Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" Turns 40

If you weren't in middle school by 1986 or 1987, I don't care what you think about Frank Miller's four-issue series, The Dark Knight Returns.  Sorry, young reader!     

There was context to when the comic came out, an understanding of what was changing in media and culture and comics, and if you grew up on comics in the wake of Dark Knight Returns, it's like trying to tell people Revolver isn't a breakthrough album after all, or that Citizen Kane doesn't matter (which the internet is always more than happy to do, and seem quite foolish in the process).

I don't do this often - generally I'm a "hey, like what you like, but here's my opinion" guy.  But sometimes The Kids(tm) are just wrong, and I don't think you had to be there at the time - you can just have a reasonable knowledge of recent history, comics history and have read a book somewhere along the line.  And so, in this case, when I have seen 10,000 bad takes by bad take-havers, here is mine.

Mainstream superhero comics have some key years.*  

Tom Noonan Merges With The Infinite

Tom Noonan is one of the best actors I ever saw in a movie.  I've never gotten over his performance in What Happened Was...   

He was never a leading man, but every time he showed up, you were getting something new and unexpected.  Truly brilliant, even in stuff like RoboCop 2, or giving soul to Frankenstein's monster in Monster Squad.  And, really the perfect version of Dolarhyde in Manhunter.  

Over the years he retreated from big pictures and that's how we got What Happened Was...   We got other appearances here and there - he came in to one episode of Louie and blew the doors off.  But his days of playing types in big budget pictures was over.

But, man.  What a performer.  

Wise Watch: Mystery In Mexico (1948)

Watched:  02/17/2026

Format:  Sketchy Russian streaming site

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Wise

I have no idea what happened here.  It's totally fine, but a major step down from Born to Kill.  But Mystery in Mexico (1948) is also a lot lighter - frothy, really.  It feels like a B movie at 65 minutes, with a mystery that is mostly an excuse to go to Mexico.  Which - I can blame no one for wanting a little jaunt to visit our neighbors.

Insurance company detective Steve Hastings (William Lundigan) has a colleague that has disappeared with a $250K necklace (that's 1948 dollars).  He follows the guy's singer sister, Victoria (Jacqueline White) down to Mexico City - and he relentlessly pursues her as a sex pest which means he's also there to help her when she gets into trouble.  

The film is a co-production with a Mexican studio, and has plenty of Mexican talent.  It does its bit to show off Mexico and Mexico City as a place of class and adventure.  But it feels super slight.  I get the feeling they were on a vacation and occasionally took breaks to make a movie.  

It's totally fine.  For some reason I thought Ricardo Montalban was in it, but with a 65 minute run time, at 30 minutes and no Montalban, I realized I was very wrong and a bit cross.  Montalban in this era was awesome.  Well, in all eras.

There's a few decent scenes.  Nothing to write home about.  

But Jacqueline White is in two of my favorite movies (Crossfire and The Narrow Margin), so it was nice to see her here as well.  (late edit:  White is apparently still with us at 103 years old!)

No real notes on Wise here other than that this is emotional whiplash after Born to Kill and really marks what I think of when it comes to Wise - he's a chameleon.  He gets what is needed, no matter the genre.  And this one mixes genres with the light-hearted detective and some real threats of violence.

Jesse Jackson Merges With The Infinite

Back in an era when the news media was functional, I was well aware of Jesse Jackson, his history and some of what he stood for.  From a young age, I understood Jackson was a young man who had worked alongside Dr. King, and who was carrying that mission forward.  As he would run for President every cycle, I was aware of the need for him as a voice to speak to issues impacting underrepresented Americans - running knowing his chances were next to zero, but including his messages in the hope of seeing those ideas shape the platform of the Democratic party.

Jackson was an unapologetic voice for rights and for those not represented by mainstream politics.  He could be challenging to the status quo, even antagonistic, speaking plainly about uncomfortable issues like race, socio-economics and the engines that benefitted from a more egalitarian society.  

While figures like John Lewis would follow political paths into office and effect change in those halls of power, Jesse Jackson remained involved via activism and media appearances.  He also led peace delegations and was seemingly omnipresent on the national/ international stage for much of the 1980's and into the 1990's.  

Sometimes controversial, Jackson's vision for how to get to that better world sometimes seemed myopic, but he did have understandable goals.  He certainly had his moments deserving public scrutiny, but it's also hard not to see folks with their own agenda amplifying any blunder he might have had.

