Flick Pick: Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare

 

I skipped this one at the theater, because I assumed someone had found the Giles Milton book of the same name (which title we have appropriated for similar lessons on this blog).

Which is fascinating non-fiction reading, based on Churchill's private wartime files, only declassified a few years ago. I skipped the movie named after it because I was afraid someone had Ingloriously Bastardized some cracking good WW2 exploits of the SOE and SAS, and gone all Hollywoketarded on it.

Nope.

In fact, author Damien Lewis wrote his own book with the same title as Milton's.

And Lewis was on board as one of the co-executive producers of the flick.

The Milton book (which you absolutely ought to read) is a literal almanac of Who Was Who among the British throat-slitters in WW2. Which would take 27 movies to cover. We haven't read Lewis' version, but after seeing the movie, we want a copy as soon as we can get one.

This flick, OTOH, is only about one such operation: Operation Postmaster, which was an illegal, unauthorized, and unsanctioned mission nonetheless ordered by Churchill to destroy the Italian freighter and tugboats resupplying the Nazi U-boat menace that was strangling Britain at the beginning of the war.

Yes, it's been fiddled with a tad for cinematic purposes. But it is, indeed, "based on a true story". If you've seen Euan Lloyd's The Sea Wolves, you'll have a taste for this kind of movie. (If you haven't seen that one, that makes two flicks you need to put in your to-watch queue.)

Forget that part. It's a rollicking fun-as-hell action flick even if it was sheer fantasy. To prove the point, (Spoiler Alert) the real-life versions of the cast members are shown at the end of the flick, to illustrate the sort of insane derring-do they pulled off from 1940-1945.

Apparently, for the pic, they found an empty harbor in Turkey which they could build as the double for the real location, and then blow to hell to make the film. They nailed both parts.

This was in theaters only in April, and again, because it doesn't suck up much to Hollyweird's DEI and woketarded shibboleths, it slipped in and out of theaters without so much as a ripple. Underpromoting it for those reasons, it cost $60M (probably double that), while bringing in only $26M in release(which the studio only gets half of), so financially, it was a theatrical flop, losing about $100M.

Their loss is your gain. I found it at Big Box store, which means it's streaming and Netflixing and all that other jazz, for a song.

Our rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ This movie kicks ass.

We only hope this things gains new life in home release, allowing director Guy Ritchie and Producer Jerry Bruckheimer to team up to make the next five or ten installments of this story.

Land Of Bad

Somehow, Hollyweird burped this one out just this past February, and it's already out on BD/DVD, after about 15 minutes in theaters, and no PR campaign. Which is how we found it amongst the straight-to-video junk at one of the local big box establishments.

"Somehow" isn't hard to figure out here, not because it sucks (just the opposite, in fact, which with movies these days is rare enough to be noteworthy) but because it features exactly no blue-haired lesbians, no PC woketarded crapola, no white guilt or globull warmist climastrology, no brave and strong women endowed automagically with awesome powers of mightiness by way of a vagina, and only one female anywhere within 5 spots of top billing (and BTW, she quietly kicks ass, as you'll see when her moment arrives). IOW, it shits on every Hollyweird predilection for everything bassackwards to real life, screwball, and stupidly bent that's kept audiences away from movie theaters for the last 5 years or more, with a very few exceptions.

Semi-spoiler Alert: JSOC mini-team is sent into the Philippine jungle to rescue a three-letter agency asset held hostage. The lead is Liam Hemsworth as the fish-out-of-water JTAC newbie plopped amidst the Tier One operators. His contact at the other end of the satellite uplink is Russell Crowe, as the oldest and most portly captain in the US Air Farce's drone pilot corps. Imagine Maximus, after partying with John Candy and Chris Farley at a Vegas buffet for a decade, then add 50 pounds, and you're on the right track.

Nonetheless, the flick marches, hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle, and things on the mission go to total sh*t, as they often do IRL. See the flick.

You want an epic like Gladiator or Master And Commander? Fuggedaboudit. You want comic book schlock like Commando , Battleship, or any of The Expendables? Not happening either.

You want a tight yarn about good guys being badasses, like Tears Of The Sun or Act Of Valor? Stock up on popcorn and beverages, and get comfortable.

Hollywood orphaned this movie, because it's everything they dislike, rolled into one flick.

Do yourself a favor: Give Hollyweird and their twisted sensibilities the middle finger, and buy, rent, or stream this flick.

You won't be disappointed.

Our rating: ★★★★ Danger close. Cleared in hot.

Happy Anniversary

Exactly 80 years ago tonight, 600 POWs accomplished one of the most daring prison breaks in history, tunneling and blitzing 76 men out of Stalag Luft III.

Do as you like, but I know what's showing on the tube hereabouts tonight.

