80's Panic Watch: Mazes and Monsters (1982)

Watched:  03/07/2025

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Steven Hillard Stern

For any younger readers hitting this site, you may be vaguely aware of the Satanic Panic of the 1970's-1990's.  But it was real and really annoying.  I was a kid living on the edge of the Bible Belt in the 1980's, but I think the wide-eyed and whispered warnings one would get about the dangers of playing the fairly recent phenomenon of Dungeons & Dragons were everywhere.  And I don't know how much of the made-for-TV movie, Mazes and Monsters (1982), was inspired by the urban legends and actual events, and how much someone named Barb relating the plot of this movie to their friend, Donna, inspired some of those urban legends.*

I know I run on about context in which movies appeared, but I think with this one, if you don't know the context of how D&D freaked people out in the 1980's, you may believe this is just a movie, and not an important cultural conversation, and therefore loses the punch of being a part of a national conversation drummed up by folks who need a strawman to combat.  In the 1970's a real kid had gone missing, and it was believed he'd freaked out from playing D&D and was lost in steam tunnels somewhere - not that he was suffering from mental illness and had left the state (which is what really happened).

Keep in mind, in the 1950's it was proposed - and believed for decades -that comics would make us all juvenile delinquents.  We do not always respond to things outside our experience in the best way.

The 1980's were a different time, where doing geek-things and admitting to it in public was a dicey proposition.  People were not as open about hobbies like D&D, consuming Star Trek, and comic book reading, as those things did carry a very real social stigma.  Plus, no one knew what you were talking about if you did bring it up.  SNL or other cultural touchstones usually mocked nerds (when that was a mean label) and that constructed their impressions of geek hobbies and those that pursued them.  Rather than fight those impressions, most folks just knew not to bring that stuff up in mixed company. It was very different from the "heavy metal music will make your kids evil/ kill themselves" that the metal-heads kind of embraced.**

The "comics are for geeks" stuff disappeared 25+ years ago, so it's hard to remember when Tony Stark has become a household name. Honestly, I'm still shocked that younger co-workers talk about their weekend D&D games in casual conversation, and maybe a little mad that they can.  Doing so in my youth would have led to lectures about how I was going to go crazy.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil Legacy (2022)

Reeser really went all-in on the hat

Watched:  03/05/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing;  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art and Rarities Auction House Exec

new skill:  cooking Italian food

Man: Victor Webster

Job of Man:  Restaurateur and Chef

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in NYC

Event:  Auction House gala

Food:  a bunch of Italian food, esp. cannoli, and sloppy joes?

I don't think I understood The Wedding Veil Legacy (2022).  I mean, I got what happened in it, but I didn't get it.  But I do hope these movies are increasingly titled like Jason Bourne movies.

Our skeptic (Alison Sweeney) of the veil's awesome powers goes through a long-projected, but fairly painless breakup with her boyfriend of a few years.  He's a classical trumpet player and has a chance to play for the LA Symphony, so with him leaving NYC, they hang it up.

In the two prior movies, we got the foreshadowing that maybe this was a relationship of convenience, and, indeed, it seems that way as the two don't even try to do long-distance and see if they'll miss each other - they just break up when he takes the job.  She is a native New Yorker, and can't imagine living elsewhere (fair) and is also working her dream job at an art auction house (also, you go girl.  Live your auction life).  So, yeah, she's kinda set.  Sweeney sheds no tears, just settles into a malaise.

Of course, Sweeney is now in possession of the reality-bending wedding veil which insists that people hook-up, and no sooner has she taken it to the tailor to get a snag fixed than she meets Man, who is there getting fitted for a tux.  

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil - Unveiled (2022)

Watched:  03/03/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art Prof

new skill:  I'd say researching art, but that is literally her job.  So, I guess, making lace?

Man: Paolo Bernardini

Job of Man:  Sales and Marketing for a lace company?

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to Venice

Event:  None?

Food:  I am sure they ate Italian food and talked about it

Budgets on Hallmark films make no sense to me.  

We're making our way through the Wedding Veil series, I guess.  It's a five movie (to date) series about a magical wedding veil that forces people to fall in love.  Frankly - its power is terrifying.  

