seen Niagara (1953) once before, back in 2012.  I recalled specific images, but was aware that I couldn't recall the actual ending.  

On a rewatch, I can see why.  The movie really cruises along to the last act, and then loses much of the appeal the film has carried up to that point.

Marilyn Monroe, in her first starring, top-billed role, stars alongside Signal Watch fave Joseph Cotten and the lovely Jean Peters.  Monroe plays the wife of Cotten, who knows she's too young for him, too vivacious and who has started running around with a younger man behind Cotten's back.  Cotten thinks something is going on but can't prove it.

They're staying in some cabins overlooking Niagara Falls on the Canadian side, and have fallen into a malaise.  Jean Peters shows up with her husband, (sigh) Max Showalter, on a delayed honeymoon.  They meet Monroe, who is made up and dressed to make Jean Peters look positively plain-jane by comparison - a tremendous feat.

G Comics: Godzilla vs. Texas

Finally got around to actually reading IDW's Godzilla vs. America: Godzilla vs. Texas one-shot.  

Was I pleased?  You know I was.  

If I recently complained about a lack of local specificity in media where the story unfolds in Texas, I will not be repeating that here.  In fact, the bigger problem for this comic is that Texas is gigantic, and the stories themselves are pretty location-specific.  Even chronologically specific.  And Texas is too big for one slim comic.

Noir Alley Watch: Blackout (1954)

Watched:  06/14/2026

Format:  TCM on Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terence Fisher

A Hammer Noir from 1954, Blackout is a British produced and London-set film that I am mostly glad I watched with Eddie Muller's commentary.  It is... an oddball movie, certainly, feeling like it zigs and zags as to what the movie is about or is even doing, which is absolutely a way to keep an audience guessing.

I'm not a fan of star Dane Clark, who I've only seen a couple of times.  I won't get into ad hominem attacks, but he's not my cup of tea as a compelling person to watch on screen.  Here, he's sort of an American - but maybe not?  Who is down to his last shilling in a London hotel bar.  

Up walks Belinda Lee. who looks like a Robert Maguire painting come to life, and offers him a job, even though he's nearing "blackout" drunk.  Lee is...  something else, so who can blame him for taking her up on the offer? Especially when the job pays 500 pounds and is to marry Lee.

He wakes up the next morning in a stranger's apartment, is told he just turned up there by an artist Maggie (Eleanor Summerfield), and sees a huge portrait of the woman he thinks he married.  He wanders out into the street to find Lee's picture beside that of her slain father.

For the film's remaining runtime, he has to dodge the cops, figure out who is playing him and why, and whether Lee and he ever actually got married.

There's a few sequences that are quite good.  According to Muller, this is famed Hammer director Terence Fisher's break, and the general quality I associate with Fisher shows itself from time to time.  

For some reason there's a whole sojourn in an old neighborhood where we meet Clark's mother that feels completely separate from the rest of the film, and is the best bit.  There's also what seems a twisted and very dark ending - that the movie instead tosses into the fire to give the audience a happy ending that leaves the whole thing on a false note.

Lee is amazing on film - just one of those actors who the camera loves. Muller lets us know we likely don't know her because she worked in Europe and died very young in a car accident. 

I'm not sure I liked the movie too much.  Normally I'd like a movie that winds and twists, but here it feels like one of those exercises where you hand a story off every few pages to someone different who has to pick up the story, while doing their own thing.

My feeling is that this one won't stick with me very long, except for a few images here and there.  I've certainly seen cheaper and worse, but this one just felt like the B picture it really was - but worth seeing to see Fisher's work at this point, and what was happening in British noir.

Hallmark Texas Watch: Texas Two-Step (2026)

Watched:  06/14/2026

Viewing:  First

Format:  Hallmark Channel

Director:  Eva Tavares

Regional specificity is hard.   

I live in Austin, Texas which has, in the last two decades (and to my surprise), become a real tourist town.  People come here and drink, eat some barbecue and street tacos, feel they've lived authentically Austin/ Texas and go home.  And that's fine. 

It's not just at Christmas that Hallmark likes to make movies about country life's superiority to city life.  We do not require the yuletide season to insist that what you really need to do is give up your nice place in a city and your much-worked-for career track and do... something? in the country.  Not when you can boff the guy from high school who is roughly doing now what he did at age 17.  And, Hallmark -  occasionally - likes to make movies specifically about people doing this in Texas.  

While looking for World Cup Games, I saw Hallmark was debuting their latest "Texas" movie.  And I watched it so you don't have to.

