Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is a bookish scholar who studies narratology.  Having landed in Istanbul for a conference, she is confronted by a small man who doesn't seem entirely substantial.  During a presentation at the conference, she sees a scowling ghostly figure in the crowd.  No matter where she looks, there is the increasingly angry figure that suddenly attacks!  After being revived from having feinted away, she explains that she has an overactive imagination and sometimes hallucinates.  Later, during a visit to the Grand Bazaar, she buys a bottle.  While brushing her teeth the following morning, she decides to pull the cap, which is firmly stuck by some resin.  No sooner does she pop the top than out swirls a Djinn (Idris Elba).  Though he offers her 3 wishes, she is resistant.  She knows that the wishes never end well.  The Djinn offers his tale of woe regarding his imprisonment in the bottle and his multiple attempts to fulfill the three wishes and free himself, all ending badly.

Is the Djinn just another of Alithea's hallucinations?  Are his tales just a figment of her fertile imagination that is fueled by long years of reading?  That all his tales end exactly as she predicts might say so.  However, there are times when it seems others see the Djinn.

Not at all what one expects from George Miller, most noted for his apocalyptic Mad Max films.  Then again, he also did Babe: Pig in the City and the Happy Feet series.  Interesting and engaging but not satisfying.  It is an unusual love story, a romance of two oddballs.  Then again, maybe it is the descent into insanity of a lonely woman.

Just okay.

Barbarian (2022)

It is a dark and rainy night and Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) arrives at a house outside of Detroit that she has booked online.  Though her code works on the lockbox, there is no key.  Her calls to the rental company are not answered.  Pounding angrily on the door, she is about to leave when the lights turn on.  Keith (Bill Skarsgard) opens the door.  He states that he rented the house and shows his reservation from a different website.  Though Keith offers to share the house, Tess isn't about to stay with some stranger.  She is forced to reconsider when she discovers that hotels are booked solid on account of a convention.  Keith offers her the bedroom and points out that it has a lock.  Though she is awoken in the night by someone creeping around, the night is otherwise uneventful.  In the morning, Keith has already left and she sets out for her interview.  Returning to the house, she finds there is no toilet paper and heads down to the basement.  The door swings closed and she's locked in.  Then she finds a secret room that looks like a torture dungeon.  Then it gets really weird.

Meanwhile in California, AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) is driving down PCH when he gets a call that sends his life into a tailspin.  His acting career may have just come to an end and his finances are unlikely to survive the year with his current level of spending.  As luck would have it, he owns some property in Detroit.  He flies to Michigan, gets a key from the rental company, and heads to his house.  Looking at the neighborhood, every other house is in ruins.  Two cars are parked out front.  Inside, there is still luggage.  His interest in the house is how much he can get by selling it.  As such, when he stumbles upon the secret room, he starts measuring the added square footage.

In an extended flashback that shows the fairly nice neighborhood in the early 1980s, Frank (Richard Brake) is shown leaving the house and stalking an unsuspecting woman.  The events of today are a result of the extensive crimes of Frank.

A surprisingly good, entertaining, and frequently humorous horror film.  Good popcorn fun and definitely recommended.

General Lane's Brigade in Central Mexico

In June of 1847, Albert Brackett joined the 4th Indiana Volunteer Regiment and set out for Mexico.  The regiment set off down the Ohio River and thence to the Mississippi.  By the 4th of July, they were camped near New Orleans.  A month later, the regiment had sailed up the Rio Grande to the training camp in Mier, Mexico.  After a month of marching and drilling, the regiment went back down the Rio Grande and embarked for Vera Cruz.  Brigadier General Joseph Lane's brigade departed Vera Cruz on September 19th, not yet aware that Mexico City had been captured 4 days earlier.  As the brigade marched inland, they did not know that Santa Anna intended to attack this relief column, hoping to break the Americans' supply lines and starve the US Army.  At Perote, the brigade met Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Walker who commanded a company of Texas Mounted infantry.  He had already won fame during the early battles of the war under General Zachary Taylor.  Continuing west with the Texas Mounted infantry, General Lane learned of Santa Anna's forces at Huamantla.  He marched his force for battle.  Though there had been guerrilla skirmishes on the roads, this was Albert's first taste of battle.  Though only 18 years-old, he was a Lieutenant and marched his men down the streets while gunfire erupted.  Though the Americans won the battle, Samuel Walker was killed.  The brigade soon arrived at Puebla where they lifted the siege that Santa Anna had waged; the American garrison - hard-pressed for 4 weeks - was relieved and the supply lines secured.  It was the middle of October, and the 4th Indiana would be based at Puebla until April.  After a brief redeployment to Nopalucan, the regiment marched for Vera Cruz.  Standing on the beach with the rest of Company I, he saw that 46 of the original 90 men were gone, almost all of them having died.  By July 16, 1848, Lt. Brackett was back in Indiana and discharged from the military.

