Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2025.3

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

1. Gandhi (1982) — 9/10
2. Ultraman S01 (2024) — 5/10
3. Man on the Inside (2024) — 7/10
4. Borg vs. McEnroe (2017) — 8/10
5. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) — 8/10
6. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) — 7/10
7. Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023) — 7/10
8. The Tomorrow War (2021) — 4/10
9. Goldeneye (1995) — 8/10
10. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Black and White) (1981) — 9/10

Gandhi (1982) — 9/10

The first scene shows us the end. It introduces us to Gandhi’s assassin, following him until he meets Gandhi, adding himself to the history books. This is a nice technique because, if you’re observant, you’ll notice the assassin’s stern, gimlet-eyed visage a few times throughout the rest of the film.

Now that we know the end, the film reaches back much earlier, with Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) being thrown off of a train for traveling first-class in South Africa. He adamantly espouses his philosophy that one must resist racism in all forms and at all times. He is beaten by the police when he burns his and others’ identity cards. He does not stop. The pain does not stop him.

There is a scene that exemplifies his adherence to his principles. At this point, you would be forgiven for thinking that his behavior is driven less by an adherence to principle and more by stubbornness coupled with a nearly complete disregard for his personal safety, but it’s more subtle than that. It’s more that he prioritizes his personal comfort, pain, safety, and even life below the goal of making things better for the downtrodden, for the unjustly disadvantaged. His overwhelming sense of justice necessitates that he come into conflict with power and those who wield it. In this scene, we see him walking with a priest, Charlie (Ian Charleson),

Gandhi: Doesn’t the New Testament say, “If your enemy strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left”?
Charlie: I think perhaps the phrase was used metaphorically . . . I don’t think our Lord meant –
Gandhi: I’m not so certain. I have thought about it a great deal. I suspect he meant you must show courage – be willing to take a blow – several blows – to show you will not strike back – nor will you be turned aside

And when you do that, it calls upon something in human nature – something that makes his hate for you diminish and his respect increase. I think Christ grasped that and I – I have seen it work.

Next, he meets a journalist Walker (Martin Sheen) on his ashram. Walker has been sent to find out what Gandhi is up to there. In another significant scene, we see Gandhi arguing with his wife Kasturba/Ba (Rohini Hattangadi) about whether she must also take her turn cleaning the latrines—something she considers to be beneath her, as work for untouchables. But Gandhi is fighting for a world without caste, without racism—a world of equals. When he almost throws her out for choosing not to do it, they say,

Gandhi: What is the matter with me . . . ?
Kasturba: You are human – only human. And it is even harder for those of us who do not even want to be as good as you do.

Later, he delivers a powerful speech at a meeting where he is gathering support. He draws the distinction between being willing to die but not willing to kill. Passive resistance.

Gandhi: I praise such courage. I need such courage – because in this cause, I too am prepared to die . . . But, my friend, there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

I have asked you here tonight because despite all their troops and police, I think there is a way to defeat this law. Whatever they do to us, we will attack no one, kill no one . . . But we will not give our fingerprints – not one of us.

They will imprison us, they will fine us. They will seize our possessions. But they cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.

I am asking you to fight! To fight against their anger – not to provoke it!

We will not strike a blow – but we will receive them. And through our pain we will make them see their injustice … and it will hurt, as all fighting hurts! But we cannot lose. We cannot. Because they may torture my body, may break my bones, even kill me … they will then have my dead body – not my obedience.

Later, as they put their plan into action, the business owners are perplexed that no-one is working.

Civilian Boss: These men are contracted laborers. They belong in the mines.
Gandhi: You have put their comrades in jail. When you free them, they will go back to work.
Civilian Boss: I’ve warned you.
Gandhi: We have warned each other.

🎤 💧 Damn, that is hardcore. Just bad-ass, streets-level hard.

A little further on, Gandhi laments his fellow countryman’s subservience not only to British rule over their bodies but over their souls.

“I try to live like an Indian, as you see…it is stupid of course, because in our country it is the British who decide how an Indian lives – what he may buy, what he may sell. And from their luxury in the midst of our terrible poverty they instruct us on what is justice and what is sedition. So it is only natural that our best young minds assume an air of Eastern dignity, while greedily assimilating every Western weakness as quickly as they can acquire it.”

Now, Gandhi is back in India and he’s been arrested. Charlie visits him in prison, but they are forced to part ways, as Gandhi will stay in India, while Charlie is going to a posting in Fiji.

Gandhi goes on trial. He refuses to bow. He refuses to admit guilt. He refuses to pay bail. He is allowed to go free. This whole scene demonstrated his famous saying,

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

After he is freed, a cadre of young, Cambridge-trained men sent by Nehru (Roshan Seth) show up to help him document the abuses. They are all—including Gandhi—lawyers. They will all live amongst the people. The British don’t know what to do with them, lamenting that “we [British] are too damned liberal.” The white man’s burden is heavy, so heavy.

