I’ve listened to Petra since high school. Beyond Belief is one of my favorite albums. The band always put on a great show.

When it comes to their new movie, Beyond Belief, though, I’m less than enthused. Not that it’s offensive or anything, but, er, it’s just not very good. There are so many puns I could apply here, but I’m not gonna.

The movie is set in the 1980s and the plot is this: Andy and his mom, Sarah, are recovering from the loss of dad and husband Martin, who pastored the local church. Sarah is ailing from the stress and Andy deeply resents that his dad is dead. It does’t help that Martin’s brother, Leo, is this predatory big business type who’s looking to put up a high-rise luxury apartment and thinks nothing of badgering people to sell their property.

All that can wait, though, because Petra is putting on a Battle of the Bands, and Andy and his band, Jericho, are chomping at the bit to enter. Andy also keeps hearing a voice that tells him to “run,” so he decides to train for a marathon with the help of his Grandpa Jake.

Uncle Leo is after Sarah to sell the church, though, and he’s also after his son, Derrick to win the Battle of the Bands. Failure would drag the family name through the mud.

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In the midst of all of this, there’s a LOT of Petra love. We see the T-shirts, the album covers, a Bible study guide, the guys who play the band, the Petra video game that looks like it’s from the 1980s but was invented for the movie. We see cameos of Petra lead singer John Schlitt and lead guitarist and principal songwriter Bob Hartman in the audience at the Petra concert in the first act of the movie. The characters talk about Petra, or at least Andy’s band does.

It’s both a commercial and a love letter with a slight dash of satire.

I didn’t dislike all of it. The film has a lot of good messages and of course the music is fantastic. Everyone seemed to be having fun, so that’s good.

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The problem is that it tries to do too much. I wish Andy had just focused on the marathon or just on the Battle of the Bands. I wish John Schlitt and Bob Hartman hadn’t shown up so early in the movie because seeing the real band members is the proverbial carrot and it doesn’t have the impact it could have had. The final scene would have been so much better.

And I don’t know why the movie isn’t set in the 90s, because Beyond Belief didn’t come out until 1990. It’s oddly anachronistic and naval-gazey to see the album cover on Andy’s wall in the 1980s.

Some of the production values are a little sloppy, too. Andy’s guitar fingerwork doesn’t match the music and there’s one scene of he and Sarah that goes from seeing them at the dining room table to backlit for some reason.

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And the guys who play Petra are very low energy compared to the real band (See a clip from one of their shows here).

Worse, though, the plot is very haphazard and predictable. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to ruin it, but it’s a bad sign when an audience can accurately anticipate what’s going to happen way before it happens and finish the character’s sentences for them.

At least, that’s what the audience at my showing did.

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To paint a picture, this was what my face looked like when the ending credits rolled:

I went into Beyond Belief unsure as to why the movie exists. After seeing it, I’m still not sure.

Beyond Belief is currently in theaters. Rated PG.

My grade: D- (Sorry, Petra)

Principal Cast: Carson Leuders, James C. Burns, Debby Gerber, Ryan Barnes, Libby Smallbone, Sophie Bolen, Sam Coffelt, Sharon Oliphant, Erik Kilpatrick, Chuck Carter, David Aaron Stone, Daniel Wilde, Harmonie Breeze, Manav Uddin, Oscar Mansky, Sharon Anderlik, Jennifer Benson, Kristie Berger

Directed by Johnny Meier.

Written by Darren Scott Jacobs, Johnny Meier, and Joe Sanders.

I feel like I’m cheating a little bit with this one. I’ve written about Hollywood and World War Two quite a bit on Taking Up Room, but there are hundreds of movies from the war years that I still haven’t seen.

Not to make anyone who remembers that time feel like a relic, but as World War Two gets farther and farther into the past, the movies made during that time feel more and more like time travel. A movie doesn’t even have to be all that good to take me back there, and Marine Raiders hit the spot. Well, in most respects, anyway.

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Sophie, Coco, Jane and Mel have been friends for most of their lives. They couldn’t be more different, but that’s what keeps them together through thick and thin. Lately, of course, their lives have been floundering and they all feel frazzled. Jane’s a lawyer and a single mom with no free time. Sophie is a personal assistant whose boss is too insecure to change a lightbulb or buy his own Skittles. Coco is divorced and mad about it. Mel is…Mel.

When Jane has a birthday, Coco comes up with the brilliant idea of spending a weekend at a spa because they all need some pampering and fun. Thus begins the annoyingly base ordeal known as…ahem, Spa Weekend.

The ladies decide not to invite Mel because she’s too unhinged and always ruins everything. Mel shows up anyway because Sophie takes pity and invites her. The spa is gorgeous. Kai, the yoga instructor, is gorgeous. The ladies’ villa is gorgeous.

Instead of getting pampered, though, the ladies are yanked into one random mishap after another. Mel steals a golf cart, freaks out the goats in the goat yoga class, wrecks the crystals at a guided meditation class, invites male strippers to the villa, and otherwise incurs the wrath of the resort’s resident goddess and general manager, Shanti, who seems to be able to teleport to wherever the trouble is happening.

On the bright side, Jane has a fling with Kai and Kai makes some really good gnocchi for Jane when Jane misses lunch. Also, Coco’s ex-husband, Roger shows up and he and Coco end up jumping each other in a mud room. It’s cute until it’s weird.

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I went into this one figuring it was going to be raunchy, but I also figured that as long as Spa Weekend was better than Joy Ride, it would still be a win.

Well. It’s better than Joy Ride in that there’s less gross-out humor. A lot less. That’s where the superiority ends.

Instead, Spa Weekend abounds with the most stereotypical jokes about how women act around each other. We have the types. The mean girl. The innocent girl. The studious, driven girl. The wild child. All strung out because of their jobs and families. All looking to cut loose and act like teenagers the way the guys in The Hangover did. All doing stupid stuff and thinking with body parts they don’t possess.

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And Mel is the biggest offender. Talking with her mouth full? Pretending to have sex with a goat? Leaving pubic hairs in the bathroom sink? Gross. Really, movie?

Spa Weekend is clumsy, the plot is almost nonexistent, and it’s lowbrow as lowbrow can be. In the end, it falls off a cliff just like Mel’s stolen golf cart. I groaned more than I laughed, and even the laughter felt more like a cry for help.

Do the filmmakers know any women? Do they even like women? It’s doubtful.

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Oh, and Spa Weekend also has the distinction of Coco saying the title of the movie five times. Yeah. Five. I also took the liberty of counting the montages, of which there were seven.

Isn’t that swell?

If anyone has the misfortune of seeing Spa Weekend, I would keep some M&Ms handy just to make the whole thing sort of bearable and pop one every time something stupid happens. Better yet, skip the movie and if possible, go to an actual spa.

Spa Weekend is currently in theaters. Rated R.

My grade: F

Principal Cast: Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau, Anna Faris, Adam Demos, Erika Heynatz, Sierra Rose, Everly Graves, Juliet Sargent, Quinn Aune, Matthew Jarzyna, Jon Quested, Tim Ross, Lauren Dillon, Robert Coleby, Felix Williamson, Dominic Ona Ariki, Ali Basoka, Aaliyah Nginyo, Diana Glenn

Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore.

At the risk of being Captain Obvious, life always surprises us. I’m not a huge Adam Sandler fan although I like some of his stuff, but when I saw the charming Don’t Say Good Luck on Netflix I had to keep reminding myself that Adam Sandler helped produce it. And that it’s a Netflix movie.

