Mission: Impossible

for example, (ignoring the plot) Timothy Dalton & Robert Davi in License to Kill.

xpost Warner is classically trained, right? Also did outstanding voicework in Baldur's Gate 2 as the villain.

also, Peter Cushing in SW

(OK, how about solid actors who get to use more than 5% of their chops playing big baddies? I think Brandauer and Malkovich qualify here.)

we can pretty much rule out sharon stone.

X-Men movies are great, kingfish otm for why too. (next one's gonna BLOOOOOOWWWWWW)

Ming the Merciless
all the bond books were written in the 50s, etc

??? That's the best Bond movie by fucking miles. The "realistic"-not-really acting served the "realistic"-not-really plot perfectly. Wayne Newton as televangelist providing cover for Davi drug op? GREAT.

A character basically hissing "I'm evil" can usu be taken about as seriously as that Colbert critic announcing "I'm a funny guy..."

Next MI: Cruise vs Montalban as Khan. "You will be ber-ried a-li-ive..."

some good, some bad, some retarded plot twists, and some simon pegg(who's good in his two scenes as fumbly britishes computer guy)

otm! the only scene in this movie that actually felt like "mission impossible" was the aforementioned vatican city sequence, which happened to be the most entertaining part of the movie.

many xposts - Irons is great in Die Hard With A Vengeance!

well, the thing is, i don't think you need them to be all that non-descript e.g. Ving Rhames is great in his role, which is admittedly just being a Ving Rhames-type incarnated as an operative. There's plenty of value in a well-contructed team of folks doing something; like a semi-crazy helicopter pilot, a tough mechanic/driver/demolitions expert, a smooth-talkin' chameleon/covert ops type, and a cigar-chomping leader who loves it when a plan comes together.

For instance.

Actually looking at IMDB now it appears he was involved in all three. Still the second one was pretty awful.

this is of course baring in mind

A) it stared and was produced tom cruise

B) it was the third part in a franchise where ultimately very little can change between films (bar the love interests of course)

C)i haven't seen 24 which from my limited knowledge of this seemed to bare a passing resemblence too

Of course much redundancy if you have seen the first two series of both 24 and Alias, and was kind of like True Lies without the misjudged gags (so in that way a lot better). Also, it might be a lot like TV series, BUT IS A FILM with plus and minuses of that.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/archives/2006/05/upside_of_taps.php

And speaking of commercials, it's bad enough to sit through 30 minutes of stuff before the movie starts, but at least half of the shit is about ... going to the movies.

How delicious that it's Nicole Kidman doing the intro.

“We are.”

Shea Wigham and his partner were just there to serve as another impetus to force Ethan and gang to keep moving. Without them, the standoff in the street in Italy would have been harder to escape.

I knew they'd bungle it the moment they cast Shea Wigham in one of the parts. Nobody's getting apprehended when Shea is in charge

The key!

The key!

was very amused when someone was explaining how the key is the most important thing in the world and no one knows where it is and we need to find it at all costs while nearby there was a computer screen showing an extremely fine-detailed 3D model of the key spinning around. just make a copy of the fucking key! more than once this happened iirc

Didn't the doodad have some sort of magic matching widget in it that made it impossible to counterfeit? Not that details like that even matter in movies like this. I was shocked how many times there would be some 5 minute exposition dump, like, "This Entity is unlike anything we have ever seen. It knows what we have decided before we have decided it. It doesn't even need to watch us because it knows where we are," etc. And then the next scene Simon Pegg or whomever will be using a computer and then be shocked, shocked, when the Entity takes over or breaks it or whatever. They'd probably try to copy the key, and then the computer would melt.

Deus ex Wigham was the last thing Cruise and Co. needed to stay on the move. Just so dumb, these two American agents traversing the globe in plain sight, getting into shootouts, tasing people, etc. So much pickpocketing and talk of pickpocketing and up-close magic in this movie, too. They should have cast David Blaine as the bad guy.

(tight closeup on a serious Cruise): "You don't know this guy like I do. I've seen things you couldn't imagine. I've seen him pierce his bicep with a needle. He's caught a bullet with his mouth. He stood on a block of ice for 63 hours, stood on a pole for 35 hours, held his breath for 17 minutes and was buried alive for 7 days ... just because he could. There is nothing we can do to stop him, which is why we need to beat him at his own game. I need you to freeze me in a block of ice."

"But Ethan, that would kill you!"

"Exactly. It's the last thing he would expect me to do. It will make him let down his guard, and then we can get the key."

"But Ethan, you'll be dead!"

