Fantastic Four (2005)

Director: Tim Story

Cast: loan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis

Have I Seen It Before: The reviews were middling, and there was plenty of other great stuff to watch that summer, so I somehow missed it during its theatrical run.

Theaters five way to DVDs, and I have the oddest, strongest memory of renting this film, watching bout twenty minutes of it, getting distracted by the types of things college kids get distracted by*, and never quite coming back to it until nearly 20 years later.

How in the hell did I watch Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four (2015) before I watched this? The mind boggles.

Did I Like It: I can kind of see where I lost interest in this, though. Where Trank’s effort is perpetual motion machine powered by misbegotten ideas, this film is content to not make anybody mad. In that first large era of superhero movies, that can be absolutely lethal in an attempt to revisit the film. or visit for the first time since. There are pop songs, and quick edits, and enough product placement to virtually guarantee the film was going to get a sequel, even if nobody bothered to show up.

It's the kind of perfunctory effort that reminds one of Daredevil (2003) and less of the resolutely individualistic efforts that helped X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002) break out from the pack... and inspire every movie studio that can get their hands on an IP to churn out this kind of movie.

With First Steps coming down the pike, I was suddenly inspired to take this one in, but I can"t say I'm particularly inspired to re-watch Trank’s film, or catch the sequel to this one.

Maybe it's finally time for me to watch Corman's version. It was at least created not to fill a studio's obligation for a summer weekend.

*Don't get too excited: I'm mostly talking about going over polling numbers in support of a political party that was all but extinct even then.

Male and Female (1919)

Director: Cecil B. DeMille

Cast: Gloria Swanson, Thomas Meighan, Lila Lee, Theodore Roberts

Have I Seen It Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: It seems like most films these days are slightly over-cooked, ultimately ill-considered attempts to appeal to the widest possible, least discerning audience. Some may blame the glut of Marvel movies devouring most of the budgets, ticket sales, and multiplex screens. Others might have seen no turning back after the release of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). Still more might have seen the excesses of films like Cleopatra (1963) eventually leading to the major studios being taken over by large multinational corporations.

I think we were all in trouble the moment this one came running through the movie houses.

DeMille is more at home amongst an epic, so trying to force a production of his into the tight packaging of a what essentially amounts to a romantic comedy feels like a mis-step. Even the greats can occasionally have a misstep. The problem comes more from the fact that I can just see Paramount—or Famous Players-Lasky, the label used for this film as Paramount was still sorting out its eventual identity—seeing what is essentially a drawing room play* and feeling like they were not going to be able to sell a restrained version of DeMille. Hence, the extended dream sequence where all of our characters are suddenly in Ancient Babylon. For reasons. This reeks of a compulsory studio note, and perhaps the first example of such a mandate, and likely the first one to sour an entire picture. Additional reading indicates that the film tried to shy away from the J.M. Barrie source material—no, not that one—because the audience might hear the phrase “Admirable Crichton” and think the film takes place at sea. DeMille never had a chance.

*Even when its on the shore of a desert island, the mechanics of the story don’t surpass the limitations of a drawing room play.

Thunderbolts* (2025)

Director: Jake Schreier

Cast: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko

Have I Seen It Before: Nope! Honestly, I was going to take a pass on this one. I’ve already missed so much of the post-Avengers: Endgame (2019) films and series. I still haven’t seen Black Widow (2020), and the ads on this one were insisting I’d be lost without having an encyclopedic knowledge of the Multiverse Saga. After my favorite theater wasn’t going to run this one**—that being the main reason I caved and saw Captain America: Brave New World (2025)—that would probably be it.

And then the reviews came back. It isn’t bad? All of these people are going to show up for the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday***? Ok, fine.

That’s the spirit to start the summer movie season, right?

Did I Like It: More than a little bit, I’m glad to report. Injecting an actual theme into the proceedings help. It may be a bit on the thin side—making the sordid past and healing from that past the fundamental fuel of whatever CGI kaleidoscope is to follow—but it is at least something. Name for me the theme of, say Brave New World****. I’ll wait.

Sure, there’s the kind of table-setting that can drag down even some of the earlier films, and the second act flies on autopilot to the point I did not fear a nap in the middle of the movie if it were to come for me. But, you want to know the most solid praise I can give this film.