Three Hallmark stars (Chabert, Autumn Reeser and Allison Sweeney) buy the veil together, as their "something borrowed" item they'll all wear.  And the first movie sees Lacey Chabert fall in love with a terrible, terrible human who looks like a Bad Boy version of Mikey Day.  

This is the best the veil can do?

Regarding budgets - the first movie ostensibly took place in San Francisco and Boston, but that was clearly Canada.  Nice locales, but nothing you don't see in many-a-mid-budget Hallmark flick.  

But the sequel, The Wedding Veil Unveiled (2022) - starring Autumn Reeser - takes place all over Venice, Italy.  They left the continent and went somewhere awesome.  You even see the library from Last Crusade.

Neo-Noir Watch: A History of Violence (2005)

 

Format:  Max?

Viewing:  First

Director:  David Cronenberg

Watched:  03/01/2025

Back when A History of Violence (2005) was in theaters, I was scheduled to see it as it’s based on a comic from a briefly lived DC Comics adult-oriented imprint. I’d read and quite liked the comic, but at showtime, one of us got sick, and we didn’t see it. And then, I never got back to it.

And that’s a shame, because 20 years later I liked it. But had I seen it back then, I doubt I would have understood how much this movie reads like a 1940’s film noir, maybe something like The Killers or a Goodis novel or movie.  It kind of reflects some of that post-War noir grit where we didn't slot people into "good guy" and "bad guy" so readily.

SPOILERS  

Viggo Mortensen stars as the smalltown café owner, Tom Stall, married to Maria Bello. The pair share kids aged around 16 and 5. Like many noir films, it’s about what happens when the unbridled viciousness of organized crime intersects with the mundane lives of ordinary people - and what happens when someone among the normal people isn't so average. 

 In a different decade, the William Hurt role is played by Raymond Burr in a B picture or Richard Conte if they had more money. Ed Harris would be played by Robert Ryan, and you can imagine Burt Lancaster in the lead role.

Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil (2022)

Watched:  03/01/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:   First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Job:  Assistant Curator at an Art Museum

new skill:  walking in 6" heels on grass

Man: Kevin McGarry

Job of Man: philanthropist

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in Boston

Event:  Museum Gala

Food:  mac n' cheese

So...   apparently - despite starting as recently as 2022 with this movie, The Wedding Veil, there are already 5 movies in the Wedding Veil series, and likely more on the way.  I kind of knew this series existed, and was avoiding starting the series so we didn't need to sprint through five movies on the same topic.  But we're running out of other Chabert options here on Hallmark as we speedrace our way through her non-Christmas filmography in a way I did not anticipate when I was like "you know what would entertain Randy...".  But 2025 has been 2025, so here we are.

Basically, the idea of The Wedding Veil series is something like The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (which I've never seen).  It's about how possession of this 19th century wedding veil will lead to true love.  Three friends, who just happen to be played by Lacey Chabert, Autumn Reeser and Alison Sweeney - three of the top Hallmark stars - find and purchase a wedding veil together, all agreeing to share the veil when they find it in an antiques shop in San Francisco.

I call shenanigans that three people would agree to look the same at their weddings in a spur-of-the-moment decision, but here we are.  And we *will* get three movies of our heroes getting married, I guess.

This movie has to do the heavy lifting for the series as it has to establish (a) the magical power of the veil, (b) who each of the three leads in the series are, and (c) what their particular deal is with romance.  Fortunately, we all know Chabert is up to this task.

Disney 60's Watch: The Love Bug (1968)

Watched:  02/28/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Robert Stevenson

Somehow we decided what we needed to do was watch the first Herbie movie, entitled The Love Bug (1968).  

As a child, I have vague recollections of Herbie movies, and I believe my mom probably took me to see Herbie Goes Bananas in the theater during its 1980 release.  And while the world of 1968 and 1980 seems a world away, it was 12 years apart, and the fourth Herbie installment.  

Herbie is the adorable whitish Volkswagen Beetle that is why all Gen-X'ers have a fondness for the Beetle even if they don't actually want one.  And I still get a thrill when I see someone in my local area who has a 90's-era Beetle they've painted with the blue and red racing stripes and number 53.

NASA Watch: Fly Me To the Moon (2024)

Watched:  02/27/2025

Format:  Apple+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Greg Berlanti

What an odd movie.

