Chabert Watch! Love on Safari (2018)

Watched:  02/18/2025

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Leif Bristow

Job: Web designer for corporations

new skill:  looking at giraffes, deus ex machina identification

Man: Jon Cor

Job of Man: Safari ranger

Goes to/ Returns to:  South Africa

Event:  Birthday for Lacey

Food:  Cookies

First of all, Brad sucks.  

Brad is Chabert's City Man, and he prides himself on loving spreadsheets.  That's fine.  I love to spend time in Google Sheets, too.  But that and misogyny are his whole personality.  He's a gigantic tool, and we're supposed to dislike him, and, hey... mission accomplished.

Chabert plays a web developer from Chicago.  In the way that only seems to happen in movies, when a great-uncle she hasn't seen in 20 years dies, Chabert inherits a whole frikkin' animal reserve and lodge in South Africa and is now responsible for miles of bushland, the animals upon it, and the people employed by the reserve.  All without a letter or phone call from the uncle forewarning her of his plans.

Coppola Watch: The Godfather (1972)

Watched:  02/17/2025

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Francis Ford Coppola

Guys...  it's possible The Godfather (1972) is a good movie.  

So, I'm not really going to review this movie.  If you were coming to this site to read whether you should watch one of the most well known and beloved movies in cinema, a game changer for American film, and a career high point and career maker for a handful of people...  I recommend you just set aside 3 hours of your misbegotten life and watch it.  

If you haven't seen Godfather and Godfather II, you're probably missing a lot of cultural references from your elders.  Just so you know.  It was hard to find a bigger, more universally beloved set of movies than these two, even during the Star Wars era.  Star Wars was for teens and kids, and Godfather was what is now prestige television for adults.

My first exposure to the film was in the summer of 1989.  We were staying with my uncle in DC and he happened to own copies of Godfather, Godfather II and Das Boot.  And each night after my folks and uncle went to bed, we watched parts of the movies and wound up watching all three.  

When we came home from DC, we watched The Godfather with some pals.  You had to watch it on two separate VHS tapes.  My guess is they split movie right after Michael shoots McCluskey and Sollozzo, but I honestly don't recall.

SNL at 50

wrapping it up at the end of the 50th Anniversary special

The past few weeks have felt like the lady in your office who declares "it's February and I celebrate my birthday... all... month... long..."  And when you don't usually celebrate your own birthday, it can feel like a lot.  

NBC has decided that Saturday Night Live's 50th Anniversary is at least as important as a general election, and so it's been non-stop hype of the fact of the anniversary, and the special that aired Sunday night (02/17/2025) on talk-shows, in the media, and in general.  And it's been great seeing former stars of the show make appearances promoting the event and maybe reclaim some of their glory while talking to, say, Savannah Guthrie or Andy Cohen, promoting the event.

And I do think Saturday Night Live is an institution - maybe not the one demanding respect the way it's been demanding for the past couple of months, but certainly is the U.S.'s hub for comedy.  It's the one constant in comedy, there week after week.  It's the mountain to reach for young comedians, and it's the launching off point for brilliant careers for some.  It manages to comment upon culture, politics, and the zeitgeist of the moment in a way that even the late night talk shows rarely achieve with their monologues and bits.  It's hard to know how many ideas and catch-phrases that are tucked away in all of our brains as easy reference points were sourced from SNL.

The first time I ever saw any SNL, I was in 4th grade (circa 1984), and it was the night we were literally moving into our house.  My parents were assembling my bed and told us to watch TV while they quickly got furniture and blankets together.  I was about 9.*

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Terminal Descent/ Riddle Me Dead (2021)

Watched:  02/14/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Peter Benson/ David Winning

Job: Puzzle Maker and Police Investigation Meddler

new skill:  complete knowledge of plant scientific names/ riddle show participant

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  canceled puzzle contest w/ a computer, taping of a game show

Food:  Italian cooking made by supporting characters/ some diner food

I guess I should mention, Jamie was digging these movies a bit.  Her reason, and I agree, is that they're not structured like a Christmas film or romcom, and the two leads bounce off each other very well.  It's a refreshing change.

