Movies in 2026 203

 

Widow's Bay (Hiro Murai, 2025)

Every year there's one or two more "must see" cable series, and this year one of them seems to be Widow's Bay. Beyond WIFI, which allows me to stream the invaluable Criterion Channel, we don't really have any channels, other than Prime, which is both impossible to avoid and also completely pathetic (in that it's now merely a clearing house for other streaming channels). However, Janet was trapped into getting Apple TV so that she could watch F1. Because we already had it we decided to give Widow's Bay a try. It's pretty mindless, although in an inoffensive way, with the most interesting thing being trying to determine who they are ripping off most dramatically: Kolchak: the Night Stalker or The Fog or Storm of the Century or maybe even Green Acres. 

The Crew

 On Monday Janet and I were able to meet Gary and Ali downtown for dinner and a treat, which is always a blessing. Once the kids moved to Montpelier it became possible to see them quite a bit, and, which every parent of adult kids tells you, it's such a gift. It was a lovely moment. Sadly, Montpelier has not truly recovered from the flood, so what was once a very vibrant downtown buzz is pretty quiet, especially since one of our foundation haunts, the Langdon Street Tavern, shut down.

After grabbing dinner at Three Penny we were thinking of dessert, and Gary told us about a gelato place around the corner. It allowed us to have a little proto-European moment, pre-move. They were supposed to be whimsically thinking about the future, but Janet broke characters.

Movies in 2026 202

 

Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984)

Somehow I had never seen Alex Cox's Repo Man, although I'm not quite certain why I never had. Granted, 1984 was a busy year, in that I got married for the first time and finished my MA, so maybe it was simply a case of being really busy. Plus, we were pretty poor, so we didn't have a lot of extra money floating around to go to the movies. I was in graduate school, as compared to some corporate path, so it's not as if the more punk sensibilities of the film would have stood at variance with my burgeoning conservative agenda. It was in the middle of the hell of the Reagan years, and America's great break with reality, so it seems like it would have been a good fit. Anyway, it was definitely my loss. Harry Dean Stanton (as Bud) and Emilio Estevez (as Otto) star as repo men, out on the hunt for cars to repossess. Somewhere along the way they get on the trail of a Chevy Malibu, which is of extraterrestrial origins (don't look in the trunk!). Tracey Walter (as Miller) steals the show, and the car, when he drives/flies the Malibu away at the end. It's funny and fast-paced, and also a critique of consumerism and religion and the hypocrisy of the Reagan years. I think the film and the punk sentiment are summed up by the exchange at the end of the movie between Leila (played by Olivia Barash) and Otto: "But what about our relationship?", which inspires his response, "Fuck that." Here at the far end of the Reagan nightmare, I think that's my response to my relationship to America. Highly recommended.

Billby

 On my mad trip through Canada and the Midwest a few weeks ago I was able to see my friend Bill, not once, but twice, which was a tremendous gift. When I dropped down into the States from Ontario, my first stop was in Rolling Prairie, which is where Bill was living when we met oh those many years ago. I can remember visiting him there over forty years ago. Since then, Bill was able to buy back most of the land that his family used to own, and now has his own forty acres (although no mule). He was my best friend in college, and I'm happy to say that we're still dear friends all of these decades later.

ON the morning I left we went for a long drive around his property, and he walked me through all of his projects - which exhausted me just hearing about them.

It's such a lovely spot, and I can definitely see why he's drawn to it. He's one of those folks who I will sincerely miss when we move overseas. I think over the years he and his wife KV have come to visit me more than any of my other friends, and if you're going to track down someone in Vermont they must truly be your friend.

Movies in 2026 201

 

Queen of the Desert (Werner Herzog, 2015)

This is a film, Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert, that I really wanted to like, but absolutely didn't. Herzog is a director I like a lot - and Gertrude Bell is a character who I find fascinating - and it's certainly a period and a part of the world that I love - but this was just a joyless slog to get through. I think you can definitely be too referential  in your handling of a subject (in a much less important way, I think for a long time I fell into the same process with my epics book, with the result that I sucked all the life out of it). Please read books about Gertrude Bell - and by Gertrude Bell - but feel free to duck this movie. 

Movies in 2026 200

 

Le Deuxieme Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1966)

I'm a late discoverer of the film of Jean-Pierre Melville (to my shame, and, again, I blame growing up in the cultural wasteland of Indiana), but I hope to make up for the delay. Last night I watched his 1966 film Le Deuxieme Souffle. I'd always thought of his film Le Samurai as a film noir, which it is, of a fashion, but it's also more than a bit of a procedural - and I'd make the same argument Le Deuxieme Souffle. If you think of a film noir as the regular joe who is drawn into a moral quagmire through one bad decision, hoping to escape poverty or a humdrum life, which leads to a string of bad decisions, then these films really aren't a film noir. However, if you think of a film noir as the study of a conflicted, morally ambivalent character - even if they're already a criminal - then they would fall into the film noir category (and this is why some film critics have argued that film noir isn't even a true genre, or at least one that is easy to define). They're both procedurals in that they give equal weight to the policeman's efforts to capture the crook, even when the police themselves often break the law. Lino Ventura plays Gustave "Gu" Minda, an older gangster who has tried for the big score but failed, but also can't accept that failure. This leads him to one last long-shot chance, even though he has the option to go away with his girlfriend Manouche (Christine Fabrega). He can't simply disappear with her because of his own code, stupid, on one front, because he can't accept living off a woman, but oddly noble on the other because he needs to go out on a high note (and also because he needs money, especially since he can't accept Manouche's). His code is also shown by the fact that when the heist blows up it appears that he had named names, and he goes to extraordinary efforts to prove that he didn't, even though the effort to do so insures that he's killed. Paul Meurisse is very good as Inspector Blot of Paris, who also has his own code of conduct, and a grudging respect for Gu's. Definitely recommended.

Movies in 2026 199

 

Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940

As we've discussed, there are some movies that you can't help but watch (no matter how many times you've seen them) when you get the chance. One of them for me is definitely Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film Foreign Correspondent. It's certainly not the best Hitchcock film, but it just might be my favorite Hitchcock film. I'm not a huge Joel McCrea fan, but he's pretty good as a classically American Johnny Jones (this definitely falls into the propaganda film category - but then, it 2as 1940) who is hired to go to Europe (about which he knows nothing, even suggesting to his boss that "maybe we should talk to this Hitler guy, he probably knows some stuff") to act as a foreign correspondent. Laraine Day (who, I guess, was 19 at the time) plays his love interest, and she sparkles, which is a nice change of pace from the icy blondes that Hitchcock loved. Herbert Marshall is wooden as only Herbert Marshall can be. George Sanders, as was his wont, stole every scene. Edmund Gwen, who I tend to associate with love able characters in Miracle on 34th Street and Them! plays a menacing role. The ending must have really spoke to an American audience not yet in the war. Definitely recommended.