Bottom Line: An effective but in the end, disappointing horror film because of a pacing problem. Has some amazing war action in it, though.
The premise of “Overlord” is brilliant. It is set during World War Two just before the Normandy invasion. A team of paratroopers needs to drop into a remote location in order to take out a radio tower that would surely cause the Normandy invasion to fail. As the clickbait articles say, what they find there will surprise you! The radio tower is just outside a small town on top of an underground bunker and inside that bunker are horrors beyond those you find in war.
The movie starts with all the main characters in an airplane flying towards their mission. They come under heavy fire as they approach their target and what follows is some wonderful special effects and camera work as you follow the main character Boyce (Jovan Adepo) from the airplane and through his harrowing descent to the ground. War is a horror show in and of itself and “Overlord” effectively portrays that both in the air and on the ground. This goes on for a while too. In fact, for the first 45 minutes or so, you feel like you’re simply in a war movie before it starts peppering in all these minor clues about the horror within the horror that is about to begin.
The horror portion of the film is a little cliche, but not in a burdensome way. You’ve got your brutish Nazi SS officer and your sadistic Nazi scientist and your rag-tag band of heroes and your damsel-not-quite-in-distress. These are good cliches for a horror film to build on and they work well for the story being told, but the problem is all in the pacing. As the movie switches from war film to horror film, everything slows down and it kind of ruins the effectiveness of the horrors yet to come. There is a really good creepiness factor to everything that follows and a satisfying fight with the big bad at the end, but much of the in-between feels like a lost opportunity for lots of fun stuff to happen.
I am being a bit nit-picky as I did legitimately enjoy the movie. I mean who besides our President doesn’t like seeing Nazis getting what’s coming to them? The war parts were great fun and the movie is worth seeing just for them and the horror parts have enough of it to be entertaining.
Bottom Line: Ridiculous premise. Cliches galore. Lots of lose ends. Some moderately cool submarine action.
Pretend for a second that you are the U.S. Navy. For years, you have been overshadowed by your much cooler brothers: The Air Force with all their cool gadgets and space stuff, the Marines with their oorah and general bad-assedness, heck, even the Army has drones and cyber-security and whatnot! Sure, the Navy has their SEALs, but even if you asked people what branch the Navy SEALs belonged to they’d probably say Marines. What’s a poor Navy to do to up their cred? Create “Hunter Killer” would be my guess because this is the type of movie you get when a bunch of people who think it would be cool to make a movie but have no idea how to make a movie. Here is a conversation that I assumed happened between the Navy and the editor and director of this movie:
Navy: You know what would be cool? Let’s shoot a scene where it shows the submarine submerging quickly and all the crewmen on the bridge are shown tilted in order to stay upright since the submarine is going down at a steep angle!
Director: Hey, that’s pretty neat! I never knew that happened. We will film that!
Editor: I’ll throw these 5 seconds in showing them all tilt as the submarine starts its dive.
Navy: Yeah, but what if we throw in more? People are talking and stuff when this happens. Lets have some dialogue while they’re all tilted.
Director: Ooh, yeah, I like it! I’ll film these lines with them both standing tilted and various other ways.
Editor: Um, that’s probably unnecessary and will look a little weird, but I see where you’re coming from. We’ll throw in the next few lines with them tilted.
Navy: And what if we cut away to some other action happening in the sub to show what other people are doing while the sub is diving and then cut back to everyone tilted? And get this, what if we show them like that for the entire length it takes for the submarine to actually dive that far?
Director: You have given me money so I will do this thing you ask of me!
Editor: *head explodes*
Yes, that is an actual scene in the movie. Add to that a bucket full of Navy cliches and dubious plot points and what you have is a real flop of a film. The movie starts with a U.S. submarine being blown up by a rogue Russian submarine for reasons that are never really explained except for the fact that now the U.S. needs to send another submarine to see what happened to their missing sub. It basically gets more preposterous from there. Treaties are broken with abandon. Plots are hatched with little forethought. It’s a complete mess of a movie.
There are a bunch of submarine movies that are pretty awesome. This is not one of them. Go rent “Hunt For Red October” or “Crimson Tide” or “Yellow Submarine” rather than “Hunter Killer” if you have a submarine fix that needs sating.
