Concluding both the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One chapter from 2023 and possibly the whole series, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning seems to at least be the final time we’ll see Tom Cruise in the superspy Ethan Hunt role he first portrayed almost 30 years ago. Naturally, it’s a bittersweet sendoff: necessary given how much unmatched physicality the now-62-year-old Cruise puts into these productions but unfortunate that it winds down one of the very best action franchises around. While this last adventure is both the most narratively simplistic and somberly apocalyptic in the series, it’s bolstered by a terrific ever-expanding cast and two extended setpieces that are unmatched in their guileless ambition and technical coordination.

We pick up the action two months after the events of Dead Reckoning, with the world in chaos due to the proliferation of The Entity’s reality-bending influence on the digital landscape, and with Ethan Hunt in possession of the key to stopping it. The locked chamber that holds The Entity’s source code is aboard a sunken submarine buried deep in the ocean, the coordinates of which are known only by Ethan’s enemy Gabriel (Esai Morales). Bent on triggering nuclear annihilation, The Entity has every world leader, including US President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), up against the wall watching control of the arsenals being seized by the evil AI. IMF team regulars Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), along with new members Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Paris (Pom Klementieff), are all in with Ethan to put an end to The Entity’s reign.

Combined with Dead Reckoning, The Final Reckoning caps off a storyline that runs over 5 and a half hours and now that we’ve seen this second portion, I would’ve preferred the series not end on a two-parter. The main reason is that Gabriel and The Entity are promising villains that would’ve worked better separately in their own films, as opposed to having them split time to face off against Ethan. Dead Reckoning teases exposition with Gabriel that The Final Reckoning doesn’t properly pay off, likely because there are too many other narrative threads that need to be tended to. As for non-human villains, The Entity has a couple moments of menace but in this final chapter, the articulation of its power is mainly relegated to people in power distressingly staring at screens. There are plenty of terrifying ways to depict a rogue artificial intelligence and this Reckoning arc doesn’t fully realize that potential.

But anyone who has watched the Mission: Impossible series knows that Ethan’s truest archnemesis is gravity and as such, The Final Reckoning has what may be their most exhilarating showdown to date. The climactic biplane sequence has been the focal point of the film’s marketing but no matter how many glimpses you’ve seen of it so far, it’s an entirely different experience watching it play out at-length in an ideally IMAX theater. The Burj Khalifa setpiece in Ghost Protocol remains my favorite scene in the series but this new plane chase is a very close second. It’s a peerless showcase of stunt work and if the Academy Award For Achievement In Stunt Design was being handed out for the first time next year instead of in 2028, I would be appalled if it didn’t go to this crew.

The Final Reckoning dedicates plenty of its extended runtime looking back on the series it’s summing up and likewise inspires us to reflect on what’s given the franchise its staying power. The most obvious answer would be Tom Cruise as the lead actor but I would argue Tom Cruise the producer is equally as important to what’s made each of these entries so consistently enjoyable. Though he’s technically never been credited with directing a film, Cruise clearly has an almost innate infatuation for storytelling and his influence in that regard has been particularly felt during the Christopher McQuarrie-directed Missions over the past ten years. It’s hard to argue there’s someone who believes in the magic of the movies more than Cruise and though he’ll likely be wearing a different hat the next time we see him on-screen, I can’t wait to see what he’ll pull out of it next.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Bring Her Back, a horror film starring Sally Hawkins and Billy Barratt, centered around a brother and sister who are introduced to their new sibling by their foster mother, only to learn that she has a terrifying secret.
Also playing only in theaters is Karate Kid: Legends, a martial arts sequel starring Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio, following a kung fu prodigy who embarks on a journey to enter the ultimate karate competition with the help of two seasoned veterans.
Premiering on Max is Mountainhead, a satirical dramedy starring Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman, which finds four ultra-wealthy friends in the tech industry retreating to a snowy mountain mansion amidst an ongoing financial crisis.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Last year saw the release of Trap and Smile 2, two thrillers about fictional pop stars in peril. Hurry Up Tomorrow, the latest ego stroke from real-life megastar The Weeknd, instead signals a perilous potential pivot in profession for the artist formerly known as Abel Tesfaye. Purportedly a companion film to his album of the same name released in January, it’s neither an anthology of segments inspired by songs from the record, nor is it a concert movie or extended music video. Reportedly inspired by an on-tour incident where Tesfaye/The Weeknd lost his voice while performing, the movie uses this inciting incident to spin a tired tale of obsessive fandom and self-destruction. It feels more of a piece with Tesfaye’s disastrous HBO series The Idol, in which he plays a seedy drifter attempting to hijack the career of a troubled pop singer. Just because his character isn’t quite as deplorable this time around doesn’t make the end result any less odious.

