At The Star, Jaylon Thompson wonders if the Royals pitching depth is how they hope to acquire offensive help<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe saw how much Cole Ragans can change a game for us in the last three starts,\u201d Picollo said. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s dominant type stuff. Kris Bubic, being an All-Star this year, it\u2019s hard to ignore him and say he is fighting for a spot. But then, you get Noah Cameron, Ryan Bergert, Stephen Kolek and Luinder Avila to compete for that spot. So, there\u2019s a lot of depth with how it works out at the end\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWith depth, you are protecting yourself, number one, but then you also have assets that other teams are interested in,\u201d Picollo said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know if that is going to be the case or not. But if that\u2019s the case, we know we have the depth to deal from our starting pitching. \u2026 So when you have a position of depth, it could be something you utilize to help in other areas.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Pete Grathoff notes that five Royals from the 2021 pitching staff are in the postseason<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a weird quirk, there are five members of the Royals\u2019 2021 pitching staff who made the playoffs this season. That 2021 season wasn\u2019t particularly great as the Royals had a 74-88 record and finished fourth in the American League Central, 19 games behind the White Sox.<\/p>\n The Royals\u2019 pitching staff had a 4.64 ERA that season, which was 19th in Major League Baseball. But five of those pitchers from that staff made the postseason this fall. Here is a closer look.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Can you guess them? I can\u2019t do spoiler text so I\u2019ll bury them somewhere in the movie reviews where no one is looking anyway<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Associated Press is doing year in review articles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kansas City continues to do well in the replay booth<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Big league teams improved their success in video reviews for the third straight year led by the Houston Astros, who were successful in 71.9% of their challenges. Houston won 23 of 32 challenges, Major League Baseball said. Milwaukee was next at 69.2%, followed by Philadelphia (66.7%), Arizona (66%) and Kansas City (65.6%).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Sure, it\u2019s a giant jumbled table of numbers, but the Royals tied for the fewest pitch clock violations<\/a> in baseball.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The end-of-the-season meeting was a big topic. I mean, it was here with both Max<\/a> and Jeremy<\/a> writing about it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Craig Brown also wrote about it at Into the Fountains<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As did Kevin O\u2019Brien at The Royals Reporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And so did David Lesky ($) at Inside the Crown<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To be clear, I was one of those who believed they needed to make a change. But a switch almost flipped when the calendar turned to July. Maybe it was more of a dimmer switch because it didn\u2019t happen all at once. But they scored six runs on July 1. They scored nine runs on July 4. They did that again on July 7. They hit .253\/.312\/.442 from July 1 through the All-Star Break, even though they still only scored 4.1 runs per game. But during the break, they acquired Adam Frazier. And after the break, they kind of went nuts. Culminating with a 12-1 win over the White Sox, the Royals scored 5.3 runs per game while hitting .254\/.329\/.447 over a 37-game period.<\/p>\n Things cooled off, as they always do. They scored 16 runs over the next seven games. Then they scored 11. Then they scored 11 over the next six games. But from September 13 to the end of the year, they scored 90 runs in 14 games with a .288\/.349\/.485 line. Sure, it included scoring 20 with 10 against a catcher, but even if you take out 10 runs, that\u2019s 80 runs in 14 games. On the whole, they averaged 4.8 runs per game from July 1 to the end of the year. That wasn\u2019t quite half the season, but it was close at 77 games.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Royals Data Dugout writes about their offseason plans<\/a>. It also has a list of Royals blogs to keep up with during the offseason. Hint: most are ones we link to a lot, but if you want them in one place, this is a good resource.