MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT Is The Best Yet In The Long Running Series

Opening tonight at a multiplex near us all:

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT

(Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2018)

These movies are getting better and better. It’s true, the sixth installment of the 22-year old series based on an over 50-year old TV show is the best one yet.

It starts with a stellar pre-opening credits sequence largely set in Berlin in which Ethan Hunt (a 56-year old Tom Cruise, looking like he’s 40), and his returning IMF (Impossible Missions Force) crew made of Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) attempt to retrieve three plutonium cores from a terrorist group called the Apostles (an offshoot of the Syndicate from the previous M:I film, ROGUE NATION).

They fail to get the plutonium, but were able to capture weapons expert Soloman Lane (Sean Harris, reprising his role from RN), and, joined by Henry Cavill as a CIA operative, travel to Paris to again try to capture the plutonium from the Apostles.

Of course, right away, we (or I) suspect Cavill’s character to be John Lark, the leader of the Apostles as his identity is unknown, but he tells CIA Director Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett) that he thinks Hunt has turned and he is Lark. Now, this is quite a leap for us to buy that the protagonist of a six entry series has now become the bad guy, but it’s a plot point that works and leads to something the franchise does best – a satisfying fake-out.

IMF Director Alan Hunley (the also returning from RN) Alec Baldwin, gets out of the office and into the field with the team for the Paris mission which involves Hunt in a killer motorcycle and car chase around the Arc de Triomphe.

The action moves to London where a rooftop foot chase (always got to have one of those), in which Hunt is shown a picture of his wife (Michelle Monaghan) and told that her life is threatened.

Then we move on to Kashmir (globetrotting!) where Hunt and his team, along with the also returning Rebecca Ferguson as former MI6 agent Isla Faust, try to de-activate the bombs before they kill billions of people. This involves an incredible helicopter chase in which Hunt fights to get the detonator from the bad guys.

Sure, there are contrivances – the goons always being bad shots in the shoot-outs, and a 15-minute countdown taking a lot longer than 15 minutes among them – but the stakes feel real, and the rush of the spectacle after spectacle is constantly exhilarating.

For sure the best sequel of our current sequel cluttered climate, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT is a cleverly constructed action thriller with a great gritty look, a sharp screenplay, lots of well placed humor, and a bunch of mesmerizing moments that make it more engaging and entertaining than any other action thriller in recent memory. 

Writer/Director McQuarrie, the only director who has made two M:I movies, is getting to be a old hand at making movies with Cruise (he previously directed the actor in JACK REACHER and MI:RN, and wrote the screenplays for VALKRIE, EDGE OF TOMORROW, and THE MUMMY), and this time he really pulls out the stops. 

Cruise, again doing many of his own stunts, once more excels as Hunt, who while mostly confident shows believable fear and worry when in the middle of all the effectively dangerous feeling activity. You could say he puts in a performance that's fearlessly fearful.

I’m not sure when Cruise will be considered too old to be doing these movies (he’s almost the age Roger Moore was in his last 007 adventure, A VIEW TO A KILL *), but it doesn’t seem like it’ll be anytime soon.

*Moore was 57, and later said that he was four hundred years too old for the part.

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The Derivative AMERICAN MADE Gets By On Tom Cruise’s Confused Charm

Now playing at a multiplex near everyone:

AMERICAN MADE (Dir. Doug Liman, 2017)

Let’s be honest - this movie has been made many times before. It’s the GOODFELLAS model of a cocky guy who does corrupt things to get the good life, while his wife on the side initially disapproves, but then is wooed by all the money coming in. This all, of course, ends badly, but not before some flashy montages stuffed with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and some comical scrapes with the law.

AMERICAN MADE’s subject Barry Seal, buoyantly played by Tom Cruise, has even been portrayed five times before - mostly on the small screen by Dennis Hopper in the TV movie DOUBLECROSSED, by Theddeas Phillips in an episode of the Spanish language series Alias el Mexicano, by Dylan Bruno in an episode of Narcos, and by David Semark in the mini-series America’s War on Drugs.

Just last year, Michael Paré had a supporting part as Seal in the true crime thriller THE INFILTRATOR starring Bryan Cranston.

So yeah, Seal’s story has been touched on just a little bit.

We meet Seal here as a bored TWA pilot in the late ‘70s who is recruited by a smooth, scene-stealing Domhnall Gleeson (EX MACHINA, THE REVENANT, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS), as CIA operative Monty Schafer, to fly reconnaissance missions in Central America to collect counter-intelligence. Since when he tells his wife Lucy (Sarah Wright) the name of the company he’s been offered to work for is called IAC, which stands for “Independent Aviation Consultants,” she says “that sounds fuckin’ made up,” he keeps his new job secret from her.

On one of his missions he is approached in Panama by the Medellín Cartel, made up of Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda) and Carlos Lehder (Fredy Yate Escobar) and Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejía), to smuggle cocaine for them from Columbia to Louisiana. This results in one of the film’s most thrilling sequences in which Cruise, who did much of his own flying stuntwork (of course he did), has trouble clearing a short jungle runway and almost crashes into the trees.

Seal gets into running guns for the Contras and is given his own remote airport in Mena Arkansas, where he hires several pilots to help him on his many missions. There’s always got to be a slimy character that may screw up things for the wheeling and dealing lead and it comes in the form of Lucy’s brother JB (Caleb Landry Jones).

