2025 Movie Log in Review

Happy New Year! As is traditional, I start the new year off with a review of all the movies I watched in the previous year. Often these are movies I have seen before, especially seasonal family favorites that we return to every year, but you'll also find the list sprinkled with new releases, classics I watched for the first time this year, and lots of movies from the last few decades that I decided to revisit. I keep the log in a notebook throughout the year so that I can keep track of what I watched and when, and I now have a complete list going all the way back to 2010. I know there are lots of websites people use to track their film viewing, but I enjoy the old-school method of keeping a physical journal. This year the annual report has been delayed due to travel, weather, and family obligations in January, but here's the log report for 2025!

 

January (11)

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most  Foul (2024)

The Major and the Minor (1942)

The Princess Comes Across (1936)

 The Flame of New Orleans (1941)

Wicked Little Letters (2023)*

Mean Girls (20204)*

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)*

Lisa Frankenstein (2024)*

Rope (1948)

Saturday Night (2024)

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

* all watched on planes to and from London

 

February (10)

Girl Haunts Boy (2024)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

Down with Love (2003)

Captains Courageous (1937)

The Fall Guy (2024)

Miss Congeniality (2000)

Deathtrap (1982)

The Nice Guys (2016)

Torch Singer (1933)

 

March (9)

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Ed Wood (1994)

Them! (1954)

Shockproof (1949)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

Supernatural (1933)

High Spirits (1988)

To Catch a Thief (1955)

Noises Off (1992)

 

April (5)

Woman of the Year (1942)

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Smokey & the Bandit (1977)

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Foul (2024) - 2nd watch this year

Alias Nick Beal (1949)

 

May (5)

Thunderbolts (2025)

The Big Clock (1948)

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

Adam's Rib (1949)

Ordeal by Innocence (1985)

 

June (3) 

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Love Hurts (2025)

Addams Family Values (1993)

 

July (10)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)

Jaws (1965)

Jaws 2 (1978)

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

Superman (2025)

Rear Window (1954)

Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Star Trek: Section 31 (2025)

 

August (16)

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

Psycho Beach Party (2000)

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

To Catch a Thief (1955) - 2nd watch this year

Desperate Journey (1942)

Mystery Street (1950)

House by the River (1950)

You Never Can Tell (1951)

The Wasp Woman (1959)

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

America's Sweethearts (2001)

Start Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

Mallrats (1995) - not nearly as funny as I remembered from seeing it in 1995

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

 

September (5)

She Done Him Wrong (1933)

Village of the Damned (1960)

Mad Love (1935)

Bugsy Malone (1976)

The Thursday Murder Club (2025) - great cast but the books are much better

 

October (15)

Hold Your Man (1933)

Back to the Future (1985)*

Back to the Future II (1989)*

Back to the Future III (1990)*

Night Monster (1942)

Operation Mincemeat (2021) - delightful WWII story based on real events

Hangover Square (1945)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Timestalker (2024) - very weird but fascinating indie British comedy

Murder, He Says (1945)

The Fog (1980)

Christine (1983)

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters (2024)

KPop Demon Hunters (2025)

*We saw the stage musical of BTTF and rewatched the trilogy as a result

 

November (8)

The Mummy (1932)

Isn't It Romantic (2019) - a meta rom com about rom com tropes

The Wrong Paris (2025) - surprisingly hilarious rom com about reality dating shows

 Baby Face (1933)

The Ladykillers (1955)

Zero Effect (1988) - still a brilliant revision of the Holmes/Watson/Adler dynamic

The Decoy Bride (2011)

Just Like a Christmas Movie (2023) - more meta rom com but very low budget

 

December (9)

Oceans Eight (2018)

Jingle Bell Heist (2025)

Queen Christina (1933)

Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

The Thin Man (1934)

White Christmas (1954)*

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)*

Die Hard (1988)*

Scrooged  (1987)*

*Every year or it's not Christmas!

 

This year's total was 106 movies. I saw very few new releases in the theater (true since Covid started in 2020), and all 3 were summer blockbusters. I watched a lot of movies on the Criterion Channel and streamed some on Netflix or Kanopy, while the rest were from my physical media collection. I've been making more time to read in 2025 and hopefully 2026, as well, which reduces my movie viewing time but has helped me reclaim my attention span and ability to focus after Covid and the general state of things wrecked my mental health. If you make any New Year's resolutions, making time for the things that bring you joy is always a good one!

50 Favorite Films from the 21st Century

The recent list of 100 best films of the 21st century in The New York Times inspired me to think about my own list of favorite movies since the year 2000, even though I think 2025 is much too early to begin talking about the best movies of a whole century. Classic movie fans know that today's critical darling can fade into obscurity after a decade or two, even if it took home an armful of awards, while an overlooked flop can become a beloved staple. The NYT list was compiled with the input of some 500 film professionals, but my list of 50 favorite films is purely personal. My list is not meant to be analytical or in any way objective, and I knew when I read the NYT list that there would be little crossover between our picks. If, however, you're looking for some newer movies to watch that aren't already being touted to you by every major publication as "the best," then my picks might be able to help. 

When making my list, I asked myself these questions: 

1) Have I watched the movie more than once? (I keep a log of every movie I have watched since 2010)

2) Did I love it enough to buy a physical copy? 

3) When I think about the movie, what do I really remember about it and how I felt when I saw it? 

4) How often do I quote the movie? Has it become part of my family's shared language? 

Some additional context will also explain - if not justify - my choices. I became a parent in 2001, so I've spent most of this century raising a child while also working both part and full-time, meaning that I saw a LOT of family films and not nearly as many grown-up movies for much of this period, especially when it came to seeing movies in actual theaters. My personal tastes run to indie films (especially from the UK), musicals, smart comedies (but NOT raunchy ones), romantic comedies if they're clever about it, and horror comedies that aren't too graphic or gruesome. I love sci-fi, superhero, and comic book movies, but I don't want them to be joyless or grim because I already get my daily dose of despair from reading the news. Rather than ranking my choices, which I would find absolutely impossible, I'm presenting them in chronological order, so we can stroll through the first 25 years of this cinematic century together. Asterisks indicate my top ten personal favorites from this list!

