Star City 1.5: The Spy Who Went to Venus

It could have the first hour of a James Bond movie, made back in the 1970s.  Star City 1.5, that is. There wasn't any space flight until the very end, but what we got was a rather brilliant, tightly woven espionage story.  All on behalf of Korolev's, aka the Chief Designer's, secret Soviet mission to Venus.  A fine piece of Bondian science fiction.  Q would have been proud.

The KGB hunt for the Russian cosmonaut or worker in the Soviet space program who was giving crucial information to the Americans already caused the death of a cosmonaut in a previous episode.  The stakes are double life-and-death -- the KGB or Soviet police could kill the cosmonaut who was a spy, and of course he or she could perish in a space mission.  In case you haven't seen this episode, I won't tell you how this all played out, except to say again that we were treated to an excellent piece of espionage fiction. Although there were elements of this in For All Mankind, there was little that was as edge-of-your-seat exciting and ingeniously resolved as what happened in episode 1.5 of Star City.

There's also a bit of romance thrown in.   Sasha's letter to his wife, the first woman on the Moon, was touching.   On the one hand, men and women are thrown together for political reasons in this fascist, paranoid society.   On the other hand, we human beings can love and fall in love whatever the factors and forces that brought us together.  The humanity rising to the surface, and motivating people in this razor's edge story, is one of the highlights of this new series.

To get back to the alternate reality, if the portrayal of Korolev in Star City is even minimally accurate, I'm sorry the real man didn't live a lot longer.  If he had, I'd wager we would be a lot further out in space, with settlements on Mars and Venus, then we actually are today.

See also Star City 1.1-1.2: Fascism and Space ... 1.3: Sadness and Joy ... 1.4: Venus in Blue Genes

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Down Cemetery Road: Comparable and Incomparable

I binged Down Cemetery Road -- all eight episodes -- on Apple TV last night.  It's being billed (on Screen Rant) as "the perfect replacement" for Slow Horses, in between its fifth and six seasons, also on Apple TV.  Both are adaptations of Mike Herron's novels, and both sport a spiffy amalgam of snappy dialogue and spy-on-spy lethal mischief.   But Down Cemetery Road doesn't have a theme-song co-written and performed by Mick Jagger (the best theme for a spy series since "Secret Agent Man"), a lead character who flaunts his flatulence in every episode, and quite the speed of narrative of Slow Horses.

Here's what Down Cemetery Road does have:

• Two brilliant and famous lead stars (Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson) in contrast to one (Gary Oldman).  And I thought Wilson's Sarah Trafford was really exceptional.
• A really world-class villain, Amos Crane (played by Fehinti Balogun), who could have worked in any Bond movie.
• Speaking of Bond, Down Cemetery Road has a train scene nearly as edge of your seat as the scene in From Russia with Love.
• Down Cemetery Road has, I don't know, call it more of a soul, than most spy stories, including Slow Horses.  I don't recall many tears in my eyes watching Slow Horses, unless they came from laughter, which of course is fine in its own right. 
•  Down Cemetery Road may have slightly hipper dialogue, with a pretty funny extended disquisition over the term "mansplaining".

But the truth is, there's no need to compare Down Cemetery Road to Slow Horses.  Cemetery is a unique TV series, with a deft blend of humor and life-and-death excitement.   By all means see it.

Mission Impossible 8: Final Reckoning: Firing on More Than All Cylinders

Well, as much as I really enjoyed the seventh Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise (MI: Dead Reckoning) when I streamed it on Paramount Plus this past May, and said I'd be back soon with a review of Final Reckoning (which was Part 2 of Dead Reckoning), which was opening soon in theaters and I intended to see ... well, the beaches on Cape Cod were just too tempting.

But I did manage to see MI: Final Reckoning tonight on Paramount Plus, where it started streaming yesterday, and I thought it was great, for all kinds of reasons.   Here, without spoilers, are some of them:

• As the eighth and (at this point, at least) the final Tom Cruise MI, Final Reckoning did a fine job of bringing into play elements from the previous seven movies.  I guess my favorite was bringing back the Phelps story, which made this eight-movie arc even more a direct descendant of Mission Impossible on television, where of course the story was born with Phelps in command.
• I said in my review of Dead Reckoning that the enemy being AI made Ethan Hunt more modern than Bond (at least so far).  In every Bond movie, an evil human being has been the prime enemy.  There were evil humans to be sure in Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning, but the worst of the villains indubitably is an AI.   Thus not only did Final Reckoning delve into Terminator territory, you can throw in Tron, and while we're at it, War Games and lots of other literally bloodless arch-villians as well.   
• To be clear, as I've been saying in lots of places these days, I'm not concerned about AI replacing us, destroying us, or anything that's been a favorite of fiction at least since Karel Čapek's R.U.R more than a century ago.  And I like those fictions a lot -- but they're fictions.  And as far as fiction about AI goes, I prefer Asimov's robots/androids, who sometimes do us harm, but also do us a lot of good.
• Final Reckoning has some powerful star power.  Tom Cruise's Ethan Hall is a truly memorable character, because he's well written and as well as well acted.  Same for the MI team, both in Final Reckoning and the previous MI movies.  And I have to say Angela Bassett as US President was superb, as well all as all the other heroes and villains that play out a taut story in which millions if not billions of lives are at stake.  (It was also great to see Tramell Tillman -- Severance! -- in charge of a crucial vessel at sea.)
• And the action scenes are first rate in every natural environment on Planet Earth, that is, land, sea, and air.  In those scenes, Hunt is every bit as impressive as Bond.
• I'll just also say that in the midst of all this action, Final Reckoning has a deep and impressive moral core.

