The Hunt for Red October (1990)

I recently rewatched another old favorite of mine and it still holds up as an all-time great cold-war thriller about a cat-and-mouse game between a US intelligence agent, a Russian submarine captain, and the Russian side trying to stop one of their own from defecting. Interestingly, the book it’s based on came out when the Cold War was still a thing but by the time the adaptation came out it was already dated, and yet the movie just works.

It perfectly captures the Cold War though paints people on both sides as rational actors trying to avert the worst excesses of that “cold” conflict and above all from letting it get “hot”. The movie manages to make the audience guess just what is going on and even long after you have figured out what Ramirez wants to do you’re captured by Sean Connery playing him as an enigmatic and competent leader who knows what he is doing but plays the game a bit too close to his chest (though given that he grew up with political apparatus of the Soviet Union that’s no surprise and makes complete sense).

And Alec Baldwin really gives the performance of a lifetime as a likable and competent office worker who rises to the occasion and risks a lot based on his hunches. After that movie, Baldwin was Jack Ryan for me, and none of the sequels based on later Tom Clancy books and with Harrison Ford in the role ever worked for me. Also, after Hunt for Red October and The Cardinal in the Kremlin, Clancy’s work left me uninterested. Those two books were political thrillers that captured the zeitgeist like few others had and his later books, while arguably selling a lot and speculating on newer, more updated threats to the then-present US never had the same impact as those two books.

The Hunt for Red October, the movie, managed to capture that zeitgeist just as perfectly as the book it was based on, despite coming out later when that time seemingly had moved on. But just for a moment, it felt like the perfect time capsule to be transported back to that era when fiery doom from atomic threat felt ever-present and the world was only a step away from falling into that abyss.

The movie captured that everyday existential horror but also the hope for a better tomorrow and so, in a way, was the perfect bridge from the Cold War era to perestroika and a world where global annihilation wasn’t on everyone’s mind all the time.

And rewatching the movie now, even decades later, it still conveys that feeling of hope that people from opposite sides can work toward a common good even if it takes a lot of hard work to come together. But you need some people to make the first step, to trust the other side and hope for human decency despite coming from different cultures. There’s a reason this is a timeless classic, such a great movie with stellar performances and perfect pacing from start to finish.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

I wasn’t sure on what note the entire DCEU would end with the Aquaman sequel, whether it would be a complete disaster or just a mediocre movie. I hadn’t heard much about The Lost Kingdom except that it wasn’t as well received as the original. Which I liked quite a bit, not because it was something substantial or deep but really well-done popcorn cinema.

And the sequel is pretty much this only more…choppy. I have a hard time defining what’s the issue here except, that for all that this has pretty much the same mix of ingredients as the first part it feels like it lacks a final pass of polish that leads to tonal unevenness. Some scenes feel just wrong with good actors suddenly overacting or in some scenes almost looking like they are lost looking for proper directions from a director or anyone.

I came away from this mostly enjoying it, it’s a grand epic with a climactic battle, and it picks up a side villain from the first movie and uses him to kickstart the main antagonist. In a lot of ways, this reminds me of Thor 2, the main big bad is evil just because, and the story is more about the protagonist getting back together with his “evil” brother and finding some common ground.

And just as Tom Hiddleston was the real MVP as Loki in The Dark World, Patrick Wilson is the real MVP as Orm in The Lost Kingdom. Which is funny as I didn’t like his character much in the first movie but here completely overshadows Jason Momoa as Aquaman who has no character arc left and is only there to provide muscle. It’s Orm who has to learn that his brother never wanted to replace him, it’s Orm who has to accept that he was wrong in the first place and try to be better.

Sure, in the end, the movie too easily forgives him for his evil deeds from the first movie but it’s a comic book reality, it’s so common there that I don’t mind it. And Patrick Wilson together with Jason Momoa is really funny to watch.

