Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War (2016)

Director: Ken Burns, Artemis Joukowsky

Cast: Tom Hanks, Marina Goldman

Have I Seen It Before: Never. You might be saying now that I would have had to take extra pains bobbing and weaving to avoid a Ken Burns documentary about a Unitarian minister that has already been shown multiple times at Circle Cinema, and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so.

And yet, here we are.

Did I Like It: Here’s an opportunity to really tell if people are reading these reviews at all. A little over fifteen years ago, I gave semi-serious consideration to going to a seminary to study to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. I even took a tour of the closest seminary that might be built to accommodate such an education. Time passed, and writing took a little more of a front seat around that time. Couple that with a growing suspicion that my personal theology might veer more towards nothing more loft than wanting to go to the movies as much as possible, the thought took a back seat.

Slowly but surely over the last year or, it’s been creeping back towards the front seat, if not quite reclaiming its momentary position. Will I go? Ask me right now, and I’d say probably not, but that’s still an improvement in odds from two years ago, when the thought wouldn’t have even crossed my mind, and certainly better than it was about two weeks ago, when I would have laughed with more than a little hostility at the prospect.

Why do I bring all this up? I could go into my usual survey of the strengths of a documentary. The technical aspects, the insight, and the level of access to the subject. You don’t need to hear me grading the documentary GOAT.

But it is worth noting that this may be the first Ken Burns documentary I’ve ever seen where there was at least a slight possibility I could see myself doing something resembling the job of the subject.

Who knows what the future might hold, but that makes a documentary hit different. Also, Ken Burns knows what he’s doing.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut

Have I Seen It Before: Oddly enough, no. I’ve seen You’ve Got Mail (1998) probably 50 times or so over the last thirty years, and yet never came around to this one.

Did I Like It: Why did I wait so long to take it in? Probably because I didn’t want to put my self in the unenviable and possibly inevitable position of saying I liked the remake more than the original.

And now here we are.

Two falls bedevil this movie upon which Nora Ephron was able to improve. First, the end game of the film—where he (Stewart) knows who she (Sullavan) is, but she doesn’t know who he is—resolves much too quickly for my taste. I need tension in suspense in my romantic comedies!

Far more egregiously, we are not treated to much of the letters Kralik and Novak trade. Part of the tremendous charm in the later film is that we find these two charming because their writing is undeniably charming. Here, we just have to accept it on faith that they’ve snared each other on vibes alone.

But let us be honest about You’ve Got Mail. It has aged far more egregiously in the thirty years since its premiere than The Shop Around the Corner. One could make a contemporary story today where two people fall in love via letters (it’d be quaint, but you could do it) and work in retail, not knowing that their most annoying co-worker is also their beloved pen pal. One might be tempted to make it all a Social Media thing (indeed, season 2 of Ted Lasso did that under the radar), but you don’t have to. Telling the story of two people falling in love using only their AOL handles, and their comfortable Manhattan lifestyles paid for by working for brick-and-mortar book stores?

All right, The Shop Around the Corner. You win this one.

Wolf (1994)

Director: Mike Nichols

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Christopher Plummer

Have I Seen It Before: Never. A monster movie starring the Joker and Catwoman? The movie absolutely fascinated me from the far distance of a movie poster or VHS cover at a Blockbuster or other rental venue. But it was one of those uniquely grown-up (as opposed to adult, which has a different connotation) films that was just out of reach, and somehow got a little more than forgotten by the time I had freedom to come around to it.

Did I Like It: The opening credits unfurl, and I know I can’t be in for a bad time, and this doesn’t even take into account the fact that the Nicholson+Pfeiffer+Mike Nichols equation should be more than enough to guarantee a good time. James Spader? Screw you, I thought he was great on The Office. David Hyde Pierce? Who has had a bad time when he is on the screen? Ennio Morricone? Slow down, movie. You already had me at Jack Nicholson!

And the movie that follows fulfills that promise, for the most part. When it shifts the mythos of the werewolf into a commentary on toxic masculinity of the 1990s*, it moves the monster movie into something more interesting than it might be on its own. When it is Columbia’s big summer movie, complete with the complicated real estate of two of the biggest stars at that moment respectively growling and arching their back in grey scale, it ultimately doesn’t quote move beyond being just another monster movie whose special effects had little hope of not aging past their sell-by date by the time the 90s were over.

