Posts Tagged ‘Simon Pegg’

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — DEAD RECKONING PART ONE: 4 ½ STARS. “breathless blockbuster.”

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.

THE ICE AGE ADVENTURES OF BUCK WILD: 3 STARS. “good messages for kids.”

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: 1 STAR. “implausible, missed opportunity of a movie.”

“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.

ISOLATION PODCAST: WHAT TO WATCH WHEN YOU’VE ALREADY WATCHED EVERYTHING PART 2!

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.

Listen to the podcast HERE!

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT: 4 ½ STARS. “an elephantine action epic.”

Writing a review for “Mission Impossible – Fallout” gave my thesaurus a workout. The film, the sixth instalment in the Tom Cruise franchise, is jammed to the gills with next-level stunts that require an expanded vocabulary to describe. Words like ‘extreme’ or ‘exciting’ or even ‘epic’ (and those are only the ‘e’ words) don’t come close to describing the behemothic action sequences contained within.

Cruise returns as the seemingly invincible action man and IMF (Impossible Mission Force) agent Ethan Hunt. Hunt and his crew, tech wiz Benji (Simon Pegg) and agent Luther (Ving Rhames), are charged with finding and capturing anarchist Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a baddie who was the leader of the Syndicate during the last film, “Rogue Nation.” “Whatever you heard about Lane,” explains Hunt, “if it makes your skin crawl it’s probably true.” Lane is working with the mysterious and murderous John Lark, a man with some extreme ideas about squashing the world order.

As Lark and Lane collect the necessary plutonium to fulfil their plan the CIA begins to have doubts about Hunt’s loyalty. Add to that the return of former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), and some newbies, CIA assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill) and black market arms dealer and lady of mystery White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) and you have lots of characters to fill the space between the stunts. Complicating matters is the fallout from some of Hunt’s previous, well-intentioned missions.

There are a lot of very good-looking people in “Mission Impossible – Fallout.” Handsome fellas and femme fatale‘s, they are all woven into a stylish story of international intrigue and plutonium. Like the others “MI” movies it’s packed with exotic locations—only James Bond has more air travel points than Ethan Hunt—doublespeak and double crosses but the narrative doesn’t matter that much, it’s all in service of the Bunyanesque action.

Choreographed to an inch of Hunts life—Cruise really puts himself out there for this one—the realism of the stunts gives the movie a sense of danger and the Green Screen Department the day off. Monumental, vertigo inducing single sequences take place on land, wheels, water and air. Only the screeching of tires score one eye-peeling chase scene between a motorcycle and a car. Visually it is so visceral director Christopher McQuarrie wisely avoided cluttering the scene with frenetic music. It doesn’t need it.

Of course those looking for a finely crafted John le Carré style story of espionage in “Mission Impossible – Fallout” will be bitterly disappointed. While it does contain huggerymuggery it frequently falls just this side of making sense. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. Even when Hunt isn’t in action the movie is in perpetual motion, but Frederick Forsyth this ain’t. Instead it is an elephantine (although no actual elephants appear) action epic that breaks the blockbuster norm of cutting away to an action sequence every ten minutes or so. It’s made up of three Brobdingnagian set pieces stitched together by words that mostly make sense.

Metro In Focus: Spielberg’s skill in listening is what sets him apart.

By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus

You don’t have to overtax the Google machine to find negative comments about being on set with Steven Spielberg. Type in “working with Steven Spielberg” and in 0.57 seconds 20,900,000 results appear, including an article where Shia LaBeouf rants, “He’s less a director than he is a f—ing company.”

LaBeouf’s resume is dotted with Spielberg-produced or -directed films like Disturbia, Transformers, Eagle Eye and, most famously, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but if Spielberg ever does the same search it’s unlikely they’ll ever pair up again. “You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” LaBeouf told Variety. “You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career.”

But that’s pretty much it for the negativity. There’s a story about Crispin Glover suing Spielberg for using his likeness in Back to the Future Part II and the critical drone that his films are overly sentimental, but primarily it’s LaBeouf against Spielberg and the world. Most of his other co-workers have nothing but praise for the filmmaker Empire magazine ranked as the greatest film director of all time.

This weekend he returns to theatres with Ready Player One, a sci-fi film that brings a virtual reality world called the OASIS to vivid life. Star Tye Sheridan calls the director a great and passionate collaborator who makes everyone feel equal on set. Co-star Ralph Ineson calls Spielberg “one of the most iconic figures of the last 100 years,” adding that it was difficult to takes notes from him on set. “When he is speaking to you your mind vaguely goes blank the first few times because your internal monologue just goes, ‘My god, Steven Spielberg is giving me a note.’ And then you realize you haven’t actually heard the note.”