The brutality of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels continues with “The Story of a New Name”. Lila is now married to Stephano and their marriage is brutal, just like everyone’s relationship in the book. Lenu is lost in thoughts that are brutal. Friends are brutal to friends. Business partners are brutal to business partners. This is the everyday world of Elena Ferrante’s Naples. Lila and Elena’s (Lenu) relationship continues to grow or perhaps fester in this world. They both experience sexual awakenings that are traumatizing, as every female’s awakening in this world probably is. They grow apart and come back together and love the same man and grow apart and come back together. It is a messy, complicated, beautifully flawed relationship.
The brutality is a product of upbringing and upbringing is a product of the neighborhood and the neighborhood is a product of neglect and the neglect has lasted generations. Welcome to the world of Naples’ working poor. Ferrante continues to dive into it with unrelenting indifference. There are no moments of “Oh, poor Elena” or “Oh, poor Lila”, it’s all straightforward “This is how it is”. Lila gets stuck in this world. Elena has a chance to escape. Elena finds, however, that the world follows her. She needs to change her manner, her speech, her dress, and still she gets looked down on. Both of them have a determination to not let this world they grew up in define them, though they follow two very different roads less taken.
Seeping and oozing throughout the novel is rank misogyny. It festers and corrupts everyone and everything it touches. Violence is the starting point of confrontation. Women are objects to be purchased and used and thrown away. Boys hate their fathers and run from what their fathers are only to become them. The perverted and cruel circle of life thus continues.
Elena Ferrante continues to be brilliant and the Neapolitan Novels continues to be not for everyone. There really isn’t much feel good to be found here. There aren’t even any good characters to root for. At best, there’s empathy. What this book is, like the one before, is straight, honest, and unflinching. If you don’t mind not having a good guy when you read, you should start reading Ferrante’s brilliant novels now.
Bottom Line: A decent enough movie with two great actors and a useless Casey Affleck.
There are some movies that you just watch and enjoy and take them for what they are and then never really think about again. “The Old Man & the Gun” is such a movie. It is based on the true story of Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford) who was a career criminal and prison escape artist and geriatric bank robber. Mostly, though, it’s a story about getting old and not going gentle into that good night. This is an incredibly appropriate story for Robert Redford given this will also be the last movie he ever acts in.
The heart of the movie is Forrest’s relationship with Jewel (Sissy Spacek). On some level, it is a romantic relationship, but mostly it is just platonic with some great chemistry between the two. The best parts of the movie are just the two of them sitting on the porch of Jewel’s farm contemplating life. These parts contain some good dialogue and let two wonderful actors shine.
Since this is a robber movie, there also has to be a cop. That cop is John Hunt (Casey Affleck). I do not begrudge them having a cop, but 90% of Hunt’s involvement in the movie was just pointless. There is this whole side-plot with him versus the FBI that comes to absolutely nothing. There are all these moments with his family that I guess are meant to humanize Hunt in some way, but there’s not much to Hunt except these moments and the moments where the movie makes clear that he’s hunting Tucker. If it were up to me, there would be less Hunt and more moments with Tucker and his accomplices, Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits!) just shooting the shit.
“The Old Man & the Gun” is worth seeing even if it won’t make a lasting impression. It is an enjoyable time and a fitting homage to two great actors, one of whom will never act again. Whenever it pops up on the streaming service of your choice, be sure to give it a watch.
Bottom Line: A unique retelling of the United States’ attempts to put a man on the moon. Beautiful and awe inspiring.
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the first men to reach past our atmosphere. Their mission: to boldly test the limits of engineering and science and the human body with the goal of being the first people to set foot on the moon.
“First Man” tells the story of the Space Race almost solely from the perspective of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) and his wife, Janet (Claire Foy). This gives the movie a very personal touch. You get a real feel for what it’s like to be an astronaut and a real feel for what it’s like to be an astronaut’s wife. Neither is easy. The movie starts with the Armstrongs taking care of their young daughter, Karen, who has cancer and ends with Neil walking alone on the moon and leaving a little keepsake for eternity. In between these bookends are all the trials and tribulations that the Armstrong family goes through to get to that first moon landing. Neil is loving, but distant. Claire is strong and loving and the glue that binds the family together.
This is a solidly acted movie all around. Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy acting opposite each other is a delight. It is not easy to stand out in Ryan Gosling’s acting shadow, but Claire Foy shows that her shadow is equally as large and her ability to portray nuanced emotion is a wonder to behold. They are backed up by a solid ensemble of supporting actors including Jason Clarke as Ed White who was about the closest thing to a friend that Neil Armstrong had.
