bob dylan and john sebastian on a triumph motorcycle, shot by douglas r. gilbert, 1964

You haven’t truly heard SWEENEY TODD until you’ve heard it in German:

When Top Gun: Maverick (🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟) first dropped in May of 2022, I gave the sequel to Tony Scott’s cult classic the five-star treatment. I walked out of the theater utterly shocked at the quality of this film: everything about Maverick exceeded my expectations, which, to be fair, were not exceptionally high. I revisited Maverick in light of Gladiator II (🌟🌟) to see if this sequel actually holds up as well as I initially thought. I’m happy to say it does- Top Gun: Maverick is the blueprint for legacy sequels done right. We should never take Maverick’s technical mastery for granted. Director Joseph Kosinski & Tom Cruise knocked it out of the ball park when it comes to all the major flight sequences- whether the film’s climax or the training scenes leading up to the major moment. But beyond the technical mastery, which earned a few Oscar nominations, the reason Maverick works so well is the story blends the past with the future. This sequel doesn’t turn its back on Maverick’s arc but doesn’t make this entire film about Maverick. That framework allows Cruise to thrive because he doesn’t actually have to carry this film. Miles Teller & Glen Powell represent the future while Val Kilmer & Jennifer Connelly represent the past. That sort of balance allows Cruise to travel between the known & the unknown. In other words, it’s the exact recipe that makes this film one of the best legacy sequels ever created. It’s also undeniable that Cruise needed to be in this film. No, he didn’t carry this movie & there’s so much quality filmmaking & acting around him to make this work. But imagine if Maverick didn’t include Cruise at all but just revolved around Miles Teller or just revolved around Powell? This film would subsequently fail because Cruise’s presence looms too large. That’s why the key to unlocking these sequels isn’t to turn your back on the key figure that made the original, it’s to figure out a way to weave what worked in the past with something that might work in the future. “It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot.”

At the time Hitler was pushing his perfect Aryan aesthetic: white, blond haired, blue eyes, fit and muscular, genetically pure Hans started making these degenerate, deconstructed dolls that were the opposite of perfect. La Poupée - sculpture by Hans Bellmer (1935)

What is the first film you think of when you see BEN STILLER? Reality Bites (1994)

An Incredibly Underrated Film