MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT Review

For the longest time, the Mission Impossible franchise has been a phenomenon I've been observing almost strictly as an outsider… that is until I actually sat down to marathon all of them before watching this new entry in the series earlier this week. On a few occasions, I've gone on record for calling this series "Fast & Furious but for smart people" and I turned out to be right in the assertion. These are all very similar with a new director for each new installment; however, what makes these far superior to all those dudebro car worship flicks is a sense of reverence for classical action filmmaking techniques and a noticeable evolution as the years went on. Now then, how does all of this relate to Fallout? Because the series has had something of a high streak since 2011 and this raises the bar even higher.

I can't think of much here that isn't a superb display of craftsmanship. Seeing a PG-13 action movie with violence that feels visceral and (most importantly of all) consequential is always appreciated. The action here is relentlessly hard-hitting while having enough levity and playfulness to keep things from getting too dark. For a picture that clocks in at about two and a half hours, it sports a rather tight screenplay that doesn't waste any time and manages to keep the stakes high up until the very end. Rob Hardy's cinematography is top notch, capturing the action clearly while managing to plant striking frames in between the chaos (in the first fifteen minutes, there’s a shot of Tom Cruise's silhouette contemplating in a warehouse that brought to mind legends like Walter Hill and John Boorman). Having the whole thing shot on 35mm film also adds a texture of clarity and grittiness that enhances every shot. All of the setpieces are top notch. From an early white-knuckle scuffle in a nightclub bathroom to the climatic helicopter shootout (a scene that's on par with the Burj Khalifa sequence from Ghost Protocol for excellent tension and stunt work), the cast and crew gives it their all and it consistently pays off.



The Mission Impossible franchise may not be one of the best action franchises of all time; but, it's one of the most dependable and consistent. All of these films are well-done thrillers but this is the peak of what can be done with this series. Fallout is terrific blockbuster entertainment with some of the finest craftsmanship put into any genre film this year or any other. It's a stone cold stunner that demands to be seen in a big theater with great projection. Don't miss it!

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT gets a...
TOTAL KNOCKOUT out of TEN

Before I go, I'd like to encourage everyone here to rewatch Rogue Nation before seeing Fallout because this acts as a direct sequel to that.

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS Arrives At SDCC With An Awesome Trailer

Yes, folks. It’s that time of year again where a bunch of folks gather up in a sun-drenched San Diego convention center for stuff you’d probably be happier experiencing from the comfort of your own home. Nah, I’m kidding. I’m just as hyped for all of these big announcements as the rest of you guys.

Earlier today, Warner Bros. Aside from the hype train focusing mainly on the ever-growing Harry Potter universe and the DCEU going forward among countless other things, we got the first trailer for the upcoming Godzilla: King Of The Monsters. Take a look, if you’d be so inclined.

Now, those who know me know that I wasn’t that huge on the 2014 reboot from Gareth Edwards. Outside of good things like Bryan Cranston’s performance and a powerhouse finale, it wasn’t much to write home about due to weak characters and a lack of anything interesting enough to make up for that. With that said, Kong: Skull Island was great enough to turn me around on Legendary Pictures’ "MonsterVerse" and this looks like following that same path. The heavy use of colors (especially those atomic blues) against beautiful shots of widespread monster destruction is a creative decision that I’m totally on board with. Seeing schlocky B-movie plots and characters being treated like high art is still a novelty that has yet to wear out its welcome. It’s got a pretty great ensemble to survive all the chaos and Michael Dougherty is a director I’m fairly confident in for this kind of material. Everything here just looks so massive and apocalyptic. It’s just incredible. Overall, this looks like a major improvement from the first one and just a cool monster movie period. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be counting down the minutes until Godzilla: King Of The Monsters hits theaters next May.

Bad Robot's OVERLORD Debuts With A Mind-Blowing Trailer

After months of impatiently waiting after hearing about how awesome the CinemaCon footage was, Paramount and Bad Robot just dropped the trailer for their latest piece of genre pulp earlier this morning. It's called Overlord and it looks totally gnarly. 

Oh yeah, that looks like pure badassery. For the most part, this hits all the beats the CC footage did and it's so satisfying to finally get an actual look at that. Soldiers dropping out of planes, Wyatt Russel in a role that'd probably make his father Kurt proud, what appear to be some sort of Nazi zombie-vampire creatures, so on and so forth. That use of AC/DC's "Hells Bells" is such a good touch. I'm having a hard time coming up with articulate ways of expressing how much I like this trailer.