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I may have missed it, but I don\u2019t think this has been mentioned here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I got a request from MLB.com to change my password. That\u2019s almost universally the sign that a company has just fessed up to being hacked (months ago) and CYA to minimize liability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sure enough, a quick internet search yields this story<\/a> by Evan Drellich at The Athletic (probably $) from a couple of weeks ago:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some Major League Baseball fans have arrived at ballparks this month to find their digital tickets have not only disappeared, but have been resold on popular platforms such as SeatGeek and StubHub.<\/p>\n In a statement acknowledging the problem to The Athletic<\/em>, the league said that \u201cbad actors\u201d have been able to access fans\u2019 tickets on a platform used by all 30 MLB teams \u2014 the Ballpark app \u2014 because of passwords scammers obtained or deciphered through other sources.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ballpark app is operating properly and continues to process tickets for millions of fans who attend MLB games. There is no evidence that this was a breach of the MLB system,\u201d the league said. \u201cThere have been widespread reports of significant data breaches on other platforms. Bad actors then have utilized leaked or stolen credentials from other websites in efforts to access the accounts of MLB fans.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n In theory, this would mean that hackers are using passwords gained from other leaks to try and crack people\u2019s MLB accounts. This is a common technique called a dictionary attack (it has its own Wikipedia page<\/a>) and the best mitigation is to make sure your online accounts all have different passwords. That way if, say, there were a giant password breach of 16 billion credentials<\/a>, a malicious actor couldn\u2019t use your password stolen from Facebook to log into your MLB account. Hopefully that\u2019s all it is and not a yet-undetected breach.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Not a ton of Royals content, so you don\u2019t mind if I go long, right? I\u2019m also falling a bit back on clich\u00e9 – dumping a few more movie reviews. But it\u2019s a busy time of year right now with school starting up and a big trip coming up at the end of the year that I\u2019m still planning bits of. Good news for you: I\u2019m out the next two weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Actually, here, let\u2019s run down the rest of the year for Friday Rumblings:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Trivia answer from above: Brad Keller, Jakob Junis, Scott Barlow, Brady Singer, Gabe Speier. I didn\u2019t realize Barlow was still in the league – though it doesn\u2019t surprise me as ground ball guy with good K rate ages well. I don\u2019t think I could have named Gabe Speier if you had spotted me the initials \u201cG S\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019re going to call today\u2019s entry: \u201c90s Movies and Sequels that Should Never Have Been Made (especially not 20 years later)\u201d. We probably should have workshopped that into something more concise. Then again, these reviews are probably longer than any of these movies warrant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A simple reading of Twister is that it\u2019s a dumb disaster movie with questionable science, a nonsensical plot, and paper-thin characters. But I do think that undersells it. Yes, it plays (really) fast and loose with tornado science and physics. Like, I\u2019m sure a belt around a pipe will save you from an F5 tornado. And it\u2019s amazing how they keep chasing tornadoes with no deadly debris. And, really, who makes a scientific instrument that you have to leave in the path of a tornado?!?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the characters are interesting enough for an action movie (especially when compared to the sequel). Helen Hunt (Jo) was in the middle of her Emmy streak, and this was a year before she won an Oscar for As Good as it Gets. Bill Paxton (Bill) was rarely critically acclaimed, though he had several notable roles in the 80s and 90s. Just a reminder about TV vs movie actors: I remember watching him in a half-season guest stint for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; he was mostly phoning it in, yet he was acting circles around everyone in that show that wasn\u2019t Clark Gregg or Ming-Na Wen. It would have been so easy to make the savant weather chaser burdened by personal trauma a man paired up with the settling-down, sensible woman, falling for a bad fit. But instead this works so much better. Additionally, you\u2019re rooting against Cary Elwes, but you don\u2019t despise him, so his death has an impact. The rest of the chasers are suitably quirky, as you\u2019d expect: a young Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck and his silly maps, pre-Lost<\/em> Jeremy Davies, etc. Even the little stop at Aunt Meg\u2019s (Lois Smith) house is a nice little respite from the action sequences.