 

1 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) *

2 Chicken Run (2000)

3 The Emperor's New Groove (2000) *

4 The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) *

5 Spirited Away (2001)

6 Love Actually (2003)

7 Down with Love (2003)

8 Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

9 Hellboy (2004) 

10 Shaun of the Dead (2004)

11 Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005)

12 Corpse Bride (2005)

13 Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) 

14 Fido (2006)

15 Hot Fuzz (2007) *

16 Mamma Mia! (2008)

17 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008)

18 True Grit (2010) 

 

19 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) *

20 The Shape of Water (2011)

21 Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) *

22 Warm Bodies (2013)

23 Iron Man 3 (2013)

24 What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

25 Chef (2014)

26 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

27 Hail, Caesar! (2016)

28 The Nice Guys (2016)

29 Hunt for the Wildepeople (2016)

30 Star Trek Beyond (2016)

31 Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

32 Kong: Skull Island (2017)

33 Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

34 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

35 Little Women (2019)

36 Knives Out (2019)

37 Rocketman (2019)

38 Emma (2020)

39 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

40 Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

41 Werewolves Within (2021)

42 Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022)

43 Glass Onion (2022) *

44 Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) *

45 A Haunting in Venice (2023)

46 Barbie (2023)

47 Hundreds of Beavers (2023) *

48 Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

49 The Fall Guy (2024)

50 Superman (2025) *

 

2024 Movie Log in Review

It's time for my annual look back at the previous year's movie viewing! 2024 was another busy year for my family, and as usual my movie viewing was dependent on other people's schedules and preferences. My list for 2024 therefore represents a mix of old and newer movies, some chosen by the other members of the household. Many of these are films I have seen before, but I did manage to see some new-to-me pictures throughout the year, too.

Since the pandemic, my in-theater movie viewing has become almost non-existent, partly due to the closure of my favorite local theater but also because of ticket prices, audience misbehavior, and the long run times of modern movies with all of their attached ads and trailers. I don't live in a city with a real film culture or an indie theater/museum that shows a lot of classic films, so I watch most of those movies at home anyway, and these days I'm also watching newer movies from the comfort of my living room couch. Almost all of the movies in this year's list were either seen at home or shown by me to my lifetime learners and retirement community group. Thanks to my subscription to the Criterion Channel, I have access to some interesting new-to-me classics every month, but I've also leaned into physical media this year to expand my personal collection of films I want to continue to enjoy. I'll post later about the DVDs and Blu-rays I've recently added to my stash.

Here's the complete list of films viewed for 2024, with links to my relevant posts from this year on this blog and over at Classic Movie Hub.

January

Escape from New York (1981)

The Shadow of the Cat (1961)

The Cat Creeps (1946)

The Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)

The Pirate (1948)

Dumplin' (2018)

Nimona (2023)

Cat's Eye (1985)

Work It (2020)

Jezebel (1938)

We Have a Ghost (2023)

Burlesque (2010)

Lift (2023)

February

The Seventh Veil (1945)

My Name is Julia Ross (1945)

When Strangers Marry (1944)

Plus One (2019)

Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Dark Victory (1939)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Mad Love (1935)

Defending Your Life (1991)

The Frighteners (1996)

Hundreds of Beavers (2023)

March

Dodge City (1939)

Annie (1982)

Falling for Figaro (2020)

Damsel (2024)

The Ghost Goes West (1935)

Godzilla (2014)

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Damn Yankees (1958)

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

April

Lured (1947)

Three Godfathers (1948)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Born to Be Bad (1950)

Hundreds of Beavers (2023) 2nd time this year

Them! (1954)

May 

Vera Cruz (1954)

What a Way to Go! (1964)

Three Amigos (1986)

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

The Fall Guy (2024)

Laura (1944)

June

Noises Off (1992)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

The Ladykillers (1955)

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Born Yesterday (1950)

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

July

Phffft (1954)

Jaws (1975)

Out of Sight (1998)

State and Main (2000)

You Can't Take It with You (1938)

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

Artists and Models (1955)

The Big Sleep (1978)

August

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Brighton Rock (1948)

The Last of Sheila (1973)

Inferno (1953)

Desert Fury (1947)

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997)

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

His Kind of Woman (1951)

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Blithe Spirit (1945)

Con Air (1997)

Hope Floats (1998)

Brats (2024)

Twisters (2024)

September 

My Cousin Vinny (1992)

The Awful Truth (1937)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Spirit Halloween (2022)

Muppet Treasure Island (1996)

Frankenweenie (1984)

October

Frankenstein (1931)

My Favorite Wife (1940)

Christine (1983)

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

House of the Long Shadows (1983)

Viy (1967)

Fido (2006)

I Married a Witch (1942)

Addams Family Values (1993)

Muppets Haunted Mansion (2021)

The Monster Squad (1987)

November

Notorious (1946)

Ghost Rider (2007)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

This Gun for Hire (1942)

Year without a Santa Claus (1974)

Muppets Christmas Carol (1992)

Scrooged (1988)

December

White Christmas (1955)

Anything Goes (1936)

On Dangerous Ground (1951)

Inside Out 2 (2024)

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Die Hard (1988)

It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947)

Scrooged (1988) 2nd time this year

The Avengers (2012)

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Hit Man (2024) 

 

Total for 2024: 111

Annoyingly, my total for 2024 is 19 fewer than I watched in 2023, with several months where I only got to watch 6 movies (April, May, and June). In my defense, I was spending a lot of time in early 2024 finishing up Space, the Feminist Frontier: Essays on Sex and and Gender in Star Trek, and I was also finishing another novel manuscript that I will have to figure out what to do with in 2025. 