Sophie Birnbaum is the oldest of three in a loving family, and she and her mother, Elizabeth are especially close. They’ll go to the mall and fake a Southern accent just for the fun of it. They disagree just like normal people do, but they tell each other at least once on the daily that they love each other.

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Denise and Greg Platt are living a quiet suburban life with their two kids, Audrey and Brian, and of course the quiet and normal part of life doesn’t last. It starts with a neighbor lady finding a mysterious tree growing in her backyard and ends with…well, it ends.

The End of Oak Street is about what happens when a neighborhood finds itself sent back to the era of the dinosaurs, and just in case things aren’t hairy enough, they’re surrounded by jungle and can’t leave. Yikes.

This forces the Platts to not only spend their days dodging dinosaurs, but they have no choice but to deal with each other and their various issues that would have come up sooner or later. It makes for a pretty exciting time and not unlike a 1980s movie. “Spielbergian” is a frequent descriptor by critics and audiences alike, and I have to agree.

And no, I’m not going to say much about the plot, because it’s best to go into a movie like this with clean eyes. I liked the action. I liked the humor. It was nice seeing Emily Kuroda of Gilmore Girls fame playing the local librarian Mrs. Valcourt. For the most part, the movie works wonderfully.

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That’s not to say the film doesn’t have problems. Ewan McGregor’s laborious American accent is reminiscent of Daniel Craig’s awkward stylings in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. And while the movie itself is pretty strong. the last fifteen minutes or so take on a very “What the heck?” feeling.

Also, the family should have been the core focus of the movie. With the exception of a brief scene involving intrepid librarian Mrs. Valcourt, bringing in anyone else seems to just weigh everything down and add token plot bits that don’t really enhance the story. Like when the family comes on a certain female neighbor about two thirds into the film and suddenly Audrey is holding hands with her and acting as if they’ve been dating for years. The girl moved to the neighborhood right before the dinosaurs did, so when would she and Audrey have time for that?

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Or when a neighborhood kid beats Brian up because he thinks Brian broke his brother’s arm. He does this after the dinosaurs showed up. Er. Dude. You’ve got bigger fish to fry here.

I hate to say this, but I honestly wish the Platt’s neighbors got raptured or somehow left out of the dinosaur thing. It would have made it all so much easier.

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The randomness definitely doesn’t help the film. When a certain character, and I’m not going to say who it is or even use specific pronouns, gets their leg bitten off right before getting chomped to death by a T-rex, I couldn’t tell if the audience at my showing was laughing or groaning. They’d been so silent up to that scene that who knows what anyone was really thinking.

Personally, I enjoyed The End of Oak Street, even if the last part was odd and out of left field. It was fun watching Denise, Greg and their kids try to survive and it felt like a throwback to a relatively simpler time.

The End of Oak Street is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.

My grade: B

Principal Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery, Jordan Alexa Davis, P.J. Byrne, Hudson Meek, Ann Gee Byrd, Emily Kuroda, Simms May, Grayson Thorne Kilpatrick, Pilot Bunch, Walker Russell, Hugo Silver, Michael-Christian Moore, David Alexander Kaplan, Christopher A. Martin, Denitra Isler

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell.

Spend enough time puttering around certain movies on certain streaming services and inevitably the algorithm will recommend at least one movie with a generic title and no name actors. Chances are, this movie was made on Poverty Row.

Poverty Row wasn’t a place, obviously, but an expression. Like off-Broadway or off-off-Broadway. Poverty Row movies were made on teeny tiny budgets, some tinier than others, and if they were promoted or reviewed at all, they were lucky. If they garnered a double-bill with a more prestigious movie, they were even luckier.

Many of these movies were made in the mid- to late nineteen-thirties with the idea that they would be shown on television, but unfortunately World War Two put the kibosh on that, so the vast majority of them languished on vault shelves for roughly a decade until television became available. The companies that made Poverty Row movies, such as Producers Releasing Corporation, often had short lives and were usually absorbed into other larger studios.

What’s fascinating about Poverty Row is their sheer creativity. The movies often had little to no scoring, the actors clearly wore their own clothes, and clever workarounds were employed to save money and materials. If there was a car chase, they were usually pretty short and often ended with the cars pulling into a vacant lot or off to the side of the road. A street scene that would normally require a few dozen extras would be plopped down on an actual city street. Any corners that could be cut were cut.

The results were some of the least-talked about movies of the studio era, but nowadays they’re a curiosity. Here’s a gallery of just some of these Poverty Row quickies, and if anyone would like to read the full reviews, please click the titles. Hope you all enjoy…

Torture Ship (1939)

One would think a movie with a title like this would involve torture, right? Heh, Nope. The title is just lip service. What we get is a tale of a doctor who corrals criminals on a yacht so he can inject their pituitary glands with a serum that will, theoretically, make them so happy that they won’t be criminals anymore. Torture Ship’s main distinction is that it’s loosely based on a Jack London short story called “A Thousand Deaths.”

Step On It (1936)

Repeated speeding leads a state trooper to arrest a woman, which leads the woman’s dad to surmise that the state trooper might be great at helping him find out who’s stealing his gasoline company’s gasoline. While not being a state trooper anymore. Did I forget to mention that Poverty Row movies often have laughingly implausible storylines? What’s even more laughable about Step On It is that there’s one scene in which a guy drives out to the baddie’s hideout, and for the entire time, we never see his face.

Hold That Woman! (1940)

Who knew a repo man could double as an action hero, but that’s what we get in Hold That Woman! Jimmy stops off on his way to a date to repossess a woman’s radio, but she calls the police and has him thrown in jail. Unbeknownst to Jimmy, though, there are some stolen jewels hidden in the radio, and that sparks a contest between Jimmy and his fellow skiptracers: Whoever gets the radio back first will get a big payout. Jimmy’s not too worried, though. In between taking care of business, he and his fiancee, Mary have time to get married and buy furniture for their new apartment.

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Saleslady (1938)

Mary is the heiress to the Cannon Mattress Company fortune, but she wants someone to love her for her and not for her money. So she decides to temporarily walk away from the socialite scene and gets a job in a department store, where she meets a guy named Bob. They get married right away and things seem perfect, but there’s a problem: Bob dislikes heiresses. This movie is pretty cute and features acclaimed character actor Henry Davenport as Mary’s grandpa.

Telephone Operator (1937)

When a local dam breaks, it falls to switchboard operator Helen to keep up communications in town, even as the water pours through the window of the telephone company and she and her coworker Dottie have to stand on a floating piece of wood. Honestly, there’s really not much to this movie, but the cast is OK. And if Helen looks familiar, that’s because she went on to play the lingerie model in The Women: “Our new one-piece lace foundation garments. Zips up the back and no bones.”

Sky Racket (1937)

Marion runs away from her wedding and ends up getting kidnapped by a gang of thugs who shoot planes out of the sky with a laser beam. We also see Marion taking out her makeup and touching up her face whenever she gets the chance. This was by design because funnily enough, the movie had a tie-in deal with MovieWave Cosmetics, so it was all about product placement. Oh, and about that laser beam: We don’t actually see it. The head baddie just walks up to a cabinet radio and turns a knob.

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Bank Alarm (1937)

Bank Alarm is one of a series of films about a guy and his girlfriend who solve mysteries, and in this case they’re after a man who posed as a lawyer in order to murder a bank robber who’s already in prison. Whew. Of course that means there are underworld dealings afoot, which means shenanigans are a thing. Like changing serial numbers of dollar bills and fronting mysterious clubs. Oh, and the old stuffing-money-in-mattresses trick is a thing, too. Bank Alarm might be low-budget, but it’s actually pretty fun.