Without the above-mentioned choppiness to its tonal pacing, this would be just as good as the first movie. It’s not but as far as sequels go I was mostly happy with it. Not the worst movie to end the DCEU on.

True Lies (1994)

I hadn’t seen this one in a while and only remembered that I liked that quite a bit. So when James Cameron finally allowed to get this published on BluRay and 4K UHD and led to a monstrosity of AI-“enhanced” picture quality, I got that Spanish BluRay about which nobody is quite sure whether it’s legal or a bootleg.

The movie reminded me of Mr. and Ms. Smith with an unequal power dynamic where Arnold goes on spy missions while his wife gets bored with her life. When she is catfished by a fake spy, and Arnold’s character finds out, he goes ballistic and sets up a complicated ruse to give his wife some of that “real” spy action to spice up her life. Only to then get derailed when the real terrorists arrive.

This is mostly a still good action-comedy though some of the parts have aged worse than others. The whole jealous husband who stalks his wife and then sets up an incredibly cringeworthy almost-striptease for his wife is just not a good look and not as funny as I remembered it twenty years ago. Some of the action still looks incredible. It’s funny in parts, though not all.

Overall an enjoyable diversion if you can stand some of the cringe moments the movie dishes out. Also, Tom Arnold as Arnold’s side-kick/voice of reason is an underrated performance and steals the show in almost every scene he shows up.

Ernest & Celestine (2012)

People often complain about the lack of animated movies with the look of hand-drawn visuals that made Disney such a powerhouse of animation in the first place. What they overlook are the many underappreciated and completely overlooked animated movies that come from other places and are just as great as Disney was in its prime.

Ernest & Celestine is a beautiful movie with great characters that find together through hardship and prejudice and overcome both in a story that could have easily fallen prey to sentimentality or shoddy writing. Despite how hard those things are to deal with in the real world, it’s easier to make it believable against the background of a world where bears and mice are not on friendly terms.

When Ernest and Celestine meet each other, things don’t go the usual route of hate and fear. Both because the two of them are kind of outsiders in their cultures and each of them looks for someone else to connect to. Ernest wanted to become a musician instead of a judge as his parents wanted him to be and ends up alone and poor.

Celestine rather draws than goes out collecting teeth as the other mice kids do (the mice society here thrives on collecting bear teeth to replenish their own used-up ones which are the foundation of their society because with their teeth they make all the things they need).

Mice in particular grow up with stories of evil bears out to eat them, though in reality, they are rather more civilized and most of them wouldn’t eat mice (except when very hungry, which is the hilarious first meeting of Ernest and Celestine, who lectures Ernest she’s a very bad catch with not enough meat on her bones).

The movie works because as sentimental as this whole story sounds, the creative forces behind it managed to make it all feel very genuine by making Ernest and Celestine such well-realized characters. Celestine is a dear, headstrong, willing to stand up for her beliefs but also at times as scared and lonely as she is, and she admits to it without holding back or lying about it. Ernest is a more gruff fellow but with a heart of gold that Celestine eventually manages to capture and together they are better for it.

We don’t see too many stories about friendship in movies like this, it’s either romance and love or buddy movies with few emotions. Here we see the story of two outsiders who are good for each other (and their interactions despite the dramatic depth are incredibly funny at times while also really heartwarming), recognize what they have, lift each other up, and then fight for their friendship when the rest of the world tries to break them apart.

All beautifully drawn, well-written, and just perfect in every aspect. Great movie, everyone who likes animation should check it out.

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)

I’m quite a big fan of the Kung Fu Panda series, one of the few animated series of the last two decades that only got stronger with each sequel and has yet to disappoint me. So I read with some trepidation the reviews of this and the reaction unlike with the other movies was much more muted. Not terrible, mind you, but not great either.

Expecting the worst I kind of put off watching the movie altogether but eventually relented. Color me surprised how much I enjoyed this. After three movies and a couple of TV shows of questionable canonicity I wondered what was there left to tell. Turns out the movie does the unique thing of passing the torch, of allowing its hero to grow up or at least realize he won’t be the main character forever.