Gandhi, Nehru, and others call for a general strike—no Indian is to work with the British Empire. Gandhi is, once again, arrested. People are protesting all over Bombay, but especially at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab. The British soldiers line up along one side of the square, weapons raised, and fire into a crowd of civilians absolutely indiscriminately, chambering one round after another in their bolt-action rifles. People drop like flies. All routes of escape are blocked. Thousands fall. 1560, to be exact.

After it is over, days later, Gandhi and Nehru arrive, surveying the scene of the slaughter, in silence.

At a huge rally, Gandhi calls on people to burn every piece of cloth that they own that was made in England. An Admiral’s daughter arrives, taking the moniker Mirabehn (Geraldine James) and pledging her fealty to Gandhi.

The police beat civilians and are, in turn, beaten by a huge crowd that torched the police station. The people are out of control; Gandhi wants to call it off because an “eye for an eye leads to the whole world going blind.” He is very strict about non-violence. When told that the people won’t stop, he responds,

“I will ask. And I will fast as penance for my part in arousing such emotions – and I will not stop until they stop. […] If I die, perhaps they will stop.”

He begins his fast; it goes on for days and days. He is starving himself, drinking only a bit of lemon water and needing to be turned in his bed by Mirabehn to keep him from getting bedsores. He is deathly weak. It works, though. The revolution is stilled, and he is able to eat again, and able to walk a bit. Soon thereafter—and long before he’s healed—a soldier appears to arrest him for sedition—even though his actions had stopped a revolution. “If there is one protest – one riot – a disgrace of any kind, I will fast again.”

He is made to stand in court for his crimes.

“I will save the Court’s time, M’Lord, by stating under oath that to this day I believe non-co-operation with evil is a duty. And that British rule of India is evil.”

The judge is forced by law to sentence him to six years in prison. He seems to do so reluctantly.

The film picks up years later. Ba and Gandhi are reenacting their wedding ceremony as Walker and fellow reporter Collins (Richard Griffiths) look on. They are there to find out what he will do next. Gandhi does not disappoint He thanks Walker for his inspiration[2]—Gandhi will walk 240 miles to the ocean and make salt, a symbolic breaking of the law prohibiting personal production of minerals and a commemoration of the anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh, the slaughter that took 1500+ lives.

“Gandhi: The function of a civil resister is to provoke response. And we will continue to provoke until they respond, or they change the law. They are not in control – we are. That is the strength of civil resistance.”

They reach the shore and many, many people produce salt. The British decide to arrest anyone but Gandhi, arresting 90K to 100K people with no end in sight. The police beat the people but no-one resists with violence. The desperate British determine to arrest Gandhi, despite their best-laid plans to avoid doing so. He really is in charge. With Gandhi in prison, his followers once again march on the prison, forcing the soldiers to beat row after silent row of them to the ground, offering no resistance. It’s gut-wrenching to watch, but the rows of men keep coming, and the soldiers keep beating them down.

“Walker: [calling his report in to his newspaper] both Hindu and Muslim together. […] Whatever moral ascendance the West held, was lost today. India is free for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give, and she has neither cringed nor retreated.[3]”

It is enough. It is too much, even for the British Empire. Gandhi is called to the British Raj to be invited to London for peace talks. He comes home from his much-feted trip to London empty-handed, though he remains confident that the British are desperate, that he is still in the driver’s seat. Gandhi and his wife are back in prison for having tried to give a speech about Indian independence. Margaret Bourke-White (Candice Bergen) of Life Magazine shows up to visit him, arriving with her driver, an unnamed lieutenant played by John Ratzenberger (Cliff Claven from Cheers). She photographs Gandhi while he’s making his own homespun clothes.

“Gandhi: What you cannot do is accept injustice. From Hitler – or anyone. You must make the injustice visible – be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.”

In the next scene, a visibly aged Gandhi sits by his wife’s side as she lies abed. She has had a coronary thrombosis and is dying. He tells her he will go for his walk, but she grips his hand to stop him. Instead, he sits with her. Much later, a doctor comes in and discovers that she has died. Gandhi has remained in the waning afternoon light, still clutching her cooling hand, tears standing out in his eyes.

With the British slowly coming around to the idea of British independence, the powerful of India move in to take over, to partition the country into Muslim and Hindu pieces.

“Gandhi: What do you want me not to do? Not to meet with Mr. Jinnah? I am a Muslim! And a Hindu, and a Christian and a Jew – and so are all of you. When you wave those flags and shout, you send fear into the hearts of your brothers.”

His nationalist opponents do not bend, though. He was able to bring the British empire to its knees but is now powerless against his own countrymen, who speak for the people. They tell him that he can have an independent Pakistan and an independent India or that he can have civil war.[4]

At the border, as Hindus march one way and Muslims the other, they fight and “no-one can count the dead.” Gandhi is bowed but not beaten. The others discuss the horrible situation but Gandhi declares that there is “nothing he can give.” He walks away, slowly and somewhat weakly, but also steadily and confidently. He heads to Calcutta. Things are very, very bad there, with much rioting in the streets.