Happy-Go-Lucky (1938)i

Mistaken identities, lookalikes, and amnesia, oh my! When Mary goes to Shanghai to look for her Marine husband, Bill, who was shot down over the Pacific, she meets Jack, thinking he’s Bill. Of course there’s a group of baddies making trouble, and because it’s Poverty Row, of course there are odd tweaks to keep everything in budget, such as when Jack takes a flying leap off of a yacht and the frame rate slows down to make the plunge look longer.

Utah Train (1938)

We end with Tex Ritter. Yes, he was John Ritter’s dad. He was also a prolific country singer, his most famous credit being the theme song of High Noon. For his own part, Ritter played characters named Tex most of the time, and in Utah Train he and his buddies help apprehend a ghost train. The plot is thin as thin can be, but Tex’s ability to pull his guitar out of nowhere like a video game character is truly impressive.

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Poverty Row might not have gotten much buzz, but it was fun while it lasted and shows independent directors making movies long before indie was cool.

Torture Ship and Utah Train can be streamed for free on Tubi. Step On It is available on Prime and YouTube. Telephone Operator, Sky Racket, Bank Alarm, Hold That Woman! and Happy-Go-Lucky are available on Prime.

What if premarital sex was completely outlawed except for one night out of the year? That’s the premise of One Night Only, a rather clumsy and implausible romp that could be romantic and goofy if it wasn’t so unbelievable and sloppy.

It’s an alternate universe when everyone is marked with a chip that indicates their marital status. For three hundred sixty-four days of the year, it’s illegal for unmarried people to fornicate. One night out of the year, for twelve solid hours, all bets are off, their chips turn from red to green, and sex is fine, even expected. Everyone counts the days down as if The Night is another Christmas and looks to hook up with someone, anyone during those twelve hours.

Allie’s day job is as a singer. As in, she sings the jingles we all hear on those medication commercials with the long, long lists of side effects. She gives it her all, but it’s a little demoralizing to put everything into words like “psoriasis.”

Owen owns a pizza place and is looking forward to proposing to his girlfriend on The Night, but over sushi, Malika tells him she’s planning on sleeping with someone else. Owen can’t go home because Malika needs the apartment. He can’t go to his mom’s apartment, because Mom is going to sleep with a guy named Rick.

Allie feels depressed about her prospects, but her roommate helpfully gives her a dress that’s barely a dress and sends her off. Long story short, she and Owen have several meet-cutes, some more meet than cute, and after a few false starts they admit that maybe they’re supposed to at least hang out.

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Meanwhile, the clock is ticking down the minutes and their chips are going to turn red again.

The audience at my showing guffawed their way through this one. I mostly facepalmed and grimaced and wondered if I was a stick-in-the-mud for not being enraptured over what I was seeing.

Maybe it was because the premise is completely absurd. Or it’s because the movie feels like it keeps punching itself in the face. Anyone who doesn’t take a flying leap into bed is pitied. Anyone who leaps into bed without condoms is a dope. One of the movie’s lengthiest bits involves a stolen Durex condom that’s so precious Owen has to hold Allie by her legs while she fishes it out of a storm drain.

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It could also be the abundant awkwardness. I didn’t need to see Christian Gillespie bouncing in his tighty-whities on a baby grand singing about how he’s going to go all the way with Monica Barbaro. It’s not cute. It’s very cringey. His character is supposed to be this super-edgy rebel, but he gives off Teletubby vibes.

Speaking of cringe, I really didn’t need to see Molly Ringwald and LeVar Burton wearing nothing but bubble wrap. It feels like desperation. Icky, tacky desperation. GenXers who have fond memories of John Hughes movies and Reading Rainbow might want to avert their eyes.

Another big misstep is Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro’s chemistry. It feels forced like everything else in this movie feels forced. They might be good together if everything wasn’t so squished. Chance meetings over twelve hours can be the beginning of a connection, but that’s it.

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Overall, though, the movie made me feel like a loser if I didn’t get on board with resisting a mandate that the average American wouldn’t have signed off on in the first place. Legislating morality beyond basic expectations is always a bad idea, and when morality revolves around finding someone with whom to have a one-night stand, it all feels cheap.

One Night Only tries hard, but in the end it’s a Walk of Shame. Oh well, that’s life.

One Night Only is currently in theaters. Rated R.

My grade: D-

Principal Cast: Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Charlie Gillespie, Nicholas Braun, Molly Ringwald, Maya Hawke, Ben Marshall, Bobby Cannavale, Julia Fox, King Princess, Michelle Hurd, Pete Davidson, Jay Ellis, LeVar Burton, Quintessa Swindell, Roma Maffia, Ella Loudon, Sydney Cole Alexander

Directed by Will Gluck.

Written by Travis Braun.

Remember when My Big Fat Greek Wedding came out? This little flick that could played on a few screens, left those screens, and then came back bigger on more screens just based on word of mouth and popular demand. Can we say that about any other movie? I don’t think so.

Almost twenty-five years later, this movie is a classic story about family and identity, and like all good classics, it never ages.

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Netflix movies, and streaming movies in general, have the reputation of suckage. Flat lighting, cheap drama, phoned-in acting. They’re basically Harlequin romances put onscreen (No offense to anyone who likes Harlequin romances, but they do have a certain reputation)).

Sometimes, though, life surprises us. We all know this. Even Netflix can surprise us, not that I’m trying to shill for them, but I was actually surprised to find Remarkably Bright Creatures. It’s beautifully filmed. It’s colorful. It’s well-written. It’s well-acted. It’s narrated by an elderly octopus named Marcellus.

Widow Tova Sullivan lives in a little seaside town in Washington state, and spends her nights cleaning the local aquarium. She’s made friends with Marcellus the octopus, who spends his days longing for the open ocean. He wants out of his tank so badly that he’ll undo the latch and hop around, leaving behind a trail of wet spots, and Tova has to coax him back in.

Marcellus isn’t the only one who’s longing to be free. Tova feels estranged from her lifelong friends, her son went sailing and never came back, and she’s all set to sell her house and move to an assissted living facility across the bay. She’d rather die than be a burden to anyone.

When Tova sprains her ankle she has to find someone to fill in for her. Enter Cameron, a guitarist in a band who’s come into town in his decrepit VW bus looking for the man who he believes is his father. He’s incredibly insecure and not a little flakey.

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Cameron’s hard up for funds, and he’s not well-versed in the art of cleaning, either. Tova, despite her bad ankle, comes in to teach Cameron that there’s a right way to do things and to teach him how to handle Marcellus.

The cephalopod in question watches the friendship develop between this unlikely pair and wonders how he can help them. He knows his time is short and that they’re both hurting, but octopi are more intelligent than they’re often given credit for.

I could say more, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Believe me, it’s better this way.

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Remarkably Bright Creatures is an incredibly sweet movie but not in a saccharine way. While the premise is a little far-fetched, as Marcellus would have to be omniscient to know as much as he knows about Tova and Cameron, these characters are very well-drawn. They’re not the most polished people, but they’re not slick Hollywood types, either. We feel as if we know them.

I can’t imagine anyone but Sally Field in the role of Tova. She brings a graceful mix of pepper, wisdom, and frailty to a character who’s on the verge of giving up but who keeps finding reasons not to. Alfred Molina voices Marcellus with perfect world-weariness.

And it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the guy who once played Doc Ock plays a literal octopus.

