If you thought director Noah Baumbach was turning all populist after While We’re Young, take heart! At my recent screening of Mistress America, five people walked out within the first twenty minutes, apparently put off by hilariously flawed characters who talk to themselves, but at each other, without mercy.
Their loss.
It’s a charming, wonderfully offbeat, fast-paced dialogue fest, and a perfect vehicle for Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the script with Baumbach.
Gerwig stars as Brooke, a busy New Yorker who seems happy to get a visit from her soon-to-be stepsister Tracy (Lola Kirke – impressive), an 18 year-old student at a nearby college. Brooke bombards Tracy with stories of her exciting life and social calendar (“He’s the kind of person I hate – except I’m in love with him!”), instantly gaining an admirer. Tracy’s reserved demeanor is no match for hurricane Brooke, and soon Tracy and two friends are joining Brooke on a mission to persuade her rich old boyfriend Dylan (Michael Chernus) into bankrolling her plan for a new restaurant/hair salon/cool place to be combo.
The gang ends up crashing a party hosted by Dylan’s wife (loves these names) Mamie-Claire (Heather Lind). Mamie-Claire may or may not have stolen Brooke’s idea for a line of t-shirts, and the visit descends into a madcap frenzy of incidents and allegations. As characters move throughout the rooms of Dylan’s lavish house, Baumbach stages it to perfection, much like a high school play directed by a coked-up Woody Allen.
Underneath the inspired insanity, though, lies a love letter to the written word. Tracy desperately wants to join her school’s literary club, and she uses Brooke as the basis for a short story that she hopes will be accepted into their magazine.
As the characters’ continue their rapid fire, often non-sequitur dialogue, it’s offset with Tracy’s voiceover reading of the measured, wonderfully flowing prose of her short story. This not only puts a spotlight on the art of writing, it cleverly reinforces the film’s undercurrent of self-delusion.
Brooke lives to define herself, as Tracy so eloquently puts it, as “a beacon of hope for lesser people,” regardless of how well her definition aligns with reality. “Lesser” people’s descriptions aren’t as welcome, a fact beautifully illustrated by a scene where Brooke is recognized by an old high school classmate. Gerwig is a true wonder in the role, combining comic timing with the depth needed to make Brooke sympathetic no matter how much you want to dislike her.
Will Mistress America be the movie where the masses (minus those five party poopers from my screening) get hip to Gerwig’s unique talents?
For the 10-year-old boy inside us all, Turbo Kid opens cinematically and on VOD today. It takes us to the post-apocalyptic future of 1997, many years after the catastrophe that destroyed most of humanity, leaving a scrappy few to scavenge for water and survival.
The film is expanded from a short originally rejected by the ABCs of Death franchise (in favor of T is for Toilet – eesh). The short is worth a Google, but the full length film is a celebration of early Eighties storytelling and juvenile imagination.
It’s a mash-up of the Power Rangers and Hobo with a Shotgun. That is, it’s a perfectly crafted time capsule: a low budget, live action Saturday morning kids show – except for the blood spray, entrails and f-bombs.
The Kid (Munro Chambers) wheels around the wasteland on his sweet bike, picking up bits of retro treasure to trade for water, ever watchful for the henchmen of evil overlord Zeus (Michael Ironside). His one real solace comes from the Turbo Man comics he gets in trade for his scavenged booty.
When his only friend, Apple (Laurence Leboeuf) – an energetic, teal-wearing girl – is in danger, he becomes Turbo Kid. Together he, Apple, and a mysterious Australian arm wrestler take on Zeus to free fellow survivors from his oppressive, bloody leadership.
Writing/directing team Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell have crafted a delightfully absurd action comedy. Its 1982-ish panache is joyously spot-on, and the combination of innocence and gore perfectly captures the pre-teen cartoon watcher’s imagination.
And Michael Ironside! The feral Canadian makes a glorious Zeus, flanked by scoundrels and outcasts suited for a Mad Max film. (The early ones, before the budget and talent came in.)
Turbo Kid is not trying to be Mad Max, though. It’s trying to be the imagined Mad Max (or Indiana Jones or Star Wars or Goonines) game you and your stupid friends played in the neighborhood on your bikes, and it succeeds miraculously because Turbo Kid never winks or grimaces at its inspiration. This is a celebration, not a campy mockfest.
Yes, it has trouble keeping its energy for the entire 89 minute running time, but for those of us who took our Saturday morning shows out to the neighborhood streets every weekend, it’s a memory blast.
