Review – Six Minutes to Midnight

Eddie Izzard stars as a new teacher at a British boarding school for the daughters of German diplomats and businessmen. It’s his bad timing to show up right as World War Two is getting started. The storytelling includes enough wit, intrigue and suspense to keep it from being a tween version of Eye of the Needle. Mildly amusing

Review – Raise the Titanic

This was released several years before the actual Titanic was located, so just finding it would have been enough drama all by itself. Raising it from the bottom of the ocean would have been the icing on the cake (if not overkill). But as this is a Clive Cussler story, naturally it also has to involve secret agents and a radioactive MacGuffin needed to power an SDI anti-missile system. Not to mention recurring Cussler character Dirk Pitt, who’s clearly being sold to the audience via multiple repetitions of his name (if you made it into a drinking game you’d die) in an effort to turn him into a James-Bond-esque franchise character. Despite the plot holes big enough to drive an SSBN through, it’s an entertaining bit of dated international intrigue. Mildly amusing

Review – No Time to Die

Looks like Daniel Craig and the Bond franchise may be done with each other, which is a good thing if this movie is where they were headed together. Plot and character development provide thin fabric for holding the action sequences together. As usual, the studio spent a lot of money on the production. But a little more time on the script might have helped. Mildly amusing

Review – Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

At this point I’m starting to lose my ability to tell the difference between Young Jack Ryan movies and Jason Bourne movies. I hope the distinction doesn’t come up during a job interview, cocktail party conversation or some other awkward situation. On the other hand, extreme generic filmmaking has advantages. Like McNuggets, you get what you ordered. Mildly amusing

Review – The Imitation Game

I loved the code-breaking parts of this tale of Alan Turing and Bletchley Park. But then I’m a fan of that kind of thing, so an average audience member might not get such a big kick out of it. The personal relationship stuff, on the other hand, didn’t do as much for me, at least in part because a lot of it was pure fiction. Still, overall the story was well told, engaging and entertaining. Worth seeing

Review – Skyfall

Five decades after the birth of the Bond series, the latest entry returns somewhat to the beginning. This go-around is at least a bit less racist and sexist than Dr. No, and the stunt work is considerably more elaborate. But the filmmakers made a conscious – even self-conscious – decision to cut way back on the gadgets and one-liners. The running time required a few more plot twists than strictly necessary. And I admit I could have done without the villain’s rat story. But overall this was an entertaining experience, considerably better than the previous two Daniel Craig Bonds. Mildly amusing

Review – Safe House

Someday they’re going to make it all the way to the end of one of these without using the phrase “off the reservation.” But apparently such an enlightened, racism-free age is not yet upon us. Nor is the day when I finally remember that just because Denzel Washington can act doesn’t mean he’s in a movie that gives him the chance to do so. This mediocre blend of noisy action sequences and predictable plot twists isn’t a finest hour for anyone, not even Ryan Reynolds. See if desperate

Review – Argo

It’s like Ben Affleck heard people calling him an actor/director and set out to prove them wrong on both counts. In 1980 the Canadian government and the CIA collaborated to sneak American embassy staff out of Iran disguised as a film crew, a real life story with tremendous cinematic potential. Helmed by the Cohen brothers, this might have been a successful oddball caper picture. A political thriller veteran like John Frankenheimer or William Friedkin might have made this work as an espionage movie. Affleck’s vision seems to be more “Let’s shoot The Hurt Locker as a comedy.” And in front of the camera, he adopts the listless, emotionally dead approach that seems to be a trend at the moment (may it vanish as quickly as it appeared). The Oscars didn’t snub you, buddy. They just politely turned their backs to give you the chance to slink away with some of your dignity intact. See if desperate

Review – The Bourne Legacy

Here we go with a new operative same as the old operative. They’ve replaced Matt Damon with Jeremy Renner, and they stirred in some nonsense about a virus. The IMDb notes indicate that Paul Greengrass, the director of the first two Bourne sequels, suggested that this round be called The Bourne Redundancy. Which hits the nail squarely on the head. See if desperate

Review – Haywire

Every once in awhile something floats to the top of my Netflix queue that I have no memory of adding. Sometimes I can’t even figure out why I might have added it to begin with. Perhaps with this one it was a desire to see something like Hitman or the Bourne series only with a female protagonist. The director does a reasonably good job with hand-to-hand combat sequences, which is a good thing because there are a lot of them. The plot, on the other hand, is weak, standard fare. They should have cut back the budget for Hollywood B-list stars in the supporting cast and spent a little more on the screenwriter. Mildly amusing

Review – XIII: The Conspiracy

Though this is based on a French-Belgian comic book from the mid 1980s, it nonetheless comes across as a half-baked blend of 24 and the Bourne series. In particular, Stephen Dorff is to Kiefer Sutherland as RC is to Coke. Sadly, with just two hours to work with, the plot tries to run so fast that it trips over its own feet. The maze of false identities and dueling conspiracies never gets the chance to unravel itself adequately. As a result, it’s hard to care who the protagonist really is or why anyone does what he or she is doing. On the plus side, at least it wasn’t as broom-intensive as the video game. Mildly amusing