If I have any disappointment, well, Cruise has made clear that this is his last Ethan Hunt story.  I hope he changes his mind.  And gets the recognition he -- and everyone associated with this movie -- amply deserve.

See also Mission Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning: Well Beyond Bondian ... Mission Impossible 6: Fallout: Better (These Days) Than Bond ... Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

Stranger Things 5.1-5.4: Best So Far

I binged the first four episodes of the fifth season of Stranger Things up this week on Netflix -- we'll have to wait until Christmas Eve and New Years Eve to see the rest -- and these four were by far my favorite so far.

Here are the reasons (with no spoilers):

• The action is nearly non-stop.  Although I've enjoyed the previous seasons, I thought all of them, in comparison to these final episodes,  developed the story two slowly, and had too much talking.  I suppose this might have been a necessary build-up to this final season, but the action and pace of development in 5.1-5.4 was often breathtaking.
• And these four episodes -- also billed as Season Five, Volume One -- also managed to fit in some standalone stories, which were captivating.  My favorite was Max's, which brings in a touch of time travel,  including a mention of Madeleine L'Engle's now classic A Wrinkle In Time.
• It makes sense that A Wrinkle in Time, published in 1962, would be known by Max and anyone with a vibrant mind in the 1980s, when Stranger Things takes place.  Having characters spouting popular culture from the 1980s has always been one of the charms of the series, and it was also good to hear Bond and Magnum mentioned again in this finale season.  I miss them both (well, maybe James Bond a little more).
• Speaking of Max again, she also delivers my favorite line in this set of four episodes: "music has a way of finding you, even in the darkest places".  True then, and so true in this world we're in today. (I say this as I'm beginning to binge the Beatles nine-episode Anthology.  Review coming soon.)
• It was good to see Linda Hamilton is this first volume of the final season.  There always has been a Terminator flavor to Stranger Things, and it becomes especially prevalent in this rousing conclusion.

As a closing point -- and the closest I'll come to giving you spoiler -- the best action dramas, in science fiction and non-science fiction -- always feature ultimate heroes and villains of equal power.  The first four episodes aka volume one of the fifth season of Stranger Things also does a great job of setting this up.

See also Stranger Things 1.1-1.5: Parallel Horror ... Stranger Things 1.6-18: Lando to Fringe ... Stranger Things 2: Bigger, Better ... Stranger Things 3: Growing Up...  Stranger Things 4: A Big Step Forward 

more parallel worlds ... "flat-out fantastic" - says Scifi and Scary

The Diplomat season 3: Thriller in More Ways Than One

My wife and I just finishing bingeing the 8th episode of The Diplomat season 3 on Netflix.  I thought this third season was the best season so far.  Every episode was brimming with excitement and surprise.  Indeed, the only predictable thing in this phase of The Diplomat is the content and conclusion of every episode was unpredictable, and radically so.  This season couldn't have been presented more effectively than all episodes at once.  Each episode was a chapter in a book that you couldn't put down (in both meanings of the word).

It was also was the most romantically explicit -- not that it would be "R" rated, the only nudity was the British PM's backside -- but the romance was hot, inhabiting and invigorating just about every relationship and every episode.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

Indeed, there was a very big hint at the very end that Hal Wyler (perfectly played as always by Rufus Sewell) as VP of the United States was sleeping with Grace Penn, who became President after the death of Rayburn that was the stunner at the end of season 2, after Kate Wyler (perfectly played as always by Keri Russell) makes passionate love with Callum Ellis in a previous episode, and then in the final episode apologizes to Hal staying away from him physically and enthusiastically adhering to their "secret divorce" in  Ellis's arms.   And the First Man -- Todd Penn -- suspects something may be going on in bed between his wife (The President) and Hal (the Vice President), with the ending certainly suggesting that Hal is living up to his title as "Vice" President in more ways the one.

The thrill of The Diplomat is also political, and a political thriller, almost James Bondian (as I said about the previous seasons), this third season of The Diplomat certainly is.   Not only are the Russians and Chinese involved, but the US and the UK are on the edge of being at serious odds, after the truth comes out that the US was responsible for the sinking of the British ship with which the series began.  And the political thrills are lubricated by the lies that we see the US side cooking up to protect President Penn, blaming the deceased former President for something that Penn was actually responsible for when she was VP.

Also like the Bond movies, we're told at the end of The Diplomat season 3 that there will be a fourth season.  My only regret is that it won't be up on Netflix tomorrow.

