Happy Birthday, Audrey Totter - Noir Watch: Lady in the Lake (1947)

Watched:  12/18/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  ha ha ha ha...  oh, mercy

Director:  Robert Montgomery

December 20th marks the birthday of Signal Watch patron saint of noir bad girls, Audrey Totter.  

For more on one of our favorite stars of the silver screen, here's a post from earlier this year on Moviejawn.

Last year, through a series of misadventures, we missed our annual watch of Lady in the Lake (1947), and so we wanted to make sure we got in this year's screening.   You have your Christmas movies, I have mine.  

Robert Montgomery stars and directs, mostly as Marlowe's voice over.  Montgomery is not a bad actor, but his Marlowe is maybe my least favorite - I mean, Bogart plays the same guy in The Big Sleep, and I'm a huge fan of Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet.**

There's truly nothing like this movie - not from this era.  95% of the film is presented from the subjective viewpoint of Philip Marlowe - our lead and a detective.*  The idea is that the audience is looking through Marlowe's eyes - eyes which are a camera the size and weight of a Mini-Cooper.  As a studio film where they let a new director run with an idea, it's some very strange viewing that in 2025, feels like the world's longest videogame cut-scene.

Holiday Noir Watch: Repeat Performance (1947)

Watched:  12/16/2025

Format:  Kanopy

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Alfred L. Werker

I'd seen Repeat Performance (1947) a few years back, I assume during one of the windows where blogging was on pause, because I have no write-up of the movie.  I'm very sure I saw it as part of Noir City Austin, but if I found out it was under different circumstances, okay then.

I didn't remember it particularly well, just a few impressions that turned out to hold.  I remembered it had a really solid ending that kind of saved the movie for me, the lead was a little aimless, and it sagged in the middle.  But it also was a curious exploration of a concept that would be pretty popular now and would withstand a remake.

The film opens on Joan Leslie murdering a "Barney" (Louis Hayward) and then fleeing to find friends at a New Years' party.  She's asking for help, and Richard Basehart takes her to see George Sanders Tom Conway.  En route, she makes a wish to have the whole year to do over - and she gets it.

After Joan Leslie has adjusted to the idea that she is living over 1946, she races home to change things.  

But no matter what she tries to do, fate keeps bending back to the inevitable conclusions of the year before.  Her husband, Barney, will play around on her with playwright Paula Costello (Virginia Field).  She'll star in Costello's play.  Richard Basehart will find himself under the thrall of Mrs. Howell Mrs. Shaw (Natalie Schafer), a wealthy financer of the arts, who will do him dirty.  And it doesn't matter what Joan Leslie changes.

If marching inevitably toward one's doom is a feature of noir, then this slam dunks so hard it shatters the noir backboard.  But it is a weird fantasy movie, and for this sort of stuff that lived mostly in pulp magazines and would become more familiar with TV anthology series like Twilight Zone, it feels really early for a movie to be pulling mystical hoo-har and genre mixing.

If I'm looking for a way to strike it as noir, it's one part "oh, magic", and one part "this movie has a femme fatale, but our female lead is both dumb and spineless, not the usual strong woman at home.".  Sure, they frame her as such, but she's a dope when it comes to her shit-bag of a husband.  

That's no shade on Joan Leslie, who nails what she's given... but two years after WWII, it seems very, very odd that wed have a movie where a woman - who has murdered her philandering husband and is given another chance - once she sees how things are lining up - wouldn't kick his ass to the curb and avoid, you know, MURDER a second time.  He's also a terrible drunk, emotionally abusive, capable of physical abuse, and not once does he demonstrate why anyone wants to spend time with him.  He's arguably also the least handsome guy in every scene.

And still this lady is clinging onto him after he humiliates her and ruins himself.  It's kind of painful to watch. 

Virginia Field as the evil Paula Costello is actually pretty great.  Hats off.  She is one stone cold b.  

Anyway, not my favorite, but it's interesting.  

True Crime/ Noir Watch: The Phenix City Story (1955)

Watched:  12/14/2025

Format:  TCM on HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Phil Karlson

The Phenix City Story (1955) was not at all what I was expecting from brief descriptions I'd read over the years when making a choice for what to watch.

