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

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)
Journey to Italy (1954)
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969)
Journey to the Lost City (1960)
Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962)
Shakes the Clown (1991)
Vampyr (1932)

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

It’s the Great Depression, and gosh, times are tough in Chicago. Sol Gann (Ray Wise) is a union man and single dad, maybe the best darn dad who ever dadded. He’s landed a steady job but it’s clear across the country and he can’t bring his daughter Natty, so he leaves her behind and asks a friend to take care of her. The girl’s not having it, though, and runs off to find her father, 2,000 miles away.

Natty (Meredith Salenger) walks away unscathed from a train wreck and a car wreck, gets good advice and her first kiss from the world’s most clean-cut hobo (John Cusack), is befriended by a totally tame wolf (Ned), gets sent to a cold-hearted orphanage (but, of course, escapes), gets almost raped but rescued by the wolf, and eludes dangerous homeless-haters and railroad bulls. Along the way she’s helped by a parade of kind-hearted strangers, and accompanied by a corny, always optimistic musical score. And that darn wolf.

This is a kids’ movie from Disney, so every moment is calculated to be cute and wholesome, but that can be entertaining when it’s done right. It’s done right, and surprisingly for Disney, features two damns and two shits!

More than 30 years later, Salenger married funny guy Patton Oswalt.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Journey to Italy (1954)

Katherine and Alex (Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders) are an upscale married couple, un-enjoying a vacation in Italy. In an early, chuckle-inducing scene, a tour guide points out the wonders of an Italian patio’s view, pointing in every direction — there’s Vesuvius, there’s Pompeii, there’s the Island of Capri… The pointing and then moving on is so superficial, it has to be intended as a joke, right?

Katherine and Alex argue, never particularly about anything, just trading insults, snippiness, impatience as they get on each others’ nerves. Which got on my nerves, too.

They decide to spend their days separately. She’s the tourist, going to Italian museums, taking tours, always impressed by the sights, but rushing to the next ancient bauble to gawk at. He’s bored by museums and history and such, didn’t particularly want this vacation, so he chases a local woman, but remains a perfect gentleman with her. At the end of each day, Katherine and Alex return to their hotel for nightly quips and insults, and she sleeps on the couch.

As the film approaches its climax, Katherine and Alex discuss a divorce while he drives their car through a pedestrian plaza during a very crowded street festival, honk-honk-honking the horn to get people out of the way, as both he and she ignore Italy all around them.

The film ends with a tacked-on twist that’s fake, stupid, and unbelievable, but by then, who cares? Katherine and Alex’s arguing is the heart of the movie, but their arguments and relationship have half the depth of a junior high couple quarreling in the locker bay. Despite being filmed on location, the film’s perspective on Italy is as shallow as pointing at Vesuvius from the patio.

Directed and co-written by Roberto Rossellini, who was porking Ms Bergman at the time.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969)

Gerry Anderson made Fireball XL-5 and other science fiction filmed with marionettes, and his name is all over the opening credits, so imagine my disappointment as people walk on-screen, revealing the movie to be marionette-free.

Roy Thinnes and Ian Hendry star as astronauts sent on a six-week mission to the sun, but they come back after only three weeks. From their perspective the mission took the full six weeks, and they expect full pay, but their commanders think they’re slackers who inexplicably cut their assignment short.

The tech is cool old-school punch cards, paper data tape, and magnetic reels. The story, while potentially interesting, is underwritten to make sure any 5-year-old could follow along. The result is a movie that’s mildly fun, but would’ve been better with marionettes.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Journey to the Lost City (1960)

Chandra is the king of an island nation called Eschnapur, which seems to be in Africa or India. There are deserts and camels and tigers and such, and long opening narration tells us Chandra has power of life and death over his subjects, that he’s in love with some dame who doesn’t dig him, that his brother is plotting against him, and more. There’s so much explanatory narration at the start, I wondered whether this is a sequel and they’re explaining Our Story So Far.

When the narrator finally shuts up and lets a story start, it’s in German that’s badly dubbed into English. Chandra demands an architect build him a gaudy tomb, the gaudiest in human history, but the architect refuses. Next comes a flurry of brief scenes with different characters, and more scenes with other characters, until I paused the film to find my bearings through the internet.

