Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

In a word, wow. I’m a week late to the Mission: Impossible – Fallout party, and while I would have liked to have seen the film in an entirely packed house, the fact is that Fallout is such a punchy film, so aggressively laced with adrenaline and bombast, that I suspect it’d work just as well on an airplane headrest as in a half-packed IMAX auditorium. It’s a film bursting with energy, firing on more cylinders than you knew a film could have, with a clever knack for surprise. The more hyperbolic in the review community are calling it one of the greatest action films of all time, and while that’s a bridge I’m not ready to cross just yet, I’ll say it’s an appropriate accolade because Mission: Impossible – Fallout is one of the finer action films in recent memory.

In the fallout (see what we did there?) of Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is still working to dismantle the terror network organizing in the wake of Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). After his team (comprised of Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) loses a cache of plutonium to Lane’s successors, Ethan is assigned a CIA escort (Henry Cavill) to make sure the weapons are recovered. Little does Ethan know that former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) is also chasing the plutonium, in a globetrotting chase that will lead Ethan closer to Lane than he imagined.

As someone who still hasn’t seen the first three Mission: Impossible movies (and with no legitimate reason for not having done so), I’m always a little surprised to think that this is a 22-year franchise with six films, a consistent lead, and an ability to persist without getting bogged down in reinventing itself or in lingering slavishly on the past. It is, in a sense, the purest version of a franchise, shaving off what didn’t work in the last installment and inheriting only a bare skeleton on which to hang a powerful action story. With returning director Christopher McQuarrie (the first time the franchise has brought back a previous helmsman), there are nods back to Rogue Nation, but the story is constructed in such a way that Fallout may as well be a standalone.

And boy does it work. The action setpieces are remarkable, literally breathtaking in a way that lets you temporarily forget the indestructibility of Tom Cruise (both on screen and, evidently, in real life, thanks to his much-ballyhooed refusal of a stuntman). These action scenes are refreshing for their clarity, astonishing in their choreography, and addictively compelling for their ability to raise the stakes like a cinematic Shepard tone. There’s a second-act car chase in Paris that feels like The Dark Knight had a baby with The French Connection, which includes also a motorcycle chase, a shootout, and a marine getaway for good measure; just when you think the fever has pitched, McQuarrie finds a way to raise the mercury with another twist. It’s as if McQuarrie, pulling double-duty as screenwriter, looked at each bad-as-it-can-get moment in the film and asked, “But what if it were on fire?”

Fallout is a movie that feels like anything could happen, but all under the umbrella of certainty that the good guys will prevail and, in fact, that they always already have it in the bag. Between the rubber face-changing masks, the continual double-cross reversals, and the sheer unstoppability of Ethan Hunt (who can, if the occasion requires, pilot a helicopter with no training or reorganize a hostage extraction with minimal time to prepare), Fallout is a movie that just feels right, leaving an audience with a big dumb grin. It’s a movie that doesn’t need a lot of frilly analysis because the movie is very no-frills in its approach to earnest straightforward action. There are a lot of moving parts in the film, with action sequences evolving and morphing even as the plot splinters and diverges. At one point, just when things start to go smoothly and umpteen new challenges arise, Cavill bursts out, “Why do you have to make everything so f—ing complicated?!” If Fallout is overly complicated, it’s in service to the immense satisfaction to be gained once Ethan barrels through the problem with a direct and unilateral solution that takes not a single human life. Ethan Hunt is an American James Bond, yes, but he’s also at home in the superhero genre because of his abiding belief that no mission is worth the life of a teammate; his super power is that aforementioned jack-of-all-trades ability to roll with any punch and salvage any mission gone awry.

The real thrill, then, is not in whether Ethan and the IMF will save the day, because of course they will. It’s in how much will be thrown their way, how much they have to overcome, and how creative a solution they’ll devise to get there. It’s in the payoff when you discover all the steps that have led to this moment, all the ways Ethan has prepared to get what he needs and how much he’ll have to improvise along the way. It’s a lot of fun; I can’t overstate how compulsively fun this movie is and how thoroughly it earns all the moments you want to stand up and cheer, little frissons when Chekhov’s gun gets to fire. If Sicario was the unlikely franchise, Mission: Impossible is the little franchise that could, and it’s earned its day on the hill.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is rated PG-13 for “violence and intense sequences of action, and for brief strong language.” Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Starring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Vanessa Kirby, and Alec Baldwin.

