Tag Archives: Tom Cruise

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) Movie Review

When I went to see Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, I was more excited by the “extended look” at Top Gun: Maverick than I was by the movie I had come to the theater to see. The ad was the dogfight training montage sequence that occurs early in the film, in which Tom Cruise’s Maverick hunts the helpless young Top Gun graduates with an all-out aerial assault, all set to the tune of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

It is a cracker jack sequence, very exciting and well-edited. Within the context of the film, you realize that the joke of the sequence—that the first person to get “shot down” by Mav has to do 200 push-ups—doesn’t track across the entire montage. For some reason, the rules change halfway through the montage so that everyone who gets shot down by Mav has to do push-ups. But as an isolated sequence where the rules are not very important, it is a superb set piece.

This ad was the first time I felt genuinely excited for Top Gun: Maverick. Sitting in the theater for this sequel, coming 36 years after Tony Scott’s original, I soon realized that Continue reading Top Gun: Maverick (2022) Movie Review

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) Movie Review

Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the sixth installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, and like all long-lasting Hollywood franchises it serves a steady-handed formula.

The plot of Fallout, then, needs little explanation. American secret agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is tasked with finding and retrieving a series of MacGuffins. To do so he reassembles a familiar team. Hunt will dangle high in the air. He will run at top speed. He will go rogue. All in pursuit of a narrative fueled for the contrived sake of action set pieces. All of which are stellar, so who am I to complain.

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If nothing else, Fallout is the breeziest two-hours-twenty that you’ll spend in the theaters this summer. It is an achievement of Continue reading Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) Movie Review

American Made (2017) Movie Review

One thing that American Made is not is moral. Whether it is political, however, is a different question entirely.

The Doug Liman-directed, Gary Spinelli-penned film tells the pseudo-real life story of pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), who is tapped by the CIA and, eventually, the Pablo Escobar drug cartel, to run product between the U.S. and Nicaragua in the early 1980s.

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The film weaves the conspiratorial story of excess and escalating stakes through Cruise’s charming persona, which feels Continue reading American Made (2017) Movie Review

The Mummy (2017) Movie Review

In the 1930s and the 1940s, Universal made a name for itself creating monster movies. Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolfman, among others, were hugely popular intellectual properties in Hollywood. They made household names of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. They were undoubtedly iconic films.

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Now, Universal is rebooting the franchise. They first attempted this interconnected horror universe with Continue reading The Mummy (2017) Movie Review

2017 Summer Box Office Predictions

I’m about a month late to this game, but, you know, life gets in the way sometimes. Who are you to judge? This said, I am cheating a bit with a month’s worth of data already available.

Either way, it is time to take a look at what Hollywood blockbusters will top the domestic box office in Summer 2017 (Summer 2017 in this case encompassing the period between the first weekend in May and Labor Day weekend). Shall we?

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The Top Ten: Continue reading 2017 Summer Box Office Predictions

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) Movie Review

 

In the opening scene of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise’s franchise spy Ethan Hunt is seen hanging from the side of a plane as it takes off of from a private runway in Minsk. On board is a massive amount of nerve gas able to take out a large city worth of people. Hunt grapples against the hull of the plane as tech expert Benji (Simon Pegg) struggles to open the door for him remotely from a nearby grass plain.

 

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Finally, the door releases and Hunt is pitched into the cargo hold of the plane. Holding tightly to the pallet of nerve gas, he gives a guard a Continue reading Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) Movie Review