Shakedown (1950)

Director: Joe Pevney

Cast: Howard Duff, Brian Donlevy, Peggy Dow, Lawrence Tierney

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: In the last few years, I’ve been enjoying going to see old movies at the theater. The older the better. At those screenings, occasionally my mind will wander and wonder what the performers would think if they were aware that their now antique work was being viewed in the way it was meant—mostly—to be seen.

It’s always been a bit of an odd hypothetical. Until a few nights ago, when it is what actually happened. Mrs. Helmerich nee Dow was invited to join us all for Noir Night at the Circle, and so the hypothetical became a very real dynamic.

By all accounts, she left early in screening, whether owing to the fact that most people would not want to dwell on their performance, that her screen career was several lifetimes ago, or the fact that she’s well into her nineties. The likely answer is that any performer—especially if they have passed on—couldn’t be bothered to dwell much on their old performances.

But, far more importantly, I didn’t dwell much on the fact that people actually involved in the making of the film were in the room. The film worked well enough my mind didn’t have time to wander. A tight plot unfurls with speed. It’s nothing special, but it doesn’t have to be. A man with fluctuating luck got a little bit greedy, and proceeded to get his just deserts. Who do I credit with such a quality journeyman’s job of a movie? Look at that director’s name again. Now look up your favorite episode of the original Star Trek*. Odds are you’re starting to put it together.

*You have one, even if you would insist that you don’t.

Armageddon (1998)

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck

Have I Seen It Before: I mean, yeah. I was both alive and awake in any kind of way in 1998, so I think I was kind of obligated*.

Did I Like It: Is there a movie more willfully stupid? Yes, I think The Legend of Zorro (2005) is about 20% dumber than this film. If I hadn’t just recently watched that film, I may have some other candidate. Perhaps the better question is: Is there a more willfully stupid movie that also largely got away with it**?

I submit that there is not.

You might roll your eyes and insist that this is a movie that requires one to turn off their brain. Sure, but with the sheer tonnage of sound in space, the logic of sending oil drillers into space, and the film’s reflexive need to put foreign countries through the most pain so the USA can remain largely unscathed, there’s a maximum yield, right? It’s an onslaught.

All of that could be forgiven, though, if it weren’t for one singular unbelievable moment. Explaining the mission that will save all of humanity, the President (Stanley Anderson, reprising his role from The Rock (1996), meaning this is technically also a sequel to the the original set of James Bond films) says:

And yet, for the first time in the history of the planet, a species has the technology to prevent its own extinction… Through all of the chaos that is our history; through all of the wrongs and the discord; through all of the pain and suffering; through all of our times, there is one thing that has nourished our souls, and elevated our species above its origins, and that is our courage.

Am I some kind of chump for finding the idea that we might be able to fix our problems somehow alluring? Maybe so.

*Speaking of obligating, I actually got pushed into asking a girl to go with me in one of the more lightly humiliating moments of my life. She said no. I mean, I guess it wasn’t that humiliating, objectively, but it was tied to going with the movies, so it felt like an attack on the home turf.

**A weird aberration that—no joke—kept me up a few nights ago: 1998 feels like an alien planet to the here and now. This is the highest grossing film of 1998. Of the top ten highest-grossing films of that year, only one was a sequel (Lethal Weapon 4) and only one was followed by sequels (Dr. Dolittle). Mulan had a re-make, but that hardly counts. Also, before you start screaming “so far” at me, I have a hard time imagining someone green-lighting a Gibson directed Lethal Finale/Lethal Weapon 5 after the dust settles on The Resurrection of the Christ. I think the record will stand.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Director: Stephen Sommers

Cast: Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marlon Wayans, Christopher Eccleston

Have I Seen it Before: No. Why would I have? I’m of that particular point in the greyscale of generations that I have next to no awareness of the G.I. Joe as anything to care about. I was a kid in the market for action figures long after the older barbie-sized toys, and I am just a hair too young to have had any kind of ambition for the USS Flagg aircraft carrier toy that apparently took up an entire room.