First - Phenix City is a real city in Alabama on the Georgia state line.  Second - this is a true crime movie that was made in the wake of the assassination of a recently elected new Attorney General from the State of Alabama who was voted in on his promise to clean up the vice and corruption in Phenix City.

Phenix City sits across the Chattahoochee River from the larger Columbus, Georgia and near a very large Army Base, Ft. Benning.  Apparently, for decades and decades, that was enough to make the small town (about 24,000 people) into a place where one could gamble and pick up hookers while the locals looked the other way.  While Phenix City also had more churches per capita than anywhere else in Alabama, somehow the city basically turned a blind eye to the economic engine that is allowing your town to be Pottersville.  

The movie is wildly frank about this for a Hayes Code-era movie.  They murder children, on screen.  There's other acts of terrible violence.  It mentions and shows prostitution, gambling, etc...  and even discusses and shows prostitution offered in return for votes for the corrupt politicians.  I'm kind of shocked this movie isn't a much bigger deal just as a counterpoint to what people think is both the squeaky clean media of the Eisenhower era and a counterpoint to the dumbulbs who think things were all Mayberry in ye olden thymes.  

Neo-Noirvember Chabert Watch: The Pleasure Drivers (2006)

Watched:  11/29/2025

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Andrzej Sekula

Editor's note:  we've decided to Thelma and Louise our way through the remaining Chabert filmography.  I've been looking to see if I can find the Chabert films I haven't seen yet via very cheap used copies or online one way or another.  This one set me back about $5.

Truly a product of a particular decade, somehow The Pleasure Drivers (2006) arrived about seven years after that decade.  It's another LA-based low-budget crime movie, with this one peppering itself with vague philosophical aspirations, but what they are saying lacks any insight and is dumb.  And, the movie is entirely populated by characters who take their cues from how human beings behave from other movies, leaving us with weird third-generation xeroxes of motivation instead of anything identifiable as human.  

Everything about the film feels late-90's, part of the post Pulp Fiction indie boom.  It's three stories that loosely intertwine, and, of course, collide at the end.  But none of the three stories is very interesting and none of the characters terribly watchable.  

Noirvember Watch: Saigon (1947)

Watched:  11/27/2025

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  Leslie Fenton

I was pretty psyched to see a new-to-me movie starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.  And one that was set in a post-WWII Saigon.  I was very curious how they'd handle the dynamics of the French colonialism, Japanese occupation, rise of Communism, etc...  

Well, the answer is, none of that comes up.  In fact, I don't think there's a single Vietnamese person in this movie.  That's... wild.

I *do* like the basic idea of the plot.  

Three Army Air Corp soldiers in post-War China are getting discharged.  One of them doesn't know he has only 2-3 months to live due to an ailment (cancer?  something else?) but will likely just die suddenly.  So, the other two decide to show him the time of his life, which they can do if they take a lucrative but shady gig flying a businessman from Shanghai to Saigon.  

But when they go to get the plane and fly him out, the cops stop the businessman, while his secretary, Veronica Lake, jumps in the plane and they fly off.  The plane crashes in Vietnam, and they make their way to Saigon.  Along the way, the dying man falls for Lake (reasonable) while she spars with Alan Ladd.

Oh, and she has a briefcase full of cash.

And, as Lake humors the dying guy, she and Ladd start to fall for each other.

Anyway, it's super weird.  They treat it as if everyone in Vietnam is French?  Or vaguely European?  There's only one Asian person in the movie at the very beginning who sounds very Southern Californian.  

The movie is fine.  It'll never be a favorite, but when I was thinking "I don't think this is working", it kind of changed directions a few times and saved itself.  It fits into that "it's fine" category, but closer to "it's good".  But I just wasn't 100% on board.  But I maybe need to give it another shot.

Noirvember Watch: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Watched:  11/22/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Billy Wilder

If you ever wanted to crush the human soul with a pair of slick mid-century movies, you could do worse than to schedule this movie alongside The Sweet Smell of Success.  

The movie probably seems a little over the top in some ways, but holy christ, you kind of know it's more accurate about our relationship with the media and how the media keeps us invested than any of us really want to admit.  