Happy New Year to all the classic movie fans and film fanatics! I hope your 2025 will be full of great movies and good fortune.

Meeting Marilyn at Universal Studios

This spring has been one thing after another! Family travel, a totaled car, an actual tornado that hit my neighborhood, and a couple of bouts of minor illness have kept me away from the blog for too long. I hope to get a full movie review up soon, but to make up for my absence here's a highlight from my trip to Universal Studios Orlando in April: me cracking up the Marilyn Monroe impersonator with my impression of Jack Lemmon saying "Daphne!" 

 

In spite of Universal's tremendous history as a film studio, the parks really lean into the more recent blockbusters (I'm hoping the new Universal Monsters area at Epic Universe will actually honor the classic versions and not just the reboots, but we'll see). Marilyn is one of relatively few classic movie characters featured at the theme park, and she didn't have much of a line when we saw her out greeting guests. Of course I complimented her dress from The Seven Year Itch (1955). That led to a wonderful little conversation about Billy Wilder and then Some Like It Hot (1959), which I had just rewatched a few weeks before our trip.

 

I was impressed by the performer's knowledge of Marilyn and her films; she had clearly worked hard to know her character even though most of the guests won't be able to appreciate her efforts. If you happen to visit the Orlando parks, do take a few minutes to chat with "Marilyn" if you see her!

2023 Movie Log in Review

Happy New Year! Here's hoping that 2024 brings you good moments and many great movies. It's time again to look back at the last year of my movie viewing and make the final tally of films watched. My classic movie choices for 2023 were heavily affected by the many great collections on the Criterion Channel last year, and I'm looking forward to another year of old favorites and new discoveries there. Most of the other streaming services continue to be useless for classic films, but I watched quite a few new movies on them. Visits to the theater continue to be low compared to pre-pandemic numbers; we saw a few new releases on the big screen this year - including super hit Barbie - but in general it just wasn't worth the cost and hassle, especially after we were accosted by a drunk/high and very noisy audience member at Dungeons and Dragons. Much of my energy in 2023 went to work on a forthcoming anthology of feminist essays about Star Trek, so I spent a lot of time rewatching episodes and films from that iconic franchise (more about that later!). 

Here's the monthly breakdown for every movie I watched at home or elsewhere in 2023.

January

The Woman on the Beach (1947)

Francis (1950)

Forbidden Planet (1956)

The Nice Guys (2016)

Love is News (1937)

Honor Society (2023)

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

Big Brown Eyes (1936)

The Pale Blue Eye (2023)

Dead of Night (1945)

Goldeneye (1995)

February

The Unknown (1927)

Pillow Talk (1959)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Harvey (1950)

The Suspect (1944)

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Rosaline (2022)

The Sound of 007 (2022)

Lover Come Back (1961)

Phantom Lady (1944)

A View to a Kill (1985)

Send Me No Flowers (1964)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

The Queen of Spades (1949)

March

Dancing Lady (1933)

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

The Princess Bride (1987)

42nd Street (1933)

The Heroic Trio (1993)

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

Antman: Quantumania (2023)

Clue (1985)

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022)

Thunder on the Hill (1951)

Prom Pact (2023)

April

Sky High (2005)

The Importance of Being Earnest (1951)

A Woman's Face (1941)

Grease 2 (1982)

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Magic (1978)

 

May  (my kid graduated from college and we had a big family trip to the UK!)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

 

June

The Lost King (2023)

What's Love Go to Do With It? (2022)

For Me and My Gal (1942)

Monkey Business (1952)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

 

July

Polite Society (2023)

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

The Mad Miss Manton (1938)

On the Town (1949)

The Woman in Question (1950)

 

August

Haunted Mansion (2023)

Barbie (2023)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

Asteroid City (2023)

Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Ladies in Retirement (1941)

Brigadoon (1954)

 

September 

Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980)

Mr. Vampire (1985)

Mr. Vampire II (1986)

Mr. Vampire III (1987)

Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Jane Eyre (1943)

Mr. Vampire IV (1988)

MST3K: Beyond Atlantis (1973) - live at the Center for Puppetry Arts

Ivy (1947)

Moss Rose (1947)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2023)

Blanche Fury (1948)

Elemental (2023)

3000 Years of Longing (2022)

 

October

Red, White and Royal Blue (2023)

So Long at the Fair (1950)

Murders in the Zoo (1933)

Doctor X (1932)

Haunted Mansion (2023) - second time this year

The Old Dark House (1933)

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Corridor of Mirrors (1948)

Gaslight (1944)

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Dial M for Murder (1954)

The Monster Squad (1987)

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

So Evil My Love (1947)

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Devotion (1946)

The Lost Boys (1987)

Dead Again (1991)

Freaks (1932)

Madeline (1950)

Hocus Pocus (1993)

Haunted Spooks (1920)

Bewitched (2005)

No Hard Feelings (2023)

Casper (1995)

 

November

The Lodger (1944)

The Quick and the Dead (1995)

Johnny Guitar (1954)

Rancho Notorious (1952)

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)

The Marvels (2023)

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

High Anxiety (1977)

Dragnet (1987)

Werewolves Within (2021)

The Cheat (1931)

Three on a Match (1932)

 

December

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

Repeat Performance (1947)

Bell, Book and Candle (1958)

The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)

Die Hard (1988)

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Hudson Hawk (1991)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Scrooged (1987)

White Christmas (1955)

Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)

Love, Actually (2003)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

A Christmas Story (1983)

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

Glass Onion (2022)

 

Total for 2023: 130

I watched 23 more movies in 2023 than in 2022, so that's an improvement! As usual, it's an eclectic mix of classics, new releases, family favorites, and weeknight compromises with the spouse.

