Musical Watch: Wicked (2024)

Watched:  06/26/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jon M. Chu

I am a huge fan of the OG Wizard of Oz.  My second biggest regret about ending the podcast was not covering the movie before we put away our mics.  In my opinion, it's not just an important film, it's a key to American film and culture.  

That said - I am fine with derivative works.  Of course people want to explore this amazing world in which Wizard of Oz takes place, to consider and deconstruct and shuffle around the cultural icons of the movie, look into the characters, themes, etc...  It's a bubbling well for interpretation, commentary and America.

Wicked (2024) came in riding decades of popularity as a stage show and soundtrack.  Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenowith were launched to super stardom with the show and became fixtures.  People who don't care about Broadway probably already knew two of the songs by osmosis before ever buying a movie ticket.  It's one of the few 21st Century Broadway shows to break into the pop consciousness like 20th Century shows like Oklahoma!, Phantom, Cats or Les Mis.  

The film adaptation did great at the box office and was at least an American phenomenon.  It did fine overseas, but likely suffered from being an English-language musical about a play that probably hasn't been getting seen in Beijing, etc...  quite yet.  And who knows if they care about The Wizard of Oz in Lichtenstein?

But in the states, it made almost half-a-billion dollars.  As the movie was released in late Fall, Christmas season 2024 was pink and green with the movie's merchandise and imagery everywhere.  It was kind of neat.

Rebekah Del Rio Merges With The Infinite

Singer and performer Rebekah Del Rio has passed.

Superman 2025: Making An Event

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

If nothing else, I think WB/DC - and maybe the film industry - will come out of Superman (2025) remembering that movies used to be events. And, how to create events again. 

It's been a while since I've seen a studio work this hard to make a movie something for which they've built anticipation and a desire to participate in by the public... make them want to see it on the biggest screen possible.  Even if Superman doesn't make a billion dollars at the box office, which is may not, WB has fired up the engines of the machines that once brought people out to stand in line for the privilege of watching one of their movies. Right now it *feels* like it's working.   

TL;DR: The Democratization of Film Discussion and Star-Based Rating Systems

Recently, I had a good convo with pal Stuart when, after seeing a mediocre star rating of a classic film, I shot off the snide line "We should only apply star ratings to new media. Sliding in in 2025 to give a 80 year old movie a 3 star review serves neither you nor the movie."

Stuart wisely pointed out that *of course* our ratings are subjective, transitory (will likely be different at a different time) and we cannot have the experience of those who experienced a movie in 1945.  People are only able to give the rating they can give - and we cannot require homework of them to give a rating.

And, I agree!  

Everyone is entitled to their rating.  

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and review.  If I did not believe this, this blog wouldn't exist.  

Certainly social media has made us all experts and put us all out there expressing our opinions whether the world wants our genius or not.  These days, I'm primarily exposed to these opinions through BlueSky's #film feed, which is often linked to folks' letterboxd accounts.  For buddies like Stuart, JimD, Howard, and JAL, I've even linked their letterboxd accounts right on the version of this page (and, yes, you, RHPT) you see on web browsers not viewed in mobile versions (look over there in the left menu bar, we'll wait).  It's how I track their viewing and opinions as dudes whose opinions I personally value, even - or especially - when it's different from my own.

Obviously, I am included amongst the teaming masses howling movie opinions into the void.  In no way is this blog special.

While I keep this blog more or less, really, as my personal film journal to track what I have and haven't seen (just this weekend, I found out I'd once seen the movie Red Dragon, which, if you'd held a gun to my head, I would not have said I'd seen) it's also very much me publicly sharing my opinions.  And, also also - It's a record of how I personally view film.  

In fact, I would think reading the blog, day over day, would give people an idea not just my opinion on film, but also give you some insight into who I am (and I am sorry about that.  I know it's unpleasant).  And, yet, I publish links from this blog to Facebook, Insta, Threads, Tumblr and Bluesky with every post.  So it's not like I'm quiet about all this. 

The subjective nature of the experience of viewing film is something they only sort of taught 30 years ago in film school, tilting wildly from auteur theory to death of the author in the same class and without trying to reconcile the two.  I don't know how helpful it is to say "there is a mind behind a film, a vison and we treasure that beyond measure.  But ALSO...  It doesn't matter once you release it as the audience makes it their own and 13-year-olds who can't understand your movie count as much as folks with a PhD in the topic of the film and film itself". 

I'm egalitarian as hell, but I'm not that egalitarian. 

80's Watch: Flashdance (1983)

Watched:  06/22/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  Second all the way through

Director:  Adrian Lyne

If you want an idea of what a different world I was in as a kid versus where we are 40 years on, I think Flashdance (1983) is a pretty interesting test. 

First, Flashdance was huge back in the day.  It was referenced in other movies, on TV and elsewhere.  The soundtrack had a couple of great songs (I still think Gloria by Laura Branigan is phenomenal). And though it was Rated-R, it wasn't unusual for my classmates to have seen it by 5th grade, thanks to HBO.  

It's also not a very good movie, but people loved it at the time.  And I don't mean the movie is problematic by 2025 standards (which it is), but because it just sort of wanders around for long stretches.  Like, nothing is happening.  People walk around.  They goof.  The plot refuses to move along.

Oddly, there's barely any conflict.  It's a movie that pitches that if you believe in yourself, sorta, and don't really do the work, your new, rich boyfriend will buy your way into a dance school.  Because nothing about Alex's path to an elite ballet school makes a lick of sense.

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.

