Podcast: The Righteous & Top Gun: Maverick

The Righteous & Top Gun: Maverick

Greetings, programs, and welcome to this week’s podcast! Following a year-long journey from its festival premiere at Fantasia 2021, Mark O’Brien’s The Righteous is finally coming to cinemas and on-demand thanks to Arrow Video and Vortex Media, and after a 36-year gap, Tom Cruise is back as a Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in the long-awaited sequel to the 1980s classic Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick.

There are streaming links powered by JustWatch a little further down this page, and the episode should be live wherever you listen to podcasts (also including on this page) now.

Join us!

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Awesome: Every Tom Cruise Run Ever

Tom Cruise Running

If there’s one thing Tom Cruise is famous for it’s being a dedicated and generous performer who will put his body on the line to make sure that you, the moviegoers, are entertained. If there are two things he is famous for they are that and that he’s a high-ranking member of what is widely considered to be a cult. If there are three things, they’re all and running in the movies. So here’s video of every Tom Cruise Run ever, which is probably the best way to get ready for **Mission: Impossible – Fallout** this coming weekend.

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‘American Made’ Trailer, in which Tom Cruise acts

Here’s a quick fact for you: Tom Cruise is 54 years old. I am pretty sure that he has a Lazarus Pit stashed away somewhere. Here’s another fact: when he’s not doing an endless string of action films, Tom Cruise is a pretty good actor. He’s got a new movie coming out this fall that may or may not remind us of that. Let’s take a look.

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Edge Of Tomorrow Is The Best Sci-Fi In Years And You Can Own It Today

EoT Mix

I’m not one to blindly promote products just for the sake of information, so a Blu-Ray release doesn’t usually inspire me to comment. However, when that film is *Edge Of Tomorrow*, and there’s a chance you may have dismissed it at the cinema on account of the worst marketing campaign in recent memory, then I have to try and change your mind. For it’s not just Tom Cruise’s best film in years, it’s also one of the finest slices of sci-fi escapism you’ll ever watch.

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Edge of Tomorrow Trailer: Groundhog Day in a Future War Starring Tom Cruise.

Edge of Tomorrow

_Edge of Tomorrow_ may be a fitting title for a guy who is basically living out a nightmare version of _Groundhog Day_, waking up after dying in combat only to be forced to relive that combat over and over again. I, hover, preferred the original title _All You Need is Kill_.

Either way there is a trailer now so let’s take a look.

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Review: Oblivion

Oblivion

Do you ever read or watch science fiction? Have you ever had your mind blown at some plot twist or big reveal? Has a story ever made you think about things in this world in a new and different way?

Oblivion is a film that really wants to have this kind of impact on you but doesn’t. That’s not to say that it’s a bad movie just that while it is _good_, or rather _pretty okay_, it isn’t _great_.

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Awesome Classics: Top Gun

Top Gun

Yeah, that’s right. Top Gun is a classic.

The problem with talking stunt something that everyone has seen is that everyone has seen it and everyone already has an opinion, and Top Gun is certainly a polarizing film among my circle of friends. In case you hadn’t already guessed though: I love it.

In case you haven’t seen it Top Gun follows Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a US Navy fighter pilot as he competes to be the best of the best at what he does at Top Gun, the navy’s elite fighter wining school. He shows up cocky, gets beaten, endures some loss, falls in love, and in the end is the hero. When you lay it out on paper it’s a fairly straightforward formula action movie. It’s that way on screen as well.

That is to say that the movie is pretty shallow, especially by today’s standards, but it does make a cursory effort to be more than the shallow testosterone fest it seems to be. Two thirds of the way into the film when a beloved supporting character dies it shows the main character reeling and vulnerable from survivors guilt and regret. If it breaks from the mold at all it’s that in the age of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone churning out movies like Predator, First Blood, and Commando it dared to actually show it’s hero mourning instead of just shedding a single tear before throwing his head back and screaming at the heavens, invoking super human power to overcome the ridiculous odds he’s about to face.

Yes, I’m saying that the hero of Top Gun is in fact human whereas most 80s heroes were not.

Tom Cruise was 24 in 1986, he’s hardly at best form here, but he’s better than the movie needs him to be, especially when it comes to the switching back and forth between the ultra cocky public persona that Maverick cultivates and the unsure private persona you see when it’s just him and Goose, his best friend.

But then there is the rest of the movie. A movie with awesome exciting dog fighting, with dude-bro alpha male rivalry, with 24 year old Tom Cruise falling in love with 29 year old and taller than him Kelly McGillis, with a zillion catch phrases and and awesome high five/low five when the main characters score a point in volleyball. And yes, the volleyball features men oiled up and playing in the sand.

There’s a lot of people in this world that will tell you Top Gun is shallow. That it’s thinly veiled homoeroticism. That it’s stupid. They aren’t wrong (well, they are wrong about the homoeroticism, the intended audience for that was the girl friends of all the dude-bros that went to see it), but none of that matters. At the end of the day it’s well executed and fun.

Recently I had the chance to see it in 3D IMAX in the lead up to its Blu-Ray re-release and it holds up pretty well. There’s something to be said for the shared movie experience, when everyone in the theatre is there and completely into the movie. Only a few times have I truly experienced this, but it’s amazing. The 3D, well, I could write a whole other article on 3D but it was OK, but blown up to IMAX proportions the film was amazing.

And all this is fueled by Kenny Loggins 80s pop rock anthems.

So is the whole thing cheesy? Yes. Shallow? Absolutely. Fun? Beyond a shadow of a doubt. If you’re one of the few people who hasn’t seen Top Gun, or more likely someone who hasn’t seen it in years, now is the time. Grab the Blu-Ray (or go to a screening if they are still happening near you), have a few beers, crank the sound and take highway to the danger zone.

Yeah, I went there.