During my last years of school, I saw Jackson speak on campus (on the steps of Main) at the University of Texas at Austin, I believe during the Hopwood Decision era. It was kind of amazing to see him in person leading thousands of people.

Jackson remained active well into the 2010's, but was no longer who the press ran to for soundbites.  His legacy of activism and work as a voice for Civil Rights has already inspired generations.  

Kids Watch: Godzilla vs Kong (2021)

Watched:  02/16/2026

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  3rd?  4th?

Director:  Adam Wingard

What I learned is the power of friendship.  And the power of a right hook to knock someone through a skyscraper

-my nephew, aged 10

Today was the day I knew was coming since Jason and Amy told me they were pregnant.  Today, I watched a Godzilla movie with my nephew and niece.  And, I am proud to say, The Boy was into it.  

Robert Duvall Has Merged With The Infinite

Actor Robert Duvall has passed.  He was 95.  

Gen-X and older have a place in their hearts and minds for Duvall who starred in *something* we loved along the way, and was key to why we loved it.  He has 146 credits listed on IMDB as an actor, 14 as a producer and 5 as a director.  

Like most folks my age, it was his turn as Tom Hagen in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.  But swiftly after, it was Apocalypse Now, Colors, The Natural, THX-1138, MASH and countless others.  

Duvall has a weightiness to his performances, a believability that served him well in parts like Tom Hagen, but also sold the absurd (see Lt. Col. Kilgore) as real.  Truly one of the greats of his generation - and part of why we were so lucky to get that cast and crew on The Godfather to begin with.  

I admit, there are large parts of his filmography I've never seen - I read Lonesome Dove instead of watching it, for example.  But that's going to happen with someone with so many credits, almost all of which people will say were solid.

He'd obviously slowed down, but he still has one more credit as in post-production even now.  

Here's to one of the greats.  

Fantasy Watch: Red Sonja (2025)

Watched:  02/15/2026

Format:  Kanopy

Viewing:  First

Director:  M.J. Bassett

Jim had been rec'ing this movie at me for a while, and the man knows me well.  

Heads up - most people are going to dismiss this movie, and that's fine.  And maybe my reasons for saying "this is kind of cool" won't add up, but here we go.

I have no idea what the budget was for Red Sonja (2025) but it's certainly not a $150 million.  So, this is a movie that does a lot of "you get the idea" hand waving with FX and sets, etc...  that was part and parcel of exactly this kind of movie when it was starring Brigitte Nielsen and making me stay up way too late on a Saturday in middle school.  And, in fact, I'm kind of wondering if we lost something about the charm and allure of those movies when all they had were talent in front of and behind the camera, where a movie would sink or swim based on story and characters.  And cool ideas.  We couldn't just smother everything with CGI.

Stupid Valentine's Watch: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

they tried to combine the "Love, Actually" poster design with an Apatow design

Watched:  02/14/2026

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Glenn Ficarra and John Requa

Two time stamps on Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) stick out for me.  

The first was that I had my first chuckle at 22:00 and change.  In a 2 hour movie.  This did not bode well for the "comedy" I'd put on.

The second was that I paused the movie to do something thinking there was maybe 10 minutes left and there was still 54 minutes of movie, and (a) I could not believe how long this movie felt and (b) I had the passing thought that this was the sort of movie critical milksops like Owen Gleiberman used to wet themselves over in the 90's.  Movies that think they have something to say, some poetic statement about life and love, but are just absolutely hollow and maybe kind of rotten inside.

Gleiberman, then plaguing Entertainment Weekly, gave it an A.*  

When people say "what happened to romantic comedies?" - this is what happened to them.  We decided what rom-coms needed to be were bleak melodramas starring Steve Carrell as a sad sack who keeps taking hits someone thought were funny, but just seem kind of sad, really.  Yes, we all liked The 40 Year Old Virgin, but that was a movie where he was surrounded by really funny people and managed by Judd Apatow.  Here, he's just miserable for two hours.  

Friday the 13th Watch: Friday the 13th (1980)

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Watched:  02/13/2026

Format:  Amazon  

Viewing:  Second - but first since I was a kid

Director:  Sean S. Cunningham

So, when I was a very young kid, my friends who lived near us had (a) a VCR and (b) a sister in high school who rented Rated-R movies.  So, yeah, I saw this when I was 7 or 8.  I am pretty sure I saw it again in middle school, because I very much remember Betsy Palmer going murdery.  

I've never been a huge fan of horror movies where the main attraction is "the kills", and that's absolutely what this movie is.  It's just a lot of set-up (some might say too much set-up) and then people getting murdered by surprise.  

