The Ray Pletcher Blog

Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is a timely tale about the dangers of AI and also a deeply personal story bringing Ethan Hunt's origins at the IMF full circle. This marks the third entry in the franchise that Christopher McQuarrie has both written and directed as he manages to bring to the screen an intensely cinematic film with both high physical and emotional stakes.  The story is centered around an ominous artificial intelligence known as "The Entity" which has become sentient and proceeded to infiltrate its way into the computer systems of prominent nations across the world. Thus when Ethan is recruited by Kittridge (his old nemesis from MI: 1 played by Henry Czerny) to retrieve the other part of a key that governments across the world are racing to obtain in order to gain control of the AI, Ethan decides to go rogue against his government to destroy the AI thinking that that much power is too much for anyone to have. Ethan's

"The most powerful person in this world is the storyteller", Jim Caviezel declares in the special post-credits message to the audience at the end of this film. The story he's talking about is that of the millions of children who are put into slavery in today's 21st century society. Directed by Alejandro Gómez Monteverde, Sound of Freedom is based on a true story and follows Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel) who saves a boy from ruthless child traffickers and then learning the boy's sister is still captive decides to embark on a dangerous mission to save her. This film was made 5 years ago but faced every road block you can think of on it's way to the theatres due to the studios being afraid to release it until Angel Studios stepped in as the distributor. And now that it's finally out there in the world this film sends a resounding and powerful message that God's Children Are Not For Sale. It also operates on another level working as a film itself

Turning 81 years old this month, Harrison Ford returns as Indy for one final adventure as the famed archeologist in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Directed by James Mangold, the story follows Indy who upon retiring from being a professor in NYC in 1969 stumbles upon a new adventure that sees him joining forces with his goddaughter Helena played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. They race against the clock to retrieve Archimedes' Dial before a Neo-Nazi played by the menacing Mads Mikkelsen does first and carries out his plot to ressurect the Third Reich. Set against a beautifully moving and triumphant score by John Williams, this picture is a rollercoaster of an adventure that you don't want to miss out on.  The film opens with a 25 minute prologue featuring a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford set during World War Two. To be honest I didn't quite buy into it as most of it looked very video gameish to me but there were moments were it quite wo