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I’m not sure what I was expecting when I turned on Remarkably Bright Creatures. Old Woman With Mop? Octopus With Remarkably Expressive Tentacles? Who knows.

It was a lark, that’s for sure, and it more than paid off.

Remarkably Bright Creatures is currently streaming on Netflix. Rated

My grade: A+

Principal Cast: Sally Field, Lewis Pullman, Colm Meaney, Joan Chen, Kathy Baker, Beth Grant, Sofia Black-D’Elia, Brandon McEwan, Donald Sales, Mapuana Makia, Laura Harris, Anthony Harrison, Dan Payne, Shauna Johannesen, Chris William Martin, David Parent, Michael Delleva, Noah Craig

Directed by Olivia Newman.

Written by Olivia Newton, John Whittington, and Shelby Van Pelt.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels seem to be required reading for many Americans just for the sheer love of it. The home-y scenes of family life, the food, and the glimpses of a time long past are something to be visited over and over again. I know I have, and I even got to visit the site of the Ingalls’ cabin in Kansas, which Wilder wrote about in Little House On the Prairie.

This novel has been adapted for the small screen several times, the most famous instance being the Michael Landon series. Now we’ve got Netflix’s new series of Little House On the Prairie, which is not only beautifully filmed and acted, but gives other versions a run for their money.

The series follows the Ingalls as they move to Independence, Kansas because Charles has heard there’s free land there. There they find a thriving and diverse community, becoming so ingrained in their new surroundings that they wonder who they were before they left the Big Woods.

Life isn’t perfect, of course. Everyone has their own reasons for coming to Independence, and some carry more baggage than others. As time goes on, the community becomes very tight-knit, and the Ingalls can’t imagine leaving.

Little House On the Prairie is hugely enjoyable. It flies by. Granted, it’s not pure Laura Ingalls Wilder, but it’s got the flavor of the original novel, drawing enough from the source material to maintain cred. The rest heavily reads Jeanette Oke and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

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The show also lays out what was going on in Osage Territory at the time the Ingalls would have been there. It’s not terribly accurate, but it serves to paint a picture of the political situation at the time.

Also not terribly accurate is the abundance of people around. The real Ingalls family was much more isolated except for a neighbor couple, the Scotts, and Mr. Edwards, who waded through an icy cold river with his clothes on his head to bring presents to Laura and Mary at Christmastime. As far as we know, Mr. Edwards didn’t have a drinking problem as the series portrays him.

And the Ingalls family had very few interactions with the local tribe when they were in Kansas. There’s a scene in the series where two Native Americans come to the Ingalls’ cabin and take their food, which really happened, only they didn’t make off with Caroline’s china shepherdess as the series shows the Native Americans doing. The novel also talks about Laura watching as a line of Native Americans ride out of the territory and she, Mary, and Charles visiting the former Native American village, coming away with handfuls of beads.

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One thing that isn’t different from the original novel, though, is the abundance of music, because Charles Ingalls was a prolific fiddler, and the period songs we hear on the show are on point. If anyone has seen the Christy TV series starring Kelly Martin, there will be plenty of familiar pieces here, and the Prairie people do a lot of singing.

That said, there are anachronisms galore, only I can’t say too much without giving spoilers, but oh well. The Ingalls ladies’ bonnets were pretty but not what they would have worn, as they provide absolutely no sun protection whatsoever. Laura’s flat-brimmed hat works, but the real Laura and Mary would have also worn bonnets most of the time. Laura said more than once in her books that she really disliked sunbonnets, as wearing them felt like looking down a stovepipe.

The series also shows women taking jobs to help pay for household expenses, which wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but a woman proposing to a man would have been highly irregular.

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In its favor, the show doesn’t try to be too politically correct but keeps everything very family-friendly and relatively appropriate to the source material’s time period.

To be honest, though, I didn’t care too much about the show’s thin Wilder veneer. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a series this good and I hope there’s a second season.

Little House On the Prairie is currently streaming on Netflix. Rated TV-PG.

My grade: A-

Principal Cast: Luke Bracey, Crosby Fitzgerald, Alice Halsey, Skywalker Hughes, Kowen Cadorath, Jocko Sims, Barrett Doss, Mary Holland, Warren Christie, Meegwun Fairbrother, Alyssa Wapanatahk, Wren Zhawenim Gotts, Maclean Fish, Rebecca Amzallag, Michael Hough, Ryan Robbins, Xander Cole, Sharon Bajer, Meghan Follows

Developed by Rebecca Sonnenshine.

I can’t help myself. I know I said I’d take a break from series recaps, not that I have to do them, but when I found out about Prime’s new show, Elle, I was hooked. Especially when I saw that all the episode titles were lines from the original Legally Blonde movie.

The show can be unfailingly cute, albeit a little too energetic in the callback game. It’s energetic in other ways, too. I was going to do another episode-by-episode recap, but decided to binge instead. Elle moves fast and likes it that way.

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The title of this movie is almost too on the nose. It’s almost the end of July, I have one full week of vacay left, and I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: this July has been a very skimpy month in terms of new releases.

And things seemed to be working against me yesterday as far as finding something to review was concerned. I tried watching a movie called Camp on Tubi but turned it off after about twenty minutes because there were too many jokes about Hitler and Nazis. The titular camp is for Jewish teenagers and they’re joking about Hitler and Nazis. Oh, and there’s a Nazi ghost that is said to haunt the camp.

Does anyone else think that’s just a wee bit tacky?

Tubi wasn’t done with me yet, though, as the “You Might Also Like” recs offered a brand new movie called Summer’s Last Resort. Feeling a little bit desperate, I decided to give it a shot and while this movie is initially a mondo cringe-fest, it gets better. Kinda.

Summer is an awkward fifteen year old whose mom, Milly has just started dating Glenn, the vice principal at Summer’s high school. When school is out for the summer, Glenn invites Milly, Summer, and Summer’s younger brother, Grayson, to an all=inclusive Caribbean resort for a week, because he’s been nominated Vice Principal of the Year.

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Summer can’t think of a worse way to spend her time, but she goes along anyway, thinking she’ll break up her mom and Glenn. Glenn, meanwhile, has other ideas, because he really wants Summer and Grayson to like him and be OK with he and Milly dating.

As it turns out, though, Summer’s efforts to break up Milly and Glenn are more embarrasing than brilliant, and it complicates matters when she meets a cute Canadian teenager named Crosby. Oh no, Summer can’t go for five minutes without being embarrassed by something. When she first meets Crosby, Glenn slaps her on the back hard enough for her to spit out her drink, and that’s just the beginning of the cringe-fest.

Seriously, this movie started out trying its hardest to win me over, and maybe I’m just a little too cynical, but I couldn’t crack a smile no matter how hard I tried. There’s one scene in particular when Glenn and Summer have a chance to swim with an ancient dolphin named Kimberly, and, well, how do I put this delicately?

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Summer can’t eat gluten. She accidentally eats some pancakes that have gluten one morning at breakfast. When she and Glenn go to swim with Kimberly, Summer is suddenly afflicted with a massive gas attack which somehow kills Kimberly. Implausibly, Glenn and Summer perform CPR on Kimberly and we’re treated to a close-up of Glenn giving the dolphin mouth-to-mouth.

Only it’s mouth-to-blowhole and we see Glenn’s mouth coming at Kimberly’s blowhole. From inside Kimberly. Ick. Go ahead and make faces.

Kimberly somehow revives and happily swims around the pool, much to the delight of the crowd, and Glenn and Summer have a nice heart-to-heart afterwards. Yay.

