BlacKkKlansman (2018)

My parents felt that Spike Lee's first non-honorary Oscar was a long time coming and thus were glad when he got one for Best Adapted Screenplay for this. It sounded like they wouldn't have been surprised if he'd gotten more for it. The film certainly has received a lot of awards at other ceremonies. So I had to check it out, albeit with a little trepidation.

In 1972 Colorado Springs, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, son of Denzel) dares to take an invitation to become the first local Black policeman. When he sees an ad for the Ku Klux Klan, he calls on a whim and, sounding naturally "White" enough, arranges a meeting to join it. Not looking nearly as White as he sounds, he persuades vaguely similar-sounding co-worker Philip "Flip" Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to go in his stead. With a little help from others on the force, they monitor just how much of a threat this Klan chapter is.

Mission: Impossible — Fallout (2018)

For once, an M:I entry has the same director as last time. As such, it enjoys clearer continuity than usual, perhaps helping us remember the order of the unnumbered sequels. (I might have been the only person in my theater to recognize a callback to the first movie in the form of a funeral for "Max.")

The Apostles, the Syndicate's offshoot following the arrest of leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), have acquired three nuclear bombs and plan to sell them to a terrorist code-named John Lark. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) accepts the mission to stop them, partly by impersonating Lark. But while the FBI director (Alec Baldwin) trusts the Impossible Missions Force now, the CIA director (Angela Bassett) doesn't, so Ethan must go with CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill), who's not introduced with good humor and thus will be obnoxious at best. Indeed, Walker initiates the suspicion that Ethan is Lark....

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

I'd seen a few movies written by David Mamet before, but not based on a play of his. Oddly enough, the most oft-cited moment does not occur in the play: One-scene wonder Alec Baldwin features as a company-hired motivational speaker with the attitude of a prototypical drill sergeant (Baldwin did look to Patton for inspiration). In truth, he seems to be channeling Al Pacino, for whom he was something of an understudy herein. I had seen this part already, and it didn't exactly make me eager for more, but I value my cinematic education.

That early scene helps establish the plot. At a super-shady real estate agency that cold-calls individuals to sell them overpriced land, business has not been good lately. The agency offers prizes for the two salesmen who accomplish the most in the near future but will fire the other two. It feels unfair to the less successful, because they've done well in the past and have just fallen on bad luck with regard to sales leads, if "luck" is the right word. In desperation, two conspire to steal the good leads and make it look like a plain burglary.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

If someone had told me after the first or second M:I entry that there would be a fifth in 2015, I would have dismissed the prediction with a raspberry. If someone had told me in 2006 that it would star Tom Cruise, I would have rolled my eyes. Funny how these things change.

In Ghost Protocol, Ethan Hunt and company had their remote support cut off and dealt with failing gadgetry among other new problems. This time it's worse: The CIA director (Alec Baldwin), believing that the Impossible Missions Force made up the destructive force known as the Syndicate to justify its own less ruly acts, gets the IMF officially disbanded. When Ethan doesn't stop doing what he does, he becomes a wanted man, worrying the few people willing to help him track down Syndicate honcho Solomon Lane (Sean Harris, who needs little more than a stone face).

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

By now some of you may be thinking, "What's with all the 2012 animations on this blog?" I couldn't tell you. I moved this one up in my queue because it was the only one I knew to have anything related to Christmas in it. It's actually set on and around Easter, but with all the attention given to Jack Frost and Santa Claus (herein called "North" for some reason), that hardly matters.

Yes, I hate the title. Even if it didn't come between Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole and Guardians of the Galaxy, you could hardly guess what sort of guardians were involved. Besides, there have been quite enough movies with "Rise" in the title in the last, oh, decade, and it's not especially appropriate herein. But I moved past the title and enjoyed the movie, for the most part.