Eye of the Needle was a novel that catapulted Ken Follett to instant fame. It was first published in 1978 with the title of ‘Storm Island’, and eventually became much more successful as ‘Eye of the Needle’. It was the author’s first major success and set him up to write many more successful novels based on a fast action track incorporating a spy thriller.
The novel takes a historical period (not too far back though – World War 2) and spins a story around that. The concept of a ice-cold anti-hero all out to break the secrecy of the allied effort getting felled by the courage of a lady with whom he has had an affair was very gripping. The story line is not very complex, but there is a fair amount of detail that holds the reader.

During World War II, the allied forced had been pushed from Europe and needed to re-enter the continent in order to take on the Nazis militarily. There are not too many feasible invasion routes, with the Dover-Calais route being the shortest and hence the most likely. The allies had however decided to take the longer Normandy landing; the biggest question was about how to protect this information from the Germans and to get them to focus on the Calais entry point. This entire operation was called Operation Fortitude, and it involved setting up a massive fake army so that the Germans could be deceived from afar. However, if a spy on the ground looked, he would be able to determine that this entire operation was a fake.
And the novel is based on such a person. A skilled spy, called ‘Die Nadel’, who is ice-cold and can kill anybody if they get in his way, eventually finds out the extent of the fake army and has to reach his submarine pick-up in a remote corner of Britain, and also transmit his findings to the German high command.
And then he runs into this couple living on an isolated island. A young couple, but the husband got crippled in an accident and is now very bitter, with the bitterness causing their relations to drift apart. And into this comes the spy; the inevitable happens; he soon starts to have an affair with the wife (the entire scenario described in some detail). At the same time, Der Niedle is being hunted by the British military who have found out about him and will do anything to hunt him down and kill him.
So what happens ? Does the husband find out about him ? Will the cold spy be able to reveal his truth or will he be found ? What about the affair between the wife and him ? ‘Eye of the needle’ is a well paced thriller with some well sketched out characters.

I watched this movie when I was very young, early teens, and the movie impressed me enough that I still remember it. The movie did not seem stretched, and presented a good representation of the world of the disabled. It was also the first movie that I saw where physical interaction seemed to be beautiful rather than something that was difficult to watch with others.
The story is not very complicated: William Hurt arrives as a new energetic, but unconventional teacher at an institution for the hearing impaired. There he finds Marleen Matlin (who is hearing impaired in real life also), who is a graduate of the school, but instead of going out in the real world as taught in the school, stays on to work in the school. He tries to make contact with her (having already fallen for her), but she resists his attempts until he finds out the reason for her stubborness from her mother.
Eventually be breaks through and they develop a mutual romantic interest and start living together.
This film was released in 1986, and won the Oscar for Best Actress for Marleen Matlin.
The film has some good humour, and I found the screenplay for the movie had a natural flow, overall I liked the movie.

This is a movie from 1986, and the overall scenario is that of a time when the USSR existed as a strong adversary and the military had to be on a razor’s edge. It is a pure thriller, with all the fast action of fighter planes, macho people and sexy ladies.
The story is simple: Tom Cruise gets a chance to go to Top Gun (the ultimate naval aviators training area) when a fellow aviator pulls out. He, along with his navigator, land up at Top Gun. His behaviour can be essentially described just by using his call sign ‘Maverick’. He acts and behaves like a maverick too, bypassing the rules of the academy in his training. His chief rival Val Kilmer follows the rules, performs quite nicely and is ahead of him in points. The love interest comes in the form of Kelly McGillis, a civilian instructor at Top Gun.
The film becomes deadly serious when, in an accident, his navigator gets killed when trying to eject from the plane. Maverick loses his attitude, and needs to be reminded about his dead dad who dies as a hero in an area where he was officially never supposed to be, and hence his heroism could never be acknowledged.
The recovery happens when he is back on a carrier, and another set of pilots are in trouble. Maverick has to overcome his fears and rescue them. One of my favourite pieces of sound from the movie is the ‘Top Gun Anthem’.

Predator was the first movie of Arnold Schwarzenegger that I watched, and it was a fairly impressive movie from an action perspective. The movie was made in 1987, and starred an extremely impressive creature, whom one is sure could scare the daylights out anybody stuck in a jungle.
The movie story is deceptively simple. There are a group of commandos on a rescue mission, but not told the real story. In a jungle, they start to sense something wrong, and find the bodies of the earlier team. What they eventually find is the Predator, a creature who hunts humans using some special weapons, beyond human-vision perception, and a stealth that is incredible (invisible is a good way to fight). He starts picking off the commandos one by one, killing them in different ways, until it’s only Arnie.
The finale is about how Arnie manages to extricate himself from the clutches of the Predator, and flees from there.
The movie is a taut piece of work. The way that the sequence in the jungle leads to the point where they suddenly see the Predator (and then don’t), the terrific scene where they try to bait the Predator ending in an incredible scene where the whole group fires a massive burst into the jungle, the fear on the girl’s face, and the scene at the end where you know that the Predator, even when dying, is upto no good. This is all edge of the seat action, and the movie is a must see.