I could hear the little man inside me again. He was screaming like a little girl.
Like its protagonist, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) this movie can’t decide if it should mercilessly mock the idea of an Army unit researching psychic phenomena as an alternative to war or cheer for the collection of oddballs who threw their lives into the endeavor. Director Grant Heslov tries to have it both ways and comes close to pulling it off.
He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.
It’s best to think of this movie as the estranged fraternal twin of Dr. Strangelove. Fail Safe is the sober, humorless one. Both films cover virtually the same territory, that of an inadvertent nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, but while Stanley Kubrick treated Armageddon as a subject worthy of absurdist gallows farce, Sidney Lumet takes it seriously for some reason. (more…)
You got something against the English language, Colonel?
Directed by John Frankenheimer, this film teams with his masterpiece The Manchurian Candidate to form a potent one-two punch of Cold War paranoia. The earlier film, with Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey, boasted a more complex plot and a layer of political satire that’s not found here. That doesn’t make Seven Days in May a lesser film, just a different one with different goals. (more…)
Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!
Stanley Kubrick’s acid-soaked absurdist farce about the end of the world has to stand alone among the genre of cold war films in the same way that 2001: A Space Odyssey stands alone among science-fiction films. (more…)
I am now the luckiest kid in America! This must be the biggest discovery since, I don’t know, television or something!
Before he struck it big with Disney, Pixar and The Incredibles, director Brad Bird helmed this minor delight of a movie for Warner Bros. which, sadly, almost nobody ever saw when it first came out. A well-deserved cult status followed its release on home video, however, paving the way for its director to move on to bigger and, although it’s difficult to believe, even better efforts than this.
What is it about the free world that pisses the rest of the world off?
The last time Kevin Costner got anywhere near John F. Kennedy’s presidency, namely Oliver Stone’s cinematic hallucination known as JFK, history took a beating like a narc in a biker bar. Thankfully, Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days doesn’t take anywhere near the number of liberties with the truth (how could it) and its historically questionable aspects are minor and forgivable as necessary dramatic licenses in the service of a tightly honed political thriller that also happens to be mostly true.
Wolverines!
Ah, the Eighties. They were a time, weren’t they? We had MTV, big hair, narrow ties, Ronald Reagan and a commie behind every rock. John Milius’ tale of teenage insurgents fighting a communist invasion of the United States is violent, at times goofily operatic and it’s probably a better movie than you’ve heard. That violence earned it the distinction of being the first PG-13-rated movie ever released.
Before, he was evil and my enemy. Now, he is evil and my friend.
Released at the height of the James Bond heyday, this sober, gritty adaptation of John le Carré’s novel
What are you going to do, Edward? Save the world?
The Good Shepherd uses the classic form of the espionage thriller to tell the story of the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency through the eyes of one character, Edward Wilson, himself a composite of several real figures in the early days of the American intelligence community. Despite its length, deliberate pacing and a central character that is not particularly sympathetic, this film is a compelling account of a crucial, little known part of American history.
Your name is Clerk and my name is Sir or Boss if you can manage. And if I ever catch you in my office again, you’ll be pissing purple.
Spy movies basically come in two flavors. There are the action movies with the espionage background, like the Bond and Bourne movies, and then there are the movies that focus on the more mundane aspects of spy craft. These can be just as exciting, in their own way, as the high-octane actioner, if done correctly. Breach was done correctly.
