Postmodern Paradigm? Pure Power Pop?

Anti-Matter Vatican What???

Dan Brown's Angels and Demons (2009): adapted from the novel by Dan Brown by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman; directed by Ron Howard; starring Tom Hanks (Robert Langdon), Ewan McGregor (Chief Pope's Dogsbody McKenna), Ayelet Zurer (Woman Who Knows All Things That Langdon Does Not Know Especially Italian, The Map of Vatican City, Anti-Matter, and Whatever The Hell Bio-ub-Nuclear-Physics Is), Stellan Skarsgard (Swiss Stellan Skarsgard), Nikolaj Kaas (The Non-Albino Albino), and Armin Mueller-Stahl (Suspicious Red Herring Cardinal):

Pure postmodern power pop!

In The DaVinci Code, Harvard Symbologist (not an actual thing)  Robert Langdon battled a conspiracy that hides the true nature of the relationship of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. The conspiracy was dangerous because, um, it might hurt the great-to-the-Nth-power-child of Mary and Jesus. 

Wait, were the stakes that low in The DaVinci Code?

But now, in a tactic ripped from the escalatingly epic pulp space operas of EE "Doc" Smith, Langdon returns to battle a conspiracy that intends to kill all the popes and blow up Vatican City with an Anti-Matter Bomb stolen by The Last Illuminati from the Anti-Matter-Bomb-Making facilities at the Large Hadron Collider in Poussy, France.

Anti-Matter Bomb? WTF?

Angels & Demons is enjoyable nonsense. Tom Hanks looks a lot more relaxed than he did in The DaVinci Code. He runs around Vatican City trying to save the four most likely candidates for Pope because he knows more than anyone about Italian things even though he still cannot speak or read Italian despite Italian things being the focus of 90% of his academic studies and 97% of his exciting adventures.

Tom Hanks is joined in his awesome world-saving adventures by an Italian biosphere genetic astrophysicist who knows everything about Vatican City, the history of the Popes, and Anti-Matter. 

Jesus, these people have weird fucking skill-sets!

The only thing that would make Angels&Demons the greatest movie ever made about anti-Catholic conspiracies deploying Anti-Matter Bombs against the Vatican only to be thwarted by an Italian woman with a crazy skill-set, Forrest Gump, and a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) would be if the self-flagellating, Opus Dei-serving, super-Albino super-assassin (Paul "The Vision" Bettany) showed up to turn over a new leaf like Jaws at the end of James Bond in Moonraker and help Langdon, Robert Langdon save the Vatican. Highly recommended!

Tom Hanks Playhouse

Inferno (2016): adapted by David Koepp from the novel by Dan Brown; directed by Ron Howard; starring Tom Hanks (Professor Robert Langdon), Felicity Jones (Sienna Brooks), Omar Sy (Bouchard), Irrfan Khan (Harry Sims), Ben Foster (Zobrist), and Sidse Babett Knudsen (Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey): I actually think this is the best of the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard/Dan Brown movies. Tom Hanks's Robert Langdon is tired and bleary for much of the film (for good reason). The historical clues are almost perfunctory, as if the film-makers finally admitted that the whole point of these things, like a James Bond movie, is the globe-trotting scenery. 

There's a decent twist at the two-thirds mark, the supporting cast is all solid, and Ben Foster finally gets cast correctly, as a squirmy, passive-aggressive billionaire who wants to kill 50% of humanity. Director Ron Howard even presents us with a couple of drug-induced visions for Langdon that are creepy enough to suggest that a Ron Howard-helmed H.P. Lovecraft movie wouldn't have been the botch that such a pairing initially suggested. A perfectly good time-filler. Recommended.

Sully (2016): adapted from the book by Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow by Todd Komarnicki; directed by Clint Eastwood; starring Tom Hanks (Sully), and Aaron Eckhart (Skiles): "Sully" Sullenberger successfully landed a passenger jet on the Hudson River in January 2009. This film is excellent when it sticks to the landing and much less so when the screenplay tries to grind some ideological axe about how awful bureaucracies and government are, courtesy I assume of right-wing brain-trauma survivor Clint Eastwood. 

The National Travel Safety Board investigation (nay, witch hunt) of Sully after the landing is pretty much entirely invented. It doesn't even make much sense: wouldn't the owner and/or manufacturer of the airplane want to roast Sully if anyone, given that the financial loss would be suffered there? Well, no, I guess, because Corporations Are People Too, and good people at that. Good, good people. Bad, bad bureaucrats trying to protect us. Bad! Tom Hanks is fine, as usual, and the landing sequence is tense and thrilling. All the other stuff is right-wing wankery. Lightly recommended.

Don't Look Down

As Above, So Below: written by John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle; directed by John Erick Dowdle; starring Perdita Weeks (Scarlett), Ben Feldman (George), Edwin Hodge (Benji), Francois Civil (Papillon), Marion Lambert (Susie), and Ali Marhyar (Zed) (2014): Minor but enjoyable horror movie that would have benefited from not being 'found footage.' But I've got a soft spot for any movie that involves a descent into the Paris Catacombs in search of that Moby Dick of alchemists, the Philosopher's Stone. 

And they're the real catacombs! And there's almost as much graffiti down there as there are human remains! Also, in case you've got a bet going, the black guy does not die first, though he does attract an inordinate amount of attention from whatever's down there. Demerit points for referring to something from Dante's Inferno as being something from "legend"; bonus points for actually incorporating a number of concepts from the Inferno into the descent. My biggest complaint is that they don't end up surfacing in Australia. Lightly recommended.

The Daredevil Inside (What a Feeling)

Daredevil: Lone Stranger: written by Ann Nocenti; illustrated by John Romita Jr. and Al Williamson (1989; collected 2011): Good old Marvel, putting together a reprint volume that begins with a story set in a much larger company-wide crossover (the 1989 X-Men Inferno storyline) and ends without resolution after teasing a somewhat bizarre and imminent crossover between Daredevil and the super-powered race of the Inhumans.

Ann Nocenti's writing is pretty sharp here, though one wonders whether she made the decision to pit super-acrobat and super-sensed blind (former) attorney Daredevil against supernatural menaces that don't really seem all that comfortable in the mean-streets world of Daredevil. Marvel's Lucifer, Mephisto, makes several appearances, along with the supernaturally transformed Manhattan of the Inferno storyline and another demonic presence whom Daredevil fights alongside longtime bud Spider-man.

Daredevil himself, fresh off some embarrassing screw-up or another, is in full mope mode here, wandering around the countryside for a few issues feeling sorry for himself, fighting a couple of mutant jerks (The Blob and Pyro) who now work for the U.S. government, and reluctantly helping an animal-rights activist dressed in Flashdance apparel liberate a bunch of animals from a factory farm. It was the 80's!!! Scientists genetically engineered chickens with larger wings and perfect women with larger boobs in the same laboratory all the time!!!

John Romita Jr.'s art is generally fine here, the action well-choreographed and his design for Mephisto genuinely weird and disturbing. Veteran Al Williamson does a fine job inking Romita Jr., giving the appropriate characters a lightness of line that makes some of the action sequences appear more balletic than the pencils might otherwise have shown. Lightly recommended.