For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched “Johnny Mnemonic,” a 1995 cyberpunk action film directed by Robert Longo and adapted from a William Gibson short story of the same name, by Gibson himself. “Johnny Mnemonic” stars Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Takeshi Kitano, Ice-T and Dina Meyer. In “Johnny Mnemonic,” Keanu Reeves plays Johnny, a “mnemonic courier” who transports sensitive data for corporations via storage implant in his brain. He takes a job that requires him to store too much memory, threatening his life if he can’t make the delivery as quickly as possible. While getting the data, his clients are attacked and killed by the yakuza. Johnny goes on the run, where he is betrayed by his handler, befriended by Jane, a cybernetically-enhanced bodyguard, and brought to the attention of the Lo-Teks, an anti-establishment group. They discover that the data Johnny holds is a stolen cure to a technological disease that afflicts much of the planet. The creator, a mega-corporation called Pharmakom, refuses to release the cure because they are profiting off of the treatments. As Johnny is hunted by hired assassins for Pharmakom, he and his allies fight to disseminate the cure and save Johnny’s life. The tagline for “Johnny Mnemonic” was “The hottest data on Earth, in the coolest head in town.” You can find “Johnny Mnemonic” to rent or buy on demand at iTunes and Amazon. For our next episode, we are watching “A Time to Kill,” directed by Joel Schumacher. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War. Our next episode, on “Virtuosity,” will be a companion to this one.

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle, John and special guest Laura Hudson (formerly of Wired and The Verge) watched the 1995 cyber-thriller “Hackers,” directed by Ian Softley and starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Fisher Stevens and Lorraine Bracco, with supporting roles for Matthew Lillard, Penn Jillette, Wendell Pierce, Marc Anthony and Felicity Huffman. “Hackers” centers on Dade Murphy, alias “Zero Cool,” who made hacking history 7 years before the events of the film when he crashed 1,507 computer systems and was banned from owning or operating computers and touch-tone telephones until his 18th birthday. On his 18th birthday, he finds himself living in New York with his mother and attending a new high school, where he falls into a crowd of teen hacker. There’s Ramon, the Phantom Phreak. Emmanuel “Cereal Killer” Goldstein, Paul “Lord Nikon” Cook and Kate “Acid Burn” Libby, Dade’s hacking rival and romantic interest. One night, one of the youngest hackers in the group, Joey, breaks into a supercomputer owned by a large energy company. He is noticed and arrested by the US Secret Service, which is working with the company’s security officer. Unbeknownst to the Secret Service or anyone else for that matter, the security officer — Eugene “The Plague” Belford — has essentially orchestrated a scheme in which Joey and other hackers are to be blamed for a virus he created, whose purpose is to extort millions from the company into a private account. Thus begins a race: Belford is desperate to get the only evidence of the virus, downloaded by Joey before he was arrested, and our teen hacker heroes are trying to clear their names and get to the bottom of this conspiracy. The tagline for “Hackers” was, of course, “Hack the planet!” You can find “Hackers” to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon. Our next film is the 1995 cyberpunk thriller, “Johnny Mnemonic.” Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest episode of the patreon is on the 1964 nuclear war farce, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

In this week’s episode of the Patreon we discussed Sidney Lumet’s heady Cold War thriller Fail Safe, based on a novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, published in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fail Safe stars Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton and Larry Hagman with cinematography by Gerald Hirschfeld. The story moves between three characters: U.S Air Force General Black who has been having a recurring dream in which a Spanish matador kills a bull before a cheering crowd, Dr. Groeteschele, a hard-line anti-communist and political scientist who believes it is possible to fight a limited nuclear war, and the President of the United States. When a computer error causes a U.S. bomber group to erroneously receive valid orders for a nuclear strike on Moscow — and Soviet countermeasures jam U.S. radio communications, preventing Strategic Air Command from rescinding the command — General Black, the president, the Pentagon and eventually Soviet command scrambles to prevent a full scale nuclear exchange. Working together, they manage to stop some of the bombers, but one fateful aircraft makes it through Soviet defenses to release its weapon. Faced with the unimaginable, the president and General Black decide to make a compensatory sacrifice, in the hopes of avoiding war. The tagline for Fail Safe was “It will have you sitting on the brink of eternity!” To listen to the whole episode, subscribe to the Patreon at patreon.com/unclearpod.

