Books The Spy and the Traitor Ben Macintyre's story of a Russian Spy is the a great culmination of different sources to tell a concise and interesting story. Providing pivotal perspectives from different source to tell a complete story with no fluff and no overt bias.
Movies 12 Strong This move is part of the household's Memorial Month movie list. It is an important part of American history that hasn't been told until recently. After more than 2000 civilians died from an unprovoked attack, we needed to provide a show of force that we will not sit quietly.
Movies Fourth Wing An interesting book that I enjoyed reading and was a nice change to the magic of dragons and how humans interact with them. The layers of character building and expectation does have a bit of "Girls rule the world" and the protagonist has a large case of Deus Ex Machina.
Movies Oppenheimer This is a biopic. What that means is that it is longer and is more story driven rather than action packed. However, like Interstellar, Christopher Nolan does a fantastic job of providing stress and interest that keeps you in your seat.
Books A Spy Named Orphan This book drags you through weeds of information to present the dumbest that the UK has to offer from the establishment and from their turncoats. This is the type of book that makes you question why you decided to start reading it because a lot of the information feels completely superfluous.
Movies The Creator I have talked about John David Washington being an amazing actor in both Tenet and BlacKkKlansman and this movie is far better than those. Also I had no idea he was Denzel Washington's son and damn does it show. He is a power house.
Movies The Last Samurai Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe are so good in this movie. They have a wonderful chemistry and I think really play off of each other. Let alone for a guy who has so few lines, Hiroyuki Sanada is a presence to be dealt with.
Books Extreme Ownership Jacko Willink and Leif Babin do a fantastic job of presenting leadership qualification and skills, as something we should all recognize. Through the lens of failure and near misses, they provide real world recommendations to how to be an effective leader on and off the battlefield.
Movies Greenland I was very surprised by this movie. I am a huge fan of Gerard Butler to the point that my smart home bot is named Gerard the Butler. He is extremely underrated and this movie is proof of that. In fact, everyone did a great job. Morena Baccarin however, does an ok job.
Books Hagakure If you are looking for a book that speaks to the ideas presented in [[The Last Samurai]], this isn't it. This book is the written word of a Samurai Monk take by his apprentice. I am not sure what else to say. As with any collection of ramblings, some are good and some are downright stupid.
Movies Sicario Day of the Soldado So what drew people to the original movie was the awesome border crossing scene. The movement and quick action was outstanding. This movie has a scene that while cool, is nothing like it. It is probably the most memorable scene from the movie with the exception of the opening scene.
Books Project Hail Mary "Project Hail Mary is a absolute fantastic book that scratches this deep nostalgia of being a kid and wanting to be an astronaut and scientist and so much more." With a blend of anxiety, suspense, joy, and surprise, Project Hail Mary is the best science fiction book you will ever read.
Books Wabi Sabi The stories Beth was able to experience while living in Kyoto are outstanding and have lead to some great life lessons and down to earth definition of wabi sabi. Wabi Sabi is you being in your most natural, authentic place.
Books Man's Search for Meaning Victor is a holocaust survivor and phycologist before the war that was tells a compelling story of first hand experience of his time in both Dachau and Auschwitz as well as the therapy techniques that he created called logotherapy. His stories are concise, cohesive, and emotional
Movies The Equalizer 3 The filming of this movie is much more artistic than anything done in the previous two movies. I really enjoyed this movie. There is a saying "Respect an Old Man in a Young Man's game" and I have always seen that phrase really come to life from the operators and infantrymen that I have known.
Books Altered Carbon Altered Carbon is what you want in a Cyberpunk novel and the world created is so well presented, I wish that CDProjektRed had used this as their template rather than the CyberPunk RPG. The characters make for a well loved world and the story makes sense, with one very notable exception.
Movies Table 19 Overall, the story is also really cute. Art is supposed to imitate life and life imitates art and this is art that is matching a messy relationship where people just don't know how to communicate and how text messages don't relay emotion so having a heavy conversation is better in person.
Books Ego is the Enemy This book does a great job of presenting both personal and historical stories about times where ego was the mind killer and control of it was what lead to something great. Just like in Stillness Is the Key, Ryan presents what seems like easy concepts in a way that are digestible for daily content.
TV How I Met Your Mother This show ended a decade ago and while some of the pop culture references are a bit dated, the rest of the show has really held up. The cast is outstanding and after years of working together, it really shows the amount of love and faith they had in each other.
Books Tough Terry Crews recounts the lessons he is still learning as he has moved through his life from school, growing up in an abusive home, the NFL, and acting. These lessons are presented to you in a way that almost feel like you should feel guilty for learning these lessons in the way he did.
TV The Witcher (Netflix) Geralt, The White Wolf, tackles monsters, mages, and all other manners of creatures fighting evil… lesser, greater, middling. It's all the same. If I have to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.
Books The Lions of Lucerne This is the first book in the Scot Harvath series and it shows. The book shows an age to the style of writing as well as the research on terminology. I know the author got some heat in that in this book and has since made changes to correct those.
TV Secret Invasion Look lets be honest. This show did not do well and for good reason. It was entertaining, but was all filler episodes for the next big movie. They should have left it as a movie like it was originally pitched, because the TV show did not do it.
Books The Republic of Pirates There are some really interesting stories that happened and the people that you follow in the book are some big names, most I know/recognize from Assassin's Creed Black Flag, but also some that you probably have never heard of. Minus of course the pirate nerds... there has got to be at least one
Movies Kandahar I know that I originally thought that this was going to be a closer plot to The Covenant, but I was so wrong. While yes it is about the translator and their ability to know the area, but nothing close to same depth of that story.