*Don’t worry: It hasn’t changed that much in 30 years. Also, worry: It hasn’t changed that much in 30 years.

A Perfect Murder (1998)

Director: Andrew Davis

Cast: Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, Viggo Mortensen, David Suchet

Have I Seen It Before: Feels like an appropriate enough movie to give one of those “I was a little rich boy” confessions. I probably saw it about three or four times during a cruise—you take me on a luxury boat, I’m still going to stay in the cabin and watch whatever movie is playing on TV—when I was fifteen.

Did I Like It: I just recently watch Dial M for Murder (1954) and knew that a remake—1998 being the strange year that we all just decided to re-make large swaths of Hitchcock’s library—of the movie was somewhere out there, and in the back of my memory.

Set aside your shot-for-shot remakes, and set aside your hollow-toned movie-of-the-weeks, if one was going to take the raw material that made up Hitchcock’s movies and try to truly re-make it, I don’t think I could have come up with a filmmaker more suited to the task than Andrew Davis. We can talk about The Fugitive (1993) for hours, and I would be more than thrilled to have that conversation, but he also managed to be the only director to get a real performance out of Steven Seagal not just once, but twice. If the world was prepared to engage in yet another questionable trend, the wisdom of bringing in Davis is clear.

And the movie mostly succeeds, thanks largely to his skill at crafting movie thrillers. No one is stupid. Everyone is right up against it. Indeed, it’s at least slightly interesting to think of this film as an inversion of Davis’ success with The Fugitive. There, the tension comes from a good man insisting he didn’t kill anyone. A Perfect Murder, the tension stems from people eager to kill those closest to them.

Is A Perfect Murder a great film? No? Does it measure up to its predecessor? Also, no. It comes from an era when—and from a studio who was particularly troubled by this phenomenon—every movie was made with an eye to avoid risk. It isn’t like that has changed in the years since, though. Now, the studios wouldn’t even give a wide release to a thriller with adult characters doing adult things, even if it spoon feeds us character development we may not have ultimately needed.

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993)

Director: Gene Quintano

Cast: Emilio Estevez, Samuel L. Jackson, Jon Lovitz, William Shatner

Have I Seen it Before: I’m reasonably sure I did. It was a PG-13 release at that time when I would watch almost anything I could get my hands on.

I must not have thought that much of it then, becuase it wasn’t exactly like it got into regular rotation.

Did I Like It: And I think I laughed significantly maybe twice during the entire runtime, and both of those times it was at something Jon Lovitz said, which Is as surprising as anything else.

As Estevez is interrogating Lovitz, in obvious, thin satire of Mel Gibson and Joe Pesci*:

ESTEVEZ: Give me a name.

LOVITZ: (uncertain) Shouldn’t your parents have done that for you?

Ha. Good times.

The other chuckle I had was when Lovitz brought into relief an issue I had with most of the film to begin with, when he asks if Estevez has seen Hot Shots! (1991). I might trust Estevez to pick me up from the airport or do anything else that might be considered responsible**, it’s entirely possible that Charlie is just a bit—more than a bit, actually—funnier than his brother. I keep trying to put that out of my head and have a nice time with the film, but then Lovitz hangs a lampshade on the problem, and that’s afte rthe film went a step further and had Sheen cameo. As a valet attendant, the most troubled of all the Sheen/Estevez clan can make a flavorful comedy meal out of nothing lines, where Estevez appears to struggle throughout the film to remember why he agreed to do this in the first place.

I know for a fact that Charlie Sheen is funnier than Kathy Ireland. Everyone might be funnier than Kathy Ireland.

*I’m not looking up the character names. That’s how much of an impact the film had. Most of them are puns.

**While I’d trust their father to be President of the United States, but that’s a different issue.

Dial M For Murder (1954)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know. I’ll admit I’ve seen the scene of Wendice (Milland) coming back after nearly getting away with it, as it’s playing in the background of The West Wing episode “Ellie.” I didn’t even really intend to do a double-featue of this and Rear Window (1954), but here we are.

Did I Like It: Dial M is certainly on a smaller scale of Hitchcock movies than Rear Window. One might even complain that it is on such a small scale that it is relying on its plot to make magic. That might be considered a note against it, but I maintain that’s not the case. In years past, I’ve been a sucker for a byzantine plot, and as years go on I’m less impressed by plot alone. Maybe I’m becoming a sentimentalist, but the human element needs to be there, too.

