Category Archives: Movies

February 21, 2026 · 5:18 am

The wandering shadow of Valentine’s Day: movies

LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS (1970) is a favorite rom-com of mine that I always think of watching on Valentine’s Day, but usually too late to actually do it. This year, I made it.

This is based on a stage play collecting several different one-scene skits. Here, however, they’re woven into a coherent hole as everyone’s related to everyone else, all gathered together for the wedding of Mike and Susan (Michael Brandon, Bonnie Bedelia). Her father (Gig Young, excellent in the role) is cheating on her mom (Cloris Leachman) with Susan’s aunt (Anne Jackson); her sister Wilma (Anne Meara) is getting sexually frustrated with her husband (Harry Guardino); Michael’s brother Richie (Joseph Hindy) is divorcing his wife Joan (Diane Keaton) and their parents (Richard Castellano, Bea Arthur) can’t understand it — so the marriage didn’t work out, you can’t end it just like that!!

The film shows it’s age in some ways. It’s an era when no-fault divorce was new (and divorce itself was still a touchy subject — though America has always been a divorce nation) and living together was a sin; when TYG and watched it a decade ago, she didn’t pick up that Mike’s male roommate was a lie he’d made up to hide that Susan was his roommate.

The emotional core, however, holds up well. Young’s slick dodging over commitment. Castellano and Arthur expressing their sad view of marriage. Michael listening to their stories about other bad marriages who didn’t divorce and finally exploding (“I don’t want someone telling a horrible story about us that ends with ‘but they’re still together.”). Overall it’s a charmer. “If you let ten years of love end in a bathroom, I’ll lose all respect for myself.”

Returning to that Christmas gift collection of Fritz Lang films — THE WANDERING SHADOW (1920) has a woman fleeing into the mountains to escape a vengeful pursuer. We eventually learn this is the outcome of an insanely melodramatic backstory involving free love, a fake marriage, an inheritance and more. Overwrought though it is, it looks and watches way better than Harakiri (reviewed at the link), whether that’s Lang learning on the job or just being more at home with German material. “For your support and assistance I am eternally in your debt, but I must carry my cross alone.”

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February 18, 2026 · 5:15 am

No, zero to hero is not the universal theme of all fiction

In a recent substack post, Celeste Davis of Matriarchal Blessing discussed the many rich and famous guys who’ve gone from pudgy and nerdy looking to buff and muscular, including Jeff Bezos and Christ Pratt. I don’t find this terribly remarkable — while the pressure on men to look good isn’t as intense as with women, it does exist. In our modern world I don’t think it’s that far off from someone forty years ago getting rich and switching to bespoke suits.

Davis argues that what this is really about is becoming invulnerable: “The invulnerability arc shows up in just about every myth, story and hero we have for boys—be they modern or ancient, religious or secular. The story goes like this: once upon a time there was a weak, shrimpy boy, who eventually through pain and violence is transformed into a fortress of muscle and power. Now no one makes fun of him. Now he is a hero.” Cases in point, Disney’s Hercules, Harry Potter, Batman, Captain America. Davis goes on to argue that if your goal is a long, healthy life (and for a lot of these dudes, it is), becoming buff or paying for radical medical treatments won’t work as well as having a community of friends around you.

That conclusion I do not dispute. Davis’ interpretation of the “invulnerability arc” as the essential Boy’s Journey … not so much. Since she brings up the Marvel and DC cinematic universes, let’s look:

Iron Man: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr. of course) discovers his munitions manufacturing has made the world worse. Sets out to atone. And far from being invulnerable, he starts the movie in good health, then ends up a guy relying on the world’s most advanced pacemaker. The comic book doesn’t start Tony out in such a guilty place, but does emphasize even more that he’s not invulnerable —drain his armor’s power, he’s dead. Jack Kirby cover below.

Superman: No arc. He’s an invulnerable child who grows up into the world’s most invulnerable man.

Thor: Arrogant jackass whose arc is learning not to be such a jerk.

Captain America: (Steve Rogers in the Jack Kirby scene above is saving a Cap imposter, by the way). No question his origin involves going from a scrawny 4-F into the perfect man. But I think it’s more significant that his quest isn’t to become strong, it’s to fight fascists. That’s why he applies in the comics (and IIRC in the film). That’s what drives him. And it’s not that he’s invulnerable —

— it’s his indomitable spirit, as in the Gene Colan image above.

