Tag: J.J. Abrams

Every Mission: Impossible Movie Ranked, From Worst to Best

Where does Tom Cruise’s latest, “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” rank among the six films?

Did anyone ever expect the “Mission: Impossible” franchise to have this much longevity? In every movie, Tom Cruise dons a ridiculous prosthetic mask, pulls off an impossible heist and even ends up forking over the thing he just stole to the very person he’s trying to keep it from in the first place. But across 22 years, six films and five directors, each “Mission: Impossible” movie has varied wildly in tone, style and cast while pushing the limits of wacky, action set pieces and preserving the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the original TV series. With “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” the sixth film in Cruise and Paramount’s franchise hitting theaters Friday, we chose to accept this nearly impossible mission of trying to decide which ones we like best. This list will self destruct in five seconds. Continue reading “Every Mission: Impossible Movie Ranked, From Worst to Best”

10 Cloverfield Lane

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is a chamber horror drama that bares ties to “Cloverfield” in name only.

10cl_posterJ.J. Abrams projects tend to be more interesting as viral marketing campaigns than as actual films. Not so with “10 Cloverfield Lane,” a tightly-wound chamber drama and horror thriller that bares ties to the 2007 surprise blockbuster “Cloverfield” in name only.

In a jarring and harried opening, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is on the run, not from an impending natural disaster, but from a relationship. She drives to the middle of nowhere to escape her problems and gets run off the road in a violent collision. The disorienting, turbulent moment, with a jolting cut away in image and sound to reveal the title credits, speaks to the film’s style. First time director Dan Trachtenberg plays on what we think we know throughout “10 Cloverfield Lane.”

When Michelle wakes, she’s cuffed to a pipe in a small bunker. An IV is attached to her arm and she has a large, locking brace on her knee. In a panic, she manages to reach across her room to her cellphone, only to find she has no service underground. Her captor is Howard (John Goodman), who tells her, “I’m going to keep you alive.”

The line has multiple connotations. Howard found Michelle crashed on the side of the road and brought her in, but he has to keep her prisoner and orders her to behave. He explains that outside the walls of his bunker, an “attack” has taken place rendering the air contaminated and uninhabitable. Michelle is skeptical. She sees two mutilated pigs outside a window but also a blood stain and dent on the side of Howard’s truck that suggests he abducted her and lied to keep her locked up.

Then there’s Emmet (John Gallagher Jr.), a dopey, good-ol country boy with a broken arm. Did Howard break it? He’s not a captive, but doesn’t seem to be on Howard’s good side. Could they be in cahoots, or can he be trusted? He claims he saw the attack, something he’s never seen before, but only believes the air is poisonous because Howard said so.

“How do you know that,” Michelle prods. Time and again Trachtenberg pushes the question and makes Michelle a prisoner of circumstance, torn between the danger both inside the bunker and out. Howard could be sincere or devious, sane or delusional, or maybe a bit of all four. Goodman speaks calmly, but firmly with a lightly scolding, parental tone that complicates the dynamic between Howard, Michelle and Emmet. He talks fondly of his dead daughter and shows Michelle similar affection.

Trachtenberg’s visual tone has him playing on the contrast between claustrophobic close-up shots and emptier wide shots. There’s little concrete sense of time, and even the bunker’s confines run hot and cold. One scene is an intimate conversation between Michelle and Emmet between two walls, his backdrop a frigid blue and hers a warmer pink. There’s no certainty as to what they’re really thinking about the other.

While the question of what lies outside the bunker provides constant suspense and curiosity, the ultimate reveal almost can’t help but be a letdown. The conflict between Howard and Emmet doesn’t feel as well developed as could be, Howard becomes more of a traditional monster down the line, and the breathtaking ending feels like an out-of-left field twist that overwhelms the film’s small scale beginning. And if “Cloverfield” got anything right, it’s that the protagonists at its center were not heroes. Michelle has a weirdly innate talent for shimmying through air vents, crafting hazmat suits from household items and performing acrobatics to evade her captor.

A recent article in Vulture suggested that “10 Cloverfield Lane” could change the way Hollywood approaches movie franchises. The original story by Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken and with help from Damien Chazelle (“Whiplash”) was written without “Cloverfield” in mind but contains some of that film’s DNA. If bending the parameters of a small story can lead to more compelling, original ideas such as this getting to the screen, that’s a good tradeoff.

