I watched Speed for the first time last night. I can’t explain why it has taken me so long to see it, considering how much I love action schlock. Hell, I’ve seen Speed 2 multiple times.

It was great, though it had to win me over. Once Keanu boards the bus, I thought it found its stride, or maybe I finally settled into the movie’s vibe. The most surprising thing about my experience (to the extent that it was nearly the only thing I wrote about in my letterboxd diary) was how compelling I found Keanu. I suspect that I’m biased by his post-John Wick resurgence and Internet darling status, but I really thought he was, in his own way, implying a huge amount about his character’s interior life through his line readings and body language. As I understand it, that was not the consensus at the time.

It very much convinced me that I should get my butt into gear when it comes to looking at other 90s action movies. I feel like the whole decade is just packed with other, similar blind spots. At the very least, I’m advancing Point Break to the top of my watchlist.

I don’t know if any specific blogs that still operate in that sort of space, but I will say I’ve had luck with finding folks on letterboxd who put care and thought into their reviews. Admittedly, you still have to sort through a lot of "this was good! I liked it!"to find those reviewers, but it’s not impossible. My starting spot was looking up the hosts of some of the movie podcasts I listen to (shout out to Blank Check and Eye of the Duck) and then seeing who they interact with on the platform, checking those folks out, and so on.

He’s making an economics joke I believe. Econ 101 was a long time ago, so I could be off the mark here, or misremembering, but I believe money is counted every time it changes hands. Alice buys something from Bob for a nickel, Bob turns right around and purchases something from Alice using that same nickel. The nickel is still only worth 5 cents, but its responsible for 10 cents worth of GDP.

Or maybe not, and I’m REALLY misremembering econ 101.

I’m: A Contraction

It is my constant hope that my local Alamo will bring this back someday and I’ll be able to watch (and more importantly hear) this in an actual theater. As you pointed out, the sound engineering in this is almost more important than the visuals for conveying the intensity here, and I have to imagine that it is simply concussive with the aid of professional sound equipment.