The Secret Agent: nominated for Best Actor and also for Best Picture this was the last of the Best Picture nominees that I needed to see. Starring Brazilian actor Wagner Moura, best known for me as playing Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos. He is very good. He plays Armando initially in late 1970s Brazil. It is a time of political instability. He is a former professor with a young son and a deceased wife.

The movie follows the intrigue surrounding him on a few timelines.   One of those timeline is present day when a couple young female students are reading news articles and asked to transcribe audio cassettes from interviews from back in the day.   Armando’s story interests the young present day students.   Back in 1970s the film opens with Armando stopping for gas in his VW Bug with a dead man lying in the desert sand with cardboard atop his body.   Armando is told by the gas station attendant that the body has been there for a few days.   The police arrive and ignore the body but give a thorough inspection of Armando’s car.   Thus is the current state of affairs with police.   

The movie’s name is a tease because Armando nor any principal actors are government agents.   This is not Mission Impossible or James Bond. They are ordinary people.   Armando was involved in a patent, for which a Minister seems to be most interested.  So interested that Armando is a target.   Armando has a young son, and a father-in-law for his deceased wife.  He takes on a job at the Records Office looking to track down the records for his own mother.   And so the story goes as we follow what happens.  The story is in some ways similar to last year’s I’m Still Here also set in Brazil during the military dictatorship.  There the husband is taken away from his family and wife played by Oscar nominee Fernanda Torres tries to cope with this and find out what happened to him.   We live in strange times and this movie is another that shows how uncertainty in government can impact the lives of ordinary citizens.  This is worth checking out, although I don’t see it as an Oscar winner. 

Predator Badlands: Back in 1987 the original Predator was released as an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie with Carl Weathers and Jesse “the Body” Ventura.  A team of well trained commandos is sent into a Latin American jungle where all but Arnold is wiped out.   The creature didn’t speak but had the ability to cloak itself, as well as having sophisticated weapons in its armour.  Arnold described it in the end as “one ugly motherf-er”.  He was right.   If you can believe it, there have been five core Predator films plus an additional two Alien crossover films.  I would never have guessed that this creature would spawn so many movies.   Who knew?   
It is surprising to me how Elle Fanning who stars in this in a duel role can make this film and then also do Sentimental Value.  They are just so different.   In this she plays synthetic robotic organisms.  They are named Tessa and Thia.  Think of them like C-3PO and you aren’t far off.  Thia has had a setback on her own and met up with Dek the Predator. 

Dek has had his own troubles on his own planet as his brother and father look down upon him as a runt in the gene pool. They cannot seem to tolerate that. Dek wants to prove his valour (like How to Train Your Dragon) by capturing a formidable and dangerous creature from another planet. So there you have it. On the journey Dek learns some things about alliances and loyalty and sentiment. Thia learns that she works for the ruthless Weyland-Yutani Corporation, from the Alien franchise, which values alien destructive beings for weaponization. There are pieces of other movies here, like Star Wars visually, and Avatar with its deadly natural world along with Aliens with this deadly new creature. Did this exceed expectations? Well no because there were none. I expected this to be formulaic nonsense. I will say that it didn’t suck. That’s something if you want something to pass the time on an airplane. However, nothing really is gained and the needle about Predators isn’t really moved. Imagine a whole planet of them! At the same time it is a bit of a paradox how such a lizard/dinosaur like creature can create such technology. How does one program complex IT and weapons systems with those fingers?? There is a set up for a further sequel to this and I can assure readers that I won’t see it in the theatres. I will bet that Arnold probably never imagined that his initial film 38 years ago would still crank out new films.