My Ten Favorite New-to-Me Movies of 2022

Happy New Year!

No time like the present to look back over my movie-watching for the past year and share what my ten favorite new-to-me movies were, right?  Here we go!

1. The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) A British hunter (Stewart Granger) masquerades as the king (Stewart Granger) of a small European nation so that the king's enemies (including James Mason) can't usurp the throne while the king lies ill.  Things get complicated when the fake king falls in love with the woman (Deborah Kerr) who is intended to marry the real king.  Much swashbuckling ensues.

2. 36 Hours (1964) A high-ranking Allied officer (James Garner) is kidnapped by Nazis just before the Normandy invasion so they can try to trick him into telling them where the Allies intend to invade.  This movie kept both my husband and I on the edges of our seats, in the best way possible.  Absolutely terrific.

3. Hamlet at Elsinore (1964) Marvelous production of Hamlet actually filmed in the Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, Denmark.  Hamlet (Christopher Plummer) must figure out if his uncle-stepfather Claudius (Robert Shaw) actually killed his father or not.  He's assisted by his friend Horatio (Michael Caine), but eventually loses his throne to Fortinbras (Donald Sutherland) after all.

4. Paris When it Sizzles (1964) A screenwriter (William Holden) tries to cure his writer's block and write his next smash hit with the help of a typist (Audrey Hepburn) with quirky and funny results. I feel like Alex and Emma (2003) is basically a remake of this movie, though I suppose they might both just be inspired by the true story of Fyodor Dostoyevsky writing a book under a tight deadline with the help of a stenographer that he fell in love with and subsequently married.

5. Lilies of the Field (1963) A wandering handyman (Sidney Poitier) gets conned into helping a group of German nuns build a new chapel.  This is an oddball movie, and no mistake, but filled with sweet charm.

6. Gold of the Seven Saints (1961) Two fur trappers (Clint Walker and Roger Moore) find gold and then try to keep two different bands of outlaws from finding and stealing it.  It's a story that's been told onscreen quite a few times, but I love that the treasure didn't actually make these two friends have a falling-out AND there is one line that Clint Walker says at the end that is so unequivocally perfect and unexpected and wonderful that I must love this movie.  Also, Roger Moore as a fur trapper must be seen to be believed.

7. The Beautician and the Beast (1997) A New York City beauty school teacher (Fran Drescher) gets hired to teach the children of an East-European Dictator (Timothy Dalton) because one of his aides thinks she's a science teacher.  I love how they fall in love because she's the first person who has told him the straight truth and treated him like a person in a very long time, and how her kind heart keeps her truth-telling constructive instead of destructive.  

8. Wild Harvest (1947) Two friends (Alan Ladd and Robert Preston) own and lead a group of combine harvesters who travel around harvesting crops for farmers.  They have a falling out over a woman (Dorothy Lamour) who marries one of them but desires the other.  Yes, it's a movie about guys harvesting crops.  Yes, the whole thing is held together by the buddies-to-enemies dynamic between Ladd and Preston.

9. Top Gun: Maverick (2022) An unruly pilot (Tom Cruise) teaches a bunch of hotshot pilots how to not get killed on an important mission.  Actually has more of a plot than the first Top Gun (1986), and I love how they were able to include Val Kilmer despite his health problems.

10. The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) A British hunter (Ronald Colman) masquerades as the king (Ronald Colman) of a small European nation so that the king's enemies (including Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) can't usurp the throne while the king lies ill.  Things get complicated when the fake king falls in love with the woman (Madeleine Carroll) who is intended to marry the real king.  Much swashbuckling ensues.

Um, yes.  Two different versions of The Prisoner of Zenda are on this list.  And what makes those wilder is that they used the exact same shooting script for both of them.  I like the 1952 better, mostly because I like all three leads much more, but the 1937 is really excellent too.

Some years, it's tricky to come up with a top ten because I watched so many good new movies, I have trouble deciding on ten.  Some years, it's easier because I didn't watch that many new-to-me movies that I loved.  This was one of those years -- I think I came up with 12 possibles for this list, so narrowing it down to ten wasn't hard at all!

"Top Gun: Maverick" (2022) -- Initial Thoughts

Are you looking for an adrenaline rush movie with repeated jolts of excitement?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick (2022).

Do you want a feel-good movie?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick.

In the mood for a gentle romance between two mature adults who don't jump into bed the moment they lay eyes on each other?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick.

Need a shot of nostalgia that leaves you happy, not lonely?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick.

Looking for an unapologetically pro-American military movie?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick.

Have you missed summer blockbusters that didn't involve aliens or robots or monsters?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick.

Want a movie that will make you laugh and cry both?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick.

Wondering just how good Tom Cruise still looks on a motorcycle?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick.

Really curious as to how they worked Val Kilmer's character Tom "Iceman" Kazansky into the plot, knowing that Kilmer has battled cancer and lost his voice?  Go see Top Gun: Maverick.  (Spoiler: it was clever and well-done and respectful.)

Seriously, this movie was FAR better than I expected.  Granted, I've only seen Top Gun (1986) maybe four or five times, and most of those were when I was in college.  But what I remember of it was not nearly as nuanced or emotionally satisfying as this one is.  I am impressed.

(And, yes, Tom Cruise still looks really good on a motorcycle.  But it's highly unfair that the man turns sixty this year and still looks that good in jeans and shirtless.)

This post is dedicated to Colonel Michael A. Haack, USAF (Ret.), my real-life hero.  Every time I watch a movie that involves the Air Force, particularly fighter pilots, I think of my cousin Mike.

Movie Music: Danny Elfman's "Mission: Impossible" (1996)

Way back when this movie came out, my brother and I pooled our money and bought the soundtrack together because we loved the movie so much. We listened to it All The Time. We especially thought it was awesome as background music when we were playing with our Star Trek action figures -- we memorized which tracks were which so we could cue up exactly what we needed for whatever was going on in our tiny fictional universe.

So, today I'm going to share my favorite tracks from the soundtrack. And I'm of course going to begin with the iconic theme song. It's an instant smile-inducer for me :-)

My mom had this book from the 1960s that had the sheet music for the theme song from the original TV show, and I figured out a jazzed-up version of it to match this one and memorized it. Did I mention that I really love this soundtrack (and movie) a lot? Thanks to this, Dick Tracy, and Men in Black, Danny Elfman was possibly my favorite composer in the '90s.

I think my favorite track of all is "Zoom B" because it's basically an adrenaline rush set to music.

But I also love "Betrayal." It's very minor, and feels shadowy, mysterious, kind of chilling.

Okay, that's it for today, my friends. As Jack Harmon says, hasta lasagna!

(This review originally appeared here at J and J Productions on August 15, 2015.)

"Mission: Impossible: Fallout" (2018) -- Initial Thoughts

Okay, so that was an incredibly stressful movie.  Eventually.  Not at first!  At first, it was quite fun.  Fun and bouncy and lots of little "haha, got you!" moments where they trick people with their masks and their tech and so on.  

Spoilage marked!

(SPOILER) All the scenes in the trailer, where it looks like Henry Cavill's throwing Tom Cruise thru walls and stuff?  Totally not.  Henry and Tom are working together to fight other people.  But then it all twists, and Henry's actually the bad guy, but he's convinced the CIA that Tom's the bad guy, and everybody's after him except Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames (END SPOILER), and it's all kinds of cat-and-mouse chases, which were fun, except there were a LOT of chase scenes.  

Oh, but there was one chase scene that busted me up because it HAS to be a nod to The Man from UNCLE (2015) -- Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill in a truck that they drive full-speed through an increasingly narrow alley until it gets stuck.  And since Tom was originally cast to play Napoleon Solo, but then Henry ended up stepping into the role because of M:I Rogue Nation going over its shooting schedule or whatever, and so it was really fun while Henry and Tom were working together (but never getting along) because of UNCLE thoughts.

And they wound Tom Cruise up and let him start running, and I think he ran for like 10 minutes.  Just ran and ran and ran and ran and ran.  Because he's Tom Cruise.  It's what he does.

Anyway, the ending was horribly tense, with him hanging off this helicopter and I have nightmares like that where I'm hanging off something and I lose my grip, and that's what happens to him, so I had to remind myself it was just a movie, he was going to be fine.  And if I have to do that, then it's too tense, because I have to purposely remove myself from the movie, and that's just annoying.  Then he and Henry were fighting at the edge of this cliff, and you know they're going to go over the cliff, and I was like, "JUST FALL ALREADY AND GET IT OVER WITH!" and then they did, and I was like, "It's just a movie, it's just a movie, nobody actually fell over that cliff," because that's my real-life fear, watching people fall off cliffs.

And so yeah, it was really tense and maybe I'll watch it again on DVD, but maybe not because I think that jumping jacks and bike rides are safer ways to get in my cardio workout than jacking up on that much adrenaline and terror.

(SPOILER) Also, they killed Alec Baldwin and I'm ANGRY.  (END SPOILER)

But Rebecca Ferguson was gorgeous and tough and I loved her.  

And Simon Pegg was funny, and Ving Rhames was loveable, and so that made me happy.

And I sat next to this lovely lady who was probably in her 70s, and she just got the biggest kick out of this movie.  It was like sitting next to my dad -- she totally reacted to stuff the way he does.  She was having the time of her life, and I should've like asked her to be my friend or something because she must be a barrel of fun to hang out with.  When it was done, she was all, "Whoooeee, that was a wild ride!" and I wanted to hug her, hee.

So, those are my initial thoughts.  Which were originally my email to DKoren when I got home from the movie, and I said all I had to say about the movie in that email, so I figured, why write it up twice?  And just shared it with you, with spoilaged marked :-)

Is this movie family friendly?  Contains the F-word and some other bad language.  LOTS of non-gory violence of the punching and stabbing and shooting sort.  One scene that involves strangulation and is hard to watch.  No innuendo or smutty scenes.