After five years, I finally want to go watch Black Widow. Maybe there is hope for Marvel yet.

*This movie came directly for the Party Now, Apocalypse Later style guide, didn’t it?

**I’ve got more than a few things to say about Disney’s theatrical distribution model, but those will probably have to wait for some other blog post.

***A film I’m feeling obligated to see, if for no other reason than I need to bear witness to just what Robert Downey, Jr. is thinking—beyond, you know, money—coming back to the fold when he was right on the verge of re-inventing himself with Oppenheimer (2023).

****And no, “what happens when the President turns into a Hulk monster in the middle of a Rose Garden press conference” does not count as a theme.

78/52 (2017)

Director: Alexandre O. Philippe

Cast: Marli Renfro, Alfred Hitchcok, Tere Carrubba, Alan Barnette

Have I Seen It Before: Probably not, and yet I feel like I’ve seen more than enough fawning retrospectives of Psycho (1960)—to say nothing of docudramas like Hitchcock (2012) or The Girl (2012)—that I can’t say so with complete certainty.

Did I Like It: That previous statement wound tend to think I have a bit of a withering view of the film, but I can say there will probably be no further deep dives on the shower scene of Psycho. This has done the job. A fawning fan documentary—that still manages to poke holes in both Anthony Perkins’ ADR reading and wig choices—we do spend more than a little bit of time watching people of varying levels of fame watching the scene.

The film is far stronger when it is interviewing Renfro—when you think you’re seeing parts of Janet Leigh that you’re not supposed to be seeing, you’re actually seeing Renfro—and marveling at her indelible impact on cinema and subsequent lack of fame.

It also manages to delight when it confronts the complete unraveling of the magic contained in Hitchcock’s classic, namely in trying to recreate the death of Marion Crane in Gus van Sant’s Psycho (1998). That later film has the dubious reputation of being a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but there’s a decent runner in here where we learn that a 1:1 transcription of the shower scene didn’t work in color, or with far more of Anne Heche than we could have ever hoped to see of Leigh or Renfro. The thread at the fine sweater already pulled, the scene had to be re-made to far diminishing returns. I didn’t know that. I usually judge a documentary by its ability to teach me something, and it is difficult not to view a documentary kindly when it teaches me something I didn’t know about something I thought I knew quite well.

Abigail (2024)

Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Cast: Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Alisha Weir

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I had nominally avoided it during its theatrical release last year, as Dracula’s Daughter (1936) was easily one of my least favorite of the Universal monster movies. But, then Beyond the Caving in the Woods comes a-calling, and one of these days I may have seen all the horror movies.

Did I Like It: I’m left mostly bewildered by the film. Had it committed to its original idea and indeed been a remake of Dracula’s Daughter, it might have accomplished a number of things previously just out of reach. It would have the been the best possible type of remake, taking a previous film that didn’t work and improving things. It could have also been Universal’s attempt—the fourth one, by my count—in recent years to make a shared monster universe.

But it isn’t either of those things. It barely manages to answer the pitch of “Reservoir Dogs (1992) but Lawrence Tierney turns out to be a vampire and also, there’s a little bit of Home Alone (1990) in there as well.” It accomplishes that excessively busy goal only so much as it ticks off those disparate elements in a perfunctory fashion. I didn’t think I’d get to the end of this longing to watch Dracula’s Daughter, but I definitely didn’t feel like I got anything out of the film that I wouldn’t have gotten from watching Reservoir Dogs, Home Alone… or any of the other attempts Universal has made to light the Dark Universe.

The humor of it all doesn’t quite connect, characters react in awkward ways to everything happening in the film, and at the risk of offering spoilers, I had to look at a plot synopsis to really understand that Joey (Barrera) wasn’t made into a vampire in the film’s climax.

It’s a mess. It may be a mildly likable mess, but it is still a mess.

The Breaking Point (1950)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Cast: John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Phyllis Thaxter, Juano Hernandez

Have I Seen It Before: No. It more than a little bugs me that this is definitely the first 35mm projection I've seen this year, and it even more bugs me that I can't honestly remember the last film I took in an analog format. That really must change, or 2025 will really get the best of me. I wonder if these truly are the twilight days for the format outside of big markets.