For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched Michael Bay’s weirdly prescient action thriller, “The Rock,” released in 1996 and starring Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage, Ed Harris, Michael Biehn and William Forsythe. The supporting cast is also chock full of compelling character actors, including John Spencer, Philip Baker Hall, John C. McKinley, Tony Todd and Bokeem Woodbine. In “The Rock,” Ed Harris plays General Francis Hummel, a disillusioned Vietnam War vet who is angry with the American government for abandoning its soldiers to die behind enemy lines with little to no recognition or compensation. To get his revenge, and to get compensation for his men and their families, he leads his force of rogue Marines in a raid on a naval weapons depot, where they steal a stockpile of VX gas-loaded rockets. They then seize control of Alcatraz Island, off the coast of San Francisco, and hold the area hostage. Either the U.S. government pays him $100 million from a military slush fund, or he launches the rockets, killing hundreds of thousands of people. To disarm the rockets and stop Hummel, the Pentagon and the FBI organize a joint-task force of Navy Seals, special agents and a former convict at Alcatraz. Nic Cage plays FBI agent Stanley Goodspeed, a chemical weapons expert asked with identifying and disarming the weapons. Sean Connery plays John Patrick Mason, a former MI6 officer and current maximum security inmate who was the only person to successfully escape from Alcatraz. The FBI has brought Mason out of prison to aid the mission. The team successfully infiltrates Alcatraz, but then the plan falls apart. The Seals are killed, and Goodspeed and Mason are left trapped in Alcatraz. Their only hope of escape, and survival, is to complete the mission before an airstrike — ordered as a last resort — destroys the island and everyone on it. The tagline for “The Rock” was “Alcatraz. Only one man has ever broken out. Now five million lives depend on two men breaking in.” You can find “The Rock” to rent or buy on demand on iTunes and Amazon. Our next episode will be on the 1995 film “Hackers.” Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest episode of the patreon is on the 1964 nuclear war thriller, “Fail Safe.”

For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched director Brian De Palma’s 1996 adaptation of Mission: Impossible, starring Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Henry Czerny (Kittridge!), Emmanuelle Béart, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, Kristin Scott Thomas and Vanessa Redgrave. It was shot by frequent De Palma collaborator Stephen H. Burum and edited by Paul Hirsch. Screenplay by David Koepp and Robert Towne. Mission: Impossible, based on the television series, was the inaugural project of Tom Cruise’s production company, and the Mission: Impossible franchise has become a core part of Cruise’s celebrity career. The film was generally well-received by critics, although there were complaints about its convoluted plot, and was one of the biggest hits of 1996, grossing nearly $181 million on a budget of $45 million. In Mission: Impossible, Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, a member of the Impossible Missions Force who is on the run after his entire team — including its leader, Jim Phelps, played by John Voight — is killed in a failed mission to obtain a secretive list of every undercover CIA agent. When Hunt learns that the mission was actually a staged hunt for a mole within the IMF — and that the real mole is still out there, seeking the list — he goes on the run in an effort to obtain the list for himself, expose the mole, and regain his freedom. To do so, he recruits his own Impossible Mission Team — comprised of Ving Rhames, Jean Reno and Emmanuelle Beart — and stages a break-in at CIA headquarters in Langley. What unfolds next is a series of twists, turns, surprises and betrayals. The tagline for Mission: Impossible was “Expect the Impossible.” You can Mission: Impossible to rent or buy on Amazon and iTunes, and to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Paramount Plus. Our next episode is Michael Bay’s action thriller, The Rock. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. The latest episode of the Patreon is on the 1961 film “Judgment at Nuremberg.”