See also The Diplomat 1: West Wing Meets Bond ... The Diplomat 2: West Wing Meets Bond Part 2

My 2021 in-depth interview with Rufus Sewell about The Man in the High Castle

MobLand: The Godfather of Streaming Television

Just saw the finale of what will almost certainly be the first season of a tour-de-force series about warring crime families on the other side of the pond, i.e., the UK.  MobLand has everything -- a powerful, unpredictable story bristling with what The Godfather and its sequels did so well in movies.  That would be a potent, explosive blend of violence and family dynamics that can make your head spin.

Here I'll talk about two ingredients that brought this kick-in-the-solar-plexus across: the music and the acting,

First, MobLand has one of the best theme songs I've heard in years:  "Starburster" by Fontaines D.C.  I mean, I'm no expert in hip hop, but I know "Starburster" has powerful elements of it, and the recording suits the story to be told in every episode to a tee, as well as being instantly unforgettable mind candy. 

And that's just for literally starters.  In the finale alone, we get major songs by Johnny Cash (sung twice) and The Rolling Stones.  Like in The Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas, and all immediately classic crime family dramas, the music of MobLand is at once avant garde and classic.  

Now let's get to the acting.  Pierce Brosnan gave an astonishing performance as Conrad Harrington, the anti-hero crime boss whose gang is at the center of the action.  This man played two characters who were suave to the max -- Remington Steele and James Bond -- and in MobLand he trashes those icons and goes vehemently in the opposite direction, cursing and screaming and giving loud and withering vent to his anger and his other moods with the best of 'em.   Meanwhile,  Helen Mirren, a world-class actress, is every bit as vicious and violent in her role as Maeve Harrington, Conrad's wife..  Neither of them are youngsters, but I wouldn't want to meet either of them in a dark alley.  Or a lit one, either, for that matter.

And alongside these veritable criminal forces of nature -- Emmy-worthy spectacular -- we have Tom Hardy's portrayal of Harry, the Harringtons fixer (a lot of "Har"s in that sentence).  He's calm, contemplative but deadly when he needs to be.  Like Brosnan and Mirren, Hardy is a world-class actor, great in just about everything he does, but yet to establish himself in a role as luminary as James Bond, Vito Corleone, or Michael Corleone.  But his performance in MobLand could move Hardy into Al Pacino territory.

The lesser-known actors in MobLand were excellent, too.  Paddy Considine (House of the Dragon) as one of Conrad and Maeve's sons, gives a heart-rending performance, as does Joanne Froggatt (Downton Abbey), for different reasons, as Harry's wife.   The truth is, there's not a weak performance in this powerhouse of a series.

Hey, I managed to review MobLand without even a hint of a spoiler.  I'm going to listen to some more Fontaines DC music now.

Black Bag: Pick It Up

Just saw Black Bag, which popped up on Peacock on May 2, after debuting in theaters here in the U. S. on March 14.  It has a lot to commend itself,  including a top-notch cast, with Michael Fassbender (whom I just saw in The Agency, the CIA in London series which I reviewed the first three episodes of here), Cate Blanchett (who starred in lots of great movies and series, including recently Disclaimer, a brilliant literary psychological drama which I reviewed here), and Pierce Brosnan (formerly Remington Steele and James Bond, of course, currently starring in Mobland (giving a tour-de-force performance as a gang boss; I'll be reviewing it after its finale next week, but I can tell you now that it has one of the best theme songs I've heard in many a year).

Black Bag actually has some music running through it, too.  It has some action, but most of the time it's more a chess-piece cosy that Agatha Christie would have appreciated.  It also, like The Agency, flaunts the very best of current and possibly imagined AI and digital media in the spy-craft it details.  But its best feature is Fassbender's George and Blanchette's Kathryn as a loving couple who are likely good guys, and the rest of George's team, evenly matched between men and women who are also romantically involved in one way or another.

If I had a complaint, it probably would be that the narrative resolved itself a little too quickly, and may have played better as a limited series of three or four episodes.  Also, the villain was not as ingenuously concealed as in Agatha Christie's work, and maybe more time for that story to spool out would have been helpful too.

But the mix of espionage and romance worked well, and one advantage of a movie over a TV series is that you're not investing as much time in watching a movie as you would a series, so the movie's lack of perfection is less objectionable.

Mission Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning: Well Beyond Bondian

With all the promotion of Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, set to debut in U.S. theaters in the next few days, I thought it was high time to see Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, released in 2023, and which is actually Part 1 of the two-part story which will conclude with The Final Reckoning.

So I saw Dead Reckoning on Paramount+ last night.  And I was struck by several things, all of which have been inexorably building over this eight-movie run, which, as we all know, began as one of the best television series in history:

1. Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt has been getting more and more like the best secret agent in movie history, i.e., James Bond.  Hunt is a far better fighter than anyone ever was in the Mission Impossible TV team.  In fact, the strength of that team resided in its group prowess, and while Hunt has an impressive group behind him, he clearly has powers not only equal to Bond's but sometimes approach Superman's.  I mean, he leaps more than tall buildings, and in Dead Reckoning he jumps off a jagged mountainside, high above a fast-moving train he's attempting to intercept.

