Having finished the K’s and before beginning the L’s, Father forgive me for I have sinned — a few movies watched out of proper alphabetical order.

Bug (1975)

An earthquake in the first few minutes destroys a church in the middle of a hellfire-and-brimstone sermon, which is enjoyable, but that’s the high point of the film.

After that, everything is crawling with flammable bugs, crawling up from where the ground was shifted in the earthquake. The community college’s insect expert explains that there’s no such thing as flammable bugs, but the bugs disagree, and keep lighting stuff on fire and blowing up pickup truck gas tanks, burning the leading lady’s wig while she’s wearing it, etc.

Bradford Dillman stars, acts his heart out and never cracks up once, despite being surrounded by bugs and ludicrousness. Screenplay by William Castle and Thomas Page, based on Mr Page’s novel The Hephaestus Plague. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc, who made 13 Kojacs, 19 Night Gallerys, and Somewhere in Time.

This is a William Castle movie without a gimmick, and it’s boring, except for the church falling down, and the slight smile of noticing that some interior scenes were filmed on sets from the recently-canceled Brady Bunch.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Eephus (2025)

Rec-league amateur baseball, mid-October, Adler’s Paint vs the Riverdogs. The movie is that game.

The players are pudgy, in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Attendance: about 10, including one old guy in the bleachers, a couple of kids, one of the players’ girlfriends out behind the outfield fence.

There’s a scoreboard, but it’s not plugged in, cuz that costs extra. If you want to know the score or inning, ask the guy with the scorebook.

No lights, either, but as the sun goes down the players want to keep playing, even after the umpire has gone home. Play they do, inning after inning in increasing darkness, barely lit by headlights from parked cars. Everyone complains about the darkness, but nobody wants to stop playing, which is the movie’s symbolic point. It stretches too long, though, too many innings in darkness, and nobody mentions the danger of being beaned with a line drive you literally couldn’t see coming.

I like baseball, and spent years umpiring in rec leagues, so trust me, this movie is absolutely accurate. It might be the most accurate movie ever made about adult amateur baseball. The players drink beer between innings, and make constant wisecracks, most of which aren’t funny. Late innings, when a guy hits a foul ball, someone’s gotta go into the woods and find it, because that’s the last ball either team has.

What’s most accurate is, just like a real rec league game, it’s kinda boring and doesn’t matter at all.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Man on Wire (2008)

In 1974, a French acrobat walked a wire between the tops of the two towers of New York’s World Trade Center. He was Philippe Petit, and he’d been planning his stunt for seven years, he says, since reading a magazine article about plans for the WTC’s construction.

Before his big day in New York, Petit had taken similar strolls above the cathedral at Notre Dame and across Australia’s Sydney Harbour Bridge. Whatever’s the opposite of acrophobia, Petit has it.

For the big day in New York, 8/7/1974, he had accomplices and connections and must’ve had an ample budget. Friends or hired help (it’s unclear which) wore pilfered uniforms, drove official-looking trucks, carried forged ID cards, and hand-trucked the equipment he needed into the buildings. And if what Petit and the film say is true, they did it twice, stashing the needed rigging in closets on the 82nd floor of both towers — a built-in back-up plan.

And then, Petit walked the wire, and when he saw police were waiting to arrest him, he turned around and walked almost all the way back. And then he turned around and did it again. He wire-walked the distance between the twin towers, 110 stories above the asphalt, eight times, he says.

The film is based on a book by Petit, and made with his ample cooperation and on-screen interviews, so it’s not a critical look at the man and the day, but what’s to be critical? Dude did something remarkable, terrifying, and fascinating. Eight times.

Directed by James Marsh (The Theory of Everything, Wisconsin Death Trip), Petit comes across as vain, playful, pathologically driven, and more than mildly nuts — someone you’d love to have a cup of coffee with, and then hope to never see him again.

Why did he do it? Wrong question, in my opinion. Ask why so few do anything similar.

Verdict: YES.

10/29/2026

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. And I mean it — if you ask, I will get you the movie.
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No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.