Then Christopher Nolan will release something and the whole debate will be restarted anew.

Did I Like It: As a film noir, all the elements are here. The thing moves along at a nice clip. There's just a little bit of tension as to who will get away with what, and who might unfairly suffer in their wake. What's more, the eventual resolutions of those plot lines manages to find answers that aren't as pat as one might think when they see the age of the film. It ends on a slightly unfair, melancholy note that raises it to be more memorable than standard examples of the genre.

As a Hemingway tale, I wonder if it is a little lacking. There's a fisherman (more than a few of them, in point of actual fact) in the mix, so if one squinted at the affair from a fair distance, the specter of Papa might flit through your mind. Beyond that, there's no elemental perspective on man as a creature of the 20th century. Harry Morgan is not contemplative of his relationship with a fish, or how that fish threatens to unravel him as he desperately searches for his own courage. No, he's just looking for an ever-increasing pile of money. Maybe To Have and Have Not (1944) got it closer.

Sinners (2025)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: A review like this is more than a bit daunting. I love the movie so much that I get the distinct sense that I’ll be chewing* on parts of the movie for years to come. A simple review won’t be able to hold everything I want to say about it. An episode of <Beyond the Cabin in the Woods> won’t be able to cover everything I want to say about it.

Ryan Coogler hasn’t missed yet, and shows no signs of stopping now. He made a seventh movie in the Rocky franchise into something not just watchable, but essential. His biggest hit Black Panther (2018 demanded a sequel. Fate took away his star, which would spell disaster for lesser mortals, and he turned the whole affair into a meditation on grief at a time when big budget fair is positively allergic to anything resemble a theme.

Here, Coogler has made what is quite possibly the best vampire movie ever made. By equal turns startling, dread-inducing, and sexy**. His cast is perfect. One could make a case for Jordan being the MVP here, playing two roles, having them both be distinct characters, and managing to have chemistry with himself. But don’t turn on either Caton or O’Connell. Caton is either a born blues musician who also has tremendous screen presence, or one of the authentic screen acting finds of this century who can also play the blues like you wouldn’t imagine. O’Connell would be forgiven for playing a typical vampire villain role, but even he too has charisma and pathos (and not none musical talent) so that it is impossible to find the weak link in the chain. Not that I’m of a mind to go looking that hard.

This is about the length of a typical review, and there’s so much more I want to go into. The spiritual implications. The depiction of cultural appropriation. The sexiness, again***. But you know what? The review may never be able to contain it all. Come find me and talk to me about, I’m sure I’d love to chat.

*Pun accepted, if not entirely intended.

**To my mind, this might be the most pro-cunnilingus film since—no judgments—Gigli (2003).

***Really, it may be one of the sexiest films ever made, and that’s before the vampires show up and start to ruin everyone’s good time.

His Majesty, The American (1919)

Director: Joseph Henabery

Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Marjorie Daw, Frank Campeau, Sam Southern

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I slept through opening weekend because I wouldn’t be born for another 65 years.

Did I Like It: When the film is a pulpy, frothy concoction following Bill (Fairbanks) seeking thrills, it’s kind of fun. One wonders if Bob Kane and Bill Finger (mostly Finger) saw the death-defying adventures of a trust fund kid sliding down a fire pole to free-lance with first responders and thought there was certainly something there. Why, in this film he almost buckles swashes, even if his turn in The Mark of Zorro (1920) is still in the offing.

When it tries to be some sort of political drama or satire or… Something. It never seems to settle on what it wants to do in acts two and three. Whatever it wants to be, I think its safe to say that it is less than successful. The search for the heir to Montenac is so predictable as to be a foregone conclusion the moment it is introduced. The film then proceeds for another hour going through the motions of resolving that plot whilr still producing the number of reels that Fairbanks, Griffith, Pickford, and Chaplin needed to make their United Artists experiment work*.

One might write off such complaints as me not being willing to allow for less sophisticated audiences more than a hundred years ago, but I think that’s unreasonable. The players here an their contemporaries can make films that still resonate today. This may be a middling effort, and there is a reason that people know Fairbanks more for Zorro than anything else. I’m glad that the film is preserved as well as it is—the several generations removed digital projection was just fine—but I sure hope a better film didn’t disappear to the vagaries of nitrate film in favor of this.

