Noirvember Watch: Laura (1944)

Watched:  11/07/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Otto Preminger

This year for Noirvember I'm coming back to some classics of film noir.  I've been so focused on watching movies I'd not previously seen, or seen only once, that it's been *years* since I've seen some of the biggest films in the genre.

And I didn't know where to start, so I just picked Laura (1944).  

G Watch: Godzilla Minus Zero (2026)

Watched:  11/05/2026

Format:  AMC Imax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Takashi Yamazaki

So, readers of this here site will know I'm not just a Godzilla stan, I'm particularly an evangelist for Godzilla Minus One, that first film.  So, how did I feel about Godzilla Minus Zero (2026)?  Right?  That's what we're asking?  Maybe?

SPOILERS

Last Horror Watch: The Cycle (2026)

Watched:  11/04/2026

Format:  Shudder

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jordan Downey

More than one person reached out to let me know I should watch this movie, so thanks if you were are one of those two people!

I wasn't really given any heads up as to what the movie was about going in, so I'll do you a favor and drop this here:

SPOILERS

G Watch: Godzilla Minus One (2023)

seriously considering this as a tattoo on my right leg

Watched:  11/03/2026

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Fifth?  Sixth?

Director:  Takashi Yamazaki

Well, that was a delight.  Again.  

Jamie and I have each seen the movie four times in the theater, and I think we saw it at home at least once, but I can't find the write-up.  Anyway, there is plenty about this movie elsewhere on the site.

Godzilla Minus One (2023) wound up winning the Oscar for FX in 2024.  And, in many ways, the movie likely earned the award for making what looks like a $200 million Hollywood movie on something like $15 million.  But I think we all know - that movie really received an award for being a successful popular-style movie in the mode of a Steven Spielberg spectacular, and people who saw it mostly really liked it.

Happy Godzilla Day

 

On November 3rd, 1954, Gojira premiered in Japan.  

Let's all celebrate Big G and 72 years of stomping and being a real problem for trains.

G-Watch: Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)

Watched:  11/02/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Ishiro Honda

This movie I may have seen too many times.  

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) is 90 minutes that feels three times longer than that.  I always forget that when I put it on.  

Ostensibly the movie is about how King Ghidorah comes to Earth after devastating Venus, but the movie is 80% about a princess of a country where people dress like they raided a Shakespeare festival getting possessed by the ghost of a Venusian and the problems it causes.  There's a cop who is supposed to help her and his goofy sister who works for a publication that is basically In Search of....

Godzilla doesn't make an appearance until about the 39th minute.  And then disappears again for way too long.  He is goofy and does a "my butt!" jump when Ghidorah stings his butt with Ghidorah-lightning.  I am fine with this, but that's the sort of Godzilla we've got here.

Eventually we get Rodan, Godzilla, Mothra the Faeries, etc...  but holy god is it a long walk to get there.  I did enjoy this movie at one point, but I've seen it too many times, I guess.

We don't even really get how much fun King Ghidorah is as a boo-able villain until Invasion of Astro Monster, a plainly better and more entertaining movie.  

RomCom Watch: The Love Hypothesis (2026)

a movie that fully endorses faculty sleeping with students

Watched:  11/02/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Claire Scanlon

Jamie reads.  A lot.  Like, tears through books at a clip I admire but also - I only know what she's reading maybe every 1/3rd book.  This was an adaptation of a book she'd read, and she wanted to check it out - and already had.  

As your foremost guy who will put on a Hallmark movie as background noise or to nap to, Jamie was curious about my reaction to what is a modern romcom that hits a lot of Hallmark tropes but allows its characters to exist in a world far closer to our own.  People swear and take off their shirt to do sports.  Gang, there is sex!  With a butt in view!

I mostly know star and Executive Producer Lili Reinhart as the girl who played Betty Cooper on Riverdale on the CW.  She plays Olive, a RomCom trope with legs.  Olive is (a) brilliant but lacks confidence, and is (b) adorably clumsy for exactly one scene.  She's (c) hot but not in a way that will threaten our primary audience (and Olive obviously doesn't know it and somehow no one seems to think so).  Therefore, somehow (d) against all odds, no one seems to ask her out. But (e) of course she doesn't make enough time for herself, she's so dedicated to her work and has no time for love.