Gandhi declares another fast, unto death if the fighting does not stop. Mirabehn says that “his pulse is very irregular; his kidneys aren’t functioning.” He will not stop his fast until they all—Hindu, Muslim, everyone—can convince him that the fighting will stop and that it will not start again. People listen. No-one wants Gandhi to die—so they must stop killing each other. An entire country stops fighting to prevent Gandhi from starving himself to death. The film really makes you believe that this is how it happened.

“Maulana, my friend, could I have some orange juice . . . then you and I will take a piece of bread.”

Later, Gandhi is once again with Bourke-White. She is taking pictures while he is preparing to leave for Pakistan, to show that there is nothing to fear from our Muslim brothers.

“Gandhi: I’m simply going to prove to Muslims there, and Hindus here, that the only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts – and that’s where all our battles ought to be fought.

“Bourke-White: And what kind of a warrior have you been in that warfare?

“Gandhi: Not a very good one. That’s why I have so much tolerance for the other scoundrels of the world.”

Outside, he hasn’t gone very far before we realize that we have returned, after 3½ hours, to the first scene, and to the cold, gimlet eyes of the Hindu nationalist who murders Gandhi in cold blood.

“Gandhi: There have been tyrants and murderers – and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it – always”

This is quite an incredible film, with a cast of thousands. It is so easy to forget how difficult it is to make a movie this believable and realistic, something that happens much less often these days. Ben Kingsley masterfully portrayed the power of Gandhi’s personality and the overwhelming force of his conviction. He proved to us how that conviction could have moved a continent of a billion people to resist the British, but peacefully, no matter how violent the response. He laid his entire life on the line for his country, for his people. They knew.

Ultraman S01 (2024) — 5/10

The Japanese have always seemed just as comfortable making anime as they are making live-action series and movies. This one follows all of the cinematic tropes of a TV show—framing, shot choice, etc.—but it’s a cartoon. It almost feels rotoscoped, the animation and detail are so good.

The show starts off with what is completely normal drama, introducing us to the story of Ultraman, as depicted at his museum, built after he’d returned to the stars. The museum is just for show, though; below lies a mission-control center. Two of the original members of the crew of a space mission meet up there: one worked there and the other has revealed that he has super-strength—and that his son does too. We learn that he was Ultraman back in the day but that a new Ultraman is back and wreaking havoc.

Ten years pass. Ultraman’s son Shinjiro is in school. He’s a teenager. He does a Matrix/Spider-man-style leap from one building to another. Shinjiro becomes Ultraman and has a few encounters with a few minor enemies but it’s overall not very interesting. There’s a side plot with aliens on planet Earth that’s pretty much like the plot of MIB but it’s also a bit half-hearted.

Side note: it’s pretty cool how, even in a cartoon, everyone wears house slippers. As noted above, the animation is really well-done and very realistic, with an extraordinary attention to detail for even the most mundane actions, like walking across a room.

Unfortunately, the story is really, really weak and kind of boring. There are long, repeated scenes of Shinjiro becoming Ultraman that was pretty cool the first time but that grows pretty old by the umpteenth time that they’ve recycled the footage. Not only was there one Ultraman, who was apparently an alien, another who was his father (or was he the alien one?) but there’s now Shinjiro and another dude who’s just dressing up as Ultraman too. Despite these quirks, the plot is bog-standard and kind of boring, with a pop star who’s super-famous but also just kind of hangs out in alleyways near Shinjiro’s school, and with a gang of bullies who beat up people, etc. etc.. I stopped watching even before the end of season one.

Man on the Inside (2024) — 7/10

Charles Nieuwendyk (Ted Danson) is a widower who’d lost his wife to dementia a year ago. He lives a very structured life, alone but productive. He’s an engineer and a former teacher. His daughter Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) would like him to finally heal from his loss, but she’s not a tremendous help as she doesn’t have her own family under any real semblance of control. I think it’s meant to be funny but her three boys are terrifyingly useless.

She extracts a promise from Charles to do something with himself. He answers a job ad from private detective Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada) to investigate the theft of an expensive necklace. Charles is quickly welcomed into the bosom of the overwhelmingly friendly staff and residents. Didi (Stephanie Beatriz, Rosa from Brooklyn Nine Nine) runs the place.

There are a bunch of cute interactions and others that are just standard fare for this type of show. Charles very much enjoys his role as spy—and Julie only grudgingly accepts that he’s doing an OK job. Charles eventually cracks the case by discovering that no-one was robbing anyone. The necklace and many other small things had been taken by Gladys, a resident who was falling deeper and deeper into the grip of dementia. Charles deduced this because his wife had been the same way just before she’d died.

The show was quite upbeat and only occasionally bittersweet. Ted Danson is a gem. It wouldn’t have worked at all without him.

Borg vs. McEnroe (2017) — 8/10

This film tells the tale of the first match-up at Wimbledon between Björn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason) and John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf) in 1980. We learn about how both of the young men grew up, with almost more emphasis on Borg’s upbringing than McEnroe’s.

Borg was a hotheaded youth who learned to control himself to a nearly robotic degree—at least in public. He was nearly pathological about his health and seemed to be suppressing near-panic attacks quite regularly. On the court, though, he was ice. They mentioned a lot, though, that once he starts losing, he keeps losing. He doesn’t have the mental wherewithal to pull himself back.