It is a bit strange watching this movie if you know the history. Going to space is a fairly dangerous occupation and this is all in the past. You see the lives of these men who you know are going to die and you know when they’re going to die and you are then at the scene when you know they will die and yet you feel that maybe, just maybe they’ll be able to avert their fate.
The mood of the movie is set wonderfully by the music. Space scenes are an homage to “2001: A Space Odyssey”. And I would never in a million years think that I would utter these words, but the music also makes effective use of a theremin. The theremin brings out this haunting sadness in the music that I would never have imagined possible for such a revolting instrument.
I am guessing that the people who would like this movie fall into two camps: those who like space history and those who like Ryan Gosling. The Venn diagram of those two is probably one giant circle for Ryan Gosling and one tiny circle for space history with the space history circle being almost entirely subsumed by Ryan Gosling’s circle. Which is as it should be. We are all just living in Ryan Gosling’s world.
Bottom Line: A passable but lifeless story that, for reasons beyond me, tries to cast Tom Hardy as a loser.
I don’t want to get all Neil deGrasse Tyson on this movie, but it should have lasted only five minutes. Any vehicle that size that loses its heat shielding tiles upon reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere would burn up into tiny bite-size chunks and no human or alien could survive. This is especially true of aliens whose primary weakness happens to be fire. I’m glad I could get that off my chest.
Well, Marvel had a good run of fun, exciting, and worth watching movies. That streak has ended with “Venom”. This is a shame because giving villains their own backstory and their own motion picture vehicle is a great idea whose time has come. The problem is that Venom’s (Tom Hardy) motivations are minimally defined and kind of stupid and Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is the kind of good person who is really mostly just a dick pretending to be a good person when it suits him. Yes, Eddie Brock is Brett Kavanaugh. He even treats his girlfriend, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), horribly. Come to think of it, the whole movie is basically about a being who nonconsensually invades people’s bodies and everyone around those people being mostly alright with it or afraid to speak up. Ugh. Did I just make this movie into a euphemism for rape culture? Even all the relationships are horribly dysfunctional! Anne inexplicably keeps Eddie in her life and helps him even though he shamelessly takes advantage of her and cruelly violates her trust. Eddie somehow learns to like having Venom inside him even though Venom is clearly using him. Gah! I have completely ruined this movie for me.
Ok, so, besides the whole “Marvel deciding to make a major motion picture whose lead character is a rapist” thing, there are parts of “Venom” that are fun. I couldn’t for a minute buy the whole Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock as a loser thing, but there was some good banter between Eddie and Venom at times and there are some legitimately funny moments. The action scenes are fun, though I could have done without the exploding on impact drones and the CGI is sometimes a little over used and hard to follow. The movie doesn’t quite know what to do with Michelle Williams, which is a shame because she is great. She should have her own superhero movie.
As I wrote the review, I came to the realization that I should probably have rated the movie two stars instead of three, but my rating is all the way at the top and here I am way down here at the end. The effort of changing it is too much for me. And really, three stars is an accurate assessment of my enjoyment level for the movie before I decided to let my brain take over and ruin my fun. I must now go try to kill it with alcohol. Oh, and you can probably skip “Venom”, though there’s almost certainly going to be a sequel and it’s going to star Woody Harrelson so I’ll probably end up going to see it because Woody Harrelson is delightful!
Bottom Line: A dramadey that had me smiling from start to finish. Also a crime thriller. Also a satire. What I’m trying to say is there’s a lot going on here.
Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) is the kind of mother that all suburbanite parents hate; beautiful, successful, confident, wonderful husband, self-absorbed, narcissistic. Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) is the kind of mother that all suburbanite parents hate; beautiful, over-achieving, aims-to-pleasing, perfect in every way, all while being a single mom. Emily is the spider to Stephanie’s fly and all the suburbanite parents know it so when the two meet, they all know one thing: This is going to be fun. The two quickly strike up a friendship and become besties, but Emily isn’t exactly the type to have a bestie, but she is the type to have a pet. And like a determined pet, when Emily goes missing, Stephanie will stop at nothing to find out what happened to her.
“A Simple Favor” starts as kind of a satire on suburban life. There’s a lot of petty sniping at the very perfect Stephanie and at the very easy to dislike Emily. It then morphs into this weird, uncomfortable drama as the friendship between Stephanie and Emily grows very one-sidedly deeper as Stephanie falls completely in awe, if not in love with Emily. Then it turns into a who-done-it when Emily mysteriously disappears. Throughout the whole thing, the movie has a delightfully wicked sense of humor that ties everything together.