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The movie gets better by the end. I won’t ruin it, but suffice it to say that it involves a jetski, a Spork, and an octopus stolen from the resort aquarium.

Summer’s Last Resort is incredibly weak and predictable to a fault. The writing is terrible, the acting is terrible, and many of the situations couldn’t be more lame. Still, it has a few shining moments. Then it’s dumb fun and firmly in so-bad-it’s-good territory. And did I mention that the title is incredibly apt? Happy almost-end of vacay, everyone.

Summer’s Last Resort is currently streaming on Tubi. Not rated.

My grade: F

Principal Cast: Sophia Bush, Jerry O’Connell, Violet McGraw, Tim Rozon, Clara Alexandrova, Dawian van der Westhuizen, Max Botha, Richard Wright Firth, Candice van Litsenbourgh, Chris van Rensburg, Terence Bridgett, Andrew Rouz, Rachael Saunders, Alan Foulis, Thuto Merrengula, Jason Holdsworth, Ryan Kruger, Reece Davids

Directed by Melanie Scrofano.

Written by Emily Andras.

This July has been undeniably skimpy when it comes to appealing movies, and naturally in Movie World, when the going gets tough, the tough go old school. When Ladies Meet has been on my watchlist forever, and while it seems like a nice, light comedy, it packs quite the punch.

Mary Howard is a bestselling author who’s so beloved that she can’t go to a party without people asking for her autograph. She’s also beloved by journalist Jimmy Lee, who’s come back from a long trip and wants Mary to marry him.

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Remember Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? If not, it’s a 1962 Edward Albee play about a couple named George and Martha who have another couple, Nick and Honey, over after a party. It’s not so much a visit as a struggle session, with Nick and Honey sitting by awkwardly while George and Martha go ballistic. At least, that’s what Nick and Honey do until they get sucked into George and Martha’s world.

The play was adapted for the screen in 1966 and starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis, losing none of the tension of the play. Then again, it wasn’t much work for Taylor and Burton, who were known to fight as fiercely as they loved.

The Invite reminds me of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Can’t imagine why.

Oh wait, yes I can.

Joe and Angela live in a spacious San Francisco apartment that Joe inherited from his parents. Joe used to be in a band but now teaches music at East Bay Conservatory, and he comes home one night to find that Angela has invited the upstairs neighbors over for dinner. Their daughter is out at a sleepover, so the adults have the freedom to kick their shoes off.

Angela and Joe don’t have the greatest marriage. They can’t go for five minutes without sniping at each other. Each one of them is more dissatisfied with the marriage than they’re willing to admit, but Angela is determined they’ll put a good face on at this dinner party.

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The couple in question, Hawk and Pina, seem to be everything Joe and Angela aren’t. They’re not married and they’re very sexually liberated. So sexually liberated, in fact, that they have group sex orgies at their apartment on a regular basis. They think that Joe and Angela might like to join their activities.

They’re so prepared that they’ve even brought condoms just in case. Joe and Angela aren’t sure what to think, but they play it cool.

I’m so mixed about this movie. On the plus side, it reads like a stage play and gives us ample time to really walk around inside these characters’ heads. The dialogue is natural to a fault, with everyone talking over each other sometimes the way people often do, and we’re dealing with four very seasoned actors.

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It’s also pretty straightforward and realistic to how adults might talk about sex when kids aren’t around, although I’m not sure everyone gets that comfortable on a first meeting. Not to say it can’t happen, but it feels like TMI.

Seth Rogen is probably the best part of The Invite because even though his character is just as messed up as everyone else, he shields himself and us with a comedic touch. When he and Pina go into the library to, well, get more comfortable with each other, Joe looks like a sixth grader about to play Spin the Bottle for the first time.

On the other hand, the movie fumbles because it’s a little too self-aware. I lost count of how many times Olivia Wilde just barely dodged breaking the fourth wall. Seriously. She almost looks straight into the camera so many times. I know this isn’t her first foray as a director, but I could just see her reminding herself that she was in front of the camera and not behind it.

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And the awkward subject matter is off-putting after a while. It’s not as explicit as Miller’s Girl, not by a long shot, or as pretentious. It just feels premature and unearned. If I invited someone into my home and they started talking the way Pina and Hawk do, even if they’re nice about it, I’d politely show them the door.

However, the show and the evening must go on, so the door is not an option. Goody.

The Invite isn’t terrible. It’s Virginia Woolf-lite. However, it’s not the kind of movie I would seek out all that often, especially since I no longer have the luxury of ignorance.

The Invite is currently in theaters. Rated R.

My grade: B-

Principal Cast: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton, Skip Howland, Mel Powell, Rachel Thurow, Mario Valdez

Directed by Olivia Wilde.

Written by Cesc Gay, Will McCormack, and Rashida Jones.

Gotta hand it to Netflix for their impeccable timing. Not only have they released Shipwrecked: Nightmare At Sea at the height of summer vacay season, but it’s currently the number one movie. Eeeeeeep. Train wrecks and shipwrecks have a lot in common, I guess.

Seriously, though, this film is terrifying.

It’s pretty hard to forget the wreck of the Costa Concordia even though it happened fourteen years ago. The ship lying on its side, the desperate passengers trying to get off in lifeboats even though the ship is listing so much that the lifeboats can’t be lowered, the desperate passengers left on the ship as it continues to list.

And worst of all, the mismanagement by the captain and the crew, the former of whom is currently paying the price for not going down with the ship and failing to keep the passengers and crew informed about what happened.

Not that he had to die or anything, but the man did leave the ship before many of the crew members and refused to return even after being ordered to do so.

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There was so much that was wrong with how the disaster was handled. It’s infuriating.

Shipwrecked has a razor-sharp immediacy. Not only is it a recent memory for many, but eerily enough, it went down almost one hundred years to the day after the Titanic. In fact. some of the passengers compared the wreck to the Titanic because of the difficulty the Concordia had in getting everyone off in lifeboats.

The biggest difference between the Titanic and the Concordia, of course, besides the Titanic’s much higher death toll and the inadequate number of lifeboats, is the fact that so much of the Concordia wreck was filmed by survivors. Patricia Sandoval’s footage in particular is heavily sprinkled throughout the film.

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Hers isn’t the only footage, though. We hear recreated dialogue of the moment the trouble started and hearing the captain ask, “What have I done?” when he realizes what’s happened. We also see the passengers at a party when the ship struck the rock, and the way it all plays out is not so much like the Titanic as The Poseidon Adventure.

The bulk of the film is taken up by interview footage, and the thing that struck me is how the cruise had so little time to be normal. Many guests went straight from the party to the lifeboats, which meant that the women were mostly in heels.

The movie effectively keeps the tension going at an almost feverish pace for about two thirds of the runtime before letting us know what happened to some of the passengers, many of whom are understandably traumatized and changed forever by their experience.

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That’s not to say that it’s perfect, though. Shipwrecked’s biggest flaw is that it’s pretty condensed. It also doesn’t talk much about the people who died, but that could be because the families didn’t want to be involved.

Full disclosure: I never went on a cruise growing up, mostly because my mom gets motion sickness. Not knocking anyone who goes on cruises, but it just wasn’t on the radar. After seeing Shipwrecked, though, it sort of puts me off ocean cruising possibly for life. I wouldn’t mind taking a riverboat cruise on the Mississippi, but that’s about it. Yeah, I know what happened to the Concordia was unusual, but these kinds of films always remind us that the possibility of things going wrong is always there.

Shipwrecked: Nightmare At Sea is currently streaming on Netflix. Rated TV-14.