In Hurry Up Tomorrow, Tesfaye plays a fictionalized version of his The Weeknd alter ego, who we meet in the haze of a world tour under the guidance of his overzealous handler Lee (Barry Keoghan). Despite his success, The Weeknd remains unhappy, on the tail end of a romantic relationship that ended with vicious voicemails and emotional evisceration. The psychological stress leads to a muscle tension dysphonia diagnosis and a Halloween performance cut short due to the performer’s strained vocals, but not before he locks eyes with the alluring Anima (Jenna Ortega) in the crowd. She inexplicably barges her way backstage and finds The Weeknd, consoling him after the cancelled show and proposing they spend the night together instead. Despite their connection, the harsh light of day reveals that the pair have very different ideas about which direction each of them would like the relationship to go.

Generously, Hurry Up Tomorrow could be described as Tesfaye’s investigation into the The Weeknd façade he created after first releasing music anonymously back in 2009. He’s teased for months and years that he’d like to lay the moniker to rest and the film does connote the “burn it all down” posturing of someone eager to end an era. If it turns out this movie is the final project Tesfaye completes as The Weeknd, it’s a dissatisfying denouement to a music career filled with impeccably-produced pop songs. If it’s his audition reel for future film work, he needs to hurry up and put the brakes on that plan right now. Put bluntly: Tesfaye is not a believable actor in any capacity. When he’s not morosely mugging for the camera, he’s lashing out with the verisimilitude of a vexed chipmunk. I’m not sure I’ve seen a performer struggle this hard to play what’s ostensibly a version of themselves.

Unfortunately, Tesfaye has roped the otherwise reliable writer/director Trey Edward Shults into this shameless star vehicle, which indulges the talented young filmmaker’s worst impulses. Though the composition of shots from cinematographer Chayse Irvin are fleetingly striking, Shults simply has no idea what kind of story he wants to tell here. The threadbare script by Tesfaye, Shults and Reza Fahim only contributes sketches of characters and shadows of motivation when it’s not busy with platitude-laden dialogue. The direction is somehow even more meandering, stacking up pointless scenes of insipid impressionism for the first hour before settling on a horribly derivative storyline involving celebrity kidnapping. When Anima proceeds to fansplain the meaning of The Weeknd’s songs to the tied-up star, it’s as torturous for us in the audience as it is for the supposed protagonist.

Die hard fans of The Weeknd will no doubt be desperate to parse misunderstood meaning out of Hurry Up Tomorrow but its ostentatious pretensions couldn’t be more obvious. All the tired symbolism and vapid interactions point to an ego addict who wants us to feel bad for how rich and successful he is; “Save Your Tears” would’ve been good acting advice to take from one of his song’s titles. The climactic moment is both a stunningly shallow bit of self-aggrandizement and a tragic reminder of how misused Tesfaye’s talent is here. He has a powerful and compelling singing voice, even if he doesn’t quite know how to make the best use of it at this point in his career. If tomorrow holds more promising things for his artistry, it can’t come quickly enough.

Score – 1/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, an action sequel starring Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell, extending the journey of IMF agent Ethan Hunt as he continues his mission to stop a master assassin from obtaining an AI program known as The Entity.
Also coming to theaters is Lilo & Stitch, a live-action animated remake starring Sydney Elizebeth Agudong and Billy Magnussen, which finds a lonely Hawaiian girl befriending a dog-like runaway alien, unaware that the visitor is genetically engineered to be a force of destruction.
Streaming on Netflix is Fear Street: Prom Queen, a slasher film starring India Fowler and Suzanna Son, centered around the popular girls of a high school in 1988 who begin to vanish one by one prior to their highly-anticipated prom night.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

