At the Movies in 2025

 

A running list of what I've seen on the big screen this year:

1. Babygirl (2024)- AMC Village Crossing 18

2. Blood and Black Lace (1964)- Music Box Theater (January Giallo)

3. The Brutalist (2024)- Music Box Theater

Judy Garland: Radio Actor

In addition to her legendary career as a movie star, Judy Garland also spent a lot of time acting on the radio in the 40s and 50s. This part of her career often gets overlooked for a couple reasons. First, the size of her accomplishments on film (with classics like THE WIZARD OF OZ, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, and A STAR IS BORN) and onstage (she was one of the most popular performers of her era, culminating in her iconic 1961 live album JUDY AT CARNEGIE HALL) simply dwarfs everything else she ever did. The other reason is because of the disappearance of the medium itself. Dramatic radio, a massively popular medium in the 30s and 40s, went into quick decline with the rise of television in the 50s. Everyone knows that the invention of TV hurt the movie business, but it laid waste to radio—particularly dramatic radio.

I’ve compiled the following annotated list of Judy’s dramatic performances on radio. Please note, this list does not include the hundreds of appearances she made on shows where she appeared as herself to do an interview or sing a song or two. This is a list of her work as a radio actor.

 

1940

10-28: Strike Up the Band - Lux Radio Theatre. With Mickey Rooney. An adaptation of their film of the same name. Judy did more work for Lux Radio Theatre than any other show, and happily most of these have survived.

1941

1-26: Love’s New Sweet Song – Silver Theater CBS. This full episode might be lost, though a brief clip of Judy singing has survived. According to author Scott Schechter, Judy cowrote the story for this show and cowrote the song she sings.

10-12: Eternally Yours -Part I – Silver Theater CBS. This one might also be lost. I can’t find much information about it. The program usually specialized in original dramatic works, but occasionally did movie adaptations, and I wonder if this wasn’t a production of the 1939 Loretta Young movie. Part one of two.

10-19: Eternally Yours -Part II – Silver Theater CBS. Part two of two.

11-9: Babes in Arms - Screen Guild Theater. With Mickey Rooney. An adaptation of their 1939 film.

11-17: Merton of the Movies - Lux Radio Theatre. With Mickey Rooney. An adaptation of the play of the same name. I think this might be the only time Judy and Mickey acted in a radio show that was not an adaptation of one of their films. 

1942

10-12: Morning Glory - Lux Radio Theatre. With John Payne.

12-28: A Star is Born - Lux Radio Theatre. With Walter Pidgeon. This is an adaptation of the 1937 David O. Selznik drama. It was Judy’s first attempt at the character of Esther Blodgett and inspired her to eventually tackle the role on film (as a musical) later on. 

1943

3-22: For Me and My Gal – Screen Guild Players, CBS. With Gene Kelly and Dick Powell. An adaptation of Judy and Gene’s 1942 film.

12-12: Ringside Table – Silver Theater, CBS. With Alan Ladd. This one also appears to be lost.

1946

1-28: The Clock - Lux Radio Theatre. With John Hodiak. An adaptation of Judy’s 1945 film.

9-14: Holiday – Hollywood Star Time. Not sure if this one has survived. An adaptation of the 1938 Katharine Hepburn film.  

11-21: Drive In – Suspense. This one is readily available and is a real treat. Judy does radio noir! Suspense was just about the best show of its kind and Judy’s episode—where she plays a carhop who makes the mistake of accepting a lift home from the wrong man—is a real nailbiter. It’ll make you wish she did more of this kind of thing.

12-2: Meet Me In St. Louis - Lux Radio Theatre. With Margaret O’Brien. An adaptation of Judy and Margaret’s 1944 film.

1950

11-5: Alice Adams – The Theater Guild on the Air, NBC. With Thomas Mitchell. An adaptation of the 1935 Katharine Hepburn film.  

12-25: The Wizard of Oz - Lux Radio Theatre. Do I even have to say? An adaptation of Judy’s 1939 film.

1951

2-15: Cinderella – The Hallmark Playhouse. Judy as the title character.

1953

2-16: Lady in the Dark - Lux Radio Theatre. With John Lund. An adaptation of the 1944 film. Pretty dated and sexist, but if you’ve seen BABYGIRL you’ll see some funny parallels with this story. This was, I believe, Judy's last dramatic role on radio. 

This is list is only complete in the sense that it has all the performances I know of, but, of course, I'd always love to discover more. Let me know of any I missed!

