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A bonafide So Bad It’s Good, just filled to the brim with dumb ideas and awful dialogue. Hats off to Jimmi Simpson for having a career after this, here he plays one of the most insufferable “quippy asshole” characters of all time. I found it jarring when his character dies and someone expresses genuine sadness about it. Like, his death is an unambiguous good. Drink anytime someone tells Frankie Muniz (as Swink!) to SHUT UP. My favorite part is that it turns out the girl we were supposed to root for is clearly the worst actor of the bunch. I would’ve bet money she’d be the first to die. It’s shocking that she gets to be the final girl, and I don’t mind saying it’s Samaire Armstrong because she’s MAGA and she ran for mayor of Sedona AZ one time and lost. She can fuck right off.

The first foray of the Boogedy franchise, Mr Boogedy, is overlong at 45 minutes, this baby clocks in at a daunting 100. It’s got a bigger cast, more backstory (Richard Mo’s got a brother who is also a competitor in the gag business), it even takes place in multiple locations! That’s way too much time and resources devoted to something this thin, but damned if I didn’t mildly enjoy spending time in this cruddy, stupid, silly world. A family of pranksters terrorized by the world’s lamest ghost, it’s some kind of premise. Plus there’s a scene where Mo is floating down a hallway while holding chattering teeth on his stomach and that’s an image you just don’t see all that often.

Sometimes you rewatch a favorite from your childhood and think “Yeesh I guess I was a dumb kid” and other times you get a Karate Kid or this little Disney masterpiece. The first American film to win at the Moscow Film Festival, this zippy little adventure is all about labor rights, the pulverization of the working man and other stuff that would’ve made old Walt spin in his grave. Incredible vistas, Salinger is great, Cusack looks like he’s 4, goddamn Ray Wise is the dad! Ray. Wise. Best part is of course Jed the Wolfdog from Bellingham WA, the John Cazale of dog actors. Guy was in only 4 movies but two of them are called White Fang and guess who plays the titular character? Other two are this and mf’n The Thing, possibly the greatest dog performance of all time! He’s second lead here and has to play the entire range of emotions. Jed had it, man.

I had a friend in 2nd grade who was obsessed with this movie, and Mr. Boogedy in general. When the other kids would be talking about Freddy and Jason, this kid would be like “But you know who’s really scary is that Mr. Boogedy, that guy is a problem, am I right guys?” And then he’d get beaten up or whatever. This movie reminded me the most of the Sega CD game Night Trap starring Dana Plato. Just the trappings of horror with very little by way of set up or explanation. Not a complaint, really, because the movie’s got jokes! There’s a deliberate self aware stupidity going on here that’s surprisingly ahead of its time. Not to say it’s particularly good—it looks like shit and is lazy as hell, overlong at 45 minutes, but goddamnit it made me laugh. We should’ve listened to that boy, instead of walling him up in the abandoned coke oven.

It’s 60’s live action Disney and all the pitfalls that go with that, but it’s also interesting as hell. First of all, it’s based on a beloved German children’s book written by a guy who was openly anti-Nazi while living in . He was a vocal opponent of Hitler and he never even left the country! And he survived? Like the Nazis interrogated him a bunch but never killed him, possibly because he was so beloved for writing this book. I just didn’t know surviving being a Nazi opponent in during WW2 was a thing. Anyway the movie was shot in post War Berlin, so we got lots of ruins and rubble and kids solving crimes and stuff that Wes Anderson would (and purportedly does) love. For me it’s all about the tunnels, and we got plenty of that too. A bit sluggish at times and it’s weird that all these German kids have American accents but if you’re already blowing your money on a Disney + subscription I recommend checking it out.

