Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch:” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I joined CTV NewsChannel anchor Roger Peterson to have a look at new movies coming to theatres, including Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in with CKTB morning show host Steph Vivier to have a look at movies in theatres including “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch:” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the kid friendly “Lilo & Stitch” and the literary rom com “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” the eighth instalment in the franchise now playing in theatres, IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team attempt to save the world from a “truth eating, parasitical AI known as The Entity.” If Hunt and his IMFers (Impossible Missions Force) can find The Entity’s original source code they just might be able to “deceive the Lord of Lies” and save the world. “The whole world is in trouble Ethan,” says former pickpocket-turned-IMF-agent Grace (Hayley Atwell), “and you’re the only one I trust to save it.”
CAST: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, and Angela Bassett. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie.
REVIEW: “I need you to trust me one last time,” Ethan Hunt says to his team in the new film, but he could be speaking directly to the audience.
For almost thirty years we have come to trust that the “Mission: Impossible” film franchise will deliver sky-high thrills—like Tom Cruise hanging off the side of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building—good looking people in exotic locations and convoluted, exciting stories of espionage, ripe with twists and MacGuffins. Sometimes the movies were needlessly confusing, but they were always entertaining and, “Look! Tom just rode a motorcycle off a 4,000-foot cliff!”
Given the track record, it’s easy to trust Ethan Hunt one last time. It’s easy to believe Cruise and Co will offer blockbuster entertainment for their last time in the clandestine world of the IMF. But, as Ernest Hemingway said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
In other words, buy the ticket, take the ride. Your trust will be rewarded with a ponderous, overlong movie that goes out of its way to break the golden “show me, don’t tell me” rule. Endless exposition weighs down scene after scene as Hunt as his team explain their every move and every convoluted plot twist, as if vocalizing the movie’s wild tangents makes them less preposterous.
It’s a talky movie that leans heavily into nostalgia—the first hour is basically a recap with flashbacks—and self-congratulation. It’s disappointing because this series has always valued entertainment over set-up. They haven’t always made sense, but the movies have never failed to make our collective eyeballs dance with big action sequences.
“The Final Reckoning,” however, does give Cruise a chance to indulge in his daredevil tendencies.
An ambitious underwater sequence is a testament to the franchise’s commitment to practical stunts over CGI enhanced imagery. As Cruise swims through the wreck of a sunken Russian submarine the danger and claustrophobia are tangible, and it raises the stakes for Hunt and the movie.
After that, director Christopher McQuarrie, who co-wrote the script with Erik Jendresen, settles back into the film’s talky, laborious vibe until a third reel aerial sequence finally delivers the kind of wowser eye candy we trusted Cruise to deliver. Set 10,000 feet in the air, the death-defying scene sees the star jump between biplanes to thwart the film’s villain, a painfully underused Esai Morales. It’s wild, high-flying action even by Cruise’s superhuman standards.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” asks for your trust, and, if you’re patient and willing to sit through pages of dialogue to get to the heart-pounding action you expect from a film like this, it earns that trust. But, overall, this explosive franchise goes out with a whimper not a bang.
When the “Mission: Impossible” franchise began in 1996 the movies were big, prestige spy thrillers, heavy on the intrigue and supported by large action sequences. Then came 2011’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” a popcorn flick built around an eye-popping sequence featuring star Tom Cruise scaling the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, with only a pair of suction gloves and courage coming between him and certain death.
That sequence made audience’s eyeballs dance and changed the focus of the franchise. It also turned Cruise into the Evel Knievel of cinematic risk taking.
Since then, the movies have been driven by the death-defying stunts performed by their star, the seemingly fearless Cruise, rather than the convoluted plots of the first batch of films. In the world of “Mission: Impossible” there is no building is too high for Tom to climb, no chasm too wide for him to jump.
The new film, “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One,” files the actual story down to a nub—”I’m going to need a few more details,” says glamourous international thief Grace (Hayley Atwell), as if commenting on the script. “They tend to get in the way,” replies Benji, nodding his head.—while letting it rip with wild action sequences.
The catalyst for the action is artificial intelligence run amok. Called The Entity, it is an all-powerful machine, “who is everywhere and nowhere” and has no center. “We don’t want to kill it,” says Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), the former director of the Impossible Missions Force, “we want to control it.”
The key to controlling it is, well, a key. Split into two halves, the key only works when made whole. Kittridge’s best chance of intercepting the key is the IMF, a secret group of expert spies made up of Ethan Hunt (Cruise), computer technician Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), field agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and sometimes member Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).
The IMF’s mission, should they choose to accept it, is to retrieve one half of the key from glamourous international thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) before she can sell it to black market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby). The fear is Mitsopolis will pass the key’s combined halves to terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales). “None of our lives can matter more than the mission,” says Stickell.
Cue feats of daring-do and wild action.
“Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning” is the ne plus ultra of modern, big-budget studio filmmaking. Director Christopher McQuarrie manages the breathless, super-sized movies with an expert hand, blending old school action movie filmmaking with real stakes.
