Category: Hayley Atwell

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE THE FINAL RECKONING

By Marc S. Sanders

The blessing behind Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning is that it opts not to follow the uninspired routine that was settled for with the previous entry, Dead Reckoning Part I.  With myself included, that film was poorly received overall (look for my review on this page). It performed way below box office expectations as well.  After its release, writer/director Chrisopher McQuarrie and producer/star Tom Cruise were in a quandary.  The hanging thread of a magical key/MacGuffin and the answer to destroying the omnipotent Entity were left unresolved.  A new film had to be made, despite an empty storyline.  Money had to be spent.  So, the guys needed to invest it wisely.  For the most part, the finances were used quite well as the pair learned what worked. More importantly they steered away from what didn’t.

What this movie improves upon is a hearkening back to some of the favorite elements of almost all of the prior films in the series, now on its eighth chapter.  Naturally, some citations cover what occurred in the last film to drive the continuous thin story of Final Reckoning. There are references made to the mysterious Rabbit’s Foot from the third picture, a favorite of mine.  Most notably, is the return of a long-lost character that no one would ever expect to turn up again. The best thing is that he truly serves the mission.  He’s not just a cameo blink and miss it.  Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire repeated that terrible grievance over and over.  The return of this particular guy actually makes you smile, laugh and cheer.  Yes, believe me when I tell you that marketing for Final Reckoning thankfully do not share every detail.  There’s more here than Tom Cruise running and running some more. 

Miguel and I took advantage of an IMAX presentation, and for two guys who normally favor Dolby, this action/adventure should only be seen on IMAX.  Probably the best film I’ve ever seen in this medium and I saw Dead Reckoning Part I this way, but that did not measure up to what’s offered this time.

Tom Cruise is absolutely nuts.  He’s over sixty and he’s doing some of the most daring stunts he’s ever accomplished.  The insurance bill to cover his safety must be at least half the budget to make the movie.  The famed biplane scenes that you likely caught in trailers, even on the marquee poster, is so much more impressive on IMAX.  You are seeing every limb of the actor’s body stretch to their breaking points to hang on to first a red plane and later a yellow plane.  Cruise’s facial muscles stretch against the G-force that is giving him resistance at ten thousand feet in the air.  McQuarrie makes sure to cover every inch of these flying machines from the cockpit to the wings and the tail rutters and the landing wheels underneath.  Cruise’s superspy, Ethan Hunt, has to climb all over these things as they go up and down and upside down and right side up on top of bursting into flames.  This scene is not even over in ten minutes.  It feels like a good twenty-five minutes and it looks like it’s no easy feat for Mr. Hunt.

Midway through the film finds Ethan Hunt deep sea diving to a shipwrecked submarine.  This sequence might rely more on set design, but I was convinced the entire time that Cruise was actually that deep below the surface of the water.  Memories of James Cameron’s The Abyss come to mind, but McQuarrie’s craft of this middle sequence within his three-hour film is so well edited and designed.  On IMAX you feel yourself submerged with the weight of the ocean above you.  The film will cut to the outside of the sub to show it drifting as Ethan Hunt shifts from one side of the interior to the other.  Whatever action the guy takes, the sub works against him leaving you wondering if the vessel is going to topple over an ocean floor cliff to even greater and unescapable depths. 

I will never like this movie as much as when I saw it in the IMAX screening.  It’s impossible to feel the same way on a large in-home flat screen.  This is a giant movie.

Grand set pieces with the sub or the planes had me thinking that Christopher McQuarrie should get a Best Director nomination.  I know it won’t happen but not everyone can accomplish what’s offered in Final Reckoning.  Could Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola?  I question that, because this is an altogether different kind of beast.