Every time I think of a sentence, I scrap it and just want to jump from my desk, shouting "[insert your favorite expletive here] YEAH! THIS LOOKS SO AWESOME!". Anyway, all joking aside, this is one of my most anticipated releases of the year. J.J. Abrams producing a grindhouse-style sci-fi horror action war picture with a hard R rating is unquestionably within my wheelhouse. Oddly enough, this may be the least cryptic and most straightforward piece of marketing I've ever seen for a Bad Robot production. There's no hiding what this is (except for a few twists and turns that'll probably be awesome) and bless its heart for that. It looks creepy, action-packed, utterly bizarre and just a great old-fashioned time at the movies.

We'll see if it lives up to the hype, come November 9th*.

*NOTE: This was originally supposed to come out on October 26th, which is a shame that it changed because it would've been really cool to see this on Halloween night. Still, it's not that far away I suppose.

Nic Cage Rage Is On Full Display in First Trailer For MANDY

NOTE: Yes, I'm aware this trailer came out weeks ago. Whatever, I had this already written. So, here's some more content.

Having one of the more bizarre careers out of any well-known modern actor, Nicolas Cage and insanity go together like peanut butter and jelly. Unless we’re talking about his earliest work or his direct-to-video paycheck gigs, he’s a great talent who makes good movies even better and bad movies compulsively watchable. His latest picture comes from Panos Cosmatos, a filmmaker who gained notoriety a while back thanks to his feature debut being the psychedelic cinematic wonder Beyond The Black Rainbow. It goes under the title Mandy. Take a look for yourself, will you?

...well, that was certainly something, wasn’t it? And, here I was, thinking that Mom And Dad was the only Nicolas Cage movie worth paying attention to this year. So much to unpack for a quick trailer. Lots of hazy, colorful visuals of the cryptic and unsettling variety like Cage hammering together a sleek looking battle axe and the Hellraiser-looking dudes that kidnap his wife. Strange animated cutaways. Cage filled to the core with anger and covered in blood. A tease of a swordfight with chainsaws that’s so utterly bananas, it could’ve been ripped from a certain Tobe Hooper picture. It’s a lot of cool stuff to take in. If this doesn’t end up being the weirdest movie of the year, the rest of 2018 is going to be pretty gnarly.

Having been screened at both Sundance and Cannes months ago, the reception’s been more than intriguing. Jacob Knight from Birth. Movies. Death. (a fellow critic I trust above many others) went as far as to describe it as “Ghost Rider by way of Alejandro Jodorowsky”*. Also, this is going to be something of a posthumous release seeing how the score was done by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson (who unfortunately passed away a little over five months ago). I can’t say that I’m entirely prepared for this craziness; however, that doesn’t mean I’m not hyped out of my skull to see it when gets unleashed on September 14th.

*That bit was paraphrased. You can read his thoughts here: https://boxd.it/nUuaT

Neill Blomkamp is Bringing RoboCop Back To The Big Screen

According to film journalist Jeff Sneider and confirmed by press outlets like Deadline, critical wonderboy director Neill Blomkamp (director of District 9, Elysium, and Chappie) is working on a new project: RoboCop Returns. At the time of writing, it’s been confirmed that this new film will be a sequel that sort of acts as a soft reboot. Justin Rhodes (writer of both the upcoming Terminator reboot and the Green Lantern Corps film that's still in development over at DC) has been chosen to pen a revision of a screenplay written by franchise creators Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner (written ages before comics legend Frank Miller was brought on to do RoboCop 2 instead).

Personally, I think there’s a 50/50 chance of this being any good. As much as I love the original (seriously, it's in my top 25 favorites), the RoboCop franchise as a whole is a very mixed bag. Starting out with an all-time classic and a pretty decent sequel, things took a massive nosedive when RoboCop 3 hit theaters in 1993 with its inferior PG-13 rated anarchy and an even worse excuse for a reboot about two decades later. Outside of a couple decent comics and videogames, there isn’t much of value to this venture; yet, I’m not going to write this new movie off because I’ve been burned in the past.

