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Dick Tracy starts reasonably strong, which one forgets as the serial plods through the near five hours of its fifteen chapters. The first chapter’s a decent enough pilot, with lead Ralph Byrd actually solving a crime, something he doesn’t really do later on. It doesn’t even open with him, instead read more

Brothers United, sadly, does not feature much in the way of brothers uniting. Much of the chapter is spent with Ralph Byrd begging Carleton Young to remember his identity and Young not remembering his identity and running away. There’s no uniting. It’s actually the most red herring of a chapter read more

The Devil in White is the penultimate Dick Tracy chapter, which is great. It means there’s only one left. And it even has an interesting cliffhanger. It doesn’t have an interesting cliffhanger resolve. It has another easy cliffhanger resolve; I don’t think the serial’s had a single good resolve. read more

Paddy Chayefsky adapted his own play for Middle of the Night and there are some clear alterations with original intent. Fifty-six year-old widower Fredric March is in garment manufacturing. His first scene has him hanging out with the other old guys in the factory, kvetching about how there’s nothi read more

So, unfortunately, Ralph Byrd (you know, Dick Tracy), doesn’t get shot in the cliffhanger resolution. He dodges. Because they all heard the Spider approach because the Spider has a club foot. Except they also all think the Spider is wearing a disguise, implying the club foot is a part of that disgu read more

The Trail of the Spider is the clip chapter. After the current winner for laziest cliffhanger resolve in the serial–Ralph Byrd turns a steering wheel to get out of danger–Byrd and the cast get together with three new characters to hear all about the Spider. Although Byrd’s been hunting the Spider read more

Much of Police Story operates on charm. If it’s not co-writer, star, and director Jackie Chan’s charm, it’s charm of the scenes. There are some painfully uncharming moments–mostly Chan’s frequent neglective abuse of girlfriend Maggie Cheung–but even when Police Story is in its stunt spectacular read more

Harbor Pursuit starts and finishes in the harbor. For some reason, crackerjack G-Man Ralph Byrd never pieces together the harbor might be a base of operations of the Spider Gang. Just one of the many obvious connections Byrd’s been missing since chapter one. Or two. Byrd at least seems competent in read more

The Gold Ship is the tenth chapter of Dick Tracy. It’s the first chapter where Ralph Byrd even entertains the notion his brother might still be alive, even though brainwashed and surgically disguised brother Carleton Young has been running afoul of Byrd since the second chapter. Young just hasn’t read more

The Stratosphere Adventure isn’t much of an adventure, but it is a fairly interesting chapter. The entire chapter takes place right after the cliffhanger resolve. A cop-out cliffhanger resolve, where federal agent Ralph Byrd puts his own safety before civilian Wedgwood Nowell (big surprise), but st read more

You Can’t Take It with You has three major plot lines, all interconnected, but separate enough the film often feels stretched. There’s the rather lovely romance between stenographer Jean Arthur and her boss, bank vice president James Stewart. There’s Edward Arnold’s attempt to create a munitions read more

Murder in the Fleet is a reasonably diverting little B murder mystery; Frank Wead and Joseph Sherman’s script is almost better than the film deserves, given it doesn’t even run seventy minutes and doesn’t even bother pretending it’s got subplots. Well, outside top-billed and sort of lead Robert read more

As Come Swim gets under way, the short provokes a couple thoughts. First, it’s not really going to be eighteen minutes, is it? Spoiler, not only is it eighteen minutes, it’s two separate short films stuck together with the first nine minutes or so being a dream sequence. Or is it a dream sequence? read more

Nowhere near as many wipes this chapter, but that lack doesn’t really help things. The cliffhanger resolve is another reveal one; turns out it wasn’t the bad guys shooting those guns off-screen, it was the good guys. So there wasn’t really a cliffhanger at all. Like always. It’s never a cliffhanger read more

The opening narration of Lick the Star, which isn’t from the same character as the end narration, explains the ground situation. Ostensible protagonist Christina Turley has just returned to school after her father accidentally ran over her foot. So she’s on crutches. She worries her group of friend read more

The Ghost Town Mystery has a lot of wipes. Half wipes, quartering wipes, circular wipes. Wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe. I swear there haven’t been this many wipes in the serial until now. There’s also some terrible insert shots of lead Ralph Byrd when he’s listening to someone. Edward Todd, Helene Turner, read more

Avengers: Infinity War has quite a few significant achievements. Special effects, for example. But the two most salient ones are Josh Brolin’s performance (of a CG character, no less) and the pacing. Directors Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely do an extraordinary job ju read more

I’m going to start by saying some positive things about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. It has fantastic CG. Wow is cinematographer Henry Braham truly inept at compositing it with live footage, but the CG is fantastic. Whether it’s the exploding spaceships or exploding planets or the genetically read more

There’s a lot going on in Lawn Dogs. Lots of good things, lots of strange things, lots of bad things; the worst is probably housewife Kathleen Quinlan’s lover molesting her daughter, Mischa Barton. The film doesn’t want to deal with it. Lawn Dogs is lots of visual splendor, courtesy director Duigan read more

Since 1954, Japan’s Toho Company Limited has made over thirty Godzilla films. There are three distinct eras of Toho Godzilla movies–the Showa, the Hensei, and the Millennium. Most of the films, at least during Showa era, got dubbed theatrical releases in the United States. If they didn’t get theatr read more