McEnroe was also a hotheaded youth…but he stayed that way. He was raised to be the best in everything, including scholastics, which quite surprised me. They show his father pushing him to do math problems in his head. I hadn’t known that about him. Whereas in Borg’s case, it was his coach that drove him very hard, in McEnroe’s case, it was both of his parents, with his father stepping in as coach.

The movie told the story well, in an unhurried but not boring pace. The final match was indeed quite exciting, with a back-and-forth where McEnroe takes an early, easy lead of 6–1 for the first set, then drops the next two to Borg. McEnroe is keeping himself under control much better and receives words of encouragement from Borg during a change of side,

“It’s all right.

“It’s a great match.

“Just play your tennis.”

McEnroe fends off seven match points from Borg to win the tie-break in the fourth set. They battle to a 6–6 tie in the fifth set. In the fifth set, there is no tie-break. They play games until one of them has a two-game lead. Borg triumphs relatively quickly with 8–6 to win his record-setting fifth Wimbledon in a row.

McEnroe gets a standing ovation for the incredible match and for having displayed more sportsmanship. He had won over the Brits, which he only kind-of cared about, but it was something, at least.

Borg and McEnroe met at the airport, with the three-years-younger McEnroe obviously and still a bit star-struck. Titles tell us that McEnroe would defeat him in the 1981 Wimbledon final, which was Borg’s last tennis match. He retired at 26 years old. He was best man at McEnroe’s wedding. They are friends to this day.

I really like Shia LaBeouf and was quite impressed with Sverrir Gudnason as well.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) — 8/10

Like Raiders of the Lost Ark (reviewed below), I know all of the beats of this film by heart. I have seen this movie more times than I can remember—at least half-a-dozen times over the years; the first time in a movie theater.

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is in Shanghai, trading a precious Chinese relic to Lao Che (Roy Chiao) for a giant diamond. He is cheated and poisoned and chaos ensues as he tries to get the antidote. Nightclub singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) picks it up while searching for the diamond that had also been scattered onto the floor. Indy grabs her and they plummet out of a through stained-glass window from the fourth-floor, dropping through three awnings, and into Short Round’s (Ke Huy Quan) waiting car. They speed to the airport, where Weber (Dan Akroyd)[5] gets them onto a freight flight, which they don’t notice is owned by Lao Che.

The pilots abandon the plane, Indy, Willie, and Short Round drop on an inflatable raft into the snow, into a river, over a waterfall/cliff, and they wash up near an Indian village, where they are taken in by the Shaman (D.R. Nanayakkara). There, they learn that Pankot palace has once again been occupied by a Majaraja (Raj Singh). They are welcomed there by Chattar Lal (Roshan Seth)[6]. They are welcomed to dinner. Live eels. Eyeball soup. Giant bugs. Monkey brains. This is wildly unfair to Indian food.

Next up is a bit of sexual tension, innuendo, and back-and-forth between Willie and Indy, then the Mughal assassin in Indy’s room, the ceiling fan, the breeze rustling the flowers, the busty statue in Willie’s room leading to a tunnel that “follows in Shiva’s footsteps,”, then the bugs on the floor—“It feel like I step on fortune cookies”—the millions of bugs on the floor, on the walls, everywhere. Then there’s the room with the spikes on the slowly descending ceiling. Willie reaching into the scorpion-filled hole to release the fulcrum, Indy, Willie, and Short-Round running through the room, with Willie bumping the switch, and Indy barely snatching his fallen fedora from under the once-again closing door.

Next up is “Kali Ma; Shakti de” (“Mother Kali, give me power”). High priest Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) is hosting a Thuggee ceremony, sacrificing victims to Kali. He magics the first victim’s myogenically beating heart from his chest, holding it high for his supplicants. Into the campfire toast-holder with him and into the magma fires. The Shankara stones are lit. After the ceremony, Indy heads in to “rescue” the stones but is distracted by the cries of young prisoners, and is eventually caught, as are Short-round and Willie. They are reunited in a cage, manacled. They learn that they will be made to drink the blood of Kali and will thus be enslaved.

Mola explains to Indy that they are searching for the remaining two Shankara stones in the mines. After a bit of uprising and subduing, Indy and Short-round are tortured and indy is enslaved with black magic. The Thuggees have decided to sacrifice Willie in the campfire-toaster cage. Short-round escapes, and then burns Indy to wake him from his black sleep. They do battle with Mola Ram’s thugs while Willie yo-yos toward the magma. Indy and Short-round eventually get Willie out.

Shankara stones pocketed, Indy is ready to rescue everyone else. Back into the mines they go, releasing all of the children. Indiana is in a knock-down, drag-out fight with a giant Thuggee. The still-magicked Maharaja pokes Indy’s voodoo doll, but Short-round takes him out. Indy is free to go mano-a-mano with his opponent, eventually driving him into the rock-crusher. Short-round releases the Maharaja with fire.