This memoir is a fascinating narrative of the war and provides glimpses of the many officers and men with whom he had contact.  In these days, the states would raise companies and regiments that would support the regular army.  Volunteer forces were generally mustered for a limited time.  In the early days of the war, there were 3 month and 6 month volunteers, which dictated when an offensive might be launched.  Taylor was hampered after some of his early victories as his volunteer forces went home.  Colonel Joseph Lane had commanded the 2nd Indiana Volunteer Regiment at the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847, winning his promotion to general in the aftermath.

The book is as much of a travelogue as a campaign journal.  Brackett offers details about plants, animals, food, culture, architecture, geography, weather, and more.  He records some songs he heard, both English and Spanish.  There are short biographies of officers in his regiment and occasionally details on their lives after the war (his memoir having been written in 1854).  Some of these post-war details go too far, offering lengthy tangents that are narrated by others; it's like he copied and pasted a news story into his book to add some pages.

Certainly not a book for everyone but highly recommended for those interested in the Mexican-American War.

The Terminal List

The book opens with James Reece, Navy Seal, concealed on the side of a mountain overlooking a road toward Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  He's on a private mission and it involves murder and vengeance.  Soon, a financier in a Mercedes drives into sight and Reece puts a bullet through the windshield.  One down, many more to go.

Some months earlier, Lt. Cmdr. Reece was in Afghanistan and cursing the brass who gave his team short notice to take out a target.  It was unlike normal mission flow and had all the hallmarks of an ambush.  The brass was adamant, brushing aside his concerns.  Sure enough, just as his team is about to descend a ridge to the target location, the mountainside explodes, killing the majority of the Seals.  He calls in support and medical evac only to have a secondary explosion wipe out the arriving Army Rangers and support helicopters.  It is the largest loss of life for such a mission.  While recovering in a military hospital, the physician discovered that two of slain Seals had brain tumors.  The doctor asks if the men had been having headaches; Reece does not mention that he has been suffering headaches.  He has hardly arrived home than he learns the only other survivor from the ambush has committed suicide.  He doesn't buy it.  Worse still, a home invasion resulted in the death of his pregnant wife and 3-year-old daughter.  There is no chance that this is all happenstance.  Reece means to find out who engineered so many deaths and why.  His first thread leads him into a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of government.

There are some impolitic similarities to certain politicians who were of note at the time the book takes place: 2016.  There is a cabinet secretary who is expected to announce for the presidency and whose husband is a former politician who, while popular, is infamous for his philandering.  Gee, who could this couple be model upon?  There is no mention of political parties but there are the occasional digs against the growing surveillance state and gun control.  The villains are only too willing to use military forces inside the United States.

One of the few weaknesses of the book is that Reece seems to have just the right asset in the right place.  Most of these contacts seem entirely reasonable and fit with the life of a Seal.  A couple of them are entirely too convenient, most notably Marco the Mexican millionaire with a private commando squad and an eagerness to provide money and material for Reece's mission.  Then there was Liz, a former Army pilot who happens to work for another millionaire who gives her carte blanche to fly around the country.  Though I very much liked these characters, it is hard to see how Reece could have eluded capture for his cross-country trail of vengeance without exactly such allies.

A topnotch thriller with plenty of action, frequent suspense, and a larger serving of ultraviolence.  This blood-soaked tale of revenge sees Reece use not only his Seal training but also many of the skills that his terrorist adversaries used.  Jack Carr, himself a former Navy Seal, has written an outstanding debut novel.  Highly recommended.

Now to see the Amazon series.