This isn't a criticism.  This is like being surprised a cop in a 1980's movie is divorced, drinks too much, is a loose canon, and is partnered with their seeming opposite.  It's how these movies work.  

And it is here I am going to stop my discussion.  This movie was essentially what you think it will be.  It's safe to say, this is fine for streaming as part of the package I already have, but it was not theatrical ready.  And it's good there's a home and market for romcoms that is not Hallmark.

I do think Reinhart was better than the material and she shows signs she could be a thing.  I'd like to see her in some more interesting material.

G-Watch: Godzilla (1954)

Watched:  11/01/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Not sure

Director:  Ishiro Honda

Well, it's Sunday and on Thursday, we're going to see Godzilla Minus Zero.  To prepare, we're watching this movie, Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster, and then Godzilla: Minus One.  It shall be a mini-Godzilla Gauntlet.  

It's been a while since I last watched this one.  In fact, I am unclear on when I last saw it.  It may have been in the 2010's.  Give me some grace, there's a lot of Godzilla I've seen over the past few years.

Hallo-Watch: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Watched:  10/31/2026

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

Well, we managed to get in a viewing.  It wasn't easy, but we did it. 

Still top-tier for me, not as a sequel, but as a movie on its own.  

I've been watching this movie for Halloween every year since at least 2015.   Maybe earlier.  I've lost track, and in ye olden days, this blog wasn't exactly a film-watching journal.  So.  I don't know beyond 2015.  I do suspect I've seen this movie at least 20 times.  More likely, something like 25-30 times.  I don't believe I saw it until 2003 when Universal put out a crate of horror movies, so it's been a lot of catch-up.

As mentioned whilst discussing this year's viewing of Frankenstein, it felt like that movie left a lot of gaps in the conversation.  Bride of Frankenstein picks up saying directly to the audience "oh, we weren't done.  That's only half the story," and starts addressing those questions artfully and with pathos and a huge helping of humor.

Hallo-Watch: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Watched:  10/30/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing: First.  Ha.  Just kidding.

Director:  Frank Oz

James F. watched this and we had a bit of a convo about it in his comments, so I found myself watching Little Shop of Horrors (1986).  Again.  

I highly recommend checking out James' blog.  Dude is crushing it over there, and had some interesting thoughts on this film.  I don't always line up exactly (that would be boring), but I always get his point.  Get over there and check him out.  

So, read his post.  My comments I'll limit.  We've all seen the movie.

First, my crush on Audrey (if not Ellen Greene) continues on uninterrupted since a screening in 1986.  Well done.  We wrote about our crush 18 years ago at the old blog.

Sir Patrick Stewart Merges With The Infinite

Well, I've already pushed back some tears about this one.

Sir Patrick Stewart, our captain, has passed.  He was 86.

Prepare for a few generations of people to be really broken up about losing one of the bright stars of our firmament.

I had seen Stewart in one or two things before I came to know him as Captain Picard with the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot, Encounter at Farpoint.  I was, originally, a bit thrown.  But, within a few episodes, I understood what Stewart was bringing to the screen.

By the time I left for college it was with a poster that was just Picard, and so it was that Patrick Stewart - in the form of Jean-Luc - watched over me my freshman year.    

It turned out that Sir Patrick, out of character, was an immensely interesting person, who seemed to embrace life and the world around him with more warmth with each passing year.  After Star Trek, he made a tremendously good version of A Christmas Carol, he became Professor Xavier - a character I held dear from my X-Men reading days, and helped create the comic book movie as it exists now - one that demands the material find a truth to it.  And during COVID, he read us Shakespeare.  

He was outspoken about gay rights, about equality domestic abuse and other causes, and seemed, above all, a good man.  

Among his Star Trek comrades, he truly did seem to be the Captain - the British-trained actor who expected the most out of everyone, and the love the cast showed for him on and off screen was apparent.  And I knew during that final season of Picard, we were seeing a terrific gift given to us by that cast and crew.  One final mission for a man who was aging and meant much to all of them.

If you can find it, this coming Christmas season, either find his version of A Christmas Carol on television or the audiobook he narrated of Dickens' book.

Fair sailing, Captain.  You'll be missed.

Horror Watch: Dolls (1986)

Watched:  10/25/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  I'll call it a first viewing

Director:  Stuart Gordon

Sometimes I just want to know what the story is or was about a movie more than I care about the movie.