For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched the 1996 action thriller slash high school drama The Substitute, directed by Robert Mandel — a prolific television director — and starring Tom Berenger, Ernie Hudson, Diane Venora, Marc Anthony, Luis Guzmàn and William Forsythe. In The Substitute, Berenger plays Jonathan Shale, a Vietnam veteran and mercenary who takes a break from the business of wet work after a botched operation in Cuba where several of his men were killed. He returns home to Miami to stay with his girlfriend, Jane Hetzko played by Venora, who is a teacher at a local, troubled high school. Jane becomes a target of the largest and most dangerous gang at the school, Kings of Destruction, and its leader Juan, played by Anthony, directs his men to attack her. She is seriously injured and while in the hospital, Shale maneuvers to become her substitute. His plan? To take down the gang, which is using the school as essentially an open air drug market. As he moves to confront Juan, Jonathan discovers that the gang is working with the school’s ambitious and corrupt principal, played by Ernie Hudson, to move and distribute ever larger shipments of drugs from foreign supplies. Eager for revenge after a friendly teacher is killed by Juan, Jonathan gathers his men to make an assault on the gang, its suppliers and their allies. The tagline for The Substitute is “The most dangerous thing about school used to be the students.” You can watch The Substitute for free on Amazon Prime or on Tubi or Pluto or one of those services. Our next episode will on Brian DePalma’s 1996 espionage thriller, Mission: Impossible. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more.

For this week's Patreon episode, we watched the 1976 thriller "Marathon Man," directed by John Schlesinger, written by William Goldman, and starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane and Marthe Keller. In "Marathon Man," Hoffman plays a graduate student who becomes entangled in a plot by a Nazi war criminal — and his U.S. government allies — to recover stolen diamonds. The film reflects an of-the-time fascination with the afterlife of the Nazi regime, and especially those Nazis who escaped to South America. We have nothing but positive things to say about this movie and our conversation was interesting as well. You can find "Marathon Man" for rent or purchase on iTunes and Amazon and for streaming on Paramount+. There is also a new 4K blu ray to check out, if you're so inclined.

Welcome back to Unclear and Present Danger! It’s our first episode of the new year and we’re here with a pretty fun movie — “Executive Decision,” directed by Stuart Baird, produced by Joel Silver and starring Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Joe Morton, Steven Seagal and many others. Music by, as you might expect, Jerry Goldsmith. In “Executive Decision,” an intelligence analyst played by Russell and a group of commandos, led by Seagal, must infiltrate a passenger jet bound for Washington DC that has been hijacked by a terrorist group. On board the jet is enough nerve toxin to kill everyone on the eastern seaboard. Most of the film is a tense standoff on the airliner, as the commandos try to defuse the nerve bomb and take down the terrorists, while the terrorists move forward with their mission. The tagline for Executive Decision was “Five miles above the earth, an elite team of six men must make an air to air transfer, in order to save 400 lives on board a 747... and 40 million below.” You can find Executive Decision to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon. Our next episode of the podcast will be on “The Substitute,” otherwise known as “Stand and Deliver if the teacher body-slammed the students.” Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. The latest episode of the Patreon is on “Marathon Man.”

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger — the last episode of the year! — we watched Tony Scott’s 1995 submarine action thriller, “Crimson Tide,” starring Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, Viggo Mortenson and James Gandolfini, among many others. And to discuss “Crimson Tide,” we have an esteemed guest! Tony Gilroy, who you may know from his work on the Bourne films, political thrillers like “State of Play,” “Beirut,” legal thrillers like “Michael Clayton” or the recent Star Wars Disney Plus series “Andor.” Now, if you haven’t watched “Crimson Tide” — and you should, stop this episode and go put it on — here’s the score. In “Crimson Tide,” the crew of the USS Alabama, a nuclear submarine, is put on high alert as civil war breaks out in post-Soviet Russia. Military units loyal to the ultra-nationalist rebel have taken control of a nuclear missile installation and have threatened nuclear war if threatened. The USS Alabama is commanded by Captain Frank Ramsey, a career veteran of the submarine corps. He has chosen the cerebral and inexperienced Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter to serve as his new executive officer. The two clash, eventually coming to an impasse over an Emergency Action Message order a missile launch against the Russian base. Ramsey wants to move forward while Hunter wants to delay action until the USS Alabama can clarify a second message received but interrupted as the crew confronted an enemy submarine. What follows is a confrontation, a mutiny, and a race to confirm the Alabama’s true orders lest they fire the shot that starts a nuclear conflagration. The tagline for “Crimson Tide” was “Danger Runs Deep.” You can find “Crimson Tide” for rent or purchase on iTunes and Amazon. Our next episode will be on “Executive Decision,” directed by Stuart Baird and starring Kurt Russell, Halle Berry and John Leguizamo. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest episode of the patreon is on the 1984 Robert Altman drama on Richard Nixon, “Secret Honor.”