Both Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick are wonderful in this movie. They play almost polar opposite characters but have this perfect chemistry even as opposed characters that I so want to see them in either a buddy comedy or as a superhero duo. Or maybe as the evil and good conscience sitting on the shoulders of Kristen Bell who gets into wacky hijinks.
The movie also stars Henry Golding as Emily’s husband, Sean Townsend. First off, how lucky is Henry? He has gone from relative obscurity to being in two awesome films in a single year, the other being “Crazy Rich Asians”. Second, it didn’t click with me when watching the movie, but the married couple are Emily Nelson and Sean Townsend. They kept their last names! Not only that, but their child is named Nicky Nelson. They used the mom’s last name! Little thing, but still kind of cool.
“A Simple Favor” is fun and well acted and has a few “why in the world did they do that?” moments, which can be forgiven. It is well worth watching and you would be doing yourself a disservice if you do not see it. I had a smile on my face for quite some time after leaving the theater.
Bonjour mes amies! I had the distinct pleasure of dining at Le Pressoir d’Argent, Gordon Ramsey’s two Michelin star restaurant in Bordeaux, France, with six of my closest friends. It was an absolutely wonderful gastronomic experience and I am supremely lucky that so many people could share it with me.
The restaurant is located on the second floor of the Hotel Intercontinental and the man at the front desk showed us to a little alcove which contained the elevator that led us up to the restaurant. We were greeted immediately by a young woman with close cropped black hair and an inviting smile and shown to our seats. Our party having taken two cabs and ours arriving first, we selfishly arranged ourselves with our backs to the wall so that we may observe the goings on in the restaurant. I love watching restaurants operate. Good restaurants move in a motion that resembles a dance and Le Pressoir d’Argent moves like a waltz. The women all have short pixie style hair or pulled up into a severe bun and are dressed elegantly, but conservatively, and the men all have short hair and suits which match the conservative style of the women. The people bringing the food from the kitchen wear black gloves and stiffly walk the meals to the tables as others swoop in to distribute the courses to the table.
Le Pressoir d’Argent is know most of all for its lobster and the decor reflects that. The walls are adorned with sea shells and pictures that are almost x-rays showing close ups of various crustaceans are strategically placed around the restaurant. There was almost a Little Mermaid “Under the Sea” feel to it and given its heavily seafood menu, some of us could be heard singing “Les Poissons” from time to time. Les Poissons, les poissons, how I love les poissons! Yeah, we’re all class. My only complaint about the ambiance was the room was entirely too warm, which led to us guzzling 70 Euros worth of water. Ah, Europe and your non-free water! Given how much we spent for the meal, 10 Euros a piece for water isn’t a big deal, but you’d expect better temperature control for an exclusive restaurant like this. This is the only reason why I am not giving a five star rating. Everything else was phenomenal.
All seven of us had the six course tasting menu. The menu was provided to us in both French and English due to my very French sounding name, which was a very nice touch. I also partook of the wine pairing which was done blind. They would serve the wine with the course and the sommelier would come by at the end of the course and let you guess what it was. I got one right. Go me!
The Tasting Menu
I started the meal with a fancy drink whose name I cannot recall, but it was delightful and refreshing and served with a sturdy paper straw.
Oh drink! I do not remember your name, but you were delicious!
As expected in restaurants of the quality of Le Pressoir, we were treated to a few tiny delectable before the official menu started. I should really take notes because I don’t remember what they were either. The highlight was the almost sushi style tidbit with roe on top, but the skewer of meat served along side it was also wonderful.
This amused douche loved the amuse-bouches
We were also treated to a delightful salad of some sort before finally getting to the tasting menu. It was creamy and basily and almost too beautiful to eat.
Salad done right
Finally, we get to the tasting menu! First dish was Bazas beef tartar in oyster cream with Aquitaine caviar and sorrel. It was served on a bed of salt in a glass covered dish and smoke trickled out of the salt when the cover was lifted. Both Bazas and Aquitaine are the locations of where the beef and caviar, respectively, were sourced. It was served with a white wine that paired perfectly with it. I am not much of a white wine fan, but this trip to Bordeaux opened my palette to whites like none before have. The problem with a blind tasting and my inexperience with white wines is my not remembering which wines paired with which dishes and sadly, the picture I took of the bottles is a bit blurry. I am only slightly sure that this was a Chablis. I would gladly drink this wine alone.
