Wise Watch: Mademoiselle Fifi (1944)

Watched: 01/21/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

Our viewing of movies by Robert Wise continues with Mademoiselle Fifi, a 1944 movie, made during the darker days of World War II, using the Franco-Prussian War as a wispy-thin analog for the German occupation of France and a clear show of support for the French Resistance.  

This is Wise's first solo directorial effort, but you'd never know.  The movie seems assured of the handling of actors as it does of camera management and tone.  

The movie is intended as an odd propaganda - yes, stateside it would be seen as pro-French Resistance, but also would have informed Americans of what it means to be occupied, and how those under the bootheel may react in ways noble, practical and cowardly.  And, that some may not see much different day-to-day, or take advantage of cozying up to the occupiers.  I cannot assume this would have been very comfortable for movie go-ers who may have wanted to have less nuanced takes on the occupation.

Neo-Noir Texas Watch: Lone Star (1996)

Watched:  01/09/2025

Format:  Criterion 4K

Viewing:  Unknown - likely 4th or 5th

Director:  John Sayles

I remember going to see this opening day in Austin at the Arbor 4 at, like, a 4:00 pm show, thinking "no one will be there.  It's John Sayles.  And, I'm going by myself, I can find a seat.".  

Y'all, it was so packed when I showed up, I wound up in the front row staring straight up at the screen for the duration.

And I loved it.  

At the time I was double-majoring in film and history at the University of Texas.  As part of my load, I took as much local and regional history as my degree plan would allow.  And, yes, the courses I took illuminated the material certain officials are currently screaming to the heavens about colleges teaching.*

Noir Crime Watch: Dillinger (1945)

Watched:  01/08/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Max Nosseck

A biopic of famed gangster John Dillinger, Dillinger (1945) is really a crime drama that feels pulled from a "true crime" pulp magazine - the sort where facts will not stand in the way of a good story.  I can't tell you what's real here or not as I know two things about Dillinger - that he once broke out of jail with a fake gun, and something I can not print in a family publication like the Signal Watch.*

Anyway, this is the movie that broke Lawrence Tierney, for good or ill.  And he's solid in the movie - maybe singularly good here playing a (checks notes) absolute cold-blooded monster.  I won't get too much into Tierney as a person, but apparently he was a real asshole - like in a way you or I can't comprehend putting up with.  

Chabert Watch: Home Front (2002) (aka: The Scoundrel's Wife)

Watched:  12/22/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Glen Pitre

There's a lot going on in Home Front (aka: The Scoundrel's Wife - 2002).  Some might argue too much.  

A period piece taking place mostly during World War II, it's about a woman and her family living on Louisiana's Gulf Coast, who are pariahs already when the war breaks out.  It seems some years before the woman (Tatum O'Neal) and her husband may have gotten up to misdeeds that will be shared later.

It's a bit of a frustrating movie because it's a look at some real life things - that German U-Boats were off the US coast causing havoc, there was concern about internal collaborators, etc....  And some of this forgotten history is illuminated brilliantly, really, as O'Neal's family is awakened by a fire's glow off in the distance, out over the water as a U-Boat hits a shipping vessel.  

Meanwhile, life in the small fishing village carries on for O'Neal and her teenage son, Blue, and her daughter, Florida (Chabert), just aging into adulthood.  A doctor moves in nextdoor, but he has what seems to be a German accent (Julian Sands).  Meanwhile, the town Priest (Tim Curry) wrestles with alcohol.

Rockettes at 100

1925 marks the founding of what was then the "Missouri Rockets", in St. Louis, who would swiftly move to New York City and become The Rockettes.  

The Rockets were a Midwestern response to someone seeing a Ziegfeld Follies show and saying "I could maybe do that".  And, indeed, Russell Markert brought his vision to the stage in the Midwest and a sensation was born.

If you've never checked out the remarkable history of the Ziegfeld Follies, it is weird, wild stuff.  There's nothing like it in 2025 (and who can say if we're better or worse for it).  But suffice to say, Florenz Ziegfeld made an impression that echoes through to today in more ways than we can count.  

Circa 1932, the Missouri Rockets moved to New York's Radio City Music Hall, renamed themselves The Rockettes, and by 1933, they put on their first Christmas Spectacular, which dazzles to this day.

Thanksgiving Watch: Squanto - a Warrior's Tale (1994)

Watched:  11/24/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Xavier Koller

I don't know that I've ever seen a movie make me decide, while watching an uplifting story that's part of the well-worn self-mythologizing of America, that the hero is 100% wrong.  But that's where I landed with Squanto: a Warrior's Tale (1994).   