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The action sequences are exciting and the effects look good for 1996. Heck, they still look good today. I swear many movies today look worse than the best effects of the 90s and early 00s. There are nice little bits like how the opening scene pays massive homages to The Wizard of Oz <\/em>(though no self-respecting Midwesterner would be dumb enough to try and hold a storm cellar door down with their arms). The driving force behind the characters is to save lives, and it is believable. There appeared to be, at least, an attempt to put a small bit of cinematic veneer around an action movie. Oh, and the soundtrack is so very late 90s (including the last songs<\/a> that Van Hagar made before Sammy was kicked out of Van Halen). So, yes, even though it\u2019s clearly a breezy (hah!) action movie, there was some effort to make it slightly more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t think there is a word in English that captures just how low my expectations were for this movie. German probably has one. What\u2019s a polysyllabic Deutsch word for \u201cLow expectations resulting from a 20-year-old sequel that should never have been made\u201d? TooManyNacthenJurassicWorldCrappeng\u00e4nger? I don\u2019t recall any loose ends that needed tying up from the last movie. Neither did the creative team here. That\u2019s ok – it didn\u2019t matter as nothing is tying this to the original except the title.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With a better script, Daisy Edgar-Jones (Kate), Anthony Ramos (Javi), and Glen Powell (Tyler) are a good main trio. Powell owns practically all of the scenes he\u2019s in. Though I could do without the \u201caw, shucks, you need to face your fears\u201d message that should have been countered by Kate saying \u201canyone who didn\u2019t have three friends die can kindly (expletive) off lecturing me about my trauma\u201d. Edgar-Jones does her best with a meh script that\u2019s a hazy echo of Helen Hunt\u2019s character from the first. The role of Javi is mostly bunk – unrequited love turned lesser bad guy. None of the other characters are remotely interesting, save for Harry Hadden-Paton\u2019s Ben, a British journalist following crazy Yankee storm chasers. Actually, I stand corrected: you despise the villains. Javi gets his funding from pre-Superman <\/em>David Corenswet and his shady real-estate partner, who swoop in after the tornadoes and buy uninsured property for pennies on the dollar from people who just lost everything. Though you wonder how nice guy Javi ever got mixed up with these people and never left.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Many other superficial aspects of this movie mirror the first. The effects look similar. The rodeo tornado with no warning is laughable in this day and age. Maybe in 1997, there was limited warning, but technology is so much better now and EF4s don\u2019t just spawn out of nowhere. They completely lack debris (again) and disregard a lot of physics (again) except when it\u2019s plot-convenient (again). I can\u2019t tell you if Kate\u2019s \u201ctornado killer\u201d idea would work \u2013 I assume not or we\u2019d already try it in real life \u2013 but we spend a lot of time telling the audience it will so it has to in the movie. This goes back to my \u201cThe Day After Tomorrow<\/em>\u201d theory of science fiction physics. If there\u2019s a \u201cscientist\u201d spending time to treknobabble it onscreen, that\u2019s how it works in that universe \u2013 but everything else works as it does in ours. That\u2019s why, silly as they sound, \u201cgiant freezing category 6 hurricanes that come down from the atmosphere\u201d work, but you can\u2019t just have cold chase Dennis Quaid down a hallway \u2013 that\u2019s not how things work and causes a suspension of disbelief.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you can\u2019t tell, so far, I feel like it\u2019s just a pale imitation of the first. Heck, even the soundtrack is worse \u2013 trading rock and pop for mediocre country music. It\u2019s weird \u2013 we\u2019re used to studios nostalgia mining \u2013 and I fully expected tons of callbacks to the original. But we got very little of that, save the mentions of tornado instrument Dorothy. So why even attach the Twister<\/em> name to it? Or even make the movie? It\u2019s not really bad \u2013 it\u2019s just not even there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This movie is draped in awards, influential, and financially successful. Much better writers and scholars have espoused its praises, so I\u2019m not going to waste too many words here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes, it\u2019s a slow burn of an epic, but Ridley Scott keeps it interesting. You could say the script is simple, but its singular, unflinching march through the plot is a strength, not a weakness. The movie made Russell Crowe a star, but Joaquin Phoenix also earned his Best Supporting Actor nod.