Kirk Douglas plays a talented journalist who has been run out of every decent newspaper on the East Coast.  He rolls into town in Albuquerque in a broken down car and takes a job at a small paper that insists he publish only the truth.  

A year later, he's sent to go cover a rattlesnake roundup but en route stumbles across an accident.  At a roadside shop and restaurant they find that across the way the owner of the place has gone into an old cave where he often finds Native American artifacts, and the place had collapsed on him.  Douglas smells a story, and calls it in.  It's the first time he's really been able to cut loose with some real sensationalism, and the story gets picked up by the wire.

Noirvember Watch: Crossfire (1947)

Watched:  11/12/2025

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Edward Dmytryk

Crossfire (1947) is one of the movies they recommend when you're first trying to sort out noir, which is a bit odd.  It's about as far from Maltese Falcon or Out of the Past as you're going to get.  Heck, it's a social message movie, and feels like a prestige film on top of that - earning a few Oscar nominations, including that for Gloria Grahame in a small but powerful role.

The movie is about a murder that occurs, and the suspects are from a group of soldiers waiting to be de-enlisted from the army in the wake of World War II.  There's no obvious motive,just possibilities for opportunity.  

Robert Young plays the cop figuring out who did it, and he pulls in a young Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and is looking for Steve Brodie and George Cooper.  None of these guys seem to particularly like each other - their grouping is the loose affiliation of their unit, but they all know Cooper's character, Mitchell,is struggling.

Mitchell had really tied one on, and tried to find solace with a girl from a dime-a-dance joint, Ginny (Gloria Grahame).  And, man, is there a lot of story in her relatively few minutes on screen.  There's a whole other noir here about a girl trapped in hell who maybe saw Mitchell as anything from a chance at one night with a decent guy to maybe a way out.

And, kudos to Paul Kelly who plays a singularly weird role as "the man" against Graham.

The victim is played by one of my favorite supporting actors of this era, Sam Levene.  And eventually it becomes clear that the only motivation that Young can figure is that he was killed merely for being Jewish.  

If it's noir, the movie is a post war film reflecting on the darkness waiting for people as they came home, from cheating spouses to the same hatred that fueled the fascism in Europe and Asia that's festering at home.  This is about people already out of control before the movie even starts.  

The look is probably the tipping point.  This movie is *beautifully* shot, and in the version on Criterion, you can really see how brilliantly J. Roy Hunt lit and filmed each scene.  This is a movie that takes place mostly over one night, in the dark of the city, in bars, walk-ups and hotel rooms.  And a few scenes in the balcony of a theater.  As good as the film is story-wise, acting (Grahame was nominated for Best Supporting Actress), directing (Dmytryk also nominated), it's worth watching just for Hunt's work.

Also, the scene where Graham meets Mitchell's wife (Jacqueline White).  Hoo-boy.

In short, I love this movie, but felt I'd watched it several times and could take a break.  But I am so glad I returned to it.  It remains as relevant and powerful as ever, and maybe hits harder in 2025 than it did a decade ago.

Noirvember Watch: Blind Spot (1947)

Watched:  11/11/2025

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Gordon

A cheap and cheerful B-noir from 1947, Blind Spot is a quick watch that depends on charm of its talent and two or three gags to keep it moving.

The film was programming on TCM's Noir Alley, which I confess I am not watching as much as I should be of late.  The good news is that I found myself, once again, enjoying the intro and outro by noirista Eddie Muller as much or more than the movie.

This film follows an alcoholic writer of novels with an artistic bent (Chester Morris) who, while on a bender, goes to his publisher's office to try and sneak in and tear up his contract, which he has decided is unfair.  While there, he meets a sultry blonde (Constance Dowling) and argues with his publisher in front of a successful writer of mysteries (Steven Geray).  It is suggested that Morris switch to writing mysteries to make more money, and he agrees to do so.

He retreats to the bar in the lobby of the publisher's building and makes time with the blonde, who has just quit after the publisher got handsy.

That night, the publisher is found dead, and Morris seems to be the suspect.  But the evidence is circumstantial.  

