Cardboard Science: Phantom marine mutations, death rays, utter nonsense

THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES

1955

Directed by Dan Milner

Written by Dorys Lukather and Lou Russof

Spoilers: moderate

Cardboard Science: A million years of evolution with one bomb

DAY THE WORLD ENDED

1955

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Lou Russof

Spoilers: moderate

The wailing

KPOP DEMON HUNTERS

2025

Directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans

Written by Danya Jiminez, Hannah McMegan, Maggie Kang, and Chris Appelhans

Spoilers: moderate

Fierce creatures

DANGEROUS ANIMALS

2025

Directed by Sean Byrne

Written by Nick Lepard

Spoilers: moderate

Indé film

APACHE WOMAN

1955

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Lou Russof

Spoilers: moderate

Cardboard Science: I think I could stand it, except for out there—all that wasteland and mountains—it might as well be on another planet

THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES

1955

Directed by David Kramarsky and Roger Corman

Written by Tom Filer

Plutonian shores

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

2022

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

THE SHROUDS

2025

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

Spoilers: moderate

The ultimate nullifier

THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS

2025

Directed by Matt Shakman

Written by Kat Wood, Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer

Spoilers: high

Nobody drives forever

F1

2025

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

Written by Ehren Kruger and Joseph Kosinski

Spoilers: moderate

Superman returns

SUPERMAN

2025

Written and directed by James Gunn

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LXIX: You were just as dim-witted the first time you were here, you called it "Wonderland," as I recall

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

2010

Directed by Tim Burton

Written by Linda Woolverton

Spoilers: moderate

00 Week: The truth of the matter, Bond decided over coffee, was that he felt homesick for his real identity. He shrugged.

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

1971

Directed by Guy Hamilton

Written by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz

Spoilers: severe

00 Week: We've got all the time in the world to talk about love

ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE

1969

Directed by Peter Hunt

Written by Richard Maibaum and Simon Raven (based on the novel by Ian Fleming)

Spoilers: severe

00 Week: Whatever happened, he would put up no resistance to his old skin being sloughed off him on the other side of the world

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

1967

Directed by Lewis Gilbert

Written by Roald Dahl and Harold Jack Bloom (based on the novel by Ian Fleming)

Spoilers: severe

Even now, when time has dulled the impression and made me half question my own experience and horrible doubts, there are things in that letter of Akeley’s which I would not quote

THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS

2011

Directed Sean Branney

Written by Andrew Leman and Sean Branney (based on the story by H.P. Lovecraft)

plus "The Call of Cthulhu" (2005), written and directed by same

Spoilers: moderate

00 Week: The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning

CASINO ROYALE

1967

Directed by John Huston, Ken Hughes, Val Guest, Joe McGrath, and Robert Parrish

Written by Wolf Mankowitz, John Law, Michael Sayers, Ben Hecht, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern, Billy Wilder, and Woody Allen ("based on" the novel by Ian Fleming)

Spoilers: high, I guess, but also largely meaningless

I'm counting on you, red, white, and blue

AIR FORCE ONE

1997

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen

Written by Andrew W. Marlowe

Spoilers: moderate

Do better

CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD

2025

Directed by Julius Onah

Written by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Peter Glanz, and Julius Onah

Spoilers: moderate

00 Week: Planes with atom bombs don't get stolen in real life. Except that they do. You're slowing down, James... Don't give me that crap about real life. There ain't no such animal.

THUNDERBALL

1965

Directed by Terence Young

Written by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, Ian Fleming, Richard Maibaum, and John Hopkins

Spoilers: severe

00 Week: Now you're talking. What are we going to do? Rob the end of a rainbow?

GOLDFINGER

1964

Directed by Guy Hamilton

Written by Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn (based on the novel by Ian Fleming)

Spoilers: severe

Turning Lebanon into a Lebaoui

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

2025

Directed by Wes Anderson

Written by Roman Coppola and Wes Anderson

Spoilers: moderate

Killing strangers so we don't kill the ones that we love

BALLERINA

2025

Directed by Len Wiseman and/or Chad Stahelski

Written by Shay Hatten

Spoilers: high (for nerds, anyway; for non-nerds who can already guess what could go wrong with an action movie smooshed into a preexisting intellectual property, moderate)

00 Week: In his particular line of business, peace had reigned for nearly a year. And peace was killing him.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

1963 UK/1964 USA

Directed by Terence Young

Written by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkeley Mather (based on the novel by Ian Fleming)

Spoilers: severe

You take your car to work, I'll take my board

THE SURFER

2025

Directed by Lorcan Finnegan

Written by Thomas Martin

Spoilers: moderate

You spend too much time on the Internet!

