Masters of the Universe Movie: So, Nostalgia is a Weird Thing

So, there's a new trailer out for a He-Man movie.

And then I saw writer Chris Roberson said, over on Bluesky:

The goldilocks range for childhood nostalgia is such a weirdly specific thing. If you were too old or too young for something when it came out, forget it, but if you're in the right range, it's forever golden. For me, He-Man was silly kids stuff, but Thundarr the Barbarian is a timeless classic.

I was born in 1970 and was the PERFECT age for the Star Wars flicks as they were released, but I was five minutes too old for all of the 80s toy lines my slightly younger friends remember so fondly. And I was already hooked on imported anime series by the time the associated cartoons started airing.

And it really echoed my same thoughts.  Sometimes you can see why people are nostalgic for something - and while I *should* have been in that goldilocks zone for this property per Roberson's formula, I somehow never bit.

But I very much remember He-Man and the Masters of the Universe becoming a thing.  

In Septemberish of 1983, the cartoon debuted near the very start of the school year, and it meant I began on the wrong foot with my 3rd grade teacher.  I was listening to a classmate tell me about the show I hadn't seen yet - and so engrossed was I, I failed to note she'd started teaching.  It was how I got my name on the board for the first time that year.  But not the last time.

Damn you, He-Man.

But I did swiftly catch the cartoon, and was soon watching.  

That Christmas, I received a few He-Man figures as gifts, and bought myself the villainous Mer-Man myself shortly after - in no small part because I thought I should be into these toys and the show.  I determined Mer-Man was cool, no matter the line of toys, and spent my pennies. 

it was like looking in a mirror

But, frankly, in-hand, I thought the He-Man doll itself was grotesque, and didn't like looking at him.  He was my least favorite of the line.

Our guy was oddly proportioned, sporting a gigantic head with a face like a guy who just took it in the nuts - just before the nausea hits.  At least the villains were monsters and whatnot.

feet by Rob Liefeld, amirite?

The figures came with mini-comics with nice art, and that was my lesson in the right hand not talking to the left.  Clearly the people working on the comic talked to the toy-makers while the cartoon people decided to do their own thing, and nothing added up. Teela was sometimes the Sorceress, other times, just "girl" in the He-Man universe.  There was something about He-Man's sword being split in two that has really been lost to time.  Stuff like that.

But I do think my repulsion at the He-Man figure had a lot to do with my disinterest early on.  

When it came to the cartoon, I watched mostly because it was on when I came in the door from school more than that I liked anything about the show - which was clearly a weird mish-mash of borrowed ideas that defied any real world building.  And I just never thought of the heroes as characters - they were just, like, moving around on screen and were bland stand-ins with stilted animation.  It was a show where the villains were infinitely more interesting as a bunch of weirdos.  Most vexing - no one ever seemed to actually use their sci-fi tools or super strength or weapons thanks to TV guidelines.  At least the Transformers continually shot at each other, even if no one ever hit anyone else.  

With what I was led to believe was a lengthy backstory, somehow the stories were very wash-rinse-repeat.  There was no momentum.  One wondered why the heroes were always on the defensive and why they only had four poses.

In 1988 or so, I finally watched the live-action movie of Masters of the Universe when it came to VHS.  I thought it quite bad, even at that age.  The locale, the cheesy pairing with hep teens, the complete change of look for well-worn characters, etc...  It all screamed "we're embarrassed of this and want to do something else entirely".  

All I cared about was Meg Foster as Evil Lyn, because I was 13 and she sure seemed interesting (I'm 50 now, and still think I'm right about this).

But really, by fifth grade, I'd gradually lost interest in He-Man while still watching GI Joe and Transformers.  And - there were other shows tied to toy lines by this point.  Silverhawks.  Thundercats.  Hell, Jem and the Holograms.  And I'd watch, but was well aware these shows were quite bad by whatever rubric one develops as a kid and slapped together hoping to recreate the sales of other cartoon and toylines, and we knew it.

Eventually I started watching a little bit of baseball, WKRP and The Jeffersons instead.  I didn't give up on cartoons, and was an avid fan of TaleSpin, Tiny Toons and other shows through high school.  But didn't really think much about He-Man except if you had a reason to hold aloft a magic sword (usually a stick or broom) and shout "I have the power!"

Anyway, as I aged up, I've been wildly surprised by the staying power of all of these franchises.  He-Man, Thundercats, even Silverhawks.  And that my contemporaries tend to have fond memories of these things.  I guess all of them have had second go-rounds and shows and whatnot that I just haven't seen that kept these things going.  I did watch some of the Revelations thing on Netflix, but kind of lost steam.   