Anyway - we went ahead and knocked these two out.  You're welcome.  

I will note - the audio was pretty bad in these two movies.  I can't say what happened, but there were garbled lines, the echo of shooting on location mixed with ADR. Wind.  It was all over the place.  

With two years since our last movies, we have some new supporting cast, and we're given some lines about what happened to the former colleagues.  

Marvel Cap Watch: Captain America - Brave New World (2025)

Watched:  02/13/2025

Format:  Cinepolis

Viewing:  First

Director:  Julius Onah

It was hard to miss the negative reviews for Captain America: Brave New World (2025), which was maybe a good way to go in.  I already had pre-purchased my tickets, even knowing this movie has been delayed for months, had serious reshoots, and I'd noted Marvel was already pushing Fantastic Four and Thunderbolts as hard or harder than this movie.  

I also know that taking to social media and bravely saying "this new Marvel movie isn't very good" is the current cool thing to do, whether it's Quantumania, which fully deserves every iota of hate it got, or Deadpool and Wolverine, which was amazingly meta and a fun Saturday afternoon at the movies (and richly rewarded for the effort).

After numerous misfires and mid-level efforts, it's fair to say Marvel hit the point where the quality of what they do has slipped.  What I think folks fail to appreciate is that Marvel's long run of putting out fun, watchable stuff was singular and extraordinary.  No one else has come close.  And if you're younger, that's hard to appreciate.  In a couple dozen movies - they became an institution almost as much as the idea of the Western or Costume Drama.*   And, of course, being an institution rightfully means they're the ones to take down/ make fun of/ be skeptical/ cynical of, especially in their modern work.

At the core, I think the same problem plagues Marvel movies that plagues Marvel (and DC) comics themselves - which is that there's a crippling level of continuity in their sprawling universe, and that can be paired with the fact that Marvel seems unwilling to build any second-generation characters in the old-school fashion with their own mythologies, rogues gallery and *personal* continuities.  Characters like Sam Wilson just kinda loosely fit into the big picture and exist in the Marvel Comics U.  And that is how this movie feels.  Captain America: Brave New World operates more as a sequel to 2008's Hulk and other MCU continuity threads than it is a Captain America film.  Arguably, Sam Wilson is not the star of his own movie in much the same way, Steve Rogers was one of many characters with understandable motivations in Civil War.

Why Did I Do This Watch: Madame Web (2024)

the derp crew

Watched:  02/12/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  Second

Director:  SJ Clarkson

I swore I'd never watch Madame Web (2024) again, but I did.

A year on, it's horribleness has already reached mythic status in the superhero movie nerd community, and it's just growing in stature as Sony piles on Morbiuses and Kravens.  

I stand by every word of this lengthy discussion from last year.  

What I was trying to sort out was whether I just misunderstood the movie the first time, had I missed something?  Worse - was this just such a new take, and maybe a female-centric one I didn't get, that I was too hard on this movie?

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Abracadaver (2019)

you'd think the prop would indicate this movie is more fun than it is

Watched 02/10/2025
Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jonathan Wright

Job: Puzzle maker and Police Investigation Meddler

new skill:  close-up magic

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  Birthday at Magic Manor

Food:  I don't think there was any food

In a move that makes total sense from a cost-savings perspective, Lacey Chabert and Brennan Elliot (as Detective Man) return for a third installment in the Crossword Mysteries series - a series which was clearly shot all in one big sprint for these three installments.  Chabert has the same hair, and, occasionally, the same jacket.  The sets for the police office and the newspaper are the same, and the cast remains intact-ish.  

This time, the only tie to a crossword puzzle is that - in order to create a single day's crossword puzzle, Chabert has enrolled in weeks of magic classes at an approximation of LA's Magic Castle.  I do not know if New York has one of these.*  

It is a crazy reason for Chabert to be on site, but I guess it's weird Jessica Fletcher was always floating around when someone dropped dead 23x a year.

Superman 2025: Merch as Marketing

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

We have Superman (2025) on the way, which means a whole new, very specific wave of merch will roll out from now until, likely, next Christmas.

