Oh the Bad Movies & TV You’ll Watch 16!

Here at Frock Flicks HQ we have access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and some, ehem, other sources to watch historical costume movies and TV shows. Hey, we could even watch movies on ye olde DVDs sometimes! So we spend a lot of time in front of a screen, attempting to watch our endless queue. Alas, not every flick set in the past is worth our time (though for ones we DO review, use the search box or menus to peruse the archives!).

Here’s a little behind-the-scenes info: There are a lot of mediocre historical costume movies and TV shows out there! We’re not talking Snark Week-worthy travesties — we LURVE watching those. But some stuff is just distinctly average. These are boring movies, the dull shows, the ones with meh costumes and stories that can’t even rise up to the level of camp entertainment. Or the ones that are mildly entertaining, maybe have ‘good-enough’ costuming, or are moderately snark-worthy, but we can’t be arsed to work up a sweat about it.

Thus, this is an occasional series with our one-line reviews of things we’ve tried to watch but just don’t care enough about to write a whole blog post or podcast. Your mileage may vary!

 

Along Came Love (2023)

A French film about a complicated relationship that starts just after World War II and ends in the 1960s. It touches on many themes: the aftermath of the war for French women who had relationships and children with German soldiers, interracial relationships, and bi/homosexuality. It’s not a happy movie, but it’s interesting! Most everyone wears very “normal people” clothes that are appropriate to the era but nothing flashy. — Kendra

 

 

De Sade (1969)

I tried to watch this psychedelic “biopic” about the famed Marquis de Sade, late-18th-century writer and libertine, for Snark Week. The costumes were indeed pretty bad, but I just CAN’T with the late 1960s/early 1970s “ooo we’re making this film an ACID TRIP, how cutting edge of us!” filmmaking. And none of the women appear to be enjoying the BDSM or sex, unless they’re getting paid to do it, so it brings up some weird issues of consent.  — Kendra

 

 

Eiffel (2021)

Yet another attempted Snark Week watch (see the things we do for you?). But it wasn’t bad enough it was just boring, and the costumes were lackluster. It’s the epitome of a yawn. Also, making the story of building the Eiffel Tower into some mostly fictional love triangle? I couldn’t roll my eyes hard enough. — Trystan

 

 

The First Churchills (1969)

When I wrote my “Top Five 1970s British Miniseries I’d Love to Watch, But…” post, people were insistent that The First Churchills was worth sitting through stagey sets and bad videography. So I tried. I really did. Got halfway through episode one and noped out. STAGEY SETS AND BAD VIDEOGRAPHY!! (Somehow Trystan has managed more than I have, so we’ll have an actual review in the future). — Kendra

I have a higher threshold for bad videography, and more importantly, there are fontanges I wanna see! — Trystan

 

 

The Godfather (1972)

With Diane Keaton’s recent passing, I tried revisiting some of her few frock flicks, starting with this breakout role. It’s a memorable performance — she manages to hold her own as the girlfriend, then wife of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), and her role is even meatier in the sequels. But while this movie recreates the post-WWII New York ambiance, the costumes are a weak spot (this photo is supposed to be 1945), and the only part of the trilogy that really gets historical costumes right IMO is in the second movie with the backstory of young Vito Corleone in Sicily and when he first immigrates to the U.S. Even then, it’s mostly menswear! — Trystan

 

 

House of Guinness (2025-)

I don’t like beer, and I don’t like 1860s costumes, so this Netflix series already had some strikes against it. But it was getting a lot of press, so fine, I watched the first two eps, and nah, not my cuppa. If you can’t grab me in the first TWO HOURS, what are you even doing? The so-called drama starts with Protestants vs. Catholics in Ireland, but is very narrowly focused on conflict among Guinness factory workers. That’s overlaid with some boring and cliched storylines about the Guinness heirs themselves, attempting to give them fictional scandals in dark, gritty settings (I had to lighten this one image a lot). — Trystan

 

 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017)

The modern-day story of the author researching the true story of Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells form the base for all human cells grown in labs, along with her daughter (played by Oprah Winfrey), who is processing the mother she never knew and the fact that the family was totally excluded from even knowing about the research; it’s intercut with flashbacks showing Henrietta in the 1940s. The period scenes are great, and Renée Elise Goldsberry gives a wonderful performance (and has GREAT hair and makeup) as Henrietta, but it’s just not enough historical content to warrant a full review.  — Kendra

 

 

Isadora (1968)

 

A rather haphazard biopic of early 20th-century dancer Isadora Duncan. Vanessa Redgrave plays her as a sort of historical manic pixie dream girl who’s obsessed with her dancing but also really likes to shag random dudes and have their babies on the side.  The movie was alternately titled The Loves of Isadora, so yeah, let’s just reduce an iconic artist to her sex life. The flick is lavishly filmed when it comes to locations, but the costumes get boring since Isadora’s fond of filmy Grecian-style draperies on- and off-stage. — Trystan

 

 

Nuremberg (2025)

Rami Malek plays the psychiatrist (Douglas Kelley) who studied the leaders of the defeated Nazi regime as the Allies prepare for/implement the Nuremberg trials, which judged the highest leaders that remained after the war, including Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe). The psychology is fascinating, the performances are strong, and the costumes are on point. And there’s a LOT of important resonance with our time period today, when right-wing political parties are trying to throw out democracy. As the real and on-screen Kelley would later say, the Nazi leaders were “…people who exist in every country of the world. Their personality patterns are not obscure. But they are people who have peculiar drives, people who want to be in power, and you say that they don’t exist here, and I would say that I am quite certain that there are people even in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half of the American public if they could gain control of the other half, and these are the people who today are just talking—who are utilizing the rights of democracy in an anti-democratic fashion.” — Kendra

 

 

One Hundred Years of Solitude (2024)

I adore the book by Gabriel García Márquez, but there’s just no way his magical realism sprawling multi-generational story could be put on film in a way that captures the glory of his prose. And this Netflix series proves that, sadly. It’s beautifully filmed, but many things that are symbolic are spelled out and become clunky onscreen. Some books just should remain books. — Trystan

 

 

The Promised Land (2023)

Danish hottie Mads Mikkelsen plays the real-life army officer who lived on and cultivated what was then barren moorland in the 1750s. It’s essentially a Western, as a lone man struggles against the land, comes into conflict with local baddies, but learns a ton about himself and the Meaning of Life by meshing his life with an indentured servant and a Romani farmworker. It’s actually a better film than I thought it was going to be, but there’s not a lot of costumey stuff to review, other than the generically-fine 18th-century costume worn by an upper-class lady in a very few scenes. — Kendra

 

 

La Rafle (2010)

What a timely film! In 1942 Paris, huge numbers of Jews were rounded up by French police collaborating with the Nazis. They were put into a bicycle velodrome (an enclosed stadium) for several days, without food or water, and then sent to a transit camp from which they were deported to actual concentration camps. The film follows several key characters, from a young child to a Christian nurse, as the horror unfolds. It’s heartbreaking to see from the inside what happens when governments indiscriminately arrest and remove people from their homes, break up families, and give zero shits about their welfare. It’s happening in the U.S. right now, and I can’t believe we can look back in horror at situations like this but not see their modern parallels. — Kendra

 

 

What did you think of these movies or TV shows? What other stuff should we remove from our queue? Have you searched our site recently to see if we’ve already reviewed your faves?