This isn't a dig at my contemporaries.  And, I assume, there's a generation or two younger than me who are very into He-Man despite coming to the property late.  It just feels weird to me specifically in that - I clearly like kid stuff I had nostalgia for.  I love me some DC and Marvel Comics, and I was watching Super Friends and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends pretty early on.  I can tie my interest in Zorro, The Lone Ranger and Tarzan to some cartoons more than any particular movie.  But in particular, I'm just always shocked by how, of all things, He-Man has stood the test of time.  It always felt to me like there just wasn't much there.

But people really like that dude, his roid rage and his furry britches. 

And when I say that, here's a $2,200 statue of He-Man and his cat.  People will pay that amount and own this happily.*

it's not uncool, but $$$

That said, I totally get that people imprint on something like that at a certain age.  Whether it's the comfort of seeing the same heroes defeating evil every day, a liking for the design and mythology, or that Teela seemed to be drawn with Monroe-like proportions - folks stuck with the shows and made it whole hobbies.  

Do I get excited by Castle Grayskull and Moss Man?  Not so much.  But I'll watch this movie streaming, I'm sure.  

I mean, it has Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn.

this I can support

*keep in mind, people pay way more than that for a ticket to a single sports game.  Everything is worth only what people are willing to pay.  I'll pay $50 for a vintage comic, but I'm guessing you won't.

Hallmark Watch: Frozen In Love (2018)

Watched:  01/21/2026

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Scott Smith

Here in real life, we're prepping for a winter storm coming this weekend, and I knew I was planning to finish watching Mademoiselle Fifi in the evening, so we threw on this RomCom from Hallmark, Frozen In Love (2018).  

The film is not a Christmas movie, but the stuff Hallmark programs, post-holidays, to fill the winter months.  Yes, there is snow and ice and ice hockey in this movie.  No, I don't know anything about hockey.

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.

Happy Birthday, Geena Davis

Hey!  It's the birthday of Geena Davis!  Who doesn't like Geena Davis?  

I believe my intro to Davis was as Larry in Fletch.  After that, she was just sort of omnipresent in movies.  But I decided she was *great* (post-Oscar win) when I saw Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own within a year of each other.  

I didn't see a few of her bigger movies til well after the fact, but I can always say, along with Sigourney Weaver and a few others, if you say "hey, Geena Davis is in it", I'll watch it.  

Davis is less in the spotlight these days - the last thing I saw her in was GLOW, where she crushed it as a casino manager and former showgirl.  But she's not just doing the acting and producing thing (she's a very successful TV and film producer).  She founded the Geena Davis Institute.  

I think she's the right person to have started such an org, and their work is important, bringing research and spotlights to issues of "equitable representation in media" (from their website).  

Here's to Geena Davis - trailblazing and playing my favorite ballplayer in a movie.

Also, she once surprised Stuart at work.

Noir Thriller Watch: Diabolique (1955)

Watched:  01/19/2026

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Henri-Georges Clouzot

Diabolique (1955) hangs heavy over so much of cinema that, like many other films I've both finally watched - or still haven't seen (hello, Bicycle Thieves) - the very weight of it made it seem like homework instead of watching something for the sake of watching a movie.  

It also makes these movies difficult to write about.  I don't guess I'm ever breaking new ground, but when it comes to something with the gravity of this film, what's the point of writing about it, really?

But even I thought it was ridiculous I'd never seen Diabolique.  Spousal murder movies are part-and-parcel for noir, from probably before Double Indemnity.    

Anyway - TCM's Noir Alley programmed the movie, and what better way to frame the movie than with Eddie Muller's brand of bar room rather than classroom?  

The film is both familiar - it's been ripped off endlessly in the ensuing 71 years - and yet it remains unique and surprising in other ways.  A post-WWII France, still sorting itself,makes for an interesting locale.  The economic situation is still rough, and the occupation has left its shadow and scars.  It's also made in France and therefore the Hayes Code isn't so much a factor.  But I'd really point to the characters and performances.  Grade A stuff riding a Grade A script..

At a boys' boarding school - the principal is carrying on with a teacher with the full knowledge of his wife, a timid woman with a heart condition.  However, the principal abuses the teacher, and somehow - the wife and the mistress have fallen into a conspiratorial friendship.  Even as we meet them, they're planning how to kill the principal and make it look like an accident.

