Destiny's Name is Adventure

 Mrs. Spew and I saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny last night, so tis time to re-rank the Indy movies.  My old post set the terms, so I am just going to consider where the new movie stands in the various categories.  To be clear, Raiders was and remains my very favorite movie of all time. So, its ranking ain't changing.  But I do have a question: when did they Star Wars: a New Hope Raiders so that it is now called Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark?

More Spideys, More Rankings, More Better

 Back in the days of yore, I used to talk about and rank pop culture a fair amount here.  So, with my fave comic book character getting another fantastic movie, tis time to rank again.  Spidey was always my favorite.  I used to collect multiple spidey comic books  every month pretty much for all of the 1980s and stopped only in the mid-1990s for two reasons: the increasingly expensive comic books were roughly a month's worth of diapers and it was diaper changing time; and clones.  The spidey series went deep into clones, and I did not like that very much.  Multiverses?  That is something else entirely.  

When the first Tom Holland movie came out, I ranked the Spidey movies.  That was four spidey movies and a heap of appearances elsewhere ago.  I will start each category with the previous ranking and now how it has changed both due to re-watching and the addition of the new movies.  To be clear, there are now ten movies to rank: Tobey's S1, S2, S3; Andrew's S4, S5; Tom's S6, S7, S8, and Shameik's S9, S10.  

Spoilers below the break.

Binge-ing and Ranking the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Inspired by the Binge-Mode podcast and the need to watch stuff while I treadmill away the food that I stress-baked and stress-ate during this pandemic, I recently watched nearly all of the MCU movies.  I skipped a few that I had seen recently, and I didn't have access to the Hulk movies.  The hosts of Binge-Mode ranked their faves, and theirs were a bit different than mine.  And, yes, the rankings changed after re-watching and also listening to the podcasts.  So, below, I rank the movies and indicate the best/worst parts of each.  

DC Sucketh Runneth Over

So, Henry Cavill is out as Superman.   John Rogers had a nice series of tweets explaining what Warner Brothers' problem is--they don't like the DC characters/universe, so they can't get into it and make it work.  The fun thing is the wild speculation on the next Superman.  And, of course, there is wagering.  I got an email from a sports book which gave the following odds:

Next Superman Actor	American Odds	Fractional Odds
Michael B. Jordan	+125	5/4
Armie Hammer	+350	7/2
Henry Golding	+1000	10/1
Benjamin Walker	+1600	16/1
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson	+900	9/1
Will Smith	+5000	50/1
Tyler Hoechlin	+900	9/1
Ryan Gosling	+1000	10/1
Nicholas Cage	+3300	33/1
Ben Affleck	+5000	50/1
Mark Wahlberg	+1200	12/1
Idris Elba	+600	6/1

Source: https://www.betonline.ag/sportsbook/futures-and-props/entertainment

I think the odds on MBJ are way too low.  There is no way that he is almost even odds.  I think most of the names here are jokes, and I would definitely bet the field (that none of the above is the winner).

As a Marvel guy who loves the DC shows on TV, there seems to be a simple solution: get the TV people to make a movie or three.  But that is too damn obvious.

Anyhow, I will continue to make mine Marvel as the only Marvel movies I didn't like very much or at all were Thor 2, the Hulks, Age of Ultron.... and that's about it.  The TV shows are more of a mix.

And as Stan would say, Excelsior!!!

A Few Clues About the Primary Audience

We just saw Pacific Rim: Uprising, and I have only one reaction--strange to see a movie so clearly aimed at the Chinese marketplace from a North American franchise.  Some clues beyond the  spoiler break:

Black Panther: The Most Meaningful Marvel Movie

Mrs. Spew and I went to the first showing of Black Panther last night, and we were not disappointed.  Since most folks have not yet seen it, only go beyond the break if you don't mind being spoiled or were able to see the movie pretty quickly.

Oscars 2018

I think I saw more of the nominees than in a normal year with fish sex Shape of Water being the last of the Oscar movies I will see in the theater.  Next week is Black Panther and then the rest of the summer movies of 2018 (summer is earlier than ever).  So, what would I vote for?

Best Movie:
Get Out.  It was the movie that did and will stick with me.  It had the most interesting and surprising premise.  It was multidimensional--funny, scary, moving, meaningful.  Number two is hard as Dunkirk was an amazing movie--very creative in its own way, very much the epic of the year.  But Shape of Water was also very multidimensional--Cold War spy thriller, sci-fi fish out of water (sorry), and romance.  Oh, and fish sex.  I saw Dunkirk a while ago so it is hard to compare with Shape of Water.  I did pay heaps of attention to the direction and editing of both, probably because of my daughter, Intern Spew, and her nascent film career.  Three Billboards was quite good and moving, but the racist redemption thing kind of took me out of the movie a bit.  Lady Bird?  Incredibly well acted but not all that special to me.  Sorry.

