Brian's Thoughts on Movies

This is a long one so I broke it into two parts to make it more digestible.  Spoilers for all things Bond below:  No Time to Die faced so many roadblocks from original conception to release that it feels it was willed into existence, despite having a clear setup from the end of Spectre.  At the end of that film Bond captured Blofeld but opted not to execute him.  Bond left the secret service to try to start a life with Madeleine Swann, the daughter of Mr. White, Bond's onetime nemesis who had worked for Spectre.  In Spectre Madeline told a story of a man who entered their house which left a thread to be explored. Daniel Craig made a comment to an interviewer right after finishing the long shoot for Spectre, on which he broke his leg, that right at that moment he would rather slash his wrists than play Bond again.  I read the entire interview (as opposed to just the headline) and in context he was speaking about how tired he was in the moment and was clearly...

My discussion on the Rocky films, continued.  Spoilers below:                                                                                       Rocky V  (1990) Rocky V has a reputation as the nadir of the series.  Stallone has said that it is because he created a story that is too depressing and Rocky movies are supposed to be inspiring.  The producers have said that the film was scripted for Rocky to die at the end until an 11th hour change which gives the film a mixed tone.  I will admit I have a soft spot for it because after all the showiness of Rocky IV it tried to go back to focus on the characters and develop the relationship between Rocky and his son, which had not been don until this point....

Body swapping stories are an old trick in films and are often used comedically.  In the 1980s there were switching parent and child bodies (Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son).  Parent Trap took a pair of twins and had them switch places but Face/Off  does something new with the concept by taking a hero and a villain and having them switch faces and forcing them to adapt to each other's lives while trying to stop each other. Spoilers for Face/Off below Director John Woo was famous for his action heavy and Catholic themed Hong Kong films like The Killer and Hard Boiled.  Woo's films explored the effect on violence on its heroes and victims and often mirrored the hero and villains in some way. Woo's characters often wear black suits, slide around a lot, hold two guns, and have Mexican standoffs, sometimes in slow motion. The Killer in particular, is a powerful film in which the title character, played by Chow Yun Fat, tries to raise money for an operation ...

Spoilers for the series and films discussed below. Spider Man: Far From Home (2019) The second Spider Man film in my opinion was released a year too soon.  Spider Man was blipped in Avengers: Infinity War and brought back in Avengers: Endgame, the latter of which was only released two months before Far From Home.  Therefore the first trailer was out long before Endgame, showing that Spider Man somehow has come back and notably did not feature Tony Stark, which hinted at his fate in  Endgame.  Marvel tried to cover this a little by having Tom Holland introduce a second trailer but insisting that audiences see Endgame first.   The other issue is Far From Home is set several months after Endgame in which the characters (most of whom were blipped) have begun to process it but seeing it so soon afterwards feels awkward.  It would play a little better with some distance between it and Endgame.  None of this is the fault of the film, which is very well m...

 By now it should no longer be noteworthy when a big title from the 1980s is revived with some of the current cast.  Star Wars, Rocky, Rambo, Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters are all active again.  The notable thing with Top Gun is there was only one.  Star Tom Cruise resisted big paychecks to make Top Gun sequels because he wanted to play a lot of different roles.  Over the years every now and then I would hear rumors of another Top Gun film.  After Mission Impossible : Ghost Protocol was released and revived Cruise's career word came out that a Top Gun was being developed until the original director Tony Scott committed suicide.   I was saddened by Scott's death as the circumstances were obviously extremely painful for Scott's friends and family.  As a film fan Scott had become a very reliable director of entertaining films with a visual flourish.  Except for Crimon Tide Scott's films were nowhere near as artistically inclined as his bro...