Guest Post About the First "Mission: Impossible" Soundtrack

I've got a new guest post up here on J and J Productions, all about the soundtrack for the very first Mission:  Impossible (1996).  I have a lot of memories from my later teen years associated with this soundtrack.  My brother and I would put it on as background music while we played with our action figures, I listened to it while doing schoolwork in the basement, and I also used it for inspiration while trying my hand at writing a little science fiction.

"Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation" (2015) -- Initial Thoughts

I kind of think of the Mission:  Impossible movies as sort of James Bond's nerdy cousin.  Fewer tuxedos, more sneakers.  Fewer exploding pens, more off-site computer hacking.  Attractive in its own way, but not actually stylish.

Turns out that nerdy cousin cleans up awfully well, though.  In the latest movie, we get treated to a lot of more Bond-like set pieces, with tuxes and slinky dresses and the sorts of stylish locations we'd expect from 007.  In fact, one of the things that I like best about Rogue Nation is how it cheekily grabs from so many other bags of tricks, though I can't decide if it's doing this as an homage, or more of a game of sly one-upsmanship.

For instance, a lot of time is spent at the opera, just like in Quantum of Solace (2008).  They use Turandot instead of Tosca -- but both are operas by Puccini.  Both movies have fight scenes that take place behind the opera's scenery, with ethereal music juxtaposed over brutal violence.  But the fight scene in Solace is a mess -- the worst use of shaky-cam I can ever remember seeing.  Both James Bond and his opponent are dressed in black suits, and the camera shakes around so much you can't tell who is slugging whom.  The fight in Rogue Nation, by contrast, is elegant, simple, clear.  Far superior.  Feels a bit like the filmmakers are saying, "Hey, we can do this better.  Let's take your mess and make something good out of it."

Later, there's a very lovely car-and-motorcycle chase scene that involves driving a car down a bunch of steps, very reminiscent of The Bourne Identity (2002).  There's also a scene where Tom Cruise is in an upside-down car, echoing his own Collateral (2004).  Even one of the official posters tosses in what seems to be an homage to the iconic poster for Tom Cruise's Risky Business (1983).

For a movie-lover like me, all those nods are kind of like secret handshakes or an extra toy in the Crackerjack box, I guess.  If you get them, it's extra awesome, but if you don't, the movie is still really fun.

Anyway, kudos to this film for creating a female spy (Rebecca Ferguson) who isn't simply there for sex appeal, to get rescued by the hero, or any other lame things.

Ilsa Faust is strong and smart, and my favorite thing about her inclusion is how none of the guy spies stand around with their jaws open going, "A girl can do that?"  She's a spy who happens to be a woman, not a woman who happens to be a spy -- they completely accept her as an equal, and that tickled me.  For instance, rarely does Ethan Hunt need rescuing, ever, but when Ilsa rescues him, it doesn't feel smarmy or symbolic, it feels like nothing more than one agent rescuing another, which was so refreshing.  She's the coolest female agent I've seen since Black Widow, and has a similar can-do vibe.  Also, I really dug Ferguson in Hercules (2014), so it's great to see her in a bigger role and bigger movie!  I hope to see more of her, and soon.

Here's the funny thing, though:  I'm not a feminist.  I don't go around singing, "Anything you can do, I can do better."  I don't need a female character to kick butt to think of her as strong.  I firmly believe there are some things most men are better at, and some that most women are better at.  However, I've kinda always wanted to go around punching people and riding motorcycles and rescuing secret agents, so when I get to watch a female character do that, I'm quite pleased.  Especially if she's accepted by all the guys.

Is it family friendly?  A scattering of bad language, lots and lots of PG-13-level violence, there's a torture sequence with little actual torture involved, there's a teensy bit of from-the-waist-up-and-from-behind nudity in a non-sexual context, and there are lots of very tense moments.  One of the most family friendly action movies I've seen -- no sex scenes, not even any kissing, and refreshingly little profanity.  Ilsa does wear a pretty skimpy bikini, though.

Bottom line?  I wanna see this again!

Dad and Grandma O. are here for a couple days, on their way to points west of here. So Cowboy and I had supper with them last night and hung out for a while at their hotel. And tonight I had supper with them again, and then Daddy and I went to see Mission: Impossible 3!

I liked it. I liked it almost as well as the first one, and waaaaaaaaaaaay better than the second. The first one was sizzlingly original, while the second one was too informed by The Matrix and used too many identity-switches. This one is more informed by the Bourne movies, with wham-bang collisions and the use of random common objects as weapons (both a pen and a phone receiver, ala Bourne), but with crunchier fights (I do like the mind-altering swifty fights of the Bourne movies, but this was a movie about losing blood and getting hurt, so those wouldn't have worked).

M:I and M:I 3 are kind of like James Bond got buddies and some street smarts, lost his unrufflable tux-clad exterior somewhere along the way, but retained his gadges and panache. If that makes any sense. I'm tempted to rewatch the first one tonight, to see if it's as shiny as I remember. It's been several years since I watched it...