Which Films have you seen lately? 19 - Get Your Film's Name Outta Your Mouth

[EvaDK]

Watched Patriot Games on Friday, the Tom Clancy thriller where Harrison Ford fights Irish terrorists.
Probably the worst of the three Tom Clancy adaptions I've seen (Red October and Sum of All Fears). Not much technothriller in the movie, the coolest scene probably being when Jack Ryan and the CIA are watching a live feed of spec ops assaulting a terrorist camp - the level of clinic detachment gives it a feel not seen most spec ops scenes.

Otherwise, there aren't really any good set pieces and the movie climaxes with two guys punching each other.

The Jack Ryan films fell victim to the trope, that an American hero in an action film, has to prove himself as an action hero too. That's also how Ben Affleck's rather boring and harmless Jack Ryan finds himself in a fistfight with a Nazi henchmen twice his size in The Sums Of All Fears. I can imagine the producers going "We need Affleck to punch someone, dammit. He can't just sit behind a screen and talk in a phone for the whole climax, just because that's what a real intelligence officer would." The worst though is Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan realizing - to his own huge surprise - that the CIA is a clandestine organisation, involved in a lot of dark deeds around the world in Clear And Present Danger. His 'Jack Ryan' thinks he works for a boy scout organisation.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

The Jack Ryan films fell victim to the trope, that an American hero in an action film, has to prove himself as an action hero too. That's also how Ben Affleck's rather boring and harmless Jack Ryan finds himself in a fistfight with a Nazi henchmen twice his size in The Sums Of All Fears. I can imagine the producers going "We need Affleck to punch someone, dammit. He can't just sit behind a screen and talk in a phone for the whole climax, just because that's what a real intelligence officer would." The worst though is Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan realizing - to his own huge surprise - that the CIA is a clandestine organisation, involved in a lot of dark deeds around the world in Clear And Present Danger. His 'Jack Ryan' thinks he works for a boy scout organisation.

I think the boy scout organization was the commonplace conception of the CIA at the time. People believed they were the "good guys" and were not engaged in torture, spying on Americans, killing Americans, overthrowing democracies, staging coups in nations not at war, or working to favor political parties. We can look back now post Snowden and The Patriot Act, James Clapper, Mike Pompeo, with declassifications of CIA malfeasance and say, "well yeah duh these people are as evil as they come" but that wasn't the case for the average person when the film was released.

 

[EvaDK]

The CIA were exposed long before these films were made; especially in their activities in Vietnam, Cambodia, South and Central America. But I get that Hollywood tried to shape Jack Ryan as an American counterpart to James Bond of the MI6. But Bond was never naive about the nature of the job he was performing, or the people he worked for. However, both Ryan and Bond got momentarily overtaken by a new rising star in the spy action genre; Jason Bourne.

I've read The Hunt For Red October back in the day and also one of Tom Clancy's other Ryan centric novels that haven't been adapted for the screen. But I honestly can't remember if Clancy's depiction of Ryan matches the screen versions, or not. I was probably like 15-16 years old when I read them. I generally do like the films and the genre as a whole (I'm a big Bond fangirl), but I'm well aware of how politics are represented or mis-represented in them.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I haven't thought any of the film versions of Jack Ryan were exactly right. Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October was probably the closest to the books (although I haven't read the book lately, either). My memory of Ryan in the books is closer to being an American George Smiley than an American James Bond, albeit much younger and earlier in his career. My sense was that Clancy decided Ryan should be a former Marine just so he could plausibly handle a gun and not to get killed when there was violence around him, not that he was some kind of [butt]-kicker with combat experience (back then, it was more reasonable that the character could have been a Marine as a young man and not seen any action). I'm not sure who I'd cast in the role today. John Krasinski's series is fine for what it is, but it doesn't "feel" like a Clancy-Ryan story to me. Hard to put my finger on why.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

The CIA were exposed long before these films were made; especially in their activities in Vietnam, Cambodia, South and Central America. But I get that Hollywood tried to shape Jack Ryan as an American counterpart to James Bond of the MI6. But Bond was never naive about the nature of the job he was performing, or the people he worked for. However, both Ryan and Bond got momentarily overtaken by a new rising star in the spy action genre; Jason Bourne.

I've read The Hunt For Red October back in the day and also one of Tom Clancy's other Ryan centric novels that haven't been adapted for the screen. But I honestly can't remember if Clancy's depiction of Ryan matches the screen versions, or not. I was probably like 15-16 years old when I read them. I generally do like the films and the genre as a whole (I'm a big Bond fangirl), but I'm well aware of how politics are represented or mis-represented in them.