SP Seal has to contend with that along with the DEA, CIA, the Contras, the Sandinistas, and the Reagan White House, where we get cameos by Oliver North (Robert Farrior), and George W. Bush (Connor Trinneer).

While AMERICAN MADE, written by second-time screenwriter Gary Spinelli (the little-seen STASH HOUSE was his first), recalls the formula of the aforementioned GOODFELLAS, and covers the same ground that the also aforementioned THE INFILTRATOR, SICARIO, WAR DOGS, SAVAGES, and especially BLOW did, it’s an enjoyable romp that features Cruise’s most invested acting in ages (take that, THE MUMMY!).

Cruise delightfully puts a cynical spin on his TOP GUN persona of old, and carries the movie with his charm even when he’s mostly confused about how in over his head he is.

It may be an overly familiar ride that plays fast and loose with the facts, but it entertains for most of its running time, and it’s commendable that it doesn’t ape the Scorsesean style as extreme as AMERICAN HUSTLE did.

Though not as good as their previous film, EDGE OF TOMORROW, this film has director Liman and Cruise appearing to work well together, which bodes well for their proposed sequel to EDGE. Maybe that one will have a better, less generic title than their first two efforts.

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The Dark Universe Franchise Kicks Off With THE MUMMY, Which Isn't Even Matinee Worthy

Now playing at a multiplex near everybody:

THE MUMMY (Dir. Alex Kurtzman, 2017)

Until recently, I was unaware that there is a new cinematic franchise in the works involving rebooting the Universal Monsters. A massive interlocking series featuring movies starring Dracula, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon is planned under the name “Dark Universe,” as in, ‘look out, Marvel! Dark Universe is coming to overshadow you big-time!’

Not so fast, DU, as your inaugural release, THE MUMMY is a dud on arrival. Without a single scare, it fails at horror; without any genuine thrills or excitement, it fails at suspense; without any charm or depth, it fails at romance and drama; and with very few laughs, it fails at comedy too. There’s no genre it succeeds in! Even its visual imagery, which looks washed out and flat (and I saw it in 3D), is dreary, with no oomph.

I kept wishing that Tom Cruise had just made another MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movie instead, as just about everything he does in this film – death defying airplane acrobatics, outrunning sand storms, dodging gunfire through chaotic chase sequences – he’s done so much better in that series.

So this film, which is so not connected to the Brendan Fraser MUMMY franchise (R.I.P. 1999-2008), concerns an Egyptian goddess named Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella, giving it her all but still not very scary) cursing Cruise as a brash graverobber, who along with his army buddy Jake Johnson, just happened to come across her tomb in modern day Iraq. After his wise-cracking role in JURASSIC WORLD and now this, maybe Johnson’s forte will be to be the comic relief on the sidelines in big ass fantasy action movies.

The cast is rounded out by Annabelle Wallis as an exposition-spouting archeologist, and possible love interest for Cruise, and, more importantly, a low key Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, who my friend Fonvielle of Filmvielle told me will be like the Nick Fury character in the Marvel movies – the connective tissue between all the projected entries.

Thing is, Marvel built their cinematic universe bit by bit, movie by movie, before branding itself so blatantly. Samuel L. Jackson’s Fury appeared for the first time in an after credits scene (something that Marvel might as well trademark) to hint at a future framework involving the Avengers, etc, but THE MUMMY begins with a “Dark Universe” title that hasn’t been earned. They’re trying too hard to make an all-new Universal Monsters series immediately happen, but it’s way too soon for it to really be “a thing” yet.

Especially as I predict that WONDER WOMAN, in its second week of release, is going to kick its ass. Hell, the much buzzed about horror indie IT COMES AT NIGHT might even trounce it. I bet that one has legitimate scares in it too.

So, in conclusion – Dark Universe, keep your pants on! You’re getting way ahead of yourself says this lowly blogger. And Cruise – make another MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, EDGE OF TOMORROW, or even a JACK REACHER movie instead of getting aboard this silly franchise wannabe. Even the TOP GUN sequel that he’s talked about recently is a more appealing prospect than another entry in this convoluted mess of monster movies that Universal is cooking up (or re-heating).

THE MUMMY isn’t even worth the price of a matinee or the admission for a second run screening. Wait for it to come to Redbox or Netflix, then skip it there too.

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JACK REACHER Is Back In A Standard Issue Action Thriller Sequel

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK

(Dir. Edward Zwick, 2016)

The first movie in the budding Jack Reacher franchise, 2012’s JACK REACHER, was a standard issue action thriller, and this is its standard issue action thriller sequel.

Tom Cruise, who also co-produced, returns as the army trained indestructible badass title character, in this adaptation of the eighteenth entry in Lee Child’s Reacher series (the first film was based on the ninth novel – don’t ask me why they are doing them out of order) with writer/director Edward Zwick replacing Christopher McQuarrie at the helm.

After an opening scene that, apart from a few crucial beats, has been heavily spoiled in the film’s trailer and TV spots, involving Reacher turning the table on a couple of corrupt cops in a diner, we learn that our stoic, rarely smiling hero is still doing his drifter thing off the grid. 

The guy has stricken up a bit of a long-distance relationship over the phone with a Major Susan Turner (Colbie Smulders, still best known as Robin from How I Met Your Mother despite her more recent work in Marvel movies), who has taken over his post in the military police force.

