MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: THE FINAL RECKONING feels just a little too long, but that’s okay. It’s as though all involved were not quite ready to say goodbye in what may or may not be the last foray by Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. To be honest, neither are we, and by we, of course, I mean… Read More »
ARGYLLE
Someone once opined, perhaps facetiously, that there is a fine line between stupid and brilliant. There isn’t. There is a wide yawning chasm that would take a super-laser traveling at the speed of light several millennia to cross, and even then, it would only register on the far side as a faint glimmer in the… Read More »
KANDAHAR
KANDAHAR has the virtue of being more than a quotidian action tale of espionage and its attendant machinations. By taking a brooding rather than kinetic approach, it becomes a bittersweet meditation on, as one character sums up very neatly, the idea that modern wars are not meant to be won. The implications of that provide… Read More »
NO TIME TO DIE
And so we have come to the end of Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007. NO TIME TO DIE provides both him and us, with a veritable cornucopia of Bond-ness, from a supervillain’s lair on a remote island, to the finely honed quip we’ve come to expect as James takes out a minion with yet another… Read More »
ANNA
There is in Luc Besson’s ANNA fully one-third of a very good movie. That third is a finely drawn satire, cartoonishly violent in its sublimation of female rage as it addresses female exploitation in the modern world using the milieus of espionage and modeling as the metaphor. The other two-thirds is a plodding retread of… Read More »
RED JOAN
Science is pure. A hypothesis is either true or it isn’t and the scientific method can be used, unfailingly, to prove it. Politics and human emotions are another story, as we learn in RED JOAN, a drama of that most potent mixture, love and politics. Based on a true story, it considers questions of loyalty… Read More »
THE LOVERS AND THE DESPOT — Ross Adam Interview
Rob Cannan was stuck in London traffic as my phone interview time with him and his filmmaker partner, Ross Adam began, but Adam did a terrific job doing double-duty, as it were, talking about their stranger-than-fiction documentary, THE LOVERS AND THE DESPOT. The two spent years pursuing the movie rights to one of the most… Read More »
OPERATION AVALANCHE
There is something irresistible about a well-constructed conspiracy theory. The juxtaposition between the secret hands behind the scenes pulling the strings that control our destiny, and the peculiar sense of security that the world is not just a series of random events, that there is an order to it even if he have no collective… Read More »
JASON BOURNE
I’m put in mind of tea leaves. Good quality tea leaves that have rendered such a wonderful cup of tea that you wonder if maybe, just maybe, there’s enough of their essential, unique quality left to take one more infusion to make a cup as good as that first one. And so it is with… Read More »
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR
John le Carré writes espionage stories in which the action is cerebral and the suspense comes from a keen observation of each protagonist’s character. Thus, the stakes in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR involve much more than the list of names that will topple those in power. They involve the people caught up in the intrigue… Read More »