What I've Caught Up With, June 2026 Part 1

On pace for June for me is 33 movies, which is exactly how many I watched. I didn’t catch up at all, which still puts me at 7 movies off the pace for the goal for the year. Hitting the minimum goal is a good enough accomplishment for now, and July offers the opportunity to catch up. As seems to always happen, I was on pace to catch up a bunch and had a week where I watched almost nothing. If I can avoid those weeks, I’ll be on pace in no time.

What I’ve Caught Up With, June 2026 Part 1
Film: Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (1999)

If you’ve watched Babylon 5 and you’re not planning on watching the follow-up series Crusade, this movie is worth seeing but not essential. There’s nothing wrong with it and as sometimes happens in Babylon 5 history, we’ve got a fun guest star; this time it’s the great Tony Todd. Basically, the Shadows—the main threat for the first few seasons of the show—have decided on revenge against humanity. It’s not a bad story, but as tends to be the case with anything like this, it plays like a long episode, more or less a two-parter in terms of length. You can live without it, but if you do decide to watch Crusade, you’ll want to see this first. For what it’s worth, while I really liked the main show, I have no interest in a half season (13 episodes total) of a bunch of side characters.

Film: The Brothers Karamazov (1958)

A true Russian epic, The Brothers Karamazov is a romantic Gordian knot set in Tsarist Russia of the mid-19th century. Katya (Claire Bloom) is in love with dissolute and somewhat degenerate military officer Dmitri Karamazov (Yul Brynner), who in turn falls in love with the vibrant but entirely venal Grushenka (Maria Schell), who is pursued by Karamazov patriarch, Fyodor (Lee J. Cobb), a drunken and unscrupulous businessman. Also in the mix is Ivan Karamazov (Richard Basehart), who falls for Katya, who wants nothing really to do with him. Running interference is Alexey Karamazov (William Shatner! In his film debut!), a monk, who does what he can to placate everyone. Oh, and there’s the bastard son Pavel Smerdyakov (Albert Salmi), who struggles with morality. The performances are solid, the story is big, and the themes of atheism and belief are interesting. While the brothers get top billing, it’s Maria Schell as an almost perfect distillation of a femme fatale who owns this film.

Film: Doc Hollywood (1991)

Most people consider Cars to be one of Pixar’s worst films, but make it live action a good 15 years earlier and you get Doc Hollywood, which is a truly delightful little rom-com. Dr. Ben Stone (Michael J. Fox) is on his way to California to work as a plastic surgeon when a car accident strands him in Grady, SC. Forced to work in the hospital as community service, Dr. Stone interacts with a variety of colorful locals including the alluring Vialula (Julie Warner). This genuinely is what Cars could have and should have been. It’s fun, quotable, and the sort of movie where there really isn’t an antagonist. Great cast—Woody Harrelson, Bridget Fonda, David Ogden Stiers, Frances Sternhagen, and Roberts Blossom among others.

Film: The Mouse on the Moon (1963)

Despite what you might think of the title, there are no small rodents here outside of the animated ones in the credits. This is a sequel to The Mouse that Roared, a movie that didn’t really scream out for a sequel. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick, Europe’s smallest and most backward nation, has issues with its one export—their bottles of wine have started exploding. Desperate for money, they beg the U.S. for a loan under the pretense of wanting to join in the space race. Not wanting to be left out, the Russians start donating materiel, and Grand Fenwick is forced to actually build a rocket rather than just use the money for indoor plumbing. This is a spoof and it’s ridiculous, but it’s hard not to enjoy it.

Film: Saved! (2004)

I grew up in one of the most religious towns in the United States, and that’s not an exaggeration. You don’t leave my hometown; you escape it. Saved! takes place at a Christian high school, and it’s filled characters reminiscent of my teen years. Good girl Mary (Jena Malone) learns that her boyfriend is gay. Wanting to save him for Jesus, she decides to have sex with him and naturally gets pregnant. This sounds like serious business, but this is definitely a comedy held down by Malone, but mainly by the school’s lone Jewish student Cassandra (Eva Amurri) and Mary’s paralyzed brother Roland (Macaulay Culkin), with Mandy Moore’s Hilary Faye as the main antagonist. I enjoyed this, but there were definitely moments of flashback to the holier-than-thou folks I shared a high school with.

Film: The Invisible Woman (1940)

There is a definite connection between horror and comedy. The Invisible Woman is a case not where the two genres are combined but where a franchise moves from one genre to another. This is technically the third film in the Invisible Man franchise but it has absolutely no connection to the two previous films. Shop girl Kitty (Virginia Bruce) is fired, but she’s answered an ad from kooky scientist Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore), who is funded by the suddenly broke Richard Russell (John Howard). Throw in some gangsters and you’ve got everything you need for a farce. This is a fun cast, including Margaret Hamilton as the professor’s housekeeper and Shemp Howard as one of the gangsters. It’s wacky and not great, but it is goofy fun.

Film: Invisible Agent (1942)

Invisible Agent is pure propaganda. Frank Griffin (Joh Hall), grandson of the original invisible man, runs a print shop in New York City. Before America enters the war, he is threatened by Axis agents Conrad Stauffer (Cedric Hardwicke) and Baron Ikito (Peter Lorre) to give up the formula. Once America enters the war, Griffin volunteers to parachute into Germany to do what he can for the war effort. That will apparently include dealing with secret agent and clear love interest Maria Sorenson (Ilona Massey). This is exactly the kind of film you might expect from a country just entered into war and wanting to give the folks at home something to cheer them and perhaps give them hope that U.S. technology would turn the tide.