Australian Neo-Noir Watch: The Dry (2020)

Watched:  03/05/2026

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Connolly

A while back, for various reasons, Jamie and I both read the novel The Dry. It was a big seller in Australia, where it was written and takes place.  And made its way here where I think it's done well.  

I asked for some downtime before I watched the inevitable movie adaptation so I could try to see it with fresh eyes, and hadn't honestly, thought about the book much since I read it.  It's fine!  Go read it.  But I think Jamie saw it starred Eric Bana and was happy to watch - and, anyhoo... here we are.

In the way of movies adapting popular books - the movie is largely a straight adaptation with some extraneous bits knocked off and some efficiencies found in storytelling.  But the film really does capture the mood of the novel, and as Jamie and I agreed, it looks more or less exactly how I saw it in my mind's eye.  Bleak, oppressive - a murder mystery in sun-scorched rural Australia.  

Hallmark Watch: The Stars Between Us (2026)

Watched:  03/03/2026

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Robison

I didn't used to post on Hallmark movies I put on as time-fillers, but I'm trying to be accurate.  I kind of watched this while looking up other things.

Why we watched this boiled down to neither of us being in the mood for anything challenging as we dealt with other things, and I'd already stated that I am watching basketball Wednesday night, so as this was highly ranked at Ye Olde Hallmark, this is what we landed on.

It stars Sarah Drew, who is a big name on TV in shows I don't watch (Grey's Anatomy, for example), and Matt Long who I know from Mad Men a few years back.  But those are just the folks on the poster.  This movie has a B-romance plot featuring Donna Benedicto (who is in a million things) and Noah Paul.  

The basic gist of the film is that seven years prior, Kim (Drew) met Malcolm (Long) briefly at an Eclipse party.  He was there as an astronomer, and she was there for vague reasons with a fiance.  They met and had an instant connection as they talked for what seemed to be about ten minutes before she ran off to her late-arriving fiance.  

Seven years later, Kim is working at a TV station in the news department, divorced, living with her mom and has a kid in tow when she lands an on-camera assignment to cover the eclipse.  This will make or break her career.

Wise Watch: Three Secrets (1950)

Watched:  03/01/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

Apparently 1950 was the year Robert Wise made the jump from RKO and into more prestigious pictures, apparently handed a melodrama and what I'd loosely call a "women's picture" at his new studio, Warner Bros.  

Why he was tapped for this movie, I don't know.  Maybe the complexity of a multi-pronged story and everything that would need to be included meant WB decided that an ex-editor like Wise was a good fit?  But for what the movie is - he makes it work.

The story is more than half flashback.  The inciting incident is that a family has crashed their plane on top of a mountain, and only the five year old son has survived.  No one knows his true condition, but a rescue effort is mounted to retrieve him.  A bit like the 1980's incident with Baby Jessica or the soccer team trapped in the cave, the world is watching, with bated breath.  

Happy Birthday Cara Buono

 

Happy birthday to Cara Buono, who today's kids will, in about five years, figure out was why their dads were watching Stranger Things with them.

Buono has appeared in Mad Men, Sopranos, and in a truncated (thanks to COVID) season of Supergirl.  

Rhonda Watch: Lionheart (1990)

Watched:  02/28/2026

Format:  YouTube/ Up All Night

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sheldon Lettich

Well, I'd made it to 2026 without caring if I ever saw Lionheart (1990), but this was the movie programmed on Rhonda Shear's Up All Night.  

Y'all, it's possible Lionheart isn't a great movie.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is a member of the French Foreign Legion hanging out in Djibouti who hears his brother was injured in Los Angeles, so he asks to leave, but is refused.  So he - being JCVD - fights his way out, jumps a ship and winds up in Los Angeles doubling for New York.

Back in the 1990's, Bum Fights became a thing.  Because exploiting people hadn't been refined into reality TV quite yet.  Anyway, Leon (JCVD) enters a bum fight and wins some money.  He pairs up with actual actor Harrison Page as a former fighter named Joshua who kind of does all the acting in this movie.

Anyway - they get more fights including one for rich people's amusement organized by a sexy but shady lady, Cynthia (Deborah Rennard).  She decides she wants to kind of own JCVD, but he just needs to get to Los Angeles where he learns his brother has died.  He goes and finds his brother's widow (Lisa Pelikan) who has amazing red hair, and he moppet of a daughter.  She rejects him and his help, so he uses Joshua to slip her money as is it's insurance money. 

 Eventually he has to fight a much larger guy and the French Foreign Legion guys find him, and that's our movie.