One day I'll do a full de-brief on Stuart Gordon's From Beyond, but the movie which is the subject of our post - Dolls (1986) - and From Beyond were apparently shot back-to-back re-using some of the same locations and sets.  They certainly share some of the same producers and a Director of Photography, Mac Ahlberg.

I'm guessing Dolls was shot as a sure-fire money-maker - and it's worth noting one of the producers involved with Dolls wound up writing Puppetmaster - which has a cameo by our own Barbara Crampton, star of From Beyond.  

Noir Watch: The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Watched:  10/22/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Stevenson

We're still in the late 1940's with the release of The Woman on Pier 13 (1949), and there's still more of the grit in the movies that audiences felt reflected the post-war moment than we'd see five or six years later, even in noir.

A movie about the ruthlessness of American Communists and romance twisted to obsession into cruelty, the movie finds us alongside newlyweds Brad and Nan Collins (Robert Ryan and Laraine Day).  Ryan plays a guy who came up the hard way, from a San Francisco stevedore to the newly appointed Vice President of a shipping company.  

He's met Day as the decorator for his office and married her within two weeks - something that movies treated as fairly *normal* until the 1960's.*  During their honeymoon, two things occur.  

Vamp Watch: Interview with the Vampire - The Vampire Chronicles (1994)

Watched:  10/22/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Neil Jordan

Credit where it's due.  We don't get the last 30 years of vampire media without, first, Anne Rice's vampire novels and probably not without Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994).  It's also hard to explain what a huge deal Anne Rice was in an era of B. Dalton book stores and a lack of access to somewhat transgressive fiction for suburban kids.  You want quasi-queer fiction you can read at the lunch table?  This was it.  And, there is a line somewhere from Anne Rice's novels to Twilight to stuff like Vampire Academy and, absolutely, the current popularity of supernatural romance.  

I should be clear - I'm more of a Bela Lugosi / Nosferatu / Sinners / Near Dark kind of vampire guy.  I've never read any of Rice's books.  And in 1994, I took a pass on the movie in the theaters, in part because I was busy with college, and in part because I thought Tom Cruise was a chode who had weaseled his way into the movie.

I finally watched Interview with the Vampire on VHS by myself at some point shortly after it hit the Blockbuster - but I couldn't tell you when.  All I can tell you is that I was really, really bored.  

Well, I have news about re-watching this movie in 2026.

Tom Skerritt Merges With the Infinite

Actor Tom Skerritt, fixture of five decades of film, has passed.

Skerritt was kind of amazing because you could just drop him in anywhere and he was buyable.  Running a space ship hauler?  Sure!  Someone's dad in Wyoming.  Why not?  Sometimes the stalwart, sometimes the villain, we always got the assignment.

He'll be missed.

Noir Watch: The Chicago Syndicate (1954)

Watched:  10/20/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Fred F. Sears

This was... shockingly good.  Or, at least, The Chicago Syndicate (1954) really landed for me.  Maybe I was shocked it wasn't bad, tilting into me outright enjoying the film.  

I don't rank movies by numbers or stars or whatever, but I give it... 7 Emmylous.  

just one Emmylou is quite a good thing to have

I will not be explaining this ranking system at this time.

It's perhaps because the movie has the quick pacing of nearly a modern film, or because they throw both Allison Hayes and Abbe Lane at you...  Anyway -  I dug it.  

Horror Watch: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Watched:  10/18/2026

Format:  State Theater/ Panic at the Paramount

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Robert Fuest

A couple of weeks ago, pal-CB asked if I wanted to go see The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) at Panic at the Paramount, a now-annual film series hosted between the Paramount Theatre (currently closed for remodeling) and its sister theater/ nextdoor facility, The State Theater.  

Really, it should just be a rule that when someone asks you if you want to see Dr. Phibes, you say "yes".  

A very odd comedy-horror, there are movies with similar plots, including Price's own Theatre of Blood, but nothing else feels like or even looks like The Abominable Dr. Phibes.  It's set in 1920's London with a mix of chic art deco architecture and old-school Victorian homes and offices.  Phibes himself dwells in the coolest villain layer I can think of - complete with his own Rock-a-Fire Explosion mechanical band.

Fam Watch: The Addams Family (1991)

Watched:  10/18/2026

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:   Barry Sonnenfeld

This was a Halloween watch with the niblings.  

