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.

Armageddon (1998)

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck

Have I Seen It Before: I mean, yeah. I was both alive and awake in any kind of way in 1998, so I think I was kind of obligated*.

Did I Like It: Is there a movie more willfully stupid? Yes, I think The Legend of Zorro (2005) is about 20% dumber than this film. If I hadn’t just recently watched that film, I may have some other candidate. Perhaps the better question is: Is there a more willfully stupid movie that also largely got away with it**?

I submit that there is not.

You might roll your eyes and insist that this is a movie that requires one to turn off their brain. Sure, but with the sheer tonnage of sound in space, the logic of sending oil drillers into space, and the film’s reflexive need to put foreign countries through the most pain so the USA can remain largely unscathed, there’s a maximum yield, right? It’s an onslaught.

All of that could be forgiven, though, if it weren’t for one singular unbelievable moment. Explaining the mission that will save all of humanity, the President (Stanley Anderson, reprising his role from The Rock (1996), meaning this is technically also a sequel to the the original set of James Bond films) says:

And yet, for the first time in the history of the planet, a species has the technology to prevent its own extinction… Through all of the chaos that is our history; through all of the wrongs and the discord; through all of the pain and suffering; through all of our times, there is one thing that has nourished our souls, and elevated our species above its origins, and that is our courage.

Am I some kind of chump for finding the idea that we might be able to fix our problems somehow alluring? Maybe so.

*Speaking of obligating, I actually got pushed into asking a girl to go with me in one of the more lightly humiliating moments of my life. She said no. I mean, I guess it wasn’t that humiliating, objectively, but it was tied to going with the movies, so it felt like an attack on the home turf.

**A weird aberration that—no joke—kept me up a few nights ago: 1998 feels like an alien planet to the here and now. This is the highest grossing film of 1998. Of the top ten highest-grossing films of that year, only one was a sequel (Lethal Weapon 4) and only one was followed by sequels (Dr. Dolittle). Mulan had a re-make, but that hardly counts. Also, before you start screaming “so far” at me, I have a hard time imagining someone green-lighting a Gibson directed Lethal Finale/Lethal Weapon 5 after the dust settles on The Resurrection of the Christ. I think the record will stand.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Director: Stephen Sommers

Cast: Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marlon Wayans, Christopher Eccleston

Have I Seen it Before: No. Why would I have? I’m of that particular point in the greyscale of generations that I have next to no awareness of the G.I. Joe as anything to care about. I was a kid in the market for action figures long after the older barbie-sized toys, and I am just a hair too young to have had any kind of ambition for the USS Flagg aircraft carrier toy that apparently took up an entire room.

Better question: Why did I do so now? I really need to stop letting myself get talked into getting a movie on Apple TV, simply because they’re only charging 5 bucks for it. Now I’m enough on the hook that I’m going to feel compelled to watch Retalliation (2013) or Snake Eyes (2021).

Maybe I’ll work on that later.

Did I Like It: I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the film, but I would say I am glad that I did. It’s an interesting experiment at play here. There is nothing here—in the writing, performances, or even the editing—that is particularly different from any of the baseline Marvel movies. Why can I occasionally be duped into caring about those movies—maybe moreso in the past than lately, but still—but all of this descends into so much white noise? Is it just that I have some affinity for the source material in the other scenario, and absolutely none here? Probably.

I clearly didn’t care for the movie, but I didn’t hate it so much that I want to bring down the entire house around it. There’s always a little bit of a warm feeling when a filmmaker has a retinue of actors who jump at the chance to work with him again. Sommers’ quality might vary wildly, but Vosloo is here—essentially playing the same role he plays in every other film in which he appears. But Kevin J. O’Connor, and even Brendan Fraser show up for a days work. It’s nice that Sommers isn’t an asshole.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Director: Joel Coen

Cast: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Holly Hunter

Have I Seen It Before: Sure, but I’ll admit I’ve probably listened to the soundtrack album more than I’ve seen the film.

Did I Like It: It’s hard to find anything critical to say about a Coen Brothers film. Even their less successful entries, it feels like the problem lies with us.

It’s also difficult—or probably should be—to review a movie just based on the moment in which I’m watching it, but plenty of reviews review the experience, and I should get to every once in a while, too.

After a week of the flu, I stayed away from the movie theater, which is a little bit like one of you avoiding sleep for the better part of a week. I’m in that awkward phase of the sickness where I’m not contagious, but there’s still a deep well of phlegm that my lungs occasionally feel the need to try and expel. I’m still not going to a lot of things I wasn’t already obligated to, but these tickets—with a Q&A beforehand from Nelson and cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins—had long been on the agenda.