No vote for Best Actor as I saw only one of those--Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out.

Best Actress:
Frances McDormand was just a force.  Sally Hawkins comes close because she was so very good, so very expressive despite not being able to talk.  Saoirse Ronan was very good, but the role was not that special. 

Best Supporting Actor:
Despite the whole problematic redemptive racist thing, Rockwell pulled it off really well.  Jenkins was very good in Shape, but didn't help to make the movie.  Harrelson was fine in a small role--moving, but replaceable.

Best Supporting Actress:
Metcalf in a runaway.  Ok, I only saw two of the nominees, and Olivia Spencer was very good but again the movie didn't hang at all on her.  Metcalf helped to make Lady Bird be a notable flick.


Director:
Best movie should get best director, but I am inclined to give the writing award to Jordan Peele and the directing to either Nolan or del Toro since their movies were harder, more epic.  Hmmm.  Good thing I don't have a vote.

Best Original Screenplay:
Get Out.  It had better writing and a more interesting plot than the others--I saw all five of the nominees.

Best Adapted:
Logan.... only one I saw.

Best Movies of 2017

I realized after seeing a list of best movies that I have not seen as many movies this year as I had expected.  I blame Netflix and Amazon for too many great TV shows plus heaps of travel.  So, my top ten is almost but not quite the entire list of movies I have seen.  And, yes, it is heavily loaded with comic book/action movies since those are the ones I go to the theater for.  We have seen a bunch of movies at home, but few seem to come to mind right now.  Anyhow, here's my favorite movies of the year with the top three being very close and will probably change once I re-watch them:

1. Get Out.  Just the smartest movie of the year, funny and scary and provocative.
2. Last Jedi.  I have to go with the Star Wars movie.  This had so much good stuff in it, including Chewie and the tasty porg.
3. Wonder Woman. Yeah, I am putting a DC movie ahead of the Marvel and Marvel/Sony productions.  It was so incredibly overdue, so very well executed, funny and moving.  
4. Spider-Man: Homecoming.  Thor is in my head right now because of recency bias, but I always connect with Spidey.  They did a very nice job of realizing the character and breaking the rules--Peter's friend knows, MJ is revealed only late, and on and on.  The Washington Monument scene was terrific.  Not enough Marisa Tomei, but what can do you?
5. Thor.  So much fun. So silly, with excellent use of Chris Helmsworth, redeeming a very boring character.  The play within the movie was amazing with such great cameos.  
6. Dunkirk.  Speaking of terror, this movie really puts you in that battle from three very different perspectives.  Just amazing filmmaking.
7. Lady Bird.  I think it was perhaps slightly overrated.  I enjoyed it, it was very funny, but it was not that special. 
8. Baby Driver.  Didn't necessarily make much sense but was a great ride with excellent soundtrack.
9. Colossal.  Yeah, I am an Anne Hathaway fan and she got to do some interesting stuff here.  The whole concept was quite innovative.
10. a tie between Logan Lucky and Atomic Blond.  Both were very entertaining.

Honorable mentions goes to:

• War Machine--which had some of my words five minutes into the movie.  Not the M*A*S*H of Afghanistan, alas.  
• Logan.  It was well made, and paid off greatly. But it was a downer, so not a top ten for me.
• Split turned out to be quite compelling.  Anything to generate more movies in the Unbreakable universe.
• The Babysitter.  A netflix movie about a kid who discovers that his babysitter is, um, wow.  Funny, horror, gross, great combo. 
• The new King Arthur was actually pretty good.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, I Can Rank Any Series Any Time

Of all the comic book characters, Spider-man was always my favorite.  X-Men was my favorite team, but Spidey was the one I most enjoyed.  So, yeah, we saw the new Spider-Man movie--Homecoming--the night it came out.  It is no spoiler to say that it was terrific.  The most thoroughly fun of all the Spideys, but is it the best?  Swing to the spoiler-filled rankings below:

Logan: One Hot Take

Just saw Logan, enjoyed it muchly.  I have just one nit to pick beyond the spoiler break.

