Some (Spoiler Free) Movie Reviews
Greyhound
I had really wanted to see Greyhound when it came out in theatres but then.. it didn't, due to being released at the height of the pandemic. I made a concerted effort to try to watch this movie a few weeks ago but I could not find any legal way for me to watch it (it appeared to be available via some television channel but I don't have a TV and am not about to subscribe to a whole tv channel service to watch one god damn movie). Then I tried torrenting it but was unsuccessful in even this. It's hard to be a pirate any more. Then I asked my friends, among whom are several leet haxxor IT professionals -- my birthday was coming up the following Saturday so I dropped that somehow acquiring this movie for me would be a nice present that should be easy and free for them to accomplish. Yeah no no one came through and I spent my 40th birthday eating pancakes by myself.
So instead Ii watched Dunkirk since it was on Netflix.
Dunkirk
At first I thought something was wrong with my sound system and actually fiddled with the nobs and the settings before realizing the movie actually begins with a few minutes of complete silence as some soldiers walk through (the town of Dunkirk?). Not even footfalls or other small noises. I guess they thought they were being artsy but I thought it was stupid and distractingly frustating. It would have been more poignant I think if it was _mostly_ silent but with some small noises like their footsteps and maybe occasional and increasing distant gunfire.
The movie plot is simple, this one protagonist soldier (do we even get his name? I forget) is trying to escape Dunkirk even if it means cutting queues, stowing away, impersonating others, etc. He has no backstory. No character has any backstory. No character has any character development. Everyone just does what they do. It also follows a fighter pilot and the civilian crew of a rescue boat. These different story lines are ostensibly ongoing simulteniously but disconcertingly it will be the middle of the night for one set of characters then we flash to another set who are experiencing daylight and back to the people who are experiencing nighttime, all within what 50 miles of eachother?
Altogether, it was a bit fun in as much as I always like WWII style settings but being that it was actually a pretty insipid movie imo. I give it a C+
Topgun II
Opening scrawl: "The Navy has established a training school for its elite 1% ... they call it ... Topgun: Maverick" and here's me thinking to myself uh what, yeah maybe they call it Topgun but I don't tihnk they call it Topgun Maverick. Okay mate we're 10 seconds into the movie and you're killing me with this grammar/syntax crash.
Saw the movie in the theatre with my friend Trent (who had already seen two other movies in the theatre earlier that day???). The movie was in a lot of places very predictable, harping on obvious themes (we get it he's getting older, has friction with superiors because he's a "maverick," and his former colleagues are all admirals now), and obvious homages to the original. A lot of scenes that made most of the audience laugh out loud had me rolling my eyes, maybe I'm too cynical.
Weird decision I'm puzzling over, so they homaged the infamous "homoerotic volleyball scene" from the original with a homoerotic beach football scene, but their one female fighter pilot is barely glimpsed in the background and was wearing a very conservative bathing suit. Were they trying to go out of their way not to sexualize her? If so its kind of weird to do so as they're overtly sexualizing the entire male cast in that scene.
Also I thought it was funny how adamantly ambiguous the movie remained about the baddies to be faced at the end. They're a "rogue state" but no location is ever given, there's no flags or other identifying features. And even their fighters are not MiGs but "fifth generation fighters." One helicopter seen is clearly a Soviet designed Mi-24 but then again they also have US designed F-14s so its hard to say they're anything other than Baddyland. The snow and pine forests seem to rule out the middle east, and its obviously somewhere adjoining carrier accessible sea. The remaining options then are coast of China, North Korea (actually this is quite plausible), Russian coast, or somewhere in Scandinavia/Baltics. This obviously is sort of an exercise in futility since they clearly want it to be an entirely fictional place, which I think is kinda a cop out (what afraid of hurting film sales in North Korea?).
Ultimately the movie does deliver on its trademark chair gripping action scenes, and I enjoyed that there was kind of a twist to the final mission rather than it simply being a success. Then I walked out of the movie theatre feeling like shit I'm 40 and I'm not even a washed up fighter pilot what am I doing with my life. Altogether I give it a B