There’s something about an exquisitely crafted film—funny, energetic, and deeply felt—that I can enjoy in a theater after a little bit of time away from those wonderful darkened rooms.

The magic is amplified. The Nicole Kidman in all of us is let loose*. And for about as long as my lungs had any capacity to allow, I was able to ignore the need to cough for the better part of two hours. I existed out of the already odious year 2026. I was outside of the theater. I was with the Soggy Bottom Boys.

*Even if I would prefer it if she was shilling for any other group of movie theaters.

I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not (2026)

Director: Marina Zenovich

Cast: Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Beverly D’Angelo, Goldie Hawn

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Might have made a point of seeing it when everybody else did, but I cut the cord like an idiot and had to wait for a month for it to show up on Max.

Did I Like It: It’s easy to make a hatchet job out of anything related to Chase. He’s eagerly pissed people off for years, and there’s probably somebody out there who hasn’t yet learned that he is often difficult.

I’m not prepared to say the film goes deeper than that, as Chase does occasionally come off as sympathetically broken, but he also never seems unaware that he is being watched. He deals out his prickliness in carefully measured doses. It feels believable, but manageably believable.

Here’s the real problem I have with the whole affair. In the section of the film on Community and his eventual firing, it is depicted as if Dan Harmon—creator of the show—wrote a bit of about Chase’s character doing a Black-face Señor Wences ventriloquism act, that was only made worse by the character’s asian (read: yellow-face) wife, played by Chase’s left hand, and that was the incident which led to him saying things which necessitated likely half-hearted apologies and leaks to the Hollywood Reporter. It also indicates that after the fight between Harmon and Chase occurred, Chase still insisted that Harmon continue to run the show.

Not true.

Harmon was fired after the fight—to my knowledge, it’s never been confirmed that his firing was due to the Chase problem, but it might have been—Chase continued with the show into season 4, and the incident occurred during the production of that season, without the involvement of Harmon. If the filmmakers and interviewees got that wrong—or, worse yet, fudged the timeline through intention or expediency—then I can’t help but wonder what else they got wrong.

This is all to say that I would really like a Community movie as soon as possible. Please and thank you.

Friday the 13th (2009)

Director: Marcus Nispel

Cast: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Aaron Yoo, Derek Mears

Have I Seen It Before: Oddly enough, yes. There’s a moment when—before I met Lora, and I mean like weeks or days before I met Lora—where I could get talked into going anywhere, and seeing practically anything.

I’m not sure what I was doing there, but I sat through the film, and I haven’t remembered a bit of it since.

Did I Like It: I tend to play a little bit of a game whenever I subject myself to one of these films: Just how quickly will a Jason Voorhees rampage lose me? They all do, eventually. I’ve now re-watched all eleven films in the series, just to be sure. But this one loses me by putting Nana Visitor—she of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame—in it, for just a few minutes, and dubbing over her with a Betsy Palmer-soundalike, and then dispensing with her as fast as is humanly possible.

Boo. I say, boo. Not, Boo! It’s not scary. I view this movie with scorn, and I did so real fast. There was a point where I was floating above the movie and forgot that Jason (Mears, wither thou Kane Hodder?) was even in the thing. It is forgotten, and justly so. I’m pretty sure whatever shape Crystal Lake takes, but it will make me mad.

But I come here not only to bury Caesar (or Jason), but to praise a little bit. This series is rotten to the core, and always has been. What’s more, the makers of this film appear to agree with me. To paraphrase Jean-Luc Goddard—mainly by way of Roger Ebert—the best type of film criticism is to make another film. The first three films in this series were so insubstantial and forgettable, this film does it’s very best to zip through the entirety of those films in the first twenty minutes.

Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)

Director: Jean-Francois Richet

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, John Leguizamo, Maria Bello

Have I Seen it Before: No. Oh, no.

Did I Like It: I mean, I want to like every movie I watch as it begins. I really do. But I’ll admit that between my love for the original and my antipathy for really every John Carpenter re-make, I started this one absolutely stone-face, with my arms crossed.

The film had an uphill climb. But there was hope, there. Maybe the fact that Precinct isn’t nearly as universally loved as Halloween (1978) or even The Fog (1980)*, the filmmakers would feel free to create something watchable, and dare I even hope, fresh and interesting.

One can’t imagine that this would be able to harness the ruthless simplicity of the original. That’s probably automatically too much to hope for, as even John Carpenter wasn’t wielding the energy of his earlier work by the time this came around. Years started beginning with “2” and subtlety went right out the window. The plot is over-constructed, which inevitably leads to more dialogue, which inevitably takes away from the action…

And, far more importantly, opens the doors to cliché. While they may attempt to give a bit of a spin to the character eventually**, the moment O’Shea (Brian Dennehy, in case you were wondering what happened to his character after First Blood (1982)) proclaims that he is right on the cusp of retirement, an infant is more than capable of mapping out where his character is going to end up.