On this week’s episode of the podcast, Jamelle and John watched “City Hall,” a 1996 political drama directed by Harold Becker and starring Al Pacino, John Cusack, Danny Aiello, Bridget Fonda, David Paymer and Martin Landau. You’ll also notice a beardless Richard Schiff, Lauren Velez, and Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. In “City Hall,” Cusack plays Kevin Calhoun, the loyal deputy to Mayor John Pappas, played by Al Pacino. After a young boy and a police detective are killed in a sting gone wrong, Calhoun has to navigate a tense political situation in effort to bring the crisis to a resolution without harming the rising prospects of his boss. Unfortunately, as he soon discovers with the help of Marybeth Cogan, a lawyer for the slain cop played by Fonda, behind the deaths are a tangled web of corruption that reaches from the political machine to the courts to the mayor’s office itself. The tagline for “City Hall” is “It started with a shootout on a rainswept street and ended in a scandal that shattered New York.” You can get “City Hall” for rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes. Our next episode will be on “Crimson Tide.” Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more.

On this week’s podcast, Jamelle and John watched the legendary Hong Kong director John Woo’s 1996 action thriller “Broken Arrow,” starring John Travolta, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Delroy Lindo and Howie Long. In “Broken Arrow,” a rogue pilot, Air Force Major Vic Deakins, played by Travolta, steals two nuclear weapons with the intent to sell them back to the United States government for a profit. His co-pilot, Captain Riley Hale, played by Christian Slater, is left for dead during the theft of the weapons. When Hale is found by park ranger Terry Carmichael, Samantha Mathis, the two race to stop Deakins, who eventually decides that he is going to detonate one of the weapons and irradiate the Southwest. The tagline for “Broken Arrow” was “Prepare to go ballistic.” You can find “Broken Arrow” to rent or buy on Amazon and iTunes. Our next episode will be on the 1996 drama “City Hall.” Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more.

This week on the Patreon, Jamelle and John were joined by Beverly Gage — a professor of history at Yale University and author of "G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century" — to discuss Clint Eastwood's 2011 J. Edgar Hoover biopic, simply titled "J. Edgar." We had such a good time discussing the movie with Professor Gage that we thought we should share this episode on the main feed as a bonus! We hope you enjoy it and we hope you consider signing up for the Patreon if you haven’t already. "J. Edgar" stars eonardo DiCaprio in the title role, with supporting performances from Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas and Judi Dench. The movie is available for rental or purchase on iTunes and Amazon. You can find Beverly's book at a bookstore near you. This episode was produced by Connor Lynch. Our artwork is by Rachel Eck.

For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John watched Oliver Stone’s 1995 dramatization of the life and career of President Richard M. Nixon, appropriately titled “Nixon.” Like Stone’s other mid-century political film, “JFK,” it stars a murderer’s row of A-listers and character actors: Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins, Paul Sorvino, Mary Steenburgen, James Woods, Powers Boothe, Tony Goldwyn, J.T. Walsh and many, many others. To talk “Nixon” we were joined by the great Nicole Hemmer, an associate professor of history and director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, the author of two great books on conservative politics, and one of the co-hosts of the PastPresent podcast. You can find “Nixon” to rent or stream on iTunes or Amazon Prime. The tagline for “Nixon” is “Triumphant in Victory, Bitter in Defeat. He changed the world, but lost a nation.” Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod The next episode of the podcast will be on John Woo’s first American feature, “Broken Arrow.” And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War. Our latest episode is on “The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover,” written and directed by Larry Cohen.