Restless young men try to make their way in the city. They party, chase girls, work boring jobs and start to wonder about the bigger picture. Hopes seem dim, but one of the guys has an extra spark. Maybe it’s disco dancing, bartending, or more recently, stripping, but the point is this guy’s gonna learn some life lessons and make his mark!
This time, that mark starts with “just one track.”
We Are Your Friends gives us Cole Carter (Zac Efron), who pours over his music editing software, mixing beats that he hopes will lead him to the top of the club DJ scene in Los Angeles. James Green (Wes Bentley, nice to see you) is already there, so what luck that he takes Cole under his wing for no reason whatsoever, showing him the ropes as well as his very tempting girlfriend/assistant Sophia (Emily Ratajkowski).
This is the feature debut for director/co-writer Max Joseph, and there are certainly familiar trappings, requisite cliches and even a couple cringeworthy moments (Cole defending Sophia’s honor to some loudmouth assholes – ugh). But other times, there’s some real skill here looking for a good home.
Joseph utilizes slow motion, text graphics, animation and even flirts with the fourth wall, essentially providing an entertaining EDM for Dummies class for those of you (ahem, those of us) who are a bit late to the party. Breaking out such a bag of tricks is often just for show, but Joseph seems to have good instincts for storytelling with style. Once he can eliminate the sudden lapses where those instincts vanish, he’ll be fine.
Efron doesn’t show a ton of range, but honestly, he’s not asked to. He still displays the charisma of a budding star and Ratajkowski (SI swimsuit issue, Gone Girl) shows promise for a successful transition from modeling to legit acting career. Bentley, despite a Kenny-Loggins-in-the-Danger-Zone look, is the real treat. After numerous smaller supporting roles, he gets a more vital one here, and manages to give James some unexpected depth.
Like many of the films with this formula, the problem is what to say, not how to say it. We Are Your Friends doesn’t tap into a cultural zeitgeist as successfully as, say, Saturday Night Fever, but if you’re ready for a modern-day Cocktail with some thumping beats, serve it up.
If you are unfamiliar with Craig Zobel, google him immediately. Hopefully you’ll discover Homestar Runner, which will clue you into Zobel’s particular mad genius. Go ahead and spend some time. Take in the glory that is Teen Girl Squad. Then prepare yourself for an amazingly different experience and watch the filmmaker’s third feature, Z for Zachariah.
Based loosely on Robert O’Brien’s award winning adolescent novel, the film is a meticulous examination of human behavior masquerading as a SciFi flick. Sometime after an undisclosed apocalypse (radioactivity suggests a nuclear war), Ann Burden (Margot Robbie) tends her farm alone, her valley somehow spared of the radiation. She believes she may be the last living soul until scientist John Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor) appears in the distance in his radiation suit.
What evolves is a fascinating character study blessed with two excellent performances.
Ejiofor is incapable of a weak turn, and as is always the case, he manages to wear the character’s entire backstory in his countenance, posture, wordless reactions, and eyes. He’s almost capable of presenting a fully realized character without a word of dialog, and his Loomis is a mysterious, weary guest whose undisclosed, recent experiences have made him a little distant, even as Ann has to contain her joy at finding a companion.
Robbie has never been better in a role that is sometimes almost aggravatingly naïve, and yet this is a character with the grit to survive on her own, to plow a field – to create the film’s Eden.
Nissar Modi’s screenplay sometimes treads too heavily with the biblical metaphors, but Zobel never does. While the film explores ideas of science versus religion, male versus female, intellect versus emotion, white versus black, Zobel’s real interest – as he showed with brilliantly frustrating results in his previous effort, Compliance – is to examine human foibles, resilience, and self-destructive tendencies.
Z examines the nervous but sweet blossoming of a relationship, then upends the comforting narrative with the arrival of a third survivor – handsome Caleb (Chris Pine).
Pine’s third wheel is a less developed character, but the actor manages to convey the right amount of manipulative aw-shucks and just the hint of menace the film needs to generate tension.
The film’s minimalism is both welcome and problematic, as it seems to work against much of the built-in tensions and drama that could enliven the running time.
Fans of the novel will be irritated by the many liberties taken, but Zobel’s film stands firmly on its own. Told with realism and simplicity, and boasting an intriguing amount of ambiguity – especially at the climax – Z abandons the traditions of the post-apocalyptic film in favor of something modest and moving.
