The Boys of Dungeon Lane by Paul McCartney (2026)

A release by Macca deserves a slightly longer review than a Facebook post.  This album has been hyped for months and the MPL/Universal-Capitol machine has done a great job with awareness.

Fourteen tracks, between 4:46 and 2:24 in length.  McCartney can still write lyrics that evoke memories of our own and feelings, too.  The shortest track might be my favorite of the memory lane visits–“Down South,” which describes teenage hitchhiking trips with George Harrison.  Of course “Home to Us,” the first duet with Ringo ever, is destined to be a crowd pleaser and it’s one to bring a smile for sure.

It makes sense that an eighty-four-year-old would be looking back at his youth, parents, and hometown.  I don’t think “Days We Left Behind,” “Salesman Saint,” and “Momma Gets By” are quite as successful as songs, but there are pleasant arrangements and moments in all of them.  Particularly ‘Days’ suffers from what I think is McCartney’s inability to sing in his head voice like he used to.  The songs that stay lower are more pleasant to hear.

I heard that “Lost Horizon” is the oldest-written song on the album, and it’s at least my early favorite on the album.  On this one it sounds almost like New Wave and it wouldn’t have been out of place on the Tug of War album.

One of the ‘good’ things about our streaming era is that you don’t have to commit to buying this album to give it a listen. Go to your preferred streaming service and see if you agree with me about anything I wrote!

As a bonus, I watched this interview last night and it was the best one of all the “press” he’s done.  It’s only about thirteen minutes.  Watch “Chicken Shop Date” on YouTube for a couple of genuine laughs and see how fondly he gets in his head talking about Linda, who died in 1998.

Mission Impossible 8 (Paramount+, 2025)

This has mild spoilers to the plot, such as it was.

OK, yes, the actual subtitle is The Final Reckoning, words which the villain mentions TWICE in the movie in some foreboding villain-speak .  I read an interesting article with director Christopher McQuarrie where he states that he doesn’t care if you can follow all the points of the plot in an MI movie!  He just wants you to get the gist.  Well, there was just enough recap to get us to the action scenes.

Because, let’s face it, these movies are about what ridiculous thing Tom Cruise does next.  It’s not enough that he is credited as one of the stunt fliers on the movie but he has to become the craziest wing-walker EVER, earning a Guinness world-record for flaming parachute jumps.

He has raised practical stunts to such a level that I was actually a little disappointed at the end of the ‘escape from the submarine’ as they conveniently skipped over how the former pickpocket (love Hayley Atwell though) successfully mushed a dog team by herself and found and retrieved Ethan Hunt from under all that ice when he literally stripped himself of all of his gear.  But, hey, I kept snacking and watching.

The AI bogeyman villain never made much sense but it did provide several scenes where everyone could look tense and do things exactly right that they had no clue about so that humans could defeat the AI.

At least there were several scenes with Tom Cruise running, which has to be a drinking game out there. If it’s not, it should be–a great way for college kids to get drunk very fast and stay that way.

It will be interesting to see what Tom Cruise does next.

Stranger Things Final Season (Netflix, 2025)

Note: This will have spoilers for the final season

Since the five seasons took nine years to unfold, it’s really something that this season incorporates flashbacks, or at least flashes, of the first seasons. You can really see how the cast has literally grown up together.

By the nature of the three-part release schedule we had to have two big cliffhangers before the finale, but it was a nice compromise between an-episode-a-week and we’ll-force-you-to-binge-so you-aren’t-spoiled.

Was this season perfect? Not by a mile, but it did resolve most of the things hanging over Hawkins.  Rather than a D&D fantasy the story ends up being more of an SF Horror movie like The Thing.

We learn that Vecna/Henry didn’t initially choose the evil path, but he did embrace it.  His death gave Joyce her moment in the finale.

We are given an ending that didn’t kill any main characters. It’s sad that Elle/Jane doesn’t get to stay with her friends and father but I choose to believe that was the extent of her self-sacrifice.

It was nice to see the next generation taking over the basement at the end; I appreciated having a dénouement that wasn’t rushed with the little glimpses of how the kids would continue to grow.  I wouldn’t have minded a little more with the older teens. I thought the restaurant scene with Hopper and Joyce was going to be the long awaited date with Robin and Vickie and that was the only part that semi-disappointed me.

I will be curious to see what the Duffer Brothers come up with next for Netflix!