I watched just 4 movies last week:

• If Little Caesar feels a little dated, to the point almost of parody, that’s largely because Edward G. Robinson so strongly created the template for future gangster movies.
• Jamie Lee Curtis, who stars in Virus called the movie “the all time piece of shit.” Trust her on this.
• Technically a television miniseries, split into two parts, World on a Wire is every inch a 1970s German television production, and if it’s science fictional ideas seem a little familiar now, it’s only because so many later movies have lifted them, or borrowed from the same influences.
• First Men in the Moon is very silly, but also surprisingly delightful and fun.

Finally, I rewatched The Bat, with #HorrorWatch on Bluesky. I thought the same thing as I did back in November when I watched it for the first time: it’s a little silly, a little oddly convoluted, but the cast, including Vincent Price, are a lot of fun.

Last week, there were zero guesses!

Let’s see if we can’t more than double that this week! 😉 If you know the song and artist, guess in the comments below, it’s just that simple. Good luck!

1. “Sail on, silver girl”
   “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel, guessed by Frodis
2. “Tore my shirt to stop you bleedin'”
3. “And the sky was made of amethyst”
4. “Flambeau dancers light the walkway to Jean Pierre’s”
5. “I wonder how the old folks are tonight”
6. “Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now”
   “Crucify” by Tori Amos, guessed by Chris McLaren
7. “Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox”
   “Across the Universe” by Fiona Apple (orig. the Beatles), guessed by Glen
8. “You are cruel and you are constant”
9. “They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom”
   “First We Take Manhattan” by Leonard Cohen, guessed by Chris McLaren
10. “I really think I better get a hold of myself”

I watched another 7 movies last week:

• Hamnet is a wonderful, often excruciatingly beautiful exploration of grief. It takes quite a while to get there, though I can’t decide if that’s by necessity, if that last hour of grief and loss would work as well if you didn’t frame it within the larger love story. The movie has some genuinely incredible performances, not least by the child actor playing the title role, and some of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever seen, especially in that final hour—so much so that I can forgive it for feeling like it’s just waiting for that hour from its very first one.
• I don’t know if I kept waiting for Smiles of a Summer Night to become more, or less, like A Little Night Music, the musical which was based on it. Still, it has several playfully fun scenes and performances, even if there’s nary a clown to be sent in anywhere.
• Oh, Nighthawks is bad. Some of that, I’m sure, is the editing, which chops out whole characters and scenes, but what’s left is so boring and dumb that it’s difficult to see how the movie might have worked even in its original cut. The movie doesn’t even make a compelling case for its title. The Washington Post movie review at the time reportedly panned the movie by calling it “what The Day of the Jackal might have looked like if filmed by the producers of Baretta.” Rutger Hauer is only occasionally compelling, Sylvester Stallone is almost purposefully not, and everyone else gets lost by the wayside.
• Dust Bunny could do with a little more inventiveness in its story and characters to match its production design, but there’s a fun visual flair through most of the film. It’s hardly the best of Bryan Fuller’s work, but he at least acquits himself reasonably well in the transition from TV to movies.

• Pete Hujar’s Day isn’t necessarily profound, beyond finding profundity in the mundane, in the simple act of two people talking to one another, its glimpse of a brief moment of 1970s New York.
• Videoheaven makes a number of interesting observations, but none that it doesn’t belabor or support with too many clips. You could easily sharpen the film’s focus by editing out a full hour of the film’s three, without sacrificing any of its history, connections, or critical appraisals.
• I can’t really recommend Lady Frankenstein—it’s a shoddy mishmash of the Mary Shelley story and some Italian gothic horror—but if you are going to watch it, you could do a lot worse than the version hosted by Elvira.

There were 10 song lyrics last week:

And there are 10 new song lyrics this week:

1. “Even your emotions have an echo in so much space”
   “Crazy” by Shawn Colvin (orig. Gnarls Barkley)
2. “Persecution you must fear”
   “You Can Get It If You Really Want” by Jimmy Cliff
3. “Come on, belly up, to this brave new language”
   “Face Down. Feet First” by Christine Fellows
4. “For once I can touch what my heart used to dream of”
   “For Once in My Life” by Tony Bennett
5. “There’s a reason for the sun-shining sky”
   “Let Your Love Flow” by Bellamy Brothers
6. “I know a girl who thinks of ghosts”
   “She Don’t Use Jelly” by the Flaming Lips
7. “Still you forced a way into my scheme of things”
   “Word on a Wing” by David Bowie
8. “These mishaps you bubble wrap”
   “Let Go” by Frou Frou
9. “The white walls of your dressing room are stained in scarlet red”
   “High-Flying Bird” by Elton John
10. “No one’s teenage pride or throttle”
    “Passage” by Vienna Teng

Guess the song and artist in the comments if you know them! Good luck!

I saw 7 movies last week. There was something of a theme until the very end:

• Upon seeing Angel’s Egg, Hayao Miyazaki reportedly said it was “not something others would understand.” I’m not sure understanding is what the movie wants or expects, but he wasn’t wrong. It’s intriguing, often stunningly animated, but I could not for the life of me tell you what it’s supposed to be about.
• After the Rehearsal feels like a meditation on sadness and the end of a life—I know, a shock for Bergman!—with bare staging and three compelling performances.
• What makes It Was Just an Accident remarkable is not just its harrowing depiction of the cycle of violence, or what it says against the Iranian regime, or how it was filmed in secret, but its humor and humanity in addition to all of that.
• The costumes and special effects in Planeta bur never rise above classic Doctor Who level, and its grasp on planetary science is questionable at best, but it’s an intriguing glimpse into Soviet-era science fiction filmmaking.

• As with his appearances in other films, Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot character in Mon Oncle usually elicits more bemused smiles from me than full-on laughter, and yet there is a lovely and meticulous craft to Tati’s films, as well as a knowing lampooning of the characters and the society they have built around them.
• There’s a loveliness and real sense of longing in Babette’s Feast.
• Some impressive late-game costume and makeup work notwithstanding, The Boneyard is largely terrible, dull and confused for most of its runtime and a mishmash of tones that are ridiculous when they should be scary, creepy when they should be funny. There’s half a half-baked idea in the mess—and it could have been much worse, given what was obviously a very low budget—but I very much did not enjoy this.