Better question: Why did I do so now? I really need to stop letting myself get talked into getting a movie on Apple TV, simply because they’re only charging 5 bucks for it. Now I’m enough on the hook that I’m going to feel compelled to watch Retalliation (2013) or Snake Eyes (2021).

Maybe I’ll work on that later.

Did I Like It: I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the film, but I would say I am glad that I did. It’s an interesting experiment at play here. There is nothing here—in the writing, performances, or even the editing—that is particularly different from any of the baseline Marvel movies. Why can I occasionally be duped into caring about those movies—maybe moreso in the past than lately, but still—but all of this descends into so much white noise? Is it just that I have some affinity for the source material in the other scenario, and absolutely none here? Probably.

I clearly didn’t care for the movie, but I didn’t hate it so much that I want to bring down the entire house around it. There’s always a little bit of a warm feeling when a filmmaker has a retinue of actors who jump at the chance to work with him again. Sommers’ quality might vary wildly, but Vosloo is here—essentially playing the same role he plays in every other film in which he appears. But Kevin J. O’Connor, and even Brendan Fraser show up for a days work. It’s nice that Sommers isn’t an asshole.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Director: Joel Coen

Cast: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Holly Hunter

Have I Seen It Before: Sure, but I’ll admit I’ve probably listened to the soundtrack album more than I’ve seen the film.

Did I Like It: It’s hard to find anything critical to say about a Coen Brothers film. Even their less successful entries, it feels like the problem lies with us.

It’s also difficult—or probably should be—to review a movie just based on the moment in which I’m watching it, but plenty of reviews review the experience, and I should get to every once in a while, too.

After a week of the flu, I stayed away from the movie theater, which is a little bit like one of you avoiding sleep for the better part of a week. I’m in that awkward phase of the sickness where I’m not contagious, but there’s still a deep well of phlegm that my lungs occasionally feel the need to try and expel. I’m still not going to a lot of things I wasn’t already obligated to, but these tickets—with a Q&A beforehand from Nelson and cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins—had long been on the agenda.

There’s something about an exquisitely crafted film—funny, energetic, and deeply felt—that I can enjoy in a theater after a little bit of time away from those wonderful darkened rooms.

The magic is amplified. The Nicole Kidman in all of us is let loose*. And for about as long as my lungs had any capacity to allow, I was able to ignore the need to cough for the better part of two hours. I existed out of the already odious year 2026. I was outside of the theater. I was with the Soggy Bottom Boys.

*Even if I would prefer it if she was shilling for any other group of movie theaters.

I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not (2026)

Director: Marina Zenovich

Cast: Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Beverly D’Angelo, Goldie Hawn

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Might have made a point of seeing it when everybody else did, but I cut the cord like an idiot and had to wait for a month for it to show up on Max.

Did I Like It: It’s easy to make a hatchet job out of anything related to Chase. He’s eagerly pissed people off for years, and there’s probably somebody out there who hasn’t yet learned that he is often difficult.

I’m not prepared to say the film goes deeper than that, as Chase does occasionally come off as sympathetically broken, but he also never seems unaware that he is being watched. He deals out his prickliness in carefully measured doses. It feels believable, but manageably believable.

Here’s the real problem I have with the whole affair. In the section of the film on Community and his eventual firing, it is depicted as if Dan Harmon—creator of the show—wrote a bit of about Chase’s character doing a Black-face Señor Wences ventriloquism act, that was only made worse by the character’s asian (read: yellow-face) wife, played by Chase’s left hand, and that was the incident which led to him saying things which necessitated likely half-hearted apologies and leaks to the Hollywood Reporter. It also indicates that after the fight between Harmon and Chase occurred, Chase still insisted that Harmon continue to run the show.

Not true.

Harmon was fired after the fight—to my knowledge, it’s never been confirmed that his firing was due to the Chase problem, but it might have been—Chase continued with the show into season 4, and the incident occurred during the production of that season, without the involvement of Harmon. If the filmmakers and interviewees got that wrong—or, worse yet, fudged the timeline through intention or expediency—then I can’t help but wonder what else they got wrong.