 

 

My Criterion Closet Wish List

I really enjoy watching the Criterion Closet Picks videos where various actors and filmmakers get to choose movies to take home with them. Their selections reveal interesting details about their tastes and experience with film, although they do tend to favor certain genres, decades, and directors, partly because of the generational range of the guests themselves and partly because of the cinematic tastes cultivated by being in the film business. I don't own a lot of Criterion Collection discs because I spent many years building up a classic movie DVD collection back when they were more widely available and fairly cheap, but now that DVDs and Blu-rays of classic movies are much harder to acquire I am increasingly turning to Criterion and Kino Lorber to expand my collection.

The Closet Picks videos always make me wish I could afford a full scale Criterion shopping spree, but if, by magic or divine intervention, I got to be a guest on Closet Picks, what movies would I choose? I'd want to pick films I don't already own and that I have seen at least once and know I would enjoy owning. I'm limiting myself to eight movies because the Closet Picks videos only show a handful being selected, which means I spent a lot of time narrowing my list! 

Here's my fantasy Criterion Closet list:

I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) - I absolutely adore this comic gem from Powell and Pressburger, with Wendy Hiller as a headstrong young woman determined to marry a rich, older man in spite of the handsome Scottish laird fate suddenly throws her way. The location cinematography, the delightful visual style, and the wonderful characters make this movie truly special. 

Nightmare Alley (1947) - As much as I love the romantic swashbuckling version of Tyrone Power, I can't deny his brilliance as the scheming carny in this original movie adaptation of the novel. It's one of the weirder noir classics, but the carnival sideshow makes a perfect setting for noir's favorite themes. The Criterion Blu-ray has been in my Amazon wish list for ages, but other items keep taking precedence.

The Third Man (1949) - Carol Reed's fantastic post-war noir is such a great use of Orson Welles' sinister charisma. Who can resist Harry Lime? Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli are also terrific, and the musical score really gets into your head. I've seen this movie several times, but somehow I haven't managed to own it yet, even though I love it enough to build LEGO tributes to its more iconic scenes.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) - I would love to own all of the Ealing Studios films, but this one is especially hilarious thanks to Alec Guinness playing eight different characters. It's currently listed as out of print on the Criterion website, but I bet they still have copies in that closet. (It looks like Kino Lorber might have this and some other Ealing pictures available for those of us who can't get invited to raid the closet or launch a daring Ladykillers style heist.)  

Stagecoach (1939) - Along with My Darling Clementine (1946), this is one of my favorite John Ford Westerns, thanks to its amazing ensemble cast. John Wayne doesn't show up right away, but he has a tender romance with Claire Trevor that works beautifully and allows him to be sweet and vulnerable. I'm a sucker for great character actors, and this movie just bursts with them  - John Carradine, Andy Devine, Thomas Mitchell, and Donald Meek all have significant roles.

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) - I don't have an actual Boris Karloff movie on this list, but he's present in spirit for this wacky Capra adaptation of the stage play, in which Karloff played the role taken by Raymond Massey for the movie version. This is one my top Halloween favorites, so it's a shame I don't own it yet, but I went with the Criterion edition of I Married a Witch (1942) the last time I had to pick which Halloween comedy to buy.

Beauty and the Beast (1946) - Jean Cocteau's dreamy fairy tale is a great starter choice for kids and people just venturing into foreign classics. It's both deeply familiar and hauntingly strange, and Disney borrowed heavily from it for their own animated version of the old story. Every frame is just gorgeous, and I'd love to be able to revisit it whenever I want.

Mildred Pierce (1945) - This Joan Crawford tour de force is another one I've seen several times but haven't managed to pick up yet for my personal collection. It's packed with so many of the things I love in classic movies - female narratives, noir style, romance and melodrama, great cinematography and costumes. Women's noir fascinates me, and this is one of the very best of the genre. I especially appreciate the way it focuses on Mildred's relationship with her poisonous daughter and the lengths to which the guilt-stricken Mildred will go to protect her.

Two Criterion films I already own (both great!).

That's my wish list! Some of the movies that almost made the final eight are To Be or Not to Be (1942), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Hobson's Choice (1954), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), and The Heiress (1949), but there are dozens of others in the Criterion catalog that I would love to own. What movies would you pick from the Criterion Closet if you had the opportunity?*

* Reminder! If, like me, you enjoy classic movies on a more modest budget, you can get access to a wide selection of Criterion titles by subscribing to the Criterion Channel, which is a great bargain at $11 a month.

Time to Quit Twitter

It's time to quit Twitter.

I joined Twitter over a decade ago to connect with classic movie fans, writers, fellow LEGO enthusiasts, and other people who shared some of my eclectic interests. It was, for many years, a satisfying experience that introduced me to films, books, and people I would not otherwise have found, including my current gig writing a monthly column for Classic Movie Hub. This week, however, I decided the time had finally come to pull the plug on my Twitter account. 

It has been a gradual process of disillusionment, but the current state of Twitter makes it less useful, less enjoyable, and more problematic than ever. I'll miss the good old days and the classic movie people I interacted with, but I've seen less and less of them in recent years, as my feed became flooded with the most aggressive retweeters and promoted posts. I found that looking at Twitter increased my anxiety but not my knowledge or feeling of connection, and now basic services on the site are rapidly shifting to "paid only" access, while Elon Musk treats Twitter as his personal megaphone and cudgel.

Enjoying real life at Niagara Falls in 2022. So much better than Twitter!

Going forward, you'll find links to my blog posts on my Tumblr account. Classic movie and LEGO content will also continue on my Instagram, along with way too many pictures of my cats. I am not, at this time, attempting to join one of the new social media sites like Mastodon. This blog will continue, too, although I long ago stopped trying to make it profitable. It's purely a labor of love, and I find that the regular writing practice is good for me. I hope my posts here on Virtual Virago occasionally find readers who enjoy them. You can also read my Silver Screen Standards column each month at Classic Movie Hub!

Finally, if you really want to be supportive, you can always visit my Amazon Author page and buy a book.