Despite that they’ve not met in person, Reacher and Turner set a dinner date for the next time he’s in the D.C. area, but when he gets there he finds out that she’s been arrested for espionage, after two of her sergeants were killed in Afghanistan under suspicious circumstances. Our hero senses she’s been framed and seeks out her defense attorney (Tony Beard), who tells him that one of the reasons that Turner has expressly forbidden Reacher from getting involved, is that he might be a deadbeat dad.

So the mystery of whether or not Danika Yarosh is Reacher’s 15-year old daughter Samantha is intertwined with the mystery of who’s behind the setup that comes to involved Reacher himself getting framed for the murder of Turner’s lawyer. So Reacher breaks Turner out of military jail, they find Samantha, and the threesome are on the run, mostly from Patrick Heusinger as an darkly dressed assassin only credited as “The Hunter.”

Reacher and The Hunter tangle in brutally violent fight scenes, there’s a deafening amount of gunfire in the shoot ‘em ups, and, of course, as in any Cruise action flick, there’s a lot of on foot chases (check out this supercut of “Every Tom Cruise Run Ever” which was recently added to YouTube – it goes on for nearly 19 minutes).

I’m unsure of what the title, NEVER GO BACK, means. Maybe it’s supposed to be taken in a Thomas Wolfe “you can’t go home again” way, like how Reacher returns to his old army base and has to keep telling everyone who salutes him as a major, that he’s an “ex-major.” But that doesn’t really seem to fit as it seemed like he was only visiting the place to get a date. Whatever the case, I bet it’s something that’s conveyed better in the book.

As with just about every sequel released this year, it’s a case of diminishing returns. The first one was no classic, but it was edgier and had Werner Herzog as the villain – Heusinger’s Hunter puts forth some effective evilness, but sure can’t top that.

Many times I felt like I was watching a TV show, which makes sense as director/co-writer Zwick has a lot of small screen experience, with how the narrative slickly moving from set piece to set piece with perfect places for commercial breaks. Seems like the fair to middling movie franchise would make for a much better Showtime series.

The plot points surrounding the conspiracy and cover-up involving the selling of US arms on the black market, really didn’t hold my interest. But the Reacher bonding with his possible daughter angle had a little more going for it because there’s some unforced cuteness (largely on account of Yarosh), but not much.

Smulders, who with her role in the Marvel movies as Commander Maria Hill, puts in a strong performance as a strong woman who can take care of herself here, but I wish that the film gave her more chances to upstage Cruise. Smulders’ Turner stands up to Reacher, but still lags behind him in the New Orleans-set climax which involves a chase across rooftops in the French Quarter with fireworks overhead – this plays out as predictably clichéd as it sounds.

He’s getting slightly more grizzled looking now, but at 54 Cruise can still pull off being an A-list action hero – especially if guys like Liam Neeson can still do it at a decade older. Hell, Harrison Ford is still making BLADE RUNNER and INDIANA JONES movies * and he’s 74!

Point is, Cruise still has a lengthy career ahead of being an indestructible badass. But, here’s hoping that he’ll choose worthier, more inspired projects than this in the years to come.

* Okay, Ford’s last Indiana Jones movie was in 2008, but he’s got another scheduled for 2019, and BLADE RUNNER 2049 comes out in a year. So there.

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Heist Scenes in the Movies: How Plausible Are They?

This is a guest post by Brandon Meagher:

There are countless classic moments in cinema that feature jaw-dropping heists, robberies and crime capers. While watching these shockingly memorable scenes, some viewers might catch themselves wondering, “Could that really happen?” Others, however, might think, “That’s literally impossible!”

Although we could argue both sides of this debate indefinitely, here’s the main point to remember: it’s only a movie. Reality often gets suspended when seen from Hollywood’s exaggerated lens. A blog piecefrom Atlanta Lockmaster states it best by explaining that movie criminals are the career/veteran like crooks while in reality the majority are young petty thieves looking to make a big score.

In fact, based on recent studies conducted around bank heists and robberies, would-be thieves stand a higher chance of receiving a payout in the movies than out on the streets.

Real Bank Heists vs The Heists in the Movies

According to 2009 research compiled by the FBI, an average robbery payout in the U.S. totaled roughly $4,000. You were probably expecting a much larger sum, right?

That assumption likely results from films such as Ben Affleck’s entertaining crime drama, THE TOWN (2010), for example. In the opening scene, Affleck and his gang of Boston thugs steal well over $4,000 with automatic assault rifles and frightening masks. Watch this scene and determine for yourself if such a reckless feat could be successfully replicated off-screen.

Criminals Opening Safes On Screen -- I Can Do That...Right?

Another scenic moment many moviegoers love is an intense safe cracking sequence. Our eyes bulge and spines stiffen as we intently watch the sweat dripping down a character’s face while he or she forces open a deposit box, full of valuable jewels or cold hard cash. One such scene particularly stands out as classic edge-of-your-seat cinema -- Charlize Theron’s pulse-pounding heist from THE ITALIAN JOB (2003). With her enemies on hot pursuit, Theron’s character still manages to crack a safe and escape with the loot in stacks of gold in under two minutes.

In actuality, however, the process of breaking into a lockbox is more complex and time consuming. The World Champion safecracker takes an average time of 5 minutes to open a secure bank vault. You can view his impressive performance on the Discovery Channel.

Moreover, the world’s most secure bank vaults require around 15-30 minutes for even the most experienced safecracker to break open.

Beating The Motion Sensors -- They Make it Look So Easy!

Fans of the crime genre also tend to enjoy scenes involving motion sensors such as this iconic moment in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996) when super-spy Ethan Hunt, played by formidable action star Tom Cruise, repels down a secure vault and catches his own sweat to avoid motion detection.

After watching this far-fetched exploit, you might be shaking your head at the sheer lack of believability. Nevertheless, Cruise’s fictional stunt actually served as inspiration for a real-life robbery in 2010. This case involved a group of South Brunswick, New Jersey, thieves who pulled off a Mission Impossible-esque heist at a local Best Buy. Using power tools, they cut a hole in the store’s roof, repelled through that opening and stole $26,000 worth of laptop computers, while managing to avoid touching the floor. This enabled them to evade both motion sensors and security cameras.

It’s Just a Movie

Although a rare circumstance, this elaborate crime caper suggests that, while they seem virtually improbable, some film heists should not necessarily be discredited as sensationalized box-office drama.   

Regardless of how unrealistic these sequences appear to you, many moviegoers still agree that the image of a stealth crook breaking into bank vaults, avoiding motion detector lasers and walking away with a million dollars is undeniably entertaining.

Are there any scenes from your favorite “Hollywood Heist” that we haven’t analyzed? Tell us about it in the comment section below!

Sources:

http://business.time.com/2012/06/14/thinking-about-robbing-a-bank-read-this-first/

https://www.safeandvaultstore.com/blog/breaking-into-a-safe/

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/acrobatic_thieves_hit_nj_best.html

About the Author

Brandon Meagher, a graduate from Georgia State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Film, is a self proclaimed movie junkie and enjoys watching, talking, and blogging about everything film related. You can check out more of his work here at Movies on the Mind. He currently resides in Southwest Florida.

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION Soars As High As Cruise's Amazing Airplane Stunt

Now playing at a multiplex near all of us:

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION

(Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2015)

I thought it would've been impossible for Tom Cruise to top his death defying stunt in the last entry in this series (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL), which was scaling Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, aka the tallest building in the world, without a stuntman for Chrissakes!

But obviously the man takes these missions very seriously so this time out, in the first five minutes no less, we see his Ethan Hunt hanging on to the side of an airplane as it takes off. Again, there was no stuntman. Is anybody going to be surprised if he actually gets killed doing another one of these crazy stunts on a future sequel?

Anyway, it’s a pretty thrilling opening to the fifth MISSION IMPOSSIBLE which re-unites Cruise with his IMF (Impossible Missions Force) team members Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, while Jeremy Renner watches via satellite back in Washington D.C.

Via his amazing airplane stunt, Cruise’s Hunt is able to stop terrorists’ shipment of missiles laced with nerve gas from reaching its destination and we’re off and running with Lalo Schifrin’s famous theme music blaring over the flashy credits sequence.

Then we’ve got Alec Baldwin as stuffy CIA director Alan Hunley who wants to dismantle the IMF because of their reckless disregard for rules and regulations, and recall all the operatives, especially Hunt, but nobody is giving up his location.

Months later, Hunt is captured by The Syndicate, the evil organization that he’s been unable to prove the existence of to his former superiors. With the help of a British agent (a badass Rebeccca Ferguson) Hunt is able to escape - after a torture room fight scene, that is. Hunt has a lead to pursue – the blonde, well-groomed but rat faced assassin who captured him played by Sean Harris, who’s a much better villain than Michael Nyqvist in the previous installment, 2011's GHOST PROTOCOL.

From there we get killer set piece after killer set piece. In one, Cruise and crew thwart an assassination attempt at the Vienna opera house involving more than one sniper. Another mighty sequence features a major motorcycle chase down Morocco’s winding R203 highway, and yet another has Cruise holding his breath for 6 and a ½ minutes in order to access a computer server that’s stored underwater. Yep, ROGUE NATION’s high ratio of kick ass set pieces puts every other action movie this year to shame. James Bond’s highly anticipated next adventure, SPECTRE, has its work cut out for it to top this.

The twists and turns in the plot involving a flash drive that contains all of the Syndicate’s secrets – the film’s MacGuffin - and how the British Prime Minister (Tom Hollander) and the head of MI6 (Simon McBurney) figure in the cover-up are fine, but it’s the beautifully bombastic barrage of stunts, fights, chases, and self aware humor (a lot of which comes from Simon Pegg who welcomely has a larger role than before) that audiences will most respond to.

Who knew that the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE series would become one of the most solid and dependable movie franchises out there? It’s stunning and impressive how increasingly stunning and impressive each new entry has been. Christopher McQuarrie, who’s worked with Cruise in JACK REACHER, and co-wrote the Cruise vehicles VALKRIE and EDGE OF TOMORROW, joins Brian de Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams, and Brad Bird in the exclusive club of hot shot film makers who’ve performed great genre exercises in the form of these M:I movies.

The bottom line on Cruise has been for a while that whatever you think of his off screen drama with the Scientology and all, the guy makes good movies. You look at his filmography and there’s a lot of quality there. Cruise’s performance as Ethan Hunt works so well because the guy projects an air of cocky arrogance but there’s a detectable level beneath that where you can sense real fear that he has to talk himself out of. In other words, there’s a believable, relatable human being behind the action star front.