And maybe that's what director Xavier Koller truly felt we should think.  He's Swiss, not American, and based on the script Disney gave him, it really isn't a compelling argument that Squanto was right that what his fellow locals needed to do was put down their weapons.

Before we get rolling, I have not thought about the narrative of Squanto since I was probably eight years old and we had a children's book about his life, which I can safely say:  I do not remember anything from that book, just that Squanto helped keep the Native Americans and the Pilgrims from murdering each other which led to the first Thanksgiving.  I also vaguely remembered he was not part of any tribe.

As the movie starts, Squanto is having a good week.  He just married Irene Bedard, which is a check in the win column.  But no sooner do they go for a lovers' leisurely stroll than he sees an early 17th Century British ship pulling up to his beach.  He's promptly kidnapped by the Brits who take him back to England, along with a warrior from the neighboring tribe.   

Doc Watch: Selena y Los Dinos (2025)

Watched:  11/24/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Isabel Castro

Living in Texas in the early 90's, if you had your head up at all, you heard about Selena.  While I didn't listen to Tejano or Cumbia, she'd become so big that a dumb Anglo kid like myself heard Bidi Bidi Bom Bom somewhere along the way, and I admit that I probably paid more attention to Selena because she was very pretty with a Colgate smile.

I could tell you pretty much exactly when I figured out who Selena was from the cover of her album Entre A Mi Mundo.  The cover art was everywhere.  

Candidly, in the 1990's and now, the names of most Tejano acts were just not known by Anglos and English speakers.  But Selena was rapidly breaking down that particular divide through sheer force of scale - she was selling out the Astrodome, something reserved for the biggest acts on the planet - and wildly popular local acts like ZZ Top.  

As a Texan whose first language was English, it seemed like Selena was about to cross-over to a larger audience the second she put out a record in English (see: Shakira).

But then, in 1995, at the age of 23, Selena was killed.  

As popular as she was at the time of her death, it's very hard to quantify the scope and duration of the public mourning that spilled out.

Netflix Watch: Trainwreck - Storm Area 51 (2025)

Watched:  11/19/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  

So, yeah.  I kind of vaguely remember this occurring.  

In 2019, someone posted a joke online that they were going to "assault Area 51" - ie, gather as many people as they could to "Naruto Run" onto the top secret military base with the idea "they can't stop us all".  

Since X-Files debuted, Area 51 has been part of the zeitgeist.  We all know it's there, it was a major location in the 1990's movie Independence Day, and is rumored to be where the US Air Force keeps downed alien spacecraft.  More likely it is where we test experimental aircraft as that is where the U2 surveillance craft was first deployed, as well as the Stealth Bomber, etc...

The very real Area 51 is in the middle of nowhere and if you cross onto the property and don't stop for the guards, you will be shot.  I guess one might solve the greatest mystery of all as you find out what's beyond this veil of tears.

  

Anyway, the documentary is about how all of this got wildly out of control, the power of social media to attract people with bad risk/reward understanding, and that the kids probably are all right.  Stupid AF, but all right.  It is also about how people who have no practical experience should *not* try to host a million person rave in the desert.  And how relying on the mob can really save your bacon.

Netflix Watch: Death By Lightning

One of my favorite writers is Candice Millard.  With a relatively modest output compared to other popular historical writers, I would gladly put every one of her books in your hand.

A bit like Eddie Muller over at Noir Alley, Millard manages to humanize and make her subjects deeply understandable despite the gulf of time and geography.  A while back, Jennifer R rec'd, Destiny of the Republic to me, which made me a true Millard fanboy and, these days, I'll happily pre-order any new Millard book when I hear it's available. 

Shockingly, her first book, River of Doubt, is not the book which has received an adaptation.  No post-Presidency Theodore Roosevelt mapping the Amazon for us.  Instead, it's Destiny of the Republic, an account of the extraordinary circumstances that led to the election of James Garfield to the US presidency, and his subsequent assassination by Charles Guiteau (spoilers on basic high school US History).  

Most Americans are vaguely aware we had a president named Garfield, and some know he was killed early on in his presidency.  What gets lost is the fascinating inflection point US politics were in that saw the Ohioan elected after years of prime 19th-Century corruption.  And while some may know Guiteau was, as they say, crazy - until I'd read Millard's book, I sure didn't know how Guiteau scrambled along the edges of society, his story reflecting so much of what they don't teach in school about America in the 19th century and what would come to echo through the 20th and 21st centuries.

