The Invisible Counterpoint

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit I admire mainstream films where people are shown behaving in ways you can learn from, draw strength from. In the "Hobbit," one example is my favorite part of the film. After Thorin declares that Bilbo took advantage of being left all alone to leave for home, Bilbo is shown ruminating over what Thorin just accused him of; and, after cancelling his invisibility and becoming visible to the company, offers an inspiring, considered reply. First of course he responds warmly to the dwarves' cheering his return, but after Thorin asks/presses him on why he indeed did come back, he acknowledges Thorin's cause to doubt him -- his love of his home is such, he realizes, that it's appropriate for those forlorn of one to gauge he'd eventually flee for his like-sake at some point -- but also shows him as understanding that having long known a home attractive enough to bait one back is also what leant him  the well-being to ultimately go without a b...

Star Trek: Into Darkness One of the criticisms of Abrams -- perhaps the foremost criticism of him -- is that he likes to let other directors do the hard work of staking out new territory, and then he comes in into fully delineated terrain, and makes some adjustments -- "Sally would work better with Jonathon, and the couch should go there--". With his last film everybody had him as of the dutiful flock of Spielberg, and with this film, at least at the beginning -- the same. It's Raiders of the Lost Ark , with tribesman chasing down our interloper heroes, spears thrown, an artifact used to momentarily buy time by tricking the tribesmen into forgetting their current purpose and supplicating themselves, and an escape into an airship (no snake, but discord of a kind: Spock and Kirk feuding). But okay, in truth this sort of chase is how he began his last Star Trek film, so maybe this is just how he gets a number of his films revved up. The possibility, though, tha...