What I've Caught Up With, March 2025

We lost Mom on the 21st. Not a shock that I didn’t watch a lot this month, as most of it was spent dealing with her decline. As such, a lot of the movies I did watch were more of the comfort variety. I didn’t feel a need to be challenged. I did discover, though, that my Max subscription comes with access to TCM movies, and in March, the artist of the month was my classic movie girlfriend Barbara Stanwyck. So that I spent a lot of time there.

Television-wise, I watched the short Creature Commandos season, and it was fun. I also finished Boardwalk Empire, which is a dandy companion piece to Peaky Blinders. I also finished Bojack Horseman, which was surprisingly deep for a show with so many pop culture references. It does need to be said, though, that I took a break from the show for a bit, and when I came back to it, the first episode I watched was the one where our title character gives a 25-minute eulogy for his mother. Gotta love a coincidence.

What I’ve Caught Up With, March 2025
Film: Fast Color (2018)

Is Fast Color a superhero movie? Kind of, but it really feels like a precursor to 2019’s Freaks. A woman (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who has uncontrollable seizures that cause earthquakes is on the run from scientists who want to study her. The only place of possible safety for her is with her mother (Lorraine Toussaint), who she left years ago, and who is taking care of the woman’s daughter (Saniyya Sidney). The world we’re in here is an apocalyptic one of climate devastation, with crushing droughts. The vision is an odd one, but there are moments of real beauty in it. Mbatha-Raw is always an engaging screen presence, and I like seeing David Straithairn in a supporting role in anything.

Film: Saturday Night (2024)

The show Saturday Night Live has had ups and downs over its enormously long history. It had to start somewhere, and Saturday Night is the story of that first night. How realistic is it? While I’m certain there’s a great deal of license being taken, I would not be shocked if that first show was exactly as chaotic as this presents it to be. It’s a huge cast—too much for a short review like this. It naturally focuses a great deal on Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle). A surprising amount focuses on Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, completely unrelated despite a huge resemblance), the most underused member of the original cast. This is good, but it’s pure chaos and because of that, kind of overwhelming.

Film: No Way to Treat a Lady (1968)

Police detective Morris Brummel (George Segal) gets assigned to the case of a strangler (Rod Steiger) who uses a variety of disguises to get into the good graces of middle-aged women before killing them. In his first murder, while dressed as a priest, the killer is spotted by Kate Palmer (Lee Remick), who then becomes involved with Brummel, who is relentlessly dominated by his shrewish mother who compares him to his doctor brother. There’s some definite humor here, but this is ultimately a pretty solid thriller, and the moments of humor don’t hurt it. George Segal is usually an engaging presence, and Rod Steiger is always worth watching and he’s never had more fun. As for Lee Remick, I’m always happy to see her on screen.

Film: The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)

Ethel Whitehead (Joan Crawford) is a poor married woman who suffers a personal tragedy and decides to leave her abusive husband and disinterested parents to see what the world has to offer. In short order, Ethel is modeling clothes and spending nights escorting the store’s clients around town, and then starts climbing the criminal social ladder from man to man, wanting all she can get out of life. Ethel isn’t very likeable and the story is a bit of a mess, adding new characters near the end, but Joan is up to the task. As a film noir, it’s mid-range at best, but at this stage in her career, you can do a lot worse than spend 100 minutes or so in Joan Crawford’s company.

Film: Ladies They Talk About (1933)

I’m always willing to watch Barbara Stanwyck in pretty much anything, and pre-Code Stanwyck is even better. Sadly, Ladies They Talk About is pretty thin on plot and thinner on the third act. Gun moll Nan (Stanwyck) gets picked up at a bank heist and almost bluffs her way out of it. She gets the benefit of the doubt because she’s being romanced by puritanical radio host David Slade (Preston Foster). When she admits that she really was in on the job, he rats her out, and off Nan goes to prison. Behind bars, Nan makes a friend of Linda (Lillian Roth) and an enemy of Susie (Dorothy Burgess), who is enamored of Slade and angry that he’s got a thing for Nan. The last few minutes are a ridiculous whirlwind and it doesn’t come close to earning its ending, but any excuse to spend 70 minutes with the divine Babs is worth it.

