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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-02-14 (Friday)
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2025 10:24:47 -0800
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On 2/15/25 9:05 AM, shawn wrote:

> On Sat, 15 Feb 2025 08:11:48 -0800, "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
> wrote:
> 
>> I tried to get through two movies yesterday, but was too tired to get
>> through the second one and had to abandon it to finish it off today.
>>
>> Anyway, I watched:
> 
>> The Gorge (Apple TV+) - In glorious 4k, so you can see the monsters up
>> close!!
>>     SPOILERS,
>>     at least some,
>>     come next!
>>     On that score, this is not what I was expecting - this is seemingly
>> being sold as "romance" between two sniper-assassin types (Miles Teller
>> Anya Taylor-Joy) who fall in love as "opposites" on a mission. But it's
>> actually as much, if not more... sci-fi? horror?
> 
> Hmm, maybe I missed the ads but I was expecting the sci-fi/horror
> aspect. Didn't expect the romance aspect though once I saw who the two
> 'guardians' were it seemed obvious something was going to happen
> there.
> 
>>     Anyway, Teller (who is looking kind of old here!...) and Taylor-Joy
>> play two burned out sniper-assassins, he an American and she a Russian -
>> He has nothing to live for, and she has a former KGB father (William
>> Houston) who is dying from cancer... Teller's character is approached by
>> an apparent high-level spook (Sigourney Weaver) to take on a
>> high-importance mission that he is told nothing about. He wakes up on a
>> plane to... somewhere, and told to parachute out. He ends up near a
>> watchtower on a gorge somewhere, manned by Americans or Brits, where he
>> is to relieve a British soldier (Sope Dirisu) who has had
>> guard(/maintenance) duty on that same watchtower for a year. Teller's
>> character relieves the dude, who is helicoptered out (or is he?...).
> 
> Well he does get a ride on a helicopter so there's that.
> 
>>     Anyway, eventually, Taylor-Joy's character, who is in a Russian
>> watchtower on the other on the other side of the gorge, starts flirting
>> with/trying to seduce Teller (duh! of course she does! she's Anya
>> Taylor-Joy).
>>     This part follows what we were expecting from the movie.
>>     But why they're there, and what's in the gorge, is where this movie
>> takes a hard turn. In fact, you expect that, eventually, the two of them
>> are going to get stuck in that gorge somehow, and you're not going to be
>> wrong. What's in the gorge is not what you're expecting, though the
>> explanation for all of the madness pretty much is what you'd expect.
>> (Hey, it's Ruta Gedmintas on the old film reel! I didn't know she was
>> still around!)
>>     This is the kind of movie where if Netflix had done it, it would be
>> total crap. But because it's done by Apple (TV+), this one is actually
>> kind of good.
>>     And I'll watch Taylor-Joy read a phonebook, so... Thumbs up!
> 
> I definitely enjoyed it.

Fun fact about "The Gorge": Teller's character mentions, onscreen, one 
of the places I (used to?) work at - (San Diego) "Mesa Community College".


Ian  (Yes, there's more than one "Mesa Community College" in the U.S. - 
there's one in Arizona too. But Teller was filmed at a place that was 
either meant to be an L.A. or San Diego beach, and he's later at Camp 
Pendelton, so there was no doubt in my mind that they meant San Diego 
Mesa College in the movie. I wonder if the film's writer Zach Dean 
attended Mesa College...)