Movie Review Top Gun Maverick

Top Gun Maverick

Directed by Joseph Kosinski 

Written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie

Starring Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell

Released May 27th, 2022

I walked into Top Gun Maverick highly skeptical. My experience of the original Top Gun was as an overly polished, jingoistic, cold war era male fantasy. Despite Tom Cruise’s magnetic performance and Anthony Edwards’ terrifically funny performance, I was not a fan of Top Gun. So imagine my surprise when the sequel Top Gun Maverick began getting terrific reviews from critics that I greatly admired. It didn’t completely cure my skepticism but it created a modest optimism. 

That modest optimism was then met and exceeded when I finally saw Top Gun Maverick. This is one terrific action movie. High flying suspense, incredible camera and stunt work, flawless special effects, everything you’d hope for on a more than 150 million dollar budget. But what really surprised me was the strong characters. The original was a shallow examination of cocky flyboys and the women trying to save them from themselves. This film smartly spends time with Peter ‘Maverick’ Mitchell and reveals his vulnerability, his empathy, and humanity.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Only the Brave

Only the Brave (2017) 

Directed by Joseph Kosinski 

Written by Ken Nolan, Eric Warren Singer

Starring Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, James Badge Dale, Taylor Kitsch, Jennifer Connelly 

Release Date October 8th, 2017 

Only The Brave is based on a harrowing true story. In 2013 the Granite Mountain Hotshots wildfire fighting team was sent to Yarnell Hill in Arizona to battle a wildfire. When the weather turned and the wind kicked up the flames in a new direction, 19 members of the Hot Shots team was caught behind the fire line. All 19 were killed despite their use of flame retardant covers which proved ineffective for this raging blaze.

Director Joseph Kosinski, a fine director of such solid efforts as Tron Legacy and Oblivion, brings the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots to life beautifully and painfully in Only the Brave. Taking the tale from the perspective of a new member of the squad, and ultimately the only man on the crew to survive the Yarnell Hill Fire, he was away from his team working as a scout, the film boils down the experience to a very human and relatable level that packs an emotional wallop.

Though it departs from the true story a tad, Only the Brave follows Brandon McDonough, a jobless, seemingly hopeless addict, who cleans up and looks for work as a firefighter. He arrives at the headquarters of the Hotshots in his hometown of Prescott, Arizona, with little experience, aside from EMT training course and looks to be a laughingstock to the members of the Hotshots crew. However, Supervisor and Hotshots boss, Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) recognizes something in McDonough and hires him on the spot.

In reality, McDonough was a three-year hotshot's vet when the Yarnell Hill fire occurred, but the film character is meant as an amalgamation, as well as an audience surrogate. McDonough, who takes on the nickname Donut because his new friends don’t like his name, is made a rookie so the film can use him to explain terminology and give us more insights into what a Hotshot does. It’s a good choice, if one that defies the true story.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review The International

The International (2009) 

Directed by Tom Tykwer

Written by Eric Warren Singer

Starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Brian F O'Byrne 

Release Date February 13th, 2009 

Published February 12th, 2009 

Director Tom Tykwer is best known for the cult classic Run Lola Run, a film that consists of one woman running almost non-stop for nearly 90 minutes with an occasional bit of dialogue and a little gunfire. For his latest and most high profile effort to date, the new thriller The International, Tykwer applies a similar formula as Lola only with a little more dialogue and gunfire but still plenty of running.

Clive Owen stars in The International as an agent of Interpol on the trail of the shady dealings of a devilish bank. This bank, run from Luxembourg, is weeding its way into the international arms market. To get there they engage in assassinations to smooth their way.

Anyone who has ever stood against the bank has died and now Clive and his partner, a New York district attorney played by Naomi Watts, are at the top of the hitlist. They must gather the evidence they need to bring down the bank before the bank's killers bring them down permanently.

The International has a certain timeliness to it that may appeal to the American zeitgeist or hit too close to home. Bankers and banks in the day and age of bailouts and bonuses make great boogeyman. Who wouldn't want to see Clive Owen kicking some banker butt. On the other hand, those who subscribe to the theory of movies as escapism may be turned off by leaving banks on CNN on their TV and finding more bankers in their movie theaters.

The filmmakers don't have anything to say about bailouts or bonuses, the movie instead bores us conspiracies involving debt accumulation. Thankfully, it doesn't linger too long on the conspiracy before director Tykwer gets to what he does best, running and shooting.

The International is a run and shoot movie. There is running and shooting in Luxembourg, running and shooting in Rome and running and shooting in New York City in an explosive and dazzling scene set inside the famed Guggenheim museum. Using the famed architecture to great advantage, the makers of The International craft one of the best gun fights we've seen at the movies in a very long time. This scene alone may be worth the price of a ticket.

The International is a movie of great energy and action invention. Clive Owen in all his rumpled, 5 O'clock shadowed glory sells the dull conspiracy by keeping the intensity at a constant simmer and managing to keep up with his director's hectic pacing. For the fan of big time action only, I recommend The International.