"Just leave that part to me."

lord this was fun except when it slowed down to give us the meaning (in either sense of the word)

the exact type of total nonsense i like and im p sure it knows it

had anyone (ned) said AI of Sauron yet?

i have no idea who gabriel is or why he has been chosen or what his link to the sentient superpower is nor what the sentient superpower wants but as usual that stuff really, really does not matter.

its a series about doing stuff secretly under deadline and looking amazing and honestly i just really identify with that

had anyone (ned) said AI of Sauron yet?

idk but I kept thinking "AI morals, see?" whenever he appeared

loved this but it did feel stupid in a way the other McQ ones haven't (or maybe i just need a rewatch), they definitely pulled a "write an enemy so powerful you don't know what to do with it," didn't really come into play at the end. benji putting his trust in a self-driving car was tense until you realize they weren't going to do anything with it. hunt pickpocketing the key seemed like one thing THE ENTITY should've been able to predict. nothing as interesting as benji's voice being hacked. it's already hard to take ROGUE AI seriously as a threat knowing how bad midjourney is at drawing hands.

i was certain that the gabriel flashbacks were clips from one of the first 3 movies, now that i know they're brand new they actually seem clunkier than exposition in fast and the furious movies. just totally unnecessary to do it that way. the less i know about ethan hunt the better.

really dug this!

hayley atwell was great, and pom should be a baddie in more stuff she was awesome, and esai morales rules

the set piece in the little yellow car was so great

also trains are my favorite :D

https://i.imgur.com/WaL40ox.gif

Lol

big fan of this one. getting this out of the way, i thought the Ethan/Ilsa romance which was only hinted at maybe didn't work, only because when she died it didn't feel heavy enough for someone that close to him, and while i don't want that type of heaviness for this story since it becomes an albatross on the narrative in these types of films (see: latter Craig Bonds), it felt a bit muted as far as a moment. She was a fantastic character who arguably revived the series as much as McQuarrie, maybe she deserved a bit better. but maybe they were just coming to a dead end with the part and maybe Ferguson was done playing that role and had other things she wanted to commit her time to. i suspect that might be the case. which is cool, she's a fantastic actor.

Cruise did his usual Cruise stuff and as the solid center of the franchise he's both likable and clearly insane to do what he does IRL. i appreciate his commitment to the craft. There's not much more to say about him.

Hayley Atwell is great, i also give a shoutout to her wardrobe and generally the duplicitous nature of the character really serves the narrative well, it's less about protecting her but protecting her while keeping an eye on her because she's liable to both escape and steal everything from you while doing so. which works to keep the chase going through various countries and setpieces the entire time. the car chase was particularly excellent, maybe not quite as impactful as the Ilsa pursuit in Rogue Nation but more gleefully demented.

Speaking of demented, i'm guessing Pom Klementieff really appreciated being given a shot to play a character completely the opposite of Mantis. she was clearly having a great time there, my kid's favorite part was her cackling while driving that armored vehicle over and through various obstacles. It's a very Xenia Onatopp type role. i also liked the brutality of the twist involving her, where Gabriel's deduction is correct but perhaps from the way the story plays out we can also deduce he played himself and caused what he correctly thought would occur to actually happen in the end.

Esai Morales was a good choice for the Gabriel part, he's a very good actor who never tips over into absurdity despite this being a potentially absurd role, and i also just like to see an underrated performer being given a juicy part along these lines, going mano a mano with Tom Cruise on top of a train, knife fighting his way across Europe, etc. i feel like perhaps Gabriel didn't need to be a guy from Ethan's past, that was a bit too "Silva in Skyfall" to me, but this film fortunately didn't turn into a therapy session, it just kept moving.

it was nice to see Czerny back in that role, with some good callbacks to his part in the first film. Vanessa Kirby was good too. everyone was good!

gonna be psyched to see how the story wraps up. from what i've read, there was the thought that MI:8 would wrap the franchise up, but it seems like it'll continue on for a bit longer. I hope so, it's probably the only ongoing action franchise i have confidence in as far as consistent QC, the Abrams entry aside.

i almost forgot about it in the midst of the rest of the film, but the opening scene with the Russian submarine is a great one, with such a bleak and haunting final shot.

Yeah as a grim miniadventure it was pretty great (and the actual final shot of the film appropriately fucked up and ominous).

Pom Klementieff

Was not really a fan of this movie, but particularly didn't like her character, tbh. Of course these movies are innately ridiculous, but I'm trying to think of other instances/characters that were as outright cartoonish. She reminded me, yeah, of a few colorful Bond henchpersons (Onatopp, May Day), but also a particular strain of eccentric movie assassins, not just like you may find in the heightened (sur)reality of "John Wick," but, like, Sam Phillips in "Die Hard 3," Lucy Liu in "Payback." Kind of took me out a bit.

"Mission: Impossible: Part Seven: Part 2" bumped to 2025! The future!

I don't know, something like that can't even begin to bother me in this type of movie. They are sort of the American Bond films at this point, to an extent. The outlandishness will periodically come with a territory, and it's all in good fun. I've never been taken out of any of these movies by anything other than III being mostly bad.

xpost -- Ah that sucks but the longer the SAG strike goes on...