A good chase and some good explosions.
Conventional rendering of computer hack as jigsaw puzzle.
Morally dubious main character dissipates audience affect.
But it had to be better than Pearl Harbor.
The Art of War
This movie is more like what MI-2 should have been. See below.
Good action sequences, especially that shootout in a hallway at the UN building.
Wesley Snipes acts fit enough to be credible as the UN covert operative, although his
ability to survive falls is inhuman.
The plot is murky but has some twists. What did the deaths of illegal Chinese immigrants
have to do with anything? It is confusing at best, or just wrong, to have the hero
thinking about chasing the assassin of the Chinese premier when he is chasing his
traitorous partner. The partner could not have shot the premier because he was posing as
a photographer at the press conference, on the first floor, when the shot came from the
second floor.
I would rather see a sequel to The Art of War than another Mission Impossible starring
Tom Cruise.
Mission:Impossible II
Mission Implausible.
In discourse analysis, rhetoricians consider the relationship between cohesion
and coherence.
A movie that seems good on paper may fail to satisfy an audience because of
discontinuity of discourse.
The audience's sense of continuity depends on a prior knowledge of a schema.
Unfortunately, this can equate to a formula. The audience knows Tom
Cruise as Ethan Hunt is not going to be with Nyah in the next movie, and the
cohesion principle of intensity is disrupted for the audience by pasting an
unconvincing romance into this action movie.
John Woo has been quoted as saying that Tom Cruise wanted to avoid making
Ethan Hunt too much like James Bond. He does not want to make a series of
movies following the same scheme. He wants humanity and he wants to get the
audience to care about the characters.
So they resorted to giving Ethan Hunt a love interest.
Duh.
What's next: the son we never knew Ethan had?
The romance segments of the movie annoy the audience because the local
cohesion elements of those scenes do not contribute to the global cohesion of
the complete work, despite the efforts of Robert Towne.
The audience senses the psychological discontinuity of the characters.
They blame their dissatisfaction mistakenly on the plot being too
complicated.
People were running out of the theatre during the final scene where
Hunt and Nyah are walking into the sunset because the audience knows
instinctively that such a scene does not belong in such a movie.
It would have been more convincing and more satisfying for the audience if
Hunt revealed to Nyah at the end that as a cold-blooded professional secret
agent he was exploiting her as part of his mission.
But Tom Cruise is a star and he wants to be smirking and grinning and going
for the cheap emotionality which is unconvincing and disruptive to the filmic
discourse.
Gladiator
Sharply realized Roman Empire, despite some low-resolution digital effects,
with admirable hero, despicable villain, and beheadings and impalements calls
back the sand-and-sandal epic to cinema.
Recommended for fans of intrigue and sword-fights.
Hail, Maximus!
U-571
Intense submarine action. Looks and sounds great. Bill Paxton seemed to be
asleep as the sub captain. Matthew McConaughey was good as the XO.
Harvey Keitel was excellent, as usual. Other cast, mostly unknowns, seemed to
drift in some scenes. Perhaps the director was more worried about spending
$60 million than eliciting performances. But this movie is worth seeing,
especially on the big screen. It will lose impact on your home screen.
Capture of Enigma equipment and codebooks was accomplished by British and
Canadian naval forces before the USA joined the war. British sailors boarded
German trawlers and seized their Enigma machines as early as April 1940. HMS
Petard captured Enigma codebooks from the U-559 in October 1942.
The only American capture of naval Enigma codebooks and apparatus, from U-505,
occurred in June 1944.
I recommend The Bedford Incident
, which is about a Cold War destroyer hunting a submarine in the Arctic.
Anyone interested in reading a novel about a convoy to Murmansk in WWII might
enjoy HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean.
Click on the film-strip icon for movies I saw in '98 and '99.
This movie is more like what MI-2 should have been. See below.
Good action sequences, especially that shootout in a hallway at the UN building.
Wesley Snipes acts fit enough to be credible as the UN covert operative, although his ability to survive falls is inhuman.
The plot is murky but has some twists. What did the deaths of illegal Chinese immigrants have to do with anything? It is confusing at best, or just wrong, to have the hero thinking about chasing the assassin of the Chinese premier when he is chasing his traitorous partner. The partner could not have shot the premier because he was posing as a photographer at the press conference, on the first floor, when the shot came from the second floor.
I would rather see a sequel to The Art of War than another Mission Impossible starring Tom Cruise.
Mission:Impossible II
Mission Implausible.
In discourse analysis, rhetoricians consider the relationship between cohesion
and coherence.
A movie that seems good on paper may fail to satisfy an audience because of
discontinuity of discourse.
The audience's sense of continuity depends on a prior knowledge of a schema.
Unfortunately, this can equate to a formula. The audience knows Tom
Cruise as Ethan Hunt is not going to be with Nyah in the next movie, and the
cohesion principle of intensity is disrupted for the audience by pasting an
unconvincing romance into this action movie.
