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Tormented (1960, Bert I. Gordon)
Tormented is the story of how the world’s greatest jazz pianist (Richard Carlson) lost it all because he wasn’t a forty-eight-year-old virgin. I mean, also because he let his former lover, played by Juli Reding, fall to her death without trying to help her. Good thing they’re on an island where any peculiar death results… 📖
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The Dark Past (1948, Rudolph Maté)
The Dark Past opens with a lengthy, confidently showy, and capable POV sequence. Lee J. Cobb is arriving at work, just like anyone–and the movie does a lengthy “peoples is peoples” bit–except he’s a police psychiatrist. It’s his job to save kids from becoming hardened criminals, thereby not being on the taxpayer dime. It’s progressive… 📖
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Rebecca (1940, Alfred Hitchcock)
Rebecca opens with protagonist Joan Fontaine narrating, establishing the present action as a flashback—which is kind of important considering how much danger Fontaine will be in throughout. She’s got to make it since there’s the narration. Some of that danger is in Fontaine’s head. Or, at least, she sometimes apprehensive of the wrong person. Sort… 📖
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The Odd Couple (1968, Gene Saks)
Even when The Odd Couple plods, it never feels stagey, which is impressive since it’s from a stage play (Neil Simon adapted his own play), it mostly takes place in the same location, and many of those sequences are just stars Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon following each other around and bickering. The one thing… 📖
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One-Percent Warrior (2023, Yamaguchi Yudai)
The One-Percent in One-Percent Warrior’s title does not refer to the super-rich, but rather when someone transcends in their film-related martial arts excellence. The majority of the film is just a forty-minute action sequence with star Sakaguchi Tak roaming around an abandoned zinc factory—on its own little CGI island—and kicking various butt. A lot of… 📖
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The Moon (2023, Kim Yong-hwa)
The Moon runs about two hours, but it’s got enough story for eight. About the only way to tell all the story it’s got overflowing would be a miniseries remake. And even then, you could probably toss on another couple of episodes to even it all out. The film concerns South Korea’s second attempt at… 📖
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Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman (2023, Kim Seong-sik)
Until the third act, when it suddenly becomes clear the film never really had anywhere to go (at least not in this installment), Dr. Cheon is mostly delightful. Even the listless ending isn’t not entertaining, it’s just listless. After a magic-heavy dream sequence opening, Cheon settles into the gag–Gang Dong-won is a “doctor” who solves… 📖
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The Swiss Conspiracy (1975, Jack Arnold)
The Swiss Conspiracy opens with a lengthy title card and voice-over explaining—broadly—the Swiss banking system. Then, the movie’s opening titles, an absurdist, almost silly montage of Swiss postcards, set to composer Klaus Doldinger’s least funky music in the film. Doldinger’s score is always fun and cool (and often quite good), even when it doesn’t precisely… 📖
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The Childe (2023, Park Hoon-jung)
For the first half or so, The Childe ostensibly has three lead characters. The protagonist is Kang Tae-ju; he’s a half-Korean, half-Filipino illegitimate son of a Korean rich guy. Life has sucked, leading to Kang becoming an underground boxing champ (which has so shockingly little to do with the movie it’s like they forgot it… 📖
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Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961, Roger Corman)
If Creature from the Haunted Sea weren’t atrocious, it’d have to be fantastic. There’s no possible in between for the film, which is high concept, no budget. The film starts as a political spoof about Cuban generals fleeing the revolution with gold. They enlist the aid of gambling gangster Antony Carbone, who has a yacht.… 📖
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Devil’s Partner (1960, Charles R. Rondeau)
Devil’s Partner opens with an old man in his shack killing a goat to seal a deal with Old Scratch. The man’s arrangement is simple—his soul for two years. Wait, two years of what? Shh, watch the movie. We also never get to see any more of Old Scratch than his hand. It’s effective but… 📖
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The Magnificent Fraud (1939, Robert Florey)
The Magnificent Fraud tells the unlikely tale of an actor on the run who just happens to be in the right place at the right time for the role of a lifetime. Akim Tamiroff’s stage actor’s enjoying a residency of sorts in San Cristobal’s hottest nightclub, one maybe owned by the president’s troubleshooter, Lloyd Nolan.… 📖
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The Terror (1963, Roger Corman)
The Terror is not camp, which is bewildering, not just because it’d be better if it were camp, but because, based on its vitals, it seems like it can’t not be camp. The film stars Jack Nicholson as a Napoleonic officer—he does not attempt an accent, thank goodness—who gets involved with some supernatural goings-on involving… 📖
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Doom Patrol (2019) s04e12 – Done Patrol
As usual with “Doom Patrol,” I wasn’t expecting that turn of events. I knew “Patrol” had planned something conclusive for this season, but Done Patrol is a last episode, not a season finale before a refresh. They knew and didn’t play chicken with renewal, which is exemplary these days. The team—Diane Guerrero, Joivan Wade, Michelle… 📖