McQuarrie must have done a polish on the violations he committed with the last film.  The story remains to be nothing but a chase with countdown digital clocks and the urgency for all of these tasks to be accomplished by Ethan and his team at the exact same second (a repeat M:I staple), but the dialogue does not drive in literal circles of similar vocabulary this time.  Terms like “the key” and “the entity” are not so exhaustingly uttered over and over in this film.  Esai Morales, as the conniving Gabriel, is much more interesting.  In the last movie he was terribly boring.  No charm.  No anger.  No brattiness.  Here, he at least gleefully laughs at Ethan’s demise.  He’s still far from a great villain and totally forgettable, but at least he’s given something more to do than just stand menacingly behind Tom Cruise. Morales is not just donning a dark tan and a salt and pepper goatee. 

Most of Ethan Hunt’s team is given something to do, particularly Ving Rhames as Luther and Simon Pegg as Benji, always reliable.  Hayley Atwell was the best feature of the last movie and she’s great here too as the pickpocket, and now supposedly a quick learning kick ass superspy.  Kind of—No-VERY ridiculous but I stopped asking questions.  Atwell deserves a franchise series of her own.  She’s charming and lights up the screen.  Great actor too.

Pom Klementieff as the dangerous assassin Paris is now a good guy and other than speaking eloquent French she’s regrettably become a ho hum element.  There are other unnecessary characters including Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and those two guys who were chasing Ethan in the last movie.  One carries a stupid secret that’s more like an unwelcome surprise.  The other joins Ethan’s team to shoot a gun and look panicked. 

It will only frustrate you to follow when Ethan or Gabriel has the upper hand.  Christopher McQuarrie fleshes out his overly long three-hour picture playing games like that, and I stopped trying to pass his impossible SAT exam.  The attractions are a few of the characters who work with Ethan and the great feats of strength that the hero attempts to overcome. 

It is not the best in the series.  It is a huge improvement over the last picture, though.  What’s most significant is that Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning is a gorgeous, mind blowing and breathless visual opus.

SEE IT ON THE IMAX before it self-destructs on your flat screen in five seconds.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE DEAD RECKONING PART 1

By Marc S. Sanders

The object of the Mission: Impossible films is not to wow its audience with thought provoking questions of politics or Cold War intrigue or even daring and uncompromisingly evil villains (apart from Phillip Seymour Hoffman).  The elements of espionage coursing through the TV series are non-existent in the film adaptations.  I’m not watching a film based on a John LeCarre spy novel.  By the time the seventh installment has arrived, titled Dead Reckoning Part 1, the goal of the film series is to sketch out the set ups for one action piece after another.  Only they must be bigger, bolder, and seemingly that much more impossible to overcome for their hero, Tom Cruise (playing a guy named Ethan Hunt).  The action is once again top notch.  The glues that bind these displays of bravado together, you know where the characters have to talk and give us a semblance of a plot, is as nil as the scotch tape that assembles a stretch of film reel into a running time length of nearly two hours and forty-five minutes.

The locales are as grand as any travel getaway. We go through a labyrinthine airport.  A techno night club works as a meeting place for a bunch of characters. There are journeys to the Arabian Desert, Rome, Venice, and a beautiful ride along the famed Orient Express.  Shot on digital, this movie is a gorgeous travelogue.

Let’s get the problems out of the way, though.  The MacGuffin that Ethan Hunt and his trusty pals Benjy and Luther (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames) have been assigned to recover is two parts of a specially designed key.  One part is supposedly with the disavowed MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).  The other half is questionable as to who possesses it, but a thief known only as Grace (Hayley Atwell) may be significant in finding it.  Put the two halves of the key together and it will unlock something that no one seems to know of, or where it is located.  Here’s my first issue.  The audience does know what the key unlocks because it is shown in the first three minutes of the film.  So, while the cast of characters act dumbfounded, we know all along.  So, there goes any curious interest I may have for wanting to follow through with this. 

