Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning (c) Paramount Pictures
Film: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
In Cinemas
Of all the films I am reviewing here, Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning is the most successful because it sticks to the formula that has made the film series so much fun: Tom Cruise running and Tom Cruise shirtless, preferably at the same time. OK, the action set pieces are enjoyable too, although in this eighth (and possibly final) Ethan Hunt film, it’s getting hard to top the memorable ones from the past (like inside an opera house shootout or, outside hanging onto both a really tall building or an airplane taking off). The series started almost 30 years ago to the day, with the Brian DePalma 1996 film, and there’s even a surprise Easter egg from that film that’s important to this plot. Starting a couple of months after the events of Dead Reckoning, Ethan is in hiding after successfully finding the literal and metaphorical key that will take down the AI threat known as “The Entity,” but he still doesn’t know what the key does. With the help of his dwindling original team, including Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), along with new allies, Grace (Hayley Atwell), Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis) and Paris (Pom Klementieff), Ethan must ultimately find his way to the Russian submarine buried in ice which holds the key to the key. I have heard the criticism that the talky parts are too talky and the action parts are not inventive enough, and I attribute that feeling to the film’s bloated almost three-hour running time. But I still had a good time, especially when the scene-stealing Tramell Tillman (of Severance) and Angela Bassett show up. This is director Christopher McQuarrie’s fourth M.I. film, and maybe new blood would have spiced up the finale. Still, I appreciated McQuarrie’s steady knowhow of the strength and limitations of both the franchise and Tom Cruise. Cruise keeps us invested in these movies because he literally puts his life on the line just for our entertainment. And yes, even after 30 years, I am still entertained.
Lilo & Stitch (c) Walt Disney Pictures
Film: Lilo & Stitch
In Cinemas
It's funny that Disney is still calling their reboot of their successful animated films “live action.” Yes, 2020’s Mulan is a live action version of their 1998 animated film, but their latest film, Lilo and Stitch, like 2019’s The Lion King, has more computer-generated animation than live action elements. Stitch (voiced again by Chris Sanders) and a third of the film’s main characters are alien creatures that don’t deviate much from their 2012 counterpart renderings. The blue mischievous creature was created in a lab and escapes, leading to two aliens (Billy Magnussen and Zach Galifianakis) following to retrieve him from Earth, specifically Hawaii, where he is adopted by the lonely and newly orphaned fellow agent of chaos, Lilo (Maia Kealoha), who believes he’s a strange looking dog. I recently watched the 2012 original for the first time, and while it certainly had enjoyable parts, I am still baffled by the popularity of the two titled characters, who grated my nerves, which is only exacerbated in this film. No fault of the young and talented Kealoha, but Lilo’s personality traits have been dialed up to ten, and not just in decibel points of her nine-year-old high-pitched screams. In computer generated form, Stitch is somehow more sympathetic, but I’m still not getting a plushie of that creature. It was the big box office hit of the weekend, so Disney is doing something right with these nostalgia cash grabs.
Jane Austen Wreked My Life (c) Sony Pictures Classics
Film: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
In Cinemas
Can the French make a film that feels quintessentially Jane Austen? If you’re writer/ director Laura Piani, the answer is “un peu.” In Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, Piani’s heroine, aspiring but self-defeating writer Agathe (Camille Rutherford), works at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris and unexpectedly gets accepted into a Jane Austen writer’s retreat in England. And before you can say Pride and Prejudice, she has to decide between Oliver (Charlie Anson), the pompous descendent of Austen whose family runs the retreat, or her occasional hook-up friend Felix (Pablo Pauly), for her heart. I don’t usually hold an indie film’s financial limitations against it, but it’s so obvious that this was all filmed in France with mostly French actors (all the British characters default to French for no apparent reason). The talented Anson, an actual Brit, is a convincing Mr. Darcy type and has some nice moments with Rutherford, although not without some unlikely plot serendipity. If Piani had just set the retreat in France, her delicate film would have flourished as Agathe deals with both writer’s block and love confusion in believable and funny ways.