2024 at the Movies - In Review

 

I had a pretty great year at the movies this year. I saw 107 movies in theaters of all shapes and sizes. (That's only one down from last year. And unlike last year, funny enough, I did not attend a movie showing outside of the greater Chicago area in 2024.)

As always, while I saw quite a few new films (36 in all) released in 2024, I saw a lot more films from previous eras (71). Of those 71 films, I saw the most from the 1970s (16), followed by the 1950s (10) and the 1980s (10), 1940s (8), 1960s (6), 1990s (5), 2010s (5), 2020s (4), 1930s (3), 2000s (3), and (1) film from the 1920s. I didn't see any film at the theater this year that predated 1920.

My favorite place to see movies remains the Music Box Theater, where I saw 41 films in 2024. This was followed by Facets (11), Doc Films (9), the Gene Siskel Film Center (7), Hollywood Blvd Cinema in Woodbridge (3) and the great Pickwick Theater in Park Ridge (4). I saw (4) films in the small museum at the freakshow-themed Sideshow Gelato, as well as films at places like Thalia Hall, NEIU, and Chicago Filmmakers. For more new release mainstream stuff, I went to Regal City North (9), AMC NewCity (7), AMC Village Crossing (4), and AMC River East (1).

Among new releases, my favorites (in no order) were THE SUBSTANCE, MEMOIR OF A SNAIL, THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE, ANORA, HANDLING THE UNDEAD, KINDS OF KINDNESS, JANET PLANET, CONCLAVE, A REAL PAIN, and WICKED. I enjoyed JOKER 2 and HORIZON more than most people. I thought MEGALOPOLIS was pretty terrible, FURIOSA was good-but-unnecessary, while both CIVIL WAR and LOVE LIES BLEEDING were movies I wish had stronger third acts. Both DUNE 2 and THE BIKERIDERS were, while not lifechanging, well worth the trip to the theater. 

I saw too many great old movies to list here, but highlights would have to include seeing favorites like THE WIZARD OF OZ, IN A LONELY PLACE, PULP FICTION, ZERO FOCUS, and THE FALL. My biggest discovery of the year was the Mexican masterpiece of film noir VICTIMS OF SIN that I saw at Noir City Chicago at the Music Box.

All in all, a great year at the movies.

Peggie Castle 1927-1973

 

I'm not writing much nonfiction these days because I'm busy with writing novels and teaching classes, but today is the birthday of Peggie Castle so I thought I'd post a link to the 2013 article I wrote about her for NOIR CITY magazine. The Girl They Loved To Kill: The Many Deaths of Peggie Castle is a deep dive into the haunting life and tragic career of an actress that too few people remember today. I got more than a little obsessed with Peggie when I wrote this piece, so if it reads like something of a love letter...well, that's what happens when you spend your time chasing beautiful shadows in the dark. 

The Devil's Ground: THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY and THE GOSPEL OF MARK

 

The title of Flannery O'Connor's 1960 novel THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY comes from the Gospel of Matthew (11:12), but as I reread O'Connor's book recently, I was reminded more of the Gospel of Mark.

Mark differs from the other gospels in being shorter, leaner, and less expository. It has no virgin birth. Indeed, starting out, it tells us nothing at all of Jesus's early life. In Mark, Jesus simply appears among the anonymous throng of people coming from Galilee to be baptized by John the Baptist in the wilderness. Upon being baptized by the prophet, however, Jesus is immediately driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. "And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan, and was with the wild beasts." When he returns, he begins a ministry of exorcism and faith healing that he tries, repeatedly, to keep secret. While the Jesus of Mark does some teaching (though far less than in the other Gospels), he is more a man of action. And that action tends to be confronting a world of demons (including the infamous demon collective known as Legion). At the end, Christ is crucified and dies alone uttering the final words "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me." The oldest copies of Mark didn't even have a resurrection appearance. The book ended originally at Mark 16:8, with women coming to the tomb, finding it empty, and running away. The final verse reads, "Trembling and bewildered, they fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid."

THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY is no Christ allegory, and I don't mean to imply that its story resembles the plot of Mark's Gospel. But O'Connor's second novel (like her first, WISE BLOOD) is obsessively focused on what she once called "the action of grace in ground held largely by the devil." One need only to read Mark again to see that this also happens to be the central thrust of that evangelist's narrative. 