Texas Two-Step (2026) is a movie about a woman who must go home to "Blue Creek" from Austin/Dallas to check in on her aging aunt and her roadhouse country bar and grill. 

Monroe at 100 Watch: How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Watched:  06/13/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jean Negulesco

I'd always heard that How To Marry a Millionaire (1953) wasn't very good.  In the end, it was not as bad as I figured, a nicety of someone telling you something is horrible which is just not great.  But...  eh.  

The problem for modern viewers is that this movie was the spiritual sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and people generally see GPB first and this film second, and HtMaM just isn't anywhere near as memorable, funny or entertaining.  

In my opinion, anyway.  

80's Watch: Band of the Hand (1986)

Watched:  06/12/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Paul Michael Glaser

Back in the 1980's it didn't take much for me to think a movie was pretty, pretty good.  We rented this when I was maybe 12, and we thought it was awesome.  But I also have not seen this movie in this century.  What I did know is that when this movie came up in conversation, people seemed to think it was quite bad.

I did try to rewatch part of this movie at some point in high school or college and was like "ah, yes.  This is maybe not as good as 12-year-old me believed".  But it isn't one that was popular to begin with, and did not become more popular over time.

The movie is essentially about an Outward Bound Intercept program that takes a sharp left turn and ends in a gang of troubled youth becoming remorseless killers with no future.  Is this how it's pitched?  Absolutely not.  But in a practical sense - that's it.

Waddingham News: "Ride or Die" coming to Amazon

Well, we'd be laying down on the job if we didn't keep you posted on Hannah Waddingham's coming releases.  

July 15th, we can expect to see the release of Ride or Die, a multi-episode series on Amazon's Prime Video.  It's a buddy comedy with Waddingham and the multi-talented Octavia Spencer - Spencer a normie and Waddingham is her best pal who, it turns out, actually works as an assassin.

They've released a trailer, and the show appears to be *exactly* what you just pictured in your head. 

And I'm not complaining.  

Anyway, don't say I didn't tell you in advance.  And, of course we'll be watching.

Monroe at 100 Watch: Monkey Business (1952)

Watched:  06/11/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Howard Hawks

Not everything is going to land.  

This movie had everything going for it.  Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers star, Marilyn Monroe plays a major supporting role (just before she landed leads), Howard Hawks is directing, it has Hugh Marlowe, Charles Coburn and even the kid from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (an infinitely superior movie).  

But I only really laughed at a few bits.  

My real feeling is that this movie worked very well in 1952 and has aged badly through changing social conditions and what I'd guess is better versions of similar premises.  

Monkey Business (1952) is a screwball comedy when the genre was running on fumes and a decade before it would be transmogrified into live action Disney films and Jerry Lewis vehicles.  

Disney/Pixar Watch: Hoppers (2026)

Watched:  06/09/2026

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Daniel Chong

We don't get out to the cinema like we used to, and so it was that I missed Hoppers (2026) in the theater, despite what I'd call pretty good buzz.

It's an odd movie for Pixar, which is reeling from a few years of what I'd call unpredictable box office (which is just the industry these days).  A few movies tanked, and then a few sold like hot cakes.  If I was them, I'd be deeply unsure what to think audiences actually want in a film.

Hoppers is a weird movie.  I don't mean the sci-fi concept, which is cute and fun.  A young, plucky, adorably flawed girl, Mabel (Piper Curda) is doing battle with Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) who wants to build an overpass for his beltway through her beloved woodland glade.  She figures out a wacky scientist (Kathy Najimy) and her team (Sam Richardson and Melissa Villasenor) have built robots and can transfer their consciousness into the animal-shaped bodies.  This is done to observe species up close.  

Classics Watch: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Watched:  06/08/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  fourth, I think.  

Director:  Nicholas Ray

I didn't think I'd watched Rebel Without a Cause (1955) since the mid-90's - but here it is in 2012. I really need to start checking old posts to see what I've already covered here.

The first time I saw the movie I believe I was thirteen.  My friend's dad saw us entering teen-hood and wanted to share a bit of the teen-culture he'd grown up with.  The film had such an impact on the fellow, he bought the same car James Dean drives in the movie.

Rebel Without a Cause is, I think, one of those movies everyone knows but far fewer people have bothered to watch.  Which is a shame.  I think it's kind of a fascinating movie and it's remarkable it got made then, and now would be turned into a moist melodrama with someone muttering the theme of the film - which would be the title of the movie.  

Television Watch: Hacks Concludes

Apparently I've never posted about it before, but for the past few years, HBO's Hacks has been among my favorite shows.  

