every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the K’s, with anti-alphabetical cheats)

Kid Galahad (1937)
The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002)
Kiddin’ Hollywood (1933)
Kidneys for Jesus (2003)
The Kids are Alright (1979)
The Kids in the Shoe (1935)
Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

— — —

Kid Galahad (1937)

This is one of those boxing movies where the fights are rigged, and I’ve seen so many rigged-boxing match movies I’m wondering whether boxing has always been rigged and still is.

Edward G Robinson plays a fight manager who keeps firing fighters because they think for themselves in the ring instead of boxing exactly as he coaches them. He wants a fighter who doesn’t think at all, and soon enough finds one.

Some of the boxing scenes are clearly choreographed and sped up, but most of it looks like real fights.

Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart co-star, with Jane Bryan and Harry Carey, and Wayne Morris as the lovably brainless fighter. Ms Davis sings, though she’s obviously dubbed. Directed by Michael Curtiz, based on a serial from The Saturday Evening Post. I didn’t yawn much.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002)

Robert Evans was a women’s wear executive who he lucked into work as an actor, achieving minor success in such films as Man of a Thousand Faces and The Sun Also Rises. His talent was being handsome and schmoozing, and when his acting career ended, he became a hot-shot movie producer (Chinatown, Marathon Man, Black Sunday).

This is a documentary about Robert Evans, starring and narrated by Robert Evans, and probably underwritten by Robert Evans, who’s seriously impressed with the artistry and success of Robert Evans. Wanna spend an hour and a half with a cocky megalomaniac? Here’s the ticket.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kiddin’ Hollywood (1933)

A short subject with nothing but child actors, and one of them is Shirley Temple. She’s 5, about a year before she became a star, but she’s the only thing watchable here. Gets her first screen kiss, too. It’s all pretty stupid, and the sound sucks, at least on the copy I watched.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kidneys for Jesus (2003)

Perpetually interesting Brit filmmaker Jon Ronson explores a cult called Jesus Christians. Lots of cults demand believers give up their worldly possessions; this cults demands you give a kidney.

Which leads to some interesting conundrums, like — religion for a worthy cause? Actually following the teachings of Christ? Wacky stuff like that.

I’m all for kidneys, but the Jesus Christians are wackadoodle, and I suggest you find kidneys elsewhere, or donate yours through other means.

My viewing experience was somewhat wounded by WOW TV’s large, ugly, very distracting logo, knitted into the corner of every frame. Fuck you, WOW TV.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Kids are Alright (1979)

This is a great documentary about a great band, with plenty of great music. It’s The Who: singer and pretty boy Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle, drummer and smartass Keith Moon, and guitarist/philosopher Pete Townshend, who also wails athletically on a tambourine. Many guitars and drums are destroyed. Ringo Starr and Keith Richards hang around.

The interview segments are revealing enough to get a sense of these four young men, and their rock’n’roll rocks, from “Baba O’Reilly” to “Ba-Ba-Ba Barbara Ann,” and “Happy Jack,” “I Can See for Miles,” “My Generation,” “Pinball Wizard,” “See Me, Feel Me,” “Tommy Can You Hear Me,” “Who Are You?,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and wait, there’s more.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Kids in the Shoe (1935)

Illustrated in the delightful style of early animation, and told in poetry and song, here’s seven minutes with a woman who lives in an XXXXXXXXXXL shoe, raising her many children between the laces and soles. It’s cute, and all the kids singing “Mama Don’t Allow No Music in Here” is early rock’n’roll. Even the shoe/house dances.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966)
a/k/a Operazione paura

The ghost of a young girl is frightening people into suicide, in an 18th century European town crowded with cobwebs, gothic architecture, and bad actors dubbed into worse English.

A gust of wind blasts a window open, rustling a few papers on the worst actor’s desk. He rushes to the open window, leaves it open, and stands looking out for half a minute, then has a brain-dead conversation with someone else, all while near-hurricane sound effects continue but the papers on the desk remain still.

Horror aficionados claim this is a classic, but they’re wrong and it’s quite stupid. Zero goose bumps or shivers for me, even when the ghost comes knocking, and a young woman’s response is to intentionally and fatally impale herself with rebar instead of asking the kid why she’s knocking.

The sets, cinematography, and color palate are excellent, and Mario Bava directed and co-wrote, so it’s conceivable that the original Italian-language version (Operazione paura) might be worth watching. The English-dubbed version is all I could find, though, and it’s not.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

Thymian is barely past being a kid, wearing a white dress and flowers on her head for her confirmation, when she’s raped by the manager of her father’s pharmacy. Now she’s pregnant, and the traditionally cruel punishment is that she’ll be forced to marry her rapist, but Thymian ain’t having it.

When she refuses forced wedlock, she’s shunned by her father, her baby is taken away, and Thymian is sent to a home for wayward girls. It’s basically a prison, with a psycho jailer who looks like the bailiff from Night Court. The psycho’s shrew boss demands Thymian’s diary, but she ain’t getting it.

This is a ginormous soap opera, the quintessential silent melodrama, epic in scope and with very pre-code allusions to masturbation, lesbianism, suicide, prostitution, etc. Which is why it was banned for many years across several continents.

The story is dated, thank cripes, because we no longer demand pregnant girls marry their rapists, etc, but the film is terrific across almost every frame. Louise Brooks stars, and a century later she’s still radiant.

It’s a museum piece, but so’s Rembrandt.

Verdict: BIG YES.

