Espionage

Lust, Caution

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  • Title: Lust, Caution
  • IMDb: link

One of my favorites from the extremely strong slate of films released in 2007, director Ang Lee‘s Lust, Caution earned praise winning Lee his second Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival but also backlash for the film’s explicit sex scenes causing it to be released in America under a NC-17 rating. Loosely inspired by an attempt to kill a Japanese collaborator during WWII, Tang Wei stars as the most naive member of a group of radicalized college students who plan to kill a collaborator (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) set in power by the Japanese occupation in China.

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Citadel – Baked Alaskas

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Citadel – Baked Alaskas
  • IMDb: link

The original, and arguably weakest, of Amazon’s Citadel shows returns for a Second Season. We begin with narration from the still-captured Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci) which works as a recap of the show’s First Season (notably somewhat reconning the most important revelations from the season finale) and also sets up Bernard as a major character rather than just a supporting player. Following Bernard’s escape, the show also introduces dimwitted shoot-first former CIA Agent James Hutch (Jack Reynor) who is going to help Bernard stop Manticore from using mind-control technology that they forced him to invent, whether Bernard wants his help or not. He really doesn’t.

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Arabesque

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  • Title: Arabesque
  • IMDb: link

Hitchcock-lite, director Stanley Donen‘s 1966 spy thriller Arabesque stars Gregory Peck as a college professor in over his head after being pulled into a world of intrigue involving an Egyptian cypher which killers, the government, and foreign officials all want translated. For a film that doesn’t do anything great, other than properly framing Sophia Loren as the film’s femme fatale whose true loyalties are always in question, Arabesque is only mildly diverting.

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D.E.B.S.

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  • Title: D.E.B.S.
  • IMDb: link

Giving off strong Disney Channel TV-movie vibes, 2004’s D.E.B.S. offers a campy teen spy story most notable for its central Romeo and Juliet star-crossed lovers romance being set between two young women on opposite sides of the law. Sara Foster stars as Amy Bradshaw, the star pupil at the clandestine academy for young women (recruited from secret SAT questions designed to uncover those with the aptitude for espionage) training them in Discipline, Energy, Beauty, and Strength.

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CIA – Fatal Defect

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: CIA – Fatal Defect
  • IMDb: link

The second episode of CIA continues the odd couple dynamic of Bill Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss) and Colin Glass (Tom Ellis) working uncover the true purpose of a foreign intelligence officer (Melinda Michael) smuggled into the United States. We get a few twists and turns along the way before the episode ends with the pair preventing another attack. Along the way Bill gets more close-up evidence of Colin spinning lies to suit the occasion (although only the audience partakes in the reveal of how much the man has lied over the course of the episode).

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