Everest is set to open the Venice Film Festival in early September this year, ahead of its release date next month on the 18th. That's a pretty good sign for the quality of the film, or at least Universal's confidence in it (and Universal has had an absolutely banner year at the box office with Furious 7, Jurassic World and Minions dominating the global grosses, not to mention female targeted hits Fifty Shades of Grey, Pitch Perfect 2 and Trainwreck). It does look pretty intense, and it's been a long time (if ever) since there was an actual decent movie even related to mountain climbing- maybe this could be the first?
REVIEW: "Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation" (2015) Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson. Dir. Christopher McQuarrie
When franchises start to age they inevitably become something akin to episodes, like catching up with the old gang on a long running series. It happened with the original Star Trek movies, then with the Next Generation films- we see familiar faces, some new ones, and we go along with the gang on a new mission, one that routinely has nothing to do with the last one. They've become comfort food, and done well it can leave you satisfied and full, happy to welcome the show back when the next one comes along.
The mission this time is all twists and turns, hidden identities and old-fashioned spycraft stuff, helping it to resemble even more an episode of the old TV show from which the series was born. One of the appeals of the M:I movie franchise is how completely each new entry is allowed to belong to its director. The original 1995 film was very much a stylish, Brian DePalma mystery, in retrospect the least action-packed of the series. M:I II was John Woo's of course (the worst of the bunch), but looking back on that one, even with all the slow-mo and the doves it raised the bar for the actual stuntwork, and entries three through five have all had their own singular directorial touches, but felt more or less of a pace with each other as the "next episode" framework took hold. Most people all have a different ranking of their favorites (mine would be IV, III, V, I and II) which speaks to the creative freedom the studio (and Cruise as producer) has allowed each filmmaker in doing his own thing. This time, Valkyrie and Jack Reacher writer/director Christopher McQuarrie takes the reins to craft a twisty story that starts with Ethan hanging off a plane in mid-air and leads to the the dissolution and absorption of the IMF into the CIA, while Ethan takes on a fugitive status as he single-handedly tracks down the "syndicate," a rogue organization made up of former disgruntled special ops agents, the head of which (Sean Harris) is out to fund his terror activities and be a bug in Ethan's claw every step of the way.
Of course, Ethan's pals and recurring players Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames) and now Brandt (Jeremy Renner, returning as new series regular) join him for the fun eventually, and coming on board as a guest star sure to be replaced in the next film (the women always are) is Rebecca Ferguson as a pretty badass femme fatale who switches sides so many times it'll have your head spinning. The stunts are adequately impossible, as Ethan must hold his breath underwater for five minutes, drowns, is promptly resuscitated and immediately must proceed to a high speed chase, first in a car, then in a motorcycle, and suffers at least three would be fatal injuries in the span of an hour, but you have to suspend disbelief of course, since Ethan is more or less superhuman in these movies. The plot gets twisted up in knots as the syndicate head's plan is unraveled, the face masks and gadgets make their appropriate appearances, and Ethan saves the day in duly satisfying fashion. It's basically everything we would want, and even the questions some of these events pose are fun in the way it allows you to enjoy poking holes in the story. Questions like are there really only three people in the IMF? What was Rebecca Ferguson's secret backstory that they never actually revealed? Couldn't Benji have told Ethan he already made a copy of the disk they were chasing before they almost got themselves killed twice in attempting to retrieve it?
But in the end it doesn't matter so much, because the Mission: Impossible franchise has now reached that point where we simply go along for the ride and marvel as our hero Ethan Hunt, now in his 50's (presumably, as that's Cruise's age) still possesses all of his seemingly everlasting agility and athleticism and slick professional dedication to the "mission" above all else. He is the mission, and he's now become, at this point, the "living manifestation of destiny," as one character literally calls him in this movie. Whether that's Ethan or Tom Cruise himself is immaterial at this stage- as one of our longest lasting, hardest working movie action stars he keeps giving us the goods, and will do anything for the audience, even if it involves strapping himself to the outside of a plane that takes off and flies with him on it at 150 miles per hour. That's our Ethan, that's our Tom and it's comforting to know we still have him, giving us his all even in the later stages of his thirty year career.
* * *
Blood and Wisecracks Take Center Stage in the First 'Deadpool' Trailer
Huh. Now that I finally see this overhyped trailer that was previewed at Comic Con last month, I'm wondering if all that super self-aware snark mixed with graphic violence may turn out more annoying than funny. For some reason, the tone of this thing reminds me of Kick-Ass a little bit, which was a movie that definitely turned a lot of people off. Could be a niche audience for this by default. We'll see when it comes out next February (looks like a perfect fit for Valentine's Day, doesn't it?)
Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" (1959)
One of the films that kicked off the start of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour is our blu-ray pick this week, now on in a Criterion Collection edition. This is an unconventional movie detailing a 90-minute conversation between a French woman and a Japanese man who have a brief affair, and trade memories that rarely match regarding their past and the bombing of Hiroshima after WWII. The movie was incredibly innovative in its use of flashbacks that don't add up and a non-linear way of storytelling that dazzled audiences (and critics) back in the late 50's, and helped to kick off the new movement in French filmmaking. It was an obvious influence on films like Last Year at Marienbad for instance, and you can see just how startling some of these techniques were at the time.
Trailer:
Gay Liberation Movement Kicks Off in First Trailer for 'Stonewall'
It's about time somebody made a movie about Stonewall, I'm just not sure it should have been Roland "disaster movie king" Emmerich. Seriously, this is the guy whose greatest hits include Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, and whose only attempt at historical fare was 2000's The Patriot, a cheese filled, bad history laden wannabe epic. He's got a good story here, but I'm thinking it will be just as cheesy and melodramatic as all his other films, which isn't good for movies based on true events, which really need no embellishment.
Deadpool Teases His Own Trailer
There's normally nothing I hate more than teasers for trailers, but this one at least does it a little more creatively. The snarky Deadpool himself talks to the camera and us to tease his upcoming trailer tomorrow, and who know, maybe this will finally be the movie Ryan Reynolds stars in that's successful? Tune back in tomorrow for the full red band trailer they showed to ecstatic crowds at Comic Con.
Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway Team Up in Another Look at 'The Intern'
Strangely enough, I still don't think this movie looks too bad. Sweet and sentimental I'm sure, but for Nancy Meyers it actually doesn't look so much like her usual fare. I don't know, maybe it'll work (despite Anne Hathaway's involvement).
REVIEW: "Ant-Man" (2015) Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas. Dir. Peyton Reed
Marvel's Ant-Man, their latest attempt to kickstart one of the lesser known comic book properties, is a movie so light and airy it may well not even exist, and it wooshes past you so fast it's tempting to forget you saw it five minutes after it's over. On some level, a certain lightness of touch in the material is to be admired and even sought after (what I've often complained about over on the DC side of things is their misbegotten strides to take inherently ridiculous premises way too seriously), but on the other hand, go too casual with it and the impression it leaves is that nothing here matters an ounce, and the film was simply rolled off the assembly line as fast as possible in order to move on to the next one.
The subject matter in Ant-Man is simple and preposterous- a guy inherits a mysteriously powered suit that shrinks him to the size of an ant with the strength of a superhuman. On its face this could be a wacky concept that should be treated with wild creativity and a sense of humor, something that director Edgar Wright (original writer of the story and script and who'd been attached to the project for years) would have no doubt brought to the material, having directed such idiosyncratic comedies as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. But after creative conflict with the Marvel showrunners behind the scenes, Wright left the film to be completed by studio hire Peyton Reed, with some script rewrites by star Paul Rudd and Adam McKay to keep the humor intact. From what we get on the screen, I take it Marvel simply wanted the idea to remain as conventional and accessible to as wide an audience as humanly possible, and so therefore the story follows a through line so unoriginal it could have easily been written by committee.
Paul Rudd, always an amiable and genial everyguy, is Scott Lang, a recent ex-con whose inability to see his daughter thanks to his unemployed, formerly convicted status, spars his return to thievery with his trusty gang of friendly ex-cons (seriously, these guys are some G-rated felons), but falls into the trap of Michael Douglas's Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, who's looking for someone to step into his former suit. Pym is the head of a company that's being taken over by Corey Stoll, the requisite bad guy trying to steal Pym's technology, and it's up to Pym and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) to train Scott to use the suit and pull off a heist in order to stop Stoll from becoming the Yellow Jacket. The movie's small scope and purposely tiny reach, comparatively speaking when faced with the world ending plans of the villains in The Avengers movies, could be considered a refreshingly modest approach, but there's nothing much to care about in this by the numbers, unremarkable origin story. Even Paul Rudd plays it as if he knows the whole thing is lame, and the movie races through Scott's inevitable training montage and Hope's daddy-daughter conflict as though it can't wait to get it all over with. We know where it's going from the very beginning and it never deviates one second from the predictable outcome- there's a heist pulled by the good guys and Ant-Man and Yellow Jacket get in a fight, there's lots of punching, toys get knocked over, and for some humor we get occasional breakaway from the POV shots to show us how funny it is that Ant-Man's really tiny, as if we'd forgotten.