Po unconsciously wants to hold on as long as he can, after all this is the job of a lifetime and he’s enjoying it far too much, but when a great choice presents itself for passing on his knowledge and skills, he realizes what all teachers before him have, that sometimes seeing the next generation coming into their own is just as rewarding.

A lot of that isn’t exactly spelled out, this is still a mix of action and comedy on the surface but the thematic heft of the story makes me appreciate the movie even more. There are far too few Hollywood movies about gracefully getting older. Maybe the only issue I have with the movie is that Po doesn’t look noticeably older. But his entire arc is really about that at its core.

After this I can’t wait to see where the series is going next as with Zhen we have a new character with so much potential that it makes me excited for KFP5 and possibly KFP6. I also loved seeing the Furious Five training Zhen in the credit sequence, even if I wished we had seen more of them overall. Still, what a great and enjoyable movie overall.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

I don’t know how DC Studios managed to botch sequels to the few good movies they made, but they sure did. I enjoyed the first Shazam! movie, maybe not on the same level as Wonder Woman or Aquaman but it did a fine job of introducing the main character and one of his major villains. It had a teenager as the main character who didn’t make me feel annoyed watching him.

The sequel throws out all the goodwill that the first movie created, introduced some random trio of evil goddesses with an ill-defined plan of what they want to achieve. At the same time and far worse all the convincing acting that both the Billy Batson actor and the other teenagers showed in the first movie has been replaced with cringe so bad that the first half of the movie is an act of violence against good taste and proper movie-making.

Once you get through that valley of tears the movie picks up some speed in the second half with some good moments, some good fights, and great visual designs for unicorns and that’s it really. The second half isn’t terrible, almost fun in a way but to get there you have to get past the absolutely dire first half.

It was directed by the same director and the script was written by a duo, of which one was the guy who wrote the script for the first movie, so you can’t really put the blame on new people coming in and meddling up something good (though who knows what happened behind the scene). It felt like the creative people behind the first movie had a very good idea of what to do with Captain Marvel, the sequel shows that it was maybe just luck that the first movie worked as well as it did.

That said, that DC has consistently fucked up its sequels shows that the studio’s overall approach to them is borked. Well, the DCEU is dead anyway, let us hope James Gunn can make something better of his DC movie universe.

A Practical Guide to Evil – Book 2 (2017)

As expected from the size of the whole series the second book clocks in at a much higher rate of roughly 1000 pages compared to the first book at only 400, though given the overall size of everything later books must be even bigger. Still, given that this was 1000 pages, it was a breeze to read through and didn’t feel too big at all.

Even a few weeks later though I have a hard time recapitulating what happened. This isn’t a slight against the book being forgettable and more due to just how much happens. Catherine Foundling aka our protagonist wages her first campaigns in the field, following up on the war she herself created in the first place by letting a hero go who then went on fostering a rebellion that threatens to get out of hand.

So the second book is all about having to deal with the consequences of that choice though it’s complicated by the fact that their final confrontation is the third one. And of the first two one she won, and one was a draw so the logical consequence in terms of narrative is that she has to lose, and given how much this fantasy world is shaped by gods following narrative logic it actually goes there. So, how does Catherine lose her third fight with the hero and still come out alive? With an ingenious solution, I really didn’t see coming and it’s oh-so-clever. I love it when an author manages to surprise me in such a brilliant way.

However, this isn’t all that happens. There is also a third fight with her arch-enemy The Heiress and that one doesn’t end as conclusively as hoped so she remains a threat in the next book even if a bit diminished in power. Overall though the book shows how Catherine slowly but surely makes a real legion out of her hastily thrown-together troupe, makes some hard calls along the way and things get more muddy politically as it seems that the Dread Empire queen sees her as a possible replacement for the Black Knight her mentor, just in case, which his friends don’t like much (and those are some scary friends).

