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Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Written by Christopher McQuarrie & Erik Jendresen
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

This year (2023), I watched/re-watched the entire Tom Cruise-Mission: Impossible oeuvre (I only get a few chances to use that word). As far as big Hollywood productions go, it’s not among the worst. I do hand it to the filmmakers involved that they always try to go with practical effects whenever possible, and CG is used in ways that never take me out of the films. Almost every scene is an actor in an actual location or set, not a motion capture/green screen. I don’t think Tom Cruise is an actor. Really, he’s the textbook definition of a movie star. The films under Christopher McQuarrie have improved with each entry, and I like including physical comedy as part of action sequences. These are silly movies, after all, so let them be silly.

Movie Review – Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Written and directed by Jalmari Helander

The mixing up of Santa lore is a prevalent trope in modern Christmas fare. While it’s becoming more common to see dark, action-oriented Christmas movies over the last few years, Rare Exports was one of the first. I saw this when it was initially released in 2010, and this was my first rewatch since my initial viewing. I found it to be entertaining & charming on my original viewing, but now, thirteen years later, it has not held up very well. There’s a fantastic kernel of a premise at the center of the film, but it never entirely comes together and commits the greatest sin an action movie can: it becomes interminably dull.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
Written & Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

I’ve never really been into action movies. I am male, straight, and white; the period where I came of age (1980s thru 1990s) seemed focused on hyper-violent action media that people like me were supposed to eat up. I enjoyed the worlds, designs, and ideas behind many of your typical 80s fare. I was obsessed more with heroes who were not action-oriented. Marty McFly was someone I saw as a fun hero. The same with the superheroes in the comic books I read. I never enjoyed espionage or gun-wielding fare. That still remains today. I am okay with guns being part of a film’s story or nuclear bombs or hand-to-hand combat. I just don’t get a thrill from those things. A story with a strong character arc, especially one that is bittersweet, is what really draws me into a narrative. I know some people adore this movie. I thought it was fine. It’s certainly not the worst Mission: Impossible movie, but I’m doubtful these pictures will ever hook me as they do for many others.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)
Written by Christopher McQuarrie & Drew Pearce
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

And with this film, we reach the McQuarrie Era of Mission: Impossible. When Dead Reckoning Part 2 releases in 2024, McQuarrie will have directed half of the MI franchise. That makes it worth diving into what McQuarrie says about global foreign affairs. MI is a franchise grown out of the Cold War and anti-communism. Currently, communism as an engine of state power has been beaten back by an unrelenting capitalist assault. I know China has a Communist party as its core governmental body, and they implement policies that have undoubtedly lifted people out of poverty. However, I would argue, and many other communists would, too, that they have been teetering on the edge of communism and capitalism since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. Communism has never been the offensive threat the West has made it out to be; nations who claim to have communist governments have always been entrenched in defensive positions from outside interference. All that to say, there is no genuinely threatening “commie” bogeyman for these types of films any longer.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
Written by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Christopher McQuarrie
Directed by Brad Bird

Brad Bird was not a director likely to have been chosen to direct Mission: Impossible. Before Ghost Protocol, he had no live-action directing credits but had helmed The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. Bird proved to be up to the task and partially ended up shifting the tone of the MI series to a style that remains today. He also was part of a change in the types of villains the films presented. Previous MI films featured rogue IMF agents (MI & MI2) and an arms dealer (MI3). One of the biggest problems with a director like Bird is that he is intensely objectivist, following the writings of Ayn Rand. This can be seen most prominently in his box office flop Tomorrowland but is present in nearly all his work. It follows that his villain in Ghost Protocol is someone whose motives are never clear or coherent but is an outsider attempting to disrupt the status quo. This is also a typical villain archetype in Marvel films which has been a primary reason why those films have become increasingly less appealing to me.

Movie Review – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Written by George Lucas, Jeff Nathanson, and David Koepp
Directed by Steven Spielberg

Once upon a time, there was a man named Indiana Jones. He had many adventures in his day. Then one day, he stopped. That would have been a perfect place to end things. Indy rides off into the sunset with his friends as the end credits of The Last Crusade roll across the screen. For nineteen years, it was the end. In the background, treatments, and drafts of scripts were hammered out as the creatives and executives hemmed and hawed over how much more money they could squeeze out of this one. I was okay with no Indiana Jones movies in the 1990s and most of the 2000s. We didn’t need any more stories anymore because we could always revisit the ones we had. But more was required by the money machine. So we got Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a medley of scenes from many scripts that are made worse by the development of computer-generated imagery. Poor Indy was forced to put the hat back on and dance for the audience again.

Movie Review – Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989)
Written by Jeffrey Boam, George Lucas, and Menno Meyjes
Directed by Steven Spielberg

The idea had been to make three movies from the start. After Temple of Doom was less successful than Raiders of the Lost Ark critically, there was some hesitancy about continuing. Steven Spielberg hadn’t felt as committed as he would have liked on Temple, the subject matter didn’t interest him, and the material was far darker than he would have liked. However, the director believed they could correct the course and make something better. Eschewing directorial gigs on Big and Rain Man, Spielberg focused on developing the third Indy film into something special.

PopCult Podcast – Last Action Hero/Trading Places

It’s birthday time for two movie releases from the past. One signaled the weak spots in a mega movie star’s career. The other was the first steps of a comedy star who would dominate the 1980s.

PopCult Podcast – Desperado/The Day of the Beast

One is the story of a mysterious man carrying guns in his guitar case & out for revenge. The other is the tale of a Spanish priest attempting to get into the Devil’s good graces on the night the Antichrist is to be born.

Movie Review – Black Adam

Black Adam (2022)
Written by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Certain pieces of film feel like monumental shifts in the culture, or at the very least, that suddenly reflect horrible truths about the current dominant ideologies. Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will was hailed as a masterpiece in Germany, but it found traction outside the boundaries of that country. The Nazi filmmaker’s propaganda piece was awarded in Paris and Venice and lured many people outside of Germany to see fascism favorably. Movies did not start as overt propaganda, but it’s hard to argue now that the productions released by major American film studios are not produced with some sort of establishment normalizing ideology embedded within them. Be it Nolan’s Patriot Act apologia in The Dark Knight or the military glorification found in Michael Bay’s work and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Americanism as a worldview is ever present in our “entertainment.”