Perhaps any living thing’s most primal fear is that of being eaten, and horror cinema has taken advantage of that built-in tension with every zombie movie and creature feature ever made. But there’s an added element of the macabre, the unseemly, when it isn’t some “other” preying on us for our own tasty flesh. Today we celebrate those brave, carnivorous souls who crave the other, other white meat. You are what you eat.
Who’s hungry?
5. Trouble Every Day (2001)
Writer/director Claire Denis doesn’t offer a great deal of exposition, relying instead on startling images to convey themes. Her approach, and her provocative film, may do a better job of linking not just sex and death – which is commonplace to the point of being a bore in horror – but lust and bloodlust, carnality and hunger.
Beatrice Dalle’s Core – lovingly held captive by her husband – routinely escapes to seduce and consume unsuspecting men. Meanwhile a honeymooning groom seeks her because of his own obsession and/or similar sexual disposition.
This is a tough film to watch. The murder sequences are particularly bloody and profoundly uncomfortable, but the film gets under your skin and stays there, which is the point of horror, right?
4. Ravenous (1999)
The blackest of comedies, the film travels back to the time of the Mexican/American War to throw us in with a cowardly soldier (Guy Pearce) reassigned to a mountainous California outpost where a weary soul wanders into camp with a tale of the unthinkable – his wagon train fell to bad directions, worse weather, and a guide with a taste for human flesh.
Pearce is great as the protagonist struggling against his own demons, trying to achieve some kind of peace with himself and his own shortcomings, but Robert Carlyle steals this movie. As the wraithlike Colonel Ives, he makes the perfect devil stand-in. Smooth, compelling and wicked, he offsets Pearce’s tortured soul perfectly. The pair heighten the tensions with some almost sexual tension, which director Antonia Bird capitalizes on brilliantly.
3. We Are What We Are (2010)
Give writer/director Jorge Michel Grau credit, he took a fresh approach to the cannibalism film. His Spanish language picture lives in a drab underworld of poverty, teeming with disposable populations and those who consume flesh, figuratively and literally.
Grau’s approach is so subtle, so honest, that it’s easy to forget you’re watching a horror film. Indeed, were this family fighting to survive on a more traditional level, this film would simply be a fine piece of social realism focused on Mexico City’s enormous population in poverty. But it’s more than that. Sure, the cannibalism is simply an extreme metaphor, but it’s so beautifully thought out and executed!
We Are What We Are is among the finest family dramas or social commentaries of 2010. Blend into that drama some deep perversity, spooky ambiguities and mysteries, deftly handled acting, and a lot of freaky shit, and you have hardly the goriest film on this list, but perhaps the most relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ4-UOB3Y-U
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Not everyone considers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a classic. Those people are wrong. Perhaps even stupid.
It is classic because Hooper masterfully enlisted a low rent verite for this bizarre story to do something utterly new. The camera work, so home-movie like, worked with the “based on a true story” tag line like nothing before it, and the result seriously disturbed the folks of 1974. It has been ripped off and copied dozens of times since its release, but in the context of its time, it was so absolutely original it was terrifying.
Friends on a road trip pick up a hitchhiker, played with glorious insanity by Edwin Neal. The Hitchhiker is part of a family of cannibals, and the youths will eventually stumble upon their digs. Here we find this unemployed family of slaughterhouse workers just teasing and mocking each other with little mercy. Like Sally Hardesty, we’ve entered a lived-in world belonging to them, and their familial bickering and cruelty only reinforce our helpless otherness. This inescapable absurdity is one of the things that make TCM so unsettling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs3981DoINw
1. The Silence of the Lambs
Everyone loves this film, even people who hate horror films. Those pretentious bastards call the film a “psychological thriller.” But to clarify, any film about one man who eats human flesh helping to track down another man who wears human flesh is a horror movie.
It’s to director Jonathan Demme’s credit that Silence made that leap from lurid exploitation to art. His masterful composition of muted colors and tense but understated score, his visual focus on the characters rather than their actions, and his subtle but powerful use of camera elevate this story above its exploitative trappings. Of course, the performances didn’t hurt.
Anthony Hopkins’s eerie calm, his measured speaking, his superior grin give Lecter power. Everything about his performance reminds the viewer that this man is smarter than you and he’ll use that for dangerous ends. He’s toying with you. You’re a fly in his web – and what he will do to you hits at our most primal fear, because we are, after all, all part of a food chain.
Writer/director Till Kleinert’s atmospheric Der Samurai blends Grimm Brother ideas with Samurai legend to tell a story that borders on the familiar but manages always to surprise.