And that isn’t even the bigger picture. The real one the Black Knight slowly spoon-feeds her, which is all about the Dread Empire declining and how he and his friends hoped to solve that without another big war and a big loss of lives (which is how those decline phases in the Dread Empire were solved previously).

In the end, Catherine gets what she wished for initially, control over Callow, the kingdom she calls home and which was brutally conquered by the Dread Empire. And since she has a more realistic take, Catherine believes she can do more good by leading her kingdom as part of said empire instead of trying to free it like many heroes have done and failed.

It’s all interesting stuff bundled together in a compelling narrative with lots of more fascinating things happening on the sidelines that slowly paint the picture of a complex world with lots of history. Instead of tiring you out with long lessons, the story slowly reveals tidbits here and there that make you want to know more. And given how the 2nd book solved many of the plot threads raised in the first one, I expect to see more of the outside world and their politics to come into play in the next one.

Vision by Tom King (2015-2016)

The Vision series by Tom King is such a meticulously told story, constructed with so much care and attention to every aspect that it’s hard to not be impressed by it. I’m flip-flopping on whether I like it or not, but it’s tremendously well-written despite how I might overall feel. It takes the Vision character, adds a made-up family of one wife and two kids (and later a dog), and tells a family drama that ends in death and heartbreak.

On the surface it’s all about the Vision wanting to create a family for himself, so he does that, moves to the suburbs with them, and tries to live the American Dream like so many before him. And like so often before everything breaks apart eventually as the fantasy of a family life just isn’t working out, though not because of the typical human drama but because Vision and his family try to emulate a human family with most of them not quite understanding how to go about it.

The reason I’m so conflicted on this is that most of the drama seems somewhat avoidable if the characters behaved like sensible human beings. But that’s the issue here, these aren’t your everyday humans, these are androids created by Vision who is an android himself, with memories infused (his wife with memories from Wanda) and then thrown into the real world. If you know you were created yesterday in the image of a grown-up person or teenager but are only a couple of hours old, how much common sense can you really expect to have?

So, the story gets away with the characters making bad decisions because they don’t know better, because having the memory of real people without having lived their life, without real experiences to back it up, it’s hardly fair to expect them to function well. I still don’t like how the story enforces human drama leading to tragedy, but it makes sense in terms of the overarching narrative logic.

At its heart it’s a story that tells us from the start it tries its best to make us sad, and to some degree if you aren’t made from stone, it will succeed. I rarely like this approach because it always feels manipulative and I’m not sure Tom King needed to add more heartbreak to Vision’s history. Still, in their failure to emulate a ‘normal’ all-American family they succeed at becoming human in the end, even if some of them die. It’s a paradox really, they aren’t very good at emulating being human but when they fail catastrophically, they finally become as human as everyone else with a lot of emotions that aren’t spelled out but a deep undercurrent that makes you feel.

Like I said, I’m kind of flip-flopping on it. It’s well-written and the art is phenomenal but I rather prefer adventure to human drama in my superhero comics. And I’m not sure how much of it will remain canon given how easily it can be ignored by future writers using Vision, but at least he has a daughter and a dog now.

The Weathering Continent (1992)

The Weathering Continent is a lesser-known 1992 anime movie I remembered for years afterward and always considered better than its reputation. After rewatching this I’m slightly less impressed than what my memory of it told me it would be, but I can see why I liked it so much initially.

This isn’t a grand fantasy story, more a small-scale adventure by a party of three travelers (a big swordsman, a magician, and a nimble girl who I assume would be somewhat of a rogue if we go by classic archetypes though she’s not doing anything like this here).

They cross a desert where once a mighty empire stood (the eponymous Weathering Continent is where the overall area of where the empire once and now the desert exists) and start exploring a richly decorated graveyard that is apparently cursed if you steal anything. Some bandits don’t heed those warnings and awaken the spirits of the place that turn on anyone including our party of three and how they survive and escape is basically all there is to the story.