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I hadn\u2019t seen this movie in 20 years, but I\u2019d like to point out a couple of little bits I noticed upon this rewatch. There\u2019s a lot of proto Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em> music here from Hans Zimmer, particularly in the second half of the movie. Also, this movie was the first I remember seeing the \u201cherky jerky\u201d action movie camera that would become prevalent for the next decade plus. It felt appropriate for a chaotic war or gladiatorial combat. However, I always lamented that, say, Daniel Craig\u2019s James Bond<\/em> or scores of other modern action movies opted for this style versus the action movie art of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon<\/em> or the Matrix <\/em>trilogy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What more can I say that hasn\u2019t already been said? It\u2019s well-directed and well-acted; it\u2019s straightforward, yet compelling; it looks good and it sounds good. At worst, you can say it\u2019s slow and is dark. But, ultimately, it\u2019s a well-built movie, deserving of its praise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When I told a friend of mine that we were going to watch Gladiator II, he mused that \u201cthe first 30 minutes are B reel from Gladiator<\/em> followed by a Denzel movie\u201d. He\u2019s not wrong. If Gladiator<\/em> had never been made, this would have been praised, though not to the level of the original. But as it\u2019s a sequel, it\u2019s mostly superfluous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Paul Mescal (Lucius) is fine, but he\u2019s not Russell Crowe. I guess making Lucias to be Maximus\u2019s son ties it to the original, but his story isn\u2019t as interesting. Pedro Pascal\u2019s Acacius is a good \u201cnoble\u201d foil to Lucius, and his marriage to Lucilla keeps this conflict all in the family. I love Pascal. Who doesn\u2019t? But isn\u2019t he getting overexposed these days? Similarly, Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger are also\u2026 fine, but, again, not Joaquin Phoenix. However, once Denzel Washington hits the screen, there\u2019s not a lot of oxygen left for anyone else: \u201cKing Kong ain\u2019t got sh*t on Macrinus\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Everything is just a little (or lot) less good than the original. The plot is more convoluted and contrived. Lucius\u2019s story is far less compelling, but, in the end, this is as much Macrinus\u2019s story as anyone\u2019s. The fights and effects are still decent, though some of the CGI animals look bad – the monkey scene, in particular. On the whole, the movie is not bad. But when I was done, I couldn\u2019t help but think that there was no reason for this movie to be made.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also felt like Independence Day<\/a><\/strong> and Independence Day: Resurgence<\/a><\/strong> fall into this category. Though I wasn\u2019t going to waste another 2 hours of my life watching Resurgence, so you get these lightly edited versions of reviews I wrote in 2018, which are a bit longer than the others.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I really wanted to give this film a 10. 16-year-old me gives this an 11. Yes, they use a Mac virus to defeat an alien armada. Yes, fire chases a dog down a hallway and stops conveniently when it ducks in a door (an Emmerich mistake he repeated with ice in a Day After Tomorrow). And, yes, it\u2019s a popcorn action flick. But it\u2019s the best earth-bound disaster movie ever made and will probably never be topped. Everything lines up across the board: directing, plot, characters, effects, dialogue, et al. In short, it\u2019s really fun and little detracts from that experience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Let\u2019s start with the special effects because they were best-in-breed and still (mostly) hold up 20 years later. Computer technology has seen huge advances, but few effects in ID4 would really get better. Yes, some scenes could be improved, mainly bad green screening, like the helicopter escape from the White House or the aforementioned bad fire chase. But the real drama is created from seeing iconic buildings like the White House, The Empire State Building, and US Bank Tower (LA) blown to pieces. There\u2019s the eerily serene scent with the alien ship hovering over NYC with the Statue of Liberty lying in the Hudson River. All of those were done with intricate models, and technology will do little to make those look better. The spaceships didn\u2019t need any more technology