3 ½ stars

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

StarWarsEpisodeVIIPosterI was 9 years old when “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” was released, and despite all the bile hurled at the prequels, at that age I had no concept of good. All I knew was that there was more. More Star Wars was a good thing, and for the Millennials like me who give the prequels the most hatred, “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens” is the first Star Wars movie we’ve been able to see for the first time as adults.

“The Force Awakens” doesn’t need to be as great as “A New Hope” or “The Empire Strikes Back” for it to live up to expectations. It needs to be able to fit snugly into the Star Wars canon in a way the prequels never seemed to belong. J.J. Abrams has delivered less than a masterpiece, but “The Force Awakens” is a Star Wars movie.

“The Force Awakens” has the spectacle, the whimsy, the humor, the campy, screwball charm, the romance and the invigorating excitement of the original three films. In channeling the same themes of good and evil and the mythos of the Force, this film has the spirit of a Star Wars classic.

In part, it’s because J.J. Abrams has nearly remade “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” In between films, a new evil entity known as The First Order has risen to power. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has vanished, and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is the dark lord out to find him and put an end to the rise of the Jedi. A Resistance pilot named Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) hides a map to Luke’s location in a droid called BB-8 and sends it off on a desert planet. The person who finds it is another scavenger, a person without a family and with dreams of becoming a pilot and getting out of this desolate place. Starting to sound familiar? The only difference is that this young person is a woman, Rey (newcomer Daisy Ridley). Along the way a Stormtrooper named Finn (John Boyega) will break off from The First Order and even stage a daring, hapless rescue of Poe before meeting Rey, working to protect her and banish his own past demons.

Though “A New Hope” is proud to boast themes of good and evil in the biggest and broadest of space opera, it is a film about growth, finding identity and believing in yourself. Luke makes that spiritual journey and sheds his youthful naiveté, and Rey will go on that same journey, answering the call to believe in the Force and embrace her destiny.

This is what Star Wars is about, and in that spirit Abrams more than delivers. As with the best of the franchise, the film dances between different moments of action on the ground and in the air. There are thrilling lightsaber duels, stunning dogfights, goofy chases and escapes from an amorphous tentacled creature, a scene inside a seedy cantina full of quirky galactic beings, and even something of a new Death Star. Despite the high CGI gloss, Abrams has captured the tempo of these pictures as much as the tone, with cathartic, cheerful action set pieces that avoid chaos and over-stylization in a way that’s classical and tangible.

John Boyega has a lot of uncontained enthusiasm as Finn, Adam Driver has a lot of angsty rage as Kylo Ren, and Daisy Ridley has a lot of scruffy, rugged charm and star power. Yet all three are led by the master, back in character as though he never left: Harrison Ford as Han Solo. Han is one of the great pop culture characters of all time, and he continues to get the best lines, and Chewbacca the best reaction shots. Ford is acting from the seat of his pants, sarcastic and cool yet always in a hurry and thinking on the fly. Finn has brought Han to the new Death Star and reveals he has no plan for taking down its shields, but maybe they can use the Force. “That’s not how the Force works,” Han bellows in his trademark exasperation. This could be Ford’s best performance in nearly two decades.

“The Force Awakens” does at times feel like a reboot, but hearing John Williams’s magical score swell in all the right places reminds us that there’s no harm in not reinventing the wheel. And the film does take one massive risk that will surely be polarizing. But regardless of if the plot has holes or if the twists hold up, this is still Star Wars. More is good.

4 stars

Star Trek Into Darkness

“Star Trek Into Darkness” isn’t overstuffed, but isn’t exactly balanced, and it begs for more innovation.

J.J. Abrams’s innovation on the “Star Trek” reboot was that he managed to take a long-standing institution, play with a very sacred universe’s timeline and still manage to canonize it. If he didn’t manage to impress me, and I was one of very few, it’s that doing so was his only innovation.

Set pieces existed for their own sake, as did stylistic camera twirls and lens flares. Dialogue teetered on being self-serious and self-referential without pausing for breath, and the plot that grew out of it didn’t make as much sense as it appeared. Even Roger Ebert pointed out that in this futuristic sci-fi epic, space battles were reduced to cataclysmic mayhem and sparring with fists and swords.