2. Cruise's Hunt shares another Bondian characteristic: a penchant for beautiful women.  In Dead Reckoning there are at least a handful.  My favorite is Ilsa Faust, played by Rebecca Ferguson, most recently in a crucially starring role in Silo.  Much like Bond's women, Hunt's are not only beautiful but keenly intelligent and resourceful, and they're central to events in which the narrative turns.

3. Whereas the MI team on television were invited to lend a hand in reducing or stopping significant challenges to US security, Hunt and his crew are called upon to stop challenges to the world order that verge on jeopardizing humanity itself.   In it that sense, Hunt may be even a little more than Bondian, and in Dead Reckoning he approached Terminator territory, fighting an AI menace that -- in the opinion of at least some so-called experts -- has become since 2023 the greatest threat our species has faced, and in this case engendered.

I don't share that view, but I do look very much forward to see how it all turns out on the screen in The Final Reckoning very soon.

See also Mission Impossible 6: Fallout: Better (These Days) Than Bond ... Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

The Day of the Jackal: Riveting Intellect and Adrenalin

Well, 2024 has two weeks and a few days left, so I can tell you with confidence that, amidst stiff competition, The Day of the Jackal on Peacock was the best TV series I saw this year.

Here are some of the reasons why (with no spoilers, hence "some of"):

• The series, adopted from Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel, has almost nothing in common with the 1973 movie, also adapted from the novel (which I never read).  All three, as you no doubt already know, are about a master assassin (that's about all the movie and the TV series share).  I thought the movie was really excellent.  I liked the TV series -- the last two episodes of its ten episodes up just yesterday -- at lot more.
• Eddie Redmayne's performance as the Jackal was out-of-the-ballpark fabulous.  (If we're talking about Yankee Stadium, somewhere down Jerome Avenue.)
• The story will keep you guessing in every episode, and sometimes many more times than once.
• There are all manner of police.  Some good, some bad. Some get killed, some don't.
• There are all manner of villains.  Some bad, some really bad. Some get killed, some don't.
• There's a James Bondian aspect to the Jackal -- like a Bond and all his assets, turned bad.  And he doesn't need a Q. Other than the fact that he's an assassin, I wanna be just like the Jackal when I grow up.

On a more general level, I just wrote, in my review of The Agency, that 2024 has been a year for superb spy thrillers.   The Jackal isn't a spy, but MI-6 in London is the agency most after him, so this makes The Day of the Jackal indeed another example of a superb spy thriller streaming this past year.  A windfall of edge-of-your-seat excitement.  Hats off to creator/show-runner Ronan Bennett.

I know you'd like me to tell you more, but I don't want to spoil even one of the many jolts you'll have when you see this series.  Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

Black Doves: Snow White Thriller

There hasn't been a James Bond movie since 2021, but the Brits are serving up some top-notch thriller TV series in the closing months of 2024, with a second season of The Diplomat, the first season of The Day of the Jackal (which I'll review after it concludes in the weeks ahead), and the first season of Black Doves, a six-episode Netflix mini-series which I just finished watching and I'm going to review right here.

First let me say that the review will be spoiler free, hence no usual warning, and I said first season for The Day of the Jackal and Black Doves because both have been renewed for second seasons.

Joe Barton is the creator of Black Doves.  I first encountered his work in the 16-episode Lazarus Project (2020-2023) which was mostly the best time-travel narrative I've ever seen on any screen, so I wasn't surprised that Black Doves is a uniquely memorable thriller.  It takes place during the Christmas season in current London and manages to inject life-and-death into nearly every scene of snowflakes and jingling bells.  And though it has no time travel, it plays off events and people meeting ten years ago in recollections that seamlessly slide in and out of hugs and bullets in 2024.

The Black Doves are an independent spy organization that thinks itself superior to MI-6, the CIA, and any government organization, and probably are.  The highest person we meet in the organization is Mrs. Reed, played by Sarah Lancashire, whom I can't help thinking is on sabbatical as the British Police Sergeant she played so well for so many years on Happy Valley.  Keira Knightley plays Black Dove Helen Webb, happily married to the British Defence Secretary, with two adorable kids, but fully capable of loving someone else passionately at the same time, and adeptly deadly with a gun or a knife.  The other big star, Ben Whishaw (Q in the Daniel Craig Bonds), plays Sam, a flat-out but sensitive assassin, with a long-standing friendship and professional relationship with Helen, called in to help with the dangerously escalating situation at hand.

How's that for no spoilers, right?  But I will say that the twisty plot has lots of surprises, lots of lethal action, leavened with the sarcastic humor we've come to expect and enjoy in these kinds of British thrillers.  I'll 100% be back with a review of the second season, whenever it's up, and kudos to Netflix for putting the first season all up at once just a few days ago.

Citadel 1.4-1.6: The Arch Anti-Hero

Well, I held off reviewing the final three episodes of the first season of Citadel (on Amazon Prime Video) until I'd seen the sixth and final episode -- which I just did -- because events were moving so fast in these episodes that I realized I wouldn't know what was going on, at least not well enough to write a coherent review, until I'd seen the final episode.