Now, Netflix has rolled out a star-studded series roughly based on the book and entitled Death By Lighting.  

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney Merges With The Infinite

Huh.  Dick Cheney died.

Signal Watch Reads: The Midnight Assassin - The Hunt For America's First Serial Killer (2017)

Author:  Skip Hollandsworth

Narrator:  Clint Jordan

Some time around the turn of the century, I was an avid reader of Texas Monthly, a periodical covering a wide range of topics which I considered to have some of the finest writing one could come by in that era.  And in one issue appeared the odd story of a serial killer, pre-dating Jack the Ripper, who had lurked in my own backyard - killing women and girls in Austin the mid-1880's, when Austin was the capital, but still just sprouting up as a municipality.

I was stunned.  

Like a lot of young folks with too much time on their hands, I was aware of details around particularly famous serial killers, having read up on Jack the Ripper as far back as middle school.  And I recall being aware of Henry Lee Lucas, Ted Bundy, and a handful of other killers by the time I graduated high school, back when all of it was sort of an abstraction.  So to find out that Austin had it's own Victorian-era killer, and that we had our famed Moontowers because of the killer?  That was mind-boggling.  

Since that article, the general knowledge that Austin had a 19th-century serial killer has become more pronounced.  And, these days, if you want to go on one of those Ghost Tours of Austin, I believe there's some that cater to hitting up the spots where folks were killed.  

But I'd never read Skip Hollandsworth's follow up to the article, his 2017 book The Midnight Assassin: The Hunt for America's First Serial Killer.  I'd planned to read it in October as my Hallow-read, but... I get excited and jump the gun sometimes.  And here we are.   And, yes, I took the book in as an audiobook read by Clint Jordan.

Doc Watch: The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025)

In addition to being very TL;DR, this post was difficult to write as this documentary covers horrific, very real deaths, and the aftermath, which - decades on - has no closure.  There is a lot of human pain involved, a lack of justice and no easy answers.  

In 1991, four girls were killed in the back of a yogurt shop in North Austin. Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison and Sarah Harbison.  The store was then burned.

I don't have any particular insight into the events other than knowing North Austin in the 80's and 90's.  And my own opinions regarding several elements is probably bubbling over in the post.  

Like all cities, Austin is home to some notable crimes.  

In the 1880's, we were home to a serial killer known as The Servant Girl Annihilator.  I grew up and attended college in the shadow of the University of Texas Tower, from which Charles Whitman killed 15 people and injured 30 more.  

My sophomore year of high school I was living in North Houston/ Spring.  However, as a kid I spent six years living in Austin, from 1984 to 1990.  Formative years - 4th through 9th grade.

I retained friendships despite the move, and one evening - more than a year after I'd moved away - a friend called.  Without much prior chit-chat, she dove in and started telling me about four girls murdered in the Northcross area, a street of strip malls and a one-story shopping mall.  I had never been in that yogurt store, but I knew the area, certainly. 

Not to be too callous - but the murder rate of Austin was and is a fraction of what Houston sees any year., so at first I wasn't paying much attention.  But she began describing what occurred, and she wasn't sensationalizing anything.   The facts were enough, and required no dramatic flair.  I didn't know if she was scared or sad or both.  Or something else.  But she was affected.  And, of course, she was a teenage girl who worked in a shop, sometimes by herself.

And that's how I found out that four girls around my age had been murdered in the back of a yogurt shop in Austin.  

G Watch: Shin Godzilla (2016)

Watched:  08/16/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Third, I think

Director:  Shinji Higuchi, Hideaki Anno

Shin Godzilla (2016) is currently enjoying a theatrical re-release because, I guess, why not?  Godzilla Minus One was supposed to be in theaters for a week, and wound up playing for months and making crazy bank compared to original estimates, and then landed a much deserved Academy Award.  

Yes, Shin Godzilla is also in the process of being released on 4K disc, and, look, kids....  there's something your favorite blogger would sure like to open on Christmas morning.  

I will never not tell this story, so here goes:  PaulT, Jamie and myself went to a mid-day screening of Shin Godzilla at the old Alamo Ritz, I think in January of 2017.  We were excited, the place was almost sold out in the middle of the day...  it was a whole scene.  Then the movie started and a piercing tone hit the theater.