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-THE FINAL RECKONING

2025

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Written by Erik Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie

Spoilers: moderate

00 Week: Spelled like Yes?

DR. NO

1962

Directed by Terence Young

Written by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkeley Mather (based on the novel by Ian Fleming)

Spoilers: severe

Note: runs a bit longer than I'd have preferred, mostly thanks to the inefficiencies of getting a retrospective of a film series of this magnitude started

Well, not wholly unfavorable

A SIMPLE FAVOR

2018

Directed by Paul Feig

Written by Jessica Sharzer

Spoilers: moderate (maybe high although I presume you could get at least that far ahead of it)

Walt Disney, part LXVIII: When we're human

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG

2009

Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

Written by Rob Edwards, Greg Erb, Jason Oremland, Ron Clements, and John Musker

Spoilers: severe

Walt Disney, part LXVII: If the dog believes it, the audience believes it

BOLT

2008

Directed by Chris Williams and Byron Howard

Written by Dan Fogelman and Chris Williams

Spoilers: high

Walt Disney, part LXVI: Disney Princess enchanted tales

ENCHANTED

2007

Directed by Kevin Lima

Written by Bill Kelly, Rita Hsiao, Todd Alcott, Bob Schooley, and Mark McCorkle

Spoilers: high

They'd forget their precious gold if they had to dig their own

GOLD

1974

Directed by Peter Hunt

Written by Wilbur Smith and Stanley Price (based on the novel Gold Mine by Wilbur Smith)

Spoilers: moderate

Humphrey Bogart in Argument!... or Disagreement!... or Quarrel!... or Dispute!... or...

CONFLICT

1945

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Written by Robert Siodmak, Alfred Neumann, Arthur T. Horman, and Dwight Taylor

Spoilers: moderate (or a touch more than moderate, but, anyway, not high)

Walt Disney, part LXV: Keep moving forward

MEET THE ROBINSONS

2007

Directed by Stephen Anderson

Written by more people than I'd prefer to list (based on the book A Day With Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce)

Spoilers: high

When will you make an end?

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

1965

Directed by Carol Reed

Written by Philip Dunne (based on the novel by Irving Stone)

Spoilers: Michelangelo did, in fact, finish the Sistine Chapel ceiling

I know you've seen enough of the Falls for one trip, but don't cross us off your list

NIAGARA

1953

Directed by Henry Hathaway

Written by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen

Spoilers: moderate (maybe a teensy bit high, but one generally knows how these things go, right?)

No whammies

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA

2025

Directed by Samir Oliveros

Written by Amanda Freeman, Maggie Briggs, and Samir Oliveros

Spoilers: moderate (though, in a grander sense, N/A)

Cardboard Science: You're a lovely girl, but lovely girls just don't run around worrying about non-existent sea monsters

MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR

1954

Directed by Wyott Ordung

Written by Roger Corman and Bill Danch

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LXIV: At least I saw the wild before it disappeared

THE WILD

2006

Directed by Steve "Spaz" Williams

Written by Mark Gibson, Philip Halprin, Ed Decter, and John J. Strauss

Spoilers: moderate

Or, The Misdirects of Mr. E

THE MYSTERY OF MR. X

1934

Directed by Edgar Selwyn

Written by Howard Emmett Rogers and Monckton Hoffe (based on the novel X v. Rex by Philip MacDonald)

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: I don't suppose I'll have to beg your forgiveness

CHAINED

1934

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Edgar Selwyn and John Lee Mahin

Spoilers: moderate

The merry-go-round broke down

THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE

2025

Directed by Pete Browngardt

Written by many many many people, including Pete Browngardt

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LXXXIII: Failure, then learning, then death

MOANA 2

2024

Directed by Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller, and David Derrick Jr.

Written by Jared Bush, Bryson Chun, Bek Smith, and Dana Ledoux Miller

Spoilers: moderate

Note that will eventually be removed: "part 83" is an approximate one, but it is where I believe this film will eventually fall once my not-so-diligently pursued retrospective catalog of Walt Disney animation is done sometime in the next couple of months; meanwhile, since I intended to be done with it before Moana 2 came out on streaming, even if I did not succeed in doing so, it's still best to treat it as just another entry in that series, something I've been sub rosa doing with all of Disney's new-release cartoons for the past two or three years anyhow

Cardboard Science: Not dead the way we understand death

CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN

1958

Directed by Edward L. Cahn

Written by Jerome Bixby

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LXIII: Make pishee

CHICKEN LITTLE

2005

Directed by Mark Dindal

Written by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, Ron Anderson, Mark Kennedy, and Mark Dindal

Spoilers: high

Time just went

HERE

2024

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Eric Roth and Robert Zemeckis (based on the comic book by Richard McGuire)

Spoilers: maybe high, more like inapplicable

Note: runs slightly long, but it was the most movie of 2024, whether we treated it that way or not

In the light, everybody needs the light

UNDER THE LIGHT

Jianrupanshi (Solid As a Rock)

2023

Directed by Zhang Yimou

Written by Chen Yu

Spoilers: moderate

Reviews from gulag: Guadagnino'd

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Reviews from gulag: Down with the Oscars (this isn't about the Oscars)