O'Connor's novel follows Francis Marion Tarwater, a young man running away from his calling to be a prophet. The action of the novel hinges on the death of Tarwater's great-uncle, a wild-eyed fanatic who kidnapped the boy years before and raised him in a cabin the woods, preparing him to be a prophet. When the old man dies, however, the boy tries to shrug off his calling--getting drunk and burning down the old man's house--then heads into the city to see his other uncle, an atheist schoolteacher named Rayber. But Francis finds himself fighting the urge to baptize Rayber's young son Bishop, an act that itself was prophesied by the old man before his death.   

Although WISE BLOOD and THE VILOLENT BEAR IT AWAY share many characteristics--both are about young men attempting to run away from God, both are darkly comic, and both are unmistakably the work of a Catholic author filtering her vision through the lens of Southern Protestant fundamentalism--the second book more closely resembles Mark's vision of a demonic world. If WISE BLOOD is about a man tormented by God's grace, THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY is about a man tempted by Satan and his devil possessed followers. The ghostly 'stranger' who appears at Tarwater's side, whispering in his ear to forsake his calling to preach, takes a physical form in the book's penultimate chapter, when a hitchhiking Tarwater is picked up, drugged, and raped by a stranger in a lavender suit. In the dense symbolism of the novel--the stranger takes both Tarwater's prized hat and a corkscrew bottle opener given to him by the atheist schoolteacher--Tarwater is stripped of everything he has relied on and is left naked in the woods.

This last part reminded me of two of the strangest lines in Mark--indeed, two of the oddest lines in all of the Bible--verses 14:51-52. At the Garden, when Jesus is being arrested and all his disciples have abandoned him, we are told "And there followed him a certain young man having a linen cast about his naked body, and they laid hold on him. And the young man left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked." Who is this young man? Why is he the last one with Jesus, and why is he dressed only in a sheet? Why is Mark the only writer to report his existence? We're never told, but it bears repeating that Mark is a strange, cryptic book compared to the other Gospels. In this book, where secrecy is the coin of the realm, mysteries remain intact because the narrative is more about mystery than revelation.

Like the naked young man in the Garden, Tarwater flees, and he returns to the ashes of his great-uncle's burned down house. He hears a call to "GO WARN THE CHILDREN OF GOD OF THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY." Smearing himself with dirt from the old man's grave, he prepares to begin his journey "toward the dark city, where the children of God lay sleeping."

In both O'Connor's novel and Mark's Gospel, the prose is pared down and spare, working in the service of a vision rich in dark symbolism and mystery. Neither author reveals all they know. Or, perhaps a better way to put it is this: for both Flannery O'Connor and Mark the Evangelist, the mystery is the revelation.    

      

    

At the Movies in 2024

 

A running list of what I've seen on the big screen this year:

1. House of Psychotic Women (1973)-Music Box Theater

2. The Giant Behemoth (1959)- Doc Films

3. Psycho (1960)- Doc Films

4. All That Jazz (1979)- Doc Films

5. Closed Circuit (1978)- Music Box

6. American Fiction (2023)- AMC NewCity 14

7. Blow Out (1981)- Music Box

8. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)- Regal City North

9. Night of the Living Dead (1990)- Thalia Hall

10. Night of the Creeps (1986)- Thalia Hall

11. The Strangler (1970)- Music Box

12. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)- Music Box

13. My Bloody Valentine (1981)- Hollywood Blvd (Woodridge, IL)

14. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)- Facets

15. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)- Facets

16. Belle de Jour (1967)- Gene Siskel Film Center

17. Blacula (1972)- Facets

18. Messiah of Evil (1974)- Music Box Theater

19. Jeanne Dielman… (1975)- Gene Siskel Film Center

20. Dream Scenario (2023)- Facets

21. Dune 2 (2024)- Music Box Theater

22. Drive-Away Dolls (2024)- AMC NewCity 14

23. Love Lies Bleeding (2024)- Landmark Century Cinema

24. The Untouchables (1987)- Music Box

25. Problemista (2024)- Alamo Drafthouse 

26. Days of Heaven (1978)- Music Box

27. Beetlejuice (1988)- Music Box

28. Seconds (1966)- Music Box

29. The Wizard of Oz (1939)- Pickwick Theater 

30. Frogs (1972)- Facets

31. The Devil’s Rain (1975)- Facets

32. Street Trash (1987)- Facets

33. Killing Them Softly (2012)-Music Box

34. Civil War (2024)- Regal City North

35. Augure (2024)- Gene Siskel Film Center

36. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)-Music Box

37. The Fall Guy (2024)- Regal City North

38. Walkerville (2024)- Chicago Filmmakers

39. Landscape Suicide (1987)- Doc Films

40. Mother! (2017)- Music Box

41. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)- Regal City North

42. Wildcat (2024)- Music Box

43. Furiosa (2024)- Regal City North

44. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)- NEIU -Chicago Film Society 

