I can safely say that among the long running action franchises out there, “Mission Impossible” might just be my favorite. Not only has the series managed to re-invent itself time and time again, but Tom Cruise continues to impress and compel as series hero Ethan Hunt. He is a classic hero, a man who is bound to his work, or else the world literally falls apart at the seams. He’s a daring, bold, and clever force of nature, but he’s also one chained forever to the IMF, forced to confront not only terrorist threats, but the fall out of his past enemies that have come back to finally haunt him.
Category Archives: Movie Reviews
Tag (2018)
One of my most anticipated movies of 2018, “Tag” is based on a true story of a group of friends who managed to stay in touch for decades by engaging in a game of tag. Playing the game since they were kids, and finding ways to be in other’s lives for the sake of playing the game and one upping each other, current “it” player Hoagie begins gathering his group of friends for one more big game of Tag. It seems their friend Jerry is retiring from the game, and in all the years they’ve played he’s never once been tagged. Now with Jerry about to get married, the group takes it upon themselves to take advantage and end his streak once and for all.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978): 2 Disc Special Edition [Blu-Ray/DVD]
Movies like “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” are virtually bullet proof from criticism. You either go in the movie prepared for the silly, or you can’t quite match the film’s frequency. “Attack of the Killer tomatoes” is one of the earliest known satires of “The Birds” where it’s about the inexplicable sentience and attack of deadly fruit on a small town rather than pecking deadly birds from the sky. And that’s about where it ends there. You figure with the preamble about “The Birds” and how this movie is basically the same thing but with tomatoes, we’d have a full fledged spoof of the Hitchcock movie.
Knuckleball (2018) [Fantasia 2018]
It’s disheartening when you’re watching a very good movie from a group of people you love, and then as the film reaches its home stretch you can see the wheels slowly coming off. That’s what “Knuckleball” was like. It’s a great idea, and a twisted premise with some great performances, but by the final twenty minutes it gets unnecessarily weird with a twist that feels tacked on and absolutely out of left field. Which is not to say “Knuckleball” is a bad movie, since right up until the final twenty minutes, I’d highly recommend it as a wrenching of the “Home Alone” formula that also kind of feels like a spiritual companion piece to M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit.”
The First Purge (2018)
I’ve come around on “The Purge” movies in 2018. What I once thought of as goofy exploitation movies, are now goofy exploitation movies with a point. They’re exploitation we need right now, they’re kind of angry diatribes about society that I’ve come to respect. Stuff about the white privileged banking off of the purge, the purge becoming an industry on to itself, “The Purge” posing as an alternate universe tale where the female candidate for president reigned supreme, and now where “The First Purge” begins as an “experiment.”
Flower (2018)
Probably the most disappointing movie I’ve seen all year, I probably would have shut “Flower” off midway were it not for the great turn by Zooey Deutch. Deutch has become a rising star in film, never failing to be charming, charismatic, funny, and beautiful. She’s one of the survivors of Disney television whose managed to convey some genuine humanity and appeal in a variety of roles ever since. It’s just a shame she got saddled with such a mean, vicious, and despicable dark drama romance that’s about as demented as it gets. “Flower” feels like the writers tried to combine Diablo Cody and Larry Clarke in to one twisted freak of a film, and man does it suck.
Skyscraper (2018)
I’m a big fan of Dwayne Johnson. What ever he’s in, I’m automatically going to watch no matter what as he packs a star quality that’s been missing in movies for fifteen years. I guess with every action star, it’s an oath they take that they must have their own “Die Hard” in their repertoire, and “Skyscraper” is that inevitable point in Dwayne Johnson’s career as a big screen hero prone to playing men staring down impossible odds. I’m sad to see that “Skyscraper” is about as bland and forgettable a vehicle as it gets, which is a shame since the premise has at least some potential to be quite an exciting twist on a creaky, worn formula turned sub-genre.