Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation

I can remember watching the first "Mission: Impossible" film when I was nine years old all those years ago. In 1996, when that first film was released, Tom Cruise had been one of Hollywood's hottest stars for about a decade, and (the Peter Graves controversy aside) he effortlessly helped established a new American action franchise. The franchise has, for better or worse, survived and is now in its fifth installment, and the newest one, despite its stupid title ("Rogue Nation"), is actually the best one since that first film in 1996.

As a producer of these past five films, Cruise is a much more vital player in the process than practically any other modern-day Hollywood star. His long list of successful hits include "Top Gun," "Born on the Fourth of July," "Rain Man," "Jerry McGuire," "Magnolia," and "Minority Report," but these "Mission: Impossible" films seem to be a truly immense passion for him. He has almost single-handedly picked the director for each of the five films, an eclectic collection consisting of legendary director Brian DePalma, action auteur John Woo, "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" director J.J. Abrams, Pixar animator and director Brad Bird, and Christopher McQuarrie, the Oscar-winning screenwriter who wrote "The Usual Suspects." What other Hollywood star would not only willingly hang off the world's tallest building but top that stunt by opening the newest film hanging out of an airplane as it takes off and ascends into the air? I wouldn't be too surprised if his next act would be to follow in Felix Baumgartner's footsteps and dive from the stratosphere.

Note: These films go too far with all this stunt stuff. "Mission: Impossible II" stuntman Mark Joseph Connolly suffered from permanent pain due to accidents during the filming, and "Mission: Impossible III" stuntman Steven Scott Wheatley sued the production for burns he sustained on the set that covered 60 percent of his body. Perhaps that's why Cruise has done most or all of his own stunts with the latest two.

Cruise's Ethan Hunt is willing to hang on to a plane because he's trying to steal missiles on board from a terrorist organization called the Syndicate. This element of the film is its worst, as the plot not only features a hackneyed adversary for our hero and his friends, but it also seems to lazily embrace practically every spy movie trope there is, including a silly name for the bad guys. But this to some extent also actually pushes the movie to its zenith. In an age where Indiana Jones seems to have retired, America's only answer to the Bond films is "Mission: Impossible." Here, Hunt dresses up in a tuxedo, goes to the Vienna Opera, and fights henchmen twice his size. This cat-and-mouse backstage duel as the music of Giacomo Puccini rings loudly is the movie's true highlight.

Unfortunately, immediately after is where the film gets in over its head as our characters jump from Austria to Morocco, where there's some sort of highly improbable (or, shall we say, impossible) underwater obstacle. Then a car chase, featuring a few humorous moments (particularly from Simon Pegg, returning as Benji), follows, and eventually things improve again.

Hunt is helped and sometimes hindered by British agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) whose allegiances are unclear. Hunt at least knows for certain that she's trusted by the Syndicate's leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). Harris plays Lane (who on paper is as bland as any cartoon villain) with a bit of ingenuity; he twitches about, never grinning as he salivates over world domination. Lane claims he's not a terrorist. I can't remember why he believes this, and I'm really not sure I care. The content of what he says is not the least bit interesting, but how he says it surely is.

What complicates Hunt's mission is the backroom bureaucracy. Alec Baldwin appears as Alan Hunley, the Director of the CIA, and he's had enough of the lack of protocol of the IMF team, led by William Brandt (Jeremy Renner). The two argue back and forth in front of a closed-door Senate hearing, but Hunley gets his way, and the IMF is to be disbanded, even as Hunt is still overseas hunting the Syndicate. Who cares, right? Plot boring, action good. But beneath the banality is a hint of realpolitik. The MI6 director (played by Simon McBurney) tells Faust that there's no such thing as allies, only common interests. That very much is the case in this story.

Tom Cruise came across very much in a negative light in HBO's Scientology documentary "Going Clear" earlier this year. The public, though, seems to love him more often than they hate him. They will in all likely see the sixth installment, which Cruise recently signed on for, and I'm sure they very much look forward to seeing what stunning stunt he will do next.

