Tagged: Tom Cruise

Review – Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan

MI Fallout

There was a time when the Mission: Impossible franchise appeared to be running a clear third behind James Bond and the Bourne films when it came to big budget, spy action-thrillers. But not anymore. With its sixth instalment, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the franchise thumbs its nose at both the law of diminishing returns and questions about how long Tom Cruise can keep doing this to produce a rollicking picture which continues its upwards trajectory and easily trumps the most recent instalments in those other franchises. Continue reading →

Review – Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Simon McBurney

Mission Impossible 5Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Missions Force return in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, the fifth film in a franchise which has now spanned 19 years. With a different director on each film, this instalment sees Chris McQuarrie at the helm. McQuarrie has previously worked with Tom Cruise on four occasions, including directing him in Jack Reacher and writing Edge of Tomorrow, and while he doesn’t possess the same visual flair as some who have come before him, he is the first to be sole writer and director in the series.

The CIA wants to close down the IMF, believing it to be a reckless, unaccountable division. While Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is making ground gathering information about a mysterious criminal organisation called the Syndicate, CIA director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) isn’t buying it, convinced the Syndicate is nothing more than a paranoid delusion of the IMF. As the IMF agents are called back in and reassigned Hunt stays out in the field determined to continue his mission. Wanted by the CIA and operating without the backing and protection of the American government, Hunt is dependent on his loyal former IMF pals Continue reading →

Six of the Best… TV Remakes

Recently Warner Brothers and Guy Ritchie made the somewhat peculiar decision to adapt the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to the big screen (read my review here). While Ritchie’s film wasn’t exactly a triumph, there have been a number of TV remakes which have been really good. Of course, there are also plenty which have been terrible (The Flintstones, The Smurfs, Lost in Space), but we are going to try and keep it positive here and look at six of the best TV remakes. To clarify, this is a list of the best TV remakes not just movies that have come from television shows. So I have chosen not to consider movies which feature the same cast as the television series which has disqualified films like The Naked Gun, all of the Muppets movies, Serenity, and films which originated as Saturday Night Live sketches like The Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World. So let’s jump in… Continue reading →