Tag: movies

Review: Captain America Brave New World (2025)

There has been a lot of negative pre-release videos critical of Captain America Brave New World on YouTube for months. I haven’t viewed any of them. The consensus seemed to be of impending disaster, literally; oh, this is the end of the MCU, whatever. You’ve probably seen the taglines. If you have, forgit ‘em. This is a really good movie.

I don’t know military life from personal experience. The military has some weird ass standards about not inducting kids with diabetes who might have a low blood sugar incident on the field. Funny, that. But I have grandparents who served with distinction in the Second World War. My dad and his brother Wayne both volunteered and served as radio operators in Alaska during the Korean War. I have two brothers who served in the 1970s, and a niece who defused bombs in Iraq. So, yeah, you could say I’m a relative of veterans. (If I’ve left anyone in the family out, it wasn’t intentional. Sorry.)

The is the first film Anthony Mackie has had to carry the film on his own, at least within the MCU, and that he does. Sam Wilson is a soldier who understands loyalty and duty, and respects the chain of command, even when his president is a man he has no reason to trust. He can carry himself in battle without the shield or flight gear, and certainly without any super soldier serum. But if he has to do things the hard way to clear a good man’s name, even over his president’s stubborn will, that’s what he’s going to do. And that’s America, too.

Danny Ramirez joins the cast as Joaquin Torres, Sam’s sidekick and Falcon-in-training, a role reprised from the Falcon & the Winter Soldier mini-series. I haven’t seen that series so all I have to go on is what I see in the movie. From what I see he’s got a lot of heart, but he’s going to need a lot of mentoring. He seems to have a healthy bond in that regard with Sam Wilson.

Harrison Ford is an excellent choice to step into the role of General Thaddeus Ross, formerly played by the late William Hurt. Hurt brought gravitas and a certain smugness to the role, but he never projected the disdain or rage that should’ve been percolating beneath the surface. With Ford it’s all out there, the temper just ready to explode. His Ross has no time for fools, no patience for anyone who dares to second guess him. Doesn’t sound familiar at all, does it?

At the same time Ford is able to express regret at his failure to connect with his daughter, and that’s as far as I’ll go in the Spoiler Department. At the same time, it’s unfair to represent Ross as a foil for our current president. The scriptwriters were wise enough not to fill Ross’ mouth with the kind of word salads for which Donald Trump is famous.  

The plot basically circles around Ross’ legacy, a treaty he’s pulling together which involves a Celestial relic full of adamantium. This motherload is supposed to be harvested for the benefit of all mankind, all that BS, which can be read as mostly for whichever world power who claims it first. This leads to a pitched aerial battle Sam and Joaquin have to defuse with one of our closest allies, and…. nope, that’s all. Go see the movie. This ties in with a legacy hero Cap from the Korean War era, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), who’d spent 30 years in prison as a reward for his service, thanks to men like Ross.

As with most MCU films there are callbacks to previous projects, like 2008’s The Incredible Hulk especially, The Falcon & The Winter Soldier and Eternals, both from 2021. That being said, it’s refreshing to have at least one movie that’s not bogged down in Multiverse BS. I appreciated being able to follow the action without having to mentally backtrack every thread.

The most disturbing choice for me would be casting Shira Haas, a former IDF soldier as Mossad agent Ruth Bat-Seraph. At a time when her nation is committing genocide, I don’t know what possessed Kevin Faige to commit such a negative creative decision. Her character is exactly the kind of person I’d expect Ross to hire for his personal security. However, there are any number of capable female back-up characters from the Cap comics that could’ve been scripted in. including this character is morally indefensible and may sink an otherwise excellent film at the box office.

Oh, and there’s this, too…

Grizzly (1976) review

girzzly poster

Roll ’em out. Bring on the bad animals. Let’s hear it for Night of the Lepus, Food of the Gods, Empire of the Ants–Grizzly!!!

Back in the day, following Jaws (1975) there were a slew of Giant Animal pictures meant to capitalize on people’s fear of nature, the perception of nature gone wild and taking her revenge on mankind. The environmental movement was still in its infancy, which also had to factor into the prevalence of these flicks. Few of them were of Jaws-level quality, although Food of the Gods at least had an H.G. Wells pedigree. And really–giant carnivorous rabbits? Oh Deforest Kelley, how far you’d fallen. To be fair, Night of the Lepus had the excuse that it was released in 1972, three years before Jaws redefined terror.

night of lepus poster

Where does Grizzly fit into this? Released in 1976, a year after Jaws, it was spawned by a family outing where producer & writer Harvey Flaxman’s family had encountered a bear. Rightly panned as a Jaws rip-off, it had the virtue of including Teddy, an eleven-foot Kodiak bear as the title villain. Inadvertently it reunited actors Christopher George, Andrew Prine and Richard Jaeckal, who’d also appeared in supporting roles in John Wayne’s Chisum (1970). George is Mike Kelly, the Park Ranger with the dubious task of tracking down this ursine interloper; Prine is Don Stober, the unfortunate helicopter pilot, and Jaeckal as naturalist Arthur Scott.

The film does have its pluses. How often do we get to see a bear tear down a look-out tower?  Although the species in question, Arctodus ursos horribilis was a conceit invented for the film, it was based on the giant Pleistocene Era species of Short-Faced bears. These bears, of which there were two species in North America, were about the size of a grizzly but not as heavily built. It may also be one of those rare instances where you find the dumbest thing a person’s ever done, alongside the smartest thing a person’s ever done.

Dumb action first. Two hikers have already been killed. The killer has been positively identified as a bear. Armed with this knowledge, what does this beautiful Park Rangerette do? She goes skinny-dipping in a waterfall. Guess who’s behind the falls? Oh, here comes Teddy!

The movie climaxes with the smartest act. Kelley and Stober finally track down the bear, who takes down their helicopter and kill the hapless pilot. In desperation Kelley fires a bazooka right at the bear, which is vaporized in a shower of blood. Yeah, come back from that, you S.O.B.! All in all Grizzly was a cut above the rest…a slight cut, considering the competition, nonetheless…

LINKS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_(film

Short-Faced Bear

Mikes’ latest book, FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS, is available at amazon.com.  Mike’s Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.com/Mr.-Michael-Robbins/e/B00CMHSMYA

f & d cover