ANOTHER comedic Assassin vehicle?

Russo bros, though.

Should be fun.

I enjoyed Everything Everywhere All A Once, but yes it is a little hard to understand exactly wtf is going on. Definitely worth a watch, and Michelle Yeough gives a damn fine performance.

But I don’t think the movie is going to stay with me.

I did really like the universe where the mom and daughter were peaceful rocks, tho.

I forgot to post this short video of the James bond show I went to... it was pretty cool and it turns out that this was actually a test show to see if it had legs for a permanent show. I can see it playing well to tourists. she did all the old favorites, like Adele and McCartney etc, as you would expect but she missed out on my personal favorite by Nancy Sinatra. The band was TIGHT, total pros.



the video cuts off right when I got the tap on my shoulder... 'Sir, no filming please'

Local theater in Newport, RI, is showing Blade Runner: The Final Cut and Lawrence of Arabia on June 8 and 9. 60th anniversary showing for Lawrence of Arabia, which I saw first in 1962 at the age of eight or nine.

nice

If you want my Top Gun: Maverick review, look at my profile pic.

Interesting article about Vangelis, the synth pop master who just passed away from COVID complications. He composed the Blade Runner score, Chariots of Fire, and quite a few others, and was an interesting guy.

https://www.theringer.com/music/2022...dtracks-albums

Top Gun: Maverick - all the aerial combat sequences, particularly in the final act, are great. It's funny how only Top Gun 2 has been able to match the dogfighting sequences in Top Gun.

Everything else is a bit meh. Not bad, but kinda underwhelming. Maverick's character had a definite arc in the first film. Yet at the start of this one it's as if he's mostly forgotten the lessons he learned, and has instead reverted to his daredevil ways. Other characters are underdeveloped. Hangman is basically identical to Iceman except less charismatic. The motivation for Rooster (Goose's son) dislike of Maverick is oddly confused, as if the writers thought blaming Maverick for his father's death wasn't enough when it really should be.

Still really fun film overall.

I loved Ex Machina, was luke-warm on Annihilation...MEN sucked imho.

the plot is the main character Harper (Jesse Buckley) goes to an English countryside retreat after a personal tragedy in her life. That much I understood...but nothing else that happens after that.

It's beautifully shot but that's the extent of my praise. I've read a bunch of reviews with similar views about some things that happened but completely different takes on other things. So I don't think anyone truly knows what was going on (even if they pretentiously pretend to).

If anyone wants to tell me what they think happened, in particular:



...I'm all ears

Drop everything and go see Top Gun Maverick right now. Jennifer Connelly was perfectly cast and would have made this movie a 10/10 alone. Then again, I am the exact target demographic I suppose. Anyway go see it.

the new chip n dale movie is fantastic.

interesting, saw a preview and it felt like the tone was off and it was redone so much i wouldn't really recognize it as the cartoon of my childhood

will check it out



also the voyeurs on amazon is fun to watch in a fun group that is good at poking fun at things, it's fast paced, very dumb, and has lots of beautiful naked people but was clearly not a terrence malick film

Just saw in IMAX. Great flick. J Con a babe.

So I watched Edge of Tomorrow for the first time recently. Was looking for a good action flick and it had a great rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I dunno, maybe it's just me but I thought it was horrible. Aliens were cheesy and looked like the flying spaghetti monster. The exposition describing how the aliens work, and the visions and the "orb" and all that was just laughable. Entire thing was like watching a between-levels segment of a video game that lasted 2+ hours.

Weird mashup of Groundhog's Day and Aliens that was miles worse than either. 91% positive rating on RT? Don't get it.

I loved it

Yeah I mean the praise was pretty universal, so I am in the minority obv. Just wasn't for me I guess.

Has anyone seen Crimes Of the Future yet?

I liked the film, even though (or because?) I don't like action movies in general. It had a lot more interesting going on than the typical crash and shoot stuff.

Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski, 2022

So, my GF and I watched the original Top Gun last week, just because. Neither of us had seen it in decades. It was exactly what I remembered - fun, goofy, completely ridiculous and cheesy, but exactly what it sets out to be - a gung-ho, summer tentpole movie.

But...there was also something in there I hadn't seen before - a darkness in the character of Maverick that belies all the surface cheesiness. There is depth in the character of Maverick - if not anyone else. Star Tom Cruise famously changed a lot of the script so that he could show his range - this was the movie where the actor becomes TOM CRUISE, MOVIESTAR.

Look at the movie he did immediately preceding this one - Ridley Scott's Legend. In it, Cruise is just another part of the amazing scenery, and he he is upstaged to the point of invisibility by Tim Curry's incredible performance and even more incredible make up.

Top Gun is where Cruise takes control of his image and his career, at the ripe old age of 24. But let's be honest - the movie is, while a wonderfully nostalgic cultural touchstone of the 80s, not really a great movie. But I'll watch it if it's on.

So while it's fun to see the good reviews and Cannes feting Cruise with a special Palme D'Or for Top Gun: Maverick, I went in to my viewing of the movie not expecting much beyond a fun, nostalgic romp and seeing Tom Cruise do ridiculous Tom Cruise things.