Vera Clouzot - wife of the writer/ director - plays the wife of the principal.  She is, frankly, stunning in a complex, conflicted role, asked to play so many things, and she pulls it all off brilliantly.  It's simply one of those roles that will never play as outdated and because of the legacy of the film, will keep Clouzot in the public mind despite having only three film roles to her resume (she passed 5 years later).

I don't know what to say - yeah, the movie met expectations.  Windy, twisty, unrelentingly tense...  and, of course, with an ending good enough that they ask the audience not to share the end with anyone right there at the film's conclusion - something I'm respecting here in 2026, and so I'm not discussing the film too much more.  

Anyway - that one is now checked off. 

Clouseau Watch: The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

Watched:  01/19/2026

Format:  BluRay Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Blake Edwards

We've been having a hard time synching up of late, so Simon returned to Signal Watch HQ at 9:15 AM with this movie in hand.  

I am happy to say, I very much enjoyed The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), another installment in the Inspector Clouseau series of films starring Peter Sellers and directed by Blake Edwards.  

Taking off from the last film, it runs with the Herbert Lom character, former Chief Inspector Dreyfus, escaping an insane asylum and threatening the world unless they hand over or kill Inspector Clouseau.  In a way, this is the plot of Man of Steel, by the way.  

Recurring jokes recur - like Clouseau in terrible disguises, Kato attacking Clouseau...  but much like a Looney Tunes episode, it's all very welcome.  And the vibe is somewhere between Looney Tunes, Bond and prior Pink Panther films.  

Omar Sharif makes a bonus appearance, we see a *very* early Deep Roy appearance, and Lesley-Anne Down makes a convincing argument for herself.

All in all, recommended.  The jokes hold up, and even scenes that could be read as homophobic kind of aren't.  

Anyway, I'll keep it short because I hate explaining jokes, and the whole movie is a joke machine.  

"Up All Night" with Rhonda Shear is Back!

,

Back during some crucial years of my late high school and college years, I basically couldn't sleep.  Long after my folks had gone to bed on the weekend, I'd be up... all night.  And in those days, even cable channels went off the air or rolled over to infomercials. 

But the USA network, a sort of junk drawer of basic cable, knew some of us insomniacs were up for nonsense before we finally gave up and went to bed.  And every weekend, they gave us two or three movies on Fridays and Saturdays, with interstitials featuring pals to take us into the wee hours.  

a true symbol of America's golden age

JLC Regret Watch: Virus (1999)

Watched:  01/16/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director  John Bruno

A while back, I read that Signal Watch fave Jamie Lee Curtis has at least one movie she made which she'll publicly drag.  Which made me curious.  And that movie was Virus (1999), a sci-fi schlock-fest. 

Having just sat through the hour and forty minutes of Virus, I am in agreement with JLC.  This movie is very, very not good.  

It's an alien-invasion film (on a boat!) where it feels like the movie is just abusing your willing suspension of disbelief while delivering scenes and sequences from other movies you've seen before and is daring you to keep watching.

Our plot:  a wave of candy-colored cosmic energy passes through the Mir Space Station, which, in turn, shoots a beam of candy-colored energy into a Russian science vessel.  The beam blasts energy around the ship while the captain is alarmed it's accessing the mainframe (boy we were worried about mainframes still in 1999) and we cut to a standard, post-Abyss rag-tag working crew of a tug boat in a hurricane.

Noir Watch: Decoy (1946)

Watched:  01/15/2026

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Bernhard

What an odd film.

Devoid of narrative economy, the movie starts with a guy staggering his way to the highway, and then hitches a ride from the countryside to San Francisco.  He then takes the lift up to someone's apartment, and shoots them.  It's a dame!  

A cop - an instantly recognizable Sheldon Leonard - who played Nick the bartender in It's a Wonderful Life, here playing a cop named Joe Portugal* - shows up too late.  And the woman shot tells her tale.  But only after she gets to hold the unopened MacGuffin box.

The woman is our femme fatale, Margot, played by Jean Gillie in her penultimate performance before succumbing to pneumonia in 1949 in her early 30's.   Margot's been working a grift on a mobster who knocked over an armored truck, but for his trouble is on death row - and no one knows where the money is.  She's cheating on him with another gangster, Jim, with whom she concocts a plan to get the dough.  

They'll let the guy get executed by cyanide gas, but then steal the body and revive him with Methylene Blue,** a very real medication that can, in real life, combat cyanide, but, alas, in real life, does not restore life function to a corpse.  But in this movie, it sure does.

To do this, Margot seduces the doctor who does the autopsies on executed crooks.  I guess she's really good at *something*, because in a short time she convinces the doctor (Herbert Rudley) to join in on the operation.  If they can get that money, then she'll be happy!, she says.

