If you agree with us that the biggest landmark in the visual representation of futurism in science fiction over the last several years was Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow, Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and Netflix’s Altered Carbon, then you might also see something similarly new and refreshing–and yet new and different–happening with the new Paramount+ series Halo. As I described it last month here at borg, Halo’s first episode was a dense set-up of a series opener, establishing the world building, the opposing factions and key characters in this new universe extracted from the video game franchise. But the series’ second episode, titled “Unbound,” doesn’t miss a beat in showing viewers an even more layered science fiction story is in play, with plenty of visual surprises.
Before there was a Fast and the Furious series, before Baby Driver, before Clint was Dirty Harry, before Smokey met the Bandit, or before Max ever got mad, there was Steve McQueen in Bullitt. You may try but you’re unlikely to conjure up a film that defines cool more than McQueen does as a San Francisco cop trying to protect a witness in a major case. For 50 years the Oscar-winning car chase (from editor Frank B. Keller) has topped best action scene lists from film critics and everyone else. Robert Vaughn was hardly better than as the demanding Senator Chalmers.
The music of the great Lalo Schifrin(Mission: Impossible, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mannix, Starsky and Hutch, Planet of the Apes) perfectly encapsulates the era, complete with a jazz flute interlude. There’s a reason Hollywood kept returning to Schifrin for action movie scores, like Kelly’s Heroes, Enter the Dragon, Brubaker, Charley Varrick, Cool Hand Luke, THX 1138, and the Dirty Harry and Rush Hour movies–the music is that memorable. We are lucky to have a dozen great Steve McQueen movies to re-visit, and this is one of the best. Plus you can only look to James Bond movies for an opening credits montage as cool as you’ll find in Bullitt.
You have two more chances to see Bullitt in the theater for its 50th anniversary re-release. And that’s today, October 9, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. local time. Get tickets now and check theaters availability at the Fathom Events website, www.FathomEvents.com.
It’s that time of year again. The 2016 World Series is now in full swing with the first game a sweep by the Cleveland Indians. How will the Chicago Cubs fare in Game 2 tonight? If you’re not in the baseball frame of mind yet, we have five of the all-time best baseball movies you can stream right now for free or for less than four dollars on Amazon Prime’s streaming service. Most of these can also be rented on Netflix. And let’s face it–everyone should own our fifth movie on the list.
Have you seen them already? Then you know these great films can be watched over and over again.
Let’s start with a classic: Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees from 1942. The movie recounts the then-recent personal triumph and tragedy of what baseball as an American pastime has created over and over for more than a century: baseball players as American icons. Pride of the Yankees shows the personal side of being a famous baseball player, and features real-life legends Babe Ruth, Bob Meusel, Mark Koenig, and Bill Dickey, all playing themselves on-screen. Academy Award winners Teresa Wright and Walter Brennan co-star. If you want to see classic baseball from a contemporary view, this is your movie. Although the story is certainly bittersweet and a tear-jerker, it reflects baseball as more than just a game.
The most recent movie on our list is Moneyball, from 2011, a modern classic we’ve already watched over and over. Moneyball reveals the game as a modern business. The conflict between playing the game as classically envisioned and the game as seen from an analytical angle is wrestled with from the real life mostly true story of the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane as he turned the team around in its 2002 season. Continue reading →
Tom Cruise. No matter the character, no matter the story, no matter the director, he just can’t make a bad movie. Last year’s release, Jack Reacher, available now on Netflix streaming and DVD and Blu-ray, is another home run. But for the lackluster title and so-so marketing effort, Jack Reacher might have been a really big hit last year. Cruise turns in a solid performance again, similar to his high-calibre lead acting in last year’s sci-fi release Oblivion, reviewed here at borg.com. Later this year the 51-year-old screen legend is back again, in another sci-fi release, Edge of Tomorrow, with co-star Emily Blunt.
Jack Reacher, odd name aside, could be one of those heroes you compare to Harry Callahan, Frank Bullitt, or a Daniel Craig-era James Bond. The character is that good, as is Cruise’s fit into the role of a smart and tough drifter who turns to the aid of a comatose defendant and his struggling defense attorney in the case of a shocking, random mass shooting. Cruise’s drifter is also ex-military, the kind of ex-military that can take on a group of thugs by himself, and take part in a big-screen shoot-‘em up. We see Reacher learning and growing as he tries to make all the right moves–and get constantly set back–throughout the movie, not something many films give audiences much of these days. He thinks like a lawyer or detective and does so believably, and Cruise taps into his work in The Firm or A Few Good Men, making Reacher a good follow-on for fans of those films.
As Reacher attempts to find the top gunman at a rifle range, we find Robert Duvall in another great role similar to his work in A Civil Action, this time as a craggy expert with a rifle. Along the way we meet several villains, including one played by A Good Day to Die Hard’s Jai Courtney, but far and away the most intriguing is writer/director/producer Werner Herzog as what could be a Bond villain as “Zec”. Creepy. Vile. Evil. He gives a pawn who screwed-up a choice: death, or chew off his own fingers. Yikes. Rosamund Pike (Surrogates, Pride and Prejudice) excels as the defense attorney in several scenes with the opportunity to convey a wide range of emotions for a single film–and cinematography by (Zooey and Emily’s dad) Caleb Deschanel (The Right Stuff, The Natural, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, National Treasure), gives her plenty of well-timed, stare-into-the-camera close-ups.