Sure, we get some set-up at the beginning of Camp Crystal Lake being a bad place where bad things happen, but the characters seem unaware of any of that mythology.  They're just going to the toilet and getting murdered there.  

Then, Betsy Palmer shows up as Jason's mom and blows the @#$%ing doors off for the last 1/4th of the movie.  She's great.  And, in fact, the last quarter of the movie is really good, which is how we got something like 9 sequels.  

Technically, I find the movie kind of interesting.  It's *so* voyeuristic, and effectively so, it's been spoofed and borrowed from, etc... to where you really can't do this anymore.  I think this would really speak to De Palma and kinda shows up in Body Double four years later.  Plus, there's some interesting editing - that shot of Alice's face over the lake is nifty.  

You can kind of see the line from Black Christmas to Halloween to Friday the 13th, and I'll argue, this movie does start feeling like a xerox of a xerox by this point.  ALl of the movies have a murderer sneaking around and unsuspecting young folks getting picked off.  And I can't say why this feels un-scary in comparison.  Black Christmas is *upsetting*.  Halloween works like a charm, in part because of Laurie Strode - and this movie just doesn't have that.  Sure, Kevin Bacon appears, but he's also dead pretty quick by comparison.  And we don't spend much time with our final girl (Adrienne King).

The version I watched was restored and looks better than any version I've seen previously.  It's really weird to see a movie of this vintage that is so clearly a B-movie shot on a shoe string with some occasionally iffy acting now looking as clean as anything new.  

I don't know the actual history of the box office or anything on this movie or this series.  I just wasn't watching horror during the period where these were coming out left and right and have no real nostalgia for these movies.  But I might watch the first few.  I've seen them!  I just don't really recall a lot.   But I think Jason doesn't even get the mask til the 3rd movie.  We'll see!

Noir Watch: Illegal (1955)

Watched:  02/13/2026

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lewis Allen

First, this movie has a terrible title.  I think we can all agree on that.

Second, this movie has amazing design for the titles.  Never mind that they don't fit the mood of the movie.

I feel like Joe Dante would approve.

Edward G. Robinson, the most surprising of leading men til Danny DeVito's star rose unexpectedly in the 1990's, plays a District Attorney for The City.  He's such a cracker jack, he tries his own cases, until one day he accidentally sends DeForest Kelly to the chair. 

The City does not mess around with swift justice.  Like, Edward G. Robinson only has time for dinner after the trial and already Kelly is a dead man walking.  Though Robinson finds out really as fast as one is like to do, he calls the prison just as the lights flicker.

Anyway - disgraced, Robinson quits his job and spirals into drink.  At the bottom of his lowly state he's recruited by a mob boss who wants an attorney on his side, but Robinson knows that once this guy gets his hooks in you, you're stuck forever and declines.  But after he gets involved in an embezzling case, he finds he's accidentally involved with the crook. 

As DA, he was mentoring Nina Foch who he's tried to not get romantic eyes for, pushing her to his investigator.  And Jayne Mansfield shows up as a plucky piano player (famously, she could very much play the piano and other instruments).  

Involved with the gangster, Robinson's desire to win cases takes over and he doesn't care much who he's getting off the hook, or what insane theatrics he needs to perform to win the case.  And the theatrics are insane, indeed.  

He's beating the pants off the DA with such frequency, they begin to suspect there's a mole and look at Foch, who is actually going to Robinson to chastise him for working for the devil.

SPOILERS

Turns out Robinson's investigator pal is also teamed up with the mob.  When his now-wife finds, Foch, that out, he may murder her to keep her quiet, and, cornered, she shoots him dead.  Now that's noir, baby!  

Robinson has to defend her, and things start spilling out.

Look, this wasn't my favorite movie.  I wasn't overly enamored of Foch, who comes off as a stiff.  It's pretty clear Mansfield is there because the studio knew this about Foch (see the above poster).  

In the end Robinson dies so that the Breen Office could be satisfied.  But all he was doing was his job - look,, winning a case is how this works.  And I get that we want a story about a good man who becomes corrupt, and how that could happen - and his last act of heroism (he is dying from an assassin's bullet in the last scene as he gets Foch off the hook).  But it just never feels as epic as the movie thinks it is.

And I get that they were trying to do something cute with the name "Illegal", but it's kind of indicative of how this movie works.  You can see what they're doing, but it's just not that exciting.

Robinson is watchable enough to carry the movie, but, yeah, this was just not my thing.