The human element might be a little slight here, mainly because all of the characters to seem to be depressingly void of much human warmth, stretching from the bored and unfaithful Mrs. Wendice (Kelly) to the downright psychopathic Tony (Milland). The magic of the film comes in the expert deploying of its suspense. There’s never a point as Chief Inspector Hubbard (Williams) begins picking at the characters various stories that I feel absolutely certain how this is going to end. In the early portions of the film, it seems like Tony’s plan might work out as he seems to have planned, and he’ll have to spend the rest of the fim dealing with Swann (Anthony Dawson) in a variation on Strangers on a Train (1951). When the plan goes haywire (or maybe this was the plan all along; Tony is devious that way) I spend the rest of the fim thinking that the film will be content to send Grace Kelly to the electric chair and have Ray Milland whistle off into the sunset, or perhaps have the rope of the law close in on him as his story falls apart.

One of those ends up being the answer, you should probably watch it yourself. Go do it now.

Rear Window (1954)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Raymond Burr

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I always feel like I’m having to dodge and weave a little when it comes to Hitchcock films. I love Psycho (1960). I’ve introduced screenings of it and it would be among the top ten films I would choose to watch to put on after a long day.

But, try as I might, I have never enjoyed Vertigo (1958) half as much as I feel like I’m expected to. And, cashier me out of my Letterboxd subscription if you must, I would put Rear Window closer to the Vertigo end of the spectrum.

But I realized something as I took in Rear Window on the big screen. The reason I’ve spent most of my life thinking Psycho was the peak of Hitchcock’s oeuvre is because it was created with the same production resources that were being used for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It was tailor-made for repeated views on your glass screen. Most of his other movies were made for Vistavision. TV’s need not apply.

So I’m sitting in a theater and, my phone firmly in my pocket and the visages of Stewart and Kelly fill my view, it becomes clear: Maybe one of these days I finally need to get around to seeing Vertigo on the big screen. Or, failing that, I need to leave my phone in the other room when I’m doing so.

Beyond taking it all in the way it was meant to be seen, there’s a genius-bordering-on-demented quality in Rear Window. It’s really five or six movies that dovetail, collapse, and build on one another, and Jefferies (Stewart) is watching all of them. Some come complete with their own dialogue, others are silent in the purest sense of the word, where they didn’t have to even lean on title cards to get the point across. Rear Window is all movie, and it is all movies.

And you get to spend a good portion of it absolutely dumbfounded that Jimmy Stewart can’t get over himself to marry Grace Kelly.

Life Begins at 40 (1935)

Director: George Marshall

Cast: Will Rogers, Richard Cromwell, George Barbier, Rochelle Hudson

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: First thing’s first. I love the title, or at least the hope that it represents. Second, I’m not entirely sure what it has to do with the movie that follows, but I think more films should have awesome titles. I think from now on other movies should have titles that have nothing to do with the content. Just imagine the hit The Shawshank Redemption (1994) would have been if it had been called Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)?

What we’re left with beyond that is a fairly basic, small-town romantic comedy. Had Will Rogers not had the star-power that he did, Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan could have just as easily been the romantic leads played by Cromwell and Hudson. That’s fine. I spent 85 minutes in a darkened room watching it with other people who wanted to be there, and I was sipping on an Iced Tea the whole time. I don’t have to think very hard to come up with about twenty things I would less rather to do. It might be cynical, but this is the basic magic of the movies.

It’s difficult not to note that of all the silent movie stars, Rogers was probably most suited to the transition. The rest of the comedians of the era* were physical specimens, where Rogers had an intuitive way to find le mot juste and occasionally did rope tricks. He’s good with a wry comment, and fits into the world of a talking picture quite well.

*I’m reminded with some mild amusement a younger me deputizing Chaplin into an argument in an undergrad film course when a professor kept coming back to the paragon of political and social enlightenment that was Rogers (this is the kind of education one can expect in Oklahoma). Needless to say, the professor wasn’t thrilled with that tack.

Babylon 5: The Road Home (2023)

Director: Matt Peters

Cast: Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Peter Jurasik, Bill Mumy

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I’d been holding off on watching it after its release, mainly waiting for it to get cheap on Apple TV. Then the whole series went on sale, too, and so my collision with this was something of an inevitability.