I’m definitely down with Bilge Ebiri who posited on Vulture.com that “It’s Time to Start Liking Tom Cruise Again,” and seeing the excellent, intelligent, and genuinely exciting MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION is the best place to now put that into practice.

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EDGE OF TOMORROW: Terrible Title; Terrific Presentation

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

EDGE OF TOMORROW (Dir. Doug Liman, 2014)

First off, it’s a terrible title. It’s so generic; it sounds like a James Bond movie or Star Trek episode title. Maybe it should’ve been called: BETTER THAN OBLIVION.

Secondly, this really doesn’t need to be in 3D. It’s another one of those films that underwent a post conversion into the gimmicky format, and, as I’ve complained about many times before, it makes the image darker and less vivid.

But those gripes aside, Tom Cruise’s latest sci-fi action vehicle is a smart, funny, and insanely inventive entry in the summer blockbuster sweepstakes of 2014. Sure, its high concept premise can succinctly summed up as ALIENS meets GROUNDHOG DAY, but it takes that thread and goes its own clever places with it.

Cruise, as an army major who's so not a top gun, is forced into the front lines of an invasion of earth by squid-like aliens, nicknamed "mimics." In a Normandy beach battle, obviously reminiscent of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, Cruise, outfitted in bulky body gear, kills a mimic but then gets melted in a bath of its acidic blood.

Then Cruise wakes up on the previous day at the army base at Heathrow Airport. Everything that happened to him before - Bill Paxton as a FULL METAL JACKET-style Sergeant yelling at him, members of his platoon ridiculing him, and multi-tentacled monsters murdering him - happens again, despite his crazy-sounding warnings or attempts to reverse the situation.

Very amusingly, Cruise's day of death resets again and again, with our protagonist each time gaining a little more info on how to plot more successful moves throughout it. This is where Emily Blunt, harder edged than we've ever seen her, comes in as a heroic Special Forces soldier, who Cruise learns has once been a looper herself.

You see, as Noah Taylor as a scruffy scientist explains, the mimics have the ability to reset the time stream in order to improve their strategic edge in combat, and when Cruise and Blunt killed and got wasted in the remains of an Alpha Mimic, they absorbed their time looping powers.

In punchy training montages, that surely will be as scrutinized by film geeks trying to figure how many days or years Cruise relives the same day as Bill Murray's montages in GROUNDHOG DAY have been, our hero gets into shape, gains confidence, and, of course, falls for Blunt.

The movie, adapted by frequent Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John Henry Butterworth from Hiroshi Sakuraska's 2004 novel “All You Need Is Kill,” loses a bit of its power when Cruise himself loses his time-looping power, and its big action climax involving massive destruction of the Louvre is pretty predictable, but overall Cruise's sharp performance carries us through a series of gripping sequences making up one of the most compelling narratives I've seen at the multiplex in recent memory.

A lot of the fun is seeing Cruise's character evolve from being a stuffy coward to being a lean, mean fighting machine, something the man can still successfully pull off at 52 years of age. All the baggage that biases many movie-goers against Cruise - couch jumping, creepy accusations that he brainwashed Katie Holmes with Scientology, etc. - all disappear a few minutes into EDGE OF TOMORROW. 

The man's charisma even helps the exposition scenes to be engaging. In one of them, when he tells Taylor and Blunt “Terrific presentation, terrific!” he may as well be talking about the film itself.

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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 8/6/13

 

The biggest new release out today on Blu ray and DVD is Joseph Kosinski’s OBLIVION, starring Tom Cruise as one of the last men on Earth in yet another sci-fi thriller set in a dystopian future. It’s a visually stunning ride, but a bit confusing at times as I wrote when the film was released theatrically last April (read my review here). The immaculately CGI-ed spectacle is available in a 2-disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet edition, and a single disc DVD version.

Special features: Audio commentary with Kosinski and Cruise, a 48-minute featurette “Promise of a New World,” 4 minutes of deleted scenes, and the isolated M83 score, presented in 24-bit/96kHz Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. It’s Definitely one to consider over seeing ELYSIUM this coming weekend.
 

Next up, Derek Cianfrance’s crime drama THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, starring Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, is out in 2-disc Blu ray (+DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet), and 1-disc DVD editions. The film which consists of two stellar acts, and one so-so one as you can read here, comes packaged with such Special Features as a Director’s commentary with Cianfrance, 10 minutes of deleted and extended scenes, and a 5 minute featurette: “Going to THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES.”

A indie that came out around the same time that I enjoyed quite a bit more is also now available on home video this week: Jeff Nichols’ MUD, starring Matthew McConaughey as a little less confident than usual yet still somewhat slick fugitive outlaw who befriends a couple of kids (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) on an island in the middle of Arkansas’ Lower White River. Special Features; Director’s commentary with Nichols, and four short featurettes (“A Personal Tale,” “The Arkansas Ensemble,” “Southern Authenticity,” and “The Snake Pit”).

Walter Salles’ not very well received 2012 adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic 1957 novel ON THE ROAD, starring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, and Kristen Stweart drops today in both single disc Blu ray and DVD editions, as does Terrance Malick’s TO THE WONDER, also a film that got mixed reviews, starring Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko (she’s also in OBLIVION btw), and Wayne Blair’s much better reviewed ‘60s soul-singing girl group comedy drama THE SAPPHIRES, starring Chris Dowd, hits the shelves in a 2-disc Blu ray set, and 1-disc DVD edition (read my review of the tuneful charmer here).