If you’re exhausted by the relentless march of Marvel movies, it may help to know that you’re not alone, as some of the characters themselves share the sentiment. “Maybe I’m just bored,” a recalcitrant Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) surmises while jumping off a gigantic Kuala Lumpur tower at the opening of Thunderbolts*, the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She’s going through the motions, both literally and figuratively, completing shady clean-up missions under the thumb of CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Still mourning the loss of her sister and the distancing of her stepfather Alexei (David Harbour), Yelena doesn’t know what she wants but she knows it isn’t this. If the ethos of The Avengers was “success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm,” then Thunderbolts* would be summed up by “if you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Yelena tells Valentina she wants out and is sent on a final mission to an off-the-map facility to destroy evidence of illegal scientific operations being run under de Fontaine’s purview. After she breaks in, Yelena’s confronted by super soldier John Walker (Wyatt Russell), who says he’s been sent there to kill her. Not a moment later, another assassin Antonia (Olga Kurylenko) engages John and then yet another assassin Ava (Hannah John-Kamen) shows up to take out Antonia. The group takes a beat to recognize the presence of a bystander named Bob (Lewis Pullman) and collectively realize they’ve been sent there to kill one another. Narrowly escaping from de Fontaine’s trap, the group of “disposable delinquents” (as Ava dubs them) solicit the help of now-congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) to settle the score with their conniving employer.

It’s impressive how the Thunderbolts* incorporates so many well-worn tropes — in addition to being a “one last job” and “ragtag band of misfits” movie, the film’s climax finds city dwellers running from a scary thing in the sky — and still comes out on top. Perhaps it’s partially due to the low bar set by some of Marvel Studios’ more recent output but director Jake Schreier and his team seem to have their eye on behind-the-camera diligence in ways that have eluded recent products of the Marvel machine. The tone here is indeed more serious, delving into the darkness of the past lives that haunt the movie’s characters, but doesn’t get too mired by glumness that it can’t have a few laughs along the way. Most importantly, these are characters who start out as odds and ends left over from previous MCU chapters but over the course of the movie, we care about them individually and collectively.

Sadly, Thunderbolts* is subject to the concrete-mixer color grading that has plagued numerous entries in this franchise but the lighting and cinematography is a cut above what we typically get in green-screen affairs. Light and shadow is an important component thematically but visually, DP Andrew Droz Palermo also uses the contrast to signal an all-encompassing menace that’s challenging and creepy. Even things like blocking and editing feel a bit more back-to-basics in a good way, with scenes arranged engagingly and the repartee between these antiheroes managed deftly. Technically, most of these characters have superpowers but the combat scenes still tend to focus more on hand-to-hand as opposed to being reliant on CG effects. It’s nice to have a superhero movie that doesn’t hinge only on gargantuan action setpieces.

When Black Widow came out in 2021, Pugh’s Yelena had to play second banana to Scarlett Johansson’s titular Avenger but Marvel wisely trusts Pugh as the face of this new crew. She’s been remarkable in film after film and she brings her all to this role, balancing a world-weary malaise with hard-earned optimism and empathy. David Harbour is even more giddy here than he was in Black Widow as the goofy Red Guardian, who’s primarily just excited that Yelena is on a team again for the first time since being a part of her winless soccer squad in childhood. On the villain side of things, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ corrupt politician gets to volley Veepesque snipes like “righteousness without power is just an opinion” at her assistant. After several projects that have signaled a decline in the brand, Thunderbolts* proves that the best way to course-correct is to focus on fundamental filmmaking. You can always count on Marvel to do the right thing, after they’ve exhausted all the other possibilities.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Shadow Force, an action thriller starring Kerry Washington and Omar Sy, following an estranged couple with a bounty on their heads, who must go on the run with their son to avoid their former employer, a unit of shadow ops, that has been sent to kill them.
Also playing in theaters is Clown In A Cornfield, a slasher movie starring Katie Douglas and Aaron Abrams, set in a fading midwestern town in which Frendo The Clown, a symbol of bygone success, reemerges as a terrifying scourge on the town’s teens.
Streaming on Netflix is Nonnas, a food dramedy starring Vince Vaughn and Lorraine Bracco, involving a man who risks everything to honor his recently-deceased mother by opening an Italian restaurant with actual grandmothers as the chefs.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup