Note: In the run-up to Mission: Impossible - Fallout, I'm revisiting the entire series in spiffy 4K HDR. Reviews for MI1, MI2, MI3, MI-Ghost Protocol and MI-Rogue Nation at respective links.
In all rankings of the Mission: Impossible movie series, 2000's second installment - surprisingly named Mission: Impossible 2 - is known as "the bad one." How bad is it? The only things people really remember about it are Anthony Hopkins' pithy retort to Tom Cruise's objection that Thandie Newton lacked training to help them, "To sleep with a man? To lie? She's a woman. She's had all the training she needs," and this zinger:
Har-har. Earn that paycheck, Sir Anthony! It's also best remembered as the movie that made Hugh Jackman's career despite his not even appearing in it. (More on this later.)
It's hard to know where to begin with M:I2 because there's so little to discuss plot-wise. In the cold open, Dougray Scott, masquerading as Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt, tricks a scientist who trusts Hunt into giving him samples of a genetically-engineered supervirus called Chimera and its cure before killing him and crashing the airliner to cover his tracks. Then we're treated to some impressive footage of Cruise free-climbing, his being given his mission and then over a half-hour of Cruise recruiting (by shagging her) Newton in order to have her get back in bed with her ex-boyfriend Scott to find out what his plans for the disease are. There's masks, diving while firing two guns, lots of kung fu, flying birds (pigeons, not doves) and hijinks and it's all dull and noisy.
I'm not susceptible to the things that trigger the easily-triggered outrage mobs, but egads the plot is skeevy and gross. Newton is introduced as a capable thief (a weird touch), but then is immediately reduced to being a sexual prop. Scott is on to her; Cruise is supposedly in love with her despite her crashing into his Porsche in the dumbest flirting scene ever filmed; it's all just dopey despite Newton being quite cute.
But really loading things down is Scott's creepy and unimpressive turn as the villain. His motivations are thin beyond "get all back up in the ex's guts" and making money selling bottled plague - this was written by Chinatown's Robert Towne from a story by Star Trek TV series guys Ronald Moore and Brannon Braga?! - but it's Scott's glowering mien that really kills things. He's awful and it's mind-boggling to realize that he was originally cast as Wolverine for the original X-Men only losing the role when a serious injury sustained while filming MI2 forced producers to scramble for a replacement. (They "settled" for a lanky Broadway musical performer named Hugh Jackman who had only two virtually unseen Australian films made a year before on his resume. If you look closely, you'll notice Jackman isn't as jacked in some scenes as he is during the cage fight where Logan is introduced. This was due to his needing to bulk up while shooting and the makers put the fight scene at the end of the shooting schedule so he could have time to get swole.)
Legendary Hong Kong action director John Woo had already had a couple of American hits in the 1990s with Broken Arrow and the truly bugnuts Face/Off and many of his trademark stylistic flourishes are present and accounted for, but the contribute to the flabby feel of the film, like he's trying to pad out Towne's thin script.
As before, it's hard to really judge audio quality on the Apple TV 4K, but the Dolby Vision image is sharp and richly-colored, though skin tones look a tad hot (reddish). The HDR effects really pop in nighttime scenes as the deep contrast lends a lush patina to the image.
It would be six years before J.J. Abrams would step in and radically revamp the Mission: Impossible series, setting it on the path it would follow to greater artistic and commercial successes.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
"Mission: Impossible" iTunes 4K Review
Saturday, July 21, 2018
In the run-up to the release of Mission: Impossible - Fallout - the sixth installment in the Tom Cruise-led series which has been running for 22 years(!) now - the previous five movies have been re-re-released on UHD/4K Blu-ray and digital formats. While I already own them all on regular Blu-ray, I was able to rebuy the whole series for $15 by buying cheap iTunes codes and the first one directly from iTunes for $5 (meaning, if you can do the math, I overpaid for this one).
Other than watching chunks of the last two installments while playing with home theater stuff, I haven't seen any of the movies all the way through since they were in theaters. Hearing that Fallout called back to the previous chapters, I'm going to try and watch all of them before see the new one and that means starting at the beginning with the 1996 Brian De Palma-directed Mission: Impossible.