Jakob, an entirely unintimidating police officer in a remote German berg, has been charged with eliminating the wolf that’s frightening villagers. Moved by compassion or longing, Jakob can’t quite make himself accomplish his task – a fact that villagers and his commanding officer find predictably soft. But a chance encounter with a wild-eyed stranger wearing a dress and carrying a samurai sword clarifies that the wolf is probably not the villagers’ – or Jakob’s – biggest problem.
Pit Bukowski cuts a peculiar but creepy figure as the Samurai – kind of a cross between Iggy Pop and Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs’s Buffalo Bill). His raw sexuality offers the perfect counterpoint to the repressed Jakob (Michel Diercks). As their cat and mouse game gains momentum, it appears the Samurai is here to upend all of Jakob’s inhibitions by eliminating anyone keeping him from embracing to his primal urges – getting “rid of the blockage once and for all.”
That’s what the sword is for.
Kleinert’s sneaky camera builds tension in every scene, and the film’s magnificent sound design echoes with Jakob’s isolation as well as that of the village itself. And though much of the imagery is connected in a way to familiar fairy tales or horror movies, the understated approach gives it all a naturalism that is unsettling.
Not that Kleinert’s content to take a naturalistic path all the way through. His tale has roots in old Germanic folklore, so the director peppers the film with enough magical realism to evoke that dreamy – in this case, nightmarish – childhood logic.
It’s a beautiful film about embracing or forever suppressing your inner monster, but this is no ordinary Jekyll and Hyde retread. Kleinert’s vision is steeped in sexuality and sexual identity, giving it a fascinating relevance often missing in this style of horror film.
The film pulls you along with a “Will he or won’t he? Is he or isn’t he?” kind of tension, and at times you’ll fear that you’ve figured out a plot twist in advance, but Kleinert is never that obvious. Though the resolution is not as surefooted as the rest of his film, the overall effort is a uniquely memorable affair.
Here’s the pitch: what if Brad Pitt’s Flintstones-watching stoner from True Romance was actually a highly trained government operative who can kill you with nothing but a spoon and a cup of soup?
Intrigued? Me, too.
So why can’t American Ultra fully capitalize on that promise?
Okay, its not really Floyd from True Romance – he’s baking comfortably in the stoner Hall of Fame – it’s Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) from the Cash and Carry mini-mart in Liman, West Virginia. Mike plans to propose to his live-in girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) during a romantic trip to Hawaii, but they never make it on the plane.
Mike suffers strange panic attacks anytime he’s about to leave town, but that seems like a minor problem once CIA agent Victoria Lasseter (Connie Britton) visits Mike at work and keeps repeating a strange phrase. Turns out Mike is really a sleeper agent who’s been suddenly branded a liability, and Victoria needs Mike to wake up before he’s taken out.
Writer Max Landis, much as he did with Chronicle, pieces together a winning premise from parts of differing genres. We think we know what to expect from weed-soaked characters, but breaking out the MacGyver shit to bust open some heads is not on the list. Throw in plenty of spy game skullduggery, and there’s ample opportunity for black comedy that the film only partially explores.
Director Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) seems equally caught in a pattern of two steps up and one back. He unleashes stylish, well-paced bursts of action, followed by slow-moving exposition and then back again, sometimes punctuated by isolated bits of sharp comedy just looking for a home.
On paper, Eisenberg seems miscast, but he’s able to make both extremes of Mike’s character blend surprisingly well. Stewart continues her recent winning streak in the film’s early going, excelling as Mike’s sweetly sympathetic love. Once Phoebe’s true motives come to light, though, it’s back to the well worn K-Stew pained expression once too often.
A little too slow to be action packed, a bit too nasty to be fun-filled, American Ultra seems held back in a familiar haze. It’s got plenty of good ideas, but just when they really start to gel, it decides to just watch some cartoons instead.
Here’s an unusual list, not because it’s out of the ordinary to ironically appreciate bad horror movies, but because Madd and Wolf disagree so vehemently about a) the movies on this list, and b) the entertainment value in bad movies. So just know that, though there are bones of contention aplenty, we’re still happy with the final six. How about you?
6. House (Hausu) (1977)
If Takashi Miike’s Happiness of the Katakuris were to marry Pee-wee’s Playhouse, this would be their offspring.
A spoof of sorts, Hausu tells the story of six uniform-clad high school girls named Gorgeous, Fantasy, Sweet, Melody, Kung Fu, and Mac. The nomenclature alone should clue you in on the film’s lunacy. The giggling sextet spend spring break at an aunt’s spooky house – or, in fact, a cheaply made set of an aunt’s spooky house. Not a single thing that follows makes sense, nor is it really meant to.