Monday at the Movies - July 2, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a forgotten film with comic book ties – it’s the pulpy adaptation of The Shadow.

The Shadow (1994) – In my ongoing effort to see and review any superhero movie I can get my hands on, it’s worth enrolling The Shadow in that tradition. Based on the hero of pulp novels and radio programs, from whom we can trace a direct line to Batman, The Shadow introduces Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston, a man who “knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men” because he’s intimately acquainted with the darkness in his own heart. After a Tibetan prologue that feels presciently similar to the first act of Doctor Strange, Baldwin dons a black hat and red scarf to fight crime in New York City, where a descendant of Genghis Khan (John Lone) has come to finish his ancestor’s work of conquest. As a devout fan of The Rocketeer, I had hoped that The Shadow would live up to that brand of retro-heroism; it doesn’t, though it does feel a lot like Rocketeer by way of Sam Raimi’s Darkman. The Shadow does an excellent job inhabiting a noir-esque version of New York between world wars, effortlessly classy and yet sufficiently dangerous. It also boasts a frankly astonishing cast of talented players in minor roles – Tim Curry as a sycophantic assistant, Peter Boyle as a cabbie, Jonathan Winters as a police commissioner, and Ian McKellen as an atomic scientist – all gifted character actors whose ilk we just don’t seem to have anymore, charming and magnetic screen presences no matter what they’re doing. As Margo Lane, Penelope Ann Miller more than keeps up with Baldwin, though the film never quite seems to know what to do with her. Nor does the film’s plot quite hang together as tightly as it pretends; many of the scenes feel fairly perfunctory, without sufficient character development to justify subplots of romance or archrivalry. The Shadow instead feels like a movie that paints by the numbers without obscuring those same numbers, including one moment when a title card explains a multiyear gap between scenes. The Shadow is ultimately somewhat charming, unmistakably of its time, and a property direly in need of being revisited now that Hollywood has a better sense of how to mine such rich source material. The Shadow is perhaps forgotten by virtue of not excelling, but its quaint approach to the process of adaptation merits it a place – if a curious one – alongside bygone efforts like Rocketeer, Dick Tracy, and The Phantom.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

I think I missed a memo, because in the last few years, Ethan Hunt has managed to become the American James Bond (Jack Ryan might have had that title long ago, but I was one of only a few who liked his most recent appearance). It’s a bit of a surprise that a franchise which began nineteen years ago is having something of a resurgence in the last five years, but if the series continues to be as good as its latest outing, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise may end up giving 007 a run for his money. (He’s already played the part longer than anyone played Bond, besting Roger Moore’s 12 years.)

After a Senate hearing disbands the IMF, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) finds himself cut off in the middle of a global search for the invisible Syndicate, a network of terrorists whose existence is doubted by nearly everyone. With the scantest of leads, Hunt seeks help from his tech-savvy comrade Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) while continually crossing paths with the mysterious Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), whose true allegiance is perpetually in doubt.

The James Bond comparison is really and truly invited by Rogue Nation (perhaps more than its immediate predecessor, Ghost Protocol), which begins with a Bond-style opening sequence in which Ethan boards a plane mid-flight from the outside. This audacious stunt, which Cruise performed himself, sets a tone for the film that roots Rogue Nation in an era where action films tried to show moviegoers something they hadn’t seen before, rather than aim first to outdo the competition or just outthink the audience.

As I said of Ghost Protocol, the joy of these films is that they don’t focus so much on transcending the genre as they do on playing very well within the established conventions of the espionage narrative. What’s even more refreshing is the way the films recall the early Bond films’ one-and-done format, without baiting the audience back for a sequel or relying on their memory of a small detail from movies past. As someone who hasn’t seen the first three (but who now wants to, desperately), it’s striking how well the film introduces its main characters, some of whom have been around since 1996. I hadn’t met Ving Rhames’s Luther before, but I had a good sense of who he was and how he fit into the story because the film has a very acute sense of narrative integrity, respecting its audience enough to give us a complete experience.