All directors give suggestions on set, but it seems it’s the way Spielberg speaks to his actors that sets him apart.

Ed Burns remembers making a mess of several takes on the set of Saving Private Ryan to the point where Tom Hanks said to him, “I’ve seen you act before, and this isn’t acting.” Afraid he would be replaced, he got nervous and continued to blow take after take but Spielberg didn’t offer guidance. Two weeks passed. The cast started laying bets on who would be fired first.

Turns out, no one was fired and Burns learned a lesson he would later take into his own directorial efforts like Sidewalks of New York. The actor reports that Spielberg said, “I like to give my actors three takes to figure it out. If I step in after the first take and give you a note, especially with young actors, you’ll hear me rather than your own voice.”

Burns calls the experience “a life changer” adding it taught him that being a director is “about knowing when to give direction.”

The superstar director says the listening lesson was learned early in life.  “From a very young age my parents taught me probably the most valuable lesson of my life: Sometimes it’s better not to talk, but to listen.”

There’s someone else Spielberg keeps in mind when making a film. “I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.”

READY PLAYER ONE: 3 STARS. “Spielberg seems to love spectacle over story.”

In brand crazy Hollywood “Ready Player One,” the new sci fi film from Steven Spielberg, is an everything-old-is-new-again hybrid. Based on the novel of the same name from author Ernest Cline it’s not a reboot or reimagining of a comic book or old film. It’s an original story that may appeal to folks who say the movies only recycle ideas. At the same time it’s stuffed to the gills with enough pop culture icons to warm the hearts of any nostalgic moviegoer.

It’s 2045 and the world is a mess. Cities are a hodgepodge of dystopian horrors, overcrowded, polluted and corrupt. For the people, whatever joy can be mined from the desolate, depressing life comes from immersing themselves in a virtual reality world called OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation). “Except for eating, sleeping and bathroom breaks,” says Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), “everyone does everything in the OASIS.” Based on 1980s movies, pop culture and videogames, it’s a technological escape from the all-too-real societal ills that make life miserable. “These days reality,” Wade says, “is a bummer.”

When OASIS creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance) died he created a way for Watts and his on-line Gunter pals—egg hunters—to find a way out of their IRL problems. The creator left behind an Easter Egg—if you don’t know that an Easter Egg is a hidden game message or image, give up now—amongst the game’s familiar pop culture characters. Whoever finds the three keys that unlock the Easter Egg will inherit the OASIS empire. Money, power, the whole nine yards. Watts, who lives in a vertical trailer park called The Stacks in Columbus, Ohio, along with his digital team the High Five, work to navigate the game and change their lives. In a race against time, they must beat the Sixers, an army of gamers employed by evil corporation Innovative Online Industries, in a war for control of the future.

Think your kids spend too much time playing video games? Get a load of Wade, Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Aech (Lena Waithe), Daito (Win Morisaki) and Shoto (Philip Zhao). This crowd are best friends, although for most of the movie they have never met on terra ferma. They spend all their time on line, forming friendships, falling in love and eventually fighting for their real life lives.

“Ready Player One” takes off like a rocket. There’s a lot of set-up and Spielberg finds a way to impart information and keep it lively. He fills the screen with an industrial view of the future, contrasting Wade’s dour real life with his vivid on line adventures, visually developing the push and pull between reality and virtual reality that fuels the film’s story. A wild car race, featuring Freddy Krueger, King Kong and the Batmobile, establishes the OASIS in a way that the minutes of exposition surrounding it never could. It also establishes the film’s love of spectacle over story.

Spielberg dives deep into the VR world, intoxicated by the endless possibilities of mixing-and-matching pop culture iconography with an adventure story. When Wade says, “The limit of reality is your own imagination,” he could very well be talking to the director. The result is a frenetic film that is fun for a while but the whimsy soon gets bogged down with feverish detail. It’s a little too long, there’s too much exposition, too many twists for a story that can be boiled down to the notion that we should spend more time in the real world.

A tribute to “The Shining” is often quite fun and there are moments of levity but it isn’t about anything other than the adventure. The commentary on our own virtual lives are never expanded upon. Of a spark of on-line love between Art3mis and Wade, who hadn’t yet met outside OASIS, Art3mis says, “You only see what I want you to see. You don’t know me.” It’s a good starting point for a conversation about what happens when avatars become real people but instead we get more exposition.

“Ready Player One” is pure escapism that begs the question, Will there ever be a video game movie that really works? The function of storytelling is vastly different between videogames and film and yet filmmakers try for a amalgam, the best of both worlds. What we usually end up with is what Steven Spielberg finds in his treatment of “Ready Player One,” a film that honours the spirit of the games at the expense of great storytelling.