4/10/2026

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
— — —
If you can’t find a movie I’ve reviewed, or if you have recommendations, please drop me a note.
— — —
No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

Long before there was this zine, before I was keeping a diary, the first time I really knew that San Francisco was home was when I’d been in the city for a week or so, and came to the Castro for a Hitchcock double feature.

The movies were great, sure, but I was overwhelmed by the theater. It’s an old-time palace for film, kept in very good condition, with an ornate rotunda, wonderful murals, a big balcony, plush seats, enthusiastic crowd, great popcorn — the works.

The Castro is from a time when theaters could be remarkable, not merely a room with chairs. It’s mesmerizing even a mile away, just seeing the marquee lit up. Being inside the Castro is an experience, even before the lights dim and the show begins.

Arguably best of all, at intermission every night, a musician sits at a pipe organ and plays a medley of movie music, climaxing with “San Francisco (Open your Golden Gate).” It shakes the seats, and that first night I was at the Castro, I thought, This is what a movie theater should be.

Can’t count the number of times I’ve been to the Castro since that first night, but it’s not enough times, and I’ve had that same thought — This is what a movie theater should be — every time.

It’s not even a mile from where I live, so tonight I was there again, for another Hitchcock double bill, and another rousing round of “San Francisco.” It’s the theater’s theme song as much as the city’s, and it felt like another warm welcome home to me, personally.

Like, where’ve you been, wanderer? Stick around this time.

As for the movies…

Rope (1948) is a marvelous black comedy of manners and murder at a New York sophisticates’ party, after a couple of college buddies have killed a third friend, just for the thrill of it.

Me, I never go to parties, they’re such a bore, but this one’s a blast, with tension that keeps climbing to the very end. Jimmy Stewart delivers one of his best performances, in one of Hitchcock’s smartest stories.

Plus, more personally, Rope on video was the the movie Sarah-Katherine and I watched the first night we, um…. so it triggered some wickedly good memories.

In Strangers on a Train (1951), two men meet on a train, and one of them suggests that they swap murders, because “Some people are better off dead, like your wife and my father.”

It’s considered one of Hitchcock’s great films, but not by me. One of the killers doesn’t want to go through with it, the other is just nuts, and we needn’t give the murdered wife a moment’s thought because the script informs us that “she was a tramp.”

There’s some tennis that’s supposed to be thrilling but seems absurd, and it all comes down to a preposterous finale on a merry-go-round that’s whirling out of control. Screenplay by Raymond Chandler, music by Dimitri Tiomkin, helmed by Hitch, so this should be marvelous, but it’s dated and dull.

Yet even when the movie isn’t all that, when the curtains come down and the lights come up and the organ rises, the Castro is what a movie theater should be.

Pathetic Life
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Tonight I put on my best personality (which ain’t much) and met Kelli Williams for dinner and a double feature. Kelli, for the poor fools who don’t know, writes the great personal zine That Girl, and tells tales of the MUNI in Twenty Bus.

We were both a little nervous at first, but most people are nervous meeting new people. If they’re meeting me they’re even more nervous, because I’m so nervous. Soon enough it felt mostly relaxed, and we talked about zines we like and our lives and whatever else came up, between bites of a fabulous dinner at the Sincere Cafe.

Then we strolled a block for two movies at the Roxie…

Love & Happiness (1994) is a lighthearted black-and-white noisish comedy about a hired killer who prefers to kill only women. Sounds delightful, eh?Perhaps unavoidably with that premise, the movie treats women coldly. Every chick in the flick is thin and beautiful, and their only scripted reason for living is to be killed. The funny parts are funny, so I was able to put off being put off by the casual killings, for the first hour or so, but it’s finally too repulsive to recommend.

Frisk (1995) is repulsive too, and leans so heavily on gay stereotypes I’m surprised it’s running in San Francisco without being picketed. The protagonist has a new sexual partner every ten minutes, plus a death fetish, so there’s oodles of sex and violence, but none of it’s fun like James Bond on Matt Helm.
According to Frisk, every gay man is tortured inside, and wants only to torture and be tortured by others.

“I shoved one hand down his throat, one up his ass, and shook hands with myself.” All righty then. I thought it was boring dreck. Kelli said that the book was better.

So that was my evening with Kelli. Before the shows, between the shows, after the shows we had a few laughs, some engrossing conversation, and some conversation that was just gross. Really it wasn’t much different from my first meetings with Josh or Jacque, except of course that it was completely different, because those guys aren’t pretty women.

To be clear, this was a purely platonic night with a potential pal, not at all a date. I’d never met Kelli before, but maybe we were buddies by the time she got onto her bus home. Or maybe not, and I’ll never see her again, unless she waves from a passing #22 or #26.

Cripes, do I sound like a total dweeb? It wasn’t constantly on my mind that I was with an attractive, funny, bright woman, only every few minutes or so. But it adds something to the mix, and probably made me more nervous than I would’ve been otherwise. I’m not Eric Stoltz in Some Kind of Wonderful, buddies with a pretty girl but unaware she’s a pretty girl.

But Kelli has a life and interests and stuff, and a boyfriend, and I’m ten years older and two or three times her weight and she could never be even slightly attracted to a lump like me. She’s not writing anything as pathetic as this in her diary, that’s for sure.

Elmer Fudd spent the evening with Drew Barrymore, that’s all. Had a good time, and hope she did too, and I’ve been Elmer for a long time & can deal with it. My heart beats a smidgen faster spending time with Kelli than spending time with Josh, that’s all. Nothing personal, Josh.

Pathetic Life
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