My grade: B+

Principal Cast: John Scimone, Megan Scimone, Patricia Sandoval, Nicholas Tallaferro, Stefania Vicenzi, Manrico Giampedroni, Rose Metcalf, Manoj Singh, Barbie Nadeau, Francesco Boaria, Alessandro Cantelli-Forti, Pier Luigi Forti, Don Lemon, Francesco Schettino, Lila Scimone, Maria Grazia Trecharici

Directed by Chiara Messineo.

There’s a ton of buzz right now over Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and it hasn’t been good. I’ve read the book a few times, and I know enough about the new movie to know that the odds are not in Nolan’s favor.

Yeah, I know that the reasonable thing would be to wait until the movie’s out to judge it either way, but some movies just stink from a mile off. The bad casting, the deliberate distortion of history, the pretentious wannabe Princess Bride dialogue, and the general defensiveness surrounding the film don’t bode well.

That and it’s a bad sign when Variety chooses to blatantly lie about pre-sales. They’ve been bragging that there’s been a heavy demand for tickets on the AMC website since they went on sale last year. I call BS because Fandango doesn’t sell tickets that far ahead. Most ticket sites don’t, Why lie, Variety?

Ergo, I’ve decided to do the safe thing and avoid The Odyssey at least until it comes to streaming. Longer, if the reviews aren’t favorable. Either way, I will not be spending my money on it. And I usually like Christopher Nolan. And Lupita Nyong’o, who’s improbably cast as Helen of Troy even though Helen of Troy has always been described as fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and possibly blonde or redheaded.

But I digress.

In light of all the animosity around Nolan’s potential misstep, I decided to revisit Wolfgang Petersen’s beefy 2004 epic, Troy. It’s been around ten years since I saw it last, possibly more, and I was surprised at how well it’s worn over the years.

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Brad Pitt plays Achilles. Eric Bana plays Hector. Orlando Bloom plays Paris. Diane Kruger plays Helen of Troy. Sean Bean plays Odysseus. Peter O’Toole plays Priam. For starters. The movie is full of vigorous dialogue, expansive scenes, and a little bit of pre-Zach Snyder slo-mo to emphasize Achilles’ godlike fighting abilities. It also might be one of the few movies that doesn’t kill off Sean Bean.

The plot is, of course, drawn from The Iliad, which involves the fight between the Trojans and the Greeks, the latter of whom are seemingly there to take back Helen after she absconded with Paris, younger brother of Prince Hector. It all culminates in the famously ubiquitous Trojan Horse ploy by the Greeks, who play on the Trojans’ complacency and grief after the death of Hector at the hands of Achilles.

Where the movie deviates from Homer’s original work is that the Trojan War is squished down from ten years to a few months, and there’s no interaction with the gods. In the book, Paris is spirited away to a tower by Athena after his humiliation in the fight with Menelaus.

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I remember that some critics poked fun at Brad Pitt’s performance in 2004, saying that it was more about getting people to look at his biceps than about the acting, but Pitt’s turn as Achilles isn’t bad. While he might initially seem a little meatheaded, he learns a few things along the way.

Orlando Bloom’s Paris does so as well, as he starts out by being a coward who thinks he knows more than he does to becoming braver if a little to quick on the trigger. I remember thinking at the time this movie came out that it was fun that Orlando Bloom was using a bow and arrow again. Paris is a quick study, it seems.

Bloom’s got great chemistry with Eric Bana who plays Hector. Bana’s turn is honestly one of my favorites, and it’s really easy to imagine these guys as brothers. Hector is a true warrior; it’s always sad thinking that his character is ultimately doomed. But that’s all part of what makes The Iliad a great story.

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I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m weary of being told that I’m the problem if I don’t like something. I’m weary of Western mythology getting lost in modern day sensibilities and DEI casting. And I’m weary of the sound and fury that is a wee bit too prevalent in Hollywood today.

It’s for that reason that going back to Troy was a heady experience. It’s definitely not a perfect movie, but Hollywood seldom makes movies like it anymore.

Troy is currently streaming on Howdy and AMC+. Rated R.

My grade: A-

Principal Cast: Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Julian Glover, Brian Cox, nathan Jones, Adoni Maropis, Jacob Smith, John Shrapnel, Brendan Gleeson, Diane Kruger, Siri Svegler, Lucie Barat, Ken Bones, Manuel Cauchi, Mark Lewis Jones, Garrett Hedlund, Sean Bean, Peter O’Toole

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen.

Written by David Beniof and Homer (novel).

There’s so much legend surrounding George Washington. Let us count the myths. He had wooden teeth. He chopped down a cherry tree and then told his father he couldn’t tell a lie. He threw a silver dollar across the Potomac. He was the first to live in the White House.

None of that is true, of course, but what is true is that Washington is the only American who is known as “The Father of His Country.”

What’s also true is that Washington wasn’t always the Revolutionary and Presidential powerhouse we know him as, and Young Washington looks at some of Washington’s career as a very young man during the French and Indian War. Brought to us by Angel Studios, the same people who gave us Sound of Freedom, Young Washington is an excellent portrayal of a lesser-known time in George Washington’s life, bolstered by a stellar cast.

The story starts with Washington as a boy, being tutored by his older half-brother, Lawrence and learning surveying, Lawrence develops tuberculosis, and resigns from his post as the commanding officer of a militia. George is competent enough that Lawrence recommends him as a replacement despite a lack of military experience.

George throws himself headlong into it, but he’s got a few things to overcome besides being wet behind the ears. He’s a little too sure of himself. And he has to contend with class structure. Because he’s a colonist, he’s looked down upon by the Brits and has to work harder than anyone to prove himself.

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He’d also like to marry Sally Cary, the daughter of a rich family, but since he’s of a lower social class, the two of them can’t be together.

All of that gets shoved aside, though, as George learns the art of war. After his embarassment at Fort Necessity, in which George’s men were picked off by French snipers and hopelessly outgunned, George has to take a deep look inside. And there we see the legend that is George Washington begin to form.

Young Washington brings it with bells on, and apart from a few liberties the accuracy is on point. William Franklyn-Miller is tall and full of charisma, holding his own next to heavyweights like Ben Kingsley, Andy Serkis and Kelsey Grammar. What gives the film an extra bit of authenticity is that Franklyn-Miller is twenty-two, the same age as Washington was at the start of the French and Indian War. I also like that the film avoids hagiography and sticks to facts, because it drives home how likeable George Washington really was and that he had his flaws just like anyone else.

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The battle sequences are suitably confusing as it must have been for the real participants, and we see a bit of the arrogance that would later be the undoing of the Brits in the Revolutionary War.

We also see what happens when old battle tactics meet new tactics and new tech. Put it this way: one of the key tenents in war is knowing one’s opponent, and new technology and tactics have a distinct advantage because they’re a mysteries. That the Brits never quite seemed to catch on to this is one of the reasons they failed.

Young Washington does a spectacular job of laying out the culture of the time period not so much through exposition but through the characters’ actions. “Show, don’t tell” is the approach, and it works.

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The only thing I would say is that the film drags just a slight bit. We could have trimmed about five minutes off of it and not missed a beat. Then again, it needs that space for these characters to breathe, so it’s no big deal.

It seemed to strike a chord with the audience at my screening, who not only applauded but chanted, “USA, USA, USA.”

It’s also suitably fitting that Young Washington was released while America celebrates its 250th birthday. It’s only proper that we pay tribute to one of the greatest figures in both American and world history, a man who was described by Governor Henry Lee III of Virginia as, ”First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Young Washington is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.