The average American however still saw the CIA overwhelmingly as a force of good. Yes, there were people who knew about those things and worked to oppose them but it was not part of the cultural norm to see them as a hegemony of evil who worked to lie, steal, and murder in the pursuit of political interests that were not aligned with the American people and often against them. I'm not saying that wasn't the case prior to The War on Terror, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden I'm just saying most of that talk was written off as conspiracy theory nuttery by the average person. If the tension of the film hinges on the reveal of their evil rather than the banality of its norm. See Spy Games vs The Good Shepard.

 

[Takhisis]

Just watched Parasite (2019), a brilliant Korean take on what used to be the Argentine ‘grotesque’ genre.

One Oscar®-winning film that actually is a good film.

10/10

 

[Sommerswerd]

Just watched Parasite (2019), a brilliant Korean take on what used to be the Argentine ‘grotesque’ genre.

One Oscar®-winning film that actually is a good film.

10/10

Parasite was indeed superb, a real treat of a film.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I've been thinking about the "techno-thriller" subgenre. It's a very narrow band, admittedly, but kind of a fun one. By definition, it has to feature technology, but it can't be so advanced that it's clearly sci-fi. It's also more of a subgenre of espionage thrillers than of science fiction or fantasy-action, even though the tech involved usually needs to be cutting-edge, if not near-future, and therefore it edges very closely to sci-fi. It's hard to slide a piece of paper between the Cyberpunk and Technothriller genres, but I feel like we have to. The sensibilities are different. It's also a genre that started in, and perhaps works best in, books rather than movies, but since this is the movies thread, I'm going to focus on movies.

Is The Terminator a techno-thriller? The Matrix? Not in my opinion. Neither are Her or Ex Machina. I also don't think technology-run-amok stories are necessarily techno-thrillers. I don't know if I'd call The China Syndrome (1979) a techno-thriller, for instance (well, I suppose it would be a "proto-techno-thriller", as below, if it qualifies at all). Are there some 007 or Mission: Impossible films that could be counted as techno-thrillers? Yeah, probably. What about Michael Chrichton movies? Is Jurassic Park a techno-thriller? No espionage element, so I'd say no.

Recommendations:

Proto-techno-thrillers, because to my memory, they preceded the use of the term:
The Conversation (1974)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
War Games (1983).

The Hunt for Red October (1990) - I think the 1984 novel on which this movie is based might have been the germination of the term "techno-thriller", even though it can be applied retroactively to things that are older than that.
Sneakers (1992)
Strange Days (1995) - Lacks the espionage element, but I can't decide it if qualifies anyway. Maybe. If a genre becomes too wide, too inclusive, it loses its utility to define things for us; otoh, if it's too narrow, it's not very useful, either.
Enemy of the State (1998)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - I think this is the only superhero movie I'd put in the category.
Eagle Eye (2008) - This one edges superclose to cyberpunk, for me, because of its use of an A.I. However, because the A.I. never materializes in any kind of humanoid form, it's never interacted with directly. iirc, it operates purely through existing communication and surveillance systems and devices. This one comes close to being a William Gibson story rather than a Tom Clancy story, if you know what I mean, but I think it still qualifies as a techno-thriller.
Kimi (2022)

Someone reminded me of The Kingdom (2007) recently. I remember liking it, but I can't remember if it had enough of the technology aspect.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I stumbled over this post of mine from January:

Looking ahead to 2022...

January 7 - The 355 - I don't actually think this looks good, but hey, it's Jessica Chastain doing a Jason Bourne-type thing. I have to try.
February 4 - Moonfall - Don't ask me to explain why I enjoy Roland Emmerich's movies, I don't want to think about it that hard.
February 11 - Catch the Fair One - Taken meets Haywire. Like Gina Carano in Haywire, Kali Reis is a genuine fighter - WBA, WBC and WBO champion at middleweight and super-welterweight - with zero acting experience. In a story about a Native American woman trying to find her baby sister among upstate New York sex traffickers. I think it was also filmed in the dead of Winter. This could be grim in a lot of ways, but it does sound compelling 'on paper.'
March 25 - Everything Everywhere All at Once - I am dangerously close to being completely over the whole multiverse thing, and I feel like it's only getting started. Still, the trailer for this one has a quirky, Michel Gondry-esque vibe to it.
March 25 - The Lost City - Oy. This could be a car-crash.
May 6 - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
June 10 - Jurassic World Dominion - Oh, for God's sake.
July 8 - Thor: Love & Thunder - In the announcement vid from Comic Con a couple of years ago, Natalie Portman looked really uncomfortable to be there, maybe even a little embarrassed. But I have faith in Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth, who's proven that he doesn't take himself at all seriously.
September 9 - Salem's Lot
November 11 - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Wow, what a pile of slop. Salem's Lot got pushed to next year, and I still haven't seen Moonfall, Everything Everywhere, or Black Panther, but I'm not sure any of these are even in my Top 10 for this year. Catch the Fair One was decent; the rest were barely watchable, at best. Clearly, my ability to predict which movies will be good is terrible.