Steanso's kids hear-tell that Unky Ry watches a lot of movies, and they kind of like movies, so there's often a bit of "you should watch a movie with the kids" which I am totally game for.  But these are 2026 kids with screens, and their relationship to movies is more like...  The Minions and Mario Bros. movie than what I watch.  

So, as smart, curious kids, they want to know what someone who watches a lot of movies likes, and I can't really say "let's talk about why everyone is wrong about Showgirls and how it's a brilliant critique of showbiz, capitalism and America..."  

As someone who grew up thinking The Addams Family was pretty keen and as a 16-year-old eagerly saw the movie opening weekend, I thought "well, I remember kids being there for this one.  It's a comedy.  Kids love Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston, right?  Right...?"

The movie went over like a lead balloon.  

It's fine.  It *is* a particular flavor of comedy they may not be ready for, and I kind of forgot how horny the movie is, which I think freaked the kids out a little.  And, apparently, the notion of things like Wednesday and Pugsley blowing each other up just off-screen did not click.

Well, maybe one day.  

Drac Watch: Dan Curtis' Dracula (1973)

Watched:  10/17/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dan Curtis

I'd heard this particular version of Dracula was pretty good, and I think that's not wrong.  I suspect it means more to British people who are familiar with the largely English cast.   It's a TV movie from the BBC, I assume, from 1973 and feels like a theatrical release, which is a reminder that TV didn't always put effort in back in the day, but when they did, it could be impressive.  

Dan Curtis's Dracula (1973) is essentially yet another version of Bram Stoker's Dracula that mixes and matches elements from the novel and other movies.  Parts of it are a wee bit more violent or gory than I expected for the primetime viewing hour, but very Dracula on-brand.  But I don't know the context of when and how it aired.

It basically bumps off Harker, which I've seen a few places and makes sense for narrative expediency depending on what you think the end should look like.

I won't get into it too much, but in this one Drac sees a picture of Lucy and she's the reincarnated ex.  When Van Helsing stakes her, everything that happens after is revenge for them taking his lady-love away.  Lucy also has only Arthur as a suitor - there is a tragic lack of a cowboy in the movie, which is bullshit.

I vaguely remember Simon Ward from something including Supergirl.  But mostly I was shocked someone cast Jack Palance as our Transylvanian Tepes.  Aside from that, none of these people meant a whole lot to me.   

Oddly, Palance is really, really good as Dracula.  It's the best I've seen him outside of Shane, and I've seen a handful of his movies (he's okay in The Big Knife).  

The thing eschews German Expressionism or even the punchy colors of early Hammer and sometimes looks like Dracula just running around someone's house, which is more or less what the book actually did.  That's not to say it looks bad - it's just not using light for mood a lot of the time. 

If I'm struggling to say much, it's because there's not much to say - but I think you can draw an interesting line from this version of the story to Coppola's version.  Both really want to mythologize Drac's origins and love for a woman across an ocean of time, etc...

Halloween Watch: Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Watched:  10/17/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Michael Dougherty

I'm always surprised you don't hear more about Trick 'r Treat (2007).  It's kind of the *ideal* Halloween horror movie, but it just seems to float around the periphery.  

It has it's own little mascot fellow, just like a Friday the 13th or, I guess, Terrifier (I haven't seen those).  It's very much *about* the season while also telling tales for the season.  It has an all-timer sequence with Dylan Baker, the most under-appreciated actor of the last forty years.  

It plays with multiple horror genres, including kids telling a story about a tragedy, a maniacal killer, girls who maybe should be in peril, and a vicious little demon.  And manages to run strong threads to pull it all together.

It's well-shot, has a black little heart, and everyone gets the assignment.  

I don't have that much to say about it at the moment.  I was positive SimonUK and I had podcasted it, but apparently that was a no-podcast hang?  Oh, yeah, it was way back in 2015.  

If I go on, I'd likely spoil the whole thing.  But if you don't want to just watch a horror movie you could watch any old time, and you want one for the spooky season?  This perfectly fits the bill.

I do remember being much more aware of who much of the cast was in 2015, but watching it now...  I remember the name Leslie Bibb, but had to look her up to remember why.  The movie was also produced by Bryan Singer, which may be why there has not been a follow up.