Did I Like It: I really love the series. It’s special effects aged like milk that had come out rancid in the first place, and while some might call pieces of its storyline derivative, I can look over those moments and decide that most of the characters have never read a book before*.

Glancing at the plot synopsis and realizing that this largely takes place in that period between the final episode, “Sleeping in Light” and the second-to-last episode “Objects at Rest,” I decided to fit this movie in between the two episodes.

I kinda wished I hadn’t. Had I watched this completely detached from a re-watch of the series, it might have been a nice nostalgic trip back to syndicated television of the 1990s. In my situation, it was just a weird, discordant note in the middle of watching the fifth, somewhat discordant season of the show. The continuity problems—largely papered over by having Sheridan (Boxleitner) jumping from universe to universe—were all the more noticeable, as the true canon only happened for me just a few hours earlier.

I knew the film was going to have a bit of a problem with the fact that a large portion of the cast has since passed away and are replaced here by voice actors trying to sound like those departed. The actress playing Delenn may not quite sound like Mira Furlan, but she has the ethereal spirit of the character down, and given that the character is not present throughout the film, but makes the moments she does appear largely work. Garibaldi, Sinclair, and Dr. Franklin have varying levels of success resurrecting the dead. The film completely falls apart, however, in its few moments that feature G’Kar. Andreas Katsulas had such a distinctive voice, and it filled every inch of the angry scoundrel who became the quiet, reflective scribe. It’s not like I need verisimilitude from my space opera, but don’t take me out of the whole thing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go watch “Sleeping in Light.”

*Including 1984, The Lord of the Rings, and any other major piece of literature not written by Harlan Ellison. Honestly, five miles long, and there wasn’t a library on that space station?

Send Help (2026)

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Dennis Haysbert

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Missed it in theaters, tragically. What else have I been missing this year? The mind reels.

Did I Like It: Easily one of the best films of the year, I can’t help but be absolutely floored by the reality that A) Sam Raimi could be let loose to do what he does best in a section of his career post-Spider-Man (2002) and B) Sam Raimi could even theoretically do what he does best in the confines of a story that contains not one ounce of the supernatural. All he had to do was pich a movie that would be Cast Away (2000) if it had been directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Aside from all of its thriller trappings, the film expertly switches back and forth from sympathizing with McAdams and O’Brien.

McAdams is giving what a pessimist might call a career-best performance, and I’m choosing to call a mission statement for the next phase of her career. Amanda Seyfried might be enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment, but McAdams may be the more interesting performer coming out of Mean Girls (2004). She doesn’t flinch in the face of the blood, guts, and indignities thrown her way, and is willing to convincingly go dowdy in the film’s earlier, more civilized portions of the film at a time when other actors at this strage of her career might blanche at the idea of letting go of one’s natural ego and embracing debasement.

The only flaw I can point to is that there might be just a hair too much CGI in the film for its own good. Panoramas on the deserted island look like they were filmed in a studio, leaving one to remember just how real something like Cast Away was.

And then there were those boars. What the hell was up with the boars?

aka Charlie Sheen (2025)

Director: Andrew Renzi

Cast: Charlie Sheen, Chuck Lorre, Jon Cryer, Denise Richards

Have I Seen It Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Once again, my three criteria for a documentary: 1) Is it technically competent. 2) Is it interesting? 3) Does it have enough access to its subject to have something unusual to say.? The greats are balanced in all three, many can claim only the first criteria.

This is an unusual case. I would say it certainly has the third criteria down, and it intermittently succeeds on the second part. I’m a little underwhelmed, however by the first. Yes, everything is shot correctly, and the filmmakers make the correct choice to format the entire film like one of the 8mm films Sheen, his brother, and his friends made as boys. But there is a sameness here that sours much of the product. There’s even a music cue, I swear, was pulled directly from OJ: Made In America (2016).

But back to where the film succeeds. Sheen has given enough access to the filmmakers, and at times is uncomfortably honest enough that one tends to think we’re getting something approaching real here. It might all be self-serving, and there may be things that aren’t addressed and sufficiently edited around.