But I will indulge myself a moment, because today I watched Robert Zemeckis's Here—the boldest Goddamn movie of the year, in its way, just a real achievement, and one that deserves a full review—but perhaps just as importantly, I also watched I Saw the TV Glow, the third feature (second anyone's heard of) from Jane Schoenbrun, the follow-up to their torturously boring and bad We're All Going To the World's Fair; and, in tandem, they very briefly restored my faith in the state of cinema, one being a fearless late-style swing from a tottering master that does some truly new shit, the other being the kind of redemption I genuinely want to see from a filmmaker who might've burned me terribly in the past, but is willing to evolve towards good, exciting work.  And this feeling was shattered, because 2024 now bears the ineradicable stain of producing Anora as America's putative Best Picture of the year, and now it's all just a bunch of morbid considerations about that whole "state of cinema" thing: the possibility that Zemeckis might never make another movie (because hardly anybody's seen Here and I do not think its reputation will grow going forward); the possibility that Shoenbrun's literal physical well-being could be jeopardized, let alone that of their career; and the certainty that Sean Baker is going to go on to keep making the worst motherfucking movies in the world for decades and decades to come.

Anyway, we'll get to I Saw the TV Glow, but I also watched Marielle Heller's Nightbitch, and now they're together, because they're both obtuse horror movies or something.  I'd say it's because they're both about nighttime, but I believe Nightbitch takes place mostly, like at a 3:1 ratio, during the day.  Oh, whatever, it's fundamentally arbitrary.

NIGHTBITCH

It's not clear whether it was Nightbitch source novelist Rachel Yoder, or its writer-director Marielle Heller, or its coterie of producers, but clearly it was decided that what women needed was their own 1994's Wolf, though I certainly can't tell you what all these women thought women must've done to deserve that.  And, somehow, the results are even less impressive: both Wolf and Nightbitch are using a story of canid transformation as a means of actually pursuing a fantasy about middle-aged rebellion and rejuvenation, and, as we weigh each film against the other, Nightbitch ought to have an advantage, because it's at least not embarrassed of being a fantasy movie like Wolf was; yet it's counter-intuitively interested in being a fantasy movie even less; and while Wolf is surely not good at "being a werewolf movie," and does not deliver on the genre pleasures which a movie about Jack Nicholson playing a werewolf has blatantly promised, at least it did have Jack Nicholson fucking a woman half his age and pissing on his corporate rival's shoes, whereas Nightbitch isn't concerned with the genre pleasures of either the werewolf movie or those of the middle-aged rebellion story.  For the long, repetitive middle half the most Amy Adams's (oh boy) unnamed mother (credited thusly, though I could've sworn she received a name) ever gets out of being a human dog, or a rebellious middle-aged woman, is... well, I guess let's just say that Heller must actually hate cats, but at least the storytelling in the corresponding sequence of Can You Ever Forgive Me? suggested she understood the concept of not hating cats.  Her movie's "nighttime" photography isn't as risibly bad as Mike Nichols's.  Let's give Heller that much.

Reviews from gulag: Police abuses

Well, it's probably not the most inappropriate connection I've drawn between two films, but we are trying to do an end-of-year wrap-up here with barely 48 more hours to go before it's moot, so that's what we're going with.  Today's subjects: I'm Still Here and Hit Man.

I'M STILL HERE

Ainda Estou Aqui

I'm Still Here, concerning the extrajudicial murder undertaken by the Medici-led military government in Brazil that triggered the mid-life ascendance of famed human rights lawyer Eunice Paiza to prominence, is exactly the kind of movie you'd guess it was from the "I'd never heard of it till it was nominated for Best Picture" thing it's got going on, and even then you'd probably ask "of the movies broadly like it, why this one?", though a more charitable response would be "why not?"  Maybe it's because it looks alright, albeit mostly by virtue of being shot on film (a 35mm so grainy I thought it was 16, and now I'm a little unsettled about it); maybe it's because it couldn't possibly offend anyone, though it does come off categorically anti-military coup, and I think that's just awfully closed-minded of it.

Still, I can't help but think it's sort of wrongheaded, as a matter of its overall narrative strategy.  Which isn't to let the tactics off the hook: take, for instance, the extended pre-inciting incident first act that's just this naturalistic slice-of-life for a Brazilian family, one that I assume was this large and of this composition in real life, because there are, like, at least three more children than the actual film can handle in its extant configuration (something the film even sub rosa acknowledges in numerous ways throughout, for instance being noticeably relieved to have gotten rid of the eldest daughter by way of a long trip abroad once her function of "being a politically-conscious teen" and "providing some almost nauseatingly-shaky Super 8 home movies" has been accomplished), but this is a slice-of-life that has no goal whatsoever besides impressing on you that bad things can still happen to nice people.  And they are, for sure, nice: with the obvious exceptions, it seems like it'd be cool to be in this family, and live in their cool beach neighborhood, and enjoy the 70s Brazilian lifestyle of wearing underwear or overclothes but not both simultaneously, but this does not, by itself, make them all that interesting to watch.  (And as long as we're talking small stuff, then the constant reference to period pop cultural signifiers is a routine example of the movie's naturalistic tolerance of dead air—I assure you, I do get that it's right at the transition to the 1970s.)

The brood

CUCKOO

2024

Written and directed by Tilman Singer

Spoilers: moderate