The credits had announced a film by Fritz Lang, but this is many miles from Metropolis. IMDB explains:

“Journey to the Lost City is not a specific film by Fritz Lang but the combination of The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959) with its sequel The Indian Tomb (1959), done in 1960 by American International Pictures.” Also according to IMDB, Lang made both those films, each with longer run-times than this hour-and-a-half mash-up.

Well, I have no interest in seeing two Fritzes desecrated and merged, so enough already, but what I’d seen looked gorgeous, so I’ve added The Tiger of Eschnapur to my watchlist.

Verdict: BIG NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962)

There’s no war and no hunger in the distant future of 2001, because the United Nations has become Earth’s one-world government. The UN’s space exploration fleet has explored the planets nearest the sun, and now we join Spaceship Explorer 12 on its mission to survey the seventh planet, Uranus (pronounced You’re-Anne-Hiss).

The crew is international but all white, all male, all apparently 40-50 years old, except a perhaps 30-year-old rookie from Germany. The tech is analog, the spaceship realistically cramped, and when they land on You’re-Anne-Hiss everything looks strangely familiar to one of the crewmen.

What they’re seeing on the planet has been built by space aliens who’ve pumped that crewman’s memories — a sci-fi trope that would’ve worked better as a mystery, instead of having a hokey Uranusian voiceover explain what’s up. But that’s the film’s only major mistake.

The visual effects are cheap but pull their weight, and there’s a brief glimpse of a stop-motion space alien. The music is theremin-adjacent, and the women imagined by the men are all beautiful. Dynamite conclusion, which is immediately followed by a pop song over the closing credits.

Overall, Journey to the Seventh Planet plays like a long-lost episode of the original Star Trek, which is a compliment.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Shakes the Clown (1991)

Bobcat Goldthwait stars as Shakes, an alcoholic clown who’s manic, unstable, and sick of your shit. Written and directed by its star, Shakes the Clown is jammed with crude, mean, dark, sometimes absurdist jokes.

The most obvious film to compare with this is Bad Santa, but BS is more realistic, while this is all enjoyable silliness. In BS, when Billy Bob Thornton was on-duty as Santa, he was mean to the children, which worked against the movie’s premise. An anti-hero working with kids can be an awful human, but he has to be good with youngsters or it punctures the whole plot.

Shakes the Clown doesn’t make that mistake. Shakes is a drunken scumbag, sure, but we see him working a kid’s birthday party, probably drunk, and he’s fun and funny and charismatic with the children. Bravo!

The story starts fast, never slows down, and delivers plenty of laughs. Features Julie Brown, Tom Kenny before SpongeBob SquarePants, Adam Sandler before he stopped being funny, Kathy Griffin, Tim Kazurinsky, Robin Williams as a mime, and Florence Henderson in the role she was born to play.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Vampyr (1932)

A young man checks in at an old hotel one evening, and soon a mysterious stranger enters his room. The stranger leaves a package and says it’s to be opened only after his death, which comes twenty minutes later.

I’m not even going to touch on the rest of the plot, as it must be experienced, not merely told, but the vibe of Vampyr is disorienting and surreal. All the rooms are claustrophobic, the hallways ominous, and there’s no escape from deranged Albert Einstein wandering the grounds.

This is not a silent movie, but there’s little dialogue and it feels silent, even as people are talking. Excellent mood music, remarkable sound effects, brilliant sets, lighting, shadows, and silhouettes, with ingenious, very modern camera work. Written and directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, who made The Passion of Joan of Arc, and based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel In a Glass Darkly, which I’ve never read or even heard of.

For a German film, the lead looks surprisingly anti-Aryan, basically Hispanic. Wikipedia tells me, amazingly, that he was an amateur actor who bought the role by underwriting the film’s production cost. No wisecracks from me — he’s very good.

So’s the movie. Dim the lights and turn off your cell phone, this is one of the greats of horror, right up there with Dracula and Frankenstein and Eraserhead.

Part of the power of Vampyr is that the copy I watched had been restored to near-opening day quality, but this flick would kick my crypt even if the print was mottled and stained.

Verdict: BIG YES.

1/15/2026

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