And then there’s Jeffrey “Ja Rule” Jenkins. See, kids, this is back in a time when selling copies of the soundtrack album for a film still meant something, and therefore bringing a rapper into the mix. He’s not a bad actor. The role isn’t much, but he’s got a decent screen presence that he isn’t distracting from the rest of the film.

But his end credits theme? I really, really hated it. Not just because the film never bothers to pull from Carpenter’s original score***. It goes beyond the “re-count the plot over the end credits” rap anthem that we’re normally used to, and name checks Hawke, Fishburne, and proceeds to be the most painfully obvious song I’ve ever heard. It may have ended the trend of ending films with these kinds of songs. It may very well have been the last one to include such a song. On that front alone, I guess it is kind of historic.

*I didn’t, but you might have.

**I wouldn’t get too terribly excited: it’s not that much of a spin.

***Try getting away with that kind of nonsense in the Halloween series. I dare you.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2025)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Juno Temple

Have I Seen it Before: Never

Did I Like It: Can I complain about the title for a moment before I launch into anything else? I’m writing the review, so of course I can. I have yet to be able to refer to the film—I am counting when purchasing my tickets—that I haven’t had to look at a poster of the film to get it right. Maybe I’d eventually get on board with it, if it wasn’t such a tiny part of the film. Aside from one reference at the mid-point, and a bit of a refrain at the end, it is absent. I half expected the film to be based on a graphic novel or video game, where the refrain was going to be far more important and simply didn’t translate very well to film. But no, this is a film called Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, and that is, at best, a few minutes of a 2-hour-plus film.

Now, that we have that out of the way.

I was never very found of suicide. What a wild way to start a review, but what I’m refering to is the practice of pouring some of every available soda at a fountain into a cup. There were and are plenty of of sodas I just don’t like, so mixing them in never felt like something I was interested in.

And yet, in this film, I can see the appeal. What we have here is pouring every flavor of sci-fi one can get their hands on into one film, like some kind of Twilight Zone smoothie. I enjoy all of those flavors on their own, so the mixture might be something I can get behind. For the most part, it is. It’s a brisk adventure movie with interesting characters, well performed by actors who I have enjoyed in other stuff. I laughed at several points. It is an enjoyable film. The problem comes when the film is—mostly in its back half, where the indiividual flavors—especially those parts taken from The Terminator (1984)—rise to the surface, and the entire affair is a little too predictable.

You might have another complaint, dear reader. You might see the adventures of the man from the future (Rockwell) as counterfeit. He ultimately can’t impact what is going to happen. You might start dusting off comparisons not to the original Terminator, but instead Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). But just as your compaints about Indiana Jones not affecting the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) are wrong, so are they wrong here, too. Indy wasn’t searching for the Lost Ark, he was searching for some kind of reconciliation with Marion. So too, is the Man From the Future not really trying to steer time back into a more positive direction, he’s really trying to…

Well, I won’t contribute to spoiling the plot, but you’ll probably figure it out.

The Blackbird (1926)

Director: Tod Browning

Cast: Lon Chaney, Owen Moore, Renée Adorée, Doris Lloyd

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: Two things are immediately striking me as fundamentally wrongheaded about the film*.

First, its plot is far too convoluted, so much so that I think the material would still produce headaches in… well, me… if it were produced as a talkie. There’s the handicapped saint, his no-account criminal of a brother (Chaney, in both roles), and then another criminal running around. It seems like they all love the same French girl, and the police are singularly unable to tell any of the three of them apart, until the plot basically resolves itself.

More importantly, however, is my deep belief that Chaney was fundamentally miscast in the role, or his abilities were fundamentally underused. This man with a thousand faces really has one face here, but we are supposed to believe that Chaney simply contorting his lim is tapping into some kind of grand cinematic magic…

When it isn’t. There isn’t two roles. I feel okay spoiling a 100-year-old film, but the dual role is a ruse, and the whole affair—if you’ll let me go back to complaining about the plot—ends with Chaney’s character having prettended to be crippled so much that he is now actually afflicted, and so severely, that he will die within minutes.

All I’m saying is that if Chaney could have been at least the man of two faces, I might have been able to sit in the theater and marvel how they pulled off such a feat in the early days of cinema. The film couldn’t offer even that much.

*I’m still enough of a neophyte at film criticism, that I feel gunshy dismissing a film I didn’t quite enjoy, simply because it was made by talent I have enjoyed elsewhere (Browning, Chaney). Both of them are long since dead, so I can’t imagine my dim enthusiasm will somehow discourage them from doing better next time.