*The one moment of impish magic that unassailably works is the film’s opening title that makes the case for UA, which a laughing Fairbanks interrupts before the film proper begins.

Coneheads (1993)

Director: Steve Barron

Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Michelle Burke, Michael McKean

Have I Seen it Before: Sure! Any real discussion of my awareness of the film will veer into what I actually think of the film, but I only add here that I have a strange memory of the film having a line of action figures—what movie didn’t have one in those years?—and I’m not entirely sure why. I also was under the impression that there was a day when Subway sandwiches didn’t exist, then this film came out, and those footlongs never left our lives.

Did I Like It: This movie either can’t or doesn’t try to answer or escape from a central question every film has to reckon with on some level: Who is this movie for?

it takes on the air of a family comedy with some sci-fi seasoning buried deep within the fry batter. On that front, it probably mostly succeeds. It’s inoffensive, and I remember as a kid being fairly amused by it.

A tame enough level of ambition undercuts other things the film might accomplish. An attempt to re-acquire the strange off-the-wall quality of the early years of Saturday Night Live mostly fails in service of the need to make a film the whole family can enjoy. Maybe most of the major players had kids. I’m told that can change a person, especially while those kids are young. Maybe Belushi died and everyone sobered up. It probably made their lives better, but the film does sadly suffer.

Another strange flex that the film can’t quite follow through on is the sheer tonnage of its cast. Almost everyone who has a connection to SNL or to well-regarded TV of the age brings to mind the over-stuffed cast of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Whereas that film expands its scope to accommodate giving everyone in the guild work, this film breaks apart at less than 90 minutes, again, likely in a an attempt to be the most risk-averse commodity possible.

Analyze This (1999)

Director: Harold Ramis

Cast: Robert de Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palmentieri

Have I Seen It Before: Oh sure. It was one of those R-rated movies that my parents let me see in those scant few years before I could just bypass their authority altogether.

Did I Like It: Back in those days when watching the movie was a special treat, I thought it was tremendous, causing me to put the movie in the same class as Ramis' work on Ghostbusters (1984) and especially Groundhog Day (1993). I kinda wanted to be Harold Ramis, if I'm being honest. A purveyor of funny comedies whose scripts actually work plot-wise. This was before his eventual petering out with duds like Bedazzled (2000) and Year One (2009), and certainly before subsequent Ghostbusters movies became occasions to memorialized him.

As a critic, one doesn't want to let the variables of one's own mood or environment, but I'm going to say that it was probably a bad idea to watch this film immediately after watching The Godfather (1972). But it’s also not a great idea that the film wants to invite all of those comparisons. Sobol’s (Crystal) dream sequence where he is Marlon Brando and Vitti (De Niro) is John Cazale during the assassination attempt in the earlier film not only smacks of self-reference via identification only and forgetting to bring some sort of commentary to the proceedings. It also highlights that Coppola and his cinematography Gordon Willis can be frequently mimicked, but rarely captured*.

The rest of the film leans to heavily on the personalities of its two stars to really ever succeed on its own terms. De Niro leans into the monosyllabic and Crystal spills forth with schtick that I want to remind them both that they’re not suffering through a talk show appearance or hosting the Oscars.

For all the good it might do them.

*Boy, that one scene in Barbie (2023) really had my number, didn’t it?

The Odd Couple (1968)

Director: Gene Saks

Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Fielder, Herb Edelman

Have I Seen It Before: Sad to confess, never. Growing up doing speech tournaments, I probably saw scenes from this—and from other Simon plays—far too many times to think of it as anything other than the blandest possible material for generally untalented performers.

I understand those might be fighting words.

Did I like It: I always get a little leery of movies based on stage plays. Sure, converting a musical into a film can work, the visual flourishes and the otherworldly quality of the production practically yearns to become a film. But down-to-earth stories about two people talking in a room is going to have a hard time justifying itself beyond just a taped performance of the play itself. Even the classic theatrical adaptations that immediately come to mind struggle with this problem. Something like A Few Good Men (1992) still feels like a story that could be told with the barest of sets, and Dracula (1931)* never feels like anything other than a stage play.