45. Handling the Undead (2024)- AMC River East

46. The Bikeriders (2024)- AMC Village Crossing 18

47. Horizon: Chapter 1 (2024)-Regal City North

48. Chinatown (1974)-Pickwick Theater

49. Destroy All Monsters (1969) w/Svengoolie-Music Box

50. First Blood (1982)- Music Box

51. Cemetery Man (1994)- Hollywood Blvd. Cinema Woodridge

52. The Church (1989)-Hollywood Blvd. Cinema Woodridge

53. Kinds of Kindness (2024)-Music Box

54. Janet Planet (2024)-AMC NewCity 14

55. A Place in the Sun (1951)-Music Box

56. Thelma (2024)-AMC Village Crossing 18

57. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2024)-Gene Siskel Film Center

58. Evil Does Not Exist (2024)-Facets

59. In a Lonely Place (1950)-Doc Films

60. Longlegs (2024)-AMC NewCity 14

61. Phantasm (1979)-Sideshow Gelato

62. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)-Sideshow Gelato

63. Scream 2 (1997)-Music Box

64. Falstaff aka Chimes at Midnight (1965)-Facets

65. The Third Man (1949)-Music Box

66. The Roaring Twenties (1939)-Doc Films

67. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)-Doc Films

68. He Who Gets Slapped (1924)-Sideshow Gelato

69. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)- Music Box- Noir City Chicago

70. Ossessione (1943)-Music Box-NCC

71. Victims of Sin (1951)-Music Box-NCC

72. Zero Focus (1961)-Music Box-NCC

73. Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)-Music Box-NCC

74. Brute Force (1947)-Music Box-NCC

75. Hardly a Criminal (1949)-Music Box-NCC

76. Inferno (1953)-Music Box NCC

77. Black Tuesday (1954)-Music Box NCC

78. Man in the Dark (1953)-Music Box NCC

79. Union Station (1950)-Music Box NCC

80. The Master (2012)-Music Box

81. Double Indemnity (1944)-Pickwick Theater

82. Megaopolis (2024)-AMC Village Crossing 18

83. The Substance (2024)-Music Box

84. Joker: Folie a Deux (2024)-Landmark Century Centre

85. Pulp Fiction (1993)-Music Box

86. In Fabric (2018)-Facets

87. Close Your Eyes (2023)-Doc Films

88. Enamorada (1946)-Doc Films 

89. Gladiator II (2024)- Regal City North

90. Heavy Trip (2018)- Music Box

91. Heavier Trip (2024)- Music Box

92. The Dark Knight (2008)- Music Box

93. Conclave (2024)- AMC NewCity 14

94. The Order (2024)- Regal City North

95. The Return (2024)- Regal City North

96. Wicked (2024)- AMC Village Crossing 18 

97. The Fall (2006)- Music Box 

98. A Real Pain (2024)-AMC NewCity 14

99. Anora (2024)-AMC NewCity 14

100. The Curse of the Cat People (1944)- NEIU CFS

101. Oh, Canada (2024)-Gene Siskel Film Center

102. Memoir of a Snail (2024)-Facets

103. The Girl with the Needle (2024)-Gene Siskel Film Center

104. Nosferatu (2024)-Music Box

105. Anora (2024)-Gene Siskel Film Center (second time)

106. Scarface (1932)-Music Box (last movie of the year)

107. Blood Harvest (1987)-Sideshow Gelato

2023 at the Movies - In Review

I haven't really been on the blog this year because I've been busy with various projects. This blog itself, of course, is a relic of an older age, not just for me but for the culture at large. Online movie and book discourse loooong ago gravitated to places like Goodreads and Letterboxd, and personal blogging is more likely to be found on popular sites like Substack. Maybe I'll make it to those places one day. (I put the 'late' in late adoption.) For now, this blog is little more than a place where I track my moviegoing (again, yes, I know about Letterboxd). 

I'm not tracking my movie *watching* which would require a whole other list. This is all about seeing movies at the theater, in person, with an audience of (mostly) strangers. After the long drought of the pandemic, I've nearly bounced back to pre-Covid levels of moviegoing. My peak was 2018, when I saw 126 movies at the theater. During lockdown, of course, that shrank to next to nothing, and then slowly crawled back as theaters reopened and Hollywood started production back up. In 2022, I saw 85 films. 

In 2023, I saw 108 movies. That's a lot. That's more than two movies a week.

As always, it's a spread of classics and new stuff, art house and megaplex.

