Guilty Pleasure No. 90: Ice Station Zebra (dir. by John Sturges)

Posted on November 29, 2025 by Arleigh

Ice Station Zebra, directed by John Sturges in 1968, slides into guilty pleasure territory like a submarine slipping under polar ice—full of big Cold War ambitions, shadowy spy games, and submarine peril that tease something epic, but so loaded with pacing hiccups, studio shortcuts, and earnest overreach that it ends up a lopsided, lovably messy ride. Sturges had already cemented his rep with crowd-roaring hits like The Magnificent Seven, where a ragtag posse of gunslingers delivered razor-sharp tension and quotable showdowns, or The Great Escape, a WWII breakout yarn crackling with clever schemes, sweaty escapes, and Steve McQueen’s motorcycle glory. Those films moved like a well-oiled engine, every scene stacking stakes and character beats into unforgettable momentum. By contrast, Ice Station Zebra feels like Sturges chasing that same high-wire ensemble vibe—a U.S. nuclear sub, the USS Tigerfish, barreling toward a trashed Arctic outpost—but bloating into a 148-minute sprawl that swaps tight plotting for endless red-lit corridor glares and withheld mission secrets. It’s not in the same league as his earlier triumphs, lacking their propulsive drive and lived-in grit, yet that very shortfall turns it into quirky comfort viewing for fans who dig flawed ’60s spectacle.

The setup hooks you quick: Commander James Ferraday, Rock Hudson’s square-jawed everyman at the helm, gets tapped for a hush-hush run to Ice Station Zebra after a satellite supposedly carrying spy photos crashes nearby. No full briefing for him, just orders to play it cool while three mystery passengers board—Mr. Jones, a buttoned-up British agent with evasive smirks; Boris Vaslov, Ernest Borgnine’s barrel-chested Russian turncoat oozing fake bonhomie; and Captain Anders, Jim Brown’s steely Marine barking orders over a squad of jarheads. As the Tigerfish dives under thickening ice floes, the sub’s innards come alive with flickering sonar pings, steam-hissing valves, and crewmen hunched over gauges in perpetual sweat. It’s claustrophobic gold at first, the hull creaking like it’s got a bad case of frostbite, echoing the trapped dread Sturges nailed in his POW camp classic but without the same spark of rebellion. Then sabotage strikes—a flooded missile bay, a wild plunge toward crush depth—and fingers start pointing. Who tampered with the ballast? Jones with his locked trunk of gadgets? Vaslov’s too-friendly vodka toasts? The Marines itching for a fight? The scene builds real sweat, divers suiting up in the nick of time, but Sturges lets the fallout drag, turning interrogation into a tea party of suspicions rather than the cutthroat blame game his best films thrived on.

These early stumbles set the tone for a film that’s promising yet perpetually off-kilter, far from the seamless revenge rhythm of The Magnificent Seven‘s dusty trails. Production fingerprints show everywhere: rumors swirl of Navy brass forcing script tweaks to glorify their boats, last-minute casting shifts from bigger names to Hudson, and a roadshow rollout with overture, intermission, and 70mm pomp that screams overambition. The Arctic plunge delivers tense highlights—the sub ramming upward through ice chunks like a whale breaching, sparks flying from shorted panels, crew barking damage reports—but lulls follow with tech jargon dumps and characters circling motives without committing to conflict. Hudson anchors it all with unflappable poise, barking commands like a TV dad in a crisis, but he lacks McQueen’s sly charisma or Yul Brynner’s brooding fire. Borgnine hams it up as Vaslov, his accent flipping from gravelly growl to vaudeville schtick during mess-hall ribbing, while McGoohan brings the sharpest edge as Jones, his dry barbs hinting at deeper layers. Brown’s Anders gets muscle but little nuance, leading a Marine crew that feels like stock tough guys waiting for their cue.

Pushing topside, the flaws bloom into full charm. The ice cap arrival unfolds in sweeping widescreen vistas—endless white expanses, howling gales whipping snow devils—but close-quarters betray the soundstage: actors plodding through “blizzards” in lightweight jackets, no puffing breath in the deep freeze, sets that wobble if you squint. It’s the kind of earnest cheesiness that sinks modern blockbusters but endears this relic, especially when the station siege erupts. Soviets drop from the sky in parachutes like deadly snowflakes, scouring the charred ruins for a buried film capsule packed with NATO missile coords. Americans fan out in white camo, trading potshots amid smoke grenades and collapsing tunnels, loyalties cracking as Vaslov’s true colors flash. Ferraday’s cool bluff seals a three-way stalemate, denying everyone the prize in a nod to mutually assured secrets. Michel Legrand’s score surges here, horns blaring over the chaos like a war drum, giving Sturges’ action chops a late workout. Yet even this payoff sprawls, talky standoffs eating screen time where his peak films would’ve sprinted to the finish.