Time for the mine-cart ride! The Thuggees give chase. “Take the left tunnel!” They don’t, of course, but everything works out anyway, of course. Mola Ram floods the tunnels. Our heroic trio escapes up a side tunnel, then are trapped on a cliff wall while the water disintegrates the walls around them. Willie and Short-round are up on a rope bridge. “Strong bridge! Look! Strong bridge!” Indy is being chased by many Thuggees while Willie and Short-round end up in Mola Ram’s clutches.

“Hang on lady, we going for a ride.”

Indy chops the rope bridge. There’s a bit of a tussle. Two of the three stones are lost. The alligators feast on Mola Ram.

They return to the village with all of its children in tow, as well as the Shankara stone. The end.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) — 7/10

I reviewed this film in 2012 and don’t have too much to add to the original. It’s a good-looking film with fun effects. Selena Kyle/Catwoman is better than I’d remembered her. The rest of the cast is loaded up, too: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Matthew Modine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Aidan Gillen, Brett Cullen.

I watched it in German this time.

Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023) — 7/10

Luther (Idris Elba) is back[7] in a feature-length movie starring his idiosyncratic now-former detective. His former boss Martin (Dermot Crowley) has been forced out. Instead of Martin and Luther, the office is now headed by an underwhelmingly acted Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo), who chews the scenery more than a bit but, to be fair to the actress, isn’t given a lot to work with in the script.

Martin has been brought back on temporarily because he understands Luther best, which is what the Odette needs when Luther goes underground and is on the run from persecution for crimes he kind-of committed or didn’t commit or definitely committed but for which he had good reasons. It doesn’t really matter what Luther’s done because (A) he’s played by Idris Elba, which gives him a pass because he’s just so suave and cool and (B) what the criminals he’s pursuing have done is infinitely worse, every time, and without question.

David Robey (Andy Serkis) is a sadist, and a performative one, at that. He likes to know that people are watching. That drives his kink. That is his affliction. He sets up a site where other sadists can watch him perform. Their kink is that they like to watch people be harmed. They, too, are sadists. At one point, Robey says that the world has judged them for loving violence, but the world decides which kind of violence is acceptable, carving out exceptions for itself, but excluding Robey and his ilk, forcing them underground and onto the darknet.

Look, Robey, you’re singing my song—the world loves to define violence so that it describes what its enemies do but not what it does—but…no. Robey, you are blackmailing, torturing, and killing people. While society does a ton of stuff that’s honestly equally as bad—stuff which is just kind of even accepted sometimes—the solution isn’t to make more horrible things acceptable. The solution is to stop society from doing horrible things too. You’re arguing for going in the wrong direction, just in order to be able to scratch your own itch.

I suppose you can ignore the politics of this but, if you were to engage, then you could see it as a twisted formulation of the argument a pedophile would make about their own affliction. The world very clearly leverages the sexuality of the young where it suits it, then draws what a pedophile might consider to be an arbitrary line to exclude their kink.

This is a mischaracterization of the reasoning behind anti-pedophilia laws, though. The laws against pedophilia seek to protect people who are incapable of giving consent. The law must draw a line somewhere. What the law—and the court of public opinion—doesn’t do is to acknowledge that most people who are breaking this law anyway are operating under a compunction, one that ends up being, for them, overwhelming. If that compunction happens to drive them in the direction of harming others, then society has to do something, either rehabilitating them, if possible, or removing them from society, if not.

No-one really wants to hear it because they’d rather just judge people with compunctions they do not share but pedophiles are sick people who need help, not just punishment. If they transgress before they can get help, then they’ve harmed victims. Our society will punish them, and rightly so, according to the rules on which we’ve agreed. But if ever there were a candidate for rehabilitative punishment and treatment, it would be a pedophile. The opposite is usually the case, even in societies that consider themselves to be moral and forward-looking.

While pornography created of actual children is obviously harmful to those children (assuming it gets out), a more forward-looking society would consider where the harm is of AI-generated child pornography when balanced against the potentially ameliorative effect for those suffering from the affliction. We don’t want them doing it at all but the solution of having them scratch their horrible itch with fake porn might be more acceptable than throwing them into prison for the rest of their lives or killing them. It’s hard to imagine society changing its puritan stance here, because the only victims are people who no-one likes, which is always going to be an uphill battle.

Luckily, society has shown an ability to change, even to benefit groups that have historically received a ton of puritan opprobrium, as evidenced by the vastly improved attitude to homosexuality, which was considered to be just as bad—or stupidly equivalent to—pedophilia. Was there a pragmatic case against homosexuality? A society otherwise able to provide members to replenish itself doesn’t have one, no. Everyone has the right to be who and what they want to be but, if too many people are homosexual, that civilization will die out unless it can figure out how to procreate without biological procreation or using only in-vitro. It’s understandable that people looking at the low replacement numbers and shrinking populations within single-mindedly growth-based economies would worry. It is still wrong to persecute people based on their sexual preference but it’s not completely unhinged and unrelated.