This is all to say that I would really like a Community movie as soon as possible. Please and thank you.

Friday the 13th (2009)

Director: Marcus Nispel

Cast: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Aaron Yoo, Derek Mears

Have I Seen It Before: Oddly enough, yes. There’s a moment when—before I met Lora, and I mean like weeks or days before I met Lora—where I could get talked into going anywhere, and seeing practically anything.

I’m not sure what I was doing there, but I sat through the film, and I haven’t remembered a bit of it since.

Did I Like It: I tend to play a little bit of a game whenever I subject myself to one of these films: Just how quickly will a Jason Voorhees rampage lose me? They all do, eventually. I’ve now re-watched all eleven films in the series, just to be sure. But this one loses me by putting Nana Visitor—she of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame—in it, for just a few minutes, and dubbing over her with a Betsy Palmer-soundalike, and then dispensing with her as fast as is humanly possible.

Boo. I say, boo. Not, Boo! It’s not scary. I view this movie with scorn, and I did so real fast. There was a point where I was floating above the movie and forgot that Jason (Mears, wither thou Kane Hodder?) was even in the thing. It is forgotten, and justly so. I’m pretty sure whatever shape Crystal Lake takes, but it will make me mad.

But I come here not only to bury Caesar (or Jason), but to praise a little bit. This series is rotten to the core, and always has been. What’s more, the makers of this film appear to agree with me. To paraphrase Jean-Luc Goddard—mainly by way of Roger Ebert—the best type of film criticism is to make another film. The first three films in this series were so insubstantial and forgettable, this film does it’s very best to zip through the entirety of those films in the first twenty minutes.

Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)

Director: Jean-Francois Richet

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, John Leguizamo, Maria Bello

Have I Seen it Before: No. Oh, no.

Did I Like It: I mean, I want to like every movie I watch as it begins. I really do. But I’ll admit that between my love for the original and my antipathy for really every John Carpenter re-make, I started this one absolutely stone-face, with my arms crossed.

The film had an uphill climb. But there was hope, there. Maybe the fact that Precinct isn’t nearly as universally loved as Halloween (1978) or even The Fog (1980)*, the filmmakers would feel free to create something watchable, and dare I even hope, fresh and interesting.

One can’t imagine that this would be able to harness the ruthless simplicity of the original. That’s probably automatically too much to hope for, as even John Carpenter wasn’t wielding the energy of his earlier work by the time this came around. Years started beginning with “2” and subtlety went right out the window. The plot is over-constructed, which inevitably leads to more dialogue, which inevitably takes away from the action…

And, far more importantly, opens the doors to cliché. While they may attempt to give a bit of a spin to the character eventually**, the moment O’Shea (Brian Dennehy, in case you were wondering what happened to his character after First Blood (1982)) proclaims that he is right on the cusp of retirement, an infant is more than capable of mapping out where his character is going to end up.

And then there’s Jeffrey “Ja Rule” Jenkins. See, kids, this is back in a time when selling copies of the soundtrack album for a film still meant something, and therefore bringing a rapper into the mix. He’s not a bad actor. The role isn’t much, but he’s got a decent screen presence that he isn’t distracting from the rest of the film.

But his end credits theme? I really, really hated it. Not just because the film never bothers to pull from Carpenter’s original score***. It goes beyond the “re-count the plot over the end credits” rap anthem that we’re normally used to, and name checks Hawke, Fishburne, and proceeds to be the most painfully obvious song I’ve ever heard. It may have ended the trend of ending films with these kinds of songs. It may very well have been the last one to include such a song. On that front alone, I guess it is kind of historic.

*I didn’t, but you might have.