This tone.   1kHz test tone.  

They paused the movie and the manager came out and said "has anyone seen this before?"  A few hands went up.  "Is this supposed to be happening?"  No.  "Ok!"  So she disappeared.  We hung out for a while.

Apparently the distributor had sent out their digital copies with 1k tone and there was nothing the Drafthouse could do. So I think we got out money back and went to Shakespeare's nextdoor for a beer.

Anyway - I've seen the movie since.  But not since seeing Godzilla Minus One.  Or spending COVID lockdown watching every single live-action Godzilla movie.  

First - this one isn't for the kids.  It's a movie that happens to have a Godzilla in it as a stand-in for any disaster, but in this case, it was pretty specifically the Fukushima nuclear accident that hit Japan in 2011.  I think Shin Godzilla is a genuinely really, really good movie when it comes to the challenge of bureaucracy and systems built to ensure safety by way of democratic processes, something I'm pretty familiar with after spending a lifetime in state-funded higher education,  State government and, recently, local government.  That a single decision must pass through up to five levels and reach a "final decider" to do the obvious, and that person is hopelessly compromised by politics, optics and party machinery has real world consequences.  

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.  

Doc Watch: Titan - The Oceangate Disaster (2025)

Watched:  06/18/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mark Monroe

(blogger's note:  we did also watch the other doc on this topic over on MAX)

Well.  This was horrifying.

I woke up this morning to another Space X rocket exploding on the pad.  Which is kind of normal when you're figuring out gigantic rockets (see the Atlas rocket program).  But the failure rate of Space X is starting to be a real stunner as booster after booster goes en fuego.  As is the insistence we get Tesla robot taxis on city streets when those taxis don't seem to recognize things like children in the road.

Also, I've worked for difficult people.  I have been a difficult people to work for.  What neither I, nor those people, have done is ignore and fire anyone who was coming along to warn us of catastrophe.  Especially catastrophe that would murder me 4000 meters beneath the ocean waves.

What Titan: The Oceangate Disaster (2025) manages to do is show how one ego run amok - and an absentee board, I'd argue - led directly to the death of five people for absolutely no reason.  

It's a story of a small kingdom, one with life and death stakes, where one guy's Ahab-like vision meant that employees needed an almost religious faith in a technology that clearly was not meant to do the thing it was required to do.  And our Ahab would ruin you if you crossed him.

I think in the wake of the news stories on Titan, we all had a pretty good idea that there had been signs.  What it was hard to know was how numerous, obvious and devastating the indicators of coming disaster had been and for how long.  

In simple terms, the doc lays out the case that systems we assume will be there didn't just fail, they don't exist.  

SPOILERS

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).

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! 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.)

NASA Watch: Fly Me To the Moon (2024)

Watched:  02/27/2025

Format:  Apple+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Greg Berlanti

What an odd movie.

This is kind of what has happened with the mid-budget romcom.  They wound up on streaming services.  I don't know if Apple wanted to be in the Scarlett Johansson business or if they bought the movie.  But here it is on Apple+, which I have for MLS soccer purposes and through T-Mobile.

This is a movie about the value of truth, that uses the conspiracy theory of faking the moon landing as it's second-half pivot, and basically only gets the names of the Apollo 11 astronauts right, tossing out the rest of what happened in actuality in order to make a cute story.  It's fine, but if you're a NASA nerd like my wife, and by extension and maybe a lesser extent, me, it will make you want to pull your hair out.

Apollo 11, the focal point of the film, may be one of the most well-documented events in human history (that's the one where they walked on the moon the first time, Howard).  To make up how mission control works, and who was working there felt... weird.  Even odd little details crop up - like, I don't know if I ever heard anyone ever refer to any part of the vehicle as "the ship", but it happens here a couple of times.  

President Jimmy Carter Merges With The Infinite

Former US President Jimmy Carter, the President who was in office when I became aware of what a President was circa 1978-79, has passed at the age of 100.

He was proceeded in death by his wife Rosalyn in 2023.  They had been married since 1946.

President Carter was president in the post-Watergate era of the U.S.A., and oversaw challenges such as the Iranian Hostage Crisis and Three Mile Island, which included him walking right into the plant as someone with a background in nuclear engineering.  He opened up Camp David for the Egyptians and Israeli governments to meet, leading to the Camp David Accords.  

He lost the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, but would go on to show how one can be of service to a country, acting as a peace ambassador and representative for Habitat for Humanity.

President Carter will be missed.