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The Plague of the Zombies (1966, John Gilling)
The Plague of the Zombies opens at its lowest point—the film involves Haitian-style voodoo (not really, the movie’s version of Haitian-style voodoo) being practiced in a Cornish village, and the high priest has a trio of Black men drumming. Throughout the film, we’ll learn about the voodoo setup (though not a lot, including what they… 📖
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Grantchester (2014) s08e04
“Grantchester” toes an interesting line with religion and religiosity. It avoids it. Yes, the show’s full of religious imagery, complete with beautifully lighted sequences where Tom Brittney gives a lovely sermon and it’s never about being shitty; it’s always about how God’s actually all for the gays and so forth. Because, besides Brittney and Al… 📖
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Doom Patrol (2019) s04e11 – Portal Patrol
As penultimate episodes go, Portal Patrol is a doozy. The team has found themselves stranded in the time stream, so it’s good Joivan Wade got his Cyborg upgrades because he has to make them a little pod to survive. The current stakes are saving the world and April Bowlby (who doesn’t appear this episode), so… 📖
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Grantchester (2014) s08e03
Al Weaver directed this episode, which I think is the first time one of the show’s stars has directed an episode. Weaver’s got a little to do on screen—he’s worried about Tom Brittney, who’s moping after hitting the guy with his motorcycle, but it’s all okay. I mean, okay in the sense Brittney’s not getting… 📖
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In the Line of Fire (1993, Wolfgang Petersen)
In the Line of Fire is about bad use of taxpayer funds. President Jim Curley is on the campaign trail, trying to shore up support in ten states in nine days or something, and his chief of staff, Fred Thompson, doesn’t want to listen to any nonsense from the Secret Service about a viable threat.… 📖
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The Book of Life (2014, Jorge R. Gutiérrez)
The Book of Life has a very nice style once the story starts. Everything looks like it’s a miniature, like Life is a CG Rankin/Bass “Animagic.” Not quite as good, but there’s a charm to it. To the style. Not to the movie. Life’s oddly and relentlessly charmless. It begins with the first bookend device:… 📖
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The Scarlet Letter (1934, Robert G. Vignola)
The Scarlet Letter’s opening title card explains while the Puritan customs might be atrocious to modern eyes, “they were a necessity of the times and helped shape the destiny of a nation.” Not on board with the former, but it’s definitely accurate for the latter. Especially since this version of Letter is about a white… 📖
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Doom Patrol (2019) s04e10 – Tomb Patrol
How do you follow up an episode where your season villain, an omnipotent time deity played by Charity Cervantes, changed the entire world into a musical? If you’re “Doom Patrol,” with an almost limitless well of human despair. The main cast—April Bowlby, Diane Guerrero, Matt Bomer, and Brendan Fraser—are all rapidly aging to their deaths.… 📖
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20 Feet from Stardom (2013, Morgan Neville)
According to the opening titles, 20 Feet from Stardom will focus on background singers and session vocalists Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, and Judith Hill. Love and Clayton started in the sixties, Fischer in the eighties, Hill in the aughts. If they’re the main cast, the supporting are Claudia Lennear and Tata Vega. The… 📖
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All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s04e03 – Right Hand Man
Right Hand Man reintroduces the idea of a triumvirate to the veterinary practice. Nicholas Ralph has put in for a student to be placed with them, Samuel West’s nasty attitude be damned. We meet James Anthony-Rose before Ralph and West, as Anthony-Rose discovers all the street signs have been taken down in the village (to… 📖
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Monkey Prince (2022) #3
Monkey Face—sorry, Monkey Prince—sort of transcends this issue. The comic’s set over forty-five minutes to an hour, but isn’t a waste of decompression. Instead, Marcus the Monkey Prince has a very full after-school calendar. He gets some more training from the custodian, Mr. Zhu, who’s actually a mystical being (Shifu Pigsy), but most of his… 📖
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Good Bye, Lenin! (2003, Wolfgang Becker)
Somewhere near the end of the second act, Good Bye Lenin! starts having some narration problems. At first they seem like a little bit too lazy writing or, given Lenin has five screenwriters, a too many hands situation. There’s just a disconnect between protagonist and narrator Daniel Brühl’s experience and what the film’s doing. Then,… 📖
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Doom Patrol (2019) s04e09 – Immortimas Patrol
Immortimas Patrol gives away some of the bit during the opening titles when the “Doom Patrol” theme gets an acapella cover version. Last episode ended with big bad Charity Cervantes getting pissed off. The town was celebrating the Doom Patrol for rescuing her, not her for being rescued, and she did something. This episode, we… 📖
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Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman)