Hercules? Disney’s take is an outlier, portraying him as a wimpy kid; in mythology, Hercules strangles venomous snakes while he’s still in the cradle. Marvel’s Hercules (at the bottom of Kirby’s cover) and most other pop-culture presentations are much the same — superhuman from the get-go.

Harry Potter is far and away the worst argument for her position. Her synopsis: “A shrimpy nerdy orphan is shunned by his family, forced to live in the hall closet and be beat up by his cousin. Eventually he fights in some battles and after securing The Deathly Hallows, becomes the master of death and savior of the world.”

Okay, that’s technically true, but only technically. The real story is a miserable lonely good gets away from his abusive caregivers, make friends, finds a parental figure who isn’t shitty and learns to be happy. The books are an endorsement of exactly what Davis says we need, community. Harry wouldn’t have made it to book two if he didn’t have Ron and Hermione (particularly, of course, Hermione) fighting alongside him. He wouldn’t have finished the series alive if he hadn’t trained his fellow students into Dumbledore’s Army.

Harry is all about community. In a sense that’s what makes him the perfect opposing player for Voldemort, who has no use for other people except as pawns or followers.

Likewise, few superheroes these days come without a supporting cast. Green Arrow and Flash on the CW have sizable backup teams, for instance. Movie Batman is probably the closest to what Davis talks about; I think he’s more an anomaly than a template.

Looking at pop culture more broadly, I think the post underestimates the number of characters who don’t have origins in a conventional sense. In cop shows we may get some backstory but a lot of the time they’re simply there, no origin. Jack Bauer on 24 ditto — his childhood and how he came to be a tough guy is never detailed that I recall.

In short, I don’t think the post nailed the zeitgeist as much as she thinks.

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February 14, 2026 · 5:07 am

A slacker and an interrogator: one movie, one TV show

Another pick from the Leonard Maltin book TYG got me last year — AURORA BOREALIS (2005) stars Joshua Jackson as Duncan, a Minneapolis twentysomething who’s stubbornly resisting adulting: he works dead end jobs, sticks with the same group of friends he’s always had, and lets life continue in much the same vein it has since he graduated high school.

As the movie starts, however, Duncan’s just lost his convenience store job. His brother is using Duncan’s apartment to bang women without his wife knowing (inspired, Duncan says, by the Jack Lemmon movie The Apartment). And now his beloved grandfather, Donald Sutherland, is suffering both Parkinson’s and the onset of dementia. Can Duncan get his shit together enough to help both grandpa and grandmother Louise Fletcher?

Things change when Duncan meets Kate (Juliette Lewis), his grandfather’s home healthcare worker, a free-spirited vagabond who never stays long in one place. Sparks fly, they become lovers and she begins nudging him to become more than he is — but will the lure of keeping everything the same make a difference?

While I’m not fond of coming of age/New Adult books, I can enjoy the tropes in a movie and this was a good one, well-acted and well-written. The special features reveal it was based on a stage play which explains why, despite the title, we never see the Northern lights. Curiously, everyone insists the closing scene is open-ended because we don’t know how Kate/Duncan will work out in the long run; as you can say that about most HEAs, I don’t find this striking. Still, thumbs up. “Do you realize you sound like Don King when you use big words?”

A friend of mine used to be a huge fan of THE CLOSER, a 2005 TNT series staring Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Johnson, a former CIA interrogator turned head of a major-crimes unit in Los Angeles. As it turned up on Netflix recently, I gave the pilot a look; it’s solidly done but I don’t know I’ll bother to watch more.

Johnson’s team aren’t thrilled about having an outsider in charge, she has a messy personal life, and in this episode she’s facing a headscratcher: An unknown women has been found murdered in a prominent plastic surgeon’s office. The surgeon’s vanished. The victim’s fingerprints are all over his home while the surgeon’s are nowhere to be found. How does it make sense? Like I said, it’s a solid job, fitting into the subgenre of cops who have One Simple Trick for getting to the truth. The Mentalist and Lie To Me both have someone who can read people like a book; Psych has a guy who’s hyper-observant about everything, HPI has someone who’s hyper-observant and can match up what she sees with a storehouse of knowledge. Here, Johnson’s a genius interrogator; having figured out what’s going on, she calmly guides the killer to a confession.