Halloween Treat: A Haunting In Venice

Kenneth Branagh's first outing as Agatha Christie's brilliant sleuth Hercule Poirot was in Murder On The Orient Express in 2017, but was hopelessly overshadowed by the original 1974 film by Sidney Lumet, which was the last movie made of her works to gain Christie's full personal approval. Albert Finney was nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal, Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for it, and the flick is a cinematic classic.

Branagh followed that up by remaking Death On The Nile for a COVID-delayed 2022 release, this time comparing unfavorably with Peter Ustinov in a career tentpole role in the 1978 film, playing Poirot flawlessly in the first of six movies, three onscreen, and three for TV. Even Branagh couldn't compete with Peter Ustinov, David Niven, and Lois Chiles getting her head blown off half a dozen times in different flashbacks, and he probably shouldn't have tried.

This time, Branagh selected Christie's Hallowe'en Party as the novel to loosely base this film on in his third outing as Poirot, a book which no one else has adapted for the screen before. It was an excellent choice, and he has finally hit his stride.

If you're a fan of old Hollywood, and want to see a solid whodunit, perfectly selected for a Halloween season release, with a solid cast, clever plot twists, by a brilliant actor/director, and with none of the woketarded nonsense that infects currently and happily on-strike Hollyweird and every piece of crap they burp out, preferring instead great entertainment for your time and money, this is your movie.

Branagh's earlier attempts had him doing the role of Poirot well, but not superbly, and making decent remakes, but it wasn't anything like career-best work, certainly not up to his earlier standards, and comparing second-best even to the earlier versions.

A Haunting In Venice is more like his work back in his Henry V days, when at 29 he was rightfully described as the Orson Welles of the era, and for which film he was nominated for Oscars for both Best Actor and Best Director, back when the award denoted actual merit. If he keeps churning out adaptations of Christie's novels and playing Poirot like this, he will be back on that perch to stay.

Rating: ★★★★ - Enthusiastically recommended. And frankly, the best flick of the paltry four offerings we've bothered to see this year, to date. You should only go if you like good movies.

Settled Science

 Mr. Garibaldi nails it. RTWT

Amen.

Mood attire.

If I lived in a Constitutional Carry state like AZ, I would not wear this t-shirt. It's how I would carry an actual Beretta 92 during December. It's only fair.

And no, Gun Karens, no one would take it away from me, because of the loaded MP-5 on a three-point sling.

And even if they did take it:

Oops. No bullets.

If you're going to go with something, commit all the way, right?

Whatever you pick, we wish all Happy Christmas viewing. I'd watch this, but I've got the entire 1st season of Reacher  to binge-watch instead.

Yippie Ki Yay.

Top Gun: Maverick

(No spoilers. Okay, almost.)

Most sequels suck. Even more so, sequels based on 36-year-old original material.

Hollywood usually - in fact reliably - screws the pooch on nearly all of them, because they can, and because most producers aren't even 36 years old. Now you know why they screw the pooch so often.

This is the exception that proves that rule. Cruise wouldn't let them screw this one up, not least because he was one of the producers (and let's face it, without him, as producer or not, there is no Top Gun sequel.)

This was in the can 2½ years ago, but COVID kept getting in the way of its release, and it was pushed from a year ago to last Thanksgiving to, finally, this Memorial Day weekend. It was worth the wait.

If you didn't like the original, don't bother. If you really liked the original, and saw it in the theaters, get yourself back to one now, and see this film. Ideally, in an IMAX theater. This movie is was what IMAX was made for, and this movie was shot for IMAX. You've never seen flying sequences like this, and as Jerry Bruckheimer said in lead-in interviews, you probably never will again either.

It tells a new story, but wraps itself in enough of the original to be satisfying. They couldn't get Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins, Clarence Gilyard, or Rick Rossovich back for this one, let alone older-than-dirt dinosaurs like James Tolkan (90), Tom Skerrit (88), or Michael Ironside (72) but the use of Val Kilmer was priceless.

And if Jennifer Connelly had been cast as the original Penny Benjamin and seen in the original film, we'd get why Maverick broke rules for her, but she'd have been jailbait at the tender age of 16 when the original premiered (she did Labyrinth that year). And we've been in hardcore lust with her since at least 1991, when she did both Career Opportunities and The Rocketeer (both of which you should catch some time, even if just for her). It also helps that at 51 now, and 48 when this was filmed, time has been far kinder to her than it has to currently best-left-in-your-80s-memories Kelly McGillis, now 64, and looking like somebody's cat-lady box wine granny. >shivers<. (Don't look. You were warned.)

You want to know spoilers, beyond the eleventeen trailers released over the last two years? Okay: you haven't seen your last Tomcat dogfight. Want more? Go. See. The. Movie.

You won't be disappointed. 

Our Rating: Fleet Admiral - 5 stars.

"Maverick is cleared for launch on Cat 1..."

One Frame Movies

 h/t Daily Timewaster