Criterion Month Day 1: His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday (1940)

The 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur has been adapted for the screen four times but its second film version, 1940’s His Girl Friday, is certainly the most consequential. That’s because director Howard Hawks had the inspired idea to change one of the central characters, Hildy Johnson, into a woman, completely changing the story’s dynamic. Instead of simply a story of a weary reporter trying to turn over a new leaf, we get that plus all sorts of mid-century gender dynamics! It’s a good time now hurry up and get in here.

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The Ninth Annual Criterion Draft

As June turns to July, we once again set our eyes on reviewing various films that have entered the Criterion Collection over the course of what we like to refer to as Criterion Month. Call it our own little corner of the Criterion Closet filled with films we’ve never seen, some potentially aligning with our tastes and some that we’ve put off seeing since they inherently might not. Once again, some of us go for themes and some of us don’t, but the one constant is that while picking which movies to review, we only have a vague sense of what we’re in for. The fun begins in just one day! Continue reading →

Mission: Accomplished

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

It’s easy to mistake hubris for ambition. In 2018, Christopher McQuarrie became the first director to make multiple Mission: Impossible movies when he went out and topped his own Rogue Nation with Fallout, arguably the franchise’s critical high watermark and certainly its biggest box office success. Having overcome innumerable obstacles in making that movie and no doubt riding high on accomplishing what no one thought could (or even should) be done, it only took a few months for series star Tom Cruise to announce that McQ would be helming an additional two Missions, to be shot back-to-back. The challenge was set, and so the universe went out of its way to make this called shot as damn near impossible as it could possibly be. Mission had never had a returning director before, now McQ will have made half the series – will that kill the magic? The franchise has thrived thanks to Tom Cruise’s dedication to death-defying stunts – can he keep topping himself as he enters his sixties? Fans like me were nervous, but it turns out those were the least of their problems.

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The Pick: 27 Dresses

It’s wedding season at Mildly Pleased, so we took a look at one of the most wedding-fetishizing romantic comedies ever made. You won’t believe how many dresses Katherine Heigl wears! Or perhaps you will, because it’s right there in the title. Either way, the boys have fun discussing the rise and fall of Miss Heigl, the affable blandness of James Marsden, the annoying New York accent of Edward Burns, and Malin Akerman’s very brief run as a Hollywood It Girl. Yes, it’s not a great cast by any means, but it screams 2008 as much as this movie’s comfort food take on pre-recession wedding woes. Continue reading →

RIP Joey Molland

Earlier this week, I found myself perusing Todd Rundgren’s Wikipedia page, going down my usual rock ’n’ roll rabbit hole searching for half-useful trivia tidbits. For example: Did you know Rundgren used to play a psychedelic-painted Gibson SG called “The Fool,” which Eric Clapton used during his time in Cream? The more you know.

Scrolling through Rundgren’s long list of production credits, I was reminded of his work with one of my favorite ‘70s bands: Badfinger. The band behind such hits as “Come and Get It” [1969, #7 US], “No Matter What” [1970, #8 US], “Day After Day” [1971, #4 US], and “Baby Blue” [1972, #14 US], the latter immortalized as the closing song in the final episode of Breaking Bad.

Then I learned something shocking: on March 1st, 2025, Joey Molland, the last surviving member of Badfinger’s classic lineup, passed away due to complications from diabetes. He was 77, and died where he had lived for the last four decades in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. As a fan of classic rock, this hit me hard.

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The Pick: Barbarella

After talking about Flash Gordon two episodes ago, it seemed only fitting that we review Barbarella, producer Dino De Laurentiis’s first foray into sci-fi comic book adaptation. Of course, this one has a much dirtier mind, stemming from director Roger Vadim’s eagerness to bring campy eroticism into the far reaches of space with the help of then-wife Jane Fonda. We delve a bit into the film’s deeply ’60s vibes as well as how the charismatic Fonda salvaged such a bizarre amalgam of counter-culture influences into something watchable. We also test our knowledge by trying to guess the highest-grossing sci-fi films that were released in that wild west of sci-fidom that predated Star Wars. Continue reading →

The Pick: The Legend of Bagger Vance

Why did we choose to cover the 2000 flop, The Legend of Bagger Vance on this episode of The Pick? Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out. Mostly, we were just hoping that it was secretly a charming little magic-tinged film that transcended its problematic title character, but perhaps that was too tall of an order. Regardless, it still gave us plenty of reasons to use funny Southern accents and bask in the film’s folksiness. Also, we end up talking about the movie The Family Man far more than you’d expect. Continue reading →