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Edge of Tomorrow

Did you see the science fiction movie where the guy needs to solve a mystery and yet he keeps dying? But every time he dies, he suddenly wakes up again--you've seen it right? It's a neat little film with a clever concept: what if a movie was like a video game, where every time the character died, he got to try over again and win? The film is called "Edge of Tomorrow," and it's the hit new mov--wait a minute! That wasn't "Edge of Tomorrow"! That was "Source Code," with Jake Gyllenhaal, from several years ago. Alright, well both films share strikingly similar plots, although "Edge of Tomorrow" is a louder (and more stupid) movie with more action and big, creepy aliens (that happen to kind of look like a hybrid of those in "Independence Day" and "War of the Worlds"--again, not so creative).

"Edge of Tomorrow," the hit new movie with Tom Cru--wait a minute! Those helmets...that gear...those grotesque aliens...I know I've seen those somewhere. Was it "Source Code"? No, there were no aliens in that movie. Methinks it was circa 1997. I know--it was..."Starship Troopers"? I remember that one! That's the guilty pleasure Paul Verhoeven movie; "the only good bug is a dead bug!" Okay, so one must concede that this "new" movie called "Edge of Tomorrow" borrows from "Source Code" and "Starship Trooper" (and "Independence Day" and "War of the Worlds"), but that's it!

Although...those aliens...they move so darn fast, rolling around and everything. Wait just a friggan minute. Those things move just like the aliens (or robots or monsters or whatever the hell they were) in "The Matrix." Is there anything original in this supposedly new movie? Not really. "Edge of Tomorrow" is frankly, not very original. But directors as varied as Quentin Tarantino, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese have all used previous works from other directors as inspiration. There is (usually) nothing wrong with this. But when it becomes so prevalent as it is in "Edge of Tomorrow," it becomes distracting, to say the least.

But wait, wait, wait! "Edge of Tomorrow" is based on a 2004 book called "All You Need Is Kill" by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. So in actuality, "Source Code" (but not 1997's "Starship Troopers") is guilty of unoriginality, no? What a particular position this reviewer finds himself in: criticizing a movie for being unoriginal when it in fact is...original. Shouldn't this make me rescind my initial appraisal of "Source Code" and assess "Edge of Tomorrow" differently? Ah, to hell with it! Complaining about a movie because it's unoriginal does not justify disliking the film. But alas, that is not the only problem with "Edge of Tomorrow." For one, it's a pretty stupid title. But again, not sufficient evidence to bash it. Is the acting bad? No--for the most part. Cruise does a fine job. Of course, he hardly ever submits a bad performance. He can almost always lead an action blockbuster, as is the case with "Mission: Impossible" or "Top Gun," and he often puts in exceptional acting, like he did in "Magnolia" and "Collateral." He's one of the rare actors who can lead a loud, dumb movie, and actually act. But he's not given too much to do here, and neither is his co-star, Emily Blunt.

Cruise plays Major William Cage (what a pristinely original name) who sort of goes on TV and "sells" the war as a propagandist. The war happens to be the entire world (or so we should hope) against an alien species. But when he shows up to the war zone, his general (Brendan Gleeson) orders him to the battlefront, even though he has never served and has no intention to. He wakes up in handcuffs and is joyfully humiliated by his commanding officer, played by Bill Paxton (whose acting is a bit over the top, but whimsical and enjoyable nonetheless). Cage is put into terribly heavy and potent gear (similar to the ones in "Aliens" and "Pacific Rim"--oh, for the love of God). "Saving Private Ryan"-style (ugh), he storms the beach with his other soldiers...and dies quickly. But then he wakes up.

"Oh, no," the audience must think. "Not one of those stupid 'it was all a dream' types of story." No, not quite. Here's where the fun begins. Cage seems a bit nauseous as he relives essentially the exact previous moments before his "death." His commanding officer, Paxton again, goes through the same routine. The other soldiers taunt him in the same manner. Something surely is amiss. He dies again and then wakes, yet again in the fetal position, kicked up. He tries to convince the others of his prophetic ability to foresee the upcoming slaughter by the aliens; it's as if the aliens know they're coming. He goes into the same battle, at times trying to save his comrades, often with success, but it's for naught. He continues to die, he continues to wake. It's as if this is the sci-fi version of "Groundhog Day" (dammit!). But he does find one peculiar difference: there appears to be someone just like him.

