Posted in: Disc Reviews by John Delia on July 18th, 2018
by Ian Delia
Another one of Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson’s movies is now raising the bar. This new motion picture is filled with intense action. There isn't only shooting and fighting, but there are also new, but unusual, animals. From smaller, slightly lethal, animals into giants of terror with their mission is to take over the world to please their master. All the power of endless destruction is controlled by Claire Wyden, who is played by Malin Akerman.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on July 13th, 2018
“This may very well be our last mission, Ethan…make it count.”
You wouldn’t know it from looking at him, but Tom Cruise was 53 years old when he did this film. So it’s only natural to wonder how many more Missions the indomitable superstar has left in him. Well, if Rogue Nation is any indication, the above quote is meant to be more winking than prophetic. Just like its tireless star, the fifth installment of the 19-year-old Mission: Impossible film franchise is spryer, tighter, and more energetic than its age might suggest with the sixth just about to drop at the box office.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 12th, 2018
You might call me jaded, but I am pretty disappointed by the state of horror movies. It's not just the last few years. The truth is I haven't seen 10 really good horror movies in over a decade. Now that I've had a chance to see A Quiet Place, that number isn't going up. A Quiet Place is not a really good horror movie. It ends up making a lot of the same mistakes that filmmakers think define a horror film in the modern age. It relies too heavily on jump scares and characters who do some of the most idiotic things, thus placing them in a somewhat self-created dangerous situation. But I will make the argument that A Quiet Place is still a pretty good horror film because of a rather clever and unique concept and a filming process that allows us care for these characters more than the usual horror film red-shirt fodder that too often leaves me rooting for the monster in a Darwin-like weed-out-the-gene-pool kind of way.
The film takes place in a near-future that newspapers place at about 2020. It's now day 86. We are now in the familiar post-apocalyptic world of deserted streets and a family of characters scrounging through the derelict buildings for scraps on which to survive. The difference here is that this family, a husband and wife with three young kids, are going out of their way to remain as completely silent as possible. They communicate strictly through sign language and walk on bare feet to avoid the sounds of footsteps. Each move is carefully calculated to avoid even the careless sound of placing a pill container on a counter. Silence is golden, and before the title card is revealed, we discover the reason for all of this care. The Earth has been invaded by creatures that are blind but with heightened hearing ability. They hunt strictly by sound and move at lightning speed toward any sound and attack with razor-like appendages. These attacks are over in a second, and the viewer is left with graphic evidence that in this future world, silence isn't golden; it's survival.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 9th, 2018
"The Secretary is dead. The President has invoked Ghost Protocol. We're shut down. No satellite, safe house, support, or extraction. The four of us and the contents of this car are all that remains of the IMF."
The fourth Mission: Impossible entry exchanges digits for a subtitle, and brings in Brad Bird to direct his first live-action feature. So the man whose The Incredibles made fun of the sort of thing that is the bread-and-butter of the M:I franchise is brought in to revitalize said franchise. Result? Job done. Gotcha. You thought I was going to say, “Mission accomplished,” didn’t you?
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 8th, 2018
"You can tell a lot about a person's character by how they treat people they don't have to treat well."
It had been a decade since Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible hit theatres to box office success, established a new blockbuster franchise, and added ‘action hero’ to Tom Cruise’s resume, and six years since John Woo’s highly stylized follow-up raised the franchise to new box office heights. In 2006 the long-awaited third installment arrived amidst controversy about Tom Cruise’s crazy off-screen antics. It was feared that the happenings of Cruise’s personal life would somehow bring down this movie; the previous two films did set the bar pretty high. Mission: Impossible 3's U.S. box office take did appear to suffer from the public backlash to its headliner’s wacky rants and questionable actions. J. J. Abrams’ top-notch action flick likely deserved better. But the third film could have put a halt to any future missions by posting the worst box office of the franchise to date. The $134 million box office was down considerably from the expected $200 million that was reached by all of the other films. As it was there would be another nearly six-year gap before the next outing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 5th, 2018
"This is not Mission: Difficult, Mr. Hunt. It's Mission: Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you."