**I wouldn’t get too terribly excited: it’s not that much of a spin.

***Try getting away with that kind of nonsense in the Halloween series. I dare you.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2025)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Juno Temple

Have I Seen it Before: Never

Did I Like It: Can I complain about the title for a moment before I launch into anything else? I’m writing the review, so of course I can. I have yet to be able to refer to the film—I am counting when purchasing my tickets—that I haven’t had to look at a poster of the film to get it right. Maybe I’d eventually get on board with it, if it wasn’t such a tiny part of the film. Aside from one reference at the mid-point, and a bit of a refrain at the end, it is absent. I half expected the film to be based on a graphic novel or video game, where the refrain was going to be far more important and simply didn’t translate very well to film. But no, this is a film called Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, and that is, at best, a few minutes of a 2-hour-plus film.

Now, that we have that out of the way.

I was never very found of suicide. What a wild way to start a review, but what I’m refering to is the practice of pouring some of every available soda at a fountain into a cup. There were and are plenty of of sodas I just don’t like, so mixing them in never felt like something I was interested in.

And yet, in this film, I can see the appeal. What we have here is pouring every flavor of sci-fi one can get their hands on into one film, like some kind of Twilight Zone smoothie. I enjoy all of those flavors on their own, so the mixture might be something I can get behind. For the most part, it is. It’s a brisk adventure movie with interesting characters, well performed by actors who I have enjoyed in other stuff. I laughed at several points. It is an enjoyable film. The problem comes when the film is—mostly in its back half, where the indiividual flavors—especially those parts taken from The Terminator (1984)—rise to the surface, and the entire affair is a little too predictable.

You might have another complaint, dear reader. You might see the adventures of the man from the future (Rockwell) as counterfeit. He ultimately can’t impact what is going to happen. You might start dusting off comparisons not to the original Terminator, but instead Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). But just as your compaints about Indiana Jones not affecting the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) are wrong, so are they wrong here, too. Indy wasn’t searching for the Lost Ark, he was searching for some kind of reconciliation with Marion. So too, is the Man From the Future not really trying to steer time back into a more positive direction, he’s really trying to…

Well, I won’t contribute to spoiling the plot, but you’ll probably figure it out.

The Blackbird (1926)

Director: Tod Browning

Cast: Lon Chaney, Owen Moore, Renée Adorée, Doris Lloyd

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Two things are immediately striking me as fundamentally wrongheaded about the film*.

First, its plot is far too convoluted, so much so that I think the material would still produce headaches in… well, me… if it were produced as a talkie. There’s the handicapped saint, his no-account criminal of a brother (Chaney, in both roles), and then another criminal running around. It seems like they all love the same French girl, and the police are singularly unable to tell any of the three of them apart, until the plot basically resolves itself.

More importantly, however, is my deep belief that Chaney was fundamentally miscast in the role, or his abilities were fundamentally underused. This man with a thousand faces really has one face here, but we are supposed to believe that Chaney simply contorting his lim is tapping into some kind of grand cinematic magic…

When it isn’t. There isn’t two roles. I feel okay spoiling a 100-year-old film, but the dual role is a ruse, and the whole affair—if you’ll let me go back to complaining about the plot—ends with Chaney’s character having prettended to be crippled so much that he is now actually afflicted, and so severely, that he will die within minutes.

All I’m saying is that if Chaney could have been at least the man of two faces, I might have been able to sit in the theater and marvel how they pulled off such a feat in the early days of cinema. The film couldn’t offer even that much.

*I’m still enough of a neophyte at film criticism, that I feel gunshy dismissing a film I didn’t quite enjoy, simply because it was made by talent I have enjoyed elsewhere (Browning, Chaney). Both of them are long since dead, so I can’t imagine my dim enthusiasm will somehow discourage them from doing better next time.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Director: Michel Gondry

Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It felt like in the mid-aughts it was not obligatory to have seen it, but to have seen it ten or twelve times…

But then again, I’ll be the first one to admit that my mid-aughts were a little bit different than others.

Did I Like It: It was a fascinating watching the movie after having not seen it for many years. The flow of the plot had long since escaped my memory, but there were moments that have been living rent free in my head all this time.