The results are good and if I were more of a fan of cop shows I might keep up with it. If I had more time for TV (and lately I don’t seem to) I might try a couple more episodes. As neither of these is the case …

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February 7, 2026 · 5:15 am

Is man’s favorite sport legal blondes? One movie, one play

Howard Hawks has done some wonderful rom-coms including Bringing up Baby and Ball of Fire. MAN’S FAVORITE SPORT (1964) is not one of them, though it has many of the elements of Bringing Up Baby, with the male lead (Rock Hudson) put through the wringer by the good bad girl Abigail (Paula Prentiss) before finally realizing she’s more than the most obnoxious, most irritating woman he’s ever met.

Roger is a legendary fishing guru working for Abercrombie and Fitch (apparently back then they were a sporting goods store rather than clothing). Abigail’s running PR for an upcoming fishing tournament and convinces Roger’s boss (John McIver) that Roger competing would be a publicity windfall for everyone.

Too bad Roger can’t actually fish: he learned by listening to fishermen talk, then sharing what they say with his customers, eventually compiled it into a book … but he has no skills. Fortunately Abigail knows fishing; she can teach Roger, but can she teach him enough? And will they kill each other before the training is over?

Hawks wanted Cary Grant for the lead role but didn’t get him (though Grant, while still elegant, was 60 — I think that would have been a stretch even for a movie May-September romance). Hudson was a logical choice, having starred in a couple of rom-coms (Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back) but he doesn’t work as Roger. In one of the early scenes — Abigail parks her car in Roger’s sport, he tries to move it, hilarity ensues — I can imagine Grant’s deadpan frustration as he struggles to cope. Hudson can’t pull it off. On the plus side the supporting cast are fun and legendary costume designer Edith Head decks out the women in some great outfits. “Does a man who sells canaries have to know how to fly?”

Now, the play: my brother has twice appeared in the musical LEGALLY BLONDE (yes, based on the Reese Witherspoon film) as the lecherous professor who recruits Elle Woods for his murder-case team simply because he’s hot for her. Wanting something light and fluffy I streamed one of the productions (he sent me a link) last weekend and enjoyed the story of how blonde sorority girl Elle Woods (“Whoever said tangerine is the new pink was seriously disturbed.”) crashes Harvard Law to prove to her ex-boyfriend she’s not some bimbo, then discovers to her surprise that she’s not some bimbo. A fun, light-hearted show, which is what I needed.“The Irish fear nothing and no-one/They keep fighting till everyone’s dead/I’m not sure where this metaphor’s going/But I feel that it needs to be said.”

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January 31, 2026 · 5:21 am

Deadly bees, silent kids and Christmas: movies and a play

I’m a fan of H.F. Heard’s novel A Taste of Honey, and a few years back watched the Boris Karloff TV adaptation, The Sting of Death. When I discovered Britain’s Amicus Films had adapted it into THE DEADLY BEES (1967) I couldn’t resist — though I can’t say that was a great use of my viewing time.

Suzanna Leigh plays Vicki, a singer burned out from overwork, though we do get a couple of pop songs before she collapses (as I know from Amicus Horrors, the studio started out doing rock-and-roll films). Recuperating on an isolated rural island (just typing those words seems to conjure ominous background music) where there’s a rivalry between her beekeeeping host, Doleman (Ralph Hargrove) and fellow apiarist Manfred (Frank Finlay). And as the movie progresses, a surprising number of people drop dead of bee stings …

All of which is rendered at a slow, plodding pace; I suspect the film added the opening (a couple of defense officials discussing some crackpot’s ridiculous claim he can weaponize bees) because otherwise it would take too long for us to learn what the film’s about. This also suffers from the lack of Mr. Mycroft, Heard’s Holmes-by-another-name figure. Still, I’m surprised nobody used this property a few years later, when America was consumed by fears of South American killer bees. “The scent of fear? I always thought that was just a phrase.”