Nonnas (c) Netflix
Film: Nonnas
Streaming on Netflix
According to Wikipedia, Vince Vaughn has some Italian heritage in his background, but not since Cher as Loretta Castorini in Moonstruck has a movie star been so oddly fitted for an Italian identifying character as Vaughn’s Joe Scaravella in the comedy Nonnas. But like Moonstruck, director Stephen Chbosky has surrounded Vaughn with enough Italian character actors that you sort of just go along with it. And with a plot like Nonnas, going along with it hits a lot of believability roadblocks during its runtime. Joe, who received a small inheritance after the death of his beloved mother, decides to honor her memory by opening an Italian restaurant in Staten Island and hiring a quartet of nonnas (Lorraine Bracco, Susan Sarandon, Talia Shire and Brenda Vaccaro) to be the cooks. The film’s two-pronged plots surround Joe’s inexperience with the restaurant business as well as the nonnas bickering (they are strangers to each other). And for a while, Nonnas chugs along on its ethnically specific charms (in the same way My Big Fat Greek Wedding did), but by the time it becomes a variation on the film Big Night (also about a struggling Italian restaurant whose co-director Campbell Scott makes a cameo here), I couldn’t make it across the finish line, even with its big heart-on-its-sleeve message. Still, if ever there was a movie to watch with your own nonna, this is it.
Things Like This (c) MPX Releasing
Film: Things Like This
In Cinemas
There’s nothing wrong with a gentle romantic comedy that disregards reality in order to play up the fairy tale aspects of a love story, but Things Like This feels as generic as its title, which is a shame since it seems to set up a more hard-hitting, unconventional premise that it rarely deals with: namely the beauty-obsessed cruelty of the gay male dating scene. Writer/director Max Talisman plays Zack, an overweight man cruelly dumped by his handsome gym-body boyfriend who realizes he is no longer attracted to him. In no time at all, Zack meets a cute boy named (wait for it) Zack (Joey Pollari), who has just broken up with his clingy and boring boyfriend (Taylor Trensch). They start a cute and relatable flirtation that leads to the predictable commitment issues of both Zacks. Zack 1’s weight is never brought up again, and in a perfect world it’s how it should be, but it just seems strange (and dishonest) that no one mentions it, not even Zack 2’s homophobic father (Eric Roberts), who seems to hate everything about his son’s life, but wouldn’t stoop to body shaming when he meets Zack 1 for the first time. Unlike the work of Ryan O’Connell, whose projects confront the gay community’s attitude towards people with disabilities (like in the Netflix series, Special), Talisman opts for an idealized Hallmark-styled gay love story of opposites who attract. And he does have an ear for fun dialogue as well as giving the women sidekick characters more depth than they are usually afforded. Talisman, of course, can make any movie he wants. I just wish he took more of a risk with his first film.
Fountain of Youth (c) Apple TV+
Film: Fountain of Youth
Streaming on Apple TV+
Fountain of Youth is director Guy Ritchie’s attempt at starting an Indiana Jones franchise, and unlike his inventive Sherlock Holmes movie series with Robert Downey Jr., he doesn’t put enough of his own directorial stamp on this genre to elevate it above just a satisfactory National Treasure clone. John Krasinski plays Luke Purdue, whose family has always been in the archeological puzzle game, until patriarch Harrison (good one) died. He is the only one still in the business, but he must enlist the help of his sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman), now a museum curator, as he tries to find the titular legend at the behest of dying billionaire Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson). This involves the now tired trope of Renaissance artists hiding clues in their paintings, and while Krasinski is no Tom Hanks (in The Da Vinci Code), he does deliver the mythological lore well enough with a major assist from Portman, who is more believable here as a curator than as an action heroine. Ritchie piles on way too many ancillary characters who are after the Purdue siblings, including Thai mobsters, British cops and a mysterious woman (Eiza González, having fun) with goons of her own. By the time the film ends up in Egypt (where the film pivots to shades of Brendan Frasier’s Mummy movies), exhaustion has set in, even with a late Stanley Tucci cameo (as possibly the same character he played in Conclave). Still, it’s better than the last Apple TV+ action film, Ghosted, but that isn’t really saying much.
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