Brian's Thoughts on Movies

  When I was a kid, I never missed The Dukes of Hazzard.   The show about two cousins in the South dealing with a comedically corrupt local law enforcement and visiting bad guys was loaded with entertaining car chases and jumps.   The cousins’ car,   the General Lee, a red 1969 Dodge Charger with sealed doors, was as much a character as any of the speaking roles.   The first time I ever noticed a continuity error was catching that in some episodes the gear shift was on the floor and in others it was near the wheel meaning they were using lots of cars.   I also usually caught it when footage (especially the jumps) was re-used. The jumps were exaggerated but largely done for real (a car was wrecked after each one).   While the stunts were good the charm of the show came from its characters, and its bluegrass score. My experience with this show got me excited when I first saw the trailer for Gone in Sixty Seconds which had a similar muscle car (a ’67 Mu...

 continued from Part I The sequence during the break is most interesting if the viewer just focuses on Vesper.  She grows concerned in the elevator when Bond pulls out the gun.  This turns into full scale panic as Bond starts battling with the Ugandan rebels.  The stairwell fight is vicious and like Vesper we just want out.  As Bond eventually strangles the chief villain, Obanno, Vesper eventually finds the courage to help Bond disarm him. Campbell allows the aftermath to play out realistically. Bond, with a lot of blood, mostly his own, on his white shirt, tells Vesper to get Mathis to help with the bodies (giving her something to do).  When he fixes himself a strong drink and looks at himself in the mirror with a sense of loathing. Craig is terrific in this wordless scene. Bond may get his man, but every violent act is taking more of his humanity.   Little scenes like this make the film longer but enrich it greatly. When Bond finds Vesper sitting...

  “So you want me to be half monk, half hitman”   James Bond to M in Casino Royale Casino Royale is my favorite film and like all great films, each time I watch it, which is only about once a year to preserve its power, I notice something new about it.  As such I have a LOT to say about this film and to avoid an overly lengthy post I am going to break it into two.  Casino Royale was such a breath of fresh air when it was released it is easy to forget the Bond series was hardly on life support before it came out in 2006. Pierce Brosnan’s Bond films had all performed well and each had something of substance, even though there had been an overuse of digital effects in Die Another Day (2002).  I had been a fan of the Bond films for over twenty years when I saw this film and the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service had long been my favorite, due to the character-based story.  In the middle of the climax of during my first viewing of Casino Royale I real...

 "Never hate your enemies.  If affects your judgement"  Michael Corleone to Vincent About a year ago I wrote a review on The Godfather Part III which was mildly positive based on the strengths of the leads and the portion of the storyline that focused on Michael’s attempt to atone for his crimes.   However, I have long felt overall a sense of disappointment in the film as it is disorganized, overlong, and asked the audience to invest in an incestuous relationship.   The film felt a little rushed as it had many interesting ideas but was not terribly well put together. Last year director Francis Ford Coppola (who also cowrote all three films with the late Mario Puzo, who wrote the original novel-which is one of my favorite books) announced he would be releasing a cut entitled Mario Puzo's The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone for the film’s 30 th Anniversary which was his original choice for a title.  This version would restructure the film an...

 "Can I interest you in a Whopper?  You can get it to go if you want to eat it in your car and cry" Burger King employee to Marcus. If you have read my review of Marvel Fourth Batch you will be aware that I found Randall Park hilarious in Ant Man and the Wasp.   His comedic instincts and interplay with Paul Rudd elevate that film above the first Ant Man for me.   I have never seen his show Fresh of the Boat but enjoyed have heard that it is entertaining.   After seeing a clip of the Netflix film “Always Be My Maybe” my wife and I decided to give it a look and were very entertained.   The recent despicable increase in attacks on Asian Americans in the country (spurred on in no small part by racist comments by the former president who was looking for a scapegoat for the Covid-19 virus) made me want to spotlight on this film, which like Crazy Rich Asians has a nearly entirely Asian American cast and was also written by its stars, the aforementioned Randall ...

  “Blessed are the merciful, so for they shall obtain mercy.”   Matthew 5:7, quoted by Abraham Lincoln in “Young Mr. Lincoln”. One of my favorite films of the past decade is Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg, which I wrote about a few years ago.   Spielberg’s film focused on the mechanics of what President Lincoln is most remembered for, the passage of the 13 th Amendment which eliminated slavery in the United States.   President Lincoln is one my heroes and I find just about any well written book or film that focuses on him worth spending my time on. However as much as I enjoyed Lincoln, I regretted that it only covered a brief period near the end of Lincoln’s life.   Recently I discovered a little gem called Young Mr. Lincoln, directed by John Ford in 1939, starring Henry Fonda.   John Ford is probably most known for his Westerns with John Wayne.   My Ford education is pretty light as I’ve only seen The Searchers and Mr. Roberts but if I ha...

 "Thanks, I'm also a youth pastor"  Jimmy Woo in Ant Man and the Wasp.                                                                          (Spoilers below) Avengers: Infinity War (2018) The third official Avengers film was perhaps the most anticipated MCU film to date.   At the end of the first Avengers films there was a quick glimpse of Thanos and he appeared in a few scenes of Guardians of the Galaxy as a figure to be feared.   The MCU has built nicely to this crescendo by using the six infinity stones as MacGuffins in several of the other films.   I have a hard time keeping track of which is which throughout the series though Infinity War does a pretty good job of keeping us in the know. Narratively, the film has an enormous job as Thanos needs to obtain all six ston...