Film: Fahrenheit 451 (2018)

In 1950, Ray Bradbury wrote a book that was a lot less about book burning than people thought. It was actually about the rise of television and what he thought that might eventually do to reading culture. It’s a great book, and the story is one that works incredibly well. So naturally, when a new version of the story is going to be made, it takes nothing but the original premise and makes an entirely new, far worse and much dumber story out of it. Seriously, read Fahrenheit 451 or, if you need a movie version, watch Truffaut’s from the early ‘60s. This one is nonsense and screws up the story and the characters, leaving out massively important elements in favor of what looks like a modified Facebook and tons of emojis. Why do this?

Film: Passage to Marseilles (1944)

The cast of this pro-France propaganda film seems very much like a Casablanca reunion, with Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, Claude Rains, and Peter Lorre with prominent roles. A group of French prisoners escape the penal colony in Guyana to return to France to fight for the homeland against Nazi aggression. We have to have “good guys,” even in this situation, so we learn that Bogart’s Jean is actually a principled newspaper man thrown into prison for anti-Nazi/anti-Vichy views. Eventually, Jean winds up part of a bomber crew running sorties, something that we take a long time to get to in flashback, thanks to a journalist telling his story. It’s a dandy propaganda film, but not much more than that, even if the cast is worth the price of admission.

Film: The Mad Miss Manton (1938)

The first on-screen pairing of Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, The Mad Miss Manton is a sort of screwball comedy that really wants to be thought of as a part of The Thin Man series but can’t quite get there. Society girl Melsa Manton (Stanwyck) finds a dead body and calls the police, but by the time they get back, the body is gone. Melsa has a reputation for pulling pranks and is lambasted in a local newspaper headed by Peter Ames (Fonda). Romance ensues, as does a murder mystery being investigated by Melsa and her gang of wacky society girls. It’s fun and pretty harmless.

Film: My Reputation (1946)

Recently widowed Jessica (Barbara Stanwyck) finds herself smothered by her mother and suddenly without anything to distract her since her sons are off at boarding school. When she is groped by a friend’s husband, she heads off to Lake Tahoe on vacation where she meets Major Scott Landis (George Brent). He’d like a romantic relationship, but she doesn’t really (at least at first), but the gossip mill starts up nonetheless, and our widow is soon not only not wearing black, but is seen as a bit more scarlet. This is not a plot that would play today, and frankly, it barely plays in 1946. Only the divine Barbara Stanwyck saves it from being complete piffle. As it is, it’s only mostly piffle.

Film: Infamous (2006)

You have to hand it to Toby Jones. A year after Philip Seymour Hoffman did the definitive version of Truman Capote in Capote, a movie about the writing of “In Cold Blood,” Jones did a different version of the same story, playing the same role. Jones’s version of Capote is very different from Hoffman’s, but it’s a damned good one. The cast of this one is stellar all the way through, and Daniel Craig makes a very interesting version of Perry Smith. Honestly, I think Capote is probably the better movie, but Jones’s portrayal of what seems to have been the thing that broke Truman Capote as a person is very sympathetic, and while there’s a moment or two that feels like camp, he plays it, pardon the pun, straight. It’s good, but I’m not convinced it’s great.

Film: Executive Suite (1954)

The president of a furniture company drops dead of a stroke on the sidewalk of New York City, throwing the company into chaos, mainly because he never bothered to name his successor. The main executives start a power struggle to take over the company. Manufacturing chief Don Walling (William Holden) is upset with the direction the company is taking, and it looks like it’s going to go the way of Loren Shaw (Fredric March), who is focused only on the bottom line and damn the product quality. This is almost Shakespearean in the way that the characters maneuver to take control. It also has a magnificent cast including Walter Pidgeon, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Shelley Winters, and more. It’s surprisingly engaging.