the final reckoning

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: This post will self-destruct in five seconds (under the sheer weight of trailers)

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Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

The novels of Thomas Hardy – in particular his last two, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure – are the supreme downers, making you feel for their protagonists and then follow them on their descent into the kind of tragedy that would have made Antigone, Electra and Medea wince. And yet: these are beautifully written books, filled with sadness and anger at a society that chooses cruel judgment over mercy and empathy. Check out this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to find out why these books have proven to be so enduring for Matt.

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Stunning Hunts and cunning stunts: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)

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Is bigger always better? Arguably, that’s the main question the Mission: Impossible franchise has set out to answer, at least since reinventing itself in its current format with 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, directed by Brad Bird. Once you get the Kremlin blown up and climb up the Burj Khalifa like a real-world Spider-Man, where do you go? Well, obviously, you ride a motorbike off a mountain in order to parachute through a window of the moving Orient Express. You try to escape a sunken submarine that’s rolling towards the abyss, while torpedoes come crashing from their enclosures to your left and right.

Is this one-upmanship impressive? Undoubtedly. Does it make for a good film? Let me get back to you on that one.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: I call this one Bitey!

MattLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

This week saw the first Six Damn Fine Degrees post by a new contributor: Doctor John Smith (now why does that name ring a bell?) wrote about movie vampires and their ties to the aristocracy and to capitalism. After all, they do like to bleed us dry, don’t they?

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