Plenty of delights here, chief among them the great Charles Laughton doing some wonderful shifty-eyed evil guy theatrics every time the camera zooms in. He was in his early 30’s playing an old mad scientist, and I gotta say: he actually does not look older than he is. That baby-faced guy has already lived long enough to gain respect in the field of science and then squander it due to his lunatic hubris? I question that. Bela Lugosi kills it as one of the more talkative beasts, really gives some pathos to the cause of the tormented freaks. Also clocks in at 70 minutes so you know I love that. But like all (most) horror movies from this time, ultimately there’s lots of dinner scenes and chamber scenes and I get a bit droopy eyed. But even I must it—a lot of people get punched in the face.

Solid, brisk noir. Nothing to write home about as a story but it’s got the great Edward G Robinson in pathetic mode, which he excelled at, and some fun TV production bts business. Most importantly it’s the rare noir shot in 3D and I saw it that way at the motherfucking Cinerama at a nearly sold out show where free popcorn was provided by, uh, Kaiser Permanente? Jesus Christ, there was a literal line around the block for an obscure 1953 B&W crime movie. Humanity isn’t completely fucked quite yet.

Stodgy and dated, yet another in the long line of films where they weirdly paired adorable Audrey with a damn senior citizen. The people demanded to see this tiny elf woman smooching with old leather bags, nothing else would do. It’s nonsense, hooey if you will, but Donen delivers the set pieces. Lots of colorful and imaginative dance sequences, plus our girl gets to really dance it up. The “beat” number in the Parisian basement is worth the price of ission, plus Astaire could still hoof it impressively for a 99 year old.

Gorgeous and hilarious, Marilyn and Russell both extremely funny in completely different ways. A quintessential “Colors were better back then” film, with vivid reds and pinks exploding your eyeballs. Never lets go of its loose, silly tone for even a second. Anyone else think MM’s crazy diction school delivery sounds a little like Fozzie Bear? Probably just me. No real complaints here, this is a tremendous amount of fun, the kind of giddy, featherweight entertainment that’s extremely hard to pull off. ALSO, and this is not a demerit—nobody says shit about blondes and gentlemen preferring them vis a vis brunettes or whatever. Men seem to prefer brunette Russell equally if not more than MM. So other than that LIE, I loved it.

The Tales From the Crypt-style morality fable isn’t my favorite type of horror, the idea of cosmic justice doesn’t scare me all that much. It’s easy to call it Cronenbergian but stylistically it was more like Gaspar Noe meets Terry Gilliam, which is not a pairing I would request. There’s a lot of stuff this movie does (mostly deliberately) that seems tailor made to irritate me (nearly TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG) but it’s definitely the movie it’s trying to be and that’s a hell of an accomplishment. This nasty screed of gooey madness packed theaters and got Oscar nominations, that’s so fucking cool. We got practical makeup effects, gallon after gallon of blood, Demi giving her all. The messaging is obvious, the satire feels 30 years old but you have to it that last 15 minutes is crazy. This isn’t for me but I’m really glad that it happened.

My girlfriend leaned over after credits rolled and said “That was a real movie movie.” High praise indeed these days, Coogler saturates this film with energy and personality. Every scene has a purpose, every character is a character. It’s personal, it’s true to the genre, it’s a fucking musical, it’s 137 minutes and it blows by. Delroy should at least get a nomination. MBJ creates two distinct characters without hamming it up. The post credits stinger was profound in ways I wasn’t prepared for. The music is excellent. The Riverdance From Hell was probably my favorite scene, that shit was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before (well, maybe the Thriller video). Can’t wait to watch again, can’t wait to buy the 4K. Movies!

Seems like an all timer hidden gem. Check out the specs on this baby: murder mystery thriller starring LUCILLE BALL directed by DOUGLAS SIRK featuring BORIS KARLOFF, all shot in gorgeous black and white. And damn it really is everything you would hope for. For about 75% of the run time. Sadly and inexplicably, this (still worth watching) film really drops the ball in the final quarter, apparently anticipating that the audience would be lost? I have no idea why but for 20 minutes at the end of the damn movie the story is taken away from Lucy and settled between two dudes in an office, and it goes on and on, it’s like the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, just endless dry information. Extremely weird. When Lucy comes back at the very end the momentum is toast. I really think someone could just cut out that chunk, film would be 86 minutes, everyone wins.

