Netflix Watch: Death By Lightning

One of my favorite writers is Candice Millard.  With a relatively modest output compared to other popular historical writers, I would gladly put every one of her books in your hand.

A bit like Eddie Muller over at Noir Alley, Millard manages to humanize and make her subjects deeply understandable despite the gulf of time and geography.  A while back, Jennifer R rec'd, Destiny of the Republic to me, which made me a true Millard fanboy and, these days, I'll happily pre-order any new Millard book when I hear it's available. 

Shockingly, her first book, River of Doubt, is not the book which has received an adaptation.  No post-Presidency Theodore Roosevelt mapping the Amazon for us.  Instead, it's Destiny of the Republic, an account of the extraordinary circumstances that led to the election of James Garfield to the US presidency, and his subsequent assassination by Charles Guiteau (spoilers on basic high school US History).  

Most Americans are vaguely aware we had a president named Garfield, and some know he was killed early on in his presidency.  What gets lost is the fascinating inflection point US politics were in that saw the Ohioan elected after years of prime 19th-Century corruption.  And while some may know Guiteau was, as they say, crazy - until I'd read Millard's book, I sure didn't know how Guiteau scrambled along the edges of society, his story reflecting so much of what they don't teach in school about America in the 19th century and what would come to echo through the 20th and 21st centuries.

Now, Netflix has rolled out a star-studded series roughly based on the book and entitled Death By Lighting.  

Happy Birthday, Louise Brooks

 

Today marks the 119th birthday of silent film star Louise Brooks.  

Here's all of Pandora's Box.

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.

Jimmy Olsen is Getting His Own DC Show (Maybe)

I saw Superman (2025) a few times in the theater and have seen a number of reaction videos to the film.  Mostly audiences responded very well to the Jimmy Olsen stuff once they started catching on to what the movie was doing and learned that Jimmy wasn't just a generic reporter guy there to give Lois someone to talk to.  

In the run up to the release of the movie, we'd talked about our enthusiasm regarding the casting of Skyler Gisondo, who we know from a few things, but primarily The Righteous Gemstones.  And while we thought Sam Huntington was pitch perfect for 2006 Jimmy Olsen, Gisondo managed to do the thing where he both made the part totally his own while also being utterly, recognizably Jimmy Olsen to fans of the character. 

It seems fair to say that the Jimmy and Eve Tessmacher stuff was better than it had any right to be, and as a Jimmy Olsen stan (are we saying sicko now?  It seems like we're saying "sicko"), I was absolutely delighted.  It's just funny that the audience was so utterly thrown by everything Eve and Jimmy were doing.  And it warms my cold, leaden heart to know that James Gunn is continuing on his quest to make a DCU of movies based on doing whatever-the-@#$% he wants instead of worrying about selling Batman toys.  

The headline here is that on November 11th I saw some notices that, after some rumors cooking since July, Jimmy might get his own show.  

Look, no one wants a weekly show following Jimmy in and out of scrapes more than yours truly.  But if the current mode at DC is proof of anything, it's that they'll sell no wine before its time.  Gunn and Safran have already canned numerous projects that seemed to have traction, and decided to play it smart rather than standing in front of investors and promising a slate of projects, each more lucrative than the last.  We've all learned from Disney's hubris and the absolute self-own that was Diane Nelson's DCEU.  

Do I want a Jimmy show?  Yes.  Do I want it to co-star Sara Sampaio?  Also, big yes.  

Word is that, as of today, the American Vandal team is looking to produce this, which is a mixed bag for me.  Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault put out one season of a show I watched and enjoyed years ago, but I didn't finish the second season and have heard nothing from them since.  Whether they actually take this across the finish line or not is an open question as these big properties tend to change hands a few times before they land.  But maybe the pitch was just that good.

Honestly, the answer is Lord and Miller, but they're otherwise occupied.

We'll see what comes out of this.  I am hopeful for the moment.

Wallace Shawn's Birthday

 

It is Wallace Shawn's 82nd Birthday.  May he celebrate with close friends.

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...  

Hallmark Watch: A Keller Christmas Vacation (2025)

Watched:  11/09/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Maclain Nelson

Hallmark fans are never happy.  And maybe with good reason.  There's a contingent that seems to get mad if anything actually happens in the movies, and others who get mad if it's not a particular kind of movie. Which leaves Hallmark in a pickle as they can't keep making the same movies over and over from a decade or two ago, but anything *new* is also a threat to part of their audience.

But, all that matters is if people watch, and apparently they are watching.  And, given the viewership habits of Hallmark viewers - which means a lack of awareness of debuts of new movies, watching later, catching the movies on the app or whenever...  that's a pretty good turn out of viewership across streaming and cable.

This year it seems Hallmark is cramming more value into fewer movies to drive up advertising during broadcast and draw eyeballs to the app.  This is opposite the decade-ago strategy of going for quantity over quality - ie: they chose not to release 75 new movies in a single Christmas and hope the novelty kept folks locked in.  But it's a risk when you make new kinds of movies and fewer of them, and give people a chance to tune away.

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.

80's Watch: Romancing the Stone (1984)

Watched:  11/07/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Robert Zemeckis

I have no idea how this movie would read to The Youths.  Fine, I expect, minus some of the jokes that would fly over their heads (ie: "The Doobie Brothers broke up?").  

Mostly it makes me miss Kathleen Turner in movies (yes, I know she's still very active... we just don't cross paths anymore).  And, man, she showed up fully formed as a movie star.  Her Joan Wilder (this is her third film and fourth screen credit) is a really pretty fun character even if they have to work overtime to make you think she's "blossoming" during the course of the film.

Maybe the action-packed climax goes on too long (I've felt this since I saw the movie as a kid) but it's otherwise a lean, tight movie with lots of solid stuff.  

But also, rewatching is a reminder of how 1980's the 1980's truly were.  Romancing the Stone is an astounding cultural artifact in that respect.  From turning Danny DeVito into a movie star (he was a huge hit from this, which is kind of odd when you see how little he's actually in this movie) to the Alan Silvestri soundtrack.  Michael Douglas exudes weird 1980's male energy that lacks any self-awareness.    And our odd relationship with South American countries in the 1980's as the drug trade was in high gear and the CIA was mucking about installing governments.  

Unfortunately, they rushed the follow up and made one of the single worst sequels I remember from the era, killing the golden goose.

Marvel Watch: Fantastic Four - First Steps (2025)

Watched:  11/07/2025

Format:  Disney+ 

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Matt Shakman

So it was the day after my surgery and I was taking pills that make it so I can't remember proper nouns, which is weird.  Sure, I can remember the dog's name, but if you're like "name the people on Mythbusters" I'm hitting like 3 and 1/2 of them accurately.

But my dad came over to keep an eye on me/ keep me entertained, and I made him watch Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025).  Which, he concluded with "14 year old me liked it a lot", which is I think a great take from a guy pushing 80.     

Anyway, I think we were in agreement that this movie is pretty wild and fun.