GOOD MORNING (1959) is a slice-of-life dramedy from Japanese director Yasujiro Ozo, looking at the goings on in a small Japanese neighborhood. Housewives worry one of them has walked off with the homeowner’s assocation dues (or something equivalent), a salaryman bemoans his miserable retirement and two brothers vow never to speak until their parents by them a TV (a variation of a plotline in Ozo’s silent film I Was Born, But). This is quite charming, though I didn’t realize how much fart humor there is in it (the special features clued me in) — the beeps Ozo uses to stand in for farts didn’t register as such, partly because I was focused on subtitles more than sounds. “Do you still eat pumice stones?”

I’m not a fan of A CHRISTMAS STORY — THE MUSICAL (I caught a TV adaptation some years back) but as my brother was in one production I watched the recording of one of his performances as Ralphie’s dad. He does as well as anyone can who isn’t Darren McGavin but the stage version is still too, well, cute.

While the movie is hardly Eugene O’Neil, the family have their rough edges. Ralphie gets his buddy Schwartz in trouble by claiming he taught Ralphie the f-bomb; Mom apparently busts the legendary leg-lamp because she hates how tacky it is. The stage version sands them off, like George Lucas insisting Greedo shot first. Here, Ralphie’s brother breaks the lamp and Mom covers for him; a big part of the ending is a song about family and how any Christmas Story that has them all together is a happy story (the songs, in general, are forgettable). Though the cast were all good in their roles. “They were so far down the evolutionary chain, they weren’t even in Darwin’s family tree!”

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January 24, 2026 · 5:32 am

A double feature: Howard Hawks, John Wayne and Leigh Brackett!

Not only that, the two movies I watched last weekend both ran 2.5 hours. Only one of them was worth the running time, though.

A number of people consider RIO BRAVO (1959) Howard Hawks’ last great film (cowritten by Brackett and Jules Furthman). I loved when I first caught it years ago; it doesn’t hold up as well on rewatching as Red River did but that may have been my mood that afternoon. Things have been so hectic this month, it’s harder to relax and go with the movie flow.

The opening is certainly striking, more so for being silent. Dude (Dean Martin), a deputy and gunman undone by drink (he crawled into the bottle after his wife ran off) stares into a saloon. Slimy bad man Burdette (Claude Akins) offers him a silver dollar to buy some booze, then drops it into the saloon spittoon. Dude (back then the name referred to a fancy dresser, which presumably Martin was before he became a lush) is almost ready to stick his hand in when Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) shows up and stops him. That prompts one of the barflies to stand up to Burdette, who guns him down. Chance and Dude bust Burdette, who’s unfazed — his wealthy brother won’t let him suffer any consequences and won’t care who gets hurt. And it’s six days until a US Marshal arrives to take custody of the killer …

This is something of an anti-High Noon. Hawks thought the premise of that film — Gary Cooper’s sheriff trying to form a posse against a gang of killers — was ridiculous; a group of farmers and storekeepers don’t stand a chance against a band of professionals. Hawks liked his protagonists competent and professional and Cooper didn’t measure up. Here, John T. dismisses the idea out of hand; he’ll do his best to survive with Dude and cantakerous deputy Stumpy (Walter Brennan), come what may. Colorado (Ricky Nelson) has the skills to help but he sticks his neck out for nobody; John T. approves (“Smart kid.”). Then there’s Feathers (Angie Dickinson), a chattering gambler who shows up on the stage and insists on sticking around for Chance, even if the odds are against him living long enough for anything to happen.

There are lots of elements echoing earlier Hawks movies here. Tough, competent men under pressure. A bantering relationship between an awkward male lead and a more assertive woman. People constantly having to prove themselves (John T. likes testing everyone). I think one reason it threw me off is that the character arcs — Dude struggling to stay off the booze, Feathers/John T. — are more important than the supposed threat of the Burdettes. That said, it’s still enjoyable, though Ricky Nelson and Dickinson ain’t much as actors. And may I say that is one terrific poster. “We’re all fools. We ought to get along very well together.”

In Films of Howard Hawks, Donald C. Willis says HATARI! (1962) is the film Willis would bring up if he wanted to prove Hawks was largely talentless. Can’t say I disagree.