Never has there been a movie where that strange, chiaroscuro quality to memory is more apropriate. The film is still funny, eccentric, and well acted and observed. But, back in those days when the film first came out, the question the film brings up is whether or not erasing pain erases the joy associated with, but as an older man I tend to think about it all in another way:

Can we ever really forget anything? I’ve met some people who would insist that they have and have put on a pretty good show of keeping up that claim, but I wonder. I guess I also wonder if, with a little time, the film’s conceit of those little moments that can vascilate wildly between being fond or painful memories have no hope of surviving. Joel (Carrey) and Clementine (Winslet) may not remember any of the particulars of why they grew to resent one another, but it’s not like removing those memories made them any less miserable. I too have probably lost more details of pain—to say nothing of getting completely wrong still more details—than I am probably aware of. There are still times I view as painful, and times I view fondly. They’ve even changed hands a few times back and forth.

Yes, indeed. Memory is a funny thing.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Director: Edgar Wright

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I’ve always thought it was a fair bit less than Shaun of the Dead (2004), but that may be too quick of a judgment. For one thing, Timothy Dalton is in the movie, and I’ve long since stopped pretending that every movie he appears in isn’t great. Doubly so for any film in which (spoiler) he’s the bad guy. Yep, I’m counting both The Rocketeer (1991) and the 2009 Doctor Who Christmas special.

Maybe the film grew on me after I finally saw The Wicker Man (1973), because as much as this film owes a debt to movies like Point Blank (1991) and Bad Boys II (2003), it’s entire structure owes far more to that singularly British horror film. I think it has far more to do with the fact that it becomes far more resonant with American audiences not because it plays with the fundamental imagery and impulses of the Western, but more that the deep, evil at the core of Sandford is about preserving some kind of image that the Chamber of Commerce has for the town. It’s going to be a long, long time before anyone uses the syntax “Make (blank Great Again” and any American evolved beyond single-cells doesn’t laugh with derision. Doesn’t matter if the film pre-dates the dark times by a decade.

The most likely, answer, however, is that I really don’t want to make the kind of comparisons that rank trilogies—even loose ones—and series. Just because Shaun caught everyone by surprise, doesn't mean that Hot Fuzz is less. It still has pop culture awareness to spare, while still offering a dynamic enough story, the hallmark of Wright. It still has pitch-perfect performances by both Pegg and Frost. There’s nothing more one should try to expect from a film.

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)

Director: Mona Fastvold

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Stacy Martin

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: This is going to sound like I am damning with faint praise, but if I just happened to be a Shaker, this would quite obviously have been the best film ever made.

And yet, I am not. So it’s going to have to be something other than that.

I’m always a little leery of a pointedly religious film. A sermon is one thing. A film is another. When a sermon is working at its best, it has to tell us something. When a film is working at its best, it has to show us something. The two are at odds with one another.

Here, we are clearly shown something, and the moments where Mother Ann (Seyfried) experiences religious ecstasy are exquisitely produced. I don’t for one moment doubt Seyfried’s performance.

And yet, I’m left to wonder. Are we supposed to feel as Shakers do when the film is unfurling before our eyes? I don’t think I’m any more interested in a life of celibacy after having watched the film than I was before seeing it. I can’t help but wonder if the way the Shakers… er, shake… is nothing more than theater trying to paper over oceans of doubt. Is Ann deluded for thinking that she is the second coming? Are the Shakers doomed* as an ongoing concern if they’re dead-set on not making any new Shakers? Are all religious movements merely byproducts of their charismatic leader’s hangups and trauma**?

If I’m think about these films, has the film really worked its magic on me? Perhaps an even better question is: Is its magic even meant for me?

*Stick around for the end credits. They are, indeed, doomed.

*I mean, probably.

Jason X (2001)

Director: James Isaac

Cast: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Chuck Campbell

Have I Seen it Before: I cite this movie whenever I feel the urge to bend over backwards to defend the Friday the 13th series. Many years ago, I spent a Tuesday at a second-run theater* seeing as many movies as linear time and a handful of quarters would allow me. I remember—just with that scene in the K-Mart holodeck—thinking that I got exactly 25 cents worth of entertainment out of the film.