Rough Cut (1980)

A hot air balloon with 'Happy Anniversary' is launched into the night sky from the grounds of a magnificent English mansion.  A beautiful woman kisses an elderly man and announces her joy at their first wedding anniversary.  Among the guests is Jack Rhodes (Burt Reynolds).  He spots a strikingly attractive woman, Gillian Bromley (Lesley-Anne Down), and tries to pick her up with a Cary Grant impression.  She is not impressed.  However, his persistence leads to a lunch date the following Friday.  It so happens that Gillian was sent to the party by Chief Inspector Cyril Willis (David Niven) of Scotland Yard.  Rhodes is a diamond thief who has never been caught and Willis has only a short time to catch him before his mandatory retirement ends his career.  Through Gillian, Willis provides details to a diamond shipment that is sure to lure Rhodes into a prison cell.

This is less of a heist film and more of a romantic comedy with a heist as the setting.  The chemistry between Reynolds and Down is terrific.  The heist is background noise while they flirt and banter, Reynolds with his natural charm and Down with a smile that lights up the room.  The heist is clever, but beside the point.  Inspector Willis was not really a likeable character, and the big twist comes too late to change that.  It was strange to see Sergeant Apone (Al Matthews) of Aliens (1986) as a musician in a Paris disco.  The gold digger wife from the opening is played by Cassandra Harris, future Bond girl (For Your Eyes Only) and wife of future James Bond, Pierce Brosnan.

This was the first Burt Reynolds film I saw in theaters, and I thought it was awesome.  Of course, I was thirteen.  I had always thought it was a big hit back then, but it barely earned back the production costs.  Even so, it's great popcorn fun.

Grim Speech with Bad Optics

Who picked the optics for this speech?  This is the standard color scheme for villains.

Like Darth Vader.

Or High Chancellor Sutler in V for Vendetta

This is exactly the wrong backdrop to use when accusing your political opponents of being a threat to the nation.  What happened to the 'uniter not a divider' theme from the campaign.  Now half the country is a clear and present danger to democracy.

Come on, man!

Arcane (2021)

The story opens in the wake of a battle on a bridge.  Vander, hulking man with steel gauntlets for weapons, escorts two newly orphaned girls away from the carnage.  The girls are Violet "Vi" and her younger sister Powder.  They are from the undercity of Zaun, which is the poorer section of wealthy Piltover.  Some years later, Vi has assembled a crew to sneak into Piltover and steal.  Their target proves to be the lab of a budding scientist who has been tinkering with magic, something long feared.  That they successful abscond with magic crystals triggers a strong response that sees enforcers invade Zaun to recover the crystals.  Meanwhile, Silco has been doing his own experiments with a drug called Shimmer that grants superhuman strength and speed.  The heightened tensions explode as competing factions clash for control of Zaun, threatening to create a rift between Vi and Powder.

In Piltover, Jayce Talis, the aspiring magic scientist, is facing potential banishment for daring to experiment with magic.  The world was brought to its knees by reckless magicians and Piltover had banned it as too dangerous.  Can he muster support from the council - notably Cecil B Heimerdinger - to not only avoid banishment but to save his research?

This is only the first act in this epic story.  The competing goals of the various characters lead to constant clashes that don't require good and evil or right and wrong.  These are solid characters with biases and dreams.  The writing is strong and at no point are characters required to do stupid things to advance the story.  That there are so many factions that find themselves sometimes allied and sometimes enemies is impressive.

On the negative, there is an inordinate number of strong females.  They aren't the usual Mary Sue (e.g., Rey Skywalker), so each of them has faults and make mistakes.  However, it was odd to see Piltover's sheriff as a woman, Silco's righthand thug as a woman, the muscular and scarred warlord as a woman, and Vi as a pugilist who takes on men who are twice her size.  Yes, this is a fantasy steampunk setting, but size and muscle mass is clearly a thing here.  There are a lot of masculine women in this world.  And, of course, there is the promise of a lesbian relationship should the series continue.

The series is based on a popular game called League of Legends.  Many of the playable characters from the game are central here, including Vi, Jinx, Jayce, Viktor, Ekko, Heimerdinger, and Caitlyn.  Each character has their special abilities and traits, which are faithfully reflected in the show.

Highly recommended.