So, you can imagine my utter surprise when I come away from The Odd Couple marveling at how good it looks. With some real photography skill behind it, and shooting on real film, the rather pedestrian setting of Oscar Madison’s (Matthau) apartment has light and depth and shadow. I mourn for the droves of comedies now shot on digital (even the above average ones) that all look like their only visual ambition is to meet Netflix’s technical standards.

You’re probably wondering by this point if I ever managed to get over the photography and actually learn to enjoy Simon’s work. I laughed more than a few times, and it was probably nice to see the whole thing come together, as opposed to just the scenes adolescents needed to try to remember so they could get an A in what they had always assumed would be a blow-off class. That might read as damning with faint praise, but that might be all I have for it, writing wise. It’s more than I thought I would have, going in.

*Which is much more of an adaptation of the ubiquitous theatrical play originally by Hamilton Deane than of anything written by Bram Stoker.

Deep Impact (1998)

Director: Mimi Leder.

Cast: Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman

Have I Seen It Before: Set aside, for a moment, the reality that the summer of 1998 was just one of those summers where I made it a point to see everything I could (Hope Floats, anyone?), you didn't get out of that summer having an opinion about the two big asteroids coming for the Earth films*.

Did I Like It: And now it's time for me to share those opinions, too. The lore around this movie is that it is the "smarter" version of the story, as opposed to its brother from a different studio. That's ultimately true, but l also think that forces almost every person on the planet to give Deep Impact more credit than it ultimately deserves.

Sure, Deep Impact reaches for emotions, whereas other movies are content with manipulation.

Indeed, there's some attempt at real science fiction, where there's a moment in that other movie where a character solemnly develops Space Madness, which I believe was cribbed from an episode of Ren & Stimpy. This one also has a score from James Horner, which automatically makes it better than most films you get in any particular summer, and a good measure better than any film that is to come**

But the reality is that Deep impact can really only be called a smart movie when it is compared to one of the silliest, most ridiculous films to ever blow out the speakers at your multiplex. It is a movie-of-the-week, with a cast of dozens, and plenty of moments of movie emotions, but it is still a big summer movie built with the largest, least discerning audience in mind. When compared with that animal crackers scene, however, Deep Impact suddenly transforms into a film for serious grown people only.

Deep Impact is the cinematic equivalent of my father growing up. His older brother was a wild child. Notoriously, legendarily so. I think Bart Simpson may have been partly based on my uncle.

Was my father a particularly well-behaved child? I don't tend to think so, but when those comparisons come in, I can see why my grandparents thought he was the calmer one.

Huh. And I didn't think I could get through an entire review of this movie without mentioning Armageddon (1998). There. I ruined it.

"I have no trouble imagining many of the people with those opinions didn't bother to see both films. I'll leave you to guess which one they did see.

**Maybe the Avatar sequels. Maybe.

Black Bag (2025)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Brand new. I really got to pick up my pace with the new releases. This year has been weird.

Did I Like It: I was probably going to like this film, however it ultimately turned out. I’m a supreme sucker for those times when Soderbergh feels the need to reach for something with a mainstream sheen. I had patience for the Ocean’s movies far longer than anyone else.

But there’s something oddly refreshing about the film beyond that which is worthy of note. Do I seem needlessly geriatric if I say that the mere act of going to a new movie that isn’t a cheap horror movie and/or comic book is refreshing enough? Probably not, as I do also enjoy those kinds of movies, but this experience was certainly nice. Also, the fact that it was only just-over ninety minutes long, it hardly had any time to wear out its welcome. That one makes me seem hopelessly immature. Trying to have all the right opinions is exhausting sometimes.

Beyond all that, the film has a fascinating concept at its core. A stylish spy thriller is always fun, but I’m bereft of another example of a spy story fueled by two characters who are pointedly committed to their marriage. Obviously one can ignore the Bond series*, or even the Mission: Impossible films. One can even set aside a film like Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) or True Lies (1994) would fit the bill, as they’re both about a marriage breaking apart under espionage and intrigue. Those who go up against George Woodhouse (Fassbender) and Kathryn St. Jean (Blanchett) come up short because their marriage is impenetrable.