Did I Like It: Well, flashforward 25 years, and I spent a few dollars for a Apple TV copy of the film—along with every other film in the series—and I’m prepared to say that I got taken.

Everything about this film is cheap, and never seems to want to be anything else. The sets are cheap, both of Jason’s (Hodder, contributing his swan song in the role) costumes are cheap, the acting is terrible**—even for a slasher film, and somebody somewhere decided that overlaying openign credits over bad CGI of the innards of an eye was the way to open a film. Some films immitate those that worked quite well in their genre. Unfortunately, a copy of copies is all we have here.

This isn’t reveltory. Anyone going into a film featuring Jason Voorhees ought to be expecting a cheap affair***. They’ve been doing cheap since the original, but even the things the series did well are offered with a healthy dollop of indifference. Harry Manfredini was often able to produce a reasonable facsimile of Bernard Hermann, but left here to try and create a xerox copy of a Jerry Goldsmith or James Horner score, he’s lost at sea.

*Kids, ask your parents.

**No, a cameo from David Cronenberg does not help matters.

***Anyone genuinely excited about the prospect might need a team of therapists to tag in full-time.

A Private Life (2025)

Director: Rebecca Ziotowski

Cast: Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: The movie could have been about almost anything, with the promises that poster is making, and I would have been on board. Foster is incapable of picking a worthless film, and even less constitutionally able to give a bad performance in a movie that maybe doesn’t qutie rank among her best.

You all see where I’m going with this one?

There’s an inconsistency at play here, and it can be just as singularly tied to that poster. We’re meant to believe that this is going to be an exceeding french romp—a cosy mystery*, even—with Jodie Foster running around outsmarting clever miscrients, using only card catalogs as her weapon.

I’m happy to report that Jodie Foster is indeed, in the film, and she is indeed quite good in it. Also, there is a scene that features a card catalog, and there is even an undercurrent throughout the film where Foster’s character, Lillian Steiner, is resolutely just behind the times when it comes to the media with which she records and organizes information, but it’s hardly a movie about card catalogs. It probably would be too much to hope for to have Foster wielding other antiques, especially a microfiche reader, as she was the star of one of the great microfiche reader sequences in all of moviedom in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

This might all be easily, if even reflexively, forgiven. It’s unfair to judge any movie by its poster—except for, perhaps, The Rocketeer (1991)—but the mystery proffered leaves a bit to be desired. We spend long stretches of the film confident that something unpleasant is goin on, veer slightly as things move to the third act that Steiner is perhaps crazier than she lets on, all coalescing into an anti-climax.

*A term I am obliged to loath.

Driven (2018)

Director: Nick Hamm

Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Lee Pace, Judy Greer, Michael Cudlitz

Have I Seen it Before: Never. In one of my Apple TV movie buying sprees, this one came across my radar, and I was probably more than a little helpless against its pitch.

Did I Like It: This is easily one of the top 4 films ever releaased that relied upon the Delorean Motor Car for a vital part of its plot.

Har. Har. Har.

It’s a reasonably entertaining deep dive into a story that—over forty years later—is even a bit of a one-line footnote in the making of time machines of note, but it isn’t reaching for much more than that. Sudekis is playing a slightly scuzzier version of his Ted Lasso personae, and Lee Pace is more than a little bit playing his character from Halt and Catch Fire, except with a grey wig. It’s a semi-amusing little trifle that you enjoy while wtching, but have no trouble understanding why it has become mostly forgotten in the years since.

I’m a little surprised that a film so dependent on the car with the gull-wing door, we never see one throughout the vast majority of of the runtime. Even John Delorean (Pace) himself is never seen driving one, as if he knew something we all expected way back when. Only at the end do we see someone—Sudekis, in one of the film’s less likely pontifications on what we know about the DeLorean sting operation—behind the wheel of the DMC-12, and even then it is played for something of joke, driving home the point that the car never really worked that well. Had this film somehow come before those other films that made the car famous, Zemeckis and Co. might have opted for some other totem for their time travel.

Come to think of it, the fact that this, a Universal production, managed to avoid any references to those other films is something of a marvel of restraint.