2022 Movie Log in Review

Happy New Year! Here's my annual post listing every movie I watched in the previous year. Getting the Criterion Channel rather late in 2022 helped me add more new-to-me classics to my list - it's far and away my favorite streaming service at the moment, and I plan to continue using it in 2023. As always, my list is a wide-ranging collection of classics, favorite hits, and new movies. June and August were busy months for family travel, gardening, and other activities, which meant less time for movies. As always, we closed out the year with the family's holiday favorites.

Total for 2022: 107

January 

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

Sparrows (1926)

Iron Monkey (1993)

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Afterlife of the Party (2021)

Dark City (1998)

The Egg and I (1947)

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

Easy A (2010)

Jonah Hex (2010)

Jolt (2021)

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

February

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

It Happened One Night (1934)

Down with Love (2003)

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)

Palm Springs (2020)

March

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

The Haunted Palace (1963)

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

Turning Red (2022)

Save Yourselves! (2020)

That Night in Rio (1941)

Midnight (1939)

Death on the Nile (2022)

April

Holiday (1938)

The French Dispatch (2021)

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Turning Red (2022) - Second time

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Cruella (2021)

 

May

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) - Second time

The Lady Eve (1941)

The Lost City (2022)

Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

June

Fire Island (2022)

Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

 

July

Stage Fright (1950)

Bombshell (1933)

The Bad Guys (2022)

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)

 

August

Lightyear (2022)

The Sea Beast (2022)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

September

Holiday Affair (1949)

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

The Blob (1958)

Star Trek (2009)

Destry Rides Again (1939)

The Mark of Zorro (1920)

Marjorie Prime (2017)

Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)

 

October

Do Revenge (2022)

Angel Face (1952)

Winchester 73 (1950)

The Corpse Vanishes (1942)

Tormented (1960)

The Curse of Bridge Hollow (2022)

Wolfen (1981)

Elvira's Haunted Hills (2001)

The Raven (1935)

Caught (1949)

The Mummy (1932)

November

The Blue Dahlia (1946)

This Gun for Hire (1942)

The Dark Corner (1946)

Cape Fear (1962)

The Glass Key (1942)

Out of the Fog (1941)

I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)

The Man from Laramie (1955)

The Divorce of Lady X (1938)

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

The Bubble (2022)

See How They Run (2022)

The People We Hate at the Wedding (2022)

December

Twentieth Century (1934)

Murder, He Says (1945)

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)

You Never Can Tell (1951)

Pinocchio (GDT version) (2022)

Lady in the Lake (1946)

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

His Girl Friday (1940)

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

White Christmas (1954)

Scrooged (1988)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

Glass Onion (2022)

Knives Out (2019)

Your Christmas or Mine (2022)

The Addams Family (1991)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Easy Living (1937)

Strange World (2022)

The Adam Project (2022)

Bullet Train (2022)

LEGO Star Wars: Be My BBY

People who know me in real life or who read this blog frequently already know that I love combining my passions for LEGO and movies. As a Gen Xer I have a particular soft spot for the original Star Wars trilogy, and of course I love Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. The daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, Carrie was a true princess of Classic Hollywood as well as an icon in her own right. I've been enjoying the appearance of young Leia on the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+, and I think casting did a great job choosing Vivien Lyra Blair. 

Here's a recent LEGO MOC that celebrates my love for A New Hope and the love we fans feel for Princess Leia and her scruffy looking nerf herder, Han Solo. I know Han and Leia didn't get together until later, but the pun was just too good to resist, and this piece was built for a Valentine's Day themed contest in my club, TNVLC. Here we see Han and Leia (or maybe it's Harrison and Carrie?) stealing a kiss just before the Battle of Yavin.

 

BE MY BBY

 

Making the News with The Muppets

 Some years ago my dear friend and fellow popular culture scholar Anissa Graham and I co-edited two books about the works of Jim Henson. They're essay anthologies featuring scholarly discussions by a wide variety of authors, including us, and they were a lot of fun to create. Both of the books were published by McFarland and are still in print today. The first is Kermit Culture and the second is The Wider Worlds of Jim Henson. You'll find them on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions, and they can be purchased from other book retailers, as well.

As a result of our work on those books, we sometimes get to do cool Muppet related stuff, and this week brought an unexpected opportunity to talk about the Muppets with a journalist from CNN. I thought some of my blog readers might enjoy the article, so here's the link:

"The Muppets are having a moment - just when we need them most" (CNN, Jan 23, 2022)

I really enjoyed talking to CNN's Scottie Andrew about the Muppets, and I think the article is a great discussion of their current cultural importance. Luckily for Scottie, it's a print article, so she didn't have to worry about suffering the fate of the Muppet News Flash anchor on The Muppet Show!

If you're interested in more of my Muppet related shenanigans, you can listen to my 2013 interview with the BBC radio program, "Last Word," marking the death of Jane Henson. I also appear as a guest on a couple of episodes of "Movin' Right Along: A Muppet Movie Podcast," hosted by ToughPigs Muppet super fans Ryan Roe and Anthony Strand.

For more Muppet posts here on the blog, try these:

Classic Films in Focus: THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979)

The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me: Reflections on The Muppets

Classic Movie Tourist: A Day in Hollywood 

Christmas Movie Blogathon: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Classic Movie Stars on The Muppet Show 

Fantastic at 50: Classic Movie Actresses

Earlier this month I celebrated my 50th birthday, one of those milestone events that feels important even if the pandemic kept me from doing much to mark the occasion. Several years ago, when I was 42, I wrote a post about 42 year old classic movie actresses and the films they made at that age, so this seems like a good time to revisit the idea and think about stars who enjoyed significant moments in their careers when they were 50. Of course, being 50 in 2022 is quite a bit different from being 50 in 1952, and Hollywood actresses in the studio era faced tremendous age discrimination. The women who managed long careers did so through versatility, perseverance, talent, and sheer determination. Here are a few of my favorite classic movie actresses and the films they made in their 50th year.