After four years and nearly $200 million at the box office, it was only a matter of time before Paramount and Tom Cruise would partner again for a new Mission Impossible film. This time the move would be completely toward the action and stunts and farther away from the television series. The hiring of John Woo to direct the second film put quite a punctuation mark on that move. This time there would be no mistake. Mission: Impossible 2 would be a no-holds-barred action adventure across the globe, and with Tom Cruise once again doing the majority of these hair-raising stunts himself, much to the concern of the new director and crew. The stakes had to be higher, and Woo was the perfect choice for that kind of film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 3rd, 2018
"Well, you think about it, Ethan, it was inevitable. No more cold war. No more secrets you keep from yourself. Answer to no one but yourself. Then, you wake up one morning and find out the President is running the country without your permission. The son of a bitch, how dare he. Then you realize, it's over. You are an obsolete piece of hardware, not worth upgrading, you got a lousy marriage, and 62 grand a year."
The more things change, the more they tend to remain the same. In 1996 Paramount was nearing the end of a run of feature films that started with a 1960's Desilu Studios television series called Star Trek. That same year the studio was beginning a run of feature films based on a 1960's Desilu Studios television series that at one time shared an actor with Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy. That series was Mission Impossible. The show starred Peter Graves as the leader of a cold war covert government group called the IMF or Impossible Mission Force. Each week he would select from a group of series regulars after getting his mission, should he decide to accept it, from a tape recorder that always self-destructed in five seconds. The tape's dissolving vapor would lead to the fuse being lit that started the opening credits and an iconic theme written by Lalo Schifin. It ran for seven seasons between 1966 and 1973. The series returned for a short while as another television series in the 1980's before it vanished into post cold war oblivion, until Paramount and Tom Cruise decided to join forces and create a new film franchise that has lasted over 20 years and is about to launch its 6th big-budget film.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on June 27th, 2018
“Run, Forrest, run!”
Forrest Gump is one of the most beloved films to be released in the past 25 years. The movie received critical love (to the tune of 6 Oscars, including the Academy Award for Best Picture) and commercial love (this was the highest-grossing film of 1994) upon its release. For better and worse, Gump can be seen as a reflection of its good-natured, dim-witted hero: it's a classic example of heart triumphing over head. Time — and, specifically, the internet — hasn't been nearly as kind to Gump as it has to several other films released the same year, but the movie endures thanks to some unforgettable sights, sounds, and a miraculous lead performance.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 27th, 2018
Remember when Steven Soderbergh told us he was retiring from filmmaking? Since that time he has been behind two of Hollywood's most unique films in a long time. Lucky Logan was a refreshing kind of heist film that made it more of a comedy with wonderful character studies. Now comes Unsane, which employs a completely unique form of filmmaking itself. The entire film was shot basically on an iPhone. That's not entirely true, because he did use various lens configurations that aren't exactly standard on the typical cell phone. Still, he used the phone as the actual digital recording device. What makes this more unique is that he did this to produce a near-normal film and not the expected "found footage" kind of project that one would expect from a movie made on a cell phone. All of this made me extremely skeptical going in, and I'll admit to avoiding the film a bit. When it arrived on UHD in 4K/HDR, I was even less interested in seeing the results. I don't mind admitting here that I was rather surprised at the film I ended up seeing.
The plot of the film is actually quite compelling. Claire Foy does a tremendous job of playing Sawyer Valentini. Sawyer has just started a new job in a new town, and she's impressing her boss and coworkers. But when a date goes badly, we discover that Sawyer is a badly damaged woman who is here because she's running from a stalker. She's suffering a kind of PSTD that isn't always evident on the surface. She does the right thing. She goes to a facility to talk to a therapist about her issues. The next thing she knows she's given papers to sign, which she does without actually reading them. There's definitely a lesson to be learned here, and Sawyer learns it the hard way. She's discovered that she's voluntarily committed herself for a week at the facility. But before you can say One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, things get intense and much worse for Sawyer. It appears she might be the victim of an insurance scam that could keep her here until her insurance coverage literally runs out. She's also confronted by the man who has been stalking her, who could now be working on the hospital staff.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 26th, 2018
"Who is Jack Reacher? Born Jack, not John. No middle name. He's a ghost. Served in the military police. A brilliant investigator, troublemaker, too. And two years ago he disappears. You don't find this guy unless he wants to be found."
We've found him. The character of Jack Reacher comes from a series of thriller novels written by Lee Child. From the very start you know that this is going to be a different kind of Jack Reacher than fans have come to know and love from the books. He’s described as being 6' 5’’ and about 250 pounds. Tom Cruise doesn't really fit any of those description elements. He does, however, fit two very important descriptive elements when it comes to Hollywood. He's still a big name and a pretty reliable box office draw. He also put up some of his own cash to produce the movie. Now that's how you get cast for a part very physically different from yourself.