The basic premise is that Ava (Hannah Einbinder), an up-and-coming comedy writer, seems to have a career on the slide when her agent, Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) teams her with his top client, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a legendary stand-up comedian, now in her late 60's.  Deborah is fabulously wealthy from her long and lucrative stand-up career with side-businesses like a line of goods on QVC.  She has a team surrounding her that is probably insulating her a bit from dealing with any unpleasantness, a daughter in her 40's, DJ (Kaitlin Olson), who is erratic at best - and has kind of seen and done it all.  

Monroe 100th B-Day Watch/ Pride Watch: Some Like It Hot (1959)

Watched:  06/01/2026

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Third?  Second?

Director:  Billy Wilder

Maybe one of the movies that I pray never gets remade,* Some Like It Hot (1959) is a wild ride of a movie that seems like it absolutely couldn't have happened on screen as a major motion picture in 1959, but... it very famously did.  Whether audiences fully grokked the subversion of the film in '59, or even now, is something I'll need to dig into.

Starring Monroe at the height of her name as a draw, plus a young Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis - it's an oddball period piece about two down-on-their luck musicians who need to flee the mob after witnessing the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and - knowing there's a job for two women in an all-girl band - go full Bosom Buddies and hop a train to Florida.  

Superman Movie - Catching Up On "Man of Tomorrow"

Today, James Gunn, Director and Writer of the next Superman film - Man of Tomorrow - released this still of Nicholas Hoult in some very familiar looking armor.  

This unleashed hordes of people who think they're clever and have never picked up a Superman comic, never watched a Justice League cartoon, walked down a toy aisle, etc... to flap their arms and ask if Gunn was ripping off any of the man franchises in which people show up in power armor, especially the video game I have never played, Halo.   

Look, dumb dumbs, this armor first showed up in a comic in 1983.  It's been adapted and changed by artist after artist since then - to the point where a few details remain common, but the general idea is that Lex, like Tony Stark, is constantly fiddling.  And, by the way, not one of you blinked about all the armored guys in the *last* Superman movie, so what are we even doing?

Marilyn Monroe at 100

Today is the 100th birthday of Ms. Norma Jeane Mortensen, better known as Marilyn Monroe.

We're fans of Monroe here at The Signal Watch, and whether that's because of her film work - and she's terrific in most of the work I've seen, or knowing her as an icon of the 20th Century - I don't know.  She was gone more than twenty years before I really understood who she was..  But even when it's a movie I don't love (see: The Seven Year Itch), or something far greater than I expected (Some Like It Hot, The Misfits), she is what they say, and few talents before or since have come anywhere near her place in the zeitgeist.  

There's no one else left, really, from this era of film that I think today's young adults and youths would readily recognize.  And even then, they may not even know she was an actress - she's simply a face on a t-shirt.  I don't know.  But she remains an icon, maybe an ethereal one at this point, but someone still seen as a sign of glamour.  We can save our comments about how some trash celebrities try and tried to steal some of her light.

90's Schlock Watch: Twister (1996)

Watched:  05/29/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Jan de Bont

This clunker that has aged poorly in so, so many ways is about two absolute perverts who clearly can only become aroused when their lives are endangered by natural disasters.  They are followed by a vast team of nameless people who delight in their kink, and seem to have no interior lives or external concerns other than bearing witness to the named characters' pursuit of their shameful desires.  

Why this was not directed by David Cronenberg, I cannot say.

Our male lead has met a stable woman, a therapist, who he believes can save him from his shameful kink.  Knowing this therapist will never join him in his thrill-seeking debauchery, he simply pawns her off on one of the sub-perverts.

Reunited with his fellow degenerate, scene after scene unfolds wherein Bill (Bill Paxton) and Jo (The Quarterback Princess, Helen Hunt) pursue tornadoes as threat to life and limb, delighting in the chaos.  Both know the old thrills are not doing it for them anymore, and only when they strap themselves with leather to ride out an F5 tornado with no protection - the ultimate depravity - are their degenerate appetites satisfied.

Happy Birthday Kylie Minogue

Happy Birthday to pop music icon and occasional actor Kylie Minogue.

Kylie is having a good year!  She wrapped up her international Tension tour*, she won Christmas with her poptacular song XMAS, and she has released a documentary on Netflix and I believe a concert film of the Tension tour is also set to debut on Netflix.  

And she's re-releasing four albums on vinyl later this year (lil' heads-up for Jamie) including the much sought-after (by me) Light Years.

You don't really know what else she'll get up to - but maybe she'll get back in the studio for another album.

