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A Most Wanted Man (2014) – Review
Though I obviously have no problem ranking my favorite films (even though I sometimes struggle with the order, as well as whether I can limit it to 10 favorites per year), and I also don’t have an issue with ranking individual performances, I’m not really good at ranking individual actors in their overall careers. Nevertheless,…
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) – Review
In Three Days of the Condor, John Houseman and Cliff Robertson, two high-ranking members of the CIA, are briefly reminiscing about how they entered the intelligence field in the first place, with Houseman (who in the film is British) talking about how he started out a decade after World War I, or as he refers to…
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Reel 74: The Wages of Greed
Sure, Gordon Gekko told us all that greed, for lack of a better term, is good. And that film sometimes takes the blame for a bunch of unfortunate things that took place in the 1990s. But there are films out there which note that there’s a darker side to greed (and, to be fair, Wall…
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Reel 73: More John LeCarré
With this episode we conclude our mini-series on spy films, with a second set of films based on the novels of John LeCarré. We start with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a 2011 film directed by Tomas Alfredson and starring more high-power talent than you can shake a stick at. They spent so much money on…
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The Russia House (1990) – Review
It’s somewhat ironic James Bond, for a long time, was considered the symbol of spies and espionage during the Cold War when Bond himself, for all intents and purposes, was never strictly a Cold War warrior. True, he dealt with the Soviets, or Soviet-type agencies, in a few novels and movies (From Russia with Love),…
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The Spy who Came In from the Cold (1965) – Review
Of all of the symbols of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall was probably the most visible. Erected in August of 1961 to separate East Berlin (the Soviet side) from West Berlin (the U.S., British and French side), it ostensibly was supposed to keep so-called “fascist” elements out of East Berlin (and, by extension, East…