Anyway, pedophiles have potential victims. If those victims remained potential, then they deserve treatment not punishment. Pedophiles who never victimize anyone are suffering heroes, suppressing their inborn drives for the sake of society and for the sake of morality. If you don’t believe that, then you must believe that pedophiles are choosing to be pedophiles, which is a weird stance to take. Does that mean that you think homosexuals and heterosexuals also choose to be one or the other?

Anyway, Robey doesn’t have a leg to stand on with his argument because his kink is to kill people and to have other people watch. This is very obviously a crime, with victims. He should be treated for his mental illness but certainly not allowed to run free. His fairy tale of himself and his ilk as some sort of alternative—or even superior—cohort in society is just the story he tells himself where he’s the star.

Robey induces a bunch of people to commit suicide to avoid the shame of him exposing their deep, dark secrets. He even turns a few people working at Odette’s branch office. When he kidnaps Odette’s daughter Anya, he also manages to turn Odette. After she agrees to deliver Luther to Robey, Luther convinces her that they should instead team up and hunt the guy down. He’s always had this power to convince; he had it in the television show on which this film is based.

Together, they track Robey to Norway (I think?), where he’s got a murder-dungeon-house in the vast, frozen wastes. He has a ton of cameras set up, ringing a torture chamber. It is utterly unclear why you would need one camera per participant. I suppose it’s so that the movie can indicate that people are signing off by the little red lights on the cameras flickering out. It is also utterly unclear how any supplies get delivered there with any regularity or why anyone would even have built that house there in the first place—this part feels much more contrived, like a comic-book movie.

Robey forces Odette to stab Luther in the stomach in order to save her daughter, displaying the act for all of his followers/paying viewers. After a bit more torture, Luther, Odette, and Anya manage to escape in a none-too-believable-or-well-acted manner (Anya and Odette are barely serviceable here), with Luther hunting Robey into the frozen wastes. Despite Luther’s two stab wounds in the stomach, he’s still feisty enough to tussle with Robey in his Land Rover, which they end up flipping into a frozen lake. Robey dies under the ice, while Luther somehow survives long enough to be rescued by divers.

His reward for solving this case is that he gets to go to work for MI5 rather than going to jail. The movie was serviceable, though it wouldn’t have been very watchable without Idris Elba.

The Tomorrow War (2021) — 4/10

What kind of movie is this? It is a formulaic one, utterly concerned with any of the human questions raised by its premise. Early in the film, our hero, former Marine—because of course he is—Dan Forester (Chris Pratt) learns the exact date and time of his death. He spends zero seconds dwelling on it.

This whole movie is a mess, with its premise of being a fight in the future completely and utterly muddied by an incoherent execution, a complete lack of dedication to the premise, dropping it when it would be inconvenient.

For example, where do all of the F18 Hornets in the future come from? Oh, because those are the planes that the Pentagon gives any movie willing to take its money in exchange for propaganda. Why are they still available in a future where humanity has been nearly defeated? Why do so many of the battles in the future look just like the U.S. military wants you to imagine urban combat, as has already been thoroughly envisioned in a dozen Call of Duty games?

Naturally, our heroes’ rifles have endless bullets, except for when they don’t for dramatic purpose. There are long, incoherent battle scenes with the white, unstoppable, and evil aliens taking any number of bullets without any obvious armor.

That’s the action, though. Just wait for the dialogue to start.

“Das ist kein Souvenir. Es ist ein Erinnerungsstück.”

Wow. So deep. Wait. Souvenir means Erinnerung in French. FFS.

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how cool they probably think it is that Dan gets to fight side-by-side with his daughter Colonel Muri Forester (Yvonne Strahovski). She sets up the plot for him when he gets to the future: the aliens are hungry aliens with no culture and no interests other than feeding. Somehow, these things just popped up without any warning and were just everywhere. Like a virus, I guess? The movie was made in 2021, perhaps this is COVID meets Starship Troopers, except that this movie is taking itself 100% seriously, unlike Starship Troopers, which was Paul Verhoeven taking the piss and which was awesome.

This is definitely a COVID-age movie: you rarely, if ever, see the two “stars” in the same scene together. There are no long shots, no panning shots, nothing of visual interest. This is either COVID or laziness but it makes for an incredibly blandly shot and visually unexciting film. Everything’s a close-up shot with bland lighting, almost always one person at a time.

As Muri’s explaining that they need to do thousands of tests of toxins for the alien, she also says that they’ll be done by morning, so no stress. OK? Now we’re treated to a science montage while they shoot the shit about Super Bowl winners in the past that he could bet on when he gets back to his own time. There is, of course, no tension that any of this technology will work. Of course it will all work.

They roped J.K. Simmons in to play a ropey-muscled, bushy-bearded, iconoclast who is James’s father. He was in the movie for about five minutes to look cool and act cool. Sam Richardson provided some comic relief but I didn’t even notice when he died, or disappeared. Everyone else is pretty forgettable. When even the stars are shot like shit. My God, they barely spent any money on the sets or the script. This is about as bad as a GI Joe movie or that Battleship thing.

Oh, wow. I thought it was over when Muri died saving her dad in the future. I was wrong. There’s a whole second act. Dan makes it back with the toxin but the time-transport is broken. How do they get to the monsters? They do a lot of thinking and discover that the aliens probably crash-landed in Russia somewhere.

