It has been 10 years since the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013. This action drama film depicts the events of the bombing and the following events in graphic detail. If you are not a fan of very violent shoot outs, this movie is not for you. Peter Berg directs a gritty film that anyone of police dramas will love.

Starring: Mark Wahlberg as Boston Police Department Sergeant Tommy Saunders (based on Sergeant Detective Danny Keeler)
Kevin Bacon as Richard DesLauriers, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston field office
John Goodman as Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis
J. K. Simmons as Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese
Michelle Monaghan as Carol Saunders, Tommy's wife and registered nurse
Alex Wolff as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Themo Melikidze as Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Michael Beach as Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick

Six Minutes to Midnight - a 2020 British movie about what happened to the girls of the the Augusta-Victoria College which is a finishing school for daughters of the Nazi elite, located in the English coastal town of Bexhill-on-Sea. The school is under surveillance by the British secret service and the English teacher Wheatley is a government agent. Realising his cover has been blown, he flees to town, but disappears before he can report to his handler, Colonel Smith. Another agent, Captain Thomas Miller, who is half-German and speaks the language fluently, is sent to replace him. When the girls head to the beach for a swim, they find Wheatley's body washed into the shallows.

Miller looks for clues and during a party he overhears a German diplomat tell PT instructor Ilse Keller, herself a former pupil, of plans to secretly repatriate the students to Germany. Miller rushes to town to tell Smith the news, but Keller follows him, shoots Smith and frames Miller for it. Now wanted for murder and unable to prove his credentials, Miller attempts to hide from the police.

Despite disguising himself as a bandsman in a stolen uniform and joining a parade, he is caught and incarcerated in the local police cells, from which he is extracted by government agents Captain Drey and Corporal Willis. Miller reveals his identity as a British agent to Drey, offering a microfilm stashed at the school as evidence of his role. They take the handcuffed Miller back to the school to recover the film, a copy of Keller's list of British spies in Germany. At the school, Drey is revealed to be a Nazi sympathiser, but Miller overpowers him and goes on the run again. Local bus driver Charlie sees him along the road, and drives him to his farm, where, believing his story, he uses a hacksaw to remove the cuffs. Miller finds a phone box miles from anywhere, and has just enough time to pass on the code phrase "Six Minutes to Midnight" to his superiors before Drey and Willis arrive. Miller, realising that Willis is unaware of Drey's pro-Nazi sympathies, starts talking. Drey turns and shoots Willis as his cover has been blown; Miller runs for it, and Drey takes his time casually shooting at Miller before sighting for the kill. Before Drey can fire at Miller again, the dying Willis shoots his superior.

Miller returns to the school, where headmistress Miss Rocholl finds her charges all gone. They have been led, some reluctantly, by Keller to a clifftop where they form two lines to mark out a landing strip as the sun begins to set. A Luftwaffe Junkers Ju-52 arrives and the mädchen light their flares and hold them aloft, but a following RAF Spitfire forces the plane to turn away just as Miller and Rocholl pull up in Willis' car. Keller pulls a gun, intending to shoot rebellious student Gretel, but Miller, Rocholl and Gretel convince her not to; the girls run to Rocholl, and Keller surrenders to Miller.

A few days later, Miller says goodbye to Rocholl in her office at the school, and the girls sing a parting chorus of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". From a radio comes Neville Chamberlain's voice announcing that Britain is at war with Germany.

Starring  Judi Dench, James D'Arcy, Jim Broadbent, Suzy Eddie Izzard, Carla Juri, Celyn Jones, David Schofield, Nigel Lindsay, Kevin Eldon, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Franziska Brandmeiern, Rupert Holliday-Evans, Tijan Marei, Andrew Byron, Bianca Nawrath, Luisa-Céline Gaffron, Joe Bone, Nicola Kelleher, Harley Broomfield, Mali Georgina Davies, Samuel Rush, Jayne Michele Pacitto, Evangeline Ward-Drummond, Daria Wolf, Patricia Winker  the movie is well acted and well written.  I'd give it 8 out of 10.

Brian Ross wrote on Apr 27^th, 2023 at 9:15pm:

Is that Tom's brother?  Gordon and Rachel's in-law?

Bob Hanks. Tom De Niro. Bbwian Ross the systems engineer.  Jimmy Mozart.

That is generous, greggery. I decided against getting a copy of Bullet Train the moment I was walking out of the cinema having watched that movie.

UnSubRocky wrote on May 9^th, 2023 at 12:15am:


I guess I was just in the right mood for some crazy comedy/violence.

I loved it.

It gets 7.3 on IMDB.

The very excellent Mr Dundee

A movie that received a lot of negative reviews from film critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Though, a negative review is not warranted for Paul Hogan's pseudo-biopic, I could not see this movie as much more than an amusing feel-good movie.

Paul Hogan stars as himself. A retired actor, living a relatively solitary life, Hogan is asked to make a sequel to his 1988 hit movie "Crocodile Dundee 2". When informed that there already is a sequel to the original sequel, the pitch meters take a turn for the worse. They offer Hogan a co-star in Will Smith to play 'Crocodile' Dundee's son. When informed that there is a problem with that because Will Smith is black, thus begins the decline in Hogan's reputation.

Throughout the movie, people and the entertainment media show contempt for Hogan, as they misinterpret Hogan's good intentions as racism, sexism, misogyny, classism, etc. And although still having friends in his inner circle, Australian celebrities have abandoned Hogan with censure.

Overall, the movie's storyline is depicted as one big spiralling into descent of an iconic comedian, whose only redemption was a good deed in trying to thwart a car thief.

I would say this movie would be good for Paul Hogan fans. But, outside of Australia, the movie might not do too well in popularity.

Dollman

The trailer basically sums up the story. An alien police officer from the world of "Arcturus" is dragged into a wormhole, in pursuit of a mastermind criminal, Sprug  -- basically a head that is transported around on a floating machine. Both crash land on Earth. The officer, Brick Bardo, finds that everything on Earth is about 6 times larger in scale than his home planet.

Bardo's first encounter with humans comes when he intervenes in a woman, Debi, who has been kidnapped and threatened by gang members. To give you an idea of the type of weapon Bardo uses, he has this large handgun that fires a type of weapon that could practically tear apart and splatter any of Bardo's homeworld people. However, on Earth, the gun is about as effective as any large-calibre handgun. Bardo kills one gang member, injures another, and has a third member running off for help. In the meantime, Debi has located her rescuer and retrieves him and his spaceship to take back to her place. Did I mention that Brick Bardo is about 13 inches tall?

'Help' for the gang members arrives when the lead gang member, Braxton Red, shows up to investigate the incident. Braxton finds the criminal mastermind, Sprug in his own crashed spaceship. Sprug strikes a deal with Braxton to help him gain control of the neighbourhood -- part of New York City's gangland where Braxton kills off other gang members who try to cross into Braxton's territory.

The rest of the movie is a basic "capture the damsel and hold her hostage for the hero to rescue" type narrative. That is basically what we have for the movie. The hero arrives, saves the day, gets the girl. I think I said that Brick Bardo is about 13 inches tall. And we are left to ponder what kind of relationship Brick and Debi will have.

The movie has a real late 1980s vibe (even though it was released in the year 1991). If you like that type of techno-beat soundtrack, the fashions of the time, and the cringeworthy dialogue, this movie is for you. I could not see this movie as anything more than a B-grade movie. Think of the movies "Dark Angel" and "Robocop" mixed together, with the low-budget look of movies of that era.

Road Games

This 1981 thriller was a movie that I watched in part, some years ago. It was late at night and I missed the first half of the movie. Then I slept through some of the last half. I wanted to watch this movie in full. After having a buffering session with my free movie download, I had finally finished watching the movie in full.

Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis star in this Australian thriller. The basic premise is that truck driver, Quid (played by Keach) is asked to haul pork products to Perth, during a meatworker strike. Upon reluctantly agreeing, Quid finds that the motel that he was about to check in had its last room taken by a mysterious van driver who had pulled into the parking lot after Quid had been parked outside for a few minutes. The next day, having slept in his truck, Quid notices that the mysterious van driver had been watching very closely from his motel window the garbage men take away garbage. Quid finds it odd that someone would be so curious about it.

On the road, Quid finds that he has passed a hitchhiker a few times. Not only that, but Quid has caught up upon his journey with the same mysterious van driver a few times, too. Upon his third passing of the hitchhiker, Quid picks up the hitchhiker, Pam (played by Curtis) and offers her a lift. After a few notifications by radio announcers and being stopped by police officers, in relation to reports of missing women and found body parts, Quid begins to suspect that the van driver might be part of the equation.

Having spotted the van driver digging a hole in the Nullabor Plain, Quid is alarmed at the plausibility of his theory about following a likely serial killer. During one of his stops, he tries to inform the police. But, the inept police department and the unhelpful locals are a frustration to Quid. And when Quid discovers that his traveling companion dog is shot by the mysterious van driver that had been waiting outside, the chase becomes personal.

This movie is pretty good for a 1981 production. I thought Keach and Curtis both kept the movie interesting. Both should be praised for coming to Australia and working on such a B-movie that ended up being entertaining.