I would have loved to seen Martin Sheen weigh in, but it’s completely understandable that he wouldn’t want to appear on camera. Stories told about him third hand—especially his circumspect toast at Sheen’s third wedding—are a highlight. The other element I was surprised by, and this might be enough to recommend the movie, are the interviews with Sheen’s second wife, Richards. A Bond movie here, and a Verhoeven movie there, and you may have an image of Denise Richards in your head. These interviews disassemble that image pretty thoroughly. Either she is a far tougher, far smarter person than the 1990s allowed her to be, or her interviews are a canny performance, and she is a far better actress than the 1990s allowed her to be.

As with some of the great documentaries, I’m content to stay with the mysteries this film lets linger.

Dancing Mothers (1926)

Director: Herbert Brenon

Cast: Alice Joyce, Conway Tearle, Clara Bow, Norman Trevor

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: There’s a famous runner through <Singin’ in the Rain (1952)> where Kathy Selden dismisses—before the advent of talking pictures, naturally— the entirety of cinema as a lot of “dumb show.” “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” she says. I always wince when I hear this, and wonder why she can dismiss the brilliance of Murnau, or Eisenstein, or even Chaplin…

Then I think she’s actually talking about movies like Dancing Mothers, and I get a lot more forgiving of Debbie Reynolds. Action still works without synchronized sound. Any Black and White film—especially the silents—can put more horror in the shadows than most can do with color. Comedy probably works better if we don’t bring a lot of dialogue into the process.

But a soap opera? And a cheap one at that? It’s, sadly, just a lot of dumb show. Somebody’s in love with somebody else. They shouldn’t be. Some sturm and drang follows to fill out the middle reels, and everyone comes to a sad end. The housewives who flocked to this are reminded that they should stick to the rivers and the lakes their used to. Everybody wins?

Early sound pictures were locked into being recorded productions of stage shows, and while the movie business was still trying to figure out how to use microphones, that flaw is at least understandable. Trying to adapt what absolutely had to be one of the talkiest plays this side of Our American Cousin for the screen might very well be the first instance of the plague that would completely subsume motion pictures for a large audience: The best reason to make any film is if its already based on something which people will readily recognize.

Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean that there’s something worth preserving in there.

The Great Escape (1963)

Director: John Sturges

Cast: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald

Have I Seen It Before: This is one of those times that I kind of hate that I added this field into these reviews all those years ago. It shifts the entire affair from a meditation on a film’s nature or a celebration of its virtues, into something like a confession.

I’m stalling. I’ve never seen it. I accept your judgments now.

But! But. I did manage to wait to see it for the first time until I could see it on the big screen. So maybe I just have a terrific sense of timing.

Sure.

Did I Like It: I mean, I get it now. I know why you’re all judging me. The movie is fantastic. Stacked to the brim with enough stars being precisely the stars that they’re supposed to be. You can practically feel the urge of a the next generation of filmmakers to pluck these gentlemen for their own future projects*.

It’s so likable, so vibrant, so fast-paced that I could hardly look away from it in its nearly three hour—definitely 2 VHS tape style—runtime. It is so winning, so laced with suspense at every turn that it took me an entire day to dwell on the fact that it was a little strange that Wellinski, the Tunnel King (Charles Bronson) being claustrophobic was especially convenient from a dramatic tension standpoint, seeing as he’s already spent most of the war digging tunnels.

I love a movie that’s so good that its one glaring flaw is rendered invisible.

*Skimming around the internet, I even learn that Spielberg’s first choice for the Richard Dreyfuss role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) was McQueen. Would have been a different movie, to be sure. All that being said, one would think that Garner would have had more of a film career as opposed to the TV career he did have.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)

Director: Joe Johnston

Cast: Rick Moranis, Marcia Strassman, Amy O’Neill, Robert Oliveri

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I was of that age where I think you’d get fined if you didn’t have the movie on VHS. To this day, I don’t quite understand why Disney+ doesn’t include the Roger Rabbit short Tummy Trouble. Before I could even get into the meat of this review, I had to go track down that short. It just felt weird not including it. Still can’t find Roller Coaster Rabbit that was shown in front of Dick Tracy (1990). It’s just a crime how little Disney uses Roger…

…But I’ll admit that’s probably a topic for some other time.

Did I Like It: It’s weird to take in a movie that you had on regular rotation back in the day but for whatever reason you haven’t seen in years. I see the film originally, and I’m with Nick (Oliveri), always in a world that’s just a little too big, and consumed with the unscrutinized idea that whatever father I happened to have was the only template for how to exist. I watch it in adolescence—because I am of that temperament to not be above watching what is quintessentially a children’s movie—and can see the opportunity of being trapped in a gargantuan backyard for two days with the girl next door as the real icebreaker opportunity that it is.