*Incidentally, I think Pierce Brosnan is not getting enough credit (story of his life, probably) for not showing a hint of his Bond in a role we all might have forgiven him for doing so. As all my reviews for the Bond franchise up until this point are done, this may be my first opportunity to say this, but: With all due respect to him, if the new powers that be in the franchise want to do an “Old Man Bond” story, first, I think No Time To Die (2021) probably covered a lot of that ground, and I would really prefer a third Dalton movie in any event.

The Dead Pool (1988)

Director: Buddy Van Horn

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey

Have I Seen it Before: Never. And now I’ve seen all of the Dirty Harry films.

Did I Like It: I’d been looking so forward to this one, given the absolutely bananas cast on display, all before they became anything that would be featured above the title. Carrey is here before Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) made him a permanent light in the firmament, and even before Neeson because “that one guy in cool films who isn’t Bruce Campbell” in Darkman (1990). I honestly don’t think I’ve managed to overhype myself on a movie this much since The Flash (2023).

I was really wanting it to be bananas, all the while knowing that I was setting myself up for a goodly amount of disappointment. It never even occurred to me that Carrey is only here in the role of the guy that they find dead in the first few minutes of a Law & Order episode.

There’s probably a reason that both Neeson and Carrey had to wait for another couple of years before they could be considered stars, and it is probably the same reason that Eastwood swore off the prospect of another entry in the series*. This is not the triumphant conclusion one might think of. It’s not oddly funny like The Enforcer (1976), but it might be unreasonable to expect a part five of a series to reach up to the heights of previous entries. The real damning thing here is that Harry may simply not be the hero that the 80s need. Gone are the days where most Americans felt lost amidst a world that was growing too fast for them, and seemed like it had gone completely insane. That’s where Harry thrived: being grumpy but strangely fair among people he would never understand. Now he just seems grumpy.

*He could have gotten away with—and probably be forgiven for—making the main character of Gran Torino (2008) the Unforgiven (1992) for Callahan.

Heart Eyes (2025)

Director: Josh Ruben

Cast: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Michaela Watkins

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I’ll admit that it somehow missed my radar altogether, but a last-minute re-working of the Beyond the Cabin in the Woods schedule brought me here.

Did I Like It: I can’t readily recall the last time I’ve been on such a roller coaster with a movie. For the first stretch it feels like it is going to be a fun gore-fest, somewhere in the vein of the Evil Dead series (and likely competing with The Monkey (2025) for screens and audiences). It also wants to weave romantic comedy tropes into the trappings of a horror movie. It worked for Shaun of the Dead (2004), why can’t it work here*?

Then it settles into the comfortable slasher rhythm that has become ubiquitous in the wave of Scream (1996) and its more recent sequels. I’m sitting there not being terribly frightened (I might be past the time where a slasher elicits any kind of real fear) and I’m more concerned with trying to figure out who did it.

I’m kind of tired watching a horror movie and slowly realizing I’m watching less of a horror movie and actually watching what amounts to a cozy mystery**.

But then something happens in the third act that gave me a strange sense of hope. The mystery suddenly becomes incidental to the murder and mayhem. For a moment, I almost dared hope that the pure simplicity of John Carpenter might be heading for its renaissance.

Then the film goes on for another twenty minutes and veers right into being just another Scream clone. Disappointment abounds.

*Spoiler alert for the end of the review: The reason it won’t work is because few people are Edgar Wright. Shaun works because the horror works, and the romantic comedy works. This movie ends up being a mashup of the later Scream-quels and something like Crazy Stupid Love (2011), when I’d really love to see a mashup of You’ve Got Mail (1998) and Halloween (1978). But I get why film studios hesitate to make films they can only market to me.

**There are few terms in the world that set my teeth on edge more than “cozy mystery.” I have my reasons.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Strangely enough, I’ve somehow managed to avoid watching most of the series since starting these reviews. But this last weekend, I’m getting an oil change at one of those lightning fast, don’t-even-leave-your car joints. The guys doing the oil change were talking about superhero movies, and I just joined right in. One of them says this was the best of them all, and I was hard pressed to disagree. So it went near the top of my list to re-watch.