Sean Mercer (Wayne again) leads a team of men working in Africa to capture animals for American zoos, variously including Pockets (Red Buttons), the Indian (Bruce Cabot) and Brandy (Michelle Girardon), the daughter of their former boss. Trouble erupts because a)Brandy, whom they’ve known since childhood, is very obviously a woman now, and b)the “Dallas” the zoo hired to photograph the team’s work turns out to be another very obvious woman (Elsa Martinelli) who finds Sean attractive but frustrating; burned by his ex, he refuses to make a move so she has to do the work (“Do you prefer your kisses fast or slow?”).

As Willis says, these feel less like Howard Hawks characters and more like character swho’ve watched lots of Hawks films and are trying to imitate them. We have the tough band of men, a flirtation that works much less well than in Rio Bravo, a constant risk of death, rivalry over a woman, a climax with baby elephants that reminds me of Bringing Up Baby …and it all falls flat. I might not be a huge fan of Angie Dickinson’s acting but I bought Feathers falling for Sheriff Chance; here I can’t swallow Dallas/Sean, nor Pockets/Brandy. Pockets is supposed to be a likable comic-relief sidekick but for whatever reason Buttons can’t pull off the role. The one good thing in the film is the gorgeous wildlife photography. It’s not enough. Oh, and while it’s only a minor weakness, it’s annoying Brackett and Hawks got their blood types wrong (someone with AB negative blood is rare, but B, O and A negative blood can all be given to such a recipient). “Rhinos, elephants, buffalo — and a greenhorn.”

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January 23, 2026 · 5:15 am

There’s hype and then there’s hype with style

“Add a movie to the wonders of the world!” is, I think, in category B

I have not seen the movie but the sentiment from those who have is that the movie does not, in fact, rise to a wonder of the world. In case you were wondering.

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January 20, 2026 · 5:19 am

Is Dr. Jekyll man or monster? Or … is he both?

A few last movies I rewatched for Watching Jekyll and Hyde.

Rewatching DR. JEKYLL’S DUNGEON OF DEATH (1979) confirmed that it’s the kind of sleazy low-budget crap that would have gone straight to video a few years later. Along with testing his ancestor’s formula for unleashed aggression on kidnapped guinea pigs (in a rare moment of sanity in this subgenre, Jekyll points out that self-testing is a stupid risk to take), Jekyll is raping the captive woman who once rejected him, leching on the sister he lobotomized (and gaslighting her that she’s a Hideous Scarface) and plotting revenge on a professor for reasons we never learn. Despite assuring us this takes place on a Vast Estate, the one or two shots we see outside are a suburban street; the eponymous dungeon is Jekyll’s basement. “We both know that genius is born of madness.”

THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960) improves slightly on rewatching – Dawn Addams is better than I gave her credit for — but ultimately still falls flat. Having Hyde (Paul Massie) attempt to win back Jekyll’s faithless wife (Addams) from shameless cad Christopher Lee is a great set up but I don’t know the characters well enough to care (did Mrs. Jekyll ever love Henry? Did Henry ever love her before he became an obsessive mad scientist?). I do like the trope reversal at the end, with Hyde struggling to purge himself of Jekyll only to lose when Jekyll resurfaces. That’s all to recommend this other than Christopher Lee’s performance as a complete weasel. “We English never know what we feel.”


For all Amicus producer/screenwriter Milton Subotsky wanted I, MONSTER (1972) to be The Most Faithful Adaptation, the most interesting idea is to make Christopher Lee’s Dr. Marlowe a practicing psychiatrist (as opposed to the standard approach of providing charity medical care or focusing on research) whose frustration with conventional psychotherapy leads to drug experiments to cut through human repression …

I do wonder if Subotsky wasn’t influenced by Two Faces as Dr. Marlowe’s belief (Subotsky renamed the leads in the belief audiences wouldn’t come to a Jekyll and Hyde film) that Evil Is Ugly could easily be refuting Two Faces screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz’s belief Evil Should Be Sexy (alternatively it could be a way to rationalize why the drug changes Marlowe physically). After watching this I decided it was impossible to pull off a faithful adaptation until Jean Renoir proved me wrong. With Richard Hurndall as Lanyon and Michael des Barres as a street punk who picks the wrong toff to rough up. “What is more to the purpose — I’ve had a lesson.”