Anyway, things take... a while... to get to the point.     

The one thing this movie has... well, it also has a knock-out nurse (Marjorie Woodworth) working for the doctor who seems like she's in a completely parallel story that isn't being filmed... So the OTHER thing this movie has is British-born lead actress Jean Gillie, who is really pretty terrific, gorgeous, and as solid a femme fatale as you're likely to find.  The character as written is why this movie exists - not that all the characters aren't a *little* bit bonkers, but Margot is a stunning psycho, using her charms to manipulate three men at a time, sometimes two in the same room.   

The weirdest thing is that the movie is called "Decoy", and at the beginning of the movie they start at the end, seeing Margot shot, the doctor clearly dying and you see an unopened money box.  And , because the movie is called "Decoy", one might spend 80+ minutes sitting there going "well, clearly that money box is a decoy".  

Like, I have zero idea why this starts at the end and tells itself in flashback.  It does nothing to help the story as we can see what will become of everyone before the story starts.  And it's not a good enough movie to make you say "gee, what was that?  Maybe there's twists and turns!"  It just plods toward that ending we saw at the beginning.

Anyway, it's certainly not awful, and from a "this is bonkers" perspective - bringing people back from the dead, Margot's scheming, etc.. - it's interesting.  But the pacing can feel deadly in the first thirty minutes or so, and it telegraphs the ending in the title.  So.

*truly, it can be said he is Portugal, The Man 

**Methylene Blue is the name of my new shoegaze band

Wise Watch: The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Watched:  01/14/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gunther von Fritsch / Robert Wise

We're continuing on with movies directed by Robert Wise - our gameplan for 2026.   

In his first outing directing, Wise did some pick-ups for The Magnificent Ambersons while Orson Welles was out of the country.  For his second directorial effort, Wise was *again* tapped in after the first director wasn't around.  Gunther von Fritsch was let go from The Curse of the Cat People (1944) for going over time and over budget at the notoriously tight-fisted RKO.  

I don't know what work belongs to Wise and which to von Fritsch here, so we'll just talk in generalities.

Re: the actual movie - as Jamie said after the movie wrapped "that was a wholly unnecessary sequel", which is absolutely true.  I'd argue The Leopard Man is more of a spiritual sequel to Cat People than this movie - but it *does* feature our heroes from the first movie, and Irena (Simone Simon) in ghostly form.

Avengers Doomsday and the All New Return of Hatin' on Superheroes

 

What a time it's been for Marvel of late.  

I think people forget about the crazy early years of Marvel when they were essentially an indie studio who leveraged studios for distribution.  Marvel was acquired by Disney in 2009, AFTER the release of the first two films.  Superhero films taking off was not a foregone conclusion, it was a thing that made sense as FX could now kind of do anything, and the generation of 1980's comics readers made their way into positions of influence where they could roll back the anti-comics hysteria of the 1950's and 1960's and show what comics had been up to since Katy Keene was a big seller.

So credit where it's due, no one forced superheroes on the public, the public was ready for them.

And, look, we all know something got off-base with Marvel after Endgame.  But many things have changed both at Marvel and in the world.

Recently I was rewatching part of The Marvels on cable - and I can see why it didn't take.  *I* liked the movie, but it required homework.  One had to watch and recall Ms. Marvel, know a side character from WandaVision, and be all in on Captain Marvel (which I was or am).  And as a stand-alone movie it never felt entirely like they'd worked out the actual stakes of the movie, the personality of the villain.  Instead, they focused on the character interaction and that story, which was a worthy story, certainly.  But there was so much going on between Skrulls, singing water planets, Hala melting down, Ms. Marvel's family, Nick Fury in space, etc...

Extrapolate that across the line, and it's maybe just too much and not enough at the same time.  

Wise Watch: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Watched:  01/12/2025

Format:  Criterion Disc

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Orson Welles/ others/ Robert Wise - some scenes

This year we're going to try to watch every film we can find directed by American film-director Robert Wise.  We will watch the movies he helmed in order of release.

Wise is the director of innumerable, truly great movies, but it's odd how rarely he gets discussed by film fans.  From film noir like The House on Telegraph Hill to the classic that is The Sound of Music and the ever-controversial Star Trek: The Motion Picture to one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, The Haunting - our fellow has range.   

Starting our journey with The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), famously an Orson Welles directed movie, will seem odd.  However, it seems Wise first got to direct during re-shoots for the ending of the movie, something allowed him as Welles was in Brazil on behalf of the Good Neighbor program instituted during WWII by FDR shooting a different movie for RKO. 