Rogue Nation is spectacle cinema doing what it ought to do with neither pretension nor laziness. With each Mission Impossible film directed by a different person, I think there’s less of a burden to outdo oneself or someone else, and more room to focus on the quality of the experience itself. Director Christopher McQuarrie, reuniting with Cruise after the very compelling Jack Reacher, has a knack for stories told well without compromising clarity, and the surprising sense of humor from Edge of Tomorrow (which he cowrote) is present also in Rogue Nation, punctuating moments of tension with unexpected moments of delight.

I had gone to see Rogue Nation because an action film always looks better on the big screen, and I’d had such a good time with Ghost Protocol that I wanted to give the franchise another look. Now that Mission Impossible is two for two, it’s probably time for me to go to the back catalog, because now I have a brand that I trust. If nothing else, I have something to tide me over until Ethan Hunt’s British counterpart returns to theaters, and something to which I can look forward when the inevitable sixth Mission Impossible film debuts. That’s my mission, and I do choose to accept it.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is rated PG-13 for “sequences of action and violence, and brief partial nudity.” There are quite a few action set pieces with chasing and fighting, but it’s mostly bloodless; there’s a somewhat intense scene where a character is deprived of oxygen for minutes at a time. A woman removes her top, but it’s seen from behind with no visible nudity.

Monday at the Movies - June 2, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, two takes on Tennessee Williams!

Blue Jasmine (2013) – Woody Allen is nothing if not prolific, but the sheer volume of his work often means that every film can’t be a success.  Blue Jasmine – Allen’s post-recession take on A Streetcar Named Desire – is, however, a triumph; in fact, it’s probably his best in at least a decade.  In a powerhouse performance, Cate Blanchett stars as the eponymous Jasmine, at wit’s end after the imprisonment and death of her too-big-to-fail husband (Alec Baldwin).  To cope with her fall from grace, Jasmine lives part-time in a fantasy world while moving in with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and her boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale).  As this iteration’s Blanche Dubois, Blanchett puts the “pathos” back into “pathetic” and more than earns her Oscar; her Jasmine is scattered and schizophrenic, slipping between realities while never failing to tell the audience which version of the world she’s actually experiencing – her own or the real one.  The supporting cast, too, is very potent in this one; Louis CK turns up for a bumbling note of levity, Baldwin as Jasmine’s husband is more important to the story than Blanche’s ever was, and the decision to split the Stanley figure in two – Cannavale’s Chili and Andrew Dice Clay’s Augie.  This gives us a fuller sense of Ginger, liberated from a reductionist “Stanley bad” approach that might be encouraged by Brando’s thuggish performance.  For those who think the filmmaker has lost his touch, this is a fine example of Allen’s late style, contemplative and sobered.

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) – Look, every now and again, I review a movie where all I can do is point to the decades of preexisting critical consensus and add little more to the discussion than to say, “Yeah, what they said.”  Case in point:  Elia Kazan’s adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play is nothing short of iconic.  While watching this tour de force rendition of the fall of Blanche Dubois (Vivien Leigh) in the home of her sister Stella (Kim Hunter) and Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), one feels distinctly that one is in the presence of a greatness which more than lives up to its reputation.  Every note-perfect beat in the film strikes a resonant chord with the audience, be it Leigh’s fragile beauty or the frankly inspired decision to film in black-and-white.  And when it comes to Brando’s mumbling hulk Stanley, you’re talking nothing short of definitive; he performs as though Williams’s pen had literally given birth to Stanley, fully formed like Athena from the foamy scalp of Zeus.  Readers of the playscript will be forgiven for thinking this is anyone’s show but Stanley’s, for he is everything you could want from a Stanley.  Kazan’s direction cements the place of the film in cinema history; his directorial sensibility lends a tragic inevitability to the proceedings, such that Stanley’s line “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning” becomes the distressing centerpiece to the play.  But the film, subject to the Hays Code, contains a slightly tweaked ending, a nuanced gesture toward a moral universe, which makes the film a distinctly unique experience when compared to the play.  It’s not Williams’s ending, that’s for sure – but it does make the film, in the final analysis, a masterpiece by Kazan.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week, but come back on Saturday for the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month!

It's Complicated (2009)

If Alec Baldwin had a fan club, I'd join it. If Meryl Streep had a fan club, I'd join it. If Steve Martin had a fan club... well, I'm not sure I'd join it, but I'd at least leaf through the literature. It's not complicated to understand, then, why I rented It's Complicated.

Jake (Baldwin) and Jane (Streep) Adler have been divorced for ten years, but there's no animosity between them; Jake's remarried, and Jane runs a bakery. When the meet up at their youngest son's graduation, amicable turns to amorous when the two begin to carry on an affair, telling themselves it's not completely wrong. Aside from the complicating factor that Jake is married to a much younger woman, Jane's starting to fall for her architect, fellow divorcee Adam (Martin). It's love soup, and it's complicated.

A movie like this needs to be grounded by strong performances for it to have any chance of success, and on that count It's Complicated scores two out of three (which, if the Meat Loaf song is to be believed, ain't bad). Baldwin and Streep are at the tops of their respective games; Streep is entirely believable as the conflicted Jane, and Baldwin is uproariously entertaining as lothario Jake. The two have fantastic chemistry, so it's not difficult to believe the two were ever married, nor is it a stretch to understand why they'd want to get back together. Martin has some chemistry with Streep, too, but it's nothing compared to the way Baldwin commands the screen. Of the two Adlers, Baldwin is slightly better in It's Complicated, since he's just that little bit funnier. Every scene he's in found me grinning like an idiot; once he actually did something, then the laughter began. Little quirks like the ones that have made him uber-famous on 30 Rock abound here, making him the star of the show, even if as third-billed he has to steal it. Martin is weaker than the other two here, but this is a recurring theme for him; like Nicolas Cage, Steve Martin seems to have run out of creative steam - that is, if The Pink Panther is any indication. (Exhibit A, your honor)

Fortunately, Martin's not in it all that much, and a terrific supporting role by John "Jim from The Office" Krasinski forms an effective substitute in the laugh quotient. For each scene Steve Martin has in which he is not funny - indeed, often he comes off as entirely pathetic, schleppy in a way that makes Patrick Wilson look like Humphrey Bogart - Krasinski is hilarious, having honed his comedic timing on primetime NBC. Krasinski plays son-in-law-to-be Harley, who becomes wise to the ongoing affair but must conceal it from the rest of the Adler clan. His role in the film is small, but it'd be a scene-stealing supporting role if it weren't for the presence of Alec Baldwin.

That's the good news. The bad news is that It's Complicated is just a teensy bit too long and a teensy bit more uncertain about what it wants to say about adultery. With one leg of the comedy tripod dropping the ball (I'm looking at you, Steve Martin), there are parts of the movie that just aren't funny; for example, a dance scene featuring Martin goes on a bit too long and seems designed simply to evoke an earlier time when Martin's antics were funny. Here, though, it just comes across as tired. As for the issue of adultery, this is (appropriately enough) complicated. For most of the movie, the affair is treated lightheartedly; our protagonists are likeable people, and they like each other, so despite Jane's reservations there's not much to worry about. Moreover, we're trained to dislike Jake's new wife Agness (Lake Bell) because she's fickle and shrewish with a child from a previous relationship, yet a few scenes near the end of the movie align us a little more closely with Agness than perhaps is comfortable. Of course, I'd likely be griping if the film had made Agness a cardboard baddie, but I guess what I was looking for was something a little less complicated than what I got.

For the most part, though, It's Complicated is an uncomplicated romp with some fine performances captaining a pretty funny ship.
Rated R "for some drug content and sexuality," It's Complicated contains a few scenes of pot smoking and, of course, people having an affair.