to look better \u2013 they\u2019re elegant in their simplicity. They\u2019re a giant monolithic evil, nearly unstoppable, save for their Achilles\u2019 heel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Scaling is the thing that ID4 does better than any other movie. Roland Emmerich, Michael Bay, Marvel, and countless others have created dozens of disaster movies, and none have gotten it right like this one. From wiki: \u201cKenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times felt that the film did an \u2018excellent job conveying the boggling immensity of [the] extraterrestrial vehicles [\u2026] and panic in the streets\u2019 and the scenes of the alien attack were \u2018disturbing, unsettling and completely convincing\u2019\u201d. It\u2019s a two-pronged assault on your senses: not only are the cities physically destroyed (the Michael Bay special), but you have enough character touchpoints to feel the destruction (we\u2019ll get to those a little further on). Despite the huge scale and the ability for many parts of it to be lopsided, there are only a few rare moments that feel like missteps (for instance, the number of fighter ships feels like it ebbs and flows). In short, any list that doesn\u2019t have it at or near the top of its disaster movie list merits scrutiny or outright dismissal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s not breaking new ground to say that action movie acting is not the same as drama acting. But the action movie formula is maximized. Will Smith is at the peak of his audience-drawing power: in the middle of his music career, post Fresh Prince, and sandwiched between Bad Boys (1995) and Men in Black (1997). Jeff Goldblum was still fresh (pun not intended) in people\u2019s minds as the archetype-creating rock star scientist Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park<\/em> (1993). They are the perfect odd couple. One, Captain Steven Hiller, is a decorated Air Force pilot who wants to be an astronaut but can\u2019t because of the woman he loves. The other, scientist David Levinson, is an MIT grad who found the rat race unfulfilling, so he works in the cable television business and tries to save the world in small ways like recycling. They fight aliens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But to paint this as just a buddy pic shorts the rest of the ensemble cast. The second billing (pun only slightly intended) goes to one of the Bill P\u2019s, Pullman, in this case, as idealized Bill Clinton \u2013 young and intelligent, but a family man with military service. His rousing speech is iconic, though, yes, we\u2019ll get to the 90s cultural implications in a minute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n All three of the main characters have romantic interests \u2013 this could be viewed as antiquated sexism, but each also serves a \u201cliterary\u201d purpose as well. Hiller is dating an adult dancer, Vivica A. Fox\u2019s Jasmine Dubrow. She\u2019s not portrayed as salacious, but as street-smart and used to illustrate the struggle of \u201cnormal\u201d people after the invasion. She\u2019s also used to explain why he\u2019s not an astronaut and to show that he has a heart of gold. First Lady Marilyn, played by Mary McDonnell, reflects many of President Whitmore\u2019s better qualities. But she also helps show how this disaster affected all, from the most vulnerable to the most powerful, and her death adds emotional heft to the disaster, making it personal for the audience. Finally, Margaret Colin\u2019s Constance Spano is part of the 90s time capsule of the movie: Levinson is considered immature because he didn\u2019t have traditional ambitions and wanted a family, while she is portrayed as the modern career woman, and the pitfalls of that choice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even once we get past those characters, we\u2019ve left out some major players. Randy Quaid\u2019s Russell Casse gives us knowledge about the aliens that seems perfectly natural coming from his character, who is just a bit broken but trying to keep his family together. I appreciated that the initial plot had him using his crop duster to destroy the alien ship after he was denied a fighter jet for being too drunk. It tied a little more nicely to the character\u2019s previous backstory. However, they weren\u2019t a slave to it, and the sacrifice that made it into the final cut worked better for that moment. It was some of the perfect \u201caction movie\u201d direction of the movie \u2013 he looks at his kid\u2019s picture, the scene pans to the kids, we see the regret in Quaid\u2019s face, but then we see everyone else who could be saved, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Judd Hirsch is a walking stereotype (hey, it\u2019s the 90s!), but lends both levity and gravity to various situations as well as a light spiritual side in the praying