Tag: William Mark McCullough

Cinema Dispatch: Captain America: Brave New World

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Captain America: Brave New World and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Julius Onah

Do you know what’s way more tiresome than another MCU movie? Hearing about how tired people are about there being another MCU movie. Marvel Fatigue jumped the shark a long time ago, and frankly, I see enough movies that there’s always a sizable buffer between each superhero outing so it never feels like the MCU is overstaying its welcome. Still, there have been some missteps in recent years after the one-two-three punch of COVID, the death of Chadwick Bosman, and Jonathan Majors being outed as a predator; all of which threw the entire Post-Endgame roadmap into chaos and left us for six years without a Captain America movie to kick-off Anthony Mackie’s run as the character. Is this a case of better late than never with Mackie proving himself to be just as big a star as Chris Evans, or have all the delays and shakeups at Marvel taken the shine off his coronation? Let’s find out!!

Things have changed quite a bit since The Avengers brought everyone back from The Snap; not the least of which being the election of Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) as President of the United States. With a new Commander in Chief looking to write his name in the history books, he works towards a peace treaty that will allow all nations to mine the precious resources from that Celestial that almost destroyed the world back in The Eternals while also trying to convince Captain America Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) to start a new Avengers Initiative to fend off whatever threats are out there waiting to strike. Sadly, these plans are forced to take a back seat when Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) and several others attending a peace talk at the White House try to assassinate the president. Of course, nothing is as it seems, and Sam is not about to let the government throw his friend back in jail. With the help of the new Falcon Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), the two set about to find out what caused those people to become would be assassins and if there is more to the plan than just the death of a President. Can Sam and Joaquin uncover the truth and save Ross’s plans for peace, or will all this chaos only beget more violence on the global stage? Is Ross being upfront with everything that he knows about this latest threat, or are there secrets so terrible that he would put the world at risk to protect them? I mean, I usually trust Harrison Ford no matter what, but still…

“I’m telling you, they BELONG in a museum.”     “Can we at least keep the Infinity Stones separate from each other? Maybe rotate them out of the display case?”
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Cinema Dispatch: American Made

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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American Made and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Doug Liman

Hollywood?  We need to talk.  I know that you love to make movies about people (usually white dudes) who catch a lucky break or have one useful skill that pays off which launches them into fame, fortune, and eventual ruin, but I think it’s time to stop.  Look, Wolf of Wall Street was wonderful and so was that Nicolas Cage movie from 2005, but these are starting to get stale and repetitive; especially with this film that looks so paint by numbers and generic that even Tom Cruise can barely seem to bring anything to the material.  Still, bad trailers and a tired premise don’t ALWAYS spell doom for a movie, and Tom Cruise can really be THAT good in a movie so as to keep it engaging even if everything else is working against it.  Does this film manage to avoid the pitfalls that so many films before it have fallen into, or are we scraping the bottom of the barrel to find just ONE more interesting story about a dude who found an odd way to strike it rich?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is supposedly based on the real life story of Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) who was your run of the mill airline pilot who was making some extra cash by smuggling in Cuban Cigars.  His actions don’t go unnoticed by the mysterious Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) who is a CIA agent looking to make his mark and believes he has found it in this pilot that he easily convinces to quit his job and start working for the US Government.  His patriotic duty turns out to be driving a plane with a camera on it so he can take pictures of Central American communist freedom fighters that the US has an interest in repressing and these pictures prove to be invaluable to that cause.  Eventually he gets bigger missions such as delivering intel to Manuel Noriega, running guns to the Contra fighters in Nicaragua, and even running cocaine for the cartel which isn’t QUITE what the CIA had in mind but they certainly aren’t gonna stop him from doing it.  Of course, with the CIA apparently doing all this on the down low, Barry not only starts catching the ire of other government organizations like the FBI and DEA, but also runs the risk of losing his sweetheart deals with the Cartel which is led up by Pablo Escobar (Maunicio Mejia).  Throw in some family drama with his wife (Sarah Wright) who is kept in the dark for a lot of this and his brother in law (Caleb Landry Jones) who’s a total fuck up that knows too much and you’re looking at a powder keg ready to explode right in Barry’s handsome face!  Will Barry find a way to keep the balancing act going indefinitely?  How far will the US Government under Reagan go to get what it wants and what will that eventually mean for Barry?  Wait, is this what the Top Gun sequel will be about!?

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“Without Goose, things just kinda went downhill for me…”

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