The TV series' lead character, Jim Phelps, originally played by Peter Graves is portrayed by Jon Voight meaning Cruise is the newly-minted Ethan Hunt, part of Phelps squad which also includes Emilio Estevez. (I'd completely forgotten he was in it, albeit briefly. Other than the then-controversial twist which )
In Prague to intercept the McGuffin, a list of the cover identities of covert operatives, things go incredibly sideways leaving everyone but Hunt on the team dead and his bosses at the IMF suspecting he is the traitorous mole, forcing him to go on the run to root out the mole. Along the way he discovers not everyone previously thought dead is dead and the who-do-you-trust factor ramps up quickly.
For a series which is now know for the insane stunts Cruise performs himself like swinging off the world's tallest building or hanging off the side of an airplane in flight without bluescreen trickery, it's remarkable how small the scale of the first M:I film was. Other than the final set piece with the Chunnel bullet train and a helicopter tethered to it (which really suffers from dated VFX) and a great practical aquarium explosion, the most involved sequence is the much-parodied infiltration of CIA HQ which is nothing more than expert framing and editing, you know, the way movies used to thrill us before pixels by the megaton got cheap.
De Palma is in his usual Hitchcock-channeling form, giving David Koepp's and Robert Towne's pulpy genre script flair, especially when Phelps' wife (Emmanuelle Béart) seems to be moving instantly past her widowhood to seemingly flirting with Hunt. The cinematography De Palma regular Stephen H. Burum and editing by ace cutter Paul Hirsch (who amazingly only has TWO Oscar nominations and one win, for Star Wars) is lush and crisp. Cruise's Hunt is clearly greener than later chapters have portrayed and flashing back to a time when he was closer to Maverick than what he's doing now makes her performance seem a little cocky, but fine.
Currently the Apple TV 4K doesn't do high-quality audio well, but the Dolby Vision transfer looks good, albeit with some warmer skin tones than we're used to. Many movies nowadays desaturate colors in their grading to the point that anything with some primary color heft seems artificial, but even allowing for the throwback style De Palma was going for - seriously, this is one of her more "I WANT TO BE ALFRED HITCHCOCK!" movies on a CV filled with them - reds seem a tad hot. Checking reviews of the disc versions, I found middling scores, mostly for image softness which is misplaced because that's the look of anamorphic lenses and film, kids.
For a series that has grossed nearly $2.8B worldwide, it's interesting to revisit the Mission: Impossible series' somewhat modest beginnings when it has grown so much larger; perhaps not as far from its roots as the Fast & Furious franchise has (remember when that was about street racing?), but certainly in a higher-rent district.
Score: 7/10. Buy it for $5.
Other than watching chunks of the last two installments while playing with home theater stuff, I haven't seen any of the movies all the way through since they were in theaters. Hearing that Fallout called back to the previous chapters, I'm going to try and watch all of them before see the new one and that means starting at the beginning with the 1996 Brian De Palma-directed Mission: Impossible.
The TV series' lead character, Jim Phelps, originally played by Peter Graves is portrayed by Jon Voight meaning Cruise is the newly-minted Ethan Hunt, part of Phelps squad which also includes Emilio Estevez. (I'd completely forgotten he was in it, albeit briefly. Other than the then-controversial twist which )
In Prague to intercept the McGuffin, a list of the cover identities of covert operatives, things go incredibly sideways leaving everyone but Hunt on the team dead and his bosses at the IMF suspecting he is the traitorous mole, forcing him to go on the run to root out the mole. Along the way he discovers not everyone previously thought dead is dead and the who-do-you-trust factor ramps up quickly.
For a series which is now know for the insane stunts Cruise performs himself like swinging off the world's tallest building or hanging off the side of an airplane in flight without bluescreen trickery, it's remarkable how small the scale of the first M:I film was. Other than the final set piece with the Chunnel bullet train and a helicopter tethered to it (which really suffers from dated VFX) and a great practical aquarium explosion, the most involved sequence is the much-parodied infiltration of CIA HQ which is nothing more than expert framing and editing, you know, the way movies used to thrill us before pixels by the megaton got cheap.
De Palma is in his usual Hitchcock-channeling form, giving David Koepp's and Robert Towne's pulpy genre script flair, especially when Phelps' wife (Emmanuelle Béart) seems to be moving instantly past her widowhood to seemingly flirting with Hunt. The cinematography De Palma regular Stephen H. Burum and editing by ace cutter Paul Hirsch (who amazingly only has TWO Oscar nominations and one win, for Star Wars) is lush and crisp. Cruise's Hunt is clearly greener than later chapters have portrayed and flashing back to a time when he was closer to Maverick than what he's doing now makes her performance seem a little cocky, but fine.