A documentary that’s gotten it’s fair share of acclaim, Amy J. Berg’s WEST OF MEMPHIS, which concerns the case of the West Memphis Three in a different light than that seen in the PARADISE LOST docs, is now available on Blu ray and DVD in single disc sets with a bunch of Special Features including nearly an hour and a half of deleted scenes, a commentary (with writer/director Berg, Damien Echols, and Producer Lorri Davis), Toronto International Film Festival Q & A and Press conference footage, a brief featurette entitled “Damien's Past (Re-Creations),” and the theatrical trailer.

 

Older titles out today for the first time on Blu ray: Arthur Hiller’s 1976 Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor thriller comedy SILVER STREAK, Wes Craven’s 1983 cult classic SWAMP THING, David Setzer’s 1986 teen favorite LUCAS, and James Toback’s 1987 rom com THE PICK-UP ARTIST, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald. 

Also on the vintage front, Disney has out a 50th Anniversary Edition of SWORD IN THE STONE, a 40th Anniversary Edition of ROBIN HOOD, and a 25th Anniversary Edition of OLIVER & COMPANY. All 3 animated titles are new to Blu ray. 

TV season sets now available include Strike Back: The Complete Second Season, Duck Dynasty: Season 3, Community: The Complete Fourth Season, The Borgias: The Third Season, Smash: Season 2, and a “Best of” box of the short-lived SNL rip-off Fridays (1980-1982), that launched the careers of Seinfeld’s Larry David and Michael Richards.

For a more complete list of what’s out this week visit Amazon’s lengthy list at their New Releases department.

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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 5/7/13

Today’s biggest release is the Tom Cruise action vehicle JACK REACHER, available in a Two-Disc Blu ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy package or a single disc DVD. The film, which I called a “cookie cutter crowd pleaser” in my review last December, is augmented by such Special Features as two audio commentaries (one with Cruise and Director Christopher McQuarrie; another with composer Joe Kramer), and three featurettes (“When the Man Comes Around,” “You Do Not Mess with Jack Reacher: Combat & Weapons,” and “The Reacher Phenomenon”).

Next up, at the same time that Jessica Chastain was getting a lot of buzz (and an Oscar nomination) for ZERO DARK THIRTY early this year, she was also appearing in Andrés Muschietti’s horror flick MAMA, out today on both single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. Special Features include a commentary with brother and sister collaborators director/co-writer Andy Muschietti and producer/co-writer Barbara Muschietti, deleted scenes, the original “Mama” short film that inspired the production, and a few “making of” featurettes. 

For reasons that elude me, a 2009 movie from high tech schlock meisters Neveldine/Taylor (the CRANK films, JONAH HEX, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE, and some other crap), that wasn’t liked much by critics or audiences, the Gerald Butler sci-fi action thriller GAMER, has been retro-actively outfitted in 3D for a new Blu ray release today. As the previous Blu ray release of the film, from 2010, has more bonus material (including a couple of commentaries) than this new version only containing a few featurettes, it seems this new edition’s only draw is its 3D conversion. Sure isn’t enough to draw me in as for it was a pretty bad film to begin with. 

A much better Blu ray experience of battle action can be found on the new History Channel special WWII From Space, which boasts that it’s “America’s war as never seen before from the unique vantage point of space.” That means this Blu ray features CGI recreations from a satellite view of such major historical World War II events like Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and Stalingrad. 

It may sound cheesy (and it is in shots that too much resemble the angles from Michael Bay’s 2001 atrocity PEARL HARBOR), but overall the approach is pretty impressive, with the vivid shiny imagery, along with interview sound-bites from experts like Lt. General Raymond V Mason, Richard Overy (author of the bestseller “How The Allies Won The War”), and Pulitzer prize winning historian David Kennedy helping to provide an immersive overview. No Special Features, but that’s no biggie. 

Another worthwhile release today on the historical documentary front is Leslie Iwerks’ CITIZEN HEARST, only available on DVD, which examines the vast media game-changing empire of William Randolph Hearst, that Orson Welles' immortal classic CITIZEN KANE apparently only tangentially touched on, with the tagline: “125 years in the making.” The well-made, swiftly-paced, and nicely narrated (by William H. Macy) film is enhanced by such bonus material as the “Hearst Castle” episode from the A & E television series America’s Castles, and over 30 minutes of deleted footage.

Also on that front is the release, also only on DVD, of the 4 part HBO documentary series Witness: A World of Conflict Through a Lens, from executive producer Michael Mann, executive producer/director David Frankham, and director Abdallah Omeish. Respectively the programs cover Juarez, Libya, South Sudan, and Rio as covered by three noted combat photographers (Eros Hoagland, Michael Christopher Brown and Veronique de Viguerie). No Special features, but with a running time of 187 minutes, it sure doesn’t need any.

Finally, an interesting indie called STARLET, directed by Sean S. Baker (TAKE OUT, PRINCE OF BROADWAY), hits Blu ray and DVD in single disc editions. Mariel Hemingway's 21-year old model/actress daughter Dree, stars as a flighty young woman living in the San Fernando Valley with stoner roommates (Stella Maeve and James Ransone), who befriends a cranky 85-year old lady (the late Besedka Johnson in her only film role). Bonus material: commentary with director Baker along with cast and crew, audition/rehearsal footage, and a few featurettes.

For more of today’s new releases, check out Amazon’s extensive list of titles (i.e. much more than I could even hope to cover).

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OBLIVION: Convoluted But Packs Plenty Of Visual Power

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

OBLIVION (Dir. Joseph Kosinski, 2013)

If I was rating this movie on the merits of its vast visual impact alone, as I experienced on an IMAX screen, I’d have to give it the highest marks. Kosinski, in his follow-up to his directorial debut, TRON: LEGACY, immerses us in the incredibly convincing post apocalyptic landscape of our world in 2077, after it’s been devastated by an alien attack that also destroyed the moon (that’s quite a sight - a demolished moon).

Tom Cruise, in deadly serious mode meaning he's refraining from flashing that blinding grin, is one of the last humans on Earth. Like WALL-E, he’s there to do a job though it’s not making skyscrapers out of trash, it’s repairing the drones that patrol Earth. In his coolly recited narration, Cruise calls himself part of the “mop-up crew.”

The rest of the human race has relocated to a colony on one of Saturn’s moons, while Cruise, protects the huge ‘hydro-rigs’ (pictured above) that harvest Earth’s remaining water.

But despite being haunted by visions of being on the observation deck of the Empire State Building with a mysterious woman during the invasion, Cruise has a nice set-up living in an iPod shiny single unit pad in the clouds (literally) with his co-worker and girlfriend, Andrea Riseborough. Their boss, Melissa Leo, pops up on a video monitor every now and then to check in and ask Riseborough, “Are you an effective team?”

The aliens, called Scavs (for “Scavengers”) have been mostly defeated, but there seem to still be some left behind lurking in the rubble.

Things get weird when Cruise comes across a crashed ship containing Olga Kurylenko in a hibernation capsule and recognizes her from his fractured Empire State Building flashbacks.

Things get weirder when Cruise and Kutylenko are captured by a ragtag underworld resistance army led by Morgan Freeman, apparently upset that he wasn’t tapped to narrate the film (I kid).

I got a bit lost in the twists and turns of the convoluted story-line and the ins and outs of the love triangle - this stuff makes sense when you have the whole story at the end but while its happening you may be like “wha?” - but the action set-pieces were gripping, the pacing swept me along, and the immaculate imagery kept my eyes a-popping.

Many critics are pointing out how many elements of OBLIVION allude to a slew of sci-fi movies, such as I AM LEGEND, THE MATRIX, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, THE PLANET OF THE APES, etc., but to me the movie came off most like it wanted to be a larger scale action re-imagining of Duncan Jones’ 2009 film MOON (also accused of being an amalgam of established sci-fi tropes), but it would give away too much, Spoiler-wise, to really go into it.

Perhaps Kosinki’s unpublished graphic novel that this is based on sorts out the narrative better but since that will probably never be published (bet some panels will make the Special Features of the Blu ray release though) I can only speculate.

I must re-iterate that the CGI, coupled with the sweeping cinematography of Claudio Miranda (TRON: LEGACY, LIFE OF PI) is really stunning - definitely the best I've seen so far this year. I've been so aware of watching actors walking around on sound stage in movies like OZ, but it never seemed like that in OBLIVION.

Along with its incredible visual impact, Cruise’s intense performance strongly carries the film. As MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL proved, the man is not going to let turning 50 take away any of his action star power. His steely focus carries us through what essentially is a popcorn picture posing as something more cerebral.

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Holiday Season Cinema Roundup 2012 Part 2

Continuing Film Babble Blog's end of the year roundup (check out Part 1 here), we now take a look at several more movies currently playing this holiday season:

LES MISÉRABLES (Dir. Tom Hooper) 

I was surprised at how many of the songs that I was familiar with in this adaptation of the wildly popular musical based on the 1862 Victor Hugo novel. I had forgotten that a long time ago an ex-girlfriend had the CD set of the Original Broadway Cast Recording from the late '80s, so much of it came flooding back as the film unfolded on the screen.

As my memories and the movie coalesced, I took in this French revolution era tale about Hugh Jackman as an escaped convict, who after becoming mayor of a small town, agrees to take care of deceased factory worker Anne Hathaway’s daughter (played by Isabelle Allen as a child; Amanda Seyfried as an adult). As sleazy innkeepers, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron-Cohen bring on the bawdy and steal the movie whenever they appear.

Jackman, Hathaway, and Seyfried, who all sing their parts live, are in fine voice, but Russell Crowe, as a ruthless policeman who’s hunting Jackman, has a rough warble that can be painful to endure - especially when the songs go on and on, which they often do. Hooper’s epic production, which clocks in at 157 minutes, wonderfully wallows in the muck of its dark, grotesque imagery, but its messiness can be overwhelming at times. Folks who aren’t fans of the musical, or musicals in general, will find it hard to take, but for the most part, I took it just fine.

JACK REACHER (Dir. Christopher McQuarrie) 

Looks like Tom Cruise wants another franchise as this is an adaptation of one of seventeen in a series of novels by Lee Child. This action thriller formula is competently constructed, but its story - Cruise as an ex-army military police investigator tries to get to the bottom of a case involving a trained military sniper who shot five random people - isn't very compelling. 