So they get J.K. Simmons to fly his C-130 transport there, along with a bunch of high-tech snowmobiles. The U.S. government doesn’t want to help. They don’t even bother asking Russia. No time or plot tension is wasted on them getting in to Russia. They’re just there.

Voila!

They soon find the spacecraft.

Voila!

They blow up a huge part of the field with precision-placed explosives that they (A) had with them and (B) placed in seconds—so fast that you didn’t even see it.

Voila.

Next, they’re in the spacecraft, killing “white spikes”. They discover that those nasty aliens weren’t the ones that had been flying the craft—because how could they be? The white spikes are pure breeding/murder machines, as required by the plot. The merry crew doesn’t waste a single second worrying whether they would be the ones that triggered the white spikes’ escape. Oops. Some of them escape. Also, no-one spends a second thinking about the other race of aliens of what might really be going on because this movie is about shooting shit not thinking about shit.

Their mission is so poorly designed and executed that the monsters are soon all over the place and they’re immediately left to figure out who will have to sacrifice themselves in a manual detonation. Once again, they are able to plant an ungodly amount of explosives. Charlie (Sam Richardson) and James (J.K. Simmons) have also miraculously escaped. They hunt the escaped queen—of course the queen escaped—and then fight her mano-a-mano, with James trying to sacrifice himself for Dan, but Dan just going ham on the queen with a single toothy spike, punching and kicking her into submission. This is ridiculous.

“James: Hast du sie gerade ‘Stirb” angeschrien?
Dan: Ja.
James: Hat funktioniert. Warum hast du’s nicht früher gesagt?”

Woof. That is bad.

James is, of course, alive. The movie had to save James so that he could meet the granddaughter that they’d just saved. Was this movie ever going to end any other way?

I watched it in German.

Goldeneye (1995) — 8/10

James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) jumps off of the Contra dam on the Lago di Vogorno in the Valle Verzasca[8], but this dam is, for the purposes of the film, in the former Soviet Union. He infiltrates the facility, meeting up with Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), who is nearly immediately killed[9]. Bond blows up the facility.

Nine years later, Bond’s racing along a mountain pass in what looks for all the world like the Swiss Alps, but was actually in Gréolières, in the south of France. He ends up racing Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) and banging his psych evaluator Caroline (Serena Gordon) before meeting Onatopp at a casino. He does his baccarat thing and follows her, finding out a bit more about her and who she’s working for. What was her character description in the script? Was it something like, “thin, crazed Russian whore with a wide, crazy grin, crazy eyes, and legs that won’t quit, whose eyelids flutter in quasi-orgasmic glee whenever she thinks about or experiences physical violence?”

On a naval ship for the demonstration of a new helicopter. Onatopp steals it and flies it to a radar facility in Russia, where we meet Boris (Alan Cumming) and breathtakingly gorgeous Natalya Simyonova (Izabella Scorupco). They are the sole survivors of an attack by Colonel Ouromov (Gottfried John) and Onatopp, who enable the Goldeneye space-based, EMP/beam weapon and take out the facility itself. He’s faking an attack by supposed Siberian separatists in order to put the country on a war footing.

Bond is called in by M (Judy Dench), who kinda/sorta hates him. He’s escorted there, as always, by Moneypenny (Samantha Bond), with whom he has lascivious banter, and soon meets Q (Desmond Llewelyn), from whom he picks up the supplies he’ll need for the mission.

Back in Moscow, Bond meets up with Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker) of the CIA. Wade calls James “Jimmy.” They meet up with Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) to get his help on a mission to learn more.

Bond is at a Russian bathhouse, where Onatopp pays him a visit. They have a knock-down, drag-out fight/fuck where James gets the upper hand relatively quickly…and Onatopp is quite pissed. He forces her to take him to her boss, Janos.

OMG Alec is back! Sean Bean didn’t die immediately! Alec is Janos. He doesn’t kill James, tranquilizing him instead. James gets away, of course, and teams up with Natalya, who’s working with the Russian defense minister. It’s a bit of a mess but we’re pretty soon involved in a chase in Moscow, where Oroumov has kidnapped Natalya and James is chasing them in a Russian tank. Oroumov keeps taking sips from his flask—he’s Russian and a drunk, get it?—but they use the same one-second scene twice.

Oroumov and Natalya join Janos and Onatopp on a heavily armored train that looks like Snowpiercer. As Janos is trying to rape Natalya, James has parked his tank on the tracks in front of the super-train. It derails. James gets the drop on them. They turn things around quickly. Now James and Natalya are trapped in the train, which is rigged to blow in three minutes. She sends a spike program to find Boris. He’s in Cuba James gets them out, just in time, of course. They kiss. Bond FTW. 🙌🏼

James and Natalya are now in Cuba. They are a couple now. Wade lands a Cessna in front of their car as it soars along a dirt road. They switch vehicles, with James tossing Wade the keys, which Wade catches in his straw hat. OK, that was very cool and casual.

After another night of passionate lovemaking, they’re up in the air again in the morning. Pay attention now because we’re in the finale of a James Bond movie. They are shot down, with James rescuing an unconscious and possibly dead Natalya. He wakes to find Onatopp rappelling out of a helicopter to python-squeeze him to death with her thighs. Natalya is back in tip-top form but fails to neutralize Onatopp, who knocks her out in a thrice. James shoots down the helicopter, which squeezes Onatopp with her own rappelling cord as it crashes.

They sneak into the satellite facility—Arecibo in Puerto Rico—where James rigs a bomb that I’m almost never actually goes off. Natalya fucks up the satellite, encrypting everything. Boris swears he can fix it before everything blows up in 12 minutes. Some stuff already blows up because of Boris’s nervous clicking of Bond’s stolen bomb-pen. Janos hunts James on the dish; James hunts Janos on the dish. Boris cracks Natalya’s encryption and starts the targeting sequence again. Bond has jammed the gears, though, so it craps out due to mechanical reasons—which are beyond Boris’s digital reach.

Janos and Bond get into a Bourne-style fight that’s pretty well-choreographed actually. Janos drops James down a ladder and James looks for all the world like Luke Skywalker hanging off of the bottom of Cloud City on Bespin. Even more so when they’ve dropped onto the final disc. Janos falls to his death. Goldeneye explodes in the upper atmosphere, torn to pieces by the degraded orbit into which Natalya had placed it. Natalya rescues James with a stolen helicopter—after which literlly everything in the facility blows up, or collapses, or both. Boris is left in the middle of it. He shouts “I am invincible” one last time before being flash-frozen by liquid Nitrogen.

Wade shows up with the U.S. Marines to ship Natalya and Bond off to Guantánamo.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Black and White) (1981) — 9/10

I’ve seen this movie more times than I can remember. This time, I watched an experiment by Steven Soderbergh in black-and-white from 2014 that is paired with a Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross soundtrack from the Social Network (YouTube). The music is great but it doesn’t match the film at all. The point of the exercise was to demonstrate how great the blocking in the film was. The soundtrack is completely non-diagetic so that we can concentrate on how well the film tells its story visually, without dialogue and without audio hinting or emotional suggestions.

This movie is one of the all-time greats, just a rollicking adventure film starring Harrison Ford as the snake-fearing, indomitable Dr. Indiana Jones, the amazing Karen Allen as a feisty former lover and comic foil Marion, and introducing John Rhys-Davies as Sallah.

If you’ve never seen it, I can name all of the scenes. We start in the Amazonian jungle, where Jones is trying to “recover” an idol from a temple. Darts, sack of dirt, giant boulder, all of the by-now-well-known beats. He’s caught just outside by his nemesis, French archeologist Belloq (Paul Freeman), who takes the idol.

Next, Indy’s at his university with his department head Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott), where they accept a contract to try to find the lost Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can. Jones travels to a bar in Nepal, run by Marion (Karen Allen). There’s a by-now classic scene of her winning a shot-drinking contest and shaking it off as if it were nothing. She has an amulet that they need to locate the ark. Arnold Toht (Ronald Lacey) shows up to try to steal it. Fire. Gunplay. Burned hand.

Next, Indy and Marion travel to Cairo, meeting Sallah (John Rhys-Davies). They meet the a little monkey, who would become Indy’s consolation when Marion is kidnapped by Belloq and Toht; Indy thinks she’s dead. The monkey doesn’t last long, eating a poisoned date, which a sharp-eyed Sallah notes in time to save Indy from the same fate. Sallah then helps Indy get onto the dig site, where Indy figures out where to dig using the amulet and a sunbeam. The Nazis are digging in the wrong place. Indy’s delighted to find Marion at the camp, alive. More drinking, but less successfully. Belloq discovers that Indy is there and digging at a better site. Sallah and Indy get the Ark out but are caught soon after.

Into the hole go Marion and Indy. Snakes, giant statues, and crumbling walls. They escape and attack the German convoy carrying the Ark. Lots of fighting on and in trucks and they’ve captured it. They put the Ark on a steamer, leaving Sallah ashore, and leaving Marion and Indy to rekindle old flames. It doesn’t last long, though, as a German U-Boat finds their steamer and takes the Ark and Marion back, not finding Indy.

Never fear! Indy has swum across open ocean from the steamer to the U-Boat and fights his way onboard. It takes him to a secret Nazi base, which he infiltrates. He is unstoppable! He recaptures the Ark but Belloq correctly perceives his threat to destroy it as a bluff and recaptures him, along with Marion. Phew.

End game: the Nazis have tied Indy and Marion to a pole, while the Nazis themselves get all gussied up for the grand opening of the Ark. It opens, releasing ghosts that melt off the face of anyone foolish enough to look at them. Indy and Marion have their eyes slammed shut and only cautiously pry them open again when they hear the top of the Ark—which had been blown high into the air on a tornado of Godly might—slam back down to seal off the ancient power.

Final scene: the Ark disappears into a giant warehouse, filled with identical-looking crates. This would become the symbol of hiding something in the depths of a vast bureaucracy.