It’s been long enough since I last saw Amadeus I forgot the narrative face-plant of the epilogue. The film objectifying the suffering of nineteenth-century psychiatric hospital “patients” is bad enough, but the way the film ignores it’s spent the second half of the nearly three-hour film away from narrator F. Murray Abraham… Well. It doesn’t… 📖
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Grantchester (2014) s08e02
Maybe the first three-quarters of this episode is the best “Grantchester”’s been in ages. And “Grantchester”’s a perfectly good show, they just really figure out a way to knock it out of the park here. Last episode laid out the new normal—vicar Tom Brittney married to Charlotte Ritchie, playing stepdad to Isaac Highams—and then saw… 📖
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The Marvels (2023, Nia DaCosta)
The Marvels is a sequel to Captain Marvel, starring Brie Larson, which came out four years before but takes place thirty years before. It’s also a sequel to the TV shows “WandaVision,” which introduced Teyonah Parris (though her character appeared as a little kid in Captain), and “Ms. Marvel,” which introduced Iman Vellani as a… 📖
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All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s04e02 – Carpe Diem
Okay, now “All Creatures” feels like it’s back. Carpe Diem is a regular, episodic entry, with Samuel West hiring a professional bookkeeper to get the practice ship-shape—did he hire Neve McIntosh because he was flirting with her at a dance and not able to ask her out so instead he offered her a job? Unclear.… 📖
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Rocky (1976, John G. Avildsen)
By the time Rocky gets to the big fight, you forget there’s actually going to be a big fight. While the film does open with a boxing match, until somewhere decidedly in the late second act, Rocky isn’t a sports movie. It’s a character study of a boxer, sure, but he’s not in a sports… 📖
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Doom Patrol (2019) s04e08 – Fame Patrol
And this, ladies, germs, zombie butts, is what is called an hour of television. Or, well, forty-two minutes of television. “Doom Patrol” once again knocks it out of the park, but then the ball ricochets and pings around the ballpark, going out of the park and then pinging back in and out until the cliffhanger.… 📖
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Theater Camp (2023, Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman)
Theater Camp is a mockumentary, but doesn’t really need to be one. The occasional title cards set some of the stage (no pun), but the documentarians don’t just not exist in the film—their subjects don’t even acknowledge they’re being filmed. And it’s about a bunch of theater kids and theater adults—and social media influencers—so you’d… 📖
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Grantchester (2014) s08e01
The mystery in “Grantchester”’s season premiere seems a tad simple. The episode’s got lots of foreshadowing—whether it’s the victim (warning: the episode kills a teenager, which is harsh), the suspects, or the season setup. I’d forgotten “Grantchester” saves the biggest twist for last, and the finale takes the proverbial cake away from the other established… 📖
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #37
I only have the vaguest memories of my previous Tomb of Dracula read through, but when Harold H. Harold appears this issue… I remembered he was going to be obnoxious beyond compare. In not disappointing my expectations, writer Marv Wolfman succeeds in disappointing my everlasting soul. The issue opens with Dracula in Boston, messing around… 📖
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Doom Patrol (2019) s04e07 – Orqwith Patrol
Aka Thank Goodness Patrol. Sorry, just need to acknowledge how everyone was pretty sure MAX was going to delete the rest of “Doom Patrol” off the hard drive without dropping them. Things pick back up where we left off–the team is in over their heads (again), and the end of the world is neigh (again),… 📖
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Buddy (1997, Caroline Thompson)
Buddy is in desperate need of some contextualizing. The film takes place—roughly—between 1928 and 1933. Given that timeline, it’s a little weird the Great Depression doesn’t start, but Buddy’s also really strange about when it decides to be grown-up and when it doesn’t. The film tells the story of eccentric socialite Gertrude Lintz, who raised… 📖
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Beast from Haunted Cave (1959, Monte Hellman)
Besides the unfortunate special effects execution (the conceptions are fine), the only thing wrong with Beast from Haunted Cave is the title. And, I suppose, some first-act budgetary shenanigans—the movie’s about Frank Wolff’s crew knocking off a gold reserve in a mining town and heading across the mountains on skis to escape, and they have… 📖
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All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s04e01 – Broodiness
“All Creatures” returns with an Easter special. Because the show’s changed so much since last time—Callum Woodhouse is off in World War II (it’s 1940)—the episode’s less the start of a new season than a special, which is fine, just a peculiar start. Since last episode (a Christmas special, so just a handful of months… 📖
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Battle Beyond the Stars (1980, Jimmy T. Murakami)
Battle Beyond the Stars answers that age-old question… what if you mixed the star-fighting of Star Wars, the visual grandeur of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and some of the production design of Alien, but also had all the sexy babes in the galaxy hot for John-boy Walton’s bod. Also, it’s a remake of Seven… 📖