It almost reminds me of a low-level RPG adventure you might play and I wasn’t surprised to find out that this was based on a 28-book series about the ongoing adventures of the protagonist trio.

While this won’t wow you with great writing (it’s solid but unremarkable and not as good as I remembered) it has some really nice 90s animation that makes it look better than it has any right to be. This is probably why I remembered this so fondly in the first place and why I still like it despite not being blown away watching it again so many years later. It’s a fun, unpretentious little story that looks pretty good. I wish they would bring out a Blu-Ray of this though that would allow its visuals to stand out even more.

Final Crisis Omnibus (2008-2009)

This is the third time I read the Final Crisis storyline and it reminded me of the well-known but counter-intuitive fact that the very act of remembering something changes our memory, because our brain isn’t taking out old memories from an archive but rather recreates memories in a process that will likely change how we remember them going forward. What has this to do with Final Crisis?

Well, after having read this behemoth of a story you would think I have a good grasp on it or could easily articulate what it’s about and who fights against whom, and furthermore the overall shape of the story. But the first two times I read this was in TPBs that collected the adjacent mini-series in their own arcs whereupon this time I read the massive Final Crisis Omnibus that has everything in a reading order that slightly changes the overall experience.

I’m not always sure the Omnibuses are the perfect reading experience for all stories but in the case of Final Crisis, which is a sprawling epic with many tangents that still somehow feed back into the ongoing narrative, it’s the superlative version of reading the event. One thing that stood out to me is that I completely missed the side-arc with the Terror Titans and the Clock King (who I remembered mostly as a silly B-list villain from the DC Animated series yet here he comes across as a chilling psychopath) when I read Final Crisis earlier.

It probably helped that I read Seven Soldiers of Victory recently and the first Grant Morrison Batman Omnibus, all good preparation for this event. Still, trying to summarize the overall narrative goes something like this, the New Gods (good and bad) have reincarnated as humans on Earth and the bad ones try to take over. Darkseid is a mob boss, then suddenly vanishes from the narrative, Clock King takes over his club, then he becomes irrelevant again, then Darkseid’s minions try something to bring Darkseid back and Earth becomes engulfed in a time-contraction/reality storm where everything falls under their influence and things go apocalyptic.

This conflict though is really a reflection of an even deeper conflict between a vampiric Monitor from outside of reality who wants to feed on the DC Multiverse and destroy it in the process. There are other tangents but this is the most simple explanation given, though previous crises are referenced as well, and in general, knowing some DC history helps understanding some of it.

When you read this you occasionally stumble over gaps in the narrative that aren’t really issues missing so much as Grant Morrison trying to tell such an epic story that he had to leave some stuff out or this would have never finished. This isn’t the easiest read to begin with, like many Morrison-helmed stories, but it feels like Final Crisis is both an advanced Morrison class on all his DC interests mixed together with an epic storyline. And still, while it’s not always forward with all information, at the end of the day it’s simply a big brawl between heroes and villains (with some deeper meanings to explore along the way) that is just fun to read.

This is a massive book, one of the biggest Omnibuses DC has published today and due to its size the mass of pages at the top will slowly move away from the spine while at the bottom curling over (it’s really hard to describe without showing pictures, let’s just leave it at that and say that producing books this heavy reaches the limits of common sense in comic book publishing). This isn’t something made for forever. And yet, for all its size, for all its narrative quirks, I managed to get through the book in three days. I read 200-page comic books for which I needed far longer to get through.

This is just such a compelling read from start to finish, and it’s not just Grant Morrison but all the authors and creators involved here. This was a massive effort and it really paid off. It’s one of those few crossovers that get better every time I read it, a grand story involving the highest of stakes with countless characters, and yet I still feel utterly engrossed and engaged. It’s likely not for everyone, but I love it utterly.