Metro In Focus: “Colossal” may have the year’s strangest premise

By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus

“I understand some people are angry at the silly elements of the film,” says Colossal director Nacho Vigalondo, “but I’m a comic book guy and those are for me a way to re-enact the golden age of comic books on screen. I’m OK with superhero films not being afraid to be silly sometimes.”

His film may have the year’s strangest premise. He takes a basic rom com format—woman in trouble returns to hometown and strikes up a friendship with a former schoolmate—and turns it upside down. And inside out. And flips it on its head. He simultaneously reinvents and destroys the form in a movie that might be best referred to as a rom mon.

“Colossal is an original idea,” he says, “and you have to be careful with original ideas. A movie doesn’t make it on originality alone, you need something else.

“If you were writing this film as a romantic comedy and you are in the third act of the movie and suddenly you have opposing monsters in it? That is impossible. You have to do it the other way. I started with a silly and dark premise of this woman affecting the monsters on the other side of the world but it didn’t become a real film until I found the characters.”

Anne Hathaway stars as Gloria, an unemployed Manhattanite who fills her days—and most nights—with booze. As her life falls apart she returns to her small hometown a broken, drunken wreck. On home turf she reconnects with Oscar, played by Jason Sudeikis, a childhood friend, now owner of the local bar and possible love interest. So far it sounds like the set up for an unconventional rom com.

She takes a job at the tavern, earns some spending cash and access to after hours booze. Then things take a weird turn.

One afternoon she wakes up with the forty-ounce flu to the news that a giant monster has attacked Seoul, South Korea. It soon becomes clear to Gloria that she is somehow related to the mysterious attacks. It sounds outrageous, like the ramblings of a drunken sot, but when she takes Oscar to the sandbox in the local playground, the monster suddenly appears on the other side of the earth, mimicking her every move. When her actions cause havoc in Seoul she is forced to confront the monster within, her addiction.

Colossal is the kind of script most Rom Com Queens would toss in the trash by page 11. Hathaway, however, throws herself at it, relishing the off kilter and dowdy character. This may be a monster movie, but the real monster is her alcoholism not the foot stomping Kaiju.

“When Anne Hathaway said she wanted to play this role that was probably the biggest turning point in my whole career. If I had a list actors in mind I would have been the crazy guy on the block. Let me put it to you this way. Let’s fanaticize, if this movie becomes an Oscar winner for Best Picture, that would be a lesser jump than these actors wanting to be in this film.”

Colossal isn’t exactly a monster movie or a Jennifer Aniston-esque rom com. It is something else, something original and that is its beauty. It’s a reinvention, for both Gloria and its genres.

COLOSSAL: 3 ½ STARS. “the strangest rom com ever made.”

“Colossal” may be the strangest rom com ever made. Director Nacho Vigalondo has taken the basic format—woman in trouble returns to hometown and strikes up a friendship with a former schoolmate—and turned it upside down. And inside out. And flipped it on their head. He simultaneously reinvents and destroys the form in a movie that might be best referred to as a rom mon.

Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, an unemployed Manhattanite who fills her days—and most nights—drinking. When her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) kicks her out of their apartment she returns to her small hometown a broken, drunken wreck. On home turf she reconnects with Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), a childhood friend, now owner of the local bar. She takes a job at the tavern, earns some spending cash and access to after hours booze. So far it is the set up for an unconventional rom com.

Then things take a weird turn.

One afternoon she wakes up with the forty-ounce flu to the news that a giant monster, an enormous Kaiju, has attacked Seoul, South Korea. It is worldwide news, but it soon becomes clear to Gloria that the mysterious attacks are somehow related to her early morning stumbles as she comes home from the bar. It sounds outrageous, like the ramblings of a drunken sot, but when she takes Oscar and her bar friends to the sandbox in the local playground, the monster suddenly appears on the other side of the earth, mimicking her every move. When her movements cause havoc in Seoul she is forced to confront the monster within, her addiction.

“Colossal” is the kind of script Katherine Heigl or Drew Barrymore or any other Rom Com Queen would likely toss in the trash by page 11. Hathaway, however, throws herself at it, relishing the off kilter and dowdy character. This may be a monster movie, but the real monster is her alcoholism not the foot stomping Kaiju. Hathaway embraces Gloria’s faults, working through issues—both physical and metaphysical—creating a character we’ve never seen in a rom com before.

Sudeikis begins the film as a typical rom com suitor, a nice guy who’s there for the woman he loves. When his affection isn’t returned things take a turn, allowing Sudeikis the opportunity to explore his dark side. Put together Gloria and Oscar are the Bickersons with a destructive (literally) edge.

“Colossal” isn’t exactly a monster movie or a Jennifer Anistonesque rom com. It is something else, something original and that is its beauty. It’s a reinvention, for both Gloria and its genres.