The glory of movies made before screenwriting books and classes became common in Hollywood—this script adheres to no rules. Sure, that makes it crazily uneven, but damned if I ever had the slightest clue what was going to happen next in this famous hit film. I knew/thought this was a comedy about ladies getting revenge on a shitty boss and I knew the song. What I absolutely did not expect was: 
—Extended corpse theft sequence
—Cartoons 
—Dabney harnessed exactly like Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon
—Final image before we cut to credits Dabney screaming while hoisted midair by garage door opener 
—SOCIALISM

It’s 1979. It’s atom bomb of charisma Raul Julia. It’s actor of some renown Meryl Streep. They are doing Taming of the Shrew in Central Park, with occasional documentary bits where they comment on the material while still sort of in character. It’s an hour long. It’s on YouTube. If you like things that are good you should watch it right away. 

Go now!

Weird and wonderful, this movie’s doing like nine kinds of things at once. You got classic no rules zany animation, sledgehammer emotional devastation, three or four levels of surrealism, inventive jokes, racism, this film has it all. I’m always struck by how cold this world is, only Dumbo, his mom and the mouse are sympathetic (ultimately the crows come around but they’re a-holes at first). The kids, the clowns, the other elephants, all hideous and cruel. During the incredible tent erecting scene the working men are singing about how they’re illiterate and are gonna piss all their money away. Dumbo’s got surprisingly sharp edges and a genuine perspective, the kind of stuff that Disney would sand down more and more in the decades after. Plus it’s got a baby elephant discovering his superpower by getting shitfaced drunk. One of my favorite revenge films of all time.

Best thing Disney ever made. Aside from being absolutely gorgeous, there’s elemental power in simplicity here. It’s just life: beautiful, fragile and cyclical. It’s only 70 minutes long but filled with long, patient shots of nature just breathing, it’s a damn tone poem. Everyone re the Mom getting shot, but the whole movie is emotionally raw. Humanity is malignant, a demonic invading force, no half measures. There’s no snark, no pop culture, the story beats are organic instead of forced, big American studios don’t make animated movies like this anymore. Hell, they didn’t make them like this even back then. Only Bambi. 

I’m enamored of the idea that there’s no way anyone making this thought they had a hit on their hands. So many wildly talented people working so hard, so much money spent (there’s a damn Mariah song!), so much full throttle, exhausting acting, knowing that most viewers are going to find this off-putting. The market for 3 hour surreal nightmare comedies just ain’t all that big. I doubt I’d watch it again but I mostly enjoyed the bleak adventure of it all, thought Phoenix was great, hope he took a long vacation after shooting this. My favorite ing performance was Nathan Lane, especially when he calls Beau “my brotha.” You think Ari showed this to his mother? I know it’s probably a mistake to over analyze how personal movies are to their creators, but I sure hope that guy’s doing okay.

Damn, they really nailed it. Very solid movie, well shot and directed, I loved all the performances. Norton is so lovable as Seeger, Barbaro is incredible, Tim’s Dylan is basically perfect. I even enjoyed the screenwriterly touches, Bobby’s relationship with Suze Rotolo signifying his growing alienation, all that crap. But mostly this is a feast of aesthetics for me, one scene after another spiking my pleasure centers. Early 60’s record stores, smoky Village folk venues, dirtbag bohemian apartments, Joan Baez in her underwear, cigarette after cigarette. And the music’s pretty good, too. I was a plate.

Simple and direct, modest in scope. Eisenberg and Culkin are doing a fantastic job doing the respective things that they do. Some funny moments, some moving moments. Most importantly, this movie is filled with HOTELS! Inside hotels, outside hotels, on top of hotels. Damn I love hotels.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Allied. Looks good, looks like a movie, loved the fuzzy pools of orange light. Great cast. Like all the movies that come out these days that everyone tries to get excited about it’s ultimately fine. The music and editing suggest that there’s something delightful going on here, something that might provide some of that shiny Oceans magic, but ultimately this is just a smaller version of stuff I’ve seen before. I guess it’s a riff. Maybe I’m tired of riffs.