And, yeah, was I right.

[Huge spoilers ahead ... ]

So the big stunning reveal in the final episode of this season tells us how and why the mole in Citadel brought it down.  And along with that -- who the mole was.   It's none other than Mason Kane, who turns out to be Dahlia's son.   Dahlia of course is the head of what we thought was the nefarious organization Manticore that brought Citadel down.  The revelation that Kane was the instrument of Citadel's destruction is the equivalent of James Bond being Blofeld's son, and he helped his father bring down MI6.

And before that beyond-shocker, we get a quick series of just slightly less profound reveals.  We meet Nadia's daughter, who, unsurprisingly is also Mason's.  This is followed almost immediately with Mason/Kyle being reunited with his new family (we found out a few episodes ago that his wife, whom we met in the first episode, is actually another Citadel agent, who also had her memories wiped and replaced, due to Mason's insistence!).  In a memorable sequences of scenes, we see Mason/Kyle's two families meeting each other for the first time.

And this, as I said, happens right before Mason, his memories restored, discovers that he is the villain he has been searching for and we have been wondering about this whole short season.  If I wanted to get literary about all of this, I'd say this makes Mason an arch anti-hero.  But I'll confine myself to saying these six episodes were fine fictional spycraft indeed, and good science fiction, as well.  I'll be sure to watch and review whatever new Citadel stories become available.

See also:  Citadel 1.1-1.2: Memories and Questions ... 1.3: Jedi

Luther: The Fallen Sun: The Risen Hero

I just saw Luther: The Fallen Sun -- the continuation of Idris Elba's Luther TV series, in a 2+ hour movie on Netflix, and thought it was excellent, in all sorts of ways, for all kinds of reasons.  In fact, minute for minute, I thought it was better than any of the many series we've seen of Luther since it came on the screen in 2010.

[I'll warn you here of spoilers, though you won't find too many here, other than what you see in the blurbs and the trailers.]

So, Luther's in prison, not because he was framed, but because of the corners he illegally cut -- what he "had to do" -- to get the criminals in the past.  His adversary is a brilliant sicko, Robey (played by Andy Serkis), who is adept on the Internet and in torturing and leaving his victims hanging, literally.  One of his victims is a young man, and Luther was on the case but unable to get Robey before Luther was incarcerated.  Fortunately for Luther, the storyline, and the ultimate resolution of this movie, DCI Raine, who is currently investigating Robey without much success, suffers her daughter being kidnapped by Robey.  This is fortunate for the story, because it obliges Raine, who starts out being adamant about not enlisting Luther, and keeping him in prison, to instead welcome him in the frantic hunt.

As most of you no doubt know, Idris Elba was at at one point being considered to play James Bond, but recently actors his age were ruled out of that running.  First of all, Elba looks young enough to me.  More important, he's an outstanding one-of-a-kind actor who played and defined the indelibly memorable Stringer Bell in The Wire and continues to do the same in Luther.  He would have done the same for Bond.   I mention this because the Luther is this story has Bondian aspects, especially in snow and ice-water action near the end of the movie.   The Luther in the TV series rarely if ever made it out of London, if I remember correctly.  The Luther in this movie is now both literally as well as figuratively a man of the world.

But apropos both Bond and previous Luthers, I did miss any love interest (such as Indira Varma's Zoe Luther) or even the partially erotic spark (with Ruth Wilson's Alice Morgan) in this Luther movie.  Maybe that's because two hours is a little too short for such relationships to really start, let alone play out, when there such a demonic psycho to be caught.  But that absence is yet another good reason to make another Luther movie.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form ... Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive" ... Luther 5.3: Bitter Fruit ... Luther 5.4: Lethal Love

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

No Time to Die: Quibbles about that Death

My wife and I finally saw the new (to us) final Daniel Craig as James Bond movie -- on Amazon Prime. We very much enjoyed it.  In fact, although it has its flaws, I'd say No Time to Die is certainly among best James Bond movies ever made.

[Spoilers follow, of course.]

Let's begin with that shocker of an ending: Bond dies.  I didn't like to see that as it was happening --not at all -- but it is a highly original way of ending a Bond movie, and deserves credit for that.  It does explode or reveal as a myth the fact that Bond never dies.  Those around him die, and he must suffer that.  But not Bond himself.

The words on the screen at the end of the movie assure us that we'll see Bond again, and this will no doubt occur the way it's been presented in every transition to a newly acted Bond since it first happened back in Sean Connery's reign, actually twice, once for one time with George Lazenby, and then for a new series of Bond movies with Roger Moore.  In those and every subsequent case, the new Bonds were introduced with no mention of the fact that they looked different from their predecessor.  The same logic says the new post-Craig Bond can be introduced with no reference to his predecessor being killed.  What this, I suppose, means is that Bond's death at the end of No Time to Die is no big deal -- even though it meant the world in the context of that movie.