Beef tartar
The second course was Saint-Jean-du-Luz spider crab served under avocado with pomelo, coriander, radishes, and a citrus dressing. Pomelo is a kind of citrus fruit. This was probably the most beautiful of the dishes and with the most subtle of flavors. I’m pretty sure this was served with a Riesling. I am not a fan of Rieslings and this one was no exception, but it did pair wonderfully with the dressing which cut the sweetness of the wine which is my primary complaint about Rieslings.
Spider crab hiding under avocado
Course three was wild turbot baked in seaweed with razor clams, cockles, bigorneau, Swiss chard, and fregola. Bigorneau are sea snails and fregola is a tiny pasta. This was also served on a covered glass dish with poofs of smoke when uncovered. Goodness was this delicious! So many wonderful flavors that mixed together so well! It was served with a white wine that I do not recall at all what it was, but notice that they served it in a red wine glass typically used for Bordeaux wines. I have only been served whites in a red glass twice and I always forget to ask why. I suspect it is because they are younger wines that, like reds often need to, require a bit more aeration than usual.
Tasty turbot
Course four was my favorite, not for the food itself, though that was spectacular, but the star of this course was the wine. This one I distinctly remember not only because it was the only red but because I guessed it right! Ok, I guessed the region right. Everything else I got wrong. It was a Bordeaux. It was bold and complex and I wish I could drink the entire bottle and would die happy if it was the only wine I ever drank again. When asked how old I thought the wine was, I guessed ten years, maybe fifteen, knowing that if he was asking, it must be fairly old. It was a 1993! This excellent wine was paired with roasted Pyrenees veal in organic cereal ragout and a side of wild mushrooms and turnip. This was excellent veal and well worth raving about, but I cannot stop thinking about the wine.
I really should have put the wine in front of the veal
And now for a slow intermission from the meal for cheese! Oh cheese, I love you so! We let our helpful server choose a nice selection of cheeses for us. I was too busy drooling all over myself to remember to take a picture of the cheese cart and too eager to dig in to the cheese plate to remember to take a picture of the pristine plate, though I did remember half way in. I can’t recall the names of all the cheeses of which we partook, but I have fond memories of the Stilton blue cheese, the Camembert, and an Epoisses that was made differently that your normal Epoisses, and this wonderful hard cheese which was probably my favorite, but I don’t at all recall the name.
A partially eaten cheese plate
The intermission continued with a surprise tour of the kitchen where we got to meet the head chef and the pastry chef. I have never done this before and it was quite cool to watch the well oiled (I assume with olive oil) machine of the kitchen humming on all cylinders. We were a large group and quite in the way so our visit was short, but enjoyable.
Yes chef!
Performing culinary magic
Course five was a perfectly pleasant palette cleanser of fennel sorbet in a green apple and mint emulsion. It was a welcome respite from the heaviness of the cheese and the veal. Fluffy and full of flavor. I did not get a wine with the sorbet and I feel cheated. Ok, not really, but it would have been really interesting to see what they chose to pair with it.
Sorbet with a see through top. Sexy!
It was at this point that the sommelier came out with the wines I had partaken of so far. He talked of the wines with passion and I pretended to understand him. I should have asked for him to stage the bottles in the order they were served, but was not thinking of it at the time. Maybe they were in reverse order? If that’s true the Chablis was in the red wine glass and the first white wine shall forever be lost to the blurry photos. I highly recommend that you go out right now and buy yourself a bottle of the 1993 Chateau d’Armailhac and share it with those you love best.
When you gonna let me be sober?
And now for the final course! Or is it? Dun dun duuuuuuun! Course six was a delightful desert of fig leaf parfait, juniper leather, roasted figs, and verjus. Verjus is the juice of unripe grapes. I have no idea what juniper leather is. It was served with a sweet almost pruny wine that I never did get the name of because we were quickly approaching hour four of our meal and the rest of my party was starting to get cranky and would soon need to be tucked in to bed. It was the perfect ending dessert course to a perfect meal.
It fig-ures?
But wait, there’s more! This was really my meal. Everyone enjoyed it, but no one would have been there if not for me. It was also relatively close to my birthday, give or take a few weeks, so everybody’s favorite vacation planner decided to tell them that it was my birthday. Le Pressoir d’Argent treated me with this stupendous birthday treat:
Happy Birthday to me!