Whether it is Cruise flying through the air on a motorcycle or navigating through the streets of Rome in a tiny, but speedy European car or hanging on for dear life as a train car disintegrates around him, the green-screenless action scenes seem to be saying, “Take that Marvel.” The organic stunts, no matter how foolhardy they may be, up the stakes, have real danger to them and set “Dead Reckoning” apart from most action flicks. It is escapism at an eye-watering level.
Tempering the action is some humor and an emphasis on the connections between the characters. Loyalty to the cause has always been paramount in these movies, but the bond between the characters has been tempered, probably because we are near the end of the franchise, by a dose of nostalgia and sentimentality.
Still, this is, first and foremost, an action movie, the characters each have an archetype to fill. Rhames and Pegg are the playful foils, Vanessa Kirby is a deliciously vampy femme fatale and Esai Morales is the kind of baddie who makes grand pronouncements like, “I will disappear like smoke in a hurricane.”
Most notable is the latest lead addition, Grace. She is a slippery character whose motives shift and change with the wind, which makes her interesting. Unlike Isla (Rebecca Ferguson), however, who could handle herself in any situation, Grace is more a damsel in distress, although in the arena of self-preservation, she is a master. She is the kind of character that franchises are built around.
“Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One” isn’t all played at 11. It has peaks and valleys, of course, but the valleys are welcome respite from the sensory overload provided by the spectacle and adrenaline. It is a heckuva mission, satisfying, even if we have to wait a year or more, for the story’s conclusion.
For better and for worse the “Ice Age” franchise seems to have been around longer than the actual Ice Age. With the latest entry, “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild,” starring the voice of Simon Pegg on Disney+, number six in the series, the movies are starting to show their age. The characters and the voice work are still fun, but the animation doesn’t have the same pop as the earlier movies.
The action begins in Snow Valley, home of unruly possum brothers Crash (Vincent Tong) and Eddie (Aaron Harris). The possums are restless, bored with life in the sleepy, icy dale. They want to experience the world, away from the over-protective eyes of their make-shift family, woolly mammoths Ellie and Manny. “It’s time for us to move out and make our mark on the world.” By fluke, they wind up in the Lost World—“We came here to live a life of adventure.”—a massive underground cave and land of danger that might be too extreme, even for them.
As Ellie and Manny fret—“If we don’t find them, I’m going to kill them,” says Manny.—an unlikely “superhero” comes to Crash and Eddie’s rescue, a one-eyed weasel named Buck Wild (Pegg). Together they form a team to defeat the dinosaurs who live in the Lost World. “It’s time to get buck wild.”
For better and for worse the Ice Age franchise seems to have been around longer than the actual Ice Age. With the latest entry, number six in the series, the movies are starting to show their age.
“The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild” has a distinctly direct-to-streaming feel about it. The above the title voice cast from the other films—Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Queen Latifah—are gone, replaced with soundalikes. Not that young kids will mind, or even notice. But older kids who grew up watching these movies—they’ve been around for twenty years—may feel this one isn’t a movie as much as it is an inexpensive, extended version of the television series that was spun off the films.
Like all the “Ice Age” movies, this one has good messages for kids about the importance of family—”The only thing that stays the same is the love we have for one another. That’s the thing about a herd, you’re a part of it, even when you are apart.”—and embracing change—“Change is scary but it is the way of the world. It can help us grow into the people we’re meant to be even if that takes us to new places.” Nothing ground breaking, just solid morals from a story that should appeal to kids who haven’t already heard those platitudes a hundred time over.
“Inheritance,” a new movie starring Lily Collins and Simon Pegg and now on VOD, is a thriller that treats logic like a Whac-A-Mole game. Every time things almost make sense logic is bashed on the head and quickly disappears back into its hole.
The long strange journey begins when richie rich Archer Monroe (Patrick Warburton) dies of a sudden heart attack. He leaves behind widow Catherine (Connie Nielsen), politician-wannabe son William (Chace Crawford) and lawyer daughter Lauren (Lily Collins). At the reading of the last will and testament Lauren is dealt a bad hand after papa’s money is doled out to her mother, brother and various charities. Lauren is left a small stipend of $1 million and a for-her-eyes-only video directing her to an underground bunker. There she finds, and becomes responsible for, daddy’s dirty little secret.
In the fortified cavern she finds Morgan Warner (Simon Pegg wearing what looks like a “Fraggle Rock” wig), restrained by shackles in a windowless pit where he has rotted away for thirty years after witnessing Monroe commit a serious crime. He tells her he’s been here “longer than you’ve been alive.”
Question is, what does an idealistic prosecutor do when confronted with a terrible situation that could affect everything she and her family have worked for?
The silly plot twists and turns aren’t the only things hard to understand in “Inheritance.” It boggles the mind that this could be billed as a thriller. According to Wikipedia, by definition a thriller can be “characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety.” The only mood this leaden story elicited in me was boredom. Early on I was hopeful for a so-bad-it’s-good experience from “Inheritance.” Then the thudding realization hit that I was simply in store for an implausible, missed opportunity of a movie that instead of moving me to the edge of my seat made me want to lean back and take a nap.
What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Two! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movie choices to stream, rent or buy that will help fill the minutes until we can comfortably cough in public once again. And no, “Electric Boogaloo” is not one of the selections.
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