Now I watch it, and I can’t help but feel a kinship with what—at least on the surface—appears to be just another in a long line of Nutty Professors. What I never seemed to notice before is that Wayne Szalinski (Moranis) is a someone who has probably spent most of his life not quite living up to his potential, at least in a way where he can do both that and pay the mortgage. He’s going all in on his magnum opus—never mind that it’s a shrink ray—and things aren’t working out.

His frustration is real. And that’s the real strength of the film that I either long-since forgot, or never quite understood: The situation is high camp (and aided by an array of special effects that largely work) and yet it’s populated with people that feel something akin to recognizable. Moranis plays the part well, even when the part is occasionally dependent on his face looking funny when there is a magnifying glass right in front of it.

Looper (2012)

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I have the strongest memory of seeing the trailer for the film in the early days of 2012 and laughing pretty hard at the whole “time travel is used for crime” and then laughing a whole lot louder at the image of Gordon-Levitt doing a Bruce Willis impression with a few pieces of prosthetic attached to him.

Then I saw the film and actually ended up liking it. Who knew?

Did I Like It: I also had almost no memories of the film in the years since. Who knew? At first, that seems like what would probably be a bad sign. I do remember thinking that my laughter about Gordon-Levitt’s casting was probably unfair. He’s doing an impression of Willis, sure, but it’s a more nuanced performanced than simply an impression and some putty glued to his face, and he fights the urge to tap into Willis’ early mannerisms in Moonlighting or Die Hard (1988).

Where does such a film go just from the pitch of a character having to assassinate himself? Those are the parts of the film that have seemed to drift away from my memory, but I should have guessed that the film would wind up where it did. How many great filmmakers of the modern age desperately wish studios would allow them to make westerns—and make no mistake, shake aside time travel and telekinesis, and this is just two black hats competing to be the more human—and have to hind them among other genres. Lucas put his outlaws and black hats in outer space, when Spielberg looked back on his influences, he couldn’t forget John Ford, and I would posit that nearly every John Carpenter film is a western, especially the horror films. One imagines that people thought Zemeckis was just cheating with Back to the Future - Part III (1990).

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

Director: Sidney Lanfield

Cast: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Richard Greene, Wendy Barrie

Have I Seen It Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: I keep thinking that certain types of stories, certain types of characters, are better suited to certain formats, with a few outlying exceptions. Batman works best in a comic book. Star Trek works best in hour-long television. Star Wars works best in rare, event movies.

Is it possible that Sherlock Holmes just works best in novels and short fiction?

Maybe.

Things are a little light here, and that’s to be expected from the studio system trying to jam a entire book into 80 minutes. Even a bad movie from 1939 has the charm of flickering in black and white and generally seeming as if it sprung whole-cloth from an untroubled* era.

Rathbone and Bruce seem tentative in their roles, but I wonder if I simply never thought much of the pair as Holmes and Watson, even if so many performers who followed are simply doing impressions of them.

The problem might be that one of the things filtered out of these Doyle adaptations is Holmes’ eccentricities. Subsequent pastiches and re-workings make Holmes to be brilliant, but erratic. Here, Holmes is merely a Smart Guy, and Watson—the only one with any actual training—is a bumbling fool.

Maybe they get better in the roles, but considering they had to grind out two Holmes pictures a year for the next seven years, I can’t imagine the assembly line mentality recommends the subsequent films any more than this first effort. The truth might be that those among you who might want to indulge in a does of classic Holmes should eschew Turner Classic Movies** in favor of the Doyle canon.

Or opt for some of the Nicholas Meyer books. There, now I’m back to my good old self.

*But, ultimately, entirely troubled.

**Gods of Cinema, what am I saying?!

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce

Have I Seen It Before: Nope. Brand new movie. I’ve watched over 100 films already this year, and yet the amount of new films I’ve seen is shockingly low.

Did I Like It: I’d be surprised if this one doesn’t make my top five for the year. It’s a brilliantly realized, wildly plausible (not an oxymoron), science fiction epic that people will spend the next few months adoring, the next several months after that reflexively complaining about it, and the next decades feeling the need to show it to anyone we find who hasn’t already seen it.