And now that I’ve gone this whole review without bringing it up, all I want to do is watch those three.

Big (1988)

Director: Penny Marshall

Cast: Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Robert Loggia, John Heard

Have I Seen it Before: If I had to rank the top 10 VHS tapes played in my house in the years before DVD broadened all of our cinematic horizons, I’m reasonably sure this one would make the list.

Did I Like It: It’s a charmed comedy that can play just as well when I was kid than when I was middle-aged adult. The thrill of the fantasy of waking up one morning and all of the restrictions of childhood are gone might have terrified some, but it thrilled me. I was the opposite of Peter Pan, and so any world where my life had to suddenly halt in favor of a supposedly immediate need to take out the trash, or—God forbid—a world where I could be grounded was an enticing one indeed.

Now, the thought of living a world where room and board are a foregone conclusion, where a pittance of a paycheck can suddenly become a fortune, and all the communication you need with the outside world is a walkie talkie and somebody with a corresponding handset just next door does have a certain simplicity to it.

Is that the secret to the film’s longjevity? Probably, it’s hard to discount the profound well-cast Hanks in the title role. Legend has it that Robert De Niro was set to play Josh Baskin, but backed out at the last moment. That’s a pretty great endorsement for De Niro’s sense of what ought to work and what has no right working whatsoever. While David Moscow—the young Josh—might be just a hair more believable as an outer-borough kid that will eventually become De Niro, there are few—if any—actors at that point in time who would have been better suited than Hanks to play a twelve-year-old trapped in the body of an adult.

A Mighty Wind (2003)

Director: Christopher Guest

Cast: Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned this in these reviews, but my parents were local folk musicians growing up. I was well into my twenties before I realized most families didn’t generate dulcimer albums in the 90s. So, of all Guest’s movies, this one probably hits closer to home than most.

Did I Like It: No review of the film in the early months of 2026 would be complete without mentioning Catherine O’Hara. I spent a lot of my review for Home Alone (1990) singing the praises of her career in total, but it’s hard not to watch this film specifically and be blown away  by her strengths as a dramatic actor. There are laughs-a-plenty with the New Main Street Singers and the organizaers of the concert, that she and Levy are allowed to exist in a sad love story that has already ended by the time we meet the characters. And before you think that the end (of the rainbow, if you will) is a better place for either Mitch (Levy) or Mickey (O’Hara), hear O’Hara’s plaintive wail, singing for her new husband’s (Jim Piddock) catheter company.

Even though it is only just over twenty years old now, there are moments that feel like they might not threaten to age unfortunately. If you read the final moment with Marta Shubb (Shearer) as “Oh, this person is a transgender woman. That, in and of itself is objectively hilarious.” It becomes a low-level Ace Ventura moment and might very well ruin whatever other pathos and actually good music the film has to offer. I tend to take it not on that front, but as a genuine human moment. Marta was there all along, and she’s just as a much of a member of the Folksman as she ever was. Maybe it’s not throoughly earned by the movie that preceded it*…

But at least it isn’t Ace Ventura.

*Is interest in skin care an indicator of being transgender? I’m honestly asking.

No Other Choice (2025)

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I’ve been frozen for a day or so regarding writing this review, because I feel like it deserves a fair bit more than saying this would have been a heck of a way for the fifth season of The Office to go.

It’s more incisive than that, although that may be the larger sum of my letterboxd review.

It’s truly fascinating how noir (and I would argue that this is at the very least neo-noir) translates to different cutlures. Had this story been told in America* it feels like Yoo Man-su (Lee) would never be able to keep far enough ahead of his schemes to not get caught in the end. Americans always get caught. Just ask William H. Macy. Lora had even mentioned that she wondered why he just didn’t team up with his targets to form a new competitior that could be the solution to all of their problems. If there ever was an American resolution ot the plot, that is it.