I did have two quibbles about the two characters must crucial to that death.  Rami Malek was superb as the arch-villain Safin who engineered Bond's death -- no one can match Malek's way of delivering powerful lines in a soft voice and a nearly expressionless face.  But given the profundity of Bond's death, I would have rather seen it done by a life-long adversary, like Blofeld, who's not able to step up to that role because he's earlier been killed by Bond in another nefarius Safin move on the lethal chessboard.  Similarly, although Madeleine (well-played by Léa Seydoux) with a most worthy love of Bond's life. we unfortunately don't meet her until the beginning of this very movie.  I would have rather seen someone we already got to know in previous movies.  Of course, since Vesper was already killed, it would have been difficult to pull someone out of the earlier Craig as Bond movies, but, nonetheless, that would have added a special gravitas in No Time to Die.  Bond's daughter was a really nice part of this movie, and had a gravitas of its own, but a mother with a history of Bond loving her before this story began would have added more.

Otherwise, I thought every other aspect of the movie was outstanding.  I especially loved the reprise of Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" at the end of No Time to Die.  The reprise, of course, was from Her Majesty's Secret Service, where it was also played at the end of the movie.  In other words, the death of Bond's true love, and then all these years later, the death of Bond, get the same musical aftermath.  Unless you're made of stone, that song is bound to bring a tear to your eyes.

Thinking about what the next Bond movie will bring, we have  the question of how many of the agents and administration in No Time to Die with survive.  I see no reason why all of them can't, deprived of course of any grief at the loss of the Bond played by Craig.  I've seen and really enjoyed every Bond movie ever made, pretty much in the year in which they were released, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also The New James Bond -- Without the Golden Pun ... It's Not HBO -- It's a Quantum of Solace

Suspicion 1.5: Tara and Sean

Superb, delightful episode 1.5 of Suspicion up today on Apple TV+.   Yes, delightful.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

My favorite scene was Tara and Sean in undies at the door, pretending to be a couple when the pesky neighbor came calling with a shotgun or a rifle.   Perfectly staged and acted.  Tara actually enjoying it underneath the pretence.  Sean almost reminiscent of James Bond.

And my favorite line came a little earlier, when Sean remarked of Tara that she looks more like Lara Croft than a professor.  Can't argue with that.  The two have a chemistry that we see again, near the end of the episode, when Tara talks to Sean who is completely unclothed in the bathroom.  Again, well staged and acted.  Good work by Elizabeth Henstridge and Elyes Gabel.

The whole story was well plotted and paced in this episode.  It now looks like Martin Copeland, Katherine's second in command, was responsible for Leo's kidnapping.  Which in turn means that all of presumed kidnappers were set up to take the fall.  And that also means that the killers with American accents who showed up in episode 1.4 are working for Copeland.

But we still don't have the complete story.  There's clearly more to each of the suspects than we knew last week.  Aadesh has sophisticated computer skills, Natalie has more money, etc.  At this point, Suspicion is really shaping up as a first-rate stylish whodunnit, and I'm looking forward to more.

See you back here next week with my review of the next episode.

See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth ... Suspicion 1.4: Surprises and Invincibility 

 

Reacher 1: Peach Pie, Stirred Not Shaken

Hey, see Reacher on Amazon Prime Video.  At its best, and that's more than some of the time, the lead character named Jack Reacher but known just by his last name has some of the quick thinking and lethal delivery of another Jack, last name Bauer, on 24.  And sometimes Reacher even recalls James Bond, with his wit and penchant for the sharp retort.

And Reacher has two assistants all his own:  Roscoe, a bright and beautiful and deadly when necessary young cop in a small town down in Georgia, and Finlay, detective captain in the same small town, who came down there from Boston.  There's almost constant action, unpredictable twists, bad guys and worse guys in this thriller based on the Jack Reacher book series by Lee Child.

Which I haven't read.  Come to think of it, I've been saying that about a lot of series and movies I've been streaming and reviewing here in the past few years, and that's likely because there are so many good series and movies out there and up there to stream.  Reacher is one of the best.

Here are some of the things I liked most in this eight-episode series which I'm sure will have some sequels:

• Reacher and the peach pie (I figured I'd start the list with a rhyme)
• Reacher and the dog (which Finlay names Jack -- ok, a spoiler)
• Reacher's tendency to say no to things he doesn't want to do, even when that answer is not socially advantageous
• The folk wisdom of even the minor characters, like the woman who says about her dead husband, something like it's amazing what a woman will put up with, if her man "throws" her a good "hump"
• The range of cities in which the action takes place, not just the small town, but Atlanta, New Orleans, and New York.
• Alan Ritchson as Reacher, Willa Fitzgerald as Roscoe, and Malcolm Goodwin as Finlay.

So, ok, you get the picture.   See what you think when you see the picture, actually, the series.  And I'm wondering where possibly up north I can get a piece of that peach pie, and happy I was able to deliver this review with no real spoilers at all.

See also Reacher 2: Better than Reacher 1

 

Absentia 3: Adrenalin and Relevance

The third season of Absentia was up on Amazon Prime Video last month.  I liked it the best of the three seasons so far because, well, I like James Bond type stories more than a vanished member of the family comes home after six years of missing, even if she is a high-powered FBI agent.