My grade: A

Principal Cast: William Franklyn-Miller, Mary-Louise Parker, Leo Hanna, Mia Rodgers, Joel David Smallbone, Kelsey Grammar, Andy Serkis, Ben Kingsley, Michael Benz, Jonno Davies, Jon Foss, Will Joseph, Ryan Begay, Clement Toyon, Nicholas Antoniou, Angus Castle-Doughty, Fearghal Geraghty, Martijn Lakemeier

Directed by Jon Erwin.

Written by Diederick Hoogstraten, Tom Provost and Jon Erwin.

George Michael Cohan will always be known as The Man Who Owns Broadway, and James Cagney will always be the man who immortalized The Man Who Owns Broadway in 1942 film, Yankee Doodle Dandy.

This movie and my family go way back. We taped it in the 1980s, probably around 1986 or so, and every year after that we watched it on Independence Day. After about a decade we all had the film memorized, but it didn’t matter. We still play it every year. My dad is about the only one who actually watches the movie on the Fourth anymore, but I’ve been known to live dangerously and indulge at other times of the year.

The film is a survey of Cohan’s life and works, told in flashback in what is supposed to be 1940, when Cohen was presented with a Medal of Honor by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Cohan’s story is fairly idealized, of course, because Hollywood likes it that way, but we still get a pretty good idea of what Cohan’s days of performing on the vaudeville circuit and why the Four Cohans were so popular. People enjoyed seeing a family performing together and the Cohans were a fun group.

I like that the movie gives a good albeit sanitized glimpse of what vaudeville was like. I performed in a few vaudeville houses when I was with the Continental Singers (the Fox Theatre in McCook, Nebraska for one), and vaudeville stages are generally tiny. And hot. Anyway…

Of course, we get an eyefull of Cohan’s Broadway work as well, which was impressive in its day and which 1942 audiences would have had living memories of. Cohan was instrumental in developing what we now call “integrated musicals” as opposed to the musical revues that were typical of vaudeville and Broadway up until that time, and Yankee Doodle Dandy showcases a few of Cohan’s greatest hits.

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Naturally, there were liberties taken, with some events being moved forward or backward and some people made older or younger than they really were. And the musical numbers are probably much fancier than Cohan could have ever dreamed. I always find myself goggling at the Broadway stages, which are a mixture of movie magic and the spectacle that was a Cohan production. The film makes it all look mostly easy, even vaudeville, which consisted of long days and sometimes long waits between meals for the average performer.

Of course there are a couple of parts of the film that haven’t aged well, but they do accurately reflect Cohan’s time. There’s a very brief scene of the Four Cohans in blackface, a performance device which was dated in 1942 but would have been done now and then during the late nineteenth century. Some viewers may also take issue with George getting a spanking in one scene, although others may feel he deserves it.

What’s important, though, is that Yankee Doodle Dandy is immensely entertaining and vigorously patriotic. Cohan’s music and spirit are brought across with plenty of gusto, and Cagney gives a tour-de-force performance, nailing the famous Cohan walk and the half-talking way Cohan would often put over a song. Cagney was an amazing actor, but his turn as Cohan is uniquely iconic for a man who had many iconic performances to his name.

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The look of the film is remarkable as well. Yankee Doodle Dandy’s director of photography was the prolific James Wong Howe, who mostly let Cagney do his thing but who also reflected mood and character without unnecessary weight.

One scene shows Cohan writing “Over There” on an empty stage with just a grand piano and a single bare bulb lighting the shot. Even though the sequence is less than a minute long, it communicates Cohan’s haste to contribute to the war effort during the First World War and the importance of this particular song.

It would be interesting to know when the scene was filmed, because Pearl Harbor was attacked while Yankee Doodle Dandy was in principal photography. The Monday following, the entire cast and crew crowded around a radio on their soundstage and listened to Roosevelt declare war. The whole crowd fell silent, and after a long beat, Cagney said, “I think a prayer goes in here.”

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“Over There” was a motif both for the film and for the Armed Forces during the Second World War. It opened and closed every episode of the radio show, “Command Performance,” which was broadcast to servicemen overseas.

It would have, no doubt, been highly gratifying for George M. Cohan, who died of bladder cancer at home on November 5, 1942. He had not only been able to see and approve of Yankee Doodle Dandy, but legend has it that he sneaked into a movie theater with his nurse to watch a bit of the film shortly before his death and was very touched by the audience’s reaction.

Plenty has changed since 1942, obviously. No one remembers vaudeville anymore, at least not firsthand. George M. Cohan’s plays aren’t produced anymore, although his music still lives. Some of the theatres Cohan performed in still exist while others don’t. James Cagney died forty years ago this year. The others who worked on Yankee Doodle Dandy have also passed on.

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None of them would recognize Broadway or Hollywood today, and I have to wonder what their reactions would be if they could see them.

It’s pretty safe to say that they would enjoy seeing audiences continue to love on Yankee Doodle Dandy, a film that has stayed timeless while also reflecting the time in which it was made and the man it pays tribute to. We need its messages and entertainment value now more than ever. I’m guessing Cohan would respond the way Cagney did so often in the film:

“My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you.”

Yankee Doodle Dandy is available on home media. Not rated.

My grade: A+

Principal Cast: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf, Irene Manning, George Tobias, Rosemary DeCamp, Jeanne Cagney, Frances Langford, George Barbier, S.Z. Sakall, Walter Catlett, Douglas Croft, Eddie Foy Jr., Minor Watson, Chester Clute, Odette Myrtil, Patsy Parsons

Directed by Michael Curtiz.

Written by Robert Buckner, Edmund Joseph and Julius J. Epstein.

When I go to a movie, especially a movie I’m reviewing, I try to avoid as much of the publicity surrounding the film as I can because I like going in with fresh eyes and I don’t want to parrot anyone if I can help it. With Supergirl, avoidance was impossible, because everyone has been talking about how lousy the film is.

Even without the buzz, I had sort of formed an opinion already from the trailer, namely that Milly Alcock played Supergirl the way Kesha would play Supergirl. As in Tik Tok-era Kesha. I remember someone on VHI say of that video years ago, “{Kesha} makes you want to shower.”

Something about the new Supergirl movie just reminds me of that. I’m not going to be shy about spoilers here, people. Or metaphors. If you’ve seen a Mad Max movie, you’ve seen Supergirl. If you’ve seen the cantina scene in Star Wars, you’ve seen Supergirl. If you’ve seen Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, you’ve seen Supergirl. If you’ve seen Easy Rider, you’ve seen Supergirl. If you’ve heard that joke about every country song being about losing the girl, the dog, and the tractor, you’ve seen Supergirl.

And yes, this movie made me want to shower.

So basically, Supergirl, only she’s going by her real name of Kara, is on a pub crawl throughout the galaxy to celebrate her birthday, when she meets Ruthye, whose entire family was murdered by bounty hunting brigand Krem. Brigands kidnap girls and force them to marry them because they’re an all-male race and need to propagate their kind. How they’ve managed to survive so long is a mystery, but anyway…

Kara has no interest in helping Ruthye until Krem steals her spaceship and shoots poison darts into her dog, Krypto. She’s got three days to find Krem and get the antidote before Krypto dies.

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That’s it. That’s basically the plot of this movie.