Instead, the film’s bleak heart only leads to something of a happy ending, which for my money becomes only darker with the realization that these people are going to have to likely live a long time with the knowledge of what they’ve done. Is that a worse punishment than imprisonment? Maybe. Probably. But even living with guilt would have been far easier than having to continue living in a world that has no use for your skills.

Maybe that’s the reason I’m having a hard time focusing in on this review: It seems like all of these characters would have been able to get better solutions to their problems by realizing that they could all get jobs in other fields. For an entertaining, thought-provoking, well-made fim, that kept taking me out of the whole affair.

Honestly, people. It’s possible to make a living. It isn’t always possible to make a living doing what you want to do.

*It is, indeed, based on an American novel by Donald Westlake, and now I’m legitimately interested to see how the concept would work out in the context of an airport paperback.

Ghost World (2001)

Director: Terry Zwigoff

Cast: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas

Have I Seen It Before: In nearly 1,100 reviews, I’ve expressed some degree of uncertainty as to whether or not I’ve seen some films before. Half-remembered cable viewings in the 90s. Endless series that become more forgettable the more patience you have for them. The stray movie you have the clearest of memories seeing in the past, and the movie you watch now is completely different than what you remembered.

This one is a little different. I’ve never been less sure I’ve seen a movie before. I remember so clearly being told by someone so many times around 2005 that I absolutely had to sit down and watch the movie. I probably would have relented, but I’m not entirely sure I did. It’s entirely possible that I just refused to watch any film that I hadn’t already come to under my own power.

Golly, knowing me in the mid-2000s must have been something of a chore.

Did I Like It: Am I the only person that views this as something of a spiritual sequel to High Fidelity (2000)*? You look at the semi-happy ending of that earlier work for Rob Gordon feels like it could never stick. He might be more able to be interest in the happiness of his partners, but is he really changed? Add another fifteen years to this guy’s life, is he not more like Seymour (Steve Buscemi) here? The store is gone, but he is still peddling 78s out of his garage, and he’s making every unhealthy decision about his love life for which he could reach?

Maybe if the film had been pitched to me like that all those years ago, I’d be a little more certain.

*Despite being completely unrelated.

Home Alone (1990)

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O’Hara

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I’m six years old in 1990, it would have been a marvel of avoidance—or a set of parents far more concerned about cartoonish violence than the ones I had—to somehow get to my 40s without having seen it probably half a dozen times.

Did I Like It: I’d be remiss to start this review without a word about Catherine O’Hara. That’d be the big reason why the review gets written now, as she passed away on Friday. Shee could play the imminently believable Kate McCallister here and seamlessly switch gears in the span of just a few years between the hateful/delightful Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988), Sally the Ragdoll in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and spend most of the rest of the next decade regularly being the best thing in a series of Christopher Guest movies where there were plenty of candidates for the MVP. I don’t say this lightly, but: She shared and was ultimately the heir to Madeline Kahn’s reign as the livewire in whatever movie she appeared. Now that they are both gone, I can’t think of talent that reaches anywhere close.

Yeah. Pretty safe bet that a review of A Mighty Wind is coming pretty quick.

But let’s try and make this review about something this movie offers that doesn’t get talked about all that much. There’ve been a dozen times when I seriously gave consideration to adding a field in the early matter detailing the credited screenwriter. One can make all the arguments about the auteur theory they can, and there are plenty of films where those arguments are unassailable, but I think the real reason I didn’t include the field is the prospect of going back to all of the previously written reviews and having to add that info. This film does feel of a piece with other Chris Columbus films, but that may be in no small part because this film was such a success that studios continued to hire him with the hope that he would bring some of Home Alone to those subsequent films. But we really need to talk about John Hughes’ work here. From all angles, this is obviously a family comedy, but it has the seemingly breezy, complicated plotting of the best thrillers. One can see the raw material for Kevin’s (Culkin, with enough charisma to spare that one never questions why they built a movie around him) war on crime all around the house, but the moments that drift in during act one that make the conceit work are unfurled so as not to make the viewer aware that they are seeing a plot unfold, but that Christmas is chaotic and anything can happen. Definitely, Hughes’ screenwriting work is not given enough credit here.