It's a lost-time mystery as the now sober Morris tries to pull the pieces together, including possibly condemning himself as the murderer.  It seems the technique he dreamed up for his own murder mystery novel is what was used to kill the publisher.  Meanwhile, both Dowling and Geray are working overtime to assist the writer.

It's no award winner, but it plays like a solid novella or short story, and the characters are colorful.  Morris and Dowling play very well off each other, even if she seems drawn to him for absolutely no reason.  And part of the cost-savings appears in overly long scenes where the same ideas keep getting conveyed as we work to fill the necessary runtime.

It's absolutely not crucial viewing, but you could do way worse.  Oddly, it would also fit in neatly with Criterion's current "Black Out Noir" showcase of film's where a lead is trying to account for lost time while they were drugged, asleep, drunk, hallucinating, etc...  

HK Noir Watch: Hard Boiled (1992)

Watched:  11/08/2025

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  Unknown.  Probably fourth or fifth.

Director:  John Woo

Back in the early 1990's, JAL and others and I would head over to Hogg Auditorium on the campus of the University of Texas on the weekend.   One of the campus clubs would bring in prints of Hong Kong cinema action movies and, sometimes sober, sometimes not, we'd sit in the then 60-year-old auditorium with whomever else had the few bucks needed to get in.  

And, bats.  Austin is full of bats, and the Mexican Free-tailed Bats would flit about above us in the dark, occasionally throwing shadows in the screen.  

Anyway, that was my intro to all kinds of movies, and where I developed a huge crush on Michelle Yeoh during Police Story 3:  Super Cop, and then had it reinforced with Heroic Trio (and of course no one ever saw Michelle Yeoh again).

I considered myself a fan of action films, but, holy shit, I had never seen anything like Hard Boiled (1992) before that first screening.  It had elements of what I was used to from American-produced action films with a dash of what I was used to from what I'd learn to call Neo-Noir.  Chow-Yun Fat was so clearly a leading man, and Tony Leung an ideal up-and-comer.  But it would be decades before I'd get around to watching him in In the Mood For Love, probably his greatest success in the west until Shang-Chi.  

As a story, Hard Boiled has enough twists to keep you going, and not all of them add up.  It's also largely a backdrop for the kick-ass action that John Woo would deliver that would fundamentally change action cinema world wide.  As JAL pointed out, you don't get to John Wick without Hard Boiled.  And, it has the mix of action and bits of oddball comedy that would come to punctuate American action film (and confuse a generation that is very cross that moods can sometimes mix in a movie).  

In general, I feel like this is a movie that film fans should see at least once.  You may not even like it, but if you understand the flow of time and how influence works in cinema, this is one of *those* films.  Just be ready for more cartoonish violence than you ever thought could fit into a single minute of film occurring for at least 1/3rd of the movie's runtime.

Neo-Noir Waddingham Watch: The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025)

Watched:  11/07/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Simon Stone

It's Noirvember, so I need to keep fitting in noir, neo or otherwise.  I also had foot surgery yesterday, so I am couch-bound and taking drugs.  So maybe all of my choices are not great in the moment.  I vaguely remember putting on like 4 Hallmark movies yesterday as I rode out a hydrocodone adventure.

Anyhoo...  I was pretty excited back when I heard Hannah Waddingham was going to be in an ensemble locked-room-murder-mystery.  She seems kind of perfect for being a little extra in a Murder on the Orient Express sort of movie.  And I like Keira Knightley well enough.  And I've been pulling for Guy Pearce since Memento.  

I was even planning to make time for this movie the weekend it dropped on Netflix.  And then the reviews hit.  Not great.   

And having had watched this movie, I am not surprised by this.

First:  all the acting is fine to good.  You cannot blame Ms. Knightley, Mr. Pearce or Hannah Waddingham (especially not Ms. Waddingham).  

The directing is... fine?  The script is awful.  The cinematography is beyond dreadful.  Who even knows about the editing...

But the movie feels like it has no idea why people find these movies interesting.  