Look how excitingly beautiful that is! Candle and all. And all fancy and such! At that point, I was wondering how all of us were going to be able to eat this giant cake boat covered in chocolate with a solitary half ball of ice cream sitting all lonely in the bow. Alas, the only edible part of the concoction was the ice cream. The rest was just for show and inedible. Beautifully inedible. The ice cream was delish. We also got some desertlettes, which you can kind of see in the boat picture there, but at this point of the meal I was so full that they didn’t make much of an impression.
The warmth of the restaurant was a small mar in an otherwise wonderful experience. The service was superb and the food was phenomenal. Le Pressoir d’Argent has charm that is equal to the charm of the city of Bordeaux itself. I am happy I was able to partake of both and to share them with a table full of some of my favorite people.
Bottom Line: A fun movie that delves deep into Asian culture. And tells the story from a mostly female point of view! Boy, do I want to visit Singapore now!
Goodness, this was a fun movie! “Crazy Rich Asians” somehow perfectly walks the line of silly, serious, outlandish, and down to earth. And while I’m sure that there is so much more for Asians that uncultured white boys like myself couldn’t even fathom the context of, it is also completely accessible to us uncultured white boys as well.
“Crazy Rich Asians” tells the timeless tale of girl meets boy. Boy asks girl to go to a wedding with him. Girl finds out boy is rich. Girl finds out boy is obscenely rich. Girl has to meet boy’s obscenely rich and…colorful family. The girl in question is Rachel Chu (Constance Wu who you may recognize from “Fresh Off the Boat”), an economics professor born and raised in the United States, and the boy is Nick Young (Henry Golding), of the Singaporean Youngs, a real estate tycoon family whom everyone in Singapore knows. They are joined by an absolutely wonderful supporting cast including Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Awkwafina, Ken Jeong, and Ronnie Chang, just to name a few.
What’s great about this movie is it’s mostly about women and told by women, but at the same time there are men in it and they are also real men and not just comedy side pieces, though they are definitely eye-pleasing pieces. From start to finish, it’s just strong women being strong, but also living real life and going through real life predicaments. Well, also while being ridiculously rich, except for Rachel Chu who is just strong and not rich.
You will be forgiven if you sometimes wonder if you are watching a movie or a tourism commercial for Singapore. “Crazy Rich Asians” showcases Singapore in all of its beauty and glory and decadence. Goodness, did I have some travelers envy watching parts of this movie. Singapore has definitely moved up in places I want to visit soon.
“Crazy Rich Asians” is based off of book one in a series of books by Kevin Kwan. It has been a wonderful success and deservedly so. We can only hope that success translates into the other two movies being made as well. It is heartening to see that epic stories featuring an almost exclusively non-white cast be successful. There are so many of these stories yet to be told and so many worth hearing.
Bottom Line: A fun action movie that falls short of its “Mission: Impossible” brethren. Ugh, Henry Cavill.
I’ve always enjoyed the introduction to the “Mission: Impossible” mission. You know, the “your mission, should you decide to accept it” stuff. As if there were any doubt that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) would ever turn down a mission. In “Fallout”, they go almost old school. The entire scene is very noir-ish and reminiscent of the old TV series. It was a great homage to the movie series’ roots.
Apart from the introduction, the rest of the movie is pretty standard spy thriller fare. There are acts of heroism and double crosses and masks and gadgets and villains on both sides and chase scenes and last second rescues. It’s all fun, but nothing really stands out. Well, except for the 15 minute timer that ticks down for what seems like 30 minutes. The problem with consistently producing a predictable product is that it becomes harder and harder to build tension. You know people will have bulletproof vests on. You know it’s going to be a mask. You know when the counter reads 00:00:01, the bomb will be defused. There is still cleverness to be found in the movie, but mostly, it’s all been done before.
And then there’s Henry Cavill. He plays August Walker, a CIA agent assigned to babysit the IMF team. There are tree stumps that have more personality than he does, though wooden does perfectly describe his acting. Cavill is who you call when the casting director says, “What this role needs is a man with a very square jaw.” The only way to give Cavill any sense of gravitas is to stick him in a Superman suit.
At two hours and twenty-seven minutes, the movie could certainly do with a trimming, especially in the second half. An action movie without an involved plot just doesn’t need to be that long. That the movie was still enjoyable despite its length says something about the longevity of the series’ formula, though. There will probably be even more sequels to come and I will probably continue to watch them because, while they’re not always the greatest, “Mission: Impossible” movies are always fun.