They’ve got some talented people for this latest picture. While I remain skeptical about who they’ve selected to write it, I’m curious to see what he does with this film and how a filmmaker like Neill Blomkamp will work with that. I’ll go on the record by saying I find Blomkamp’s work to be a bit overhyped in the grand scheme of things. Still, I admire that he is one of the few directors willing to work big ideas into the average sci-fi popcorn flick. He’s proven to critics and studios that he’s a go-to guy for entertaining science fiction action pictures with heavy social commentary underlining them. So, that and his statement regarding his love for the original along with hints at what he plans to do with this new film are reassuring. As for what a new sequel could entail, your guess is as good as mine. I’ll keep an open mind about this upcoming feature and I hope you all do the same.

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP Review

Quick Memo To The Readers: For those wondering why the site's been a bit of a ghost town lately, it's because I haven't much to report or opine on; but, don't worry. I've got a Review Round-Up coming very soon with my takes on Incredibles 2 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Comic Fade (the other site I write for occasionally) is relaunching in a couple days or so with an article I wrote about what's going end up being this year's wildest release, and the yearly gold mine of movie news output that is San Diego Comic-Con starts in a couple weeks. So, good times are ahead. For now, please enjoy my take on the latest Marvel joint.



It's taken me quite some time to realize this; but, I've had something of an epiphany in regards to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I have a good feeling fellow film nerds are going to agree with. The less these movies are concerned with the overall narrative status quo of the franchise and setting up future sequels, the better they end up being as individual works (hence why the only two films in this whole venture I'd consider classics are the Guardians of the Galaxy flicks). I bring this up because Ant-Man & The Wasp is a good example of this principle in action. It takes what made the first film good and expands on those elements well enough to where it considered better than its immediate predecessor.

Paul Rudd remains as charming and likable as ever. Thankfully, Evangeline Lily gets more to do here than she did last, proving to be a real force of nature in the action sequences and an endearing screen presence in the slower moments. Michael Pena offers some good laughs in the midst of all this chaos. Hannah John-Kamen and Walton Goggins make for two well-done antagonists, with the former being quite sympathetic and surprisingly well-developed character wise while the latter is just fun because he's Walton Goggins (who is awesome even in small doses such as with his appearance here). No further justification needed. Oh, and it's always to see Michelle Pfeiffer and Laurence Fishburne show up in anything.

This time around, all the big setpieces are even more playful and creative. You thought having a destructive climax in a room of children's toys was fun? Wait till you see all the tricks that are up this film's sleeve. From a murderer's row of re-sizable vehicles getting put to good use in car chases to resourceful uses of kitchenware, director Peyton Reed keeps finding ways to keep this central conceit ceaselessly amusing. That much was expected when I got my ticket. What I was pleasantly surprised by was how it tried to grow it's characters. Outside of this and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, I can't recall any other films of this ilk that really change their characters as people. Sure, it's awesome to see them run around in flashy costumes and punch other dudes in similar attire; but, what makes us want to keep paying attention is the little moments in between and this does it really well.



As the Marvel phenomenon keeps chugging along like a runaway train, one can be forgiven for fearing that there will come a time when there's nothing interesting left to say about these movies. For now, I've found a couple points to latch onto to keep that inevitable situation from happening for just a little while longer. First, everything since Doctor Strange has been fully embracing what makes the material strange or unique and this is no exception. Second, one of the big things that makes each film interesting is how they try to infuse other genres into their superheroics (like how Captain America: The Winter Soldier is tinged with 70s paranoid spy thriller trappings and Thor: Ragnarok seems to have more than a little love for the era of Flash Gordon and Masters of the Universe). In this instance, much like some of the original comics, the Ant-Man movies have a charming sense of reverence for 50s and 60s science fiction. Heck, they even go as far to make a clever gag at the end with a miniaturized drive-in screening of the classic B-movie, THEM! (you'll have to see the movie if you want more on that). It's a nice popcorn flick that's light and breezy but has just enough emotional weight to keep it from being ephemeral. Plus, it has giant ants playing drums! What's not to like?

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP gets a...
FUN WEEKEND MATINEE out of TEN

One last point, it would feel crass if I weren't to acknowledge some rather tragic Marvel news here. Yesterday, comics legend Steve Ditko (you can thank him for helping create Spider-Man, Dr. Strange and countless other greats) passed away at the age of 90 and his influence was far too important for me to gloss over. Rest in peace, goodsir. Your contributions will forever live on.