Remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? The best thing about that movie (aside from the monkey brains) was the simple elegance of the plot. Indy’s in trouble, and every time he escapes, he finds himself in even more trouble — a cliffhanger blown up to feature-length. The Bourne series has extended a similar [...]
Posts Tagged ‘spies’
Casino Royale
This movie stayed with me, in the way a kielbasa can be said to “stay with you” when you toss it after a night of binging on Jever at the Bohemian Beer Garden. I wrote one grouchy reviewlet for About.com, mainly about Eva Green, and to this day, the hate mail keeps coming. The funny [...]
The Lives of Others
From 1950 until the Wall came down, the East German Ministry for State Security–cutesified to “Stasi“–spied on anybody suspected to be an enemy of socialism. Through an extensive web of informants, the Stasi created a society steeped in surveillance on a scale that wasn’t completely revealed until the files were made public after reunification. So [...]
The Good Shepherd
Pretty good. Robert De Niro directs a terrific cast in a story that outlines the creation of the CIA from the thirties to the Bay of Pigs, with Matt Damon as stoically loyal spy. Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Timothy Hutton, Keir Dullea, Joe Pesci, John Turturro, and Michael Gambon make the [...]