Noirvember Watch: Deadline at Dawn (1946)

Watched:  11/04/2025

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Harold Clurman

I know a tiny smidge about the Group Theatre in New York in the pre-WWII era, and have made a few connections over the years.  And so it was that I saw Clifford Odets' name come up during the opening credits as the screenwriter, and I got a rough idea of the film that was about to unspool.  Odets was an actor who participated in the Group Theatre movement before finding his footing as a writer - in fact, the writer upon whom the Coen Bros. based the titular character in Barton Fink.

So while Criterion included this movie in with "Blackout Noir", as in "people who lost time and are trying to recover what happened", my attention shifted to the usual social issues and naturalism that I expected to populate the film.  Curiously, the film is also directed by Harold Clurman, one of the Group Theatre directors - in his sole film directing credit.  Methinks it did not go well.

The major spoiler I'll drop here at the beginning is that this movie seems like a wandering mess until the finale slam dunks everything you've seen before, tying together themes, plot elements and character motivation that has seemed... wandering at best.  Honestly, tip of the hat to that end, which is how I'll remember the film.  

Noirvember Watch: Winchester '73 (1950)

Watched:  11/03/2025

Format:  Criterion Disc

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Anthony Mann

I don't think I've seen Winchester '73 (1950) since Jamie and I rented it circa 1998 when a Hollywood Video opened near us, and unlike Blockbuster, Hollywood prided itself on having a section for older films.  And the nice thing about that was that they had limited shelf-space, so if they had it in, the movie was pretty solid.  

The movie often gets mentioned in the discussion around "Western Noir", and seeing it now, I can absolutely see why.  It doesn't hurt that director Anthony Mann rewrote the film to better suit his interests, and his prior films included noir classics like Side Street, Border Incident, T-Men and plenty of others.  At any rate, Mann was familiar with putting a lead through the ringer and understanding that they can have an irrational obsession and still be a compelling protagonist.  

In this case, all we know is that Jimmy Stewart is playing Lin McAdam, who comes to Dodge City looking for Dutch Henry Brown, and it's a vendetta.  In Dodge City, he and his partner (Millar Mitchell) have to hand in their guns just as they come across Brown, also without a gun.  A lengthy shooting competition for a prized Winchester '73 rifle takes place with McAdam winning, but Brown steals the gun and makes off.

Soon, the gun is changing hands from Brown to an Indian Trader to a chief on a warpath, to a cowardly would-be criminal.  It's great stuff.  And along the way, we see early appearances of Rock Hudon as a war chief and Tony Curtis as a young cavalry soldier.  

Stewart's obsession will be reflected in 6 years in Johns Wayne and Ford's The Searchers, but here it feels like pure noir.  Millar Mitchell's sidekick is there to comment upon said obsession as well as keep our hero on the straight and narrow.  And even the ending, where our hero has accomplished his task (spoiler) sure feels like noir with Stewart looking haunted and having to realize even as he holds the female lead (Shelley Winters), he has no idea what to do now, or if the murder of his brother did anything at all to soothe the rage.

Yes, the movie co-stars Shelley Winters, and this may be the movie where she's totally fine.  At no time did I want to shoot her out of a cannon.  Dan Duryea shows up to add to the noir flavor and play Dan Duryea, even letting his hair flop in a scene.  God, he's an amazing asshole on screen.  It's amazing.*  Charles Drake plays "Steve", the world's greatest coward.  Character actors John McIntire and Jay C. Flippen are used exceedingly well.  

It's also shot (in monochrome) in the Tucson area, and makes excellent use of the western landscape.  Gorgeous stuff.  

I guess this movie was a sort of career-saver for Stewart, and allowed him to start playing more complicated roles.  I need to check out his re-teaming with Anthony Mann on The Naked Spur.  But I certainly think of Stewart as a guy who can and did do everything in his work, from Vertigo to Harvey.  I mean, come on.  

Anyway - I kind of loved it.  On the disc there's actualy a commentary track with James Stewart and I want to give it a listen ASAP.  

*I would pay $400 to watch a movie that was just 1950 Duryea and 1950 Richard Widmark insulting each other

35th Anniversary Re-Watch: Miller's Crossing (1990)

Watched:  09/27/2025

Format:  Criterion Disc

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Coen Bros.