What seals Ice Station Zebra‘s guilty pleasure status is embracing its dated quirks as features, not bugs—hammy all-male bravado, Cold War jitters turned quaint, plot gaps you could park a destroyer in. Sturges conjures submerged panic and frosty fireworks that nod to his glory days, the sub’s practical effects holding up better than some CGI today, but without the narrative steel of The Great Escape‘s tunnel triumphs or The Magnificent Seven‘s mythic standoffs, it coasts on atmosphere over precision. Clocking 148 minutes, it tests patience with filler like extended sail sequences and coy reveals, yet rewards surrender: grin at Borgnine’s bear hugs masking menace, chuckle at the Navy polish glossing gritty potential, savor the sheer balls of staging Arctic Armageddon on a backlot. Howard Hughes reportedly looped it endlessly in his casino screening rooms, and you get why—it’s hypnotic in its wonkiness, a time capsule of late-’60s Hollywood flexing before New Wave grit crashed the party.

Pop this on a stormy night with cocoa and zero expectations, and Ice Station Zebra shines as cozy flawed fun. Sturges’ touch keeps the chills coming amid the clunkers, delivering submarine squeezes, betrayals under the aurora, and a finale with enough brinkmanship bang to forgive the bloat. It’s no peer to his earlier masterpieces, more a quirky footnote, but that’s the hook: imperfect promise wrapped in icy spectacle, begging a rewatch to spot every goofy grace note. For ’60s thriller buffs, submarine nuts, or anyone needing a break from slick reboots, it’s a frosty, flawed feast worth the dive.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Live Tweet Alert: Watch Dawn of the Mummy With #ScarySocial!

Posted on November 29, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting the goriest mummy movie ever made, Dawn of the Mummy!

If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy!

The Films Of 2025: Train Dreams (dir by Clint Bentley)

Posted on November 28, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

My house sits near two cemeteries.

To the East, there’s a cemetery that sits near a bus stop. It’s surrounded by a fence and, judging from the gravestones that I’ve seen, it was last used in 1917. It was a private cemetery, one that functioned as the final resting place for the members of one of the families who founded my hometown. To the west, there’s a park that is home to another private cemetery. It’s also surrounded by a fence. That fence wasn’t always there but it went up a few years ago because people were vandalizing the tomb stones and breaking the statues that had stood there for over a hundred years. How sick to do you have to be vandalize a graveyard?

Occasionally, when I’m near either one of the two cemeteries, I’ll take some time to look at the names on the headstones. The names are of people who I will never know. I’ll never know what they were like to live with or to eat dinner with. I’ll never know what hobbies occupied their time. I’ll never know what books they read. I’ll never know who they were. But I will always know that someone cared enough to erect a tombstone to let the world that person had once been alive. I will always know that, at some point, they were alive and they were a part of society.

I thought about those two cemeteries as I watched Train Dreams. Based on the award-winning novella by Denis Johnson, Train Dreams stars Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier. At the start of the film, the narrator (Will Patton) tells us that Grainier lived for 80 years and he spent most of his life in Idaho. He never saw the ocean. He was an orphan who never learned who his parents were, when he was born, or how he came to be placed on a train in the late 19th century. The film follows Grainier as he goes from dropping out of school to working as a logger to marrying Gladys (Felicity Jones). He builds a cabin for Gladys to live in while he’s away looking for work. He and Gladys have a daughter named Kate.

Growing up at a time when the frontier had only recently been tamed and when death was considered to be acceptable risk for the men cutting down trees and laying down railroad tracks, Robert sees his share of disturbing things. As a child, he comes across as a mountain man who is slowly dying. Working for the railroad, he watches as one of his co-workers is casually tossed off a bridge. Later, the elderly and kind-hearted Arn Peebles (William H. Macy) is mortally injured in a random accident. When loggers die, their boots are hammered into a tree. Years, later those same trees are cut down and the boots are forgotten. And yet, for all the danger in Robert’s life, there are the moments that make it all worth it. Robert always returns home to his cabin and to the embrace of Gladys and the sight of his daughter growing up. He always returns to his family until he can’t anymore. As he ages, Robert isolates himself from civilization and becomes semi-legendary in the nearby town. But, as always, legends are eventually forgotten.

