Anti-Monster Squad: "The Predator," reviewed.

Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan Michael-Key, Thomas Jane and Augusto Aguiliera. (Fox)

Predator, directed by John McTiernan the year before he made Die Hard, has been a favorite film of mine ever since I biked home with the rented VHS cassette (I couldn't persuade my dad to take me, aged 10, to see it in the theater) and watched it three or four times in a weekend. It was the 12th highest-grossing film of 1987, a year when the box office top five was Three Men and a Baby, Fatal Attraction, Beverly Hills Cop II, Good Morning, Vietnam, and Moonstruck. One sequel and four original, not-based-on-preexisting material screenplays. Just in case you need a sense of just how long ago that was.

Anyway, I love Shane Black, so I wanted The Predator to be better than it is. My NPR review is here.

I Got Stripes: Peppermint, reviewed.

If you want a wound dressed right, you'd better dress it yourself. Jennifer Garner tapes up. (STX)

"The title, with its slight echo of the 1973 Pam Grier vehicle Coffy, promises a sticky confection of feminism and violence, but the movie it's selling is a desultory drag. It's so dull-edged that even prospect of a white woman (named North!) whose family was afflicted by, um, economic anxiety before being murdered by cartel-affiliated outlaws doesn't carry the scab-picking provocation that it should."

That's me on Peppermint, a sweaty return to sweaty form for Jennifer Garner, from Taken director Pierre Morel. It's the kind of movie that doesn't get shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, where I currently am not. The full review is here.

Berg & Wahlberg 'Burg: Mile 22, reviewed.

He's a Marky-marked man. (STX)

Mile 22 is essentially Mission: Impossible minus amazing stunts, jokes, joy, Tom Cruise running, Rebecca Ferguson felling dudes by getting her leg over their shoulders, or Henry Cavill's mustache. Also minus a great Iko Uwais fight scene or any sort of Ronda Rousey fight scene, which is odd because they're both in the movie. But! There are one or two actual ideas in this thing that deserve homes in better movies. My NPR review of Mile 22 is here.

Shark, Weak: The Meg, reviewed.

They're gonna need a bigger beaker. (Warner Bros.)

Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon did me a solid with that headline. Of all the giant-shark thrillers that've been scaring us out of the water since Jaws invented the summer blockbuster, The Meg, starring the Fast & the Furious franchise's most talented chromedome, is without question the most recent. Here's my NPR review.

Somebody's Done It Better: The Spy Who Dumped Me, reviewed.

I really hate to say this about one of the only movies directed by a woman this summer, but The Spy Who Dumped Me is an oddly violent, only sporadically funny action comedy that doesn’t deserve Kate McKinnon. Here's my NPR review.

The Last Balcony: An Oral History of the Uptown

I wrote an oral history of my favorite cinema, the Uptown Theater on Connecticut Ave. NW here in DC, for the Washington City Paper. I love the oral history format. Cutting this down to publishable length tested me. My apologies to the various people whose comments were cut for length.

AMC Theatres declined to make attendance figures available for publication, but they told me they've ticket up slightly in the last year. I hope that means the Uptown will stick around a long time.

Appendix! A probably-incomplete list of films I saw at the Uptown, compiled from memory, by year.

1993: The Abyss [Extended Edition]

1996: Vertigo

1998: Godzilla (the awful Roland Emmerich one), The Thin Red Line

1999: Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, Sleepy Hollow

2000: The Perfect Storm

2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

2004: Spider-Man 2

2005: Good Night and Good Luck, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, King Kong (the underrated Peter Jackson one)

2006: Mission: Impossible III, Superman Returns

2007: Spider-Man 3, Blade Runner: The Final Cut

2008: Iron Man, The Dark Knight

2009: Watchmen, Terminator: Salvation

2010: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

2011: Super 8

2012: The Hunger Games, The Avengers, Prometheus

2013: Iron Man 3, Jurassic Park (20th anniversary 3D rerelease), Gravity

2014: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

2015: Tomorrowland

2016: Ali, Independence Day: Resurgence

2017: Close Encounters of the Third Kind 

2018: Ant-Man and the Wasp

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.