In late summer 1990, I saw the trailer for Miller's Crossing (1990) at my local cinema in Spring, Texas.  I don't remember what movie I saw that day, but I remember seeing the lush, lyrical trailer for a movie that seemed to jump off the screen with its imagery, language and violence.  Coming off of my first high of mob movies with The Godfather around that time, as well as seeing the guys who had made Raising Arizona were behind the movie, I was ready to see the film on opening day.  

But the Coen Bros. were not yet famous, and Fox, which had distribution rights, didn't really push the movie.  I kept looking for it in show listings.  But it played downtown Houston, not out in the 'burbs, and I was still something like eight months away from my license.  And, so it was that I missed the film until it came out on VHS.  

New Parker Movie Trailer: Play Dirty

One of the only book series I've read in its entirety, and re-read multiple volumes, has been the Parker series of books by Richard Stark (aka: Donald Westlake).  I tend to think of Parker as a criminal project manager, and that works for me in my world.

A while back I'd read of the casting of Robert Downy Jr. for the role of Parker in the Shane Black helmed film, but that seems to have gone away with Avengers stuff back on RDJ's slate.  To my surprise, the role here is occupied by Mark Wahlberg.  I'm not anti-Wahlberg, but after spending 20-something books with Parker, I was of the opinion that RDJ could do it, but he wasn't my first choice.  Look, Parker is supposed to be a towering figure and RDJ Is like 5'9".  I am a bit baffled by the casting of Wahlberg, but no one asked me. We have a whole Dave Bautista out there.

There have been many adaptations of Parker books to film, and all of them make the mistake of wanting Parker to have... feelings.  He does have feelings, like anger, mild-irritation, general crankiness...   but he's not a joker or hugger.  He does not quip.  And that's hard for folks writing him or playing him, and why Lee Marvin's take in Point Blank was probably closest.  He's largely amoral, and will put a bullet in you if you cross him, even if he's known you for years as a colleague.  He *does* have unspoken feelings and maybe even what he considers friendships, if Butcher's Moon is any indication.  

So, long story long, the trailer doesn't reflect the novels.  

Nor is it, exactly, one of the books.  It seems to be melding elements from The Handle and another book or two. But it's its own thing, in the end.

But what I have heard twice now is that the movie is not the Ocean's 11-vibe that I'm getting from the video above.   In my humble opinion, the closest to the vibe of the books is probably Payback with Mel Gibson, or the aforementioned Point Blank.  

If I may... Amazon is doing the wrong thing here in general, and should just make 3 Parker movies per year for maybe 3 years, and just stick to the books, setting the movies in the era in which the novels were released.  Stop at The Rare Coin Score, I think.  Bring in Claire and then decide if it's worth continuing.

Noir Watch: Force of Evil (1948)

Watched:  09/01/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Abraham Polonsky

So, what I remembered about this movie from my prior viewings:

• it's super dark
• it's a bit confusing/ complex
• John Garfield and Thomas Gomez are in it
• Marie Windsor is in it and clearly taller than Garfield and it impacts the blocking
• Windsor, as always, looked smashing

French Noir Watch: Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Watched:  07/27/2025

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jean-Pierre Melville

So, there's a whole bunch of Criterion movies on sale on Amazon, and I wasn't doing much this weekend, so I got silly and justified the expense on this movie.  Because.  

Leave me alone.  Sometimes I do things.

If you've never dipped your toe in French noir, or only watched Breathless, the French noir movement is fascinating as it's so clearly done with love for and homage to American noir (which the French coined - we just called them crime movies).  I assume American culture was imported via Hollywood in the post-war years as American GI's rambled around Europe and France took a minute to get its film industry fired up again.  But the American movies are refracted through the lens of a nation crawling out from occupation, and maybe contain the spirit which gave us Camus.  

I mean, one of the French noir films I'd rec is called Elevator to the Gallows.  Fate vs. freewill and existential dread hangs heavy on the minds of these movies - more so than American films mostly being about "don't pursue the wrong dame".

Le Cercle Rouge (1970) is a crime/ heist movie in which we're told at the outset, before we meet any characters "these people will come together, and it will go very badly, indeed".  And, that is what happens.

Noir Watch: The Gangster ( 1947)

Watched:  07/15/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  Second

You know what, I think I would just repeat myself - so here's my post on the movie from the first time I saw it back in 2018.  