This is kind of what has happened with the mid-budget romcom.  They wound up on streaming services.  I don't know if Apple wanted to be in the Scarlett Johansson business or if they bought the movie.  But here it is on Apple+, which I have for MLS soccer purposes and through T-Mobile.

This is a movie about the value of truth, that uses the conspiracy theory of faking the moon landing as it's second-half pivot, and basically only gets the names of the Apollo 11 astronauts right, tossing out the rest of what happened in actuality in order to make a cute story.  It's fine, but if you're a NASA nerd like my wife, and by extension and maybe a lesser extent, me, it will make you want to pull your hair out.

Apollo 11, the focal point of the film, may be one of the most well-documented events in human history (that's the one where they walked on the moon the first time, Howard).  To make up how mission control works, and who was working there felt... weird.  Even odd little details crop up - like, I don't know if I ever heard anyone ever refer to any part of the vehicle as "the ship", but it happens here a couple of times.  

Gene Hackman Merges With The Infinite

Gene Hackman, aged 95, has passed.

At the time of this post, the circumstances of his passing are still not completely reported.  His wife, only 64, and the family dog, were also found dead.  No foul play is suspected, but it's clearly a tragedy in the unfolding.

Hackman is one of the first actors I remember, as my dad took me to see Superman: The Movie in the theater during the film's initial release.  The movie I first recall really liking him in - for one does not *like* Lex Luthor - was Hoosiers, the movie about corn-fed high school basketball players.  After that, it's a blur.  Hackman was omnipresent and in every fifth movie that was released for a stretch of about 20 years.  I wouldn't see The French Connection or The Conversation until college.  

He was always the unlikeliest of faces to make it to star status, but his talent and charisma were undeniable.  Seeing Hackman was in a movie meant it was going to be better than most, and sometimes if the movie wasn't otherwise up to the task, he just chose to carry a movie all by himself.

As a person of a certain age, watching him for me is book ended by Lex Luthor and as Royal Tenenbaum, maybe one of the finest roles ever put to film.  

When he retired, it was a bit odd.  He was just... gone.  I remember my fellow Gen-X'ers online wondering "where the hell is Gene Hackman?" around 2007 or so, and we learned he'd just quit taking new work.  The man earned his retirement, and we forget that actors are allowed to hang it up and go enjoy life.

We'll get more details about what happened at his house.  

We'll miss you, Gene, and I'm sorry for whatever happened.  But you more than earned your retirement and now your rest.

Michael Mann Watch: Heat (1995)

Watched:  02/25/2025

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  at most, my third viewing

Director:  Michael Mann

I saw Heat (1995) in the theater, and I am pretty sure I watched it again the next year on VHS.  But, friends, it's a three-hour movie - I have not watched it at all in this century.  Fortunately, Jamie had never seen it and was up for it this week.  

It's a 90's film nerd's star-studded affair, famous upon release for having both Robert DeNiro - riding high on Scorsese at this juncture - and Al Pacino - still hot from his Scent of a Woman* Oscar win (hoo-AH!).  But it also has Val Kilmer, Jon Voigt, Ashley Judd, Amy Brenneman, Wes Studi, Mykelti Williamson, Ted "Buffalo Bill" Levine, William Fichtner, Henry Rollins, Dennis Haysbert, Tom Noonan, Tom Sizemore, Danny Trejo, Hank Azari and a tweenage Natalie Portman.  With a sprawling cast and not a ton of exposition, it doesn't hurt to be able to identify all of the characters easily by which actor we're looking at.

The movie follows a group of  professional heist-men performing a string of robberies in Los Angeles, starting with an armored car robbery that goes sideways when a new member of the team decides to shoot one of the security guards because he doesn't like his face.  This turns the heist from a robbery into murder charges (not wanting witnesses, they take down all three guards) and gets the attention of Pacino's relentless crusader of a cop.

Lynne Marie Stewart Merges With The Infinite

Actor Lynne Marie Stewart has passed.

I remember Stewart from the early 1980's and catching the HBO Pee-Wee Herman special where she played Miss Yvonne - a role she would continue to play her for decades to come.   She was part of the Groundlings crew that didn't go to SNL but made their own way in showbiz, that included Cassandra Peterson, Edie McClurg, John Paragon and Paul Reubens.

Stewart appeared in what had to have been over a hundred roles, and was most famous the past twenty years for appearing as Charlie's mom on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.