Marvel Re-Watch: Thunderbolts* (2025) - in which we really talk about Marvel in 2025

Watched:  05/25/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Jake Schreier

We had already seen Thunderbolts (2025) in the theater when the movie opened, but Jamie in particular wanted to see it again, and I'm a fun guy, so why not?

I enjoyed it on a second viewing maybe more than I initially liked it.  It really is a tight script, and I kind of reveled in the fact that the big set piece at the conclusion of the movie takes place without a shot fired.  This is near Doom Patrol territory in how we're approaching super-stuff.  

I've seen complaints about the palette of the movie, a gripe which seems to be missing the way movies work, and instead of saying "the aesthetic looks ugly.  They did it wrong" failing to ask "why does it look the way it does?  We know this was intentional."  Because the conclusion there is pretty @#$%ing obvious, and you're so close.

But we know all this.  So I want to talk about where we are with Marvel in 2025.

Box office for the movie is not amazing.  It's made something like $330 million, which I would happily take, but which is a pretty far cry from billions of dollars Marvel hopes to make with every movie.  But...

Chabert Watch: A Little Piece of Heaven (1991)

The poster features Cameron realizing he just committed several felonies

Watched:  05/25/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Mimi Leder

Holy @#$%.  This movie is unhinged.

The vibe is sort of Hallmark Hall of Fame, with the rural setting and people all deciding everything is going to be swell for Christmas at the end.  It's about Kirk Cameron kidnapping kids and taking them to his pig farm so his adult, developmentally disabled sister will have friends.  In order to keep the kids, he tells them that they've died and his house/ farm is heaven - all evidence to the contrary (for example, you have to live with Kirk Cameron).  Along the way, they become a sort of family, in a way that feels lifted from The Legend of Billie Jean of all movies.

Look, full disclosure:  I can't stand Kirk Cameron.  This started all the way back in his Growing Pains days.  He's a mediocre actor and seemed like a smug jackass even when he was just taking up real estate in Tiger Beat.  But his subsequent weirdo, condescending, "it is I who know the true word of God" routine was thin 30 years ago, and it hasn't improved with the years.  He's just the worst.

So, I was not thrilled to watch this.  

Chabert Watch: When Secrets Kill (1997)

Watched:  05/24/2025

Format:  YouTube - someone posted this a bit and no one took it down

Viewing:  First

Director:  Colin Bucksey

blogger's note: if it seems like I'm blazing through the Chabert movies, I am.  We're getting close with 7 non-Christmas movies left, and then 5 Christmas movies.  It is a journey, y'all.  But it is inspiring me for what I'll do next.  And while I have enjoyed my time with Ms. Chabert, and I have plenty to say on it (which I'll sum up at the end), it also feels like I'm in the home stretch after 62 Chabert movies here since the Christmas season kicked into gear.  

Man, made-for-cable TV movies of the 1990's are buckwild.  It's easy to forget if you haven't seen one in a while.  

When Secrets Kill (1997) is based on a Patricia MacDonald novel, and she's a prolific mystery author who does quite well.  I have no idea how true to the book this is, but it is wacky.  

The version I watched was commercial free and seemed like it was encoded from VHS tape, complete with bad picture and warbly, distorted audio, which made for some tough viewing.   And, of course, the 1990's ever-present synth score.  

I associate 1990's cable flicks with Lifetime Movies, which were such a weird mix of noir and domestic concerns aimed at an imagined audience of women (babysitters stealing babies, babysitters stealing husbands, babysitters stealing babies and husbands.).  And, certainly, a Bio-Mom returning falls into this realm.  But this aired across multiple channels, so I don't know who owned it.

Our plot:  A couple (Gregory Harrison and Roxanne Hart) are mourning a stillbirth of a much-wanted baby.  On Mother's Day, their adopted tween-daughter (Chabert) doesn't show up for brunch, and they head home as Mom doesn't want to celebrate anything.  After a brief fight at home, Chabert's birth mother appears at the door without invitation.  This is, of course, stressful.  

Chabert Watch: Off-Season - The Lex Morrison Story (2013)

Watched:  05/22/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steven K. Tsuchida

I did not have NBA-player Vanity Project down on my Chabert bingo card, but here we are.

Look, I didn't like Rick Fox when he played for the Celtics and rolled my eyes when he went to LA.  I liked him less when he married America's precious angel, Vanessa Williams.  He became dead to me when he divorced Williams.

How dare you, Rick.

So, yeah, I was immediately not excited about this when I realized this movie was about Rick Fox wanting to be in a comedy and throwing money at it until it was a reality.

I have no idea what this movie is.  It looks like a TV movie, but I can't figure out who it's for.  It feels very much like people goofing in front of a camera more than a TV show or movie.  

late edit:  I forgot the casual racism toward Asian people.  It was incredibly yikes and all out of Fox's mouth.

The story is that Our Hero is part of the PR team for an NBA team.  He's assigned to keep an eye on Lex Morrison (Fox) over the summer and get him in shape for the next season.  If he doesn't, he'll be fired.  Lex is, of course, wacky and out of control and not living up to his potential.  We are continually told Lex is in bad shape, but he is Rick Fox.  

Our lead guy, Zack Lively, is probably fine.  But weirdly and wildly bland.  He has a sort of partner-in-crime who is asked to play doofy/zany very, very broadly, and feels like a high school kid doing improv.  

I guess Fox was dating Eliza Dushku when the movie was made, so she's in it as a brief supporting role, and she's honestly the funniest part of the movie.  

There's a subplot about Lacey Chabert as a sports reporter who our lead wants to date.  Chabert does not embarrass herself.  Which I can't say for pretty much everyone else.

The movie was not for me.  But it was short at 75 minutes.  

But it is entertaining seeing them try to frame Rick Fox and Lacey Chabert in the same shot.