I guess I'll mention - this movie stuck with me in a way that really surprised me.  I've almost purchased it on disc for a rewatch a number of times-  even as recently as a couple of weeks ago - and then it was listed as part of Noir Alley's offerings on TCM.  

I'm not sure it's the best movie in the world, but after seven years, it's one I thought about quite a bit, and that's not nothing.

2010's Watch: Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

Watched:  06/29/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Writer/ Director:  Drew Goddard

It's possible in fifteen or twenty years, this movie will be found and puzzled over as featuring folks who are now established stars, mixed with longtime stars.  Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) features Cynthia Erivo in what I will say should have been a break-out performance and her entree into film stardom, rather than her having to wait until Wicked.  She's clearly already a star.  Lewis Pullman is here.  As are Chris Hemsworth, John Hamm, Jeff Bridges and a not-50 Shades-ing Dakota Johnson.  

But this movie came out and tanked.  That's neither here nor there, but it has meant that it's not exactly on the forefront of people's minds as few eyes saw the movie in the theater and it's not found an audience on home video. 

What's odd is that Metacritic comes in at a mid-range-ish 60, and the audience score is a generous 71.  And yet... no one saw this.

However, maybe in the same way of The Last of Sheila from 1973, it will find an audience that will make sure it has a cult following.  Or not.  (I heartily recommend The Last of Sheila.)

Noir Watch: High Tide (1947)

Watched:  06/22/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Reinhardt

This movie had the unfortunate combo of plodding pacing while feeling deeply convoluted.  Throw in some off-brand talent and poverty row aesthetics, and it's not exactly one of the most polished movies you're going to see.

It's a bummer, because it feels like there's probably a good story or movie in here somewhere, but this probably isn't it.  

There's just so many angles and storylines, and the movie runs only 72 minutes but has enough going on for something 45 minutes longer.  It also uses the framing of "wow, this is awful.  How did we wind up here?" with two of our leads in a car wreck at the beach, both trapped and waiting for the high tide to come in and kill them.

We flash back to a newspaper office with a tough editor, a weak-knee'd rich boy boss and our lead - who had been fired from the paper coming back to find out why his editor pal is making him the beneficiary on his high dollar life insurance.

There's multiple dames in play, gangsters, perturbed fired reporters.  It's a lot.  And it's kind of hard to care about forty minutes in as things just keep happening but it feels like the movie is spinning its wheels.

I just couldn't get into it.  I wish I could say I did.  But...  alas.  

Then, at the end, when they put all the pieces together, I was like "oh, that's actually really smart and cool".  Alas, I just didn't maintain much interest to get me to that point.  It's so short, I'll rewatch it soon to see if I like it better when I'm in a better headspace.

Fuller Watch: Forty Guns (1957)

Watched:  06/01/2025

Format:  TCM forever ago, but on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sam Fuller

I'm gonna say - I've never disliked a Sam Fuller movie.  And, in fact, I like Sam Fuller movies when I watch them, and I probably need to watch more of them.

Forty Guns (1957) is a pastiche on the Wyatt Earp/ Tombstone mythos and OK Corral films, with Barry Sullivan playing the Wyatt Earp stand-in, Griff Bonnell.  The three Bonnell brothers ride into Tombstone to collect a lawman who has been robbing mail delivery.  But on their way in, they're passed by Stanwyck in all black on a white horse, and riding head of forty men - her Dragoons.  

Stanwyck's Jessica Drummond is the hard-as-nails boss of the territory, who has helped turn Arizona into something like civilization, but rules her territory with forty hired guns who ride far and wide doing her bidding while she puppet masters politicians, judges and the law.  

She has a maniacal brother, Brockie (John Ericson), who she covers for even as he causes her no small amount of trouble, this time by shooting an older lawman - who is going blind.

In some ways, this is a familiar version of the Earps and the Cowboys story from Tombstone - three brothers taking on an organized mob on the edge of civilization.  In others, it's a bit different as Griff and Jessica start to fall for each other, seeing in each other that they're the kind of people it took to build the West, but now the use for people like them is coming to a close.