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

Killer Crocodile (1989)

A giant crocodile is hungry and angry. That’s the movie, and everything about it is cribbed from Jaws. The first victim is a young dame swimming alone. Even the music sounds like an imitation, and the script is noteworthy for its complete lack of creativity, imagination, characterization, or general giving of any damns.

Science Lady runs tests on the water, and explains before being eaten, “Mother Nature didn’t do this. This is waste from a chemical plant!” In other words, this was no boating accident!

Richard Anthony Crenna (yes, son of Richard Crenna) stars adequately, considering the material, with Van Johnson long past his prime as some vague abuse-of-authority figure called simply “The Judge.”

Watchable only for its awfulness.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Killer Eye (1999)

A mad scientist conducts experiments with people’s eyeballs, and one of the eyeballs turns into a Buick-sized monster that gets away while the scientist is arguing with his wife.

Bad acting, bad effects, slow pacing, so-so crocodile, and the women sure do like the giant eyeball’s tentacles, but unlike Killer Crocodile (above), this is schlock that’s at least sometimes sort of original.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Killer Nun (1979)

“This film is based on actual events that took place in a Central European country not many years ago.” Yeah, right, and I have a girlfriend, but she’s in a different nursing home so you wouldn’t know her.

Sister Gertrude (Anita Ekberg) has been raped, and her priest tells her to forgive and pray for the rapist. She’d rather seek out and kill men as vengeance, but she’s also willing to torture and maim women, so I’m confused. And also bored.

Weird, tuneless elevator-music is all over the soundtrack.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974)

Buncha folks who all hate each other gather at an abandoned theater, where there’s murder and intrigue. The dialogue randomly, inexplicably switches from Italian with English subtitles to English dubbed, then back again, then back again, then back again…

All the murder victims are women, usually with their blouses ripped off first, and I gave up when the killer’s next murder involved repeatedly stabbing a woman in her special unhappy spot.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Killers (1964)
a/k/a Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers

Lee Marvin plays Charlie Strom, the coldest hit man who ever hit men. Angie Dickinson is Sheila Farr, and she’s trouble. John Cassavetes is Johnny North, superstar of greenscreen auto racing. Ronald Reagan brings everything to a screeching halt every time he’s on screen, partly because of everything Reagan became after show biz, and partly because, whoa, he’s bad in this role.

Might’ve enjoyed this more without the auto-racing motif — it’s loud and phony as hell, with every race sequence greenscreened absurdly. Marvin and Dickinson are great, but it’s a long wait before they interact much.

Screenplay by Star Trek‘s Gene L Coon. Produced and directed by Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers ’56).

Verdict: MAYBE, but probably not.

♦ ♦ ♦

Project Hail Mary (2026)

It’s been years since I’ve seen a first-run mainstream movie, but an old friend wanted a get-together and suggested Project Hail Mary, so there we were.

A science teacher is plucked from public school obscurity to head a NASA emergency project trying to figgur out some ecological catastrophe. Long story short — and it is a long story — he’s sent on a spaceship to the outer neversphere.

Based on a novel by Andy Weir, whose The Martian I read and loved, and also dug the movie, about a potato farmer on Mars. This one, I haven’t read the book, and the movie’s not bad for what it is, but it’s a completely commercial venture, with every moment calculated for emotional response.

The story offers nothing difficult, challenging, or unexplained for an audience — it’s spoon-fed and the moviemakers assume you’re wearing a bib — but I was in the audience and had a good time. It ain’t great sci-fi or great art, but it’s a fun popcorn-chewer. Ryan Gosling stars, and I’d go gay for him if he’d go gay for me.

The first time the movie showed the NASA logo, it triggered a surprising moment of sadness, at least for me. Among the many damages Trump has done to all things with any potential for good, he’s shivved NASA with bloody budget cuts and thousands of careers ended. If we needed to send a spaceship to the outer neversphere in 2026, I’d turn to the European Space Agency before calling NASA.

Verdict: YES.

4/21/2026

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
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No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.