Unclear and Present Danger

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the 1997 action thriller Conspiracy Theory , directed by Richard Donner (which explains a lot) and starring Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts and Patrick Stewart. In Conspiracy Theory , Gibson plays Jerry Fletcher, a cab driver who is consumed with all manner of conspiracies, using his captive audiences to share his ideas and delusions. He i...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John are joined by Max Read — of the Max Read Substack — to talk Air Force One , the 1997 action thriller directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring none other than Harrison Ford as The President. Air Force One also stars Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Paul Guilfoyle, William H. Macy, Liesel Matthews and Dean Stockwel...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Contact , the 1997 science-fiction drama directed by Robert Zemeckis. Based on the book by Carl Sagan, Contact stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Ellie Arroway, a SETI scientist who discovers extraterrestrial life and is eventually chosen to make first contact with the alien life. Foster is joined by a stacked cast of character...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Men in Black , the 1997 sci-fi action comedy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D’Onofrio and Rip Torn. Men in Black was written by Ed Soloman and shot by the late Donald Peterman — whose credits include Flashdance , Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , Plane...

In The Saint , Kilmer plays Simon Templar, a professional thief known as “The Saint” for using Catholic saints as aliases. He steals a microchip from a Russian oil company but is caught by the owner’s son. He is then hired by the owner, a billionaire oligarch named Tretiak, to steal a cold fusion formula discovered by Emma Russell, an American chemist. Tretiak plans to use the formula to monopoliz...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the The Second Civil War , a 1997 satirical film directed by Joe Dante for HBO.  Starring James Earl Jones, Elizabeth Peña, Denis Leary, Beau Bridges, Phil Hartman and James Coburn, The Second Civil War takes place in a future where rapid, unlimited immigration has produced a balkinized society of ethnic enclaves. California is...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the 1997 thriller The Devil’s Own , directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford. In The Devil’s Own , Pitt plays Frankie McGuire, an IRA soldier who travels to the United States to obtain advanced weapons for the fight in Ireland. He is put up in the home of NYPD Sergeant Tom O’Meara, played by Ford, who does...

In this week's episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched  Absolute Power , the 1997 conspiracy thriller directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by William Goldman and based off of a David Baldacci novel of the same name. In addition to Eastwood,  Absolute Power  stars Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Scott Glenn and Dennis Haysbert. ...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Shadow Conspiracy , the 1997 political thriller directed by George P. Cosmatos and starring Charlie Sheen, Linda Hamilton, Donald Sutherland and Sam Waterston. In Shadow Conspiracy , a young White House aide uncovers a plot to assassinate the president, making him a target of the conspirators. What follows is a race to...

On this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched Tim Burton’s 1996 sci-fi comedy  Mars Attacks! , starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short Pam Grier, Rod Steiger, Jim Brown, Lukas Haas, Danny DeVito and Natalie Portman. Mars Attacks!  was based off of the 1960s-era trading card series by Topps. In the series...

In Independence Day , humanity makes its first contact with an alien race. What follows is one day of destruction, one of despair, and one day where the human race, led by the United States, fights back. Jamelle and John use the film to discuss the triumphalist American optimism of the 1990s as well as the political afterlife of the imagery of the film, which extends into the post-9/11 era. Some o...

For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Star Trek: First Contact , the eighth movie in the Star Trek film series and the first film in that series to focus solely on the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. First Contact stars Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Levar Burton, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner Marina Sartis, Michael Dorm, Alfrie Woodard, Alice Kr...

For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Courage Under Fire , a 1996 war drama directed by Edward Zwick and starring Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, as well as Lou Diamond Phillips, Matt Damon, Michael Moriarty and Bronson Pinchot. In Courage Under Fire , Denzel Washington plays Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling, an army tank commander who accidentally fir...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the 1996 science fiction conspiracy action thriller Chain Reaction, directed by Andrew Davis — whose previous UnclearPod films are The Package , Under Siege and The Fugitive — and starring Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Weisz, Fred Ward, Kevin Dunn and Brian Cox. Chain Reaction revolves around a group of scientists at...

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “A Time to Kill,” Joel Schumacher’s 1996 adaptation of a 1989 John Grisham novel by the same name. Starring Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey, with supporting performances from Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt, Charles S. Dutton, Ashley Judd, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland and Chris Cooper, “A Ti...

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 s...

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...

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...

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 H...

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. Mis...

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...

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 diam...

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 intelligen...

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 thri...

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...