Traveling To Tokyo Again, with Some Deja Vu

I landed last night/earlier today (always fun to talk about time on the other side of the dateline) in Tokyo for two weeks of follow up interviews and talks where I trot out what I have learned thus far.  Everything was super smooth (see short movie reactions below), and I have some repeated realizations:

• Stuff always seems to happen when I fly and am out of touch.  This time there is both the hacking report going public and a plagiarism scandal for the new admin.  I missed Trump's reaction but he was already engaged in pre-reacting, attacking the intel folks.  Not a good look.  I am starting to think that this admin should have a new bumper sticker: "Surprising? No. Appalling?  Yes"
• Long flights are good for bad movies or movies that I would probably not see if I were not, um, a captured audience.
• Never Go Back, the new Jack Reacher movie, was ok.  The basic problem, once again, is that Reacher is a huge guy and is a force of menace and destruction.  Tom Cruise is not, so it is hard to watch these movies if you are a fan of the books.  The plot was also changed around to film in New Orleans for some reason.  They did get both female parts right, with Cobie Smulders being far more well cast than Cruise.
• Jason Bourne--what a silly movie.  Seems like the CIA can access the street cameras only sometimes.  A lot in messed up Greece but not at all in London which has cameras everywhere.  Just a dumb extension of a played out franchise.  The CIA assassin piles up a tremendous body count along the way, making Bourne look restrained.  Oh, and it was hard to root for Bourne since he was somewhat allied with Snowden/Assange type folks, if only accidentally.  Of course, the politics were dumb--Director of National Intelligence does not pick Director of CIA.... the President does that.
• Pete's Dragon was sweet and fun, but I wouldn't see it ordinarily since I have no kid at home anymore.  
• Shin Godzilla was terrific.  The latest Godzilla movie out of Japan focuses mostly on how the politicians and bureaucrats screw up the response, and it is only when they are marginalized/killed that a younger politician is able to implement a plan made by a bunch of outsiders--nerds!  It was more fun for me as I understood the terrain of the battle--where things in Tokyo are--as a result of my last trip here.  And given that one of my basic questions of this case study is "is the agency charged with overseeing Japan's Self-Defence Force an agent of the politicians or vice versa", the movie is pretty relevant for my work.
•  Getting five hours of sleep is a victory the first night abroad.  Which is why I fly in on weekends to give myself time to adjust.  An important lesson learned after falling asleep on the couch of a Turkish General at NATO HQ in Naples.

Oh, and yes, I am superthankful that I will be in Japan and then in the air when Trump is inaugurated.  I can miss that anytime and twice on Sunday.

X-Men: Not an Apocalypse

My family went to see X-Men: Apocalypse the other night.  We went in with low expectations because we were not fans of the comic books that focused on this villain.* And our expectations were exceeded, mostly because the movie had far more light and fun than the overly dark DC movies despite being about the end of humanity.

*  Days of Future Past was a decent movie, but had a more difficult challenge since the comic book story was so very terrific.  

Spoilers below the break:

Who Guards the Guardians? Not the UN

Every time I think I am out, they pull me back in.  No, not leading the mafia.  Principal-agent theory.  Yep, and I blame Stan Lee.  How so?  I saw the new Captain America: Civil Wars movie... explanation below the break:

We are All Awakened!

I saw SW: The Force Awakens with my family on Friday.  It was delightful.  Even the previews were delightful.  Ok, not all of them, but the sloth at the DMV was fantastic.  Anyhow, I was most impressed that no one (except a troll at a certain website) tried to spoil the movie.  I was surprised by that, even as the big twist in the movie was ... (Spoilers below the break)

Creed: Embracing the Nostalgia

As I grew up in the suburbs of Philly, I have long been a sucker for Rocky movies.  This new movie was more than a Rocky movie, but as a Rocky movie, it certainly scratched that itch.  I do have some questions raised by the movie (spoilers below the break):

Thanksgiving Non-Football Watching

We watched plenty of bad football games today, but the nieces and my daughter decided to watch Dead Poet Society.  A good movie but one fraught with stuff that makes for a poor collective watching experience during a holiday: suicide, parental resentment, betrayal, Robin Williams.

So I pondered what would have been a worse choice and then asked the twitterverse.  I got some interesting responses:

I thought Deer Hunter as it was chock full of war, Russian roulette, and drug addiction but Alex usher came through with Sophie's Choice.  Not just depressing but likely to create fights and resentment--hey, Mom, which of us would you choose?  Well played, Alex.

Movie with the Most IR

I just returned from seeing Bridge of Spies with Mrs. Spew and @stephaniecarvin.  We agreed that the movie had a heap of IR in it, more so than most.  How so?  (No spoiler break since it is all factual, more or less).

1. Cold War
2. Spies
3. Desperate desire for recognition (East Germany)
4. Principal-agent problems everywhere
1. Donovan was an agent whose agenda was wider than that of the CIA
2. East Germany's interests were not identical to Russia's.
3. The spy was a very good agent, but its principal could not be sure.
4. Gary Powers was an agent who did not do what he was supposed to do.
5. Prisoners' Dilemma: making agreements in the absence of trust and enforcement mechanisms
6. Chicken: a game within the PD as Donovan was seeking to get a 2 for 1

What am I forgetting?