Also, this movie seems to be about how much Rick Fox didn't like living in Boston.  It's very weird.

My suspicion is that Rick Fox just thought this idea was good and wanted to have his own Hollywood project (he does appear in TV and movies) and decided he could be in a comedy, so he spent some of his Lakers money and made it.  He has the Executive Producer credit, and it's budgeted at $650K, so he could have easily financed it, especially using his own house as the set for half of the movie, if that is his place.  Write-offs, ahoy.

George Wendt Merges With The Infinite

George Wendt, actor most famous for his run as Norm on TV's Cheers, has passed.  

For the duration of the show's 11 seasons, Wendt played barfly Norm Peterson - a guy somewhat beat up by life but who was quick to shrug it off with a quippy one-liner.  

He also appeared in numerous films, memorably in Fletch and House.  Post-Cheers, Wendt worked steadily, often doing single episodes of TV or brief appearances in movies.  He would go on to play Santa at least four or five times, including in Santa Buddies and the A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All - uncredited here for reasons I was unclear on.  He was a wildly popular SNL host, and is why, today, we all still say "'da Bears".

It's hard to explain to today's kids what the world was like when everyone watched network TV, and of network TV shows, Cheers remained an absolute monster hit for its entire run.  Norm was a common denominator for any conversation.  Enough so that when someone licensed the idea of Cheers and put bars in airports that looked a bit like the set, they put a Norm dummy on a stool so you could sit next to him while you waited to make your connection to Duluth.  Apparently that went poorly.*

I cannot imagine what he made over the years on residuals from re-runs, but for twenty years after the show aired, it was still on all the time.

Wendt was much beloved, and seemed an okay guy.  We'll miss you, sir.

*Sadly, when I went into the Cheers bar in Minneapolis, the figures were no longer a feature.

1940's Watch: Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)

Watched:  05/19/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dorothy Arzner

I basically threw Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) on because I saw it starred Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara, and, in the end - and to my surprise-  the movie wound up kind of blowing me away.  

What starts off feeling like any of a few hundred other Depression-era movies about showgirls trying to make it (which is how contemporary reviews started and stopped with the movie), the well-worn story is repurposed as a criticism of the business of show, burlesque, the male gaze, and the position of women in society and the flack they take for making money.

I'll back up here and mention, two of the three screenwriters on this movie were women.  It also seems a male director started the film and immediately quit, handing the reigns to Dorothy Arzner.  

Chabert Watch: Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

Watched:  05/19/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Joel Gallen

I mostly missed the wave of teen movies that arrived in the late 1990's.  And the ones I did see, I only partially remember at this point, and/ or am unsure if I watched them all the way through.

I'm not even sure if Not Another Teen Movie (2001) closed out the cycle or not.  What's curious about this movie is that it kind of helped launch the terrible movie-spoof cycle that would morph into the terrible Scary Movies flicks and other spoofs. 

The 2005 release of Dirty Deeds we watched as part of the Chabert-a-Thon was trying to be one of the comedy teen movies, and I think it must have arrived very late, in retrospect.

Not Another Teen Movie is an interesting artifact for a lot of reasons.  

Chabert Watch: Sanitarium (2013)

Watched:  05/18/2025

Format:  Tubi

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Bryan Ramirez, Bryan Ortiz, Kerry Valderrama

So, this one turned into a bit more of a rabbit hole than I was expecting.  

Sanitarium (2013) is a movie independently produced in San Antonio, Texas - just down the road from my own Austin, TX.  It's a great town, and I recommend it.

The film is an anthology, three stories centering around how a trio of inmates landed in a sanitarium run by Malcolm McDowell, who sort of book-ends the film and shows up here and there.  But the movie is a testament to people figuring out they can afford the day rates for some actors and living out the dream of making a movie with actors they like.

Chabert Watch! Shadow of Fear (2004)

Watched:  05/17/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Rich Cowan

The cast in this thing is absolutely wild.  James Spader.  Peter Coyote.  Aidan Quinn.  Robin Tunney.  Alice Krige.  Matthew Davis.  and, of course, Lacey Chabert.  

I am guessing this was a straight-to-DVD movie.  It's a kind of throwback to 1940's post-war melodrama that might have been categorized as noir, but does feel decidedly 00's.  And, once again, I see the idea here, even if the execution left me mostly flat.  

I can see all of the casting as being spot on.  But the movie's plot itself is insane and absurd.  Maybe it could have worked with a different director.   Lighting.  Something.  What's weird is - they have the sets, they have the talent (mostly), but it feels like it was shot as a TV movie that happens to contain actors doing a pretty good job with a pretty ridiculous movie.  There's one scene where a guy - I think nameless, but impacted by our villain - is *acting* and I want to be, like, my guy... it's okay.  You can dial it back.  You care more than the director.  And that may be true of everyone in the cast.

Musical Watch: Kismet (1955)

Watched:  05/14/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vincent Minnelli

A couple of months ago, I rewatched It's Always Fair Weather, and remembered Dolores Gray existed. The first time I'd seen the movie, she was my favorite part of the film. And, sure, I like a smile that makes Geena Davis' grin seem understated, but she was hilarious and her two numbers were fantastic.

My understanding is that: as a teen she was given a shot by Rudy Vallee, and became a nightclub chanteuse, headlining by age 18 or so.  There's a whole story about her getting caught as a bystander in a drive-by shooting as a young woman, but that she recovered and was back performing in night clubs in a couple of months, the bullet never removed.  

Gray's career was primarily on the stage, both in New York and London.  She played Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun for two years in the West End.  Back in the US she co-starred in a popular stage production of Destry Rides Again with Andy Griffith.  

Like many radio and stage performers, she'd have disappeared into the collective memory hole if not for her few movies.