 

[BenitoChavez]

Is Jurassic Park a techno-thriller? No espionage element, so I'd say no.

Au contraire, there is corporate espionage. Remember that guy trying to steal dino DNA samples for a rival company? It's admittedly a minor side-plot but it's there

Everything Everywhere ... but I'm not sure any of these are even in my Top 10 for this year.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is legit good. Nothing like Dr. Strange. I highly recommend it.

 

[El_Machinae]

But don't have expectations! There's also a very good reason why so many people hated it. I was in a theatre to get fully immersed, with an audience that wanted to be there. The appreciation was palpable. But 100% confirmation bias there, if someone didn't like it, I never would have known.

 

[EvaDK]

Since Egon brought it up, some other 'techno thrillers' of varying watchability: Ghost In The Shell, The Lawnmower Man, Upgrade, Johnny Mnemonic, The Net, Disclosure, Hackers, Paycheck, Enemy Of The State and I reckon that the Swedish Millennium Trilogy also qualifies.

 

[BenitoChavez]

The Banshees of Inisherin - It's set on a fictional island just off of Ireland during the Irish civil war in the 1920s, about a guy who 'unfriends' another guy. There is some amusing dialogue but it was awfully slow paced, no real payoff at the end of the movie, and it had lots of heavy symbolism that didn't really enhance the movie at all for me. Kind of disappointing because it's by the same writer and actors who did In Bruges which is a great movie.

Don't Worry Darling - About a seemingly idyllic desert town but there are lots of mysterious goings-on that point to something sinister. Not as bad as some of the online reviews had me believe. It has a great setup to the mystery and great atmosphere, but the resolution to the mystery didn't answer all the questions and in fact raised even more unanswered questions.

 

[Takhisis]

Parasite was indeed superb, a real treat of a film.

I rewatched part of it again last night! There's so many tidbits that show up again -and some that misdirect or, well, as in real life, don't lead to anything much.
It's one of the few recent films which aren't so formulaic that I can guess what's happening next.

 

[Fippy]

Yup, Parasite takes an amazing turn from comedy to drama / tension.
I laughed a lot but not in the end. Those actors sell wild stuff so well..one part of my brain thinks what a crazy story, but i was almost frozen staring at the screen for 2 hours.

 

[lymond]

In Bruges which is a great movie.

Soooo good. It's been some years now since I've seen it, so I'm due for a rewatch if I can find it. Fiennes was just masterful.

 

[Cutlass]

Saw Black Adam last week. Was Ok. Didn't love it. Good action, but wasn't really that well written.

 

[Sommerswerd]

In Bruges which is a great movie.

Yes. Not sure why I watched it, but so glad I did.

Saw Black Adam last week. Was Ok. Didn't love it. Good action, but wasn't really that well written.

Its making a ton of money, but... The Rock... so... I haven't heard great things about it, but again... The Rock... so... how bad could it possibly be? He made the absolutely terrible Jumanji reboot films actually bearable. I mean... those movies are just ridiculous, but The Rock brought an almost, "so bad its good" quality to them, without actually crossing that threshold, and inexplicably, simultaneously, without crossing into George Clooney Batman territory. The movies are just kinda "Meh", when by all rights they should be Razzies... and its all because Dwayne The Rock Johnson carries them on his mighty shoulders..

 

[EvaDK]

Fans of Parasite owe it to themselves to also check out Memories Of Murder, Snowpiercer and The Host from Bong Joon-ho.

 

[PhroX]

The Banshees of Inisherin - It's set on a fictional island just off of Ireland during the Irish civil war in the 1920s, about a guy who 'unfriends' another guy. There is some amusing dialogue but it was awfully slow paced, no real payoff at the end of the movie, and it had lots of heavy symbolism that didn't really enhance the movie at all for me. Kind of disappointing because it's by the same writer and actors who did In Bruges which is a great movie.

That's disappointing to hear, as I'm a big fan of Martin McDonagh's writing, both in cinema and theatre, and was looking forward to Banshees. The Lieutenant of Inishmore in particular is one of the best plays I've ever seen.