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Filtering by Tag: Tom Cruise

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One"

Chris Klimek

IMF lifers Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie always wanted to crash a train together. (Paramount)

it’s an honor and a privilege to dissect the latest entry in my favorite film franchise with Linda Holmes, Wailin Wong, and Roxanna Hadadi on today’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. My estimation of the film grew when I saw it a second time after we recorded this, but it’s an accurate reflection of my somewhat perplexed initial response.

Choose to Accept "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One"

Chris Klimek

I did a big reversal on latest impossible Mission in the interim in between when we recorded the forthcoming Pop Culture Happy Hour episode on it and when I saw the film again and wrote my Washington City Paper review. That’s why the latter is more effusive than the former. Sometimes that happens!

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Mission: Impossible — Fallout, and What's Making Us Happy

Chris Klimek

Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Tom Cruise, and Ving Rhames.

Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Tom Cruise, and Ving Rhames.

Sure, he's a weird guy. But Tom Cruise is the greatest onscreen runner since that horse that Eadweard Muybridge photographed in 1872 to prove that all four hooves of a galloping stallion leave the ground. 

Here's our Pop Culture Happy Hour on the triumph that is Mission: Impossible — Fallout.  Any Cruiselike zealotry in my voice is purely intentional. To watch a two-star action movie with Linda Holmes is a five-star experience. To watch a five-star action movie with her is an M:I-6 star experience.

Choose to Accept It: Mission: Impossible — Fallout, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Henry Cavill is new; Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson are back.

Henry Cavill is new; Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson are back.

Mission: Impossible — Fallout is the smart spy spectacle SPECTRE shoulda been, and Tom Cruise is the best movie runner since that horse Eadweard Muybridge photographed in 1872. A little too much Cruiseplaining, but whaddayagonnado? Reader, I married it.

Barry, Plane and Not Tall: American Made, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Domhnall Gleeson and Tom Cruise as two con men. (Universal)

Domhnall Gleeson and Tom Cruise as two con men. (Universal)

Here's my NPR review of American Made, Doug Liman's heavily fictionalized but ecstatically true crime biopic starring Tom Cruise as C.I.A. gunrunner and dope smuggler Barry Seal. As I discuss in the piece, Liman's father, Arthur Liman, was heavily involved in the 1987 U.S. Senate hearings into the Iran-Contra affair, of which Seal's covert flights were an operational element. And here's Arthur.

FURTHER READING: I loved Cruise and Liman's prior collaboration, 2014's Edge of Tomorrow, and I wrote about it and discussed it on Pop Culture Happy Hour, as part of an episode about good movies that kinda tanked.

Jack Reacher? I Hardly Know 'Er! Never Go Back, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

I am a big, unapologetic fan of 2012's Jack Reacher, and the shrugging reviews I've seen of its new follow-up, Never Go Back, insult the original with their baffling assertion the new one is just as good. It's not remotely as good. The crispness of the action stuff, the weird jokes, the superb supporting players; the new one has none of that. Cobie Smulders is great, but she's not exactly underexposed like Reacher's deep bench—Richard Jenkins and David Oyelowo and Jai Courtney and Werner goddamn Herzogwas in 2012. We did not know then how ubiquitous Courtney would become in shitty sequels to 80s classics. Or that Rosamund Pike's stock would rise so fast with Gone Girl.

Anyway, here's my NPR review of the disappointing Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. Read it, and then cheer yourself up by watching Jack Reacher's A+ bar fight for the hundredth time.

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The Spies Have It: Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

The Mission: Impossible film series is 19, long enough in the tooth for its earlier installments to start to acquire the same time capsule effect that makes me love even the worst James Bond movies. I watched Brian De Palma's 1996 Mission: Impossible the night after I saw the new one, subtitled Rogue Nation, and John Woo's barely-related 2000 M:I-2, the night after that. Yep, blockbusters are different now.

Trying to articulate just how was part of the chore of writing my NPR review of the fifth impossible mission, from Jack Reacher writer/director Christopher McQuarrie. Short version: I liked it. But I had more thoughts about it than I could shoehorn into the review, so here're a few outtakes.

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