For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “The Enemy Within,” a 1994 remake of John Frankenheimer’s “Seven Days in May,” starring Forest Whitaker and Jason Robards. Like the original film, “The Enemy Within” concerns a military plot to depose the president and take control of the U.S. government. Like the original film, our hero is an Army advisor who would rather defend the Constitution than his superiors. And like the original film, the story is a race against the clock as the president and his allies try to stop their adversary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from executing his plan. “The Enemy Within” stars Forest Whitaker as Colonel “Mac” Casey, Sam Waterston as President William Foster, Dana Delany as his chief of staff Betsy Corcoran, and Jason Robards as General R. Pendleton Lloyd. The tagline for “The Enemy Within” is “You never know who your enemies are.” You can stream the movie on HBO Max or rent it on iTunes and Amazon. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. The latest episode of our Patreon is on “Seven Days in May.” So you can listen to these two episodes to compare and contrast the two movies.

For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “Hidden Assassin” — also released under the name “The Shooter” — a 1995 action drama directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Dolph Lundgren and Maruschka Detmers. In “Hidden Assassin,” Lundgren plays a U.S. Marshall, Michael Dane, tasked with arresting a woman, played by Detmers, suspected of assassinating the Cuban ambassador to the United States. Time is of the essence; the Secretary of State will meet with his Cuban counterpart in Prague — where the movie takes place — in an attempt to ease tensions between the two nations. But Lundgren isn’t so sure that Detmers’ character, Simone Rosset, is the shooter. What unfolds is a conspiracy that threatens Dane’s life and implicates some of his closest allies. The tagline for “Hidden Assassin” is “Seduction is a deadly weapon!” Which doesn’t have much to do with the actual movie. You can find “Hidden Assassin” to watch on Amazon Prime or for free on YouTube. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. he latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on the 1979 film “Winter Kills.” Our next episode of the main freed podcast will be on “The Enemy Within,” a 1994 remake of John Frankenheimer’s “Seven Days in May.” And we’ll watch the original film for the Patreon as well. Links from the episode! The films of Chris Marker A video essay on “La Jette” and “Vertigo.”

For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “12 Monkeys,” the 1995 science fiction film from Terry Gilliam starring Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt and Christopher Plummer. “12 Monkeys” is an adaptation of sorts of a 1962 French short film “La Jetée,” in which scientists in a post-nuclear apocalypse future send a man back and forward through time in an effort to save their present. The man eventually succeeds in his mission, only to be killed — his death being an image he had seen again and again in his dreams. And in the film “12 Monkeys,” Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner living in an underground compound beneath Philadelphia, in a future where the human race has been nearly wiped out by viral plague. He is selected to go back in time to find the original virus to help scientists in his present develop a cure. During multiple trips back in time, he encounters people — a patient at a mental health institution played by Pitt, a psychologist played by Stowe — who all seem to have a role in the events that will end the human race. Cole struggles to resolve whether his life and experiences are real or not, but comes to understand that the virus is real, and that the man responsible is in his orbit. He attempts to stop him but is shot and killed, fulfilling the vision he had seen, in his dreams, of his own death. The tagline for “12 Monkeys” is “The Future is history.” “12 Monkeys” is available for rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest episode of the Patreon is on “A Face in the Crowd.”

For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John were joined by Linda Holmes of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Our to discuss the 1995 political romantic comedy “The American President,” directed by Rob Reiner, written by — you guessed it — Aaron Sorkin, and starring Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, David Paymer, Samantha Mathis and Michael J. Fox, among others. “The American President” stars Michael Douglas as President Andrew Shepherd, a widow, who falls in love with an environmental lobbyist, played by Annette Bening, while he also runs for re-election and attempts to pass major legislation. The film is both a romantic comedy, depicting the president’s courtship, and a political drama, depicting the effort to win votes, dodge criticism and shore up the White House’s political position. The tagline for “The American President” is “Why can’t the most powerful man in the world have the one thing he wants most?” “The American President” is available for rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes. Our next episode will on the 1995 science-fiction thriller, “Twelve Monkeys.” Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod Linda Holmes And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on the 1970 film “The Conformist.” Our next episode will be on Elia Kazan’s 1957 political drama “A Face in the Crowd.”

