Book Review: "Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions — My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood"

My Washington Post review of prolific writer/director/producer/showrunner Ed Zwick’s name-dropping but also name-naming memoir is here.

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

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"

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

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.

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.

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.