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.  

Catch-Up Watch: One Battle After Another (2025)

Watched:  01/05/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Paul Thomas Anderson

Well, better late than never.  This was one I absolutely wanted to see in the theater, but didn't due to circumstances.

Let's not bury the lede:  I dug the hell out of this movie.  

I suspect One Battle After Another (2025) will do well through awards season - everyone in the movie is great, it's beautifully shot, the audio and score are A-level (I hadn't heard a Jonny Greenwood score in a minute).  It's on an evergreen topic in modern drag.  That said, I haven't read any reviews and I don't know what people *think* about the movie as of yet, just seen it get many stars from folks' letterboxd accounts.  

I kept thinking about how movies are made - what choices were made.  How someone else would have turned this into something preachy, or treacly, or something that was just a standard actioner.  There's a handful of directors who maybe could have done this, but PTA walks a tightrope here, and so many others would have tilted too far one way or the other.

The Signal Watch Presents: Favorite Movies of 2025

Well, here's our wee, personal best-of list for 2025.  

• We broke down the movies we watched by-the-numbers
• We talked about what we really didn't like

These are not necessarily new movies, but they are new-to-me movies.  Of the 246 unique movies I watched this year, I also watched like 175 new-to-me movies, so these are selections from that list.

We're going to break these up into categories.

Horror 

Chabert Watch: Lost in Paradise (2026)

Watched: 01/04/2026

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dustin Rikert

Job: head of a premier fashion design studio

Location of story:  Fiji

new skill:  jungle and beach survival

Man:  Ian Harding

Job of Man: Chef!

Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to Fiji

Event:  Plane crash

Food:  fish

Again, I'd love to know what stats the Hallmark Channel has about viewership when they have Lacey Chabert in a movie.  Because someone ran the numbers and was able to show that sending a Hallmark crew and stars to Fiji was going to be profitable.

It's not the first time Chabert has wrangled a destination movie.  I've seen her in movies filmed in Malta, Ireland (once as Ireland, once doubling as Scotland), vague Europe, South Africa, Italy and I think Greece.  And for the US, I know she went to Hawaii for a movie.  I feel like she's been in Manhattan at some point.

Somehow Fiji feels particularly nuts, but off to Fiji this movie went.  

The Signal Watch Presents: Worst Movies of 2025

All right.  Let's light this candle.

• We've already broken down some numbers regarding all the movies we watched in 2025.  
• And we'll be looking at the Best of the Year for 2025.

However - this post is the end-of-the-year wrap up in which I indulge in being more than a little unkind.  

There's a school of thought that "hey, you made a movie!  Good for you!  That's hard!" that's very much an appreciation for the work someone put into something, no matter how it turned out.  But we're not here to cheer on sixth graders to whom we share a family bond playing their first band concert.  

Not for my Demographic Watch: 13 Going on 30 (2004)

Watched:  01/02/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Gary Winick

So, yeah, this movie was never aimed at me.  I'm fine with that.  It wasn't aimed at me in 2004 when I was 29, and in 2026, it's even less for me.  

It's also not very good.  And not good in ways that I don't really understand.  YMMV with Jennifer Garner as a lead, but mostly the movie is a mess while also managing to feel... boring.  

It's another in a long line of movies about someone who is young getting to be an adult - like Big, Vice-Versa or...  Shazam, I guess.  Oddly, Jenna (as a teen played by Christa B. Allen and by Garner as a 13-year-old) really wants to be... thirty?  

I'll buy the magic as the conceit, sure!  I've bought Duck Planet refugees and Ewoks.   

Mystery Watch: Wake Up Dead Man - a Knives Out Mystery (2025)

Watched:  01/01/2026

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Rian Johnson

Look, I am in the bag a bit for these movies at this point.  I am not averse to a good murder mystery, and I like a quirky detective.  And since jump, I've been onboard with Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc.  

I had planned to go see this upon its theatrical release, but a confluence of events prevented this.  For good or ill, it's a Netflix movie, and after two weeks or so, they shuttled the movie over to the streamer and we finally had time to watch it.  

Honestly, I hadn't heard much about this one, and Howard gave it his usual 2.5 stars, which told me nothing, Howard.  Nothing!  And I would be more charitable than Howard, but I am also always kinder or meaner than Howard, who shoots straight down the middle most days.

In general, Wake Up Dead Man fit the bill just fine for a movie for a New Years Day.  A solid cast, an engaging mystery I was never going to solve on my own, and Kerry Washington (we will always grant extra points for Kerry Washington).