For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John were joined by Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker magazine to watch and discuss 1995’s GoldenEye, the first James Bond film of the 1990s and the first James Bond film of the post-Cold War era. GoldenEye is the seventeenth film in the James Bond series and the first to star Pierce Brosnan, who would go on to star in three subsequent pictures, all of which we will eventually cover on the podcast: Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day. Directed by Martin Campbell and starring, in addition to Brosnan, Sean Bean, Izabella Scorupco, Famke Janssen, Alan Cumming, Judi Dench and Joe Don Baker, Goldeneye was something of a reboot for the Bond franchise, which had been on a six-year hiatus since the previous entry, License to Kill starring Timothy Dalton. The plot of GoldenEye is as straightforward as one of these movies can manage: Bond is tasked with stopping the mysterious Janus syndicate from stealing and using a Soviet-era space weapon capable of causing an electro-magnetic pulse blast anywhere on the planet. Complicating this mission is the fact that the leader of Janus, Alec Trevelayn, is a former MI6 agent who was supposed to have died on a mission with Bond, nine years earlier. There’s the usual adventures and explosions and casual sexual encounters, culminating in a final showdown between Bond and Trevelayn on a massive satellite. GoldenEye, if you’ve somehow never seen it, is available for rental and purchase on iTunes and Amazon. For our next episode, we’re covering the 1995 romantic-political comedy, “The American President,” starring Michael Douglas and Annette Benning. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. The most recent episode of the Patreon is on the 1970 Italian political drama, “The Conformist.”

For this week’s episode, we watched the 1995 coming-of-age tale slash Vietnam War movie slash crime thriller “Dead Presidents,” produced and directed by Albert and Allen Hughes. It stars Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, N’Bushe Wright, Freddy Rodriguez and Bokeem Woodbine. “Dead Presidents” is the story of Anthony Curtis, a soon-to-be high school graduate from the Bronx who chooses to join the Marines in search of his own destiny. The year is 1969 and he is sent to Vietnam, leaving his family, his girlfriend Juanita and his friends behind. He experiences the worst of the war and returns home, angry and alienated, to his old girlfriend and his daughter. His friends, who also went to war, have also had their own trials. Each desperate for meaning and for money, they devise a plan to rob an armored car. As you might expect, things get quickly out of hand. In the course of the episode, Jamelle and John discuss the experience of Black veterans in America’s wars, the role of Vietnam in American national memory and the way race shapes our understanding of crime. The tagline for “Dead Presidents” is “The only color that counts is green.” You can find the move for rent on iTunes and Amazon. Episodes come out every two weeks, so we will see you then with an episode on the first James Bond film of the 1990s, “Goldeneye.” Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest Patreon episode is on the 1975 German political thriller, “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum.”

For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John watched Kathryn Bigelow’s 1995 cult favorite Strange Days, a collaboration with James Cameron inspired by the political and social turmoil of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although not quite “cyberpunk” — it isn’t a William Gibson pastiche like its contemporary Johnny Mnemonic — Strange Days borrows heavily from the genre and its various conceits. Strange Days stars Ralph Fiennes as protagonist Lenny Nero, Angela Bassett as “Mace,” Juliette Lewis as Faith and Tom Sizemore as Max, with appearances from Vincent D’Onofrio, Michael Wincott, William Fichtner and Richard Edson. Here is a brief plot synopsis: Set in the year 1999 during the last days of the old millennium, the movie tells the story of Lenny Nero, an ex-cop who now deals with data-discs containing recorded memories and emotions. One day he receives a disc which contains the memories of a murderer killing a prostitute. Lenny investigates and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of blackmail, murder and rape. Will he survive and solve the case? The tagline for Strange Days is “New Year’s Eve 1999. Anything is possible. Nothing is forbidden.” Strange Days is available to stream on HBO Max and is available for rent or purchase on iTunes and Amazon. Our next episode is on the Hughes brother’s crime thriller Dead Presidents. Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck. Contact us! Follow us on Twitter! John Ganz Jamelle Bouie UnclearPod And join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest episode of the patreon is on The Battle of Algiers.