Ford v Ferrari

In late 2019, I had a good run of getting to the cinema (a bit of a treat with a family)…we managed to hit the latest Star Wars film, the most recent Jumanji film, the latest version of Little Women, and Taika Waititi’s most recent project, Jojo Rabbit.  But somehow in the midst of all that, I missed getting to Ford v Ferrari.  Well recently, in these semi-lockdown days, I was finally able to rectify that oversight.

The Martian (for realsies this time)

So, in my last post I promised I’d actually talk about The Martian, the movie – not just about random little details about the American space program or trivia about actors that were connected with The Martian.  The short story is that I really liked this movie, and I think I’m liking it more as time goes on.  This I think is pretty significant for me as I feel like often there are movies that I like when I’m watching them, but later as I’m thinking of it I realize all sorts of things that bother me about it.  With The Martian, so far there’s none of that.  There’s really not a thing that sticks out as just being kind of stupid, which really, with me, almost never happens.

Donald Glover is a Steely-Eyed Missile Man (Some spoilers for The Martian, and a bunch of other rambling)

Back in 1969, there was a little something going on called Apollo 12 – the second manned mission to the surface of the moon.  Not long after launch, something went wrong:  the ship was struck by lightning, scrambling the telemetry being received by instruments.  It could easily have led to the entire mission being aborted.   A NASA engineer named John Aaron recognized something that nobody else did, and was able to issue an instruction that led to the flight being salvaged.  I am no aeronautical engineer so I have no exactly what Aaron did, or how it fixed things, but his quick thinking and cool head led to him being given the nickname of “Steely-Eyed Missile Man” by his colleagues.

The Bourne Legacy

Aak…gasp…krkkk!!

Okay, so actually, The Bourne Legacy isn’t all that bad – it’s well directed, competently acted, and full of cool action – but still somehow, this is the response that comes to mind when I think back to it.