Oh, and the previous winner in most IR in a movie?  Phantom Menace:

1. Trade War
2. Diversionary Theories of War 
3. Principal-agent problems
4. Relative power (always a bigger fish)

Ok, maybe not.

Anyhow, Bridge of Spies was very good, but too scary for PhD students: "my only copy of my dissertation!"

Revisionist Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Is Underrated

I ranked the Star Wars movies a while back, but the topic is fresh again thanks to this deadspin post, perhaps as we anticipate the 7th SW movie.

Some excellent points are made by the Deadspin folks:

• the first act doth rock!  Leia's big moment as Hutt-killer, the repartee after Han is defrosted, the first time we see a semi-trained Jedi really demonstrate what one can do.
• that Vader being lame is actually a good thing.  Worshiping the bad guys is always going to hurt in the third part of a trilogy because they are going to go down and down hard.  That Boba Fett got defeated pretty easily is actually terrific since he is so overrated. Yes, I said that.  His dad got killed by a Jedi pretty easily too because guess what: Jedi >> Mandalorian armor.
• Ewok hate is heightist.  Chewie rocks but Ewoks don't?  And, as we look back at the six, one can see Ewoks as a gateway cutesy that leads to Jar Jar OR so very superior to that which Lucas could have done and subsequently did do.  Depends on your point of view, as Obi-Wan would say.
• I raised my one qualm on twitter--that the Ewoks seemed way too prepared for the battle with the Stormtroopers.  How did they get the big logs in place?  The answer: the Ewoks had been preparing for this battle for quite some time.  Lots of pre-positioned stuff that just needed a spark to light their rebellion.  
• The real reason why some folks hate on Return, other than it inevitably was not going to get as much love as the two excellent movies preceding it, is the love of darkness for the sake of darkness.  Meh to that.  This movie was always going to have to be light because it was always going to provide us with a happy ending... complete with singing and modest dancing.
• So many good bits:

• Better realized Jabba
• Han's confusion about Luke and Leia.
• "Hey, it's me,"
• Speeders in the woods!
• Yoda... sob.
•  More Wedge!
• "Face the power of a fully armed and operational death star"
• The superstar destroyer plunging into the death star like Excalibur back into the lake.

The third movie ended the trilogy the way it should have ended.  Were the Ewoks a bit too cute?  Sure.   But the movie also created iconic moments and memorable lines, about as many as the previous two movies and way more than the prequels.  So, yes, I admit that I love Return of the Jedi.  It was not the best of the three, but it was a damned fine movie.  If Force Awakens can be as good as Return of the Jedi, I am going to enjoy my winter break with multiple viewings.

Hyena Road: Surprisingly Realistic

Mrs. Spew and I watched Hyena Road last night.  It is a Canadian movie depicting the Canadian effort in Kandahar.  Having spent all of four days at the Kandahar Air Field and at Camp Nathan Smith (the smaller base for the provincial reconstruction team in the middle of Kandahar City), I can say that the movie was quite realistic, especially noting the dust that is on everything.

The movie had at its center stuff that may not have been realistic: a desire to bring back an old big name Mujhadeen "the Ghost" to offset the power of the local big man.  But the local big man in the movie was very much drawn to parallel Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was the local power broker getting big bags of cash from the CIA AND the brother of the President.  I am not sure AWK was so willing to play with the Taliban as this movie's bad guy was.  AWK did more to create the Taliban via reacting to his alienation of key tribes rather than actually helping them directly.  He definitely did benefit from an insecure environment, which led to more contracts for the provision of security and such--that the movie got right.

The big glaring mistake, in my eyes, was the portrayal of the Canadian general running the larger effort.  Played by Homicide's Clark Johnson, this general was a bit more brusque and prone to cursing than the generals I have met, and I have met nearly every officer who commanded the Canadian mission in Kandahar.  However, perhaps the language is a bit more salty down range. 

The road in the title was something quite real--that the Canadians spent a great deal of effort to build a road from Kandahar City into the hinterlands, as it would be far harder to put landmines (improvised explosive devices) into the asphalt.  This road would also improve the ability of Afghans to get to market and for the NATO troops to get out to the hinterlands quickly. 

The movie did a pretty good job of demonstrating the frustration with such a complex war, with unreliable allies and that the road to hell, indeed, is paved with good intentions.  Not a bad month for Canadian movies on the war with Kandahar Journals coming out a couple of weeks ago.

Besides being mostly realistic (hockey at both the big base and the smaller one!), it had good drama and tension.  So, I give it four and a half dusty helmets!