PATRIOT GAMES (1992)

Retired from the C.I.A. agent Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) is innocently walking down the sidewalk in London with his wife (Anne Archer) and young daughter (Thora Birch) when he gets a front row seat to a terrorist attack on a member of the Royal Family.  Ford ends up killing the main terrorist's little brother, so now the bad guy (Sean Bean) swears revenge.  Next thing you know, Bean has followed Ford to America and attacks his family.  This...means...war!

PATRIOT GAMES is a fun, action-packed international thriller.  You got a terrorist attack in England, murders in Ireland, a convey attacked in England, the British SAS taking on a terrorist camp in Africa, multiple attacks in America. Some people might be a little taken back by Ford's replacement of Alec Baldwin in the role of Jack Ryan, but it didn't bother me in the least.  I actually like Ford better, so it was all good.  I also enjoyed seeing a young Sean Bean as a bad guy.  He was only in "Game of Thrones" as Eddard Stark for a short time, but he captured the sadness so well that he's forever identified in my mind as Eddard.

Quick pace, exciting fights and shoot outs, great acting, Atia from "Rome", engaging story, J. E. Freeman, James Earl Jones, Harrison Ford saying "Tits.", explosions, cars getting fucked up.  PATRIOT GAMES is a satisfying continuation to the cinematic adventures of Jack Ryan.

Part 1 -The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Part 3 - Clear and Present Danger (1994)
Reboot 1 - The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Reboot 2 - Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

OBLIVION (2013)

"Dream of us."

Films like OBLIVION make me wish I was a better writer.

In the year 2077, Earth is all messed up.  Sixty years earlier an alien force called Scavs invaded Earth.  Humans fought back as best they could, but were eventually forced to use nuclear weapons and in doing so they won the war but destroyed the entire planet.  Even the Moon got blown up!  Now 60 years later the majority of humans live on Titan or on a massive space station orbiting Earth called Tet.  On Earth itself are two humans: Tom Cruise and partner/lover Andrea Riseborough.  They live at the top of a super tall tower.  Tom repairs drones that are used to protect massive power stations (that are using the ocean to create fusion power) from a few remaining Scav bandits.  The truly weird thing is neither Tom nor Andrea have any memories other than fixing these drones for the last five years.  The excuse is that their memories were wiped for security reason, but yet Tom sometimes has haunting glimpses of a life that couldn't possibly be real.

I really, really liked this film and I would love to talk about OBLIVION more...the visuals, the story, the awesome score...but I think that the less you know about it the better.  Just go into it blind and enjoy the discovery. It actually gets even better with repeat viewings...I've watched it 7 times now.  Highly recommended.

Not part of the review, but I would absolutely love to play a video game version of OBLIVION and to see a prequel to this film also.