Ugh. I can’t begin to express how repulsive Supergirl is. Everything looks dirty, grimy, and icky. With the exception of Ruthye, everyone is unlikeable and in many cases duplicitous. Or just annoying. Besides being the baddie, Krem puts on what sounds like an Italian accent. Only not an Italy Italian accent. Oh no, he sounds like he’s trying and failing to sound like he came from Brooklyn. Seriously, it’s a terrible impression.

Kara and Ruthye get to be friends, though, so that’s good.

Other than that, no one does any favors for our main character. In the first ten minutes of the movie, we not only see Kara Zor-El drunk out of her mind, but we get to see her plop down on her ship’s toilet to take a very long dump. Nice, right? She isn’t even what we would think of as Supergirl for most of the movie, and keeps the costume to be a good sport to Cousin Clark.

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And vomiting is used as a plot device. I’m not even kidding. In the first thirty minutes or so, there’s at least one characer vomiting in every scene. The various bars. The intergalactic bus. When Kara gets poisoned by a couple who are supposed to be helping her and then Krem and his buddies show up, she actually asks them to wait to do her in because she’s got to vomit. Once she’s tossed her cookies, she’s ready to toss around some bad guys.

I had gone to that movie debating on whether or not to buy popcorn. It’s probably good that I didn’t.

Even worse is the movie’s obvious hatred of men. With the exception of Kara’s dad and Superman himself, every man in is either a rapist and slimy, or weak and ineffectual. Tell us how you really feel, movie.

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The logic is messed up, too. The movie’s big showdown is on a planet with a green sun and a yellow one. As long as the green sun is out, it has an effect on Kara like Kryptonite. She’s on the point of death when the yellow sun comes out just in the nick of time.

This begs the question: How long does the yellow sun stay out? It’s supremely tacky that the movie dooms Supergirl to be like Nuclear Man in Superman IV.

Supergirl is Ana Noguiera’s first screen credit and it shows. Sloppy writing and obvious box-ticking abound.

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Besides Ruthye and Kara’s friendship, Supergirl’s only other saving grace is Jason Momoa, who plays a character named Lobo, a bounty hunter who looks like a KISS groupie. This guy is so opportunistic that it’s hard to tell whose side he’s on, but he joins forces with Kara and Ruthye in a tacit alliance because Krem stole his motorcycle. Honestly, Jason Momoa was the only person in the movie who looked like he was having fun.

This isn’t a Supergirl movie. Not by a long shot. It’s too edgy and not in a good way. If it had been anyone but Kara Zor-El, we could have had a decent, albeit slippery film about redemption from past traumas.

Instead, we get a yucky movie that doesn’t seem to like itself or its characters. I would suggest waiting until it comes to streaming to see Supergirl, but it may not be worth it.

Supergirl is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.

My grade: D-

Principal Cast: Milly Alcock, David Corenswet, Eve Ridley, Jason Momoa, Matthias Schoenaerts, Diarmid Murtaugh, Ferdinand Kingsley, Emily Piggford, Bruce Lennox, Audrey Brisson, Ayve Leventis, Will Coban, Keely Forsyth, David Krumholtz, Paul Hunter, Charlie Raws, Leo Bill, Craig Binning, Clara Rosager

Directed by Craig Gillespie.

Written by Ana Noguiera, Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster.

Oh, the places a crapshoot can go. This time Crapshoot Cinema takes us to 1979’s Rock ‘N’ Roll High School, an eye-popping spectacle featuring The Ramones.

In the 1970s, Hollywood was desperate to get young people to buy movie tickets again, and rock music seemed to be the ideal hat trick. It was nothing new, of course. Hollywood has featured pop stars in movies since Al Jolson trilled his way through The Jazz Singer. Early musicals were often quickly-made affairs that wrapped lackluster drama and dialogue around the randomness that was movie music..And like many of those early musicals, the best parts of rock band movies was always the music. The rest? Easily skipped.

Vince Lombardi High School is known for its lax discipline, so much so that it’s getting a new principal, Miss Tovar. It’s putting it mildly to say that she’s a martinet. She’s so angular that if she ever tripped she’d leave gouge marks. She even has two hall monitors who go around dressed like overgrown Boy Scouts and lie in wait to do her bidding.

The terrible students of Lombardi High, meanwhile, seem pretty boring at first. It’s the usual crowd of jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, and outcasts who go to class and check each other out, hoping to score dates.

And yeah, about that. There’s a guy named Eaglebauer who seems to be Lombardi’s answer to Hugh Hefner. He has a literal office in the boys’ room and does a tidy business teaching his classmates how to go the Way of All Flesh, using a blow-up doll to demonstrate.

I wish I was kidding. I really do.

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This is the kind of movie that would feed the fears of the average incoming high school freshman. At Lombardi High, any frosh stepping remotely out of line gets locked in a locker or has their head dunked in a urinal.

Only…initiation is mostly an urban legend. I say “mostly” because I’m thinking of a guy I knew in high school who had to run around the Lower Gym with a penny on each finger at the behest of a few upperclassmen. He was on the football team and his dad was a social studies teacher at the school, so he kind of had a target on his back anyway. I digress, of course.

The so-called teenagers in Rock ‘N’ Roll High School haven’t been freshmen for a long time. High school or college. They look thirty if they’re a day. But that’s to be expected.

Tormenting frosh is not Lombardi High’s claim to fame, however. Riff Randell, the school’s resident Ramones fan, regularly blasts rock music over the loud speaker and the entire student body gets up and dances. All she wants to do is pitch her songs to the Ramones and see them in concert, but not necessarily in that order.

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Miss Tovar is furious. She sets out to prove that rock music is the root of all evil, a refrain every Gen-Xer has heard countless times, particularly Christian Gen-Xers (Exhibit A: The Houseplant Experiment). Whether Miss Tovar likes it or not, though, the Ramones are coming to town and maybe even to Lombardi High. One can always dream, right?

Rock ‘N’ Roll High School is six degrees of terrible. Terribly over the top. Terribly campy. Terribly dumb. Terribly long. Terribly cliched. Terribly written. It’s just terrible. It somehow stops short of being as trashy as Porky’s and as riotously tuneful as Grease, except that it’s the Ramones instead of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

It’s probably the cleanest punk movie ever made.

It also begs the viewer to have fun. Heh. Fun might have been possible if I hadn’t been busy goggling at socially awkward jock Tom’s all-too-commonplace makeout van with the shag carpeting and waterbed. And Riff’s rabid fandom. And the giant rats. Yes, giant rats. Just in case Rock ‘N’ Roll High School isn’t crazy enough.

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If the Ramones are singing, Rock ‘N’ Roll High School isn’t half bad. It might even have its cute spots. “Might” is the operative word, though. The Ramones were definitely not actors. Most of the time they look bored, and it wasn’t just the cool punk band persona at work. One kept staring into the camera as if he was waiting for the director to yell, “Cut!”

Why did any of them agree to be in this crazy movie? I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that it’s been a long time since I was so glad to see ending credits rolling. I felt like turning on the Royal Ballet and Opera’s Giselle by way of a brain cleanser.

Rock ‘N’ Roll High School is currently streaming on Tubi. Rated PG.

My grade: D-

Principal Cast: P.J. Soles, Vincent Van Patten, Clint Howard, Dey Young, Mary Woronov, Paul Bartel, Dick Miller, Don Steele, Alix Elias, Loren Lester, Daniel Davies, Lynn Farrell, Herbie Braha, Grady Sutton, Chris Somma, Marla Rosenfield, Barbara Ann Grimes, Terry Soda, The Ramones

Directed by Allan Arkush and Joe Dante.

Written by: Richard Whitley, Russ Dvonch and Joseph McBride.