I’m glad I rewatched JEKYLL (2007) as I don’t think I appreciated on first viewing how much it riffs on the March/Tracy template, sometimes in ways that are not obvious (like Tracy and March, Matt Keeslar’s Jekyll reveals his split identity to the Bad Girl before killing her, though in this case it’s unintentional). One reason this doesn’t work for me is that Keeslar isn’t a convincing Hyde, and I can’t buy that a former, hard-partying wild man (that comes from Stevenson, of course) would be that unnerved to find the stripper Bad Girl turns him on.

That said, this is one of the more contemporary adaptations, incorporating computer games, Utterson as a female BFF for Jekyll and no slut-shaming of the stripper. It has its merits, just not enough of them. “This is the moment — the single incident that defines the rest of your life.”

I rewatched the Tracy version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941) after reading a letter from Joe Breen (the top enforcer for the Production Code) warning that when Tracy whips Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner in one hallucination sequence, the whip mustn’t be seen striking the women. That’s the kind of hairsplitting the Production Code specialized in, but it works: I was genuinely surprised to realize the whip never does land — all we see is Tracy’s Jekyll cracking a whip while he rides in a hansom cab pulled by the two women.

I was also intrigued by Breen’s directive a second hallucination sequence cut out all scenes with “the girl and the swan” — they did and I’ve had no luck researching what it was.

The 1980 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE is definitely in my list of top adaptations. David Hemmings is excellent as a middle-aged Jekyll, a clergyman’s son wracked by guilt over his addiction to banging sex workers and hopeful his miracle drug will cleave off his sinful side and let him become pure. Instead it turns him into a younger, devil-may-care Hemmings by the simple expedient of ditching the middle-aged false whiskers and poundage; not only does he have more fun but Jekyll’s fiancee finds him way more charming as Hyde. Discounting gender flip adaptations (Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde), this is the only Hyde who goes for men as well as women. Even there we only see one male sex worker providing services (I’m guessing Hyde stiffs him on his pay because of Jekyll’s guilt about M/M sex). With James Bond’s Q, Desmond Llewelyn, as the ever-doomed Sir Danvers Carew. “I never thought the pleasures of the flesh were the work of the devil.”

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January 17, 2026 · 5:15 am

Wake up dead man — you’ve been targeted for termination!

WAKE UP, DEAD MAN (2025) is the third of Daniel Craig’s outings as ace detective Benoit Blanc, following Knives Out and The Glass Onion. Josh O’Connor plays Father Jud, a boxer who turned into a priest as a path to redemption after viciously beating his opponent in the ring to death. He’s assigned to the small-town parish of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher who looks down on Jud’s belief the church should offer grace and lift people up, not punch down at them. Wicks’ reverential flock included a failing doctor (Jeremy Renner), a frustrated lawyer (Kerry Washington), a devout believer (Glenn Close) and others. When Wicks walks into an alcove in full view of the flock and comes out stabbed to death, who could have done it? And how?

Craig is delightful as he relishes the prospect of a genuine locked-room impossible crime but there’s less of him in the movie and it suffers thereby. Beyond that, the movie felt off to me in a way I couldn’t pin down until I read Camestros Felapton’s review — the problem is that it’s a Catholic Church but the trappings, the sermons are very much right-wing Protestant and it doesn’t quite work (Kirsten Kobes du Mez, however, argues it works in many ways). Still, it’s a fun one to watch. “They all look like John Goodman in THE BIG LEBOWSKI.”

TYG has never seen THE TERMINATOR (1984) so we watched my DVD for a recent date night. Having imagined it as an over the top spectacle like the Avatar films or True Lies she was pleasantly surprised by the tense, low-budget story of cyborg Arnold Schwarzenegger traveling back in time to alter history by killing Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and Michael Biehn jumping back to stop him. The story is set up so we don’t know who’s who or which side they’re on or what it’s all about at first; for all the jokes about Schwarzenegger at the time (who better to play an emotionless inhuman robot?), he’s effectively menacing here.

The film’s opening acknowledgement to the work of Harlan Ellison reflects his view that it ripped off his Outer Limits episodes “Soldier” (visually the openings do have a lot in common) and “Demon With a Glass Hand” (I’m not convinced) though I think the film is enough of its own thing that it stands on its own. The start of a long-running franchise and a fine movie in its own right. “He won’t stop until he finds you. That’s what he does — that’s all he does.”

