Media Captures June 2024

 MOVIES

The Last Stop in Yuma County – 9

Is a gas station.  It’s out of gas.  A cast of characters gather at the local café, awaiting the fuel truck. There’s nothing else for miles.    Two of them have just robbed a bank.  Soon, everyone figures that out, and chaos ensues in a Tarantino kind of way.  Imagine a Pulp Fiction where they never left the diner.

This is one of those movies with the right blend of tension, humor, and violence.  It’s gotten a lot of good press, so I paid for it.  Universally well done, I don’t want to tell you much more because it would spoil the surprises, although by the time it hits the streamers you will have forgotten the following:

Francis Galluppi is the director, and it must be awfully hard for a new director to break in, but this movie signals a lot of promise.  Jim Cummings has the most prominent role as a travelling knife salesman, an attribute that comes in handy.  The actor that steals the show is Richard Blake as the most menancing of bank robbers.  As greed begins to take over the various customers, he realizes that since he’s outnumbered, he has to turn it up a notch.  Good movie, well worth a watch.

Hit Man – 9

New star Glen Powelll jumped from his minor role in Maverick to a couple of higher profile opportunities.  He co-wrote this with renowned director Richard Linklater, and since it’s about a real person who lived in New Orleans, I was prone to watch. 

Gary Johnson is barely noticeable as a teacher, but he contracts out as an undercover hit man for the New Orleans Police Force, which given the history of crime in NOLA is pretty surprising, that NOPD would be that inventive.  But, Gary is quite inventive and gets better and better at entrapping dumbasses until inevitable complications arrive.  I have no idea how much of this story is true, but it’s compelling and fun, and Glen may be headed for stardom.  But, I have a pretty poor track record on such predictions. 

Trigger Warning – 1

There I was, waiting patiently for the reappearance of Jessica Alba in this Netflix vehicle.  I wish I had never seen it.  Painfully implausible, more painfully horrible, Jessica plays a war vet returning for her Dad’s funeral to find out that his death in a mine was mysterious. An inordinate amount of time is spent in the mine, and it all left me in the dark.  I can’t believe I watched this.

 

STREAMING/BINGING and what’s left of Network Television

Tehran – 10

If I would have run for President I would have had a lot of areas where I would have needed guidance, but none more than the middle east.  I don’t understand it. Unfortunately, I’ve learned most of what I know from a sereies called “Homeland.”  I read this article ranking Apple+ series, and it ranked this as their best production, even ahead of Ted Lasso, so I dug in and swallowed season one of “Tehran” and found it not only educational on Israel and Iran, but a thrilling spy story, that grabbed me in the first episode and never let go.

Niv Sultan plays Tamar, a Mossad hacker who is trying to disable the Iran defenses so that Israel can bomb the nuclear sites, because “we can’t let Iran get the bomb.”  Aside from some makeup problems (her wounds from a beating go away rather quickly) she is a most compelling character, who has to constantly improvise and evade detection.  It’s cool stuff.

This Israeli series was the first to win an international emmy for best drama series, and in subsequent seasons it has started to add high profile talent.  Can’t wait.  If you have Apple+, dig in to this spy thriller and thank me later.