50th Anniversary Watch: Jaws (1975)

Watched:  06/21/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  (shrug emoji)

Director:  Steven Spielberg

June 20th marked the 50th anniversary of the release date of Jaws (1975), and, so, Jamie selected it for our viewing on the 21st.

As I was born mere months before the release of the movie, Jaws existing as a cultural force is a key early memory.  The movie came out, and did not just go away - it became part of the cultural lexicon overnight and then just stayed.  We had teenagers who lived next door when I was in pre-school, and those kids told us about things like the band KISS, and movies like Jaws.*  But, also, the poster and music for Jaws was as omnipresent as Star Wars in my youth, the triangle of the mouth rising toward the woman above.  The 1970's also saw maybe the final real explosion of classic Universal horror monster interest, along with Hammer and other horror scenes, and I remember things like "Monster Maze" books that would include "Jaws" beside Quasimodo and Dracula.  My brother, who has always been able to play music by ear, figured out the key few notes to Jaws on the piano and would play it - he was five or six.

But I don't think I actually watched Jaws until high school, and on basic cable at that.  That said, the first time I remember really liking it was in college when I was in film school and they kept talking about Jaws as the first summer blockbuster and I figured I should know what it's all about.

Since those viewings, I couldn't tell you how many times I've seen it.  A lot?  Probably two dozen.  

On this viewing I was thinking about how Jaws would be made today, and what makes it work for me as it is.  I dunno.  I feel like part of re-watching this movie and celebrating something that's somehow endured when even ET and Close Encounters seem to have faded over the decades - or, rather, have not been as embraced by subsequent generations as Jaws -  should be a moment to ponder what it is about the movie that's made it resonate.  

Chabert Whoops Watch: The Sweetest Christmas (2017)

Watched:  06/21/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Job: Receptionist/ Would-Be Baker

Location of story:  Helen, Georgia (which is apparently a real place themed like a German village?)

new skill:  ruining two men's lives

Man:  Lea Coco (no, really)

Job of Man:  Italian Restauranteur

Goes to/ Returns to:  has returned home

Event:  National Gingerbread Competition

Food:  oh, Gingerbread, man.  So much Gingerbread.

Well, whoops.  

I thought I'd watched this one, but... and follow me here... I found out through an odd way that I had *not* watched it.  I had confused a Valentine's movie about chocolate with The Sweetest Christmas (2017) while managing the Chabert-a-Tron 3000 and checked it off.

Hey, moron... how did you puzzle that one out?  you may be asking yourself.  

G Watch: Godzilla - Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)

when I've been quiet too long and Jamie asks me what I'm thinking about

Watched:  06/21/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  Fourth?  ha ha...  oh, mercy

Director:  Masaaki Tezuka, Koji Hashimoto, Takao Okawara

I was going to watch something else, but I wanted to, for once, watch Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) back-to-back and in order.  

Just yesterday I'd waxed rhapsodic about the first in this two-movie combo, and I'll continue to express my confusion about the sidelining of Akane Yashiro (Yumiko Shaku) in this movie.  It's kind of a weird failure of narrative to hand over story-lead duties to someone else, especially when Yashiro is in the movie and it's obviously a direct sequel.

This movie sees the appearance of Mothra, who is miffed that humanity has decided to grab Godzilla 1954's bones and is muppeting them around inside Kiryu/ MechaGodzilla.  Her pals, the faeries, appear to the guy who was in Mothra back in the day, who now has a nephew and grandson hanging out with him.  Nephew happens to be a mechanic on Kiryu and needs to have a narrative arc about how he will come into his own as a hero.  

The Prime Minister hears out Grandpa about Mothra's warning, but... what's a brother gonna do when you just dumped a trillion dollars into a giant walking skeleton robot tank to stop the nuclear lizard?  

Anyway, this one has a long couple of battle scenes, and has lots of Mothra, which is why it's a fan favorite.  I think the design of the fights is groovy, and the inclusion of Mothra organic and cool.  Plus, our girl sends her two babies into the fray, so we get some good caterpillar action.  

Like everyone else, I like Tokyo S.O.S. a lot.  We've got one of my favorite Godzilla designs, an A+ MechaGodzilla design, I love the JXSDF concept (but miss all the weird psychic stuff Miki brought to the table), and this is how you include kids into one of these movies.  He's helpful and not annoying!  The fight in the city at night is super well done as G and MechaG take down buildings and level a neighborhood in high style.

 

Doc Watch: Implosion - The Titanic Sub Disaster (2025)

Watched:  06/21/2025

Format:  Max

Viewing:  First

Director:  Pamela Gordon

Friday when I wrapped work, Jamie informed me that there was, in fact, a different documentary about the Titan submersible disaster currently playing on Max (part of the Discovery/ HBO partnership).  And so it was we put on Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster (2025).  

Just a couple of days ago, we wrote about Titan: The Oceangate Disaster which we watched on Netflix, so, yes, this is a second doc on the same topic.

Thanks to streamers seeing documentary as a fairly inexpensive endeavor, we often get more than one documentary on the same hot topic - and since the Fyre Festival adventure, I've liked watching dueling docs.  It gives me a chance to get more than one POV on a topic, and you do start feeling like you're triangulating on some version of reality as different film makers will pursue different angles.

In that prior write-up, I sort of raged against the myth of the maverick entrepreneur, so I won't repeat myself here.  

This doc is actually a great companion piece to the Netflix film with different interview subjects, some of whom share more of the mentality of Stockton Rush, some of whom were on the boat and are not covering their ass, and some saying out loud what you kind of have to suspect based on the evidence provided in both films, but which we still don't know for sure.