Katharine Hepburn, born in 1907, made the great romantic comedy Desk Set in 1957, one of her many pictures with costar Spencer Tracy. It's a funny, sweet story that highlights middle aged romance and women with careers, and it's actually one of my favorite movies that the pair made together. Of course, Hepburn would go on to even more great roles and Oscar nominations after 50, including three Best Actress wins.

Hepburn's Desk Set costar, Joan Blondell, was a year older, but she also enjoyed a long career. In 1956 the 50 year old star appeared as part of the ensemble cast in The Opposite Sex, a remake of the 1939 hit, The Women. Although she's best remembered today for her dozens of Pre-Code and other 1930s films, Blondell went right on acting until her death in 1979.

Bette Davis, born in 1908, was mostly doing television work in 1958, with a couple of guest spots on different series over the course of her 50th year. Even top stars like Davis and Crawford found big film roles harder to come by as they aged, especially if they wanted to avoid playing supporting characters like mothers to younger leading ladies. Davis, however, would eventually lean into horror roles and make the most of her lifelong ability to transform herself into extreme characters. Like Blondell, she would continue acting right up until her death in 1989.

Gloria Swanson was 51 by the time Sunset Blvd. appeared in theaters in 1950, but the actress really was 50 years old when she played the 50 year old Norma Desmond. It's a role that digs into the crisis of aging for a Hollywood actress, and it's not exactly flattering. Still, Swanson is brilliant in the film, and it's a shame the movie didn't inspire a revival for the star. Her leading man, William Holden, was still enjoying big movie roles well into his 50s, but Swanson, who earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Sunset Blvd., moved on to television appearances and semi-retirement.

Of course, some actresses fared better after 50 than others, with comic character actresses being some of the best at maintaining their careers. Long-legged Charlotte Greenwood made Down Argentine Way (1940), Mary Wickes appeared in Cimmaron (1960), Marjorie Main made seven films in 1940, and her friend Spring Byington took on ten roles in her 50th year in 1936. They had never been famous for their glamorous youth and beauty, and they trooped along through the decades in supporting roles that allowed them to keep working long after the starlet types had been forced into retirement.

When I look at modern actresses who are turning 50 this year, I see Cameron Diaz, Rebecca Romijn, Toni Collette, Jennifer Garner, and Gwyneth Paltrow, all of whom are still working and even thriving with their careers. I doubt they'll have to resort to hagsploitation roles like Davis and Crawford, and it's encouraging to think that we see 50 differently now than we did during the classic movie era. Personally, I'm feeling pretty good about being 50, and I plan to celebrate with several special blog posts in the weeks ahead.

If you're turning 50 this year, too, happy birthday, and remember, Jessica Tandy won an Oscar at 80, so you're definitely not too old to accomplish something big!

2021 Movie Log in Review

It's that time again, when I post my my movie log in review for the previous year and reflect on another year's worth of movie watching. 2021 continued to be dominated by the pandemic, which affected my movie viewing in several ways. I saw exactly one new release in an actual theater in 2021, and that was the disappointing Marvel offering, The Eternals. Alabama has done almost nothing to curb Covid cases, and theaters just haven't felt safe or worth the risk. Vaccinations did allow me to return to my lifetime learners and retirement community residents for film programs in the summer and fall, and I really enjoyed being with them again. With my family still at home for much of the year, newer movies remained a more popular group choice in the evenings, and I had less time to squeeze in classics that I hadn't seen before. We also watched a lot of British murder mysteries and Disney+ TV series.

Here's the list for 2021 - let's hope that we'll eventually see some normalcy again in 2022!

January (15)

The Return of the King (2003)

The Enchanted Cottage (1945)

Valley Girl (2020)

Dragonslayer (1981)

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003)

The New Mutants (2020)

Fisherman's Friends (2019)

Judy (2019)

Never Too Late (2020)

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

Max Reload and the Nether Blasters (2020)

Evil Under the Sun (1981)

The Mirror Crack'd (1980)

House (1977)

The History of Future Folk (2012)

 
February (9)

Yojimbo (1961)

The Mark of Zorro (1940)

The Flesh and the Fiends (1960)

Space Sweepers (2020)

Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1997)

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

Cast a Deadly Spell (1991)

Gotham by Gaslight (2018)

Justice League Dark: Apokalips War (2020)

 

March (2)

Legally Blonde (2001)

Stagecoach (1939)

 

April (6)

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

The Gay Divorcee (1934)

So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

Mystery Men (1999)

Dark Shadows (2012)

The Reluctant Debutante (1958)

 

May (7)

Scooby Doo (2002)

In the Good Old Summertime (1949)

Summer Stock (1950)

The Harvey Girls (1946)

Separate Tables (1958)

Rachel and the Stranger (1948)

Bathing Beauty (1944)

 

June (11)

Streets of Fire (1984)

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

42nd Street (1933)

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)

Dangerous When Wet (1953)

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

In the Heights (2021)

Luca (2021)

Suicide Squad (2018)

Roxanne (1987)

Hidalgo (2004)

 

July (16)

Demolition Man (1993)

The Mummy (1999)

Black Widow (2021)

The Avengers (2012)

Pygmalion (1938)

My Fair Lady (1964)

Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)

She's All That (1999)

Victor/Victoria (1982)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

The Opposite Sex (1956)

Miss Congeniality (2000)

Ocean's 8 (2018)

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

Jungle Cruise (2021)

The Truman Show (1994)

 

August (7)

Ivanhoe (1954)

The Birdcage (1996)

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2020)

The Green Knight (2021)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Jurassic Park II: The Lost World (1997)

Cruella (2021)

 

September (4)

Cinderella (2021)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

The 39 Steps (1935)

The Haunting (1963)

 

October (11)

They Drive by Night (1940)

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

The Duff (2015)

The Haunted Hotel (2021)

Death on the Nile (2004)

Good News (1947)

House on Haunted Hill (1959) - Again!