There’s a deep vein in science fiction that says—perhaps foolishly—that humanity has within it the ability to reach and fix its seemingly impossible problems. It’s fueled the Star Trek series through any number of ups and downs over 60 years. It makes Armageddon (1998) shamefully watchable. Here, there is no guilt. It’s a buddy film wrapped in the work of a scientific think tank. I’d be surprised if I didn’t try to catch it again before it leaves theaters.

The real surprise here, though, is the work of Lord and Miller. They’ve spent most of the the two decades earning a reputation of turning bad ideas for movies—21 Jump Street (2012), The Lego Movie (2014)—into unusually watchable fare. They’ve done that by largely mocking the idea that the movie should exist in the first place, and letting the audience in on the fun. I always sort of suspect that they were fired from Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) because they decided to make a comedy large mocking Han Solo, and that might have hurt Lawrence Kasdan’s feelings. And yet, here they have managed to restrain their instincts and let what works of Weir’s novel work on its own.

One-Armed Boxer* (1972)

Director: Jimmy Wang Yu

Cast: Jimmy Wang Yu, Tien Yeh, Tang Hsin, Lung Fei

Have I Seen It Before: Never. My Kung-fu/martial arts awareness has always been a bit of a blind spot in my cinematic awareness, but with the promise of a 35mm print, I’ll make the point to show up**. I didn’t even know what movie I was going into, but I was sure to be there.

Did I Like It: The movie is undeniably silly. Wang Yu*** spends at least half of the film—and indeed, made a whole improbable film career—with one arm obviously behind his back. How does he rise from the ground any time he is struck in his fights? Well, I don’t want to ruin it for you.

We had fun in the theater. I got the sense that some people take martial arts very seriously, and they weren’t having as much fun as the rest of us, and the film is pretty flimsy as far as a story goes, but God help me if I wasn’t looking for a DVD of both this and the apparently equally-crazy sequel Master of the Flying Guillotine.

It worked like a charm on me.

*The print I saw claimed its title was the The Chinese Professionals, which cursory research tells me was the title it had when it first came to America in 1973. It’s a bad title, considering the titular professionals from China are both the bad guys, and at least one of them is from Japan.

**I really thought we were in for a wild ride when the reel broke within the first five minutes. And I mean that in the best way possible. You ain’t lived until you’ve had a reel break in front of you despite George Lucas spending all of his efforts in the 2000s trying to make that a thing of the past.

***I kinda want to write a whole blog post about him. When he wasn’t making martial arts films about forty-five seconds before Bruce Lee made the genre a worldwide phenomenon, he apparently worked for the Yakuza. Where’s that movie?

A Child of the Prairie (1926)

Director: Tom Mix

Cast: Tom Mix, Rose Bronson, Ed Brady, John Maloney

Have I Seen It Before: I’m not even entirely sure I’ve seen it now. History isn’t even sure whether it was made in 2026, 2025, or 1915. I’ve never gone through this much trouble trying to find a one-sheet for a movie.

Did I Like It: At what point is a film too incomplete to be called anything else other than lost?

I’ve seen silent films that are in worse condition—oddly enough, they are mostly Tom Mix movies—where time and nitrate has gotten the worst of what is presented, and all we’re left is most of the light that would otherwise bleed through, and none of the shadow. A Child of the Prairie doesn’t quite have that same problem. The video copy of the original film is scratchy and has dark blotches where there might have once been action, but it is mostly intact.

And the word “mostly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that last sentence. Between occasionally shaky—to the point of being neurologically unsound—inter-titles and still other examples that were so still they had to be photos of a few extant frames, one never gets the sense that the film ever really came together, and more just had enough footage for somebody to release the film, but not quite enough for us to enjoy it fully. I don’t think I’m against releasing what’s available of a film, necessarily, but I can’t help but rank the thinner restoration jobs lower than the ones which benefitted from more luck and love than the average.

This might all be alleviated if I wasn’t a little underwhelmed by the action on display. Previously, I could marvel—even 100 years later—at Mix’s fearlessness, but he is limited here either by the footage available or a script that isn’t doing him any favors. In something approaching two hours with the film, I don’t think he even jumps on Tony the Wonder Horse more than a couple of times, and damned in he never chases somebody or gets chased by somebody in those limited efforts.

Maybe that’s why it didn’t get the full restoration treatment. Even in 1926, it was one of his lesser films.

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.