Sturdy, well-directed noir melodrama about shitty people doing shitty things. One big check against it is lack of fun characters. Everyone’s good but the only person who’s fun is Esther Howard as a beer swilling old broad who’s tougher than she looks. The thing that I’ll most is how everyone shamelessly lusts after young psychopath Lawrence Tierney. Before motherfucker looked just like The Thing he was a decent looking, non-gravelly voiced fellow, but every woman in this film is ready to give up her life for one night with this guy despite the fact that every thing he says is off-putting. He’s like an 8 at best, have some dignity!

Absolutely incredible proto-slasher, top to bottom. Great cast of potential psychos, most of the action takes place in a big gorgeous house filled with bitchy gentry and drunk servants, the heroine is mute (classic). Phenomenal B&W cinematography from Nicholas Musuraca, great creepy premise: the killer is picking off folks with disabilities. Bad! I think he shouldn’t do that. Everything is stylish and wonderful but the clear mvp is Ethyl Barrymore, who dated Churchill in 1900. Here she’s bed-ridden and near death, barely moves and whispers all her dialogue, still owns the movie. Ends in the most satisfying way possible, a real gem.

I’m about halfway through watching this for the 3rd time and at a certain point I noticed my face was starting to hurt. It was because I’d been smiling for like 40 minutes straight, which is unusual for me. This is 100% true. This movie hurt my face.

That cozy feeling of a movie that 1000% conforms to the (somewhat untrue) stale & square reputation of old B&W films. This is a crime noir and everyone is so nice. Prison seems nice! The crooks are all kindly old men, warm-hearted lugs and MOMS. The chief of police greets Mary Ryan by saying “How do you do? Oh that’s wonderful!” I was starting to regret my decision to not live a life of crime, up until the shootout at the end. Very strange and silly film, apparently they wanted it to be a series but it didn’t pan out. I would’ve watched every single one of them.

Lots of similarities between this and the indie game Stray: one word title, fancifully post apocalyptic, zero dialogue, you know, there’s a cat. Fortunately this film doesn’t have the same problem that game did, where the cat was inexplicably not cute. Like, how did they manage to pull that off? That cat was a dud. Flow the Cat, on the other hand, is very cute and a wonderful character. This film is aptly named, it just sort of washes over you, dreamlike, magical realism I suppose. Buncha animals on a boat in a strange ruined world, what a delight. Makes that Life of Pi look like a pile of puke.

A real triumph of diminished expectations, it ain’t great but it is a functional Alien product for the most part. Mixed bag from start to finish: unmemorable cast (David Jonsson excepted) but pretty good creature effects, solid structure but still drags. Biggest demerit is of course the Ian Holm crap, which is really just a signifier for the movie’s obnoxious habit of making franchise references. You guys know I can just watch one of those other, classic Alien movies any time I like, right? But they’re not just referencing the good first two, we even get winky reminders of Resurrection and Prometheus. Odd! Biggest plus is the wonderful throwback score from Benjamin Wallfisch tied with anything having to do with that cool ass deadly planetary ice ring.

Extremely low budget verite-type dramedy has a hell of a lot going for it. Fantastic lead performance from Melanie Mayron as a young photographer going through it in NY. Incredibly winning ing cast featuring Eli Wallach, Lord Christopher Guest, Bobby Balaban, hell even Ken McMillan shows up to play a creepy cabbie for 90 seconds. Best thing about it is just the visual splendor of ordinary lives shot on 16 in NYC, 1978. My god everything and everyone looks so wonderfully awful. So many cigarettes, so many skin blemishes, so many hideous paintings. Makes my heart sing!

