Because it’s fantastic, and because it’s got four cheeses: Swiss, muenster, mozzarella and mild cheddar. (Diet be damned.) Yet it’s still not as cheesy as the 2005 movie with Ioan Gruffudd. (Sorry.)
Is it good? It is worthy of the Baxter Building dining room. The only thing missing here is a cameo by Stan Lee in your goddam kitchen.
BY the way, I am indeed employing the British spelling of “omelette” here, because the American “omelet” will always look wrong to me. And if it’s one thing that I know, it’s omelettes.
This is it, folks. This is the greatest movie of all time. It’s better than “Blade Runner” (1982), better than John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), better than “Aliens” (1986). And those movies were all … perfect. (Man the 1980’s really were a golden age for pop culture, weren’t they?)
I was eight years old when I saw this in the theater, and I thereafter was a bit of an Indiana Jones cultist. It wasn’t just the action figures and board games and comic book and posters and role-playing games. I actually resolved to become an archeologist (or a paleontologist), and I thought the best way that I could prepare for that as a third grader was to gain experience “in the field.”
So I would lead my friends on “digs” or “expeditions” in the forests around my neighborhood. We would often arbitrarily pick a spot in the middle of nowhere and then just dig there, with a shovels we borrowed from my family’s garage. We were hoping to find … anything of interest, I guess :buried treasure, dinosaur bones, Indian arrowheads, whatever. (We never did. About the only thing we “discovered” was that tree roots are a real bitch when you’re trying to dig a hole.) I even kept maps and journals of our “adventures.” These are the kinds of things that boys do before they discover girls.
I tried to look the part, too. I had a brown cowboy hat that I hoped could pass for a fedora, an (empty) binocular case and a prop bullwhip snagged from a Levi’s jeans display at the local mall. My older brother called me “Idaho Bones” because I essentially was a cheap, skinny knockoff of the character I wanted to emulate. I hated it at the time, but as an adult, I kinda can’t dispute his assessment.
Oh, well. We all had fun. Every other boy in the neighborhood who spotted that bullwhip wanted to try it, so there’s that.
To this day, “Raiders” is still my favorite movie ever.
“From” Season 2 (2023) wasn’t quite as good as Season 1. The show borrows so much its obvious inspiration, “Lost” (2004-2010), that it also inherits that program’s central flaw — an overabundance of mysteries that confuse the narrative.
Season 1 was … mostly a self-enclosed, tidy horror tale that was reminiscent of the various iterations of “The Twilight Zone” — waylaid travelers in a mysteriously inescapable town are stalked by supernatural monsters. Smaller mysteries were peppered into the plot, and for me those story points were mostly just distracting — but it didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the show.
Season 2, however, introduced so many subplot mysteries that the story sometimes became a little difficult to follow. (Or are they really subplots? We’re now shown that the monsters of Season 1 are only one element of the supernatural landscape that our protagonists must survive.)
My complaint above should be taken in context, though — “From” is still the scariest show on television. It’s got some really good writing and some terrific characters, with a few standout actors that hit a home run every time they’re onscreen. One is David Alpay as a the group’s hilarious, antisocial genius; another is Scott McCord as a gentle giant with the mind of an eight-year-old boy.
“From” is still an amazing watch. The second season wasn’t perfect, but it was still great. It remains the show that I am surprised that so few people are talking about.
I’ve never actually read a comic book featuring the shapeshifting alien Skrulls. The story concept always seemed too campy for me. (And it still does.) But I still had loads of fun with the first episode of Marvel’s “Secret Invasion” (2023). I’d cheerfully rate this new limited series an 8 out of 10.
There are two clear reasons here. The first is that I love comic book stories in which ordinary, non-powered characters are working with (or against) superpowered characters — it makes the story and action feel more grounded in reality, and the juxtaposition is always fun to explore.
The second is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe just happens to be good at the cloak-and-dagger stuff. It’s a little surprising, if you think about it. Here we have a fictional universe known for linchpinned by story conceits derived from science fiction or magic. Yet the MCU’s stories about spies, governments and politics remain fan favorites. (Look at the broad-based appeal of 2014’s excellent “Captain America: Winter Soldier,” for example.) As I’d hoped, I really enjoyed the twists and surprises of the first episode.
Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Freeman, Emilia Clarke are always a pleasure to watch. And I’m starting to understand that Ben Mendelsohn is really terrific too.
This looks to be one of the better MCU outings. I recommend it.
Flashback to the middle aughts — I emerged from New York City’s Penn Station with a group of friends to an amazing surprise. It was none other than U2 being hauled past the transportation hub on the back of a flatbed truck, playing music.
Then, the other day, after maybe 18 years or so, my girlfriend sends me the video for a song she likes — U2’s “All Because of You.” (It’s from their 2004 album, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”) There’s the flatbed truck with the band performing all over the city.
So that’s what that was all about. A mystery nearly two decades old at lasts stands revealed.
Of course I scoured every frame of the video hoping that there was a one-in-a-million chance I’d see myself in the background. No such luck.
Anyway, my four other brushes with famous people are as follows:
Madonna. (I saw her for two seconds entering a building in Manhattan.)
Linda Ronstadt. (I gave her a tour at a historic site.)
Marissa Tormei. (I saw her in a restaurant in Brooklyn.)
Ralph Macchio. (I checked him out at a video store.)
Henry Kissinger. (I saw him at a fundraising event and helped his Secret Service detail get situated. Seriously, you can not make this stuff up.)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 