For Christmas I was given the Jack Ryan  movie boxset, and with the third season of the show starring John Krasinski now available on Amazon Prime, it seemed like the perfect time to revisit the franchise. Despite having been constantly rebooted and recast, the series has consistently produced tense and exciting action/thrillers...  mostly. Four out of five ain't bad! The Hunt for Red October The first of the Jack Ryan  movies has all the intrigue of a spy thriller, and all of the tension of a submarine movie, making it the perfect movie to kick off the franchise. Set at a time when Cold War hostilities were on the rise, we are drawn into this high-stakes battle of wills between the Soviet Union, the United States, and a lone submarine captain. Excellent performances and some clever cinematography give the movie a real sense of claustrophobia, allowing director John McTiernan to slowly ratchet up the tension, as Ryan struggles to make contact with the Red October and avoid an all o

When his boss is murdered, Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton) - a private detective afflicted with Tourette's - looks into his last case to try and figure out who killed him. Essrog's investigation will see him caught in a web of political conspiracy, as he draws the attention of some of New York's most powerful. Edward Norton has his hands full with Motherless Brooklyn - not that you'd know it. On top of his acting duties the star also serves as writer, director and producer. Taking the book Motherless Brooklyn - the title is eventually explained - a story set in 1999 and adapting it into a movie set in 1957 is a bold move, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't work. Norton and his team have done a good job of recreating 1950's New York in all its glory...and its destitution. Shot in the style of a classic noir detective drama - much like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential - the story cleverly deals with issues of corruption, greed, gentrification, exploitat

When a mission failure results in three plutonium cores ending up in the wrong hands, the IMF is put under CIA overwatch. Things get even more complicated when it's discovered that the group looking to acquire the plutonium - known as the Apostles - are the last remaining members of Solomon Lane's (Sean Harris) Syndicate. Their goal, cause a global catastrophe that will bring about a new world order. And the only link to the Apostles and the plutonium that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team have to work with is a mysterious arms dealer known as the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby). In the 22 years it has been around, the Mission: Impossible franchise has gone through many guises. Each movie is as different from the last as the men who direct them. Fallout may have the same director as Rogue Nation - a first for the franchise - but Christopher McQuarrie still manages to make this a very different movie. This one's a lot darker than previous instalments, the mission is m

  Will Smith plays Doctor Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist who discovered a recurring form of dementia in American Football players caused by repeated blows to the head. Doctor Omalu calls this condition Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), I don't pretend to understand it but basically the repeated blows to the head cause large accumulations of tau protein in the brain which affects mood, emotions and executive functions. When attempting to present his findings, Doctor Omalu was met with considerable pressure at the hands of the NFL who went to great lengths to avoid or dispute his work. The movie begins with Doctor Omalu's initial discovery in 2002. While working as a forensic pathologist for the Allegheny County Coroners Office in Pennsylvania he performed an autopsy on a former player for the Pittsburgh Steelers, discovering severe brain damage. Over the next few years Doctor Omalu continued to study CTE in order to create awareness, we see the effect this