In a general sense, *some* Superhero nerds will buy almost anything with the right logo or image on it.  T-shirts, sure.  But I've had toothbrushes, picture frames, piggy banks, rubber ducks...  I'd feel worse about this, but I also follow sports, and, friends, there is *nothing* you cannot buy that doesn't come with a Cubs logo slapped across it.  The point being, one will find a wide array of items featuring superheroes, and for a bit, this will feature the Superman movie-specific license.

Back in 2001, I remember my own brother, Steanso, saying to me "if I put a Superman sticker on a pile of dog@#$%, I think you'd buy it."  And that has haunted me ever since.  But he's not too far off when it comes to how far DC and Marvel will go in letting just about anyone license DC and Marvel art to slap on a product.  

And, since Zazzle showed up 20+ years ago, DC in particular, has been pretty free with "yeah, here's some clip art.  Go nuts."  And a lot of their imagery has just been out there, with Superman logos showing up on anything you can imagine.  

The onslaught of super-product can be overwhelming, and it does not help that some people don't bother to get the license.

Chabert Watch! Crossword Mysteries: Proposing Murder (2019)

Watched 02/08/2025
Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Don McCutcheon

Job: Puzzle maker and Police Investigation Meddler

new skill:  Escaping from enclosed spaces

Man: Brennan Elliot

Job of Man: Detective

Goes to/ Returns to: Remains in NYC

Event:  None, really

Food: you know, I don't think they stop to eat in this movie

If I was concerned this was going to be a series of movies about crimes being hidden in crossword puzzles, I needn't have worried.  Instead, the crossword tie-in here is that the victim is a friend of Chabert who (prior to checking out involuntarily) asks Lacey to hide his marriage proposal in the Sunday puzzle.  A few days later (that very Sunday!), he manages to gets murdered.  

Rather than a crossword housing the mystery, there's a whole thing about cryptography, WWII codes and a hidden treasure.  It's not bad.  The idea here is that Chabert's character is naturally adept at solving puzzles and codes, as well as driven to do so, exploiting her interns along the way - in pursuit of justice!

Detective Man is assigned to the case, and immediately he and Chabert cross paths.  Flirty paths, with meaningful glances.

Our victim, Chabert's platonic college pal, had just received tenure at College University, and was getting engaged to a woman he met a year ago.  She's a chef with access to pointy knives.  In addition to the fiancé, other possible suspects pop up, like a librarian, a faculty member, an antiquarian and an ex who is a surgeon.

Action Watch: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (2023)

Watched:  02/09/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christopher McQuarrie

This whole movie could have been an email.

Dug tells me this movie has a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I have no idea why.  It is true the entire Mission: Impossible franchise has been a struggle for me, going back to MI:2.  The movies are mostly Cruise running around and not getting his MacGuffin, punctuated with Ving Rhames reiterating the threat, so you don't forget what we're doing here, and Simon Pegg giving objectives for the next action sequence.  However, the action sequences go on so long, I completely forget what the objective was by the end.  Between the cut-scenes explaining things and the long, overly complicated action bits - it is very, very, very much like watching someone else play a video game.

The cast is impeccable.  The globe-trotting locations tremendous.  Cruise looks 45 at age 60.  Stunts are stunty.  

The plot is that an AI has gone rogue - and seems conscious.  And devious!  It has failed QAT, and apparently the dev team had never seen a Terminator movie.  The MacGuffin is a literal key that exists in two pieces that will *possibly* help control the AI.  People keep having it and then not-having it.  No one wants to just put it somewhere safe.  Hayley Atwell* shows up as one of those thieves that exist in movies like this.  She's not a spy, she's just big on ripping people off.  Vanessa Kirby, the latest addition to the Marvel U in this summer's coming Fantastic Four movie as Sue Storm, appears as The White Widow, just as she has for a couple of these movies.  Rebecca Ferguson shows up, and has like two lines, and I struggled to remember why she was important, but I think she's been in several of these.  Pom Klementieff shows up as our sexy, silent awesome hitwoman (and it feels like they let her dress herself, which I applaud).