The other problem is that the same conversation happens over and over and over again.  Lines like (and I’m paraphrasing here, or maybe I’m not) “If this key gets into the wrong hands…” and “Whatever this does unlock, Ethan, could spell the end of the world…” or “It’s important that both halves of the key are not put together…”  or “Whatever this does unlock…”  (See?  Even I just repeated myself in this write up.) Except, we know what it unlocks!!!!!  The same exchange of dialogue occurs over and over.  The redundancy exhausts itself.  It occurs so much in fact that it’s writer/director, Christopher McQuarrie, relied upon the repetitive dialogue to stretch this next M:I chapter into two films instead of one (Part 2 is scheduled to be released in 2024).  I don’t recall the context of any of Ving Rhames’ lines going further than what I have presented here, for example.

The film is also a little too character heavy.  I never understood why two agents (Shea Wigham, Greg Tarzan Davis) are constantly pursuing Ethan.  Just was not clear for me. Heightened suspense?  That’s the best excuse I can think of.  The White Widow from the prior film (Vanessa Kirby) also appears.  Not much purpose to her.  Cary Elwes is the deputy director, there at the beginning and later towards the end, but again I was not entirely certain of his contribution to the story.  Even Ilsa Faust does not seem to have much value, except to work as a step in Ethan’s ongoing trajectory for the key.  I think Rebecca Ferguson had no more than five lines in the whole picture.

Finally, Ethan Hunt seems to be up against an omnipotent enemy, an AI program known as The Entity.  The humans doing the bidding of this phantom program consist of a goatee wearing Esai Morales and his henchwoman, played by Pom Klementieff.  She looks straight out of a James Bond picture and makes for a good car chase through the stone cobbled streets of Rome in a tank like Hummer.  Morales is as boring as most of the other the M:I villains.

What works for the film is what Tom Cruise really wants to impress you with though.  Riding a speeding motorcycle off a mountain and parachuting his way down.  That’s actually a near sixty-year-old Tom Cruise performing that feat.  Very impressive.  The car chase with a handcuffed Cruise and Atwell in a puny yellow Fiat versus an unbeatable Hummer and an army of Italian police vehicles is fun on the level of Roger Moore’s Bond films.  Most impressive for me is the final act where the famed Orient Express train tumbles off a bridge with a gap in the middle, car by car with all the furnishings, piano included, pouring out while Ethan and Grace hold on for dear life. 

It’s the high stakes stunts that work.  Whatever smidge of a story there is fails though.  The script by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen lacks so much that the cliffhanger the film ends on doesn’t leave me yearning for more because it only hearkens back to the beginning.  The characters catch up to what the audience has known for the last three hours.  So, I’m not losing sleep wondering with what happens next.

Of course, I’ll go see the Part 2 installment.  Tom Cruise won’t let me down in whatever daredevil achievements he’s dreaming of doing next.  However, am I going to these movies to watch Mission: Impossible, or to watch an aggressively updated version of Circus Of The Stars?

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

By Marc S. Sanders

The character of Ultron, a terrorizing cyborg, has been a favorite Marvel Comics villain of mine ever since I discovered him in 1984 during the Secret Wars 12 issue limited run. He looked sinister with a devilish face in the shape of a metallic claw. His sonic blasts appeared more destructive than anything else ever drawn on the page. Ultron was a badass!!! (“Language!”). That being said, the cinematic interpretation is quite different, yet he’s modeled on a much more grown up sculpt.

Ultron is still a terrorist bent on utter destruction, but now he has a disregard for man. He’s written quite inventively as a direct contradiction to arguably the favorite of all the Marvel cinematic characters, Iron Man aka Tony Stark. How fitting that James Spader is cast opposite his former brat pack cast mate (Less Than Zero), Robert Downey, Jr. It is really uncanny how the dialect of Spader’s limitless Ultron can sound just like Downey’s genius Stark but with a means of annihilation; “All of you against all of me.” Ultron is smart first, powerful second. He’s not just a monochromatic android. There’s a means to his end and an inventive science to his purpose; uproot a country high in the sky and then DROP IT BACK DOWN INTO THE PLANET, like an anvil flattening Wile E. Coyote. It’s actually more novel than I’m giving it credit for.