Some excitement is there in a few set-pieces, but its climax containing a shoot-out at a construction site, only hammers home how routine a genre exercise it is. Still, Cruise fans should love it as he makes a convincing unshakable badass, and Werner Herzog makes a great villain. Read my full review here.

THIS IS 40 (Dir. Judd Apatow)

Judd Apatow’s glorified home movie is his third film to feature his wife (Leslie Mann) and kids (daughters Maude and Iris), so you know he thinks they’re funny. To his credit, for a lot of its running time (another long one at 134 min) they are funny, but this is a big sloppy comic drama with too many storylines that never really get resolved. Paul Rudd and Mann, reprising their married couple roles from KNOCKED UP, have good chemistry together, and Albert Brooks, as Rudd’s father dealing with new triplets, is highly amusing, so there’s enough here to satisfy most comedy fans. Folks who aren’t fans of heavy amounts of profanity, or Apatow’s brand of man-boy humor in general may want to skip it however. Read my full review.

ANNA KARENINA 
(Dir. Joe Wright) 

Leo Tolstoy's 1868 novel has been adapted many many times, but Wright, in the third of his “literary trilogy” with Keira Knightly, has a meta take on the material involving setting the late 19th-century Russian story in a lavish old theater that evolves within the production into whatever backdrop is needed. Knightly, as the title character, works around the ropes, pulleys, curtains, footlights, and appropriate props, to portray a virtuous woman in a loveless marriage to an imperial minister (a balding, bearded, and quite boring Jude Law) who has an affair with Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a dashing cavalry officer. It can get a bit strained at times in its second half, but Wright's inventive reworking of the well worn material makes it recommendable. Read my full review here.

Well, that's it for this not bad Holiday season. By the way, I appeared on a Special Christmas Edition of fellow Raleigh, N.C. based critic Craig D. Lindsey's podcast Muhf***as I Know last week. We recorded a commentary (of sorts) for what Craig calls “one of the shittiest sex comedies ever made: THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD (1980). The movie is available on Netflix Instant, so queue it up, go here, and listen to us babble all over it.

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Tom Cruise Confidently Strides Through Another Action Thriller Formula In JACK REACHER

Opening today at a multiplex near you: 

JACK REACHER (Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2012) 

As the tough as nails title character, Tom Cruise confidently strides through this overly familiar yet still solid action thriller formula.

Based on Lee Child’s 2005 bestseller “One Shot,” one of 17 novels featuring the army trained badass Jack Reacher, Christopher McQuarrie’s third film as director, concerns Cruise investigating what, at first, appears to be the random daylight killing of 5 people by a mysterious military sniper at PNC Park in downtown Pittsburgh.

“Get Jack Reacher!” the suspected shooter (Joseph Sikora) writes on a pad instead of confessing right before slipping into a coma, and before you know it, the suspect’s Defense Attorney (the Disney doe-eyed Rosamund Pike) is in Cruise’s company, as they both try to uncover the truth about the killings.

Cruise’s character, a self described drifter living off the grid, arouses suspicion from lead detective (David Oyelowo) and district attorney (Richard Jenkins), who happens to be Pike’s father.

While Pike goes to talk to the families of the victims, Cruise starts sniffing out a conspiracy, especially after being targeted by some thugs in a bar who were paid to put him down. The unflinching Cruise, puts them all down (except for the two that ran), of course, in a street-set fight scene that shows off the characters’ skills. Pretty standard stuff, we’ve seen lots of times before, but still entertaining in a tongue-in-cheek way.

Better is a brutally funny fight set in a tiny skuzzy bathroom, in which Cruise battles a couple of beefy boneheads wielding a baseball bat and a crowbar, but as amusing as this is, it’s a typical example of how the odds are always in our hero’s favor.

Cruise’s chief adversary is the almost as confident Jai Courtney, who’s the henchman of sorts to Werner Herzog, yes that Werner Herzog - the acclaimed German filmmaker, as the one-eyed, one fingered villain (definitely one of the better elements here), so we know exactly who’ll Cruise will have to face down in the construction site climax.

In the midst of the finale, in which Cruise is aided by the grizzled wise-cracking Robert Duvall as the owner of a nearby gun range (their first film together since DAYS OF THUNDER), I had more vivid feelings of déjà vu that I had experienced before in a movie. Its ultra derivative third act was so by-the-numbers, that I swore every single second has been done to death, right down to the dialog and deaths of the bad guys.

Director McQuarrie, who co-wrote VALKRIE also starring Cruise, is working from an established source, but he’s outfitted it to be just another standard movie star action vehicle. It’s got more class and style, largely due to Caleb Deschanel’s gritty yet sleek cinematography, than many of the recent offerings of the genre (the BOURNE re-boot, TAKEN 2, JOHN CARTER, et al), but it never reaches the heights of Sam Mendes excellent 007 entry SKYFALL, my choice for best action film of 2012. 

However, if you’re a fan of Cruise, it’s a must see. Now that it seems criticism of his crazy couch jumping, and scientology silliness, has faded, the man stands tall (yes, I know how short he actually is) as a major presence in the movies. 

As it was in last year’s far superior MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL, it’s again a blast to go along on a ride with him, even through such a cookie-cutter crowd pleaser like this.

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