Currently the Apple TV 4K doesn't do high-quality audio well, but the Dolby Vision transfer looks good, albeit with some warmer skin tones than we're used to. Many movies nowadays desaturate colors in their grading to the point that anything with some primary color heft seems artificial, but even allowing for the throwback style De Palma was going for - seriously, this is one of her more "I WANT TO BE ALFRED HITCHCOCK!" movies on a CV filled with them - reds seem a tad hot. Checking reviews of the disc versions, I found middling scores, mostly for image softness which is misplaced because that's the look of anamorphic lenses and film, kids.
For a series that has grossed nearly $2.8B worldwide, it's interesting to revisit the Mission: Impossible series' somewhat modest beginnings when it has grown so much larger; perhaps not as far from its roots as the Fast & Furious franchise has (remember when that was about street racing?), but certainly in a higher-rent district.
Score: 7/10. Buy it for $5.
"Skyscraper" Review
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Die Hard - Bruce Willis + The Rock - good villain + The Towering Inferno + great VFX = Skyscraper.
Any questions?
It's really that simple. 30 years after the seminal action classic that made Bruce Willis a star and spawned countless "Die Hard on a [fill in blank]" imitators set on a bus (Speed) or a plane (Passenger 57) or a battleship (Under Siege), the premise of a guy facing down an overwhelming threat gets rehashed with the Biggest Movie Star in the World (literally and figuratively) fighting to save his family in the world's tallest CGI building in Hong Kong (because China is where Hollyweird panders to these days) that's on fire!
Rock "The John" Dwayneson stars as security analyst hired to independently evaluate the safety and security of The Pearl, a 3500-foot-tall, 220-story megatower featuring state-of-the-art everything, self-powered by wind turbines, an indoor park and waterfall and a crazy virtual reality top level which makes no practical sense, but is obviously there for a climax ripped off from Orson Welle's The Lady from Shanghai. (It's not a spoiler when it's so clearly telegraphed by everything in the setup.)
Things are looking fine except for the offsite control center inspection (because they didn't have room in a 220-story building for a control room?) and Rock and his former squadmate who set him up with the job are in transit when they're mugged in an attempt to steal the plot's biggest stupid thing, a tablet with Ultimate Total Control Over Everything in the building - let's call it the "iMcGuffinPad" - which will allow the bad guys to shut off the fire suppression systems and allow them to set the 96th floor on fire. Unfortunately, Rock's family (wife Neve Campbell, daughter McKenna Roberts, and son Noah Cottrell) are staying in a suite on the 98th floor and are trapped when the place goes up. Hijinks ensue.
Since it's clearly
As for other comparisons, the villains suck even by lame action movie standards. Granted, Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber is one of the all-time great movie baddies, but several of the other gang members were also memorable like Alexander Gudanov's enraged blonde with the dope assault rifle and wise-cracking nerd Theo cackling, "And the quarterback is toast!" Skyscaper's hodge podge of villains aren't interesting or compelling, boiling down to the most generic descriptors like "Euro Baddie" and "Asian Ruby Rose" and the other McGuffin is so lame as to make the whole endeavor ludicrous.
Finally, despite being written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber - best known for comedies like Dodgeball and We're The Millers - it is weirdly lacking in sorely needed self-aware humor. Other than one moment when Rock is about to embark on a crazy set piece and mutters, "This is stupid," the script barely has anything which would elevate the material above rote meathead actioner level. Die Hard had John McClane constantly commenting on what was happening, speaking for the audience. For some reason Skyscraper decided that a missing leg was all the humanizing the Rock needed, wasting his ace comedic chops. Seriously, Dwayne Johnson is a greatly underestimated actor due to his massive physique, but look over his IMDB and the range of roles and note how he always seems to know what kind of movie he's making and delivers a precisely calibrated performance.
But while being derivative as all get out and inferior in almost every way, Skyscraper is still a decent popcorn muncher flick suitable for getting out of a hot summer day into an air-conditioned theater. The VFX of the tower and fire are quite convincing and the action set pieces, even when they're simply ridiculous and cribbed from other movies - the wind turbine scene is Galaxy Quest meets Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - are clearly and effectively staged. They're fun enough, but it's disappointing that they couldn't spice up the script with a little fire, too.
Score: 7/10. Catch a matinee.
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