Most Marvel afficianados from the blogs, and fellow colleagues as well, do not care much for this chapter in the MCU. I have yet to understand why. Again, each character is really drawn out beautifully by Joss Whedon with a respective storyline. Finally, Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye is given some oomph to his back story. So is Paul Bettany as the other cyborg, Vision, formerly J.A.R.V.I.S, the artificial intelligence.

Vision/J.A.R.V.I.S. outshines Data (“Star Trek: TNG,” apologies to my friend, Jim Johnson), but will never top C-3PO. I like how he’s introduced as an amalgamation of all of the film’s main characters’ abilities. Bruce Banner and Tony Stark, Thor, Ultron, Scarlet Witch, some brilliant doctor friend, and even the nation of Wakanda. They all have a piece of themselves in Vision. It’s a better story than the comics ever suggested. Maybe I’m biased having grown up on these stories, but the Vision element makes me want to clap every time I see it. So inventive and economically told for a two-hour film with a ginormous cast. Vision’s introduction is one of the best scenes in all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

A great device to unhinge most of the Avengers comes through by means of Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch (identified as Wanda Maximoff) who cripples them with mind control. How else should a sorceress take out a whole lotta muscle? It works and it gives Olsen conflict to play with. The visual effects surrounding her are also pretty cool. Sure, it might be just some neon red mist, but the cinematography and CGI surrounding her look gorgeous.

This installment also serves as neat set up for what’s to come. Quick Easter Egg in Age Of Ultron: Tony Stark Name drops the term “Endgame.” Oooooooo!!!!!!

It is really admirable what Marvel and Disney have done with the MCU, and especially watching this film. It’s ironic how filmmaker James Cameron made a statement hoping for “Avengers fatigue” so the phenomenon can die down in movie houses, etc. Funny! For me, seeing all of Ultron’s toys and wit seemed to outshine quite a bit of the residuals spawned from Cameron’s Terminator franchise.

Whedon wrote and directed a film with much more intelligence, wit, at least as much action, and threat than I ever got from Cameron’s reputation of clunky dialogue and plot hole time travel storytelling. It would do Mr. Cameron well to maybe not throw stones at the glass Avengers towers. I’m skeptical that his upcoming FOUR Avatar films will carry the smirk inducing cues the MCU has used to its advantage.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

By Marc S. Sanders

Admittedly, as a kid I read about the star-spangled hero, Captain America, on a frequent basis. In the ‘80s, to me he was nothing special; a guy with a shield, dressed like the flag who was very agile. Not many surprises were left for him to discover on the page. However, in his first MCU installment, Chris Evans, as Steve Rogers the weakling yearning to join the US Army during World War II and kill Nazis, is inspiring.

Director Joe Johnston ably introduces a character before revealing all the goodies. A fantastic special effect of downsizing Evans to a gaunt 95 pounds allows the motivation to become a hero all the more convincing. Following a series of being bullied and being rejected for service, Rogers is given the opportunity to become a lab rat for a “Super Soldier” experiment that will award him with instant fighting skills and strength. Stanley Tucci plays the doctor looking for the right candidate. Why Rogers? Because he sees he has the heart of a man only wishing to do well unto others. The experiment is a success before it becomes sabotaged, but Tommy Lee Jones, representative of the Army, is not entirely convinced. So, Cap only elevates himself to the role of a character logo, forced to sell the idea of buying war bonds across the country and entertaining the troops overseas. A rescue mission finally comes calling, and the boy in blue dons the shield and shows the world who he is and what he stands for.

Chris Evans is great in this part as a guy always on a path of “do good.” Never emoting cockiness, never in service for himself and never one to surrender to illogical and immoral mindsets. This is how Captain America should always be portrayed, a man who stands for the good of country and as the MCU films continue on, the good of the world and, well heck, lets just say the good of the galaxy. With his perfect haircut and clean shaven face, Evans never shies away from that platform.