John Woo has been quoted as saying that Tom Cruise wanted to avoid making
Ethan Hunt too much like James Bond. He does not want to make a series of
movies following the same scheme. He wants humanity and he wants to get the
audience to care about the characters.
So they resorted to giving Ethan Hunt a love interest.
Duh.
What's next: the son we never knew Ethan had?
The romance segments of the movie annoy the audience because the local
cohesion elements of those scenes do not contribute to the global cohesion of
the complete work, despite the efforts of Robert Towne.
The audience senses the psychological discontinuity of the characters.
They blame their dissatisfaction mistakenly on the plot being too
complicated.
People were running out of the theatre during the final scene where
Hunt and Nyah are walking into the sunset because the audience knows
instinctively that such a scene does not belong in such a movie.
It would have been more convincing and more satisfying for the audience if
Hunt revealed to Nyah at the end that as a cold-blooded professional secret
agent he was exploiting her as part of his mission.
But Tom Cruise is a star and he wants to be smirking and grinning and going
for the cheap emotionality which is unconvincing and disruptive to the filmic
discourse.
Gladiator
Sharply realized Roman Empire, despite some low-resolution digital effects,
with admirable hero, despicable villain, and beheadings and impalements calls
back the sand-and-sandal epic to cinema.
Recommended for fans of intrigue and sword-fights.
Hail, Maximus!
U-571
Intense submarine action. Looks and sounds great. Bill Paxton seemed to be
asleep as the sub captain. Matthew McConaughey was good as the XO.
Harvey Keitel was excellent, as usual. Other cast, mostly unknowns, seemed to
drift in some scenes. Perhaps the director was more worried about spending
$60 million than eliciting performances. But this movie is worth seeing,
especially on the big screen. It will lose impact on your home screen.
Capture of Enigma equipment and codebooks was accomplished by British and
Canadian naval forces before the USA joined the war. British sailors boarded
German trawlers and seized their Enigma machines as early as April 1940. HMS
Petard captured Enigma codebooks from the U-559 in October 1942.
The only American capture of naval Enigma codebooks and apparatus, from U-505,
occurred in June 1944.
I recommend The Bedford Incident
, which is about a Cold War destroyer hunting a submarine in the Arctic.
Anyone interested in reading a novel about a convoy to Murmansk in WWII might
enjoy HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean.
Click on the film-strip icon for movies I saw in '98 and '99.
Mission Implausible.
In discourse analysis, rhetoricians consider the relationship between cohesion and coherence.
A movie that seems good on paper may fail to satisfy an audience because of discontinuity of discourse.
The audience's sense of continuity depends on a prior knowledge of a schema. Unfortunately, this can equate to a formula. The audience knows Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt is not going to be with Nyah in the next movie, and the cohesion principle of intensity is disrupted for the audience by pasting an unconvincing romance into this action movie.
John Woo has been quoted as saying that Tom Cruise wanted to avoid making Ethan Hunt too much like James Bond. He does not want to make a series of movies following the same scheme. He wants humanity and he wants to get the audience to care about the characters.
So they resorted to giving Ethan Hunt a love interest.
Duh.
What's next: the son we never knew Ethan had?
The romance segments of the movie annoy the audience because the local cohesion elements of those scenes do not contribute to the global cohesion of the complete work, despite the efforts of Robert Towne.
The audience senses the psychological discontinuity of the characters.
They blame their dissatisfaction mistakenly on the plot being too complicated.
People were running out of the theatre during the final scene where Hunt and Nyah are walking into the sunset because the audience knows instinctively that such a scene does not belong in such a movie.
It would have been more convincing and more satisfying for the audience if Hunt revealed to Nyah at the end that as a cold-blooded professional secret agent he was exploiting her as part of his mission.
But Tom Cruise is a star and he wants to be smirking and grinning and going for the cheap emotionality which is unconvincing and disruptive to the filmic discourse.
Sharply realized Roman Empire, despite some low-resolution digital effects, with admirable hero, despicable villain, and beheadings and impalements calls back the sand-and-sandal epic to cinema.
Recommended for fans of intrigue and sword-fights.
Hail, Maximus!
Intense submarine action. Looks and sounds great. Bill Paxton seemed to be asleep as the sub captain. Matthew McConaughey was good as the XO. Harvey Keitel was excellent, as usual. Other cast, mostly unknowns, seemed to drift in some scenes. Perhaps the director was more worried about spending $60 million than eliciting performances. But this movie is worth seeing, especially on the big screen. It will lose impact on your home screen.
Capture of Enigma equipment and codebooks was accomplished by British and Canadian naval forces before the USA joined the war. British sailors boarded German trawlers and seized their Enigma machines as early as April 1940. HMS Petard captured Enigma codebooks from the U-559 in October 1942. The only American capture of naval Enigma codebooks and apparatus, from U-505, occurred in June 1944.
I recommend The Bedford Incident , which is about a Cold War destroyer hunting a submarine in the Arctic.
Anyone interested in reading a novel about a convoy to Murmansk in WWII might enjoy HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean.