In TRIPLE FRONTIER (2019), a group of retired American soldiers reunite for a heist in South America that will put their warfighting skills, friendship, and moral compasses to the extreme test. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Not everything worked for me, but I liked the overall result and loved the effort.

Santiago “Pope” Garcia works as an adviser for a government in South America that is fighting the drug cartels. He learns that a kingpin is keeping all his cash at a remote house in the jungle that he turned into a fortress. Tired of mercenary work, Pope hatches a plan to steal the money for himself, but he’ll need help. So he goes home to get the gang back together in typical heist movie fashion. Only, in this case, when the gang was together, they fought in the War on Terror and racked up a haunting body count.

Director J.C. Chandor is known for making morally gray movies, and TRIPLE FRONTIER is no exception. I went into this expecting a typical heist movie with an American soldier twist and got a lot more. Though it doesn’t explore any big issues related to the War on Terror or War on Drugs, the ones closer to home are articulated pretty well. These are men who served their country with distinction, only to be left with little or nothing at the end of it except moral injury and the constant struggle to get by. This time, they are doing it for themselves, but to succeed, they may have to compromise the one thing a soldier truly owns, which is their story and sense of honor.

From Oscar Isaac as Pope to Ben Affleck and Pedro Pascal, the cast is terrific. The action is surprisingly realistic; the soldiers are supremely badass, but they look like they are earning it. The setting is beautiful and frightening in its brutality. The harrowing trek through the jungle to escape is fraught with ethical dilemmas and physical challenge.

On the downside, the characters are not supremely well drawn, which creates a weird situation in that since this isn’t just another mindless heist movie, we expect much deeper characters. I didn’t hold the movie to a higher standard, but I have to agree that when the conflict shifts to interpersonal conflict, it doesn’t feel organic nor does it have any real impact. This is a plot-driven movie, that’s just how it is. Though I didn’t particularly care if most of them made it or not.

In all, I really liked it. A total worthwhile watch and a pleasant surprise to discover as I’d never heard of it. I was particularly interested to watch it as–sorry for a small plug here–I’d written QRF, a novel in a similar vein where a group of retired soldiers comes together to do a “heist,” only their heist is to rescue a kidnapped comrade in Mosul during the Iraqi civil war of 2016. If you like TRIPLE FRONTIER, you might check it out.

In DUNE: PART TWO, Paul Atreides struggles both to find his place among the Fremen fighters resisting the Harkonnen occupation of Dune and his own apparent destiny as both Dune’s messiah and the Kwisatz Haderach, a super-being. This is pure spectacle, beautiful world-building, and a model for how to adapt a complex classic novel.

The end result is Denis Villeneueve gave me a reason to go back to the movie theater.

DUNE has a complex story, but it’s not terribly difficult to follow. The galaxy is ruled by great houses that in turn serve the emperor. A strategically vital planet is Dune, where a spice is harvested that enables faster-than-light space travel. The Atreides family is given control, though it’s a trap set by the Harkonnen family that results in a wipe-out. Paul is a major target, as a mystical order has been manipulating bloodlines to produce a super-being that can access his ancestral memories and see the future, and his mother disobeyed orders by bearing Duke Atreides a son instead of a daughter, risking a dangerous aberration. After the massacre, only Paul is left along with his mother, now living among the Fremen natives who dream of a messiah to lead them to holy war and independence–a myth the mystical order themselves created and that Paul’s mother now manipulates to benefit her son.

The second movie begins with Paul trying to find his place among the Fremen, some of whom worship him while others don’t trust him as a foreigner. He doesn’t want to be the messiah, as he believes it will lead to mass death across the galaxy. But events keep pushing him to realize his inevitable destiny.

Pretty much everything worked for me with this movie, from the gorgeous aesthetics, scenery, and costumes to the strange cultures to the solid acting performances to the breathtaking action. The movie feels epic, something I haven’t seen in a movie in quite a while. It feels even bigger than the first movie. The only blemish might be the human drama element feels a bit trim and distant, though this didn’t really bother me. Overall, I consider DUNE: PART TWO a masterpiece and highly recommend it. Fingers crossed Villeneueve gets funded to make it a trilogy.

In TOP GUN: MAVERICK, Tom Cruise returns to the iconic 80s fighter pilot movie with a sequel that is actually goddamn superb.

It’s 30 years after TOP GUN, and Maverick is stuck at the rank of captain due to him living up to his call sign and pissing off admirals. After getting booted as a test pilot, he’s given one last chance to serve the Navy, which is train a group of Top Gun pilots, the best of the best, to fly a mission into an enemy state that is preparing to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. One of the candidates is Rooster, son of Goose, who was Maverick’s back-seater in the 80s and died in a crash, a tragic mishap that still haunts Maverick.

The problem: The admiral assigned to the project doesn’t like Maverick’s way of doing things, the pilots butt heads, Rooster hates him, and the mission seems impossible, containing a set of obstacles requiring miracles.

I went into this expecting to eat more cheese than is advisable for human daily intake, and there is certainly a full platter, but I was totally surprised. Some movies are comfort food, and this movie isn’t cheese but pure chicken soup. Cruise gives a nuanced performance to Maverick, who usually pulls off what he sets out to do as he’s the best of the best, but the admirals aren’t just yelling about doing things by the book but always have a solid point. The action sequences are pure adrenaline fuel.

So I expected to do some snorting at this one only to actually love it. It’s a classic story done extremely well from the characters and dialogue to the pacing and action.

I didn’t want to postscript this with a plug, but the plot has a lot in common with my novel THE AVIATOR: WARFIGHTER, the sequel to THE AVIATOR. If you enjoy the movie, I hope you’ll check out this two-book series, it’s a lot of fun in the same vein as MAVERICK.

In POOR THINGS (2023), a scientist resurrects a young woman and protects her as his ward, but she leaves to explore the world and herself. Artistic sets and a powerful sense of whimsy elevate the film, but overall, its single note of sexual liberation drags, with a just but pointlessly vindictive ending. For that, I fell far short of loving it.

Based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, this is a feminist take on FRANKENSTEIN, in which a Dr. Frankenstein type (or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster himself) resurrects a dead woman with a brain transplant that results in her becoming a child. Tired of being imprisoned, she demands to see the world for herself, leading to an odyssey of discovery.

Bella is innocent, and the world she inhabits is wonderfully strange, a Victorian world that is familiar but with a slight steampunk bent. Quirky music, black and white switching to lurid colors, fantastic sets, and camera techniques such as the periodic use of a fish eye lens enhance the overall sense of dreamy strangeness, resulting in a FRANKENSTEIN meets ALICE IN WONDERLAND feel. Emma Stone gives the starring role her all, supported by a terrific cast including Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe.

The first act is just charming as hell, weird, seductive. Unfortunately, the movie simply drags by its third act. This is a young woman reborn in the Victorian era without regard for social convention, and while she dabbles in many ideas–the immorality of income inequality, how suffering builds character, and so on–she never really explores any of them to any point of consequence beyond sexual liberation, which is repeated to the point of actually being dull. There certainly never seems to be any internal conflict as Bella absorbs new ideas; conversely, her being unapologetically herself doesn’t fix the world. Regarding the sex, there are something like 20 sex scenes in the movie, and to make things even more uncomfortable, her early experiences with it are when she has the brain of a child. Similarly, some of the camera techniques like the frequent fish eye start to wear thin.

At the end, Bella learns her origins and gains justice, though it misses a major opportunity for her to become the creator with compassion, which ended the movie on a sour note for me.

POOR THINGS is one of those movies that proves that art, especially film, is utterly YMMV. I liked it a lot for its ambition, boldness, whimsy, artistic vision (it’s a gorgeous film), theme of sexual autonomy, terrific score, and great actors. The movie excels in feeling. I just would have appreciated it more if there was less Anais Nin (constant eroticism) and more a true episodic exploration of what it means to be a complete human, and with an ending that didn’t go for the easy vindictive win and instead demonstrated the sum of what Bella learned in her explorations.

Anyway, check it out yourself and make up your own mind. Even if the sum didn’t quite work for me, it’s totally worth catching for many of the parts.