Did I Like It: It’s not hard to say that this is probably the best of the X-Men films*. It manages to weave together many of the elements that made X-Men (2000) and X2: X-Men United (2003) some of the early entries of the superhero boom, and the later films that managed to refresh the series with X-Men: First Class (2011). It even manages to avoid the particularly baffling multiple timelines that weighed down the series as it wore on… Mainly because this is the film that drove the timelines off the tracks.

But then again, as one of America’s fine purveyors of time travel nonsense, I fully approve of even that much.

It also helps that this film largely works. It may not be the bubbly 60s spy movie homage of First Class or the subtle homage to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)** that is X-Men United. It does owe a lot to The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and it may be the fact that at the moment I’m watching the Dirty Harry films, but Hugh Jackman has been spending the last twenty-five years just doing an Eastwood impression? It’s a pretty good one, sure, but… folks. That’s all he’s been doing.

That all reads like I’m picking at nits, but there were things that I found oddly affecting on this re-watch. And it only kind of has to do with the fact that the whole plot focuses on a megalomaniacal titan of the tech industry (Peter Dinklage) yanking a little too hard on the ear of the president (Mark Camacho) to bring us all to our inevitable doom.

All right, maybe it’s a bit more than kind of, but there’s other stuff here. I’m mainly focusing on the lost Charles Xavier as portrayed by McAvoy. He’s selfish and broken in a world where the only rational response would be to be selfish and broken. Who’s the only man in the entire multiverse who can set him right? The older, wiser Xavier as portrayed by Patrick Stewart. Hell, if I can’t have my future self set myself on the right track, I’d take any number of characters played by Patrick Stewart.

*If one ignores Logan (2017). We’re not going crazy here.

**I’ll die on this hill, but I probably won’t elaborate on it, unless I need to beef up the word count of this review.

Trapped (1949)

Director: Richard Fleischer

Cast: Lloyd Bridges, Barbara Payton, John Hoyt, James Todd

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Between the head cold that wouldn’t die, and the general feeling of exhaustion that filled the universe last fall*, I’ve been slacking on attending Circle’s regular Noir Night. Throw in the fact that before the movie they ran the 1923 animated short from Fleischer’s father, also titled Trapped, I can’t help but marvel that I go to one of the only theaters that still runs cartoons before a movie.

Did I Like It: Even beyond the amenities of the screening, it’s good to be back in the dim world of Noir. There’s something so simply intuitive about putting a hard on their luck schlub in the pursuit of an easy payday only to be completely ruined by that fantasy (it’s a fantasy at the moment) of consequences. Trapped hits all of the beats one would expect and need from the genre. There’s even a blonde (Payton) lurking around the edges of the film who can vacillate between victim and Iago-like manipulator for good measure.

But then the film takes a weird turn. All throughout the runtime, Stewart (Bridges) feels like the main character. He’s the schemer who is one step ahead of the coppers who are trying to bring the gifted forger back into justice. Most of the first act centers on his escape. Then, with twenty minutes left to go, Bridges gets arrested again. One might think he’s got a whole other escape in him before the end credits unfurl, but no. Lloyd Bridges suddenly becomes Sir Not Appearing In This Film. The final twenty minutes involves the Secret Service tightening their noose around a completely different character, Jack Sylvester (Todd).

This might have struck me as a flaw of the film, if it weren’t for the fact that we were all told before the film began that Bridges got quite sick in the middle of production, and with a B production there was no time to wait for him to get better. So it’s suddenly a story about Sylvester. Without Fleischer at the helm, this could have been a real mess, instead of a slightly off-beat one. It’s a testament to Fleischer’s skills that he could make as much lemonade out of the lemons available.

Just imagine how bad Conan the Destroyer (1984) would have been if Fleischer hadn’t been around to keep things under some degree of control.

*Now that that’s over with…

The Big Diamond Robbery (1929)

Director: Eugene Forde

Cast: Tom Mix, Kathryn McGuire, Frank Beal, Martha Mattox

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I’ve been down on silent westerns. One would hope that they would be wall-to-wall action, but oddly enough the silent comedies are more interested in keeping things moving in improbable ways.

It’s also frustrating to try to sit through a silent film that went neglected for far too long. The Last Trail (1927) had degraded to some blurry shadows with light poking through. I’m happy to report that for some reason the Library of Congress got involved with some restoration*. The copy I saw was pristine, with no strange film breaks. I really feel like I saw the film in the way it was intended to be seen, and that’s even before I mention that I got to see it with an organist.