Needless to say I loved the cinematography, loved GG, found it unnervingly relatable. I’m probably most impressed by the pacing and the joke density. Yes, art house darling, B&W slice o’ life s Ha is a heroic 86 minutes long and just hauls. And nary a minute goes by without a world class joke, this film is hilarious. I’m not gonna say it’s got the joke density of Golden Era Simpsons, but it’s pretty close to, say, season 12. Snappedy snap, laughs, pathos, heart, movies are pretty good.

If you go to the quotes section on IMDb it’s like 85% lines from Waldo Lydecker, Clifton Webb’s astonishingly quippy prick. My personal favorite was “Haven't you heard of science's newest triumph, the doorbell?“ That one had me in stitches. Also there’s “I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbor's children devoured by wolves.” And so on, everything he says is incredible. Good movie, interesting twist, looks great, but Webb’s easily the best thing going in it.

Slow moving thriller-adjacent kind of thing. The funny part of the concept is that Dick Widmark thinks he’s hit the jackpot, flirting in a hotel room with a lady who is played by literally Marilyn Monroe—and it turns out she’s CRAYYYZEE! That’s pretty fun, but ultimately the thing is heartbreaking, MM is emotionally wrecked by the death of her pilot husband in WWII. I always love movies that address the way ordinary people were destroyed by the War and MM’s, uh, particular style of acting throws you off of just how tragic the character is until the deeply sad final moments. Surprisingly powerful.

This is one of the big names in film noir for a reason, don’t know why it took me so long to get around to it. Real slow burn stuff, brutal without being too showy about it. Lang is very precise, knows how to ramp up the action, it builds to a fever pitch and we were literally cheering at how awesome it gets by the end. Two biggest highlights: Lee Marvin in the 3rd year of his career, just fucking phenomenal. I feel like he’s more known for being a big tough guy man’s man but he’s delivering the most modern performance in the film—naturalistic, new school. He's 30 here, huge and fully formed. And yet Gloria Grahame somehow steals the show, funny, tragic, charming, delivering a surprisingly plausible character arc in a small amount of screen time. Glenn Ford is also in it.

Myrna Loy, playing a “half-Hindu half-Japanese or something” is picking off her former classmates for outing her as nonwhite in school years back. Her method of execution is a combination of forged horoscopes and hypnosis. She crosses off her victims in the yearbook as she goes along, but they don’t have to be dead to get crossed off, going insane counts too. Second half she’s mostly trying to kill Irene Dunne’s boy with a dynamite laced bouncy ball. I’m not making any of this up. The movie is 59 minutes long. God I love old movies.

The first MP thing I ever watched as a teen was Jabberwocky and I absolutely despised it, made it about 15 minutes in. Next up was Meaning of Life which probably gave me my lifelong fear of v*mit. So yeah, this was my first watch of this absolutely fundamental ur-text of comedy. So much to ire, the movie begins by relentlessly pranking the viewer, story proper only starts up in earnest after about 10 minutes of rug pulling. This shit must’ve blown peoples fucking minds in ‘75, so many kinds of jokes and ideas, almost punk rock “no idea too stupid” ethos, total comedic chaos. I am so grateful that this thing exists because everything and everyone I love in comedy was positively influenced by it. 

That said, absolutely horrendous to look at, terrible sound quality, Gilliam sucks, it gave me a headache, I basically hated it. The rabbit scene made me laugh.

Insane, gross and fascinating. This is one of those movies particular to the 70’s and 80’s where you wonder if it’s actually legal to be watching it. Because the filmmakers were like “it’s time to fully sexualize Drew Barrymore” and she’s 14. Firestarter was just FOUR YEARS earlier, what the fuck are we doing. But the whole movie feels untethered. This is one of those “we can’t escape from this fucked up small town in the southwest” deals and the moment Drew and dad (Max Headroom) arrive they see a dead guy’s brains spilled out in a convenience store and the cop is like “oh yeah that guy just got murdered, anyways enjoy Shitsville folks.” Everyone’s acting like an alien, the horniness is way out of bounds, it seems like the apocalypse happened located entirely within the confines of this backwater. Movie sucks and it’s fucked up but man, it’s a pretty unique oddity if you’re adventurous for forgotten trash.