Even his smallness doesn't amount to much, as he learns how to speak to the ants with no real marveling (sorry for the pun) at the micro-universe as it exists, which we barely see. Frankly, there were more emotional stakes involved in in 1989's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. At this point Marvel knows how to tune these movies out like clockwork, tossing in the required emotional beats at all the right moments for its films to qualify as correctly formed and properly structured entertainments, but I can see the cogs churning. This one especially felt like it only barely hung together enough to make the cut. It left my thoughts the moment is was over, and I doubt I'll give it another one past the end of this sentence.
* *
10 Globe Trotting Films for August
At the start of this new month, we're in the last part of the summer, and so it's time to hand down the ten movies for August, which fall under the theme of "Going Global." That means that for your movie binge this month, each choice will take you to a different country, where they speak a different language, so if you're anti-subtitles, this won't be the month for you. Foreign-language films rue the day here, and we have some of the very best, like Amelie, Run Lola Run, and The Barbarian Invasions, alongside classics like La Dolce Vita (above), Seven Samurai, Fanny and Alexander and The Spirit of the Beehive. Each transports you to another place and sometimes another time, and so for the last month of summer you can spend it going on a worldwide cinematic vacation, even if you can't make it for the real thing. Read more about this month's theme at our Movies For Every Month page and click here for the full list of ten movies to see in August (complete with their original trailers). Here's to the dog days of summer. Happy Movie Watching!
Derek Zoolander Returns in New Teaser
Zoolander 2 is coming, guys. Or I guess I should say, 2oolander. The first teaser is exactly what fans of the old movie would expect, but I do wonder what the demand for this is now, or if anyone besides those older fans have even seen the first movie after all these years. It became something of a cult film, but I don't know if it ever became one of those that was discovered by a new people even years after it came out.
BOX OFFICE 7/31-8/02: 'Rogue Nation' Delivers a Box Office Win for Tom Cruise; New 'Vacation' Flops
The fifth entry in the long running Mission: Impossible franchise opened to a solid $56 million this weekend, above expectations and in line for the third biggest opening of Tom Cruise's career, behind War of the Worlds and Mission: Impossible II. It's a good start for the film, and though it's above past entries in the series, some of them, adjusted for inflation (like MI:2), pulled in bigger audiences overall. Still, it's a success and with a $65 million opening overseas, it comes it at $121 million worldwide for the first weekend. The other new release this week, the remake/reboot of National Lampoon's Vacation, was a disappointment, opening on Wednesday but only coming in with $21 million for the five days. After the success of We're the Millers (which is the real reason this movie was greenlit) that's pretty much a bust.
Ant-Man slipped to third for the week, pulling in $12 million for a new total of $147 million, on track to earn at least $160, while Minions has stayed in the top five for a month now, and Pixels fell 57% from last week's soft opening to just barely come in fifth. Minions has now earned $850 million worldwide, a huge success for the little alien dudes, even if the movie was reportedly a lazy prequel- I guess there's no stopping whatever the appeal of these things are to kids.
Top 5:
- Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation- $56 million
- Vacation- $14.9 million
- Ant-Man- $12.6 million
- Minions- $12.2 million
- Pixels- $10.4 million
In limited release, James Pondsolt's The End of the Tour, about a reporter's conversation with David Foster Wallace, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel, opened pretty well on just a few screens to a $31k average, despite being shrouded in a media controversy (an elite one, to be sure) over the accuracy of the film to Wallace's life. Amy has now grossed over $6 million total and Mr. Holmes crossed $10 million for relative successes in what's been a very weak year for independent films at the box office. Next week it's the opening of Fantastic Four (which is being hidden by the studio from critics until the last minute- uh oh), and Meryl Streep's Ricki and the Flash, along with the Jason Bateman/Joel Edgarton thriller The Gift, and the limited opening of the Sundance hit Diary of a Teenage Girl. The August doldrums have begun, people. See you next week!
New Batman/Superman Pics Reveal Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne
The secret identity looks are out in these new pictures from the Empire magazine spread for Batman v Superman (which I feel like the hype has been building for for about a thousand years now). We also get Wonder Woman's Diana Prince in there, but no looks at Aquaman, the Flash or whoever else was promised to cameo in this. I still don't like Batman's fatsuit, or the fact that there is no possible logical reason for the two to be fighting.