With all of that being said, it’s now time to be kind of down on this one, too. Take a look at that title. It screams action. Gunplay. Horseplay. Maybe, dare I expect too much from the world of the 2020s, a diamond robbed or two.

Maybe the more apt title of “A Light Romantic Comedy Eventually Involves a Horse And There Are Some Mild Misunderstandings Surrounding a Diamond, But They’re Really Secondary” had no hope of fitting on a poster. Even those huge ones they had in the pre-talkie era. But I would have at least not felt like I was getting short shift from the whole affair. Relegating the diamonds to an afterthought might have been forgiven if Mix was in top form. Reaching the end of his career, he’s understandably not moving as improbably as he might of in those films that only barely exist anymore.

*And yet, the film is not on the National Film Registry. After all these years, it’s really not clear to me where, when, or why they might get involved with something. Probably never will, at this rate. Probably should tell me something.

Sudden Impact (1983)

Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle, Bradford Dillman

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: I go into this one not with hype in my head, but a strange amount of comfort with Harry Callahan and his world. What’s more, Eastwood directs here for the only time in the series. Who knows Callahan and his strange mix of gruff recalcitrance and underlying decency better than the man who probably still is largely identified with the role?

And yes, Eastwood is probably most at ease in this film, but that makes the entire film seem distracted. Maybe he was a little too in love with Sandra Locke and decides to spend too much time focusing on her. Plenty of directors, and more than a few stars have fallen victim to the pitfalls of romantic nepotism, but Locke sleep walks through a role that feels like it at least needs to alternate between borderline-catatonic and scene-chewing manic.

Maybe it’s just that this is a down-note entry in the series between The Enforcer (1976) where Eastwood is able to be so relaxed that he actually got to be a bit funny, and The Dead Pool (1988), a weird—purely hypothetical for me at this point—pop cultural amalgamation. It’s entirely possible I’m being too hard on Sudden Impact. A series that goes five films without having any entries that aren’t willfully embarrassing is probably a treasure to behold. Star Trek couldn’t manage that feat. Maybe Dirty Harry is allowed to have an off day.

And now it’s just me and The Dead Pool. I strangely can’t wait. With it’s weird alchemy of Eastwood, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey (before he started talking out of his ass) and the guys who voices Mario? There’s no possibility this thing will ever live up to the hype I created entirely in my head.

The Enforcer (1976)

Director: James Fargo

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Bradford Dillman, Tyne Daly

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Is it possible that Dirty Harry Callahan (Eastwood) is actually funny? I mean, this film certainly seems to think he is and Eastwood is given more one -liners and absurd situations to deal with than he’s gotten in any film that doesn’t involve a monkey. I found myself laughing out loud more than I do with an average comedy.

But if Harry were really the absolutely mean-spirited one-man war on crime that our collective pop cultural consciousness has decided he was, it would be hard to laugh with him amidst a ridiculous world.

But here’s the thing. He isn’t. He dislikes absurdity, and is apt not to participate in it, but in a city like San Francisco that is filled to the brim with the kind of people that would drive a lesser steely-eyed conservative icon to hate everyone in sight. He’s curt, sure. He’s more into doing the job as he sees it, consequences be damned.

But he’s not a fundamentally mean man, especially if you aren’t obviously committing a felony right in front of him at that very moment, doubly so if you’re in a position of authority over him. He really hates that. He gets attached to partners quite easily, in fact. Which one might forgive him for being a dick to the litany of sad sacks who get tethered to him, as they keep dropping like flies. But this doesn’t stop him from both begrudgingly respecting and eventually mourning his latest buddy, Inspector Kate Moore (Daly). This feels like the kind of opinion that will get some red hat to trebuchet me, but I think the only reason they call him Dirty Harry is because Cuddly Bear Harry wouldn’t have looked as good on a poster.

It’s entirely possible that The Enforcer will wind up being one of my favorite of the Dirty Harry films. I’m reserving judgment, as that last one has Liam Neeson and Jim Carrey running around the edges with wacky hairdos, and I wait for that with bated breath.