TYG bought me a collection of three early Fritz Lang silents on DVD for Christmas, the first of which is HARAKIRI (1919), a film that show Germans are as susceptible to Orientalism as Americans. This adaptation of Madame Butterfly is competently made but not terribly interesting, and the jerk male lead deserve to be soundly slapped. “You lost your belief in Buddha — beware his wrath!”

It’s a big week for TYG related films — although she’s a fan of HIGH FIDELITY (2000) she’s never seen it on the big screen so that was last weekend’s date movie (it played at the Carolina Theatre here). John Cusack plays Rob, a record-store owner and something of a jerk who’s just gone through Number Five of his all-time worst breakups, with girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjelje). This sends him into his flashback booth to contemplate lost loves including Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones — why didn’t it work out? Is there a pattern here? Meanwhile he has to ride herd on his peculiar staff, most notably Jack Black in his breakout role as an obnoxious music nerd.

My only reservation when I watched this originally was wondering why Laura should be The One when she didn’t stand out compared to his past girlfriends. Now I’m inclined to see it as Rob having grown up enough to handle being in love, which he definitely wasn’t earlier. Based on Nick Hornsby’s novel, the cast includes Joan Cusack as Rob’s sister, Sara Gilbert as a music nerd and Tim Robbins as a possible romantic rival. “I’ve been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I’ve come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”

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January 10, 2026 · 5:29 am

Slammed by Hyde (and Jekyll) near the end

As I wrote a couple of weeks back, I found a spate of Jekyll and Hyde-related films right as I was wrapping up. Which is inconvenient but better than finding them after I finish.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (2003) was unavailable to stream last time I checked but by the vagaries of such things, it suddenly turned up on Prime. John Hannah stars in an unremarkable film following the template of the Spencer Tracy adaptation : Jekyll plans to test his experimental drug on a madman who dies, so why not test it on himself? Oops.

The more adaptations I watch, the more I’m impressed that the Fredric March version takes a half-hour before the first transformation and yet it isn’t boring; this film, like so many, is tedious. The most interesting aspect is that Sir Danvers Carew (David Warner) has Jekyll take a new maid into his household who turns out to be Carew’s illegimate daughter, the half-sister to Jekyll’s fiancee. That feels like it should lead to something … but it doesn’t. “The mind controls the body but who controls the mind?”

The Argentinian EL EXTRANO CASE DEL HOMBRE Y LA BESTIA (1951) is another one that suddenly turned up online, though unfortunately without any subtitles. This starts off like Stevenson (the story of the trampling, the will, the encounter by the laboratory door) then goes it’s own way with Jekyll’s wife’s pregnancy giving Jekyll the strength to resist the temptation to become Hyde. Only four years later, playing with his kid, the doctor notices his hands are turning hairy … From what I’ve read online this has a lot of A-list talent from Argentine cinema but I can’t say it worked for me. Though obviously I’m missing a lot.

CARMILLA HYDE (2010) is an Aussie film in which a straitlaced young woman’s friends decide to loosen her up by getting her drunk, drugged and raped (the term “friends” is doing a lot of work here …). To help deal with it her therapist gives her a split personality to handle the emotions until she can process them; before long, however, “Carmilla Hyde” is taking over and also taking revenge on her so called friends. And it turns out the therapist has some secrets of his own … Appendix material only. “My brother blames me — the evil child that destroyed the family.”

IGOR (2008) is also appendix material but I wish I’d had more time to pay attention to it. The story of a small kingdom of mad scientists has the eponymous assistant hoping his invention will elevate him above a mere lab worker, but a scheming rival plans to steal his secrets with the help of shapeshifter Jacqueline Hyde. “Everyone has an evil bone in their body but it’s up to us to decide whether to use it.”

Discovering the 1970s THE GHOST BUSTERS was available online, I watched their episode dealing with the ghosts of Jekyll and Hyde. This series dealt with three inept ghost hunters (Larry Storch, Forrest Tucker and Bob Burns in a gorilla suit) who work through endless shticks and comedy routines that bury the nominal plot (Jekyll’s scheme to free himself from having to haunt houses alongside Hyde). None of it was funny. This has nothing to do with the later films though Filmation revived it as a cartoon when the first Ghostbusters film hit big; a fight over the name is why the film spinoff cartoon was labeled The Real Ghostbusters.

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