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The Spirit (June 2, 1940) “The Origin of the Spirit”
Will Eisner (editor, script, pencils, inks) Joe Kubert (colors) Zoltan Szenics (letters) The Spirit ends his first adventure leaving three burning questions unanswered. First, why is he remaining officially dead—we’ll loop back—second, why doesn’t he think everyone will recognize his blue suit, and, third, how does he have those little tombstone calling cards carved already.… 📖
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Announcing The Comix Section, a Stop Button zine
Today, a full month later than I’d hoped but a couple weeks before I feared, I’m dropping The Comix Section #1, an e-zine of comic book criticism. If you have a good color printer, lots of ink, legal-sized paper, and a powerful stapler, it can also be a paper zine. It was meant to be… 📖
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Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954, Wyott Ordung)
Monster from the Ocean Floor’s a low-budget creature feature; tourist Anne Kimbell becomes convinced there’s an irradiated sea monster off the coast of her Mexican vacation village. Her pseudo-beau, Stuart Wade, is convinced she’s wrong. He’s a marine biologist. His boss, played by Dick Pinner in an (eventually) absolutely delightful turn, thinks Wade ought to… 📖
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Night of the Blood Beast (1958, Bernard L. Kowalski)
Not to be overly pedantic, but the title should be Nights of the Blood Beast. While the “Blood Beast” part is a little complicated, the film does take place over a couple nights. Two Nights and Four Days of the Blood Beast. The Beast is a space monster. Maybe. It’s definitely a space creature, but… 📖
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Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959, Bernard L. Kowalski)
Attack of the Giant Leeches stops more than ends. Some plot elements seem to go unresolved, but since the film never actually explains those stakes, maybe they don’t. Director Kowalski likes long lingering shots implying giant leech attacks, except there’s little distinction between ominous shots with leeches and those without. Since the characters never pay… 📖
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The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, Norman Jewison)
The first twenty-five minutes of The Thomas Crown Affair is a bank heist. Starting with its planning. After opening titles suggesting the film is about stars Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway doing fashion advertising, we meet future wheelman Jack Weston. Weston gets hired by a mystery man to do a job. We jump forward in… 📖
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Judgment at Nuremberg (1961, Stanley Kramer)
Insofar as it has a protagonist,Judgment at Nuremberg is the story of recently electorally defeated Maine judge Spencer Tracy. Tracy is the chief justice on a military tribunal hearing cases in the Nuremberg trials, the Allied attempt to hold the Germans accountable for their actions during World War II. Tracy's coming in towards the end… 📖
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The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989, Steve Kloves)
The Fabulous Baker Boys opens with pseudo-protagonist Jeff Bridges saying goodbye to his latest cocktail waitress one-night stand (always his decision, never hers–Baker Boys is all about taking advantage of patriarchal privilege). Under the opening titles, he walks to work. Baker Boys takes place in Seattle and regularly features its skyline, but director Kloves is… 📖
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The Twilight Zone (1959) s02e15 – The Invaders
One of my major complaints about “The Twilight Zone” is the ending reveal somehow distracts from the rest of the episode. It’s a “gotcha” moment. And The Invaders does have a gotcha moment, and it does shuffle star Agnes Moorehead off-screen ingloriously, but at least it doesn’t do anything to undercut her performance. The episode… 📖
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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… 📖