Visually, it’s a hauntingly beautiful film. The scenery is stunning, even while Robert and his fellow loggers are busy changing it by chopping down trees. But there’s always a hint of danger hiding behind the beauty. A forest fire brings an eerie, orange tint to the sky but it also destroys many lives and dreams. Joel Edgerton gives a strong performance as Robert, proving once again that he’s one of the few actors who can star in a period piece without looking out-of-place. Edgerton’s performance gives the film the humanity needed to keep it from becoming purely a film about visuals. As Robert, Edgerton rarely yells or shows much emotion at all. But his eyes tell us everything that we need to know.

With its stunning visuals, its narration, and its emphasis on nature, Train Dreams owes an obvious debt to Terence Malick. That said, it’s not quite as thematically deep as Malick’s best films. Whereas Malick would have been concerned about Robert’s place in both the universe and the afterlife, Train Dreams is more content to focus on Robert’s 80 years in Idaho (and occasionally Spokane). Whereas Malick often seems to be daring his audience to walk out, Train Dreams is very much about keeping you watching as Robert grows old. That’s not necessarily a criticism, of course. It’s just an acknowledgment that Train Dreams is the rarest of all creatures, an arthouse film that’s also a crowd pleaser. It doesn’t alienate its audience but it does so at the cost of the risks that make Malick’s later films so fascinating, if occasionally frustrating. That said, Train Dreams does stick with you. I’ll be thinking about the final 20 minutes for quite some time.

Train Dreams tells the story of a man — one of many — who may have been forgotten by history but who mattered during his 80 years on this Earth. In the end, Robert Grainier serves as a stand-in for all the people who lived their lives as American rapidly changed from being a frontier to being a superpower. The world may forget him but the viewer never will.

Scenes I Love: The Highwaymen

Posted on November 28, 2025 by Arleigh

I reviewed the film The Highwaymen (directed by John Lee Hancock) earlier this week and there was always one scene from the entire film that I always go back to rewatching. It’s pretty much a sequence where Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (played by Kevin Costner) stops by a local gun store and begins naming off pistols and rifles that he wants to examine.

It’s a random scene, but it also shows how much has changed from how American treated the purchase and ownership of guns during the Prohibition and gangland era of the late 20’s and early 30’s. This was a time when any adult could go into a store and purchase any type of gun (from pistols, rifles, shotguns and all the way up to machine guns) as long as they had the money. No license required to purchase whatever one desired and no waiting period and background check.

All of this would just a month after the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde as depicted in the film when Congress would pass the National Firearms Act of 1934 when certain firearms would be heavily restricted (such as short-barreled shotguns, machine guns, short-barreled rifles aka submachine guns, etc.) requiring specific licenses and up to restricted for law enforcement use-only.

This scene shows a time that was still holding onto the ways of the frontier and the Old West, but was about to end as the government began to centralize regulation on the federal level and away from the states. It’s a scene that on its own was a small random one that almost borders on the ridiculous as Hamer just names off guns after guns then answering the store owner’s question of which he would buy with a simple answer of “all of them.”

I also love this scene being a gun enthusiast who has his own large collection. What I wouldn’t give to be able to just do what Frank Hamer did in this scene. Though my wallet would cry if I was given the chance.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Easy A!

Posted on November 28, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties. On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday. On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix and celebrating the event’s 5th birthday with an encore presentation! The movie? 2010’s Easy A!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Easy A on Prime, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there happily tweeting. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

See you there!

Lisa Marie’s Oscar Predictions For November

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I guess the question right now is whether or not Wicked: For Good will receive a Best Picture nomination. Tradition would seem to dictate that, like The Lord of the Rings films and the Dune films, Wicked: For Good would get a nomination to go along with the first part of the story. However, the reviews of Wicked: For Good have not been particularly good.

That said, those reviews have not had much effect when it comes to the film’s box office. And that’s why I think, despite bad reviews, Wicked: For Good will be nominated. I don’t think it’s going be quite the Oscar powerhouse that some were expecting but it will still, at the very least, be nominated. It’s too big to fail at this point.

Here are my review for November. Click here for my April and May and June and July and August and September and October predictions!