Tucci is so good in a role that will never define his career. His brief appearance shows no hint of him being in a comic book movie. That’s a huge compliment. He takes the role of a German doctor seriously. He’s the scientist, but the film allows a nice scene for him with Evans showing that he is more so a friend. When his part exits the film, you miss him.

Finally, the MCU gets the female role right following the dismissive nature of characters like Pepper Potts (Iron Man), Betty Ross (The Incredible Hulk) and Jane Foster (Thor). Special Agent Peggy Carter played by the awesome discovery of Hayley Atwell makes the role her own. She plays the part like it is written, never relying on the title character for her cues. Atwell shows determination to stand out as a woman among a sea of men and never regarding herself as any different from those said men. She has some great scenes with Tommy Lee Jones debating the purpose and importance of Rogers. By the end of the film, you are not just paying attention to the fate of Evans’ character, but Atwell’s as well. Peggy Carter is written so well, you could write a TV series about her. Wait….hold on…. anyway I digress. Hayley Atwell remains the best female character of the MCU above those we’ve seen already at this point, as well as ahead of those to come in future installments.

The villain is really just a villain with Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull. The character looks great; looks just like the source material. He’s one bad dude, but not much to him. He stands to be more powerful than Hitler, yada yada yada.

Joe Johnston directs a film with a salute towards director Steven Spielberg. Try to convince me that the opening scene is not reminiscent of the opening to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Indiana Jones seems to sprinkled about as well. Johnston doesn’t try to get cute with experimental camera shots and blurry CGI action. I think because he follows a paint by numbers approach to this film, it is all the better. He offers lots of good back story to Steve Rogers role, he gives a large cast of characters their own moments to stand out (like Bucky Barnes and the Howling Commandos) and he keeps Captain America likable and a guy to cheer for; a guy to be thankful for.

So, let’s give it up for Captain America!!!!

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN

By Marc S. Sanders

Disney’s Christopher Robin is a live action interpretation of a classic story that I approve of. Like Maleficent, it’s a film that is based on new, original material with familiar and beloved classic characters of the Disney machine-unlike recent reinventions of Beauty & The Beast and Aladdin. Those films are just the same with minor tweaks that don’t generate enough hype or interest for me. (No—I will not be seeing The Lion King. I already saw it back in 1992.)

Marc Forster (Quantum Of Solace and Finding Neverland) directs while never losing sight of the fact that Winnie The Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, etc all stem from classic children’s literature by A.A. Milne. The film opens with a backstory on the title character starting with his playful adolescent connection to Pooh & Friends, followed by his departure from them into a strict boarding school and then into adulthood (played sweetly by Ewan MacGregor). Christopher falls in love with Evelyn (Hayley Atwood) and before their child is born he is sent off to war only to return as a no nonsense efficiency manager for a luggage company. He has forgotten his friends who live and do nothing (which always leads to something) in 100 Acre Woods. Worse, Christopher never laughs nor hardly acknowledges his daughter Madeline. He is not a child anymore.

This is the film that Steven Spielberg probably wanted when he directed Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman in 1991’s Hook. It just came off too clunky and messy at the time.

As the story continues, Forster is not so covert in his symbolism of Christopher Robin shedding his crotchety adult persona and returning to his childhood whimsy. Christopher crawls through the hole in the tree, muddies his suit, loses his briefcase and disregards his paperwork.

I found myself rooting for Christopher’s new found happiness and his revived love for his wife and daughter. I loved the stuffed animal interpretations of the Pooh characters (with voice work from Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett and Toby Jones). Yet, the tears at the sweetness of it all never arrived. As quick as the film began, it was never a challenge to realize how it would all turn out.

So no surprises to be had in Christopher Robin, but an original story to appreciate nonetheless. That’s good enough for me.