Chabert Watch Bonus: She Said/He Said - a 2006 Unaired TV Pilot

Well, every once in a while I'll hit the internet to see if I can turn up one of the remaining items on the 'ol Chabert-a-Tron 3000, and this time we came up yahtzee, finding the unaired TV Pilot for a little show called She Said/ He Said - a title sure to plague any SEO and likely made IT folks very sad if this got aired.

Fortunately, they were never in any danger of that.  This pilot is so bad, it's absolutely stunning anyone wanted to make it based on the script alone.  

But here it is (until it gets pulled down):

Wise/ Totter Noir Watch: The Set-Up (1949)

Watched:  02/27/2026

Format:  TCM on my DVR

Viewing:  I have no idea anymore

Director:Robert Wise

It took me a minute to get to The Set-Up (1949) as the next film up in my Robert Wise retrospective watch, mostly because I had just watched it last April.  That said - while I don't have a list of favorite films at this point, if I did, I suppose this would be one of them.  It stars two of my favorites with Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter, who both get to do great character work.  I'm not sure you get Rocky without this movie, but maybe - though I think they share a lot in their DNA.

Ryan plays an aging boxer - he's over thirty-five, and he's still boxing the small circuit, nowhere near the top of the card.  He's still living hand-to-mouth and has a girl who - until recently - believed in him, Julie (Totter).  The night we find them, she's lost faith.  She can't stand seeing him go into the ring and get pummeled, see him after when he can't even recognize her, his brains are so scrambled.  He's wrecking his health and their future for a dream that isn't possible.

Told in real-time (no fooling - like, to the minute) the movie follows roughly 75 minutes that will define the lives of both.

What's fascinating is that this movie has That Barton Fink Feeling - it's a movie about people living on the edge.  And those people are not just Stoker Thompson and Julie.  The movie has over a dozen real characters, and everyone is going through something.  

Heist Neo-Noir Watch: Crime 101 (2026)

Watched:  02/26/2026

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Bart Layton

If the title Crime 101 (2026) seems a little uninspired, what I think I'd say is - it feels like this movie is by someone who has seen and likes the same movies I've seen and liked.  And that's... fine.  If you don't watch a lot of heist movies, this may feel fresh.  It has a sprawling, winding storyline intersecting three compelling characters.  And it has an all-star cast that made the movie a real treat.  

Chris Hemsworth plays one of the modern takes on the post-Parker, post Le Samourai crooks - a loner with seemingly no life but the crimes they'll commit.  No friends, no family.  He's stolen millions in expensive jewels.  His connection/ fence/ maybe mentor is no less than Nick Nolte.  Mark Ruffalo is a cop who is such a rogue *he plays by the rules*.  He may be on the LAPD, but he's not just framing people to get his numbers up.  Also, his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh!) is leaving him.  Halle Berry is an insurance salesperson (I missed the actual job title) to the uber-wealthy.  If you need someone to help you get your Matisse insured, she's your gal.  But she's also realizing her place in her company - and it isn't a rocket ride to the top.  

Disney+ Watch: The Parent Trap (1998)

 

Watched:  02/25/2026

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Nancy Meyers

I forgot I intended to watch the new Predator movie, and so when Jamie asked if I had something to watch I shrugged and mumbled, and so she pitched the 1998 version of The Parent Trap.  We just watched the original (me for the first time), and while I knew this film would not have any Maureen O'Hara, I figured it would be interesting to see the differences between Hayley Mills² and the version co-starring Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan.

I did not know that this movie was Lohan's first role in a movie - let alone the starring role.  I may not have been paying much attention to this movie in 1998, or to Lohan the past (cough) 28 years.  A lot of credit to everyone who spotted her as a talent and got her the role.*  She's super good in this.

TV Watch: Heated Rivalry

Well.  I've now seen all of the 2026 hockey/ romance sensation folks are watching over on HBO, Heated Rivalry.

The six-episode series charts years and years of a pair of hockey players who enter the pros at the same time, one a nice boy from Canada, and one a Russian who is such a bad boy, he smokes.  The two have an immediate attraction, and embark on what is initially a sexual relationship, but eventually becomes romantic.  Both are tortured by the expectations put upon them by their macho sport and all that surrounds that as closeted men.

I'm oversimplifying because, gang, this was 6 episodes, each running 45 minutes.  

I don't know that the show really held a ton of surprises, but it's not that kind of show.  It's more about taking you on the journey as best they can as the two move from casual and sexy secretive hook-ups to developing real feelings.