Review – Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

At least it isn’t quite as bad as the last one. Tom Cruise once again plays Ethan Hunt in yet another relentless parade of expensive action sequences. Mildly amusing

Review – Highly Dangerous

A lot of espionage potboilers from the 1950s are hard to tell apart, but this one has a unique element: bugs. Oh, and a female protagonist. She’s an entomologist sent to an unspecified Iron Curtain country to spy on a secret lab for breeding dangerous insects. The story wavers between Third Man thrilling and Danny Kaye silly (especially after a brutal torture session leaves the good doctor convinced that she’s a secret agent from her nephew’s favorite radio serial). Still, it’s enough of a departure from the usual to keep it interesting most of the way through. Mildly amusing

Review - Fair Game

One thing about the Valerie Plame case that’s always puzzled me is why nobody ever seems to have anything bad to say directly about Robert Novak. Sure, Scooter Libby is the big villain (along with a handful of other folks in the Bush/Cheney White House). But if a liberal pundit had disclosed secret information that ruined the career of a CIA operative and compromised the safety of agents cooperating with her in other countries, the conservative media would be all over the serious ethics concerns raised by such an irresponsible act. And yet for Novak barely even a mention. Oh well. Overall this is a typical Hollywood telling of a reasonably interesting tale. Naomi Watts is pretty. Sean Penn is earnest. The whole thing is preachy. But as a makes-you-mad story, it does the job. Mildly amusing

Review – Salt

So if they make the movie fast and loud enough, nobody will notice that it doesn’t make any sense, right? An American secret agent (Angelina Jolie) turns out to be a Soviet mole, but she balks at her job because she’s fallen in love. And when they kill her husband … let the car chases commence! Perhaps if there are enough folks out there who like big, expensive video games better than they like movies, this will net the sequel so obviously set up by the ending. Mildly amusing

Review – From Paris with Love

Even when he just phones it in, John Travolta still manages to suck quality out of everyone and everything around him. Without him, this would have been an entertaining little foreign intrigue action movie about an intelligence community newbie trying to thwart a terrorist plot he doesn’t completely understand. But then we get the off-the-wall intel pro (played by guess who) who wackys his way through the twists and turns. The “wow, foreigners actually are all out to get us” story didn’t help matters either. Overall this will be a treat for more Travolta-tolerant folk than I in search of a loud action movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Eye of the Needle

The set-up in this spy thriller is actually quite good. A Nazi secret agent (Donald Sutherland) discovers that an “army” under Patton’s command is actually an elaborate ruse intended to draw German forces away from the real location of the impending D-Day invasion. For awhile the story stays interesting as the anti-hero evades capture and tries to sneak photos of the fake invasion force out of England. But eventually he ends up hiding out in the isolated home of a disabled RAF veteran (Christopher Cazenove) and his lonely wife (Kate Nelligan). Creepy love triangle gives way to a relentless game of cat and mouse, an unfortunate, non-thrilling end to a picture that was reasonably entertaining up until then. Mildly amusing

Review – The Informant!

Industrial espionage isn’t as inherently fascinating as the international intrigue kind more often found in films, but it still has more potential than this movie manages to realize. At its core this is the strange story of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a mid-management chemist for ADM who went to the FBI to expose price fixing in the international lysine market. But rather than just tell the guy’s story, the filmmakers start packing on a bunch of give-me-an-award nonsense. For example, Damon is clearly trying to enhance his waning credibility as an actor by pulling a Raging Bull weight gain (and doing a mediocre job at it). And that’s characteristic of the production as a whole. The quirkiness is neither funny nor intriguing enough to make up for the fact that this is a feature length movie about price fixing in the international lysine market. Mildly amusing

Review – Above Suspicion

As a horror movie buff, I’m used to Joan Crawford on the aging down slope of her career, taking any crappy job that would pay the bills and keep her in front of the camera a little longer. So it was weird to see her as the young, wise-cracking heroine of a World War Two spy movie. She and Fred MacMurray team up to play a vaguely Nick-and-Nora-Charles-esque couple asked by His Majesty’s government to detour from their European honeymoon to help track down a missing agent. Though they take to the task with brio, the plot swiftly mires in a relentless parade of secret messages stuffed in books, rendezvous triggered by watchwords and other mediocre bits of skullduggery. This isn’t the worst propaganda picture I’ve ever seen, but it isn’t exactly the best either. Mildly amusing

Review – Red

This plays out like a comic book combination of The A Team and The Bucket List (and if you’re waiting for a link to an 8sails review of The Bucket List, you may be waiting awhile). A superannuated super-operative (Bruce Willis) learns the hard way that he’s on someone’s hit list, so with a woman he’s been pestering in tow he heads out across the country in search of compatriots and answers. Along the way he picks up an old war buddy (Morgan Freeman), a nutcase (John Malkovich) and an assassin (Helen Mirren) who help him set things right. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the action sequences. Mirren was quite good, and everyone else was adequate to the task. Even Willis managed not to offend too badly. Mildly amusing