Expect puppets, random musical sequences, remarkably bad backdrops, slapstick humor, and an amazingly sunny disposition given the sheer volume of human dismemberment. The trippy nonsense wears a bit thin eventually. Luckily director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s film clocks in at under 90 minutes, so the screen goes dark before the novelty wears off.
Score: Hope does not consider this a bad movie in any respect. George considers it so bad it’s just bad.
5. Motel Hell (1980)
It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters, so swingers looking for a cheap motel in which to swing – be warned! Fifties heartthrob Rory Calhoun plays Farmer Vincent, who, along with his sister Ida (a super creepy Nancy Parsons) rid the world of human filth while serving the righteous some tasty viddles. Just don’t look under those wiggling, gurgling sacks out behind the butcherin’ barn!
Motel Hell is a deeply disturbed, inspired little low budget jewel. A dark comedy, the film nonetheless offers some unsettling images, not to mention sounds. Sure, less admiring eyes may see only that super-cheese director Kevin Connor teamed up with Parsons and Calhoun – as well as Elaine Joyce and John Ratzenberger – for a quick buck. But in reality, they teamed up to create one of the best bad horror films ever made.
So gloriously bad!
Score: Hope and George agree completely on the absolutely entertaining badness afoot in this one.
4. Sleepaway Camp (1983)
A seriously subversive film with blatant homosexual undertones, Sleepaway Camp is a bizarre take on the summer camp slasher.
It may be the shocking finale that gave the film its cult status, but it’s writer/director Robert Hilzik’s off-center approach to horror that makes it interesting. Dreamy flashbacks, weirdly gruesome murders, and a creepy (yet somehow refreshing) preoccupation with beefcake separate this one from the pack.
It’s not scary, certainly, but it is all manner of wrong. The kill sequences are hugely imaginative, and the subversive approach to the entire film makes it hard to believe more people haven’t seen this gem.
Score: Once again, George and Hope are in total agreement. This one’s a keeper.
3. Squirm (1976)
Writer/director Jeff Lieberman drops us off in rural Georgia, where small town hottie Geri (unrepentant ginger Patricia Pearcy) receives a visit from big city pal and possible boyfriend Mick (Don Scardino). Natch, the down home folk don’t take kindly to this city slicker – especially Roger, a menacing rube who wants Geri for his own.
So, the low budget gem creates a little of that Deliverance dread, but the payoff is, of course, the worms brought out by the pantload via voltage from a downed power line.
Lieberman does a fantastic job with the worms. They are everywhere, they’re nasty, they make that gross gummy noise as they squirm around on top of each other, and they may not only eat you but bore right into your face to turn you into a monster. That’s what happens to poor, lovelorn Rog, and it is awesome!
The acting and writing entertain, if ironically, but the movie offers a few real freakout moments and it goes in unexpected directions more than once. It’s weird, start to finish, and that’s always welcome.
Score: George does not care for Squirm, ironically or otherwise. Hope’s still smiling with joy just thinking about this movie.
2. Slugs: The Movie (1988)
Mike Brady (Michael Garfield) must save himself, his town, and his lustrous waves from the menace of man-eating slugs– acting ability or no! And if Sherriff Reese and Mayor Eaton can’t get their heads out of their asses, then dammit, Mike Brady will take care of this himself!
Once it’s discovered that the entire population of mutant slugs is in a single area, Mike Brady makes the level-headed, finely coiffured decision to literally explode the entire town from beneath. Why not dose their hive with salt, you ask? What are you, a wuss?!
But that’s beside the point because Mike Brady has a town to save! He’s getting scant help from the Brit chem teacher who can’t even lift a manhole cover. Weak limey! Do Mike Brady and his hair have to do everything?
The epic saga finishes with a hearty embrace. Mike Brady squeezes his puffy-coat wearing wife, and we all ignore the untold damage he’s just done to the town he singlehandedly blew to pieces. People were killed, certainly. Perhaps an arrest was more in order than a hug. But Mike Brady doesn’t do arrested.
Score: George really hates this movie and considers it an almost criminal waste of his time. Slugs: The Movie fills hope with glee and she’d gladly watch it again right now.
1. The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972)
Oh my God.
This one has to be seen to be believed. It moves at a dreamlike pace, as chopper pilot/monk/playboy/cat lover Hugo (Hugo Stiglitz!) flies his helicopter menacingly close to sexy women lounging poolside, and they act like that’s not weird at all. He mouths flirtations toward them as their towels and lawn furniture blow hither and yon. Eventually they find this dangerous harassment charming enough to be wooed.
Oh, you trusting, slutty ladies.
But things don’t always go smoothly for the handsomely wooden Hugo – as flashbacks to Head in the Jar #2 attest. It’s a deeply weird movie full of cannibalism, bad parenting, questionable facial hair decisions, and a blatant disregard for the dangers of sun damage. Plus, a thousand cats.
I know. Bad movies are often just not worth it. This one is. I swear it.
Score: Even George has to admit that the awe-inspiring incompetence of this film begs for your viewing.
Listen to the whole conversation on the FRIGHT CLUB podcast.
It’s always exciting when the next Woody Allen movie screens, but it’s best to keep expectations in check. Remember, for every Midnight in Paris, there’s a Cassandra’s Dream; for every Vicky Cristina Barcelona, there’s a Scoop.
The question is, on which side of that coin will his latest, Irrational Man, fall?
As is generally the case, Allen draws an exceptional cast. In this go-round, the always magnificent Joaquin Phoenix plays Abe Lucas, an alcoholic philosophy professor entrenched in an existential crisis. To his aid come the fresh, bright undergrad Jill (Emma Stone), and understanding, morally loose professor, Rita (Parker Posey). But their attention isn’t enough – Abe doesn’t feel himself again until he finds purpose.
What’s his purpose? Or more to the point, what’s Allen’s purpose? It’s to spin a familiar, albeit black, joke about the relative morality of getting away with murder.
Allen’s premise is actually fairly slight and not at all unique, but he pads it with loads of philosophical ponderings. We wrestle with the existential toxin of inaction, the impotence (literal and figurative) of writing instead of doing, and the messy leap from strictly philosophical ideals to life in a real, concrete world.
Irrational Man would sink into verbal tricks and intellectual nonsense were it not for three compelling, grounded performances and Allen’s sudden interest in Hitchcock.
Phoenix and Stone deliver something both pretentious and earnest enough to befit the project. Being from Allen’s pen, there’s something in their May/December relationship that works as both self-deprecation and excuse.
Posey steals every scene with a slyly comical and perfectly realized character.
The film slogs a bit through its first act, but gradually picks up steam, offering a bemused and somewhat detached observation of a mystery as it unfolds.
Though the film is listed as a drama, in many ways it is one of Allen’s cosmic jokes, and not just because he’s again toying with how to get away with murder. It’s more the laugh of, what would it be like if Woody Allen made a Hitchcock movie?
Tom Cruise may have finally found a marriage that will work. His partnership with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has produced four of the actor’s most recent films.
McQuarrie wrote Valkyrie and Edge of Tomorrow (arguably Cruise’s finest film this century), and he wrote and directed both Jack Reacher and Cruise’s latest action extravaganza, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.
McQuarrie inherited the series at its peak, Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol having brought the franchise back to relevance with talented new teammates, extravagant set pieces, and much-needed humor.
Rogue Nation picks up that same beat. The band’s back together: Cruise’s super-agent Ethan Hunt, skeptical wise cracker Brandt (Jeremy Renner), systems wizard Luther (Ving Rhames), and delightful hacker Benji (Simon Pegg).
Blessedly, the talentless Paula Patton sits this one out.
In her place as the beautiful woman who will appear in only one episode is Rebecca Ferguson as the mysterious double (or triple?) agent Ilsa Faust.
Now disgraced and disavowed by their own government, what’s left of IMF must expose their underworld counterpart The Syndicate to reclaim their status and save the world.
McQuarrie keeps the pace moving with a gliding camera that not only captures the enormity of each sequence, but develops a graceful, controlled urgency about each event.
Truth be told, though, the movie succeeds or fails depending on Cruise, and Ethan Hunt is a great character for the beleaguered movie star. Cruise can show off his still quite impressive physical presence, the script’s use of humor capitalizes on the actor’s underused strengths, and let’s be honest – Cruise has a bit of the crazy-eye, which makes him more believable in the part.
The action sequences are not quite as breathtaking as they were in Ghost Protocol, but they are impressive nonetheless.
What McQuarrie does better than any previous director in the series is to imbue every scene with a bit of humor – enough to exploit the ridiculousness of the situation without actually mocking it. He finds the fun in the familiar old gimmicks and draws on the strengths of his cast to create a blast of entertainment.
