A Few Good Men – Writing a Final Battle
Lessons from the Screenplay examines the build-up to the climactic final battle of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men.
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G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero #276
- Title: G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero #276
- Comic Vine: link
- Writer: Larry Hama
- Artist: Netho Diaz
Part 1 of “Untold Tales” kicks off a new arc for G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero with the original Snake Eyes, Scarlett, Stalker, Torpedo, Wild Bill, Lift-Ticket, Roadblock, and Scoop sent into Northern Trucial Abysmia to capture weapons tech Alpheus Hunzucker responsible for the region’s poison gas program which has wiped out entire villages of ethnic minorities. Assisting the strike force are a pair of locals, one of whom is nearly as lethal with a blade as Snake Eyes himself.
After the lengthy “Snake Hunt” arc, this single-issue tale is a nice change of pace for the comic, and it appears to be just the first as the next several issues will be short tales featuring fan favorite characters in untold JOE adventures. The running gag of Scoop being prevented from filming the action (his one job) gets a little tiresome, but otherwise the issue works well enough.
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TENET
- Title: TENET
- IMDb: link
I miss blockbusters. Although far from Christopher Nolan‘s best work, TENET doesn’t skimp on spectacle. Tackling perception as he did in Inception, this time around Nolan plays around with the idea of time travel and inversion. The concept is far more clunky than planting an idea within someone’s mind. In fact, TENET eventually devolves into little more than super-spy pitting his skills against a villain out to destroy the world. Basically, TENET is Christopher Nolan’s version of a Bond film.
The story involves an unnamed spy (John David Washington) introduced into a secret war involving those using entropy to travel backwards in time and alter events in their favor. The science is mostly gobbledygook, but the set-up does allow for some interesting sequences involving characters moving backwards through events a second time. Kenneth Branagh is fine as the evil mastermind, although his evil Russian act isn’t as much fun as it was in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.
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True History of the Kelly Gang
- Title: True History of the Kelly Gang
- IMDb: link
True History of the Kelly Gang takes liberties with the history of Australian outlaw and folk hero Ned Kelly (George MacKay) for “entertainment” purposes. I put “entertainment” in quotes because True History of the Kelly Gang is anything but entertaining. The film is a slog through Kelly’s cheerless childhood to learning the outlaw ways and eventually running his own gang (while skirting issues of his sexuality and motivations at every turn). I’m not saying you couldn’t find a way to make an entertaining movie about a crossdressing cowboy, but this certainly isn’t it.
Adapted from the novel of the same name, the script adapted by Shaun Grant spends quite a bit of time on Kelly’s relationship to his parents (Essie Davis and Ben Corbett) and offering an explanation for where his later violence was born, but it doesn’t have much to say about Kelly as either an outlaw or a man. The tone shifts wildly from dark and brooding to at times nearly whimsical leading to an uneven experience that leaves me disinterested in learning anything more about Ned Kelly (or ever seeing this film again).
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S.W.O.R.D. #1
- Title: S.W.O.R.D. #1
- Comic Vine: link
- Writer: Al Ewing
- Artist: Valerio Schiti
Marvel resurrects the Sentient World Observation and Response Department with S.W.O.R.D. #1 with Special Agent Abigail Brand in command of the space agency looking outwards to threats to Earth from among the stars from the space station known as the Peak.
The new S.W.O.R.D. has deep ties to Krakoa, and a staff that includes a mutant contingency such as Magneto and a group of six mutants who use their combined abilities to travel through space and time (in a way that isn’t explained and takes place mostly off-panel).
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