Carnival of Souls (1963)

The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

Monster House (2006)

Horror of Dracula (1958)

 

November (7)

The Sparks Brothers (2020)

To Have and Have Not (1944)

Free Guy (2021)

The Harder They Fall (2021)

The Eternals (2021)

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) - 2x this month

December (16)

Love Hard (2021)

The Big Sleep (1946)

Single All the Way (2021)

Mixtape (2021)

My Man Godfrey (1936)

A Castle for Christmas (2021)

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)

Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Encanto (2021)

Scrooged (1988)

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Gremlins (1984)

Gremlins II (1990)

Love and Monsters (2020)

White Christmas (1954) 

Total film count for 2021: 111

2020 Movie Log in Review

As we all know, 2020 was a year unlike any other. With the pandemic raging and constant political crises unfolding, we needed movies to comfort us more than ever but couldn't leave the house to enjoy them. My 2020 movie log reflects the fact that I usually had company on the couch and that our collective tastes leaned toward movies that took our minds off the overwhelming problems of the day. With that in mind, here's the log for 2020.

 

January 

The Black Cauldron (1985)

But I'm a Cheerleader! (1999)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)

Troop Zero (2019)

MIB International (2019)

Blinded by the Light (2019)

Master of Dark Shadows (2019)

Payment on Demand (1951)

The Strawberry Blonde (1941)

Old Acquaintance (1943)

February

Big Business (1988)

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

Night of the Comet (1984)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

To All the Boys: PS I Still Love You (2020)

Birds of Prey (2020)

The Fog (1980)

Shaun the Sheep: Farmaggedon (2019)

Tremors (1990)

March

Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Casablanca (1942)

Onward (2020)

Galaxy Quest (1999)

Tremors (1990) - yes, again

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020)

April

Smoke Signals (1998)

Jaws (1975)

The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

The More the Merrier (1943)

Willow (1988)

Rashomon (1950)

The Women (1939)

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

May

The Half of It (2020)

Tangled (2010)

Star Trek Nemesis (2002)

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Escape from New York (1981)

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Emma (2020)

Soap Dish (1991)

June

Rocketman (2019)

The Vast of Night (2019)

Batman Forever (1995)

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Heartbreakers (2001)

Marty (1955)

July 

Knives Out (2019)

The Haunted Mansion (2003)

The Invisible Man (1933)

Hamilton (2020)

Clash of the Titans (1981)

Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

The Creeping Flesh (1973)

Madam Satan (1930)

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

The Avengers (2012)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Jurassic World (2015)

August

Extra Ordinary (2020)

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Feel the Beat (2020)

Steel Magnolias (1989)

Jumanji: The Next Level (2020)

Emo - The Musical (2016)

Bill and Ted Face the Music (2020)

September

Countess Dracula (1971)

Twins of Evil (1971)

Stage Mother (2020)

Wonder Man (1945)

The Sons of Tennessee Williams (2010)

Fade to Black (1980)

Poltergeist (1982)

Disclosure (2020)

Valley Girl (1983)

Suburban Gothic (2014)

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

October

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Paris is Burning (1990)

Theater of Blood (1973)

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

The Monster Club (1981)

Vampires vs. the Bronx (2020)

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989)

The Addams Family (2019)

The Selling (2011)

How to Survive a Plague (2012)

The Petrified Forest (1936)

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

The Red House (1947)

Tremors: Shrieker Island (2020)

Paranorman (2012)

The Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting (2020)

November

Now, Voyager (1942)

The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)

The Late Edwina Black (1951)

Holidate (2020)

Sabrina (1954)

Hello, Dolly! (1969)

That Touch of Mink (1962)

Return of the Jedi (1983)

White Christmas (1954)

 

December

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Jingle Jangle (2020)

Barbarella (1968)

Rogue One (2016)

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Mank (2020)

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)

A Christmas Carol (1938)

The Prom (2020)

Scrooged (1988)

Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020)

A Christmas Story (1983)

Die Hard (1988)

Soul (2020)

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

The Two Towers (2002)

(And the first movie of 2021 was, of course, The Return of the King!)

Total movies watched in 2020: 128

Side note on 2020 viewing: We also watched all four seasons of Star Wars: Rebels this year, which was time well spent. Other TV series for 2020 included Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Lower Decks, The Mandalorian, Bridgerton, and the British comedy/quiz series, QI, which became a favorite bedtime show for the whole family.

2020, The Year Without Movies

2020 - a year of masks, not movies.

The last movie I saw in a theater was Onward back in March of 2020. It was spring break for my college freshman, who had brought a friend home for the holiday, and that week we were also finally closing on the sale of our old house, six months after moving into our new one across town. It should have been a celebratory week, but instead the pandemic loomed over us. The small talk at the closing was all about the virus, but in vague terms; nobody had really grasped what was about to happen. We had been to our usual theater earlier that week to see Onward with the kids, but it was never crowded there, and I didn't really think about it. By March 12th, when we closed on the sale and went out to dinner to mark the occasion, I was suddenly terribly aware of how crowded the restaurant was and for the first time felt a sense of panic about other people that has now become all too familiar. By the end of the week we were making a headlong rush back to the college in Florida to clear out the kids' dorms because the school was shutting down.

I haven't been inside a movie theater or a restaurant since then, and I don't know when I'll be back. The restaurant is still there - we've enjoyed their curbside service several times - but the movie theater is gone. I haven't driven by the spot where they're now demolishing it, but I feel its absence. I wonder what the friendly ticket seller we always chatted with is doing now. I hope she found another job before they officially closed the place and sold it. There are other theaters in town, farther from our house and more expensive, but I have no idea when I'll consider going to one of them. Vaccination is probably still months away for me, and by then, who knows what will be happening with all these new variants of the virus?

