What I've Caught Up With, February 2025

It’s been a difficult month for my family; my mother is very ill right now, and it’s difficult to deal with because of the diagnosis she has received. I also was down myself for a week with a superficial blood clot in my right calf—nothing serious, but scary, given my genetic history. Because of that, my focus has necessarily been elsewhere. I did watch a few movies of various vintage, though, and most of my viewings were better than average.

On the television front, I did a lot of work on shorter series including The Queen’s Gambit, which was a darling during lockdown. I went back to Marvel shows as well, getting through Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Echo, which respectively were quite good, good until the last episode, and should have been better. I’ve spent a lot of time with Danny McBride shows in February, finishing The Righteous Gemstones and watching all four seasons of Eastbound and Down.

What I’ve Caught Up With, February 2025
Film: Dark City (1950)

One of Charleton Heston’s first starring roles, this noir puts Heston in the role of a gambler named Danny who helps to scam a man (Don DeFore) who loses $5,000 that isn’t his and commits suicide because of it. Suddenly the man’s brother is out for revenge, and starts picking off the gamblers (Ed Begley and Jack Webb) who lead to his brother’s suicide. Since we need to have a romance, we’re going to have Danny involved with lounge singer Fran (husky-voiced Lizabeth Scott). The cast includes a young (!) Henry Morgan. It’s a decent film noir, even if the ending doesn’t really suit the style. Fun to see Heston this young, and before he became a huge star.

Film: Torch Song Trilogy (1988)

In the heart of the Reagan/Bush era, making a movie about gay romance that includes a tragic hate crime is an act of rebellion. Harvey Fierstein, who is almost inherently camp, plays a drag performer who, despite having a voice made of pure gravel, is a torch singer. It’s easy to take Fierstein’s Arnold lightly because of who Fierstein is, but this would be a mistake, because this is a truly heartfelt performance, and one that uses humor to mask the pain of existence as a gay man pre/early-AIDS New York. We get essentially a trio of stories—a failed romance with a bisexual man (Brian Kerwin), a true and tragic love with a younger man (Matthew Broderick), and a confrontation with Arnold’s disapproving mother (Anne Bancroft). This is surprisingly moving and worth tracking down.

Film: Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (2023)

An American serviceman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is wounded deep in Taliban territory with his interpreter (Dar Salim). The two face a struggle returning back to friendly lines. Our serviceman, rotated back to the States, discovers that the man who saved his life has not been given safe passage to the U.S. as promised, and returns to Afghanistan to rescue the man who saved him. It’s a pretty straightforward military tale, and it’s difficult not to find it compelling. That said, there are moments in it that feel like a video game, as Sergeant Kinley and Ahmed are knocking out Taliban soldiers with single shots and avoiding hails of bullets. Also, why is Guy Ritchie’s name stuck on the front of this? It always seems like such a dumb piece of arrogance to do this, with the exception of when John Carpenter does it.

Film: Murder! (1930)

An early foray of Hitchcock into the talkies, there’s some indication of the director he would become, both in terms of how it was made and the subject matter. An actress (Norah Baring) is found next to a dead body and is easily convicted of the crime. One of the members of the jury that convicted her (Herbert Marshall) later determines that she is actually innocent and decides to see if he can figure out what really happened before the unfortunate woman is hanged for a crime she didn’t commit. This ends up being a bit racist by the end. It also has significant problems with pacing. The film runs 102 minutes, but could judiciously be trimmed down to about 85 without losing a thing. It’s clearly Hitchcock, but it’s Hitch before he fully matured. Interesting, but hard to call required.

Film: Eternals (2021)

It’s been some time since I watched an MCU movie, and Eternals was the next one on the list. I have to say that if this had been the first of the MCU films, it probably wouldn’t have been the cultural phenomenon it became. There’s not a lot to love with this. For the casual fan, none of these characters are household names and there’s a whole bunch of them that we’re thrown into. If you want to watch a movie where ancient warriors do battle, watch The Old Guard, which is also a lot more coherent. I realize I haven’t touched on the plot of this, but I don’t know that I need to. Essentially eternal characters have protected Earth for ages and discover they’ve been kind of duped. They fight back for 2 ½ hours. This seems like the most easily skippable MCU, at least so far.

Film: Finding Forrester (2000)

A young Black teen interested mainly in basketball but with a penchant for writing (Rob Brown) encounters by chance a reclusive author (Sean Connery) who is clearly the film’s stand-in for J.D. Sallinger. The older author decides to mentor the promising writer as he looks to find some direction in his life and grow past the world he was in. It’s a solid cast and a compelling story even if it feels a lot like an extended version of the scene in Field of Dreams where Kevin Costner tracks down James Earl Jones combined with elements of Scent of a Woman. Connery played “curmudgeon” really well, and Rob Brown should be better known. Anna Paquin and F. Murray Abraham round out the cast.

Film: Indiscreet (1958)

Indiscreet is a fairly harmless romance of manners starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman as the romantic couple. If you need more of a sell than that, you and I are very different people. Bergman plays an unattached actress and Grant is an economist considering a job for NATO. He’s also a confirmed bachelor, and while he’s taken with Bergman’s Anna, he decides to claim to be married so that he can’t be committed to her. This is literally the entire plot of the film. It’s a harmless piffle, but no one is watching this for intense drama. It’s to see Cary Grant being Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman wearing high fashion. It’s nice to see a romance with someone close to age-appropriate for Grant and I can’t help but wonder what Ernst Lubitsch could have done with this trifle of a story.

Film: Safe in Hell (1931)

Forced into prostitution, Gilda (Dorothy Mackaill) starts a fire and kills the man who ruined her life. Aided by her merchant marine boyfriend Carl (Donald Cook), she escapes the New Orleans police and makes her way to Tortuga, the only place around that has no extradition treaty. She soon discovers that she is the only white woman on the island and is thus the center of attention for the criminals who have resorted to living on Tortuga to avoid the police. She’s decided to be faithful to Carl, but it becomes harder and harder when Mr. Bruno (Morgan Wallace) intercepts her mail to keep her on the edge of destitution. This is a dark pre-Code film, but an interesting one, and Mackaill’s performance as a hardened good-time girl is a banger.