The new season picks up right after the second season ended, and quickly pitches us into international espionage and subterfuge, with a searingly all-too-currently relevant theme: the bad guys want to unleash a virus upon the world, with a view towards getting rich distributing an antidote which they also have in their possession.   It turns out that Emily was missing for six years because she was kidnapped by this group, which also has other (maybe) related bio "research" at work, including (I think) developing some kind of super-warrior army they can use.

I'm putting in those provisos - "maybe," "I think" - because these connections are still not brought into completely clear focus.  But that's ok, because the action is so quick and powerful you barely have time to think about the ultimate underpinnings.   There's also an excellent development of characters, in Emily's family and beyond.  In the first two seasons, her brother played an important role.  He plays a somewhat significant role again, but not as much as Emily's father Warren and her son Flynn, very well played by Paul Freeman and Patrick McAuley.  Let's hear it for multi-generation de facto commandos!

Nick also plays a very different role in this third season, becoming the one who's kidnapped, in absentia, pursued relentlessly by Emily.  She's helped by Cal, a not completely trustworthy partner, at least not by Emily, but very effective fighting for her and alongside her.  One of my favorite scenes is how the two get the drop on a group of brutal bad guys and throw them off a hurtling train in the middle of Europe.  Stana Katic is just great as Emily, as is Patrick Heusinger as Nick and Matthew Le Nevez as Cal.

Speaking of Europe, most of the action takes place in Austria and Germany, and the combination of that and the labs filled with experimented-upon bodies adds a definite Nazi flavor to this.   I found that both appropriate and a welcome departure from ISIS or Russia being the root of the villainy.  Indeed, immigrants from the Middle East are preyed upon by the nefarious bio-tech operation, and they emerge as heroes in this story, with Rafiq (well played by Adam Hussain) working with Nick and Emily to free his mother and the other prisoners from the sinister labs.

I give Absentia 3 my highest recommendation, for its non-stop action, social relevance, human relationships, and espionage puzzles.  And back to that Bondian quality that I like: it even has a memorable villain enforcer, Dawkins, played just right by Geoff Bell.

See also Absentia: In Your Face and Worth Watching ... Absentia 2: Even More There than the First Season

 

The Foreigner: Rumble, Bond, and Remington

I reviewed the movie I saw on the plane out to Pasadena for the Mars Society Conference the other day.   Only fair that I review the movie I saw coming back.  Even if that isn't fair, there is at least one very good aspect of the movie.   I'd therefore recommend it, if you'd think you'd find that aspect as appealing as I did.

The two stars of the movie, Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan, are no youngsters.   And they play their parts perfectly: oldsters who still have all their smarts and most of their moves from their younger days.

Chan is the devastated father of a daughter killed by terrorists in the U. K.  He's determined to find and punish her killers.  Since he's a lot like an older Bruce Lee, he has the smarts and moves to do this, though he's a little creaky.

Brosnan is a former IRA terrorist now in some pretty high-up government position.  Chan thinks he knows who the killer are, since Brosnan is in charge of the investigation.  In a classic James Bond opening, we first see him in bed with a woman who isn't his wife.  Well, Bond isn't married for most of his exploits but you get what I mean.   And it turns out that the woman is one of the bad guys - bad people - bad because her group has big connection to the terrorists who killed Chan's daughter.

There are good fight and action scenes, and even some surprises in this well-worn kind of story. If anything, Chan is better than he ever was.  And this is best I've seen Brosnan since Bond and  Remington Steele.  So if you like this kind of movie, see it.  You won't be disappointed.

 

Mission Impossible 6: Fallout: Better (These Days) Than Bond

Just saw the 6th Mission Impossible movie - Fallout - with Tom Cruise in the lead role as Ethan Hunt.  I thought it was outstanding - the best of the movies so far - and, yes, better than the Bond movies these days.

The dominant philosophic theme was a refutation of the utilitarian principle that the good of the many outweigh, or should outweigh, the good of the few as a motive for action.   We see this refuted at least three times in the movie, which begins with Hunt blowing a mission to save one of his team.  He later takes precious time to make sure that a French woman police officer survives a deadly encounter.  And in the one of the scenes in the movie, Ilsa struggles with whether to thoroughly choke out an arch villain while Benji dangles from a nearby noose and looses consciousness.

There's some excellent double-agent moves in which good guys turn out to be bad guys and vice versa.  And the action scenes - in bathrooms in Paris to cliffs in Kashmir - are top-notch and in some ways better than usual.   In the bathroom, a single bad guy gets the better of both Hunt and another agent, until - well, I don't want to give too much away.  But that's more realistic than we often see in scenes like this.

There's the best balance of tongue-in-cheekness about Mission Impossible tropes and using them to effective purpose in the narrative.   An early scene features Wolf Blitzer delivering a news report on CNN.  I had a feeling he was making up the report for MI purposes, but didn't guess that he was actually one of the MI team wearing a Wolf Blitzer mask.  After that, the cracks by disbelievers that the MI strategy of masks which just Halloween had an especially delicious irony.

