Stubs - High School Confidential!

High School Confidential! (1958) Starring Russ Tamblyn, Jan Sterling, John Drew Barrymore, Mamie Van Doren, Diane Jergens, Jerry Lee Lewis. Directed by Jack Arnold. Screenplay by Lewis Meltzer, Robert Blees. Produced by Albert Zugsmith. Run time: 86 minutes. Black and White. USA. Drama

Following the death of Jerry Lee Lewis, "The Killer", on October 28th 2022, it was time to finally watch his appearance in High School Confidential!, an MGM film released while Lee was still a big rock and roll star.

Jerry Lee Lewis sings the title song.

Sadly, he is not the star of the film and only makes an appearance during the credits. Sitting in the Jerry Lee Lewis Music Truck, he is driven through the town singing the title song “High School Confidential” on the first day of school. I don’t know about you, but that never happened when I went to school.

Stubs - What! No Beer?

What! No Beer? aka What - No Beer? (1933) Starring Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Roscoe Ates, Phyllis Barry Directed by Edward Sedgwick. Screenplay by Carey Wilson. Produced (None listed: Irving Thalberg) Run time: 78 minutes. Black and White. Pre-Code, Comedy

Buster Keaton’s tenure at MGM, “the worst business decision of his life in his autobiography”, was relatively short lasting only five years. His last film for the studio, What! No Beer?, would also mark his last starring role in an American film. While his films at MGM are not generally regarded as his best, they were, for the most part, financial successes.

The studio first paired him with Jimmy Durante, a one-time nightclub comedian who had recently begun to appear in films. Durante’s rambunctiousness was a compliment to Keaton’s more iconic style. The two of them would appear in three films together, Speak Easily (1932), The Passionate Plumber (1932), and What! No Beer?

Stubs - You've Got Mail

You’ve Got Mail (1998) starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey. Directed by Nora Ephron. Screenplay by Nora Ephron, Delia Ephron. Based on the film screenplay The Shop Around the Corner by Samson Raphaelson. Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Nora Ephron. Run time: 119 minutes. Color. USA. Romantic Comedy

Movie remakes can be like impersonation, the sincerest form of flattery and sometimes a story takes time to get it right, take The Maltese Falcon, which took three takes. But then there are the films that did work, like The Shop Around the Corner (1940), which don’t need to be remade but are. The first time was as a musical In the Good Old Summertime (1949) as a vehicle for Judy Garland. These were all based on the play Parfumerie by Miklós László, a romantic comedy taking place in a store around Christmas time.

The third take, driven by Nora Ephron, the writer/director behind such films as When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Michael (1996), and Julie & Julia (2009), came out in 1998 and re-teamed Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who had already worked together on such films as Joe vs. The Volcano (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle. This film is often cited in lists of drive-by Christmas films, even though Christmas, unlike the play or the first film, really doesn’t have much to do with the story or the setting.

Descendants: The Rise of Red

From the perspective of someone who has never
watched Descendants.

In 2015, Disney launched what would be the long-running Descendants franchise, centered around a series of television films and books about descendants of various Disney characters, both hero and villain alike, attending Auradon Prep. While I had generally been aware of this franchise since around when it came out, I never really paid much attention to it since I was outside the target demographic by that point. However, as a fan of Alice in Wonderland and Disney’s 1951 animated adaptation, I did suddenly become interested when I found out that the 2021 animated special, The Royal Wedding, teased the introduction of the Wonderland setting to the Descendants universe. When this finally materialized as a fourth movie, Descendants: The Rise of Red, on Disney+, I decided to go in on the day it premiered with the perspective of a complete outsider to see how well it worked on its own merits. While it does manage to stand on its own to some extent, I found the execution of its ideas to be a bit lacking in places.

My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission

Note: This review contains spoilers for My Hero Academia.

After ten long years, the ever-popular My Hero Academia has reached its conclusion. This incredible milestone reminded us that although we had kept up with both the manga and anime, we still hadn’t seen the series’ third film from 2021, World Heroes’ Mission, despite owning the Blu-ray for quite a while. In honor of the manga’s finale, we thought we’d finally go back and take a look at this film and see what we had missed. Unfortunately, while it does continue the trend of incredible animation, certain developments make the story less satisfying than the previous film, Heroes Rising.