Best Picture

Avatar: Fire and Ash

Frankenstein

Hamnet

Jay Kelly

Marty Supreme

One Battle After Another

Sentimental Value

Sinners

Train Dreams

Wicked For Good

Best Director

Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another

Ryan Coogler for Sinners

Josh Safie for Marty Supreme

Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value

Chloe Zhao for Hamnet

Best Actor

Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme

George Clooney in Jay Kelly

Joel Edgerton in Train Dreams

Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon

Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent

Best Actress

Jessie Buckley in Hamnet

Cynthia Erivo in Wicked For Good

Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue

Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Valure

Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee

Best Supporting Actor

Benicio del Toro in One Battle After Another

Paul Mescal in Hamnet

Sean Penn in One Battle After Another

Adam Sandler in Jay Kelly

Stellan Skarsgard in Sentimental Value

Best Supporting Actress

Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value

Ariana Grande in Wicked For Good

Regina Hall in One Battle After Another

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in Sentimental Value

Amy Madigan in Weapons

I Watched Beautiful Wave (2012, Dir. by David Mueller)

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

After her father dies in an accident, teenage Nicole (Aimee Teargarden) is sent to Santa Cruz for the summer by her mother. In Santa Cruz, Nicole meets her grandmother, Sue (Patricia Richardson), for the first time. At first, Nicole is bitter and angry and doesn’t want a thing to do with Santa Cruz or its culture of surfing. That changes when she learns about her grandfather, Max (Lance Henriksen). Max was a legendary surfer who went to Vietnam and never returned. When Nicole comes across Max’s old map of surfing spots, she and her friend Kayla (Alicia Ziegler) go on a journey that leads to Nicole not only appreciating surfing but also discovering the truth about her grandfather.

Beautiful Wave is pretty predictable and, at first, Nicole is so sullen that she can sometimes be difficult to take even if she does have a good reason for not being in a cheerful mood. I liked the idea of Nicole and Kayla going on a journey together but I didn’t like that they brought two knucklehead surfers with them. What could have been a celebration of sisterhood instead became a film about two women having to deal with two idiots.

Beautiful Wave still won me over, with its gorgeous beach footage and its story of paying respect to the past and discovering your own roots. Even with the two idiot surfers getting in the way, I appreciated the way the film showed the bond between Nicole and Kayla. The ending was heartwarming, even if it did raise more questions than it answered. There are some movies that you have to be in the right mood for and I guess my mood was the right one for Beautiful Wave.

So, We Watched Sidelined 2: Intercepted (2025, Dir. by Justin Wu)

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

Since we had a few hours to kill before the Cowboys game started, Lisa and I decided to watch a movie. I wanted a love story. She wanted something with dancing. We settled on Sidelined 2.

Sidelined 2 picks up where the first Sidelined ended. Drayton (Noah Beck) is the starting quarterback at USC, even though he’s only a freshman and he’s really scrawny for a football player. (All of the football players in this movie looked too scrawny to be playing for a top-ranked program.) Dallas (Siena Agudong) is studying dance at Cal Arts and trying to figure out how to pay for her semester after she learns her scholarship won’t cover everything.

They’re in love but they still struggle because they’re going to different schools and they both have to figure out how to balance their relationship with all of their other responsibilities. Drayton tears his ACL and becomes bitter. Dallas gets a job at a coffeehouse and her boss has really messy bangs and keeps singing songs on his guitar. Dallas and Drayton realizes that there are other possibilities out there. Will their relationship last?

I thought the first Sidelined was cute for what it was. The second one was pretty boring and whatever charm the two leads had in the first film disappeared during the sequel. Drayton’s not much of a boyfriend, even before he ruins his knee. Dallas says she’s never even been to Dallas, which is weird. If I was named after a city, I would visit. It’s a Wattpad movie and all of the dialogue sounds like it was written by an AI that had been programmed to try to sound young by dropping random slang. Drayton asks Dallas if she’s “hangry.” Lisa made me go back three times to make sure he actually said that.

James Van Der Beek comes back for five minutes. He used to be the teenager with a dream. Now, he’s playing the father of a teenager with a dream. Feel old, yet?

4 Shots From 4 Film: I Am Thankful

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

On this Thanksgiving, here are four films that I am thankful for.

4 Shots From 4 Films

Dunkirk (2017, Dir by Christopher Nolan)

Nomadland (2020, Dir by Chloe Zhao)

CODA (2021, Dir by Sian Heder)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022, Dir by Joseph Kosinski)

A Scene That I Love: Planes, Trains, & Automobiles

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

This scene, from Planes, Train, & Automobiles, epitomizes everything that I love about Thanksgiving. It’s a reminder that home can be anywhere that is welcoming and that family doesn’t just include those with whom you share a common ancestor.

When John Candy finally admits the truth, that Marie is dead and that he hasn’t had a home for years, it brings tears to my eyes. That’s great acting. After everything that has happened, he finally gets to spend Thanksgiving with someone who cares about him.

I hope everyone is having a good Thanksgiving today. Enjoy it however you celebrate.