I saw 54 films at Music Box Theater, one of the best movie theaters in the country and the crown jewel of Chicago's robust cinephile community. I saw 14 films at Facets, Chicago's charmingly quirky hole-in-the-wall cinema/video rental collective. Through a work schedule fluke this year, I spent a lot of time in Skokie and ended up doing a lot of my new movie viewing at the AMC Village Crossing. I saw 11 films there. In Park Ridge there's an excellent classic film series at the historic Park Ridge Theater, and I saw 7 films there. The rest of my moviegoing was spread out among different theaters: Regal City North (6 films), the Davis Theater (4), Siskel Film Center (3), the Logan Theater (3), Regal Webster Place (2), Doc Films (2), NEIU-Chicago Film Society (1),  and Landmark Century Cinema (1). 

As is always the case with me, I saw more old movies than new releases, but I did see a lot of new releases this year. I saw 27 films released in 2023 (as well as 3 films released in 2022).

The other films I saw were spread across the decades. (The only decades unrepresented were the 1910s--which doesn't surprise me--and the 1930s--which shocks me. How did I not see a film from the 1930s this year? Odd.) Here's the breakdown decade by decade: 1920s (3), 1940s (14), 1950s (11), 1960s (9), 1970s (10), 1980s (13), 1990s (10), 2000s (3), 2010s (4), 2020s (4), 2023 (27). 

In terms of repertory, this might well have been one of the greatest years I've ever had as a moviegoer. It was great year for Orson Welles movies: I saw THE TRIAL three times, and I saw CITIZEN KANE, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, and FALSTAFF. I got to see HIGH NOON, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, PAPER MOON, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and VERTIGO. I saw a lot of noirs at Noir City Chicago (including RAW DEAL and CRY OF THE CITY). Through the influence of my horror-fan wife, I've seen a steady increase of horror movies the last few years, and this year included highlights like RE-ANIMATOR, BLACK CHRISTMAS, and CURTAINS. 

As for new releases, with the caveat that there are still things I want to see (like THE IRON CLAW and ALL OF US STRANGERS), I do not think 2023 was a great year for movies. Certainly, I didn't see a lot of new releases that I'm convinced will stand the test of time. There are some big exceptions: POOR THINGS was the best film I saw this year, a fierce, hilarious moving work of art. I don't how Yorgos Lanthimos or Emma Stone will ever top it. (Or Mark Ruffalo, for that matter.) THE HOLDOVERS was the other big highlight of the year, a film that's perfectly balanced between humor and pathos, between wit and humanity with a trifecta of excellent performances by Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da'Vine Joy Randolph. I think it's Alexander Payne's best movie since ABOUT SCHMIDT. 

I loved KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, and I really enjoyed both OPPENHEIMER and BARBIE. One largely unheralded film I loved was the touching (but unsentimental) French drama LES ENFANTS DES AUTRES. And I really adored the cynical Jennifer Lawrence romcom NO HARD FEELINGS. I liked and almost instantly forgot THE CREATOR, enjoyed the uneven NAPOLEON, had a lot of fun watching the grisly THANKSGIVING on Thanksgiving, was delighted by the charming THEATER CAMP, and really liked the Willem Dafoe performance in INSIDE. 

That's not a bad run of movies. But the disappointments were many, especially on the blockbuster side. The new MISSION IMPOSSIBLE was the weakest entry in the series, which is a bummer for a big M:I fan like me. INDIANA JONES had a depressingly lackluster final chapter (after the *previous* lackluster final chapter; there's a series that should have gracefully bowed out in 1989 when they stuck the perfect landing with LAST CRUSADE). The superhero movie is out of gas, and I'm pretty much done with John Wick at this point (I felt my interest flip off, like a switch, about halfway through CHAPTER 3, and nothing that happened in CHAPTER 4 regained it. At this point you can more or less predict the action beats in those movies before you even see them.) While auteurs like Lanthimos, Payne, and Scorsese all had a triumphant year, elsewhere things were rougher for the big name directors. Ari Aster's BEAU IS AFRAID had a fantastic first act, a muddled second act, and a root canal of a third act. Paul Schrader wrapped up his Man In A Room trilogy (following his career-best FIRST REFORMED and the excellent THE CARD COUNTER) on a low note with the lifeless MASTER GARDNER. David Fincher's THE KILLER, a film I hustled to the theater to see during its ultra-brief theatrical, was hardly worth the trip.

Add all of that together, though, and it adds up to a hell of a year at the movies. Here's hoping 2024 is even better.