And that's what I got. Maverick is so identical to the original that it could reasonably be called a remake, not a sequel. Top Gun pilots compete to see who will lead a secret mission against unnamed baddies. Cruise romances Jenifer Connolly this time, and - amusingly - Cruise takes on the "teaching" Kelly McGillis role this time.

The opening to the movie is the same, too - Navy personnel in a montage of flight prep and such - even the same text telling us about Top Gun school and being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer AND the long-dead Don Simpson. Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" plays over the credits. I was so similar that at first I had mistakenly walked into a showing of the original Top Gun.

Maverick is still a, well, maverick, and his career has stalled at captain while his contemporaries are all admirals. He lives in a flight hanger he shares with a plane he is lovingly working on. He then almost casually breaks the record for fastest man on the planet in a test plane and then is called back to Top Gun school to teach the cocky, young pilots how to dog fight on their secret mission. And then, of course, a tragedy happens and we then go on the big mission to destroy unnamed country's uranium something-or-another before it goes on line.

That's it. Same movie, right?

Then please explain to me why Top Gun: Maverick IS THE BEST FUC*ING MOVIE I'VE SEEN ALL YEAR? I laughed, I literally cried, and I was bunched up in my seat in excitement at all the incredibly thrilling flying sequences. I saw it in IMAX and was in the third row with my seat all the way back so I could see nothing but screen. So I was basically IN the movie.

It makes no sense. The movie is your basic summer blockbuster - emotionally manipulative, cookie-cutter story type of fluff - so how in the hell is it so freakin' GOOD?

I don't know, but it is. I have not been that amped coming out of a theater in years. As I went to a noon showing, there were only a few people in the theater with me - and everyone was whooping and hollering along with me. And we applauded at the end. Seriously.

Cruise is magnificent. I don't care about his goofy religion or whatever darkness there may be behind that megawatt smile, I was IN. 100%. Tom Cruise is the biggest movie star in the world, and this film perfectly encapsulates why. He should be nominated for an Oscar for this performance. I'm not kidding. He's funny, he's charming, he's regretful, he's romantic, he's sexy, he's Clark Gable meets Carey Grant meets Harrison Ford - but FUC*ING BIGGER AND BETTER. Hell, he may be the biggest movie star ever.

The secret weapon to all this is Jennifer Connelly. She grounds the movie in a very really way. She's not simply a love interest, she is a once-and-future flame of Maverick's, and she's not going to put up with falling into bed with him yet again - until she does. It's more than the usual thankless "woman" roles in these kinds of movies. And her tweener daughter is protective of her heart in a great way.

Miles Teller plays Rooster, Goose's son from the first movie, who is now a Top Gun pilot and who has a real problem with Maverick, as the older man was responsible for not only his father's death, but him not being allowed into the Navy for four years. Of course. It writes itself, right? Insert eyeroll here. BUT IT WORKS. How, I have no idea.

The scene that made me tear up is the one where Val Kilmer shows up as Maverick's one true friend from the first movie - Ice Man (that's Admiral Ice Man now) - their rivalry still there but now with a longtime friendship as he saves Maverick's ass on more than one occasion. Ice Man is dying of cancer, and Kilmer's performance is so damn touching - mostly because Kilmer has been quite sick for years as he really battled throat cancer - to the point where he couldn't speak without one of those vocal vibrator things (watch his documentary about his life - it's amazing). In the movie, he communicates with Maverick mostly via text or typing on a computer screen - but then he has a few lines of dialog - Kilmer actually speaks. It's raspy, whispery, but still recognizably Kilmer. You can hear it. And I just about burst into tears.

The serendipity of Kilmer in this role again - a role he has publicly denigrated in the past - playing a much-loved character again - I can't explain it, it just moved me.

But what people come to a movie like this is for the ACTION. The flying. The thrills. The machinery. And man does this movie deliver. We're so used to seeing Cruise do his own stunts, but HOLY SH*T when we see him in a fighter plane being launched from an aircraft carrier into the air...CRUISE IS DOING THE ACTUAL FLYING. He DID that. Absolutely bonkers.

The ending half hour of fighter plane porn during the mission is astonishing. I was jumping and swerving and scrunching back into my seat just like I was along for the ride.
Amazing in every way. The other pilots are relatively one-note - there is an Ice Man clone, a Goose clone, etc...but in a much more diversified way.

The ending is heart-warming and right. And the first end credits we see is a loving tribute to Top Gun director Tony Scott. Perfect.

*****ng hell, this is a perfect movie. I KNOW I'm being manipulated, I KNOW it glorifies the military, I KNOW it's not really that deep (even tho it is).

But goddammit, I don't care. Because Top Gun: Maverick is - astonishingly - the best movie of the year. Weird, huh?

I am looking forward to seeing it when it lands on P+.

it will NOT be the same movie

Amazing writeup Dom. I am quoting this paragraph because I experienced the same emotions during the movie. At one point my wife asked me if I was ok. I was so happy.

+1, but this has to be the lonnnnngggest movie review you have ever written on 2 + 2, no!?!? And a review of Topgun, nonetheless!!! Was not going to watch it, but now feel I have to...