Spy Movies - Blog Posts

HEARTS DESIRE

Quentin Tarantino upon hearing this awesome movie idea.

I couldn't resist rebloging this after hearing this idea.

have you yet had the cognitive dissonance that comes with learning that Jon Pertwee was an actual spy in WWII or have you not yet had that pleasure

i HAVE and it's so funny - imagine being a real life British spy and, posthumously, your most recognized achievement is playing a gay science magician on children's television

it's what he would have wanted

Watched Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

Heavy, heavy spoilers below.

Pros:

The whole underwater sequence (minus the one stupid line that ruins the momentum) is extraordinarily beautiful, Cruise drowning is one of the better physical performances he's given. Really cool to see him swim like he runs, just sort of throwing his body forwards to try to get to his goal.

The cut from the lights going out across the world to Atwell holding the glowing drive, illuminating the scene, the only light left after they've essentially turned everything off and on again, is quite beautiful.

Couple of really fun weird performances, in no particular order: Tramell Tillman, Katy O'Brian, Holt McCallany.

Esai Morales losing his mind when his arm breaks and just screaming with such a primal rage was by far the highlight of whatever weird stuff his character had going on.

Plane stuff was cool.

Cons:

A lot of it was boring. Far too much exposition, very little happens in the first hour besides Luther dying (whatever). Too many threads, the whole thing is a mess. Lots of weird stops at inconsequential destinations.

The very end was especially egregious and really went on.

Almost all of the war room drama is dumb and boring (especially at Offerman's confusing, eye-rolling death at the end).

Did lapse back a little into the Fallout style Ethan Hunt superfan show at moments.

Basically gives up any potentially interesting epistemological threads.

Klementieff does like two things.

Whatever was going on with Shea Whigham was basically nonsense after he was almost promising in the last movie.

Far too much retrospective, both on the actual movies and, weirdly, on a bunch of fake flashbacks to things that we'd never seen. Almost a pastiche of nostalgia.

Overall it's mostly dumb, but there are a couple of transcendentally beautiful moments that make it probably worth it even though it's far too long (and I like long movies).

Watched Mission Impossible - Fallout

Extremely fun while watching it and then falls off a cliff as soon as the credits roll. Certainly a step up from Rogue Nation in the cinematography, editing, and density of action pieces that distract from the nonsense plot, characters, and morality. Has at least shown me what it takes to distract me from what is so clearly a narcissistic indulgence in the physicality of a single, awful man. It is delightful in the literal sense, and so I'm willing to give it a 'like' but its failures are so much more interesting than anything else. The misogyny is, I think, less frequent but more cutting than in the last entry (Stickell's awful speech to Ilsa a particularly egregious example) and there is an increasing sense that the characters have fallen into the same rapture as the audience; Cruise's 'impossibility' overriding their sense of individuality and personhood, sending an icepick into their brain of just the right endorphins to distract from the insipid nonsense of the whole endeavor. This is much better elaborated here, here, and here. A movie like this can never be a truly great action movie, in that all of the various arts of the form are totally subordinated to the creation of a stunt show with barely even a frame narrative.

Watched Black Bag

Gorgeous! Fantastic movie to watch with your dad. A lot of Le Carré-style interest in the layers of artifice that come out of bureaucratizing the idea of secrets, and although it's not quite willing to totally sever the narrative from the world outside of espionage, the real world relevance is totally irrelevant. Great use of those well-trod thematics to explore layers of artifice in contemporary relationships within a culture of surveillance. Clever script, delightful performances (from just about everyone), easy on the eyes, most recommendable movie that's come out in months.