BRIDGE OF SPIES

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBBuzHrZBro

In case you didn't get the memo, Tom Hanks is very good at playing guys like this - the reluctant everyday All-American patriot thrust into situations much bigger than himself which grow into global proportions.

This time, his director pal, Steven Spielberg, puts him right smack in the 1960s Cold War in a true espionage incident when an American U-2 (not Bono's band, it's a spy plane) gets shot down over the Soviet Union and the US pilot is captured.

Hanks plays an insurance lawyer who must negotiate a very tricky, trigger-explosive exchange when the Soviets want one of their top spies back too.

To talk to the enemy, Hanks travels to scary East Berlin which looks like a Yesterday-Land with guns.

Watching this old-fashioned spy thriller clip which is full of Hanks looking very grim facing other men, both foreign and domestic, looking even more grim in view of the international crisis stirred, makes me certain Spielberg really digs Hanks' convincing constipation look.

"The Constitution is what makes us Americans," Hanks affirms solemnly. Excuse me, Tom, which constitution? The Constitution of America or the constitution of your tummy?

Tay Yek Keak

THE MARTIAN

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4PCI0NamI

The last time Matt Damon was stranded alone on a barren planet, didn't he turn psychotic and try to kill Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar?

Well, this is the good-guy version of Home Alone: Very Lonely Spaceman. He plays Mark Watney, an astronaut who's left behind on Mars when everybody in his team takes off after a fierce storm on the Red Planet.

While Mission Control (headed by Jeff Daniels) on Earth four years of travel away pontificate and his orbiting crewmates - including Jessica Chastain and Kate Mara - plan a dangerous, unsanctioned rescue mission, Damon, well, becomes a farmer growing his own food on a sandy floor in his scientific tent.

This three minute-plus trailer is so long and so much Gravity- meets-Apollo 13-meets-Field Of Dreams, you know what the movie is all about - which is primarily "Saving Private Matt" with stout determination and open mouths.

Yet you want to see this Ridley Scott adventure because one, he might throw in an unstoppable alien, and two, it's basically how you'd feel if you leave your dog in the car and forget to wind down the windows. You have to go back to at least make sure you're not fined.

Tay Yek Keak