It’s easy to make fun of Tom Cruise. But the truth is he’s one of the great movie stars of our time, and you need him in the center of a gigantic action movie like Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning.
This latest installment of the popular spy series features all of the franchise elements: exotic locales, insane stunts, and intricately choreographed set pieces. Even at age 62, Cruise still has the physicality and raw charisma to hold the center amid spectacle, and his ruggedly handsome movie-star face projects the requisite decency and resolve.
He’s a good hero, in other words, and that’s what you want in your big summer action movie. The Final Reckoning is actually part 2 of the story that began in 2023’s Dead Reckoning, and you may recall that the big baddie this time around is a malevolent artificial intelligence bent on world destruction.
The rogue AI is the preferred cinematic boogeyman these days, and with good reason, since we’re all wondering whether AI will be the actual boogeyman that triggers the apocalypse. It adds a nice frisson. But if you want something to chew on while the technobabble is recited, pay attention to the architecture of the story underneath: director and co-screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie has some things to say about fearmongering, polarization, media manipulation, and personality cults.
McQuarrie and Cruise don’t have to put this stuff in their big popcorn movie, but they do. Also consider the action movies of past eras: the mindless jingoism of John Wayne or the meathead aggression of Sylvester Stallone. The subtextual messaging of big dumb action movies is getting better. It can’t hurt, I suppose.
“The subtextual messaging of big dumb action movies is getting better. It can’t hurt, I suppose.l quote.”
Anyway, if you’re going to see Dead Reckoning at all, you’ll want to see it in the theater, where it’s more of a visceral, cathartic, full-body experience. At the early screening I attended, the packed house clearly enjoyed the thrill ride. This stuff always plays better in a crowd.
On the other hand, if you prefer your stories in smaller human-sized proportions, consider the acclaimed British indie Sister Midnight, which debuted last year at the Cannes Film Festival. Set in Mumbai, it’s among the very few Hindi-language indies to get theatrical distribution in the United States.
The film follows young bride Uma (Radhika Apte), who has just arrived in the city to start her life as a housewife after an arranged marriage. Uma is not into it. Her subsequent adventures in the city get really and truly weird.
The most interesting part of Sister Midnight, according to reviews, is that it’s genre-agnostic and genuinely unpredictable. Is it a drama? A comedy? A horror film? A domestic satire? A character portrait? A surreal art film? The answer is, evidently, yes. Check out the excellent trailer online for a sense of it all.
Stylistically, Sister Midnight has been compared to the films of Wes Anderson, which is fortuitous, since the new Wes Anderson film is also hitting theaters just now. The Phoenician Scheme is being billed as a dark comedy with elements of espionage and social satire, but of course, the most useful descriptor is Wes Anderson, who’s become a kind of subgenre unto himself.
The storyline concerns a billionaire mogul (Benicio del Toro), his latest scheme, and some family inheritance issues. Also in the mix: Tom Hanks, Michael Cera, Scarlett Johansson, Riz Ahmed, Jeffrey Wright, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Early reviews on this one are uncommonly consistent in their approval and suggest a film that’s more humanistic and poignant than usual. But in any case, Anderson is always worth seeing on the big screen, where his immaculate production design and symmetrical compositions can shine.
Quick Picks
For another rare find in theaters, look for the Chinese drama Caught by the Tides, director Jia Zhangke’s experimental mix of fiction and nonfiction that also premiered at Cannes last year.
Veterans of the 1990s may want to seek out Pavements, a documentary on indie rock legends Pavement that mixes scripted scenes with archival footage and jukebox musical bits. Irony, you see.
Several local theaters are running screenings and retrospectives for Pride Month. Among the highlights: A 20th-anniversary screening of Brokeback Mountain at the Alamo in Raleigh and the excellent 2014 British film Pride at the Cary Theater in Cary.
This one looks like fun: The action-drama Tornado, just in from the U.K., follows the fortunes of a young female samurai, kind of, in 18th-century England. Bonus points: Tim Roth plays the heavy.
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