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).  

Netflix Watch: Stranger Things - Season 5 Part 2

I don't know how many of you read comic books, especially superhero comics, but from time-to-time Marvel and DC have these absolutely massive, line-wide crossover events.  It's the sort of thing referenced in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.  But I'd argue that those movies represent a best-case scenario for an epic crossover.  The comics are rarely as coherent as those movies.

Most of the time, those mini or maxi-comics-series become a logistical mess as the plot takes over, and to raise the stakes, they keep throwing new angles on top of what we knew to the point of absurdity.  In an effort to deal with the scale, they have too many characters in the mix, and so it's like reading plot by bullet-point, often with those crazy ideas comics often do so well now not offered up just one comic issue or so at a time - the ideas are just tossed at you, one after another, until nothing means anything.  And character beats?  They only happen if they're (a) advancing the overall plot somehow or (b) setting us up for some moment in a book that will debut after the cross-over.  Mostly - the characters just go through the motions until the end.  And that's a function of "wow, there's way too many characters in this".

It's pretty bad writing and never feels particularly fulfilling to read.  

It may not be a mystery why comic book event crossovers are what I was pondering as I watched the back half of the fifth season of Stranger Things.  

Spoiler:  If you love Stranger Things, and don't feel like fighting about how I don't get it, etc... - now is a good time to find another part of the internet to enjoy.

2025 Watch: Movies By The Numbers

A Signal Watch Movie Year in Review: by the numbers

Each year we tally the number of movies watched and blogged, and then we break down what we watched into a few categories.  There's no real reason for this - no one gets a prize.  But let me do my little OCD companion piece to actually blogging all of these movies.

• Our Favorite movies of 2025
• Our Least favorite movies of 2025

Movies By The Numbers - Previous Years

• 2024
• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018

Let's Get Started

In 2025, we watched 255 movies.  Last year we counted 253 movies, so... basically the same.  

By clicking here, you can see the spreadsheet from which this data (these data?) are derived.

Here's a weird one - because we repeat-viewed so many movies (I even watched Jaws twice this year) we only watched 246 unique movies in 2025.  However, we're considering each movie watched where a post appeared as "a movie", so it's 255...  them's the rules.

Reiner Remembrance Watch: Stand By Me (1986)

Watched:  12/30/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Rob Reiner

There's a full run of movies we could have watched to salute Rob Reiner, but I was particularly onboard with Jamie's selection of Stand By Me (1986).  

In no way is my experience unique - but I did see this in the theater at eleven years old (I guess my parents were not deterred by an R rating), and it became a movie I watched over and over on VHS - rented and then taped off HBO at some point.  The soundtrack became part of my rotation, and is likely ground zero for my interest in Buddy Holly.  (There's a different conversation about how I was as likely to have my radio set to an oldies station as a pop station growing up, anyway, but you get the picture).  We adopted slang I use to this day - I am still known to describe things as "boss".  

If Stranger Things is any indication, with the right material, we can relate more to the ages of characters and the universality of that experience than anything about eras in which stories appear.  And I did.  

Crampton Watch: Sacrifice (2020)

Watched:  12/29/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Andy Collier / Tor Mian

There's some interesting stuff in Sacrifice (2020), but it never shakes the feeling it's maybe too-familiar- maybe especially in the wake of Ari Aster's Hereditary and Midsommar, and probably several other scary films where there's a cult involved.  

The film is about a younger couple who come to remote Norway to sell a house the guy, Isaac (Ludovic Hughes), inherited from a father he doesn't remember.  His mother, an American, told him his father found a new family and she returned to America.  His wife, Emma (Sophie Stevens) is very pregnant - and the sale of the house is intended to create a nest-egg for raising that baby.

However, the locals start off rude, until they learn who Isaac's father is, they then welcome him like a brother.  And a local constable (Barbara Crampton trying on a Norwegian accent) comes by to ask questions - telling Isaac his father was murdered in the house.  

This is a movie wherein the dude starts deciding he's down with whatever the people in the culty, remote town are offering up, and the wife is clearly trying to clear out.  

Riff-Trax Watch: Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957)

Watched:  12/28/2025

Format:  Riff-Trax on YouTube

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Edward D. Wood, Jr.

There's no good reason to watch Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957) again, or right at this moment.  But I sure did.  It didn't hurt to watch with what seemed like a 20-year-old Rifftrax over a colorized version of the film.  

It's just a good time, every time.  Especially once the monologuing really kicks in during the back half of the film.  

Y'all pour one out for Bela.

Chabert Watch: Sherman's Way (2008)

Watched:  12/28/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Craig M. Saavedra

This is my final Chabert film of ChabertQuest 2025.  Please clap.  

Well, first, this movie has a surprising lack of Chabert in it whatsoever.  She's in the opening scenes as our lead's girlfriend who predictably dumps him, which is the catalyst for the rest of the film.  I think she's gone 10 minutes in.

So, that's that.

Happy Birthday, Barbara Crampton

Happy Birthday to the great Barbara Crampton.  

For eagle-eyed readers of the site here, we've been on a Crampton-aissance for about a year and a half, watching work newer and older. 

A Christmas Regret Watch: A Little Piece of Heaven (1991)

everything on this DVD cover is a lie

Watched:  12/23/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second (and last)

Director:  Mimi Leder

While watching A Little Piece of Heaven (1991) for ChabertQuest2025, I knew instantly that this would be a movie to share with Dug and K.  

As longtime readers will know, sharing terrible Christmas movies with Jamie's brother, Dug and his wife K, is a yearly tradition here at The Signal Watch.  And, for reasons I cannot guess, Christmas seems to really bring out some absolute nonsense, from failed comedy concepts like Santa with Muscles to the utterly sincere failures, like this one.

There are many flavors of "this movie is a bad idea" out there, and we've covered a lot of them.  But this TV movie commits the sin of, as Dug put it, insisting that the ends justifies the means.  Even if the ends are highly, highly questionable.  And the means are absolutely mortifying.  

This movie contains:

• a very 90's take on an actor playing someone "special"
• drugging a child
• kidnapping a drugged child
• light casual racism
• 90's screenplay ingrained racism
• child slave labor
• child emotional labor
• gaslighting within gaslighting, like an inception where we're passing through layers of bullshit that's knee-deep
• nonsense rationalization
• child abuse-ploitation
• more kidnapping
• transporting minors
• abandoning pigs
• basically casting all those horror stories you see about people kidnapping people off the street and keeping them in their basement, or imprisoning children, and turning the abductor into a hero
• the greatest bullshit ending to a movie ever committed to screen
• Kirk Cameron

But, fun fact, a very young Lacey Chabert received an Emmy Nomination for her role as "Princess".  

Anyway, somehow this movie was written, produced, filmed, edited and given a plum primetime slot on network TV.  And everyone thought this was fine.  Even the scene where it's clear someone is tossing chickens out of a window.  And all of young Jussie Smollet's dialog.  

Merry Christmas, Every Buddy

Emmylou beneath the tree

Merry Christmas from The Signal Watch, pals.  

Here's to a quiet, peaceful Christmas for all of us.  May the season be merry and bright, and may you spend the holiday as you like, with loved ones or otherwise.  We wish you the best.

Here's to peace on Earth, goodwill to all, and the chance for all of us to be our best.

As we do every Christmas Eve, we're sharing Ms. Darlene Love singing Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home).