Brian's Thoughts on Movies

Indiana Jones is coming back to town.  In the 1980s and 1990s Harrison Ford became, due in large part to his work in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series, one of the biggest movie stars of all time, though after 2000 his profile and star power dropped a little as his audiences grew up.  When Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released at the end of 2015 Ford's moving performance as Han Solo let audiences get excited about him again (and was a much more fitting farewell to the part than Return of the Jedi had been).  Within months Lucasfilm announced a new Indiana Jones film.  In the past few years then Ford has also worked on the Yellowstone show 1923, a Blade Runner sequel, a comedy series and gave an excellent performance as the grizzled John Thornton in The Call of the Wild.  Ford's weathered face mixed with his still strong physique and sometimes flat voice gives off the impression of a man who has been affected by his experiences but still has plenty to off...

 The first post I put in this blog was for Avatar in late 2009.  I had been toying with the idea for a couple of years and when I saw that film I had enough thoughts about James Cameron's long awaited film that I even named the blog after the thoughts.  After finishing the post I felt that my main feelings with the film were expressed and I never sat down to re-watch it.   As the years went by I read stories about the Avatar sequels.  Initially two more films turned into four and the release dates kept getting pushed further back.  My response to the idea of four more Avatar films was initially disappointment because Cameron is one of the great directors and at age 68 I would rather see him explore other ideas than spend years making sequels to a film whose premise I did not feel could sustain four more stories.  In the meantime while Cameron assembled writing teams for each film he also kept himself busy with other projects.  He visited the...

 I am starting to get behind on the MCU because I do not watch all the shows.  I have not made the time to watch Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel or She-Hulk.  Nor have I seen the older shows like Agents of Shield or Agent Carter.  While I enjoy the films and some of the shows it does make for a lot of superheroes and my interests are varied.  So I will likely continue to watch the films and some of the shows if they grab my attention but not all of them. Spoilers for the three films below Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) Writer-Director Ryan Coogler had a monster of a job to rework the story he had developed when Chadwick Boseman tragically passed away in 2020 of colon cancer.  I thought Black Panther was the best film by far of the MCU and while I was excited to see where it could go, I also felt that a follow-up had little chance of holding the same power.  When Boseman died, Marvel faced a difficult choice.  They could have recast T'Challa (as the...

The original producers of the James Bond series, Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman made some interesting decisions with the early films.  One of them was not only to film the books out of order but to film some of the later books first.  You Only Live Twice was the eleventh Ian Fleming novel but was the fifth film.  Dr No was first film but came in the middle of the series.  From Russia With Love was the second film but the fourth book and Goldfinger, Thunderball, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service were all later books but were the third, fourth, and sixth films.  The logic might be to capitalize on a recent successful title but it is interesting that although the books follow a through-line the films were largely designed to be independent experiences with only loose connections so an audience member could watch one without having seen prior entries. The first four film adaptations are pretty similar to the novels but You Only Live Twice takes the Jap...