Anyway - happy birthday to Ms. Minogue.  May she have a grand birthday.

*Yours truly was at an early date on the tour here in sunny Austin, Texas.

Noir Watch: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Watched: 05/27/2026

Format:  Noir Alley / TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Second or third

Director:  Lewis Milestone

I'd been meaning to return to this one for years, but then it was hosted on TCM's Noir Alley by Eddie Muller and Ms. Rosie Perez.  Fifteen years and a whole lot more Liz Scott and Stanwyck under my belt, and I imagine my view of the movie is a bit different now.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) is a twisted, black-hearted melodrama that is one of those movies that is likely to make one a real fan of Barbara Stanwyck if you weren't already (and I am).  It's a movie with more twists and turns than you'd expect, while still delivering a finale that feels completely earned and the only way this could end.

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

Back in December pal Howard shared an article from Substack about the changing nature of "the canon" of film appreciation/ studies/ best of/ what-have-you.  It's a review of the publication, Sight & Sound, and their annual poll, with a desire to demonstrate the changing climate of what is considered "the best".  Perhaps the notion is that if you liked a film thirty years ago, now it is less important to the voting body of Sight & Sound while other movies, new and old have made it onto the list, moving around the position of movies thought *the* canon once upon a time.  And so it goes.

The article arrived around the same time I was pondering something quite different.  

In 2025, I turned 50 years old, which gives me roughly 48 year of movie-going experience.  My dad took me to see Star Wars in the theater during the 1977 release - wholly inappropriate for a kid that young, but I suppose my mom needed the afternoon off.*  I went to film school in the 1990's.  I've been discussing movies online without a thought of making a penny off my opinions and bad takes since 2003.  Yeah, 2003, kid.

Failed Watch: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

Watched:  Did not

Format:  Regal Westgate

Viewing:  Didn't happen

Director:  Doesn't matter

We'd had pretty good luck the past 2 of 2 times we'd gone to a nearby cinema to go see movies with first Project Hail Mary and then Sheep Detectives.  I was looking forward to getting back to the cinema this summer with what looks like a good line-up of summer silliness and fun.  

I purchased tickets to see The Mandalorian and Grogu this week for a Sunday afternoon matinee, figuring we'd avoid evening crowds and whatnot.  

We had learned not to bother to show up at this theater til showtime as they have at least twenty minutes of commercials and trailers.  So five minutes after start time we sat down - and, I will be honest, for some reason they'd inserted some Minions thing into the commercials and trailers, and assuming everyone loves the Minions is assuming *a lot*.  They just make me weirdly sad.  Like this is what is passing for funny now.

Anyway, all I saw of The Mandalorian and Grogu was the part up til the title sequence.  So - like, the James Bond-like cold open that isn't exactly related but tells us what's going on these days with our heroes.

I kind of knew we were in trouble when, before the movie:

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

Watched:  05/24/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Margaret Brown

Last year we watched the documentary series The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025), a multi-part doc that covered the unsolved murder of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas in 1991 and the 34 years of nightmare that followed for the families and for some of the accused.  

I'll let you read that post and why the doc was impactful.  And maybe a bit of why, as a local, it hit home.

Ironically - within about five weeks of the airing of the fourth and final episode, the City of Austin announced a positive ID on the murderer - Robert Eugene Brashers.  Brashers was a drifter of sorts and is best described as a serial killer.  Based on DNA evidence and ballistics evidence, it is pretty clear who committed the crime.

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

Watched:  05/23/2026

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Shûsuke Kaneko

So, I've only seen this movie once before - and while I've long loved Godzilla, I didn't really do a deep dive into the filmography of our giant pal - mostly because of a lack of availability of affordable Godzilla flicks in the US - until COVID hit.   At that time, affordability wasn't an issue and I picked up mostly every film just prior to lockdown.  With lockdown - we dove in kind of head first, with no plan.  Just grabbing movie based on which monsters were in them.  

When I watched Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), it was in, like April 2020.  So imagine the headspace we were all in.

Anyway - I think around this time was when I was trying to understand what the hell Toho was even doing in the 90's and 00's.  And the answer is - it gets really confusing after Godzilla Vs. Destroyah.  I have no idea if Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla vs. Megaguirus are  in the prior continuity.  They certainly are not tied to this movie, which came next.  

There's a hard break in continuity with this movie, basically starting us over (again) as a direct sequel to the 1954 movie.  Just as we'd seen in Godzilla Raids Again (1955)  and Godzilla Returns (1984) and as we'd see in the movie following this one - Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla.  

