Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt hanging on to an airborne upside-down yellow biplane in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING — PHOTO: Paramount Pictures (Still image from trailers).
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie — Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen.
When Mission: Impossible first took the leap from being a 1960s and 1970s TV series to being a cinematic franchise capable of rivalling both the most iconic spy thriller films and action extravaganzas in 1996, it was Tom Cruise’s first film as a producer. Now, 29 years later, Cruise has become Hollywood’s biggest movie star, and the film series is supposedly (if the marketing and promotion are to be believed) about to conclude with the aptly titled Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the eighth film in the series. The film features both some of the best sequences in the entire film series, but also one of the messiest opening acts of any of the films.
Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck leaning out of a window in Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY — PHOTO: Focus Features / Universal Pictures International.
Directed by Wes Anderson — Screenplay by Wes Anderson — Story by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola.
Everyone who has ever seen one Wes Anderson film knows exactly what a Wes Anderson film looks like. His signature style has made him a lot of fans and admirers over the years, and it has also earned him some notable imitators. Nowadays, with the advent of AI, automatically generated images, and the like, a trend of recreating fake film trailers in the style of Wes Anderson has surfaced. You can now go online and find several videos hyping up fake Wes Anderson-style films with AI-generated images of well-known actors that don’t exactly look right (I even saw one for a fake American adaptation of the iconic Danish Olsen Gang films). With the emergence of such artificiality leading to so many conflicting emotions, might I suggest that you check out the real thing? Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s eleventh feature-length film, is well worth seeking out. As a matter of fact, I think it might be one of his best.
(L-R) Jason Sudeikis in Ted Lasso (Apple TV+), Idris Elba in Hijack (Apple TV+), Rebecca Ferguson in Silo (Apple TV+), Tom Holland in The Crowded Room (Apple TV+), Ronald Gladden in Jury Duty (Amazon Studios), and Aaron Paul in Black Mirror (Netflix).
In this edition of Additional Bite-Sized Reviews, I take a look at six series or seasons that I recently finished, four of which are Apple TV+ releases. The outliers are Netflix’s latest season of Black Mirror and the Amazon surprise hit of the year titled Jury Duty, but the remaining four series do a good job of showcasing how Apple’s series library is growing rapidly. Are any of these worth your time? Well, let’s have a look.
Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise driving a yellow Fiat 500 through Rome in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING, PART ONE — Photo: Paramount Pictures.
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie (M:I – Fallout) — Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen.
During, and in the immediate aftermath of, the COVID-19 pandemic, certain films tried and failed to bring loads of people back into theaters. When all else — including a pretty good and underappreciated Christopher Nolan film — failed to win back the moviegoing audience, Tom Cruise, in true Ethan Hunt fashion, accepted the mission to ‘save cinema.’ And, well, he sort of did. His and Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun Maverick (in which Cruise’s hero, in a way, sets out to prove that human beings are more capable than unmanned fighter aircrafts) was such a hit that Steven Spielberg reportedly proclaimed that Tom Cruise, now 61 years of age, “saved Hollywood’s ass,” and that his film might have “saved the entire theatrical distribution.” “Is there anything Tom Cruise can’t do?” you might ask. He seems adamant to test that question out with the awe-inspiring stunts that he insists on doing each and every time he headlines a major motion picture nowadays. Now, with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One, Tom Cruise, the savior of the theatrical industry, is back as Ethan Hunt, the IMF agent and so-called living manifestation of destiny, and this time he wants to fight back against AI and algorithms (some might even suggest he’s up against streaming algorithms, thus taking that saving cinema allegory even farther). That’s right, it’s the second Tom Cruise film in a row to be about a man fighting back against technological advancements, and, once again, it doesn’t disappoint. This movie is a lot of fun.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 