Just 9 short years ago, we had no idea how much of a gift this was. An immaculately made, R rated WW2 Hitchcock riff for adults, but we just let it slide by. No worries, plenty more where that came from! I was so unaware of this thing’s whole deal I was surprised by everything, other than Brad Pitt and WW2. It’s got fucking, some fantastically abrupt violence, a party scene where everyone is partying like the world is currently ending, which it is, interrupted by The Blitz, it rules. Demerits include: Brad Pitt—not bad but not really in his wheelhouse. It’s somewhat insane we’re supposed to accept that he’s undercover as a Frenchman (“Gorlami” comes to mind). Also the denouement was notably bland. Highlights: Marion Cotillard absolutely in her wheelhouse playing an infinitely appealing and inscrutable woman. AND Bob friggin’ Zemeckis, getting in some career highlights. A lot like Flight in that it’s far from perfect as a whole but filled with enough individual perfect scenes that it’ll stick with me for a long time.

Very earnest R-rated teen sports drama from the 80’s. No real complaints here, Kool Modine is great as a sex and wrestling obsessed teen who spends most of the movie trying to cut weight and sniff panties. Linda Fiorentino arrives fully formed as a very Linda Fiorentino-ish slightly older love interest. Whole thing is very well made, the climactic wrestling showdown is surprisingly exciting. They were clearly trying to draft off of that Karate Kid magic so hats off to the filmmakers for making something with its own voice, much more than a cash-in clone job. Best thing about it is it’s shot/takes place in Spokane, the often forgotten second biggest city in Washington. It looks great here, too—sky bridges, empty streets and medium-sized buildings. Wish they’d found a way to feature the trash eating metal goat, but we can’t have everything.

I’m gonna call it: most wonderful movie of all time. I can’t think of a movie more wonderful than this. There may be better movies or movies I love more, but none more wonderful.

I got to watch this movie shortly after learning of its existence, always a treat. What we have here is a pretty unique blend of melodrama, fantasy and noir as Joan Leslie gets to relive a year of her life (starting just after the ball drops!) after things in her original timeline go sideways. Lots to like here, plenty of bitchy dialogue, sophisticated cinematography and weird digressions. Most fun thing about it is it’s hard to pin down what kind of movie it is so you never know where it’s going. I was honestly pretty surprised by the way it all plays out, ultimately dishing out that classic time travel trope of “you can’t change destiny,” but in a very strange and silly way. Points to Louis Hayward for having to courage to play one of the biggest losers in the history of film.

I love movies like this, even though they’re bad. They just stuff all of the kinds of entertainment that the old timey masses craved into one loosely wrapped package that could theoretically be described as a movie. Martin & Lewis movies are the exact same recipe: you got some tunes, you got some gags, you got some broads. Everyone’s happy, we ain’t trying to win any Nobel prizes here, college boy. Heads up if you’re interested— it’s exactly as racist as you would assume.

Moves along at a brisk pace and for that I’m grateful. Movie is 85 minutes but the script must be 120 pages long, it’s talky af, but all of the characters are likable enough. Best part is the backdrop is one of those bar hop events where everyone dresses like Santa, only it’s Hallmark so nobody can drink alcohol. So at each stop they’re just chugging a big mug of eggnog, which has got to be much more self destructive than abusing alcohol.

Best hallmark Xmas movie I’ve yet seen, damn near approximates the pleasures of a middlebrow tv show! A zippy, cheap Indiana Jones riff, they appear to have actually flown the stars out to actual Iceland to shoot this thing. If you’re familiar with this genre that’s astonishing. The art department got to make some cool-ish props, there are moments of actual (light) peril, there’s a segment that meets the technical definition of an action scene, wild stuff. Plus the two leads have undeniable chemistry. If you’re gonna watch movies like this, and I won’t say that you shouldn’t, it might be a bad idea to start with this one, it will set your expectations way too high for the rest of them.

