The Courier

I hadn’t seen a good Cold War spy thriller in a while, so I was interested in viewing “The Courier” (2021). It trundles pithily down a familiar, based-on-a-true-story path, with little, tiny spy cameras and Benedict Cumberbatch as a salesman recruited to serve as the West’s go-between to a Soviet colonel concerned about Khrushchev. Then comes the Cuban Missile Crisis and things take a dark turn, with KGB agents, dark prison cells, and Cumberbatch looking wan on the Capital A Acting diet. It’s not bad, just jarring. Spoiler alert: We all didn’t die in a nuclear holocaust 60 years ago.

Rocky IV

To say “Rocky IV” (1985) is simplistic is to say two more words than I think Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago said in the entire movie. Sylvester Stallone cashes in (or sells out?) by exploiting the Cold War in what turns out to be, more or less, a 90-minute music video of workout montages, flashbacks and forgotten ’80s hits. But there’s also James Brown singing “Living in America” when Apollo Creed enters the ring to fight Drago. That scene says more about the spectacle of boxing than anything ever filmed. If this movie only exists for that one purpose, it’s enough.