Tom Cruise, I have to say,  did another fine job.  I never got the criticism of Cruise in this or any other role.  He delivers his Ethan Hunt character with just the right mix of grit, determination, self-awareness, and even self-deprecation.    I guess comparing these MI movies to Bond is apples and oranges.   But I will say that I liked Fallout more than last few Bond moves, which were certainly good cinema.

See also:  Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy

Killing Eve: Highly Recommended

Highly recommended.  Not killing Eve - she's a great lead character - but the series, Killing Eve, which I just finished binge-watching the first season of on BBC America.

Killing Eve actually has two very memorable characters, rarely seen on television in terms of their mix of quirky intelligence, self-aware sarcastic humor, and utter devotion to their respective causes.  One is Eve, an MI5 officer who gets enthralled (by a combination of volunteering and recruitment) into an MI6 Russia assignment involving a SPECTRE-like group, the spearhead of which is Villanelle aka Oksana, a deft, gifted, peerless assassin who is all but impossible to beat.  The narrative arc continually surprises us with the way the two become obsessed with one another - obsessed not devoid of its positive elements all along the infatuation/love continuum - as Eve tries to stop and capture Villanelle and she tries to kill Eve.   To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, and just to reveal one of many brilliant exchanges, when Villanelle surprises Eve who asks if Villanelle is there to kill her, the assassin replies that all she wants to do is have dinner with Eve.

It doesn't hurt that these two already iconic characters are played by Sandra Oh (Grey's Anatomy) as Eve and Jodie Comer (The White Princess) as Villanelle, who are mutually perfect in their performances.  Indeed, so much so, that most of the other characters pale in comparison, even though theY'RE well acted and plotted.

As has been pointed out by more than one critic, most of these other characters are men, and the transcendence of Eve and Villanelle in Killing Eve could be interpreted as a paean to women and an attack on the male member (literally) in the world of spying, and, by extension, our world as a whole. Whatever interpretation you care to give it, Killing Eve is one high octane drama, as delightful as is thrilling, with surprises coming almost by the minute as the narrative unfolds.

After I caught my breath after the ending, I was glad to see there'll be a second season.  But I wouldn't bet on who will be doing what ....

Outlander 3.8: Pirates!

Well, with Black Sails sailed off the air earlier thus year, Outlander couldn't have come up a pirate thread at a better time - that is, if you like pirate stories (I do) and if that ship at the end of episode 3.8 whose men captured young Ian are pirates. 

I think they are.  But who can be sure (since I haven't read the novels, I'm only sure of what I've seen on screen).  I'm indeed sure that tonight's episode was excellent, in the new series that's come back to us with Claire's return to Scotland and the past.  Her reunion with Jamie, and all its difficulties, have been handled with intelligence and style.

As always, I have questions (and maybe these were answered already in the novels).  But -

1. Why didn't Jamie go up to the stones, rather than swim to the island, when he was out of prison, any time during the 20 years?  Is it possible that stones won't work for Jamie?  But, if so, how would he know that?  Or, did he try to travel to the future via the stones, but got nowhere?

2. Less cosmic: how was young Ian supposed to get the coins and jewels back to Jamie and Claire without a boat?  It's already been established that the swim is rough, even treacherous, so what was the plan?  (And my wife wonders why young Ian couldn't take a boat in the first place?)

But I'm loving Outlander, anyway, and the prospect of Jamie and Claire going to the same part of the world as James Bond, played by Sean Connery, another Scot, would fictionally do in our own century - come to think of it, around the same time Claire was in Boston - is appealing indeed.  How do you say shiver me timbers in Scottish?

See also Outlander Season 3 Debut: A Tale of Two Times and Places ...Outlander 3.2: Whole Lot of Loving, But ... Outlander 3.3: Free and Sad ... Outlander 3.4: Love Me Tender and Dylan ... Outlander 3.5: The 1960s and the Past ... Outlander 3.6: Reunion ... Outlander 3.7: The Other Wife

And see also Outlander 2.1: Split Hour ... Outlander 2.2: The King and the Forest ... Outlander 2.3: Mother and Dr. Dog ... Outlander 2.5: The Unappreciated Paradox ... Outlander 2.6: The Duel and the Offspring ...Outlander 2.7: Further into the Future ... Outlander 2.8: The Conversation ... Outlander 2.9: Flashbacks of the Future ... Outlander 2.10: One True Prediction and Counting ... Outlander 2.11: London Not Falling ... Outlander 2.12: Stubborn Fate and Scotland On and Off Screen ... Outlander Season 2 Finale: Decades

And see also Outlander 1.1-3: The Hope of Time Travel ... Outlander 1.6:  Outstanding ... Outlander 1.7: Tender Intertemporal Polygamy ...Outlander 1.8: The Other Side ... Outlander 1.9: Spanking Good ... Outlander 1.10: A Glimmer of Paradox ... Outlander 1.11: Vaccination and Time Travel ... Outlander 1.12: Black Jack's Progeny ...Outlander 1.13: Mother's Day ... Outlander 1.14: All That Jazz ... Outlander Season 1 Finale: Let's Change History

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...