One of the last movie days with the retirement community.

2020 was a long year for a lot of reasons, but among the things we've lost are the movies. I don't mean streaming, of course. The streaming services had a banner year, and right now they're betting on another one. What we lost was the communal experience of movies that happens in a theater when people who might have nothing else in common gather to laugh, cry, scream, and shout at flickering images on a big screen. Somehow that seems even more precious when I consider the broken, divided state of our nation. We had movies in the Great Depression and World War II to see us through the dark days. They lifted spirits, brought people together, and showed us how to be resilient and brave. In 2020, when we really needed that experience more than most of us could remember, we couldn't have it. All of my film programs with lifetime learners and retirement communities were suspended indefinitely as the virus locked us down. The movie theaters closed, some forever. We had to watch our movies by ourselves, at home, and it isn't the same. 

Some of the new releases have been delayed again and again, waiting for the expected return to normalcy. Others were dropped to streaming services instead, either to lure new subscribers or to get some return on the investment through premiere access fees. Many movies that were in development had to shut down, which means the impact of the pandemic will be felt for years to come. Right now, as we complete the first month of 2021, we really don't know when movies or moviegoers will return. We don't actually know IF they will return, either. It's possible that the future will always be different from the past we've left behind. Perhaps I'll look at this blog post a year from now and feel relief. Perhaps I'll read it and laugh ironically at my naivete. Only time will tell.

I've missed the movies this last year. I've missed the people I shared classic movies with at the library and the retirement community. I've missed being able to think about movies and write about them, but the pandemic and the upheaval in the country have fractured my attention into sharp bits of crisis all coming down like glass. I'll post my 2020 review of films watched soon, but my comforts this last year were more cinematic popcorn than brain food. We'll see if 2021 restores our collective sanity.

 

Following Along with Film and Narrative

I haven't posted a classic movie review here in several weeks because the pandemic means that my movie watching is more a group activity than my choice alone. Normally I have Monday nights to myself to watch old movies and weeks together when the spouse is away on work travel, but right now we're all at home and trying to make the most of family time! That means a lot of more recent movies that appeal to the spouse and kid and fewer films that make good blog posts for Virtual Virago. We are, however, watching movies together, especially because one of the kid's classes this term is Film and Narrative, with a different movie assignment each week. Watching a college student work through someone else's course has been really interesting to me as a former college professor, and I've enjoyed - but sometimes really questioned - the choices for this film course.

We've watched Hot Fuzz (2007), Smoke Signals (1998), Jaws (1975), Rashomon (1950), and Edge of Tomorrow (2014) together as part of the kid's film course, with the last one being the only odd choice of that lot. Sure, it's got the whole non-linear, time looping story line set against a sci-fi version of the Normandy invasion, but it's still a Tom Cruise movie and not the most original or provocative example one might have chosen. The spouse and I had seen all of these films before, of course, but they were all new to the kid, who really liked Smoke Signals and Jaws but was wishing the syllabus had more comedy to balance to out the drama and action.

The professor had the students pick a final film on their own, preferably something outside their "comfort zone," and the kid asked me to suggest some comedies for the assignment. Off to the DVD closet we went! We ended up watching The Women (1939), which was a huge hit thanks to the gleefully awful performances of Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford. It definitely provided something different from the films on the syllabus, and it gave the kid plenty to write about for the assignment. Sadly, we're now at the end of the semester, so we don't have any more movies to watch for the course.

Following along with the kid's film class got me thinking about what movies I would put on a syllabus for a similar course. This happens to be the second college film and narrative class the kid has taken; the first was as a dual enrollment student at the local university. The first class provided the students with a list to choose from for each unit, which I think worked better and created a lot more opportunity to delve into different interests, while this second class only had the one open option and all the rest assigned (which they normally watched in class as a group). I wonder if a film and narrative class works better if it sticks to a theme as opposed to being a little of this and a little of that, all over the cinematic map, but I realize it's an introductory level course and not a special topics section.

The kid's most recent class watched:

The Cameraman (1928)
 Cat People (1942)
 Batman Returns (1992)
Hero (2002)
The Way Way Back (2013)
Creed (2015)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Smoke Signals (1998)
Jaws (1975)
Rashomon (1950)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
(WALL-E from 2008 was also on the original syllabus but got dropped due to the pandemic closing campus and sending students home.)

Most of this list is pretty good, really, but I would definitely make some changes. For one thing, I'd like to see a little better representation of women as protagonists here, not just supporting characters. There are obvious boxes being checked in terms of minority and international representation, but some of those choices could be better (why come in with Creed for a bunch of kids who probably haven't seen any of the earlier Rocky films?). Here are the substitutions I might make:

Batman Returns (1992) - Change to Blade (1998) because it's not a sequel, features a black comic book hero with a great female lead, too, and taps into the enduring interest in vampires

The Way Way Back (2013) - Change to The Breakfast Club (1985) because I feel like John Hughes needs to be in here somewhere and the ensemble cast gives lots of teen types to explore. I also don't love having really recent movies in the mix because 1) kids are more likely to have seen them anyway and 2) they need more time to shake out into "important" and not so much.

Creed (2015) - Change to The Color Purple (1985) because Blade gets you a black male superhero fighter and this list still needs more women's stories in it. Even Hidden Figures (2016) would be great if one is just determined to have really recent films on the list.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) - Change to Dark City (1998) because it still has lots of mind-bending weirdness and sci-fi cred but also tech noir cool and was Roger Ebert's favorite film of 1998. It's more original but less obvious than The Matrix (1999) and offers lots of opportunities to talk about film noir and science fiction and the nature of identity and memory. I will probably put Dark City on any syllabus where it makes any sense to have it because it's just that fantastic. I used to teach it as part of my film noir unit, and it always went over really well.

What 12-13 movies would YOU put on a film and narrative syllabus? I'd love to see your lists in the comments section!