scene. Harry Connick Jr and Harvey Fierstein also have memorable moments balancing light and dark. Robert Loggia\u2019s General Grey, Adam Baldwin\u2019s Major Mitchell, and Dan Lauria\u2019s (the dad from The Wonder Years) \u201cCommanding Officer \u2013 all provide proper recognizable straight men as part of the military apparatus. Brent Spiner\u2019s Dr. Okun is still his second biggest role on his Wikipedia page after his iconic Data from Star Trek<\/em> and is a memorably quirky role. Finally, James Rebhorn plays Albert Nimzicki, the sniveling Secretary of Defense and a foil for all the \u201cheroes\u201d. Apparently, his names and mannerisms are based on an executive at MGM who, per wiki, \u201cmade life unpleasant for Devlin and Emmerich when studio executives forced recuts of Stargate<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The movie structure isn\u2019t perfect. For instance, Hiller finding his girlfriend and the First Lady in the middle of nowhere was completely unbelievable. But, I think at some point, they just said \u201cwe\u2019re going to have to force something here\u201d and that was the moment to bring your characters back together. However, other than Levinson\u2019s ex being in the White House, giving him access to the remaining security apparatus, none of the connections were necessary for the plot to happen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That the President was a fighter pilot would have been contrived if he had been the one to shoot down the alien ship. But his missile fails. We\u2019re following Hiller\u2019s and Casse\u2019s story precisely because they are the pair who take out the mothership and the first attack ship. But nothing in their background made them exceptional characters who were the only ones who could save the day. It\u2019s egalitarianism, not elitism, on display.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t think the directing in this movie is appreciated nearly enough. It\u2019s a perfectly staged disaster film and each of the 3 acts even has on-screen cue cards. As illustrated above, one of the other underrated aspects of the movie is how it weaves just the right number of threads. The audience feels the complexity of the situation and a range of emotions, while not making the movie too complicated for a summer blockbuster crowd.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some great light touches enrich the world-building but also function either as humor or exposition. For instance, in a completely unremarkable scene, as they\u2019re driving to the White House, Levinson\u2019s dad is chastising him for spending \u201ceight years at MIT to become a cable repair man\u201d. In those 30 seconds, we understand the father-son dynamic, establish David\u2019s bona fides, and the setting around them shows the panic in the streets as they are the only ones driving into Washington DC while everyone else is trying to get out. This economy of screen time makes for a pretty dense movie. It clocks in at 2:25 in length but has a lot of stories to tell in that time. There are also a number of other time capsule moments like an X-Files<\/em> joke, a McLaughlin Group<\/em> clip, and REM\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)\u201d \u2013 though the last one is a little on the nose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n David Arnold\u2019s score is excellent. Amusingly, from wiki: \u201cThe Grammy Award-winning score for the film was composed by David Arnold and recorded with an orchestra of 90, a choir of 46, \u2018and every last ounce of stereotypical Americana he could muster for the occasion\u2019\u2026 the film\u2019s producer Dean Devlin commented that \u2018you can leave it up to a Brit to write some of the most rousing and patriotic music in the history of American cinema.\u2019\u201d Like so many aspects of the movie, it\u2019s tempting to label it as \u201ctired\u201d. However, this is the often imitated movie many of these conventions and clich\u00e9s come from. It\u2019s not old hat if you\u2019re the first one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the questions I\u2019ve posed: \u201cIs this the most American movie ever\u201d? We see this theme at work in 1999\u2019s (so, almost, but not quite, a contemporary) The Matrix, too, as Agent Smith says it was designed after \u201cthe peak of your civilization\u201d. There\u2019s the conflicting message of everyone working together, but led by American paternalism. It\u2019s an idealistic one, but then again, when has imperialism not been? Oh, and the President\u2019s speech doesn\u2019t really play well anywhere else. Per wiki, BBC\u2019s review refers to it as \u201cthe most jaw-droppingly pompous soliloquy ever delivered in a mainstream Hollywood movie.\u201d Guilty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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