This is where Blunt comes in. She plays Rita Vrataski, a soldier fiercely nicknamed "the Angel of Verdun" due to her reputation as a fighter. She, too, suffers from this bizarre condition, and once she realizes it, she instructs him to find her again once he dies. Again, this is quite fun. Over and over, we see him replaying this game, finding Rita again and again, dying again and again, becoming stronger, yet discovering not only his own flaws and inabilities, but his growing (and predictable) affection for her.

But the filmmakers cannot sustain this for long. Eventually, it just becomes loud and uninteresting. A missed opportunity, as they say, and an unoriginal one.

Did I mention the music sounds a lot like the theme from "Inception"?

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A Tribute to Tim Curry

When I was a kid, Tim Curry was in everything. He was the creepy (and by creepy I mean so scary that his fellow cast members avoided him) clown that helped make "It" regarded as the most frightening television miniseries in history. He was singing as a river of destructive oil in "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest". He stole the show from Tom Cruise as a demonic lord in Ridley Scott's "Legend" with hours of Oscar-nominated makeup on him. He was the best part of an all-star cast in "Clue," stumbling his away around a mysterious house with one or several murderers, and the only good part of John Huston's "Annie." He was also hysterical in "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York," as a hotel manager accused by a movie-within-a-movie character of smoochin' with a gangster's brother. He was practically omnipresent.

Before my time, there was of course the film that first made him famous: "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in 1975. After the successful run in London and Los Angeles as "The Rocky Horror Show," the film version, with Curry as a Dr. Frankenstein-esque character singing and dancing his way around the house/space ship, has obviously become a cult class. It has also been in the news recently: "Glee" dedicated an entire episode to it, and Curry was honored as celebrities, including Evan Rachel Wood, Danny DeVito, George Lopez and Jack Nicholson, recreated the show on the stage for a benefit concert. (It didn't hurt, also, when vintage footage of a younger Russell Crowe performing in the show recently turned up.) "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," a film he once grew sick of due to the passionate (to say the least) response it had with many fans (it is the longest-running movie showing in history), acknowledged in an interview on "Fresh Air" that he recognizes it as a right-of-passage film for many. (One of the film's biggest fans, he claims, was Princess Diana.)

Curry will appear in John Landis's "Burke and Hare," and fellow star Simon Pegg seems thrilled enough that he has posted a picture of the two of them on Twitter. But to suggest that suddenly Curry has rebounded out of nowhere would be an inaccurate way to describe this talented individual. According to IMDb, he has appeared in over two-hundred projects as an actor, eight this year alone. Three of his films ("The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Clue," and "It") will soon be remade.

Roger Ebert wrote in his review of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," a film he didn't like, that Curry was the most enjoyable cast member to watch because, for one, he was the only one (according to Ebert) who looked like he was having fun. Indeed, Curry seems to be always having fun in his films. He has a taste for the hyperbole, which heightens the enjoyment, whether he's complimenting Sylvester Stallone's daughter's big, round diphthongs in "Oscar," or going toe-to-fin with Kermit the Frog in "Muppet Treasure Island," or butchering a Romanian accent in the guilty-pleasure film "Congo."

Tim Curry has never quite been a main-stream actor. Often he is "the guy from..." or something like that; many of his performances may forever be lost in the Nickelodeon vault of history and time. But many of his films have gained cult film status, such as "Times Square," in which he played a radio show host. The film was not particularly well-reviewed upon its release in 1980, but since has become celebrated by the queer community for its portrayal of young (implied) lesbians. "Clue," likewise, virtually became unknown despite its all-star cast, solid reviews, and famous title. It was only with the popularity of home video and its frequent showing on Comedy Central that it became well-known. Of course, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in 1975 was the firm visualization of surreal camp, with its tribute to B-horror and science fiction movies, rock 'n' roll, and transvestism. Curry, likewise, has never really been a leading man, and he has claimed in interviews that he doesn't want to be one. He usually is his best when surrounded by other talented performers.

He has won several awards, like an Emmy in the 1990s for providing the voice of Captain Hook in the animated show "Peter Pan and the Pirates." He has also been nominated for a Tony twice, first as playing the title role in "Amadeus" opposite Ian McKellen in 1980 and again as King Arthur in "Spamalot" in 2005. Still, something even as prestigious as a Golden Globe or even a Hollywood Star has been kept from him. (But he did open the Oscars one year.) In essence, Tim Curry is Hollywood's best kept secret for a quarter-of-a-century.

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