Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
We might be saying goodbye to Ethan Hunt after all these years. Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One was filmed back to back with its sequel, and is intended to be Tom Cruise’s swan song for his most iconic character.
Ethan Hunt must finally confront how expendable his team is in the face of dire consequences, having lost his entire team in the first film he’s not intending to ever let that happen ever again.
Leaked opinions on the test screeners for this latest Mission: Impossible film have been off the charts, and that’s saying a lot considering the test screeners still had CGI touch ups to be done and final cuts to be made. At the time the screeners were blowing out the three hour mark, but audiences were still eating it up saying that Cruise was going off the wall with this one. The movie has since been trimmed down to two hours and 27 minutes.
Still doing his own stunts this movie’s big scene has him base jumping off a cliff on a motorbike. To get the shot just right he had to pull it off multiple times. This movie’s practical effects have been causing a lot of stir. Things all started to snowball after the Swiss government chickened out over a little train explosion in the alps.
“At the start of this movie, I said to Tom, ‘What do you want to do?'” recalls Director Christopher McQuarrie. “He said, ‘I want to drive a motorcycle off of a cliff. What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I want to wreck a train.’ We’re enormous fans of Buster Keaton, John Frankenheimer, David Lean, all of these filmmakers who at one time or another had a fabulous train wreck. I thought, “I’ve earned that, I want to wreck one too.”
So the crew went looking for some unused and unwanted track somewhere to go do a full on train crash on. They landed on Poland and an old bridge that had survived WWII. The locals caught wind of their intentions and expressed themselves that they’d rather not have their old train bridge totalled for the glory of Mission Impossible. In the end they ended up doing the train scene in a place the world doesn’t care about, Stoney Middleton in the UK.
“I think the energy that went into developing it, designing that, building it, and then making a sequence that justified its existence was probably the biggest challenge of my entire life.” admits McQuarrie. He says he’s done with trains now.
In Cinemas 13 July
Asteroid City
Wes Anderson does Wes Anderson things in a perfectly framed town in the middle of the desert in a small town literally full of space cadets and their accompanying families. Something comes and upturns the entire all star cast including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, and Adrien Brody among others. If you’ve seen one Wes Anderson you’ve seen em all. But his one thing is awfully good isn’t it. This film is a nesting doll of ideas, with all the actors playing actors playing roles in a production within the film. It makes more sense if you just watch it. Trust me. It won’t disappoint.
In Cinemas 10 Aug
Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan directs a gripping biographical thriller on Robert Oppenheimer, the man who helped invent the atomic bomb over World War II, and its effects on him. Played by the titan of expressions Cillian Murphy this might finally be his shot at an Oscar. Nolan puts his practical effects skills on full display once again, and the entire film is backed up by a stellar cast including Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh and Rami Malek.
In Cinemas 20 July
Sisu
If you ever wondered where all the dumb fun Nazi killing action movies went well don’t you worry, it’s right here and it’s glorious. Long story short, a prospector in northern Finland (Jorma Tommila) is making their to the bank to secure their gold vein of wealth. He’s stumbled upon by a unit of German soldiers who rob him and promptly get John Wicked. The movie is ridiculous and gory, with a great sense of humour. Lots of fun.
In Cinemas 19 July
Sanctuary
Margaret Qualley is one of those actors that’s consistently putting out good work, but never quite gets as much attention as they rightfully deserve. She’s done everything from a music video pastiche of Fat Boy Slim’s Weapon Of Choice for Kenzo, to being a primary character in Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding. It wasn’t until her heart wrenching performance in Maid on Netflix that she really caught the mainstream consciousness. But now that she has it, she’s not letting go and not letting go is one thing she won’t be doing in her new movie Sanctuary either.
Qualley and Christopher Abbott (Possessor) play a desperate game of psychological cat and mouse in this uh… I don’t want to call it a rom com… Psychological thriller. It explores the psychology of BDSM and what it brings to both sides, as Abbott’s character tries to break things off as he gains a new role as CEO of his company. Qualley isn’t going to just let him go. It’s an incredible film and a lot of fun.
In cinemas 19 July
The Butterfly Effect of Writer Strikes
A bunch of writers striking doesn’t sound that intimidating to me. What would they tangibly be doing differently? What’s the difference between a “sit in” and a “sit there”.
The Writers Guild in the states is currently striking over in the States. What that means for you and I is that we’re probably in for a weird spate of TV and movies as rookies pick up the slack and give this whole “creativity” thing a try. How hard can it be, everybody has a keyboard and a rudimentary understanding of how words are constructed.
Here’s some repercussions of the last strikes:
Quantum of Solace
“On Quantum, we were f*cked,” Daniel Craig later told Time Out London. “We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, ‘Never again,’ but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes—and a writer I am not.”
Celebrity Apprentice
To spackle over the yawning gaps the writers left, producers returned to the bottomless content well of reality TV. The drama writes itself with enough clever editing! The Apprentice wasn’t doing so hot, but someone had the hot idea to add celebrities and make Donald Trump the king of them all. This blew up his profile and put him front and center of everyone’s living rooms. Little did they know that this man would one day become a Twitter celebrity.
Late Night Talk Shows
All those guys who hide behind desks and have scripted conversations with celebrities suddenly found out that without writers their show is… About the same in terms of quality if I’m going to be honest.