A real standard issue Hallmark xmas programmer, got the middle aged romance, the slapdash production values, feels semi-improvised, etc. Most enjoyable part is the cognitive dissonance of the purportedly televised race competition. I mean they can’t even come close to simulating this sort of thing on this budget. It’s a national show and they’re doing like middle school crafts and playing cornhole and such, the kind of events that would be cobbled together for a family work event, and this is apparently a smash hit. They got one guy with a camcorder following them around. Anyways everyone learns something and there are some Christmas trees.

Much more competently made than the first one with somehow fewer returns? Hard to explain how or why these Hallmark movies work, but the first one is so slight you can’t help but be a bit charmed. This one has clearly articulated jokes and obstacles, looks better, has like 3X the production values, but now it just seems more like a real movie, which only makes you want to compare it to real movies, and these things really aren’t real movies. Also, they really stiffed us on the hunk set pieces! Only like 2 official hunk set pieces here? Make those hunks dance, damn you!

The equivalent of a hard R for this kind of movie, Hot Frosty is ripped and vascular af and the ladies of Christmastown are constantly ogling his abs. There’s even a scene where he’s helping Lauren Holly get her car out of the snow (she crashed because ogling) that is a full-on visual sex joke! That’s how Netflix rolls apparently, somewhat edgy for this kind of movie. Still not sure if the audience is ready for Clark Gable’s reckless use of the word “damn” but baby steps. 

Hot Frosty also fixes Lacey Chambert’s stairs.

Ultimately pretty slight and a bit too long, but it has two things going for it in particular: 
1: Bogey, in a rare purely comedic role 2 years before he died. Possibly my all time favorite guy. 
2: Sir Peter Ustinov! Guy is absolutely killing as a horny, hammy scoundrel with fascinating energy. He’s gross but lovable, a living cartoon character. I think I got Ustinov pilled this year, I gotta watch more of his stuff.

Sometimes I forget how dark these old movies can be. There’s a scene where The Wizard of Oz has discovered some disturbing information and he goes into his office and shuts the door. Me being hilarious, I say “Bang!” to my girlfriend. You know, suggesting that the Wizard of Oz was going to blow his own brains out because such a notion would be absurd for a romantic comedy from 1940. Well guess what, that’s exactly what the wonderful Wizard of Oz tries to do like 3 seconds later. So. 

Otherwise this is a real Jimmy Stewart career highlight—he’s always doing something amusing, you can’t take your eyes off him. And never has a man been more reed-like. Like if you’ve ever seen a photo of an owl without plumage.

A miracle of craft and performance and all of the usual stuff, but also one of the greatest cinematic miracles of timing. Released a year after prohibition ended and immediately before the Hayes Code was adopted, a film with this kind of blissfully reckless depiction of alcoholism could’ve only existed in the tiniest of windows. They scaled back on the batshit imbibing almost immediately. Hell, I think they get fully sober pretty early on in the series, too, maybe by the 3rd. Nick and Nora without the booze is like Superman without powers, who could possibly give a shit. But the miracle happened and here they are, a delightful couple of maintenance alcoholics who don’t share the same bed but do wake up in the middle of the night to top off. And they’re the best. Aspirational.

Brutal, hard-boiled hang out movie. You got a soulless (or is he??) handsome hit man and his handlers milling around LA trying to figure out how to do a job. The main guy is one of those sociopaths with a code we all love so much, you see him in Travis Bickle (MS loves this), Anton Chigurh, lots of QT’s guys. Lots of Elmore Leonard type sloppy crime business too. Best part for me is getting to hang out in 1958 Los Angeles, where the freeways are two lanes and flowing and the beaches are damn near empty. You can snap up a house in the ‘Bu for a cool 10 grand. Enjoy it while you can, 50’s guys.

When I was a kid watching this I didn’t even put together that the parents at the beginning were supposed to look old. I just thought they looked all fucked up for some reason. “Oh so future George McFly is made of plastic, got it.”

What the fuck is better than this