All-Out Attack is trying on Godzilla as a horrifying antagonist again - or at least looking to turning a 15 story radioactive lizrd into something frightening after he'd maybe become a giant luchador.  

Espionage Watch: Patriot Games (1992)

Watched:  05/23/2026

Viewing:  First

Format:  Amazon?

Director:  Phillip Noyce

So, I don't really know how I missed this one back in the day.  No idea.  Harrison Ford.  James Earl Jones.  A Tom Clancy adaptation.  Honestly, I think I was at a 6-week-long drama camp because that's how cool I was in high school.

But I have now seen Patriot Games (1992) and it's kinda fine.  It's not my favorite.

Movies like these were prime dad viewing in the 1990's.  Men in ties would look grim and look at technology and go to board rooms.  They'd use real world issues and events and movements and tell a story that seemed wildly plausible, from a certain point of view.  The Cold War was absolutely a wild time, and it showed up in big, thick books by Tom Clancy that dads read in business trips and sometimes they'd turn into a movie.

This movie pits a splinter group of the IRA against - very specifically - Jack Ryan.  We met Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October as Alec Baldwin in 1990, but Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford, so I guess if you want even more money, you swap out actors.  I am not going to try to make sense of the continuity.  (Jack Ryan is now John Krasinski).

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

This is fun!

TCM hosts are admitting what movies they've never seen in a series called "Host Confessions".  It started last night!

More from TCM here.  They'll watch the film and discuss.  

Movies include:

• Bridge on the River Kwai - Alicia Malone
• Blazing Saddles - Dave Karger
• It Happened One Night - Eddie Muller
• From Here to Eternity - Jacqueline Stewart
• Rebel Without a Cause - Ben Mankiewicz

That's a good time.

Also, this gives me a chance to get Jamie to watch Rebel Without a Cause.  

For the record, I've seen all of these.  Call me, TCM.  I'll host my own show, Monsters and Mayhem, on Saturdays. There's plenty I haven't seen so you can shame me regularly.

Crime Noir Watch: Vice Raid (1959)

Watched:  05/21/2026

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Edward L. Cahn

I had never seen a Mamie Van Doren movie, and didn't know this was one.  I was getting on the elliptical and literally just threw on a movie and "Vice Raid (1959)" sounded like something I didn't need to focus on super hard.  And up came her name.

And boy howdy, was Mamie Van Doren's mere existence the feature attraction.  The movie essentially is doing the Tex Avery wolf for the first 2/3rds of the movie.  I have never seen a movie that literally puts up a picture of the female star and then gives her measurements.  This is a thing that happened.

The other interesting bit about this movie is that it's a 1950's movie about a prostitution ring that acknowledges what it's about using the word "prostitution".  Pretty crazy for the era.

Catch-Up Watch: Badlands (1973)

Watched:  05/20/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terrence Malick

I'd put this movie off for about the past 20 years for absolutely no reason.  I loved Days of Heaven.  But somehow I just never hit play on Badlands (1973).  

The movie, in its way, feels quintessentially American.  A clashing of naiveté with cruelty and violence, embodied by our two leads in different ways - a baby-faced Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek (here playing 15 at age 23 or so).  

The movie feels timeless and oddly universal, while de-romanticizing everything about the couple-on-a-crime-spree noir and neo-noir plotting.  Almost like a response to 1967's Bonnie and Clyde.  

I've written 3000 posts tagged "movies"

I just noticed I have a very large, round number in my blog stats.  

I have tagged 3000 posts "movies".  

Oh, yeah, by the way, if you look at this blog:

1. every post has some metadata associated with it, enabling me to tag the post to categorize it.  One of these tags is "movies".  You can find the "topics" at the foot of all posts.  I also do things like "Movies 2026" or "Superman" to make it easier to find those posts.  It's how I know what were my "First Viewing" movies when I do end of the year tallies.
2. you can also view the cloud in the left menu bar visible on desktop, and it will give you an idea what topics we're covering.

But, yeah!  3000 movie posts.  

Not all are reviews - some are just general movie discussions or movie news or whatever.  I am unsure how many times I've written up a movie, but can sort of guess.  I started labeling movies by "year seen" in 2012, and aside from a year or so when I didn't do that, you can see the numbers.  

Suffice to say, it is a lot.

Still waiting for my sweet paycheck.

I am, of course, nowhere as cool as Bernie Mac

I'm mostly excited because I normally miss those big milestones and only notice them when I'm at like 3017, and would feel "well, the moment has passed".  

If you're wondering about percentages, I have something like 5,570 total posts, give or take a few.  So it's not all telling stories in the dark around here.