And although “Star Trek Into Darkness” improves upon that last aspect to the point that I enjoyed everything I saw, part of me wishes the Abrams from “Super 8” showed up, to dust off a cliché, and boldly go where none have gone before. Point being, if you’re looking for innovation here, you won’t find it. Continue reading “Star Trek Into Darkness”

Off the Red Carpet: 3 Weeks till Oscars

Sorry this is a bit late, but consider it an opportunity for yet another Oscar blogger to wonder whether “Argo” is actually “Apollo 13” or “Driving Miss Daisy.”

Seriously, there’s been a lot of news lately, but people have run out of things to discuss. The entire season has gone so long without an actual frontrunner that now Oscar bloggers are practically inventing reasons to call one. More on that right now.

Ben Affleck SAG
Ben Affleck accepting his SAG award Sunday night. Image courtesy businessinsider.com

“Argo” wins SAG and PGA

Over the past weekend, “Argo” made a surprise sweep by first winning Best Film from the Producers Guild and then Best Ensemble from the Screen Actors Guild. Keep in mind, this is a movie that only a few weeks ago looked weak by losing a nomination for Ben Affleck for Best Director. Now it’s beaten “Lincoln” in two places where it should’ve had the edge, the PGA because it’s the bigger box office success and the SAG because if “Lincoln” is anything, it’s an actors’ movie, and if “Argo” is anything, it’s not that.

So the narrative that has grown out of this is that “Argo” is modeling the trajectory of “Apollo 13,” the last movie to sweep the PGA, SAG and DGA without having a Best Director nominee in tow. Except I don’t think the comparison makes a whole lot of sense. “Apollo 13” didn’t win the Golden Globe (not that that matters), there were only five Best Picture nominees, not nine, “Lincoln” is hardly “Braveheart,” “Braveheart” won in part because it was one of the first movie to send out screeners to Academy members, and “Argo” hasn’t won the DGA yet anyway. That happens this weekend, so we’ll see.

“Argo” isn’t quite “Driving Miss Daisy” either, the last (and one of three films) to win Best Picture without a Best Director nomination. “Argo” is a studio genre thriller that celebrates the movies, not a stuffy period drama crowd pleaser that plays on white guilt and stars Dan Ackroyd.

Frankly, I think anyone calling this race for anyone is grossly exaggerating. With such a solid crop of movies, each of them with their own powerful narrative that could drive a victory, and many of them being brought up again in conversation by critics and the public, almost any movie has SOME conceivable chance of winning. For my money, this is still a four horse race, maybe five. “Argo” and “Lincoln” are certainly safer horses to bet on, but none of the others have packed up and gone home. Continue reading “Off the Red Carpet: 3 Weeks till Oscars”

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

The action set pieces in “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” are so cartoonish it’s no surprise Brad Bird of “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille” fame made it his live action debut.

It is the rare fourth movie capable of revitalizing a franchise by cutting down on the exposition, hyper stylization and melodrama of each installment and delivering wholesome action movie adrenaline. Continue reading “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”

Super 8 Review

J.J. Abrams’s “Super 8” is a thrilling sci-fi that uses Steven Spielberg’s classics as inspiration.

Some kids in a small town in the late ‘70s are making a zombie movie with a Super 8 camera. The director Charlie says his movie needs to have a story, characters we care about and real production value. So he gets his middle school friends to read lines like “I love you too,” to paint themselves in zombie makeup and to blow up model trains with real explosives.

To think there was a time when kids actually knew what a movie needed to make a memorable summer thrill.

J.J. Abrams, the director of the spirited and exciting monster movie mystery and adventure “Super 8,” is still one of the new kids on the block in the movie world. He’s a household name on television, but as somewhat of a director-for-hire on franchise pictures like “Mission: Impossible III” and “Star Trek,” he’s been waiting for an original story like this one to show he looks up to the big boys still making movies, specifically Steven Spielberg.

Continue reading “Super 8 Review”

Star Trek (2009)

I don’t know much about “Star Trek,” the beloved TV series. But I think I know enough about J.J. Abrams’s new film to understand it, just not to enjoy it.

In making “Star Trek,” Abrams sought to make the classic sci-fi cool again, making the characters more youthful, improving the special effects, making sense of the plots, you know, just branch out to a whole new audience of ignorant fanboy yuppies without losing the old ones. Abrams retreads the original series by means of yet another origin, prequel story. As is necessary of any origin film, Abrams does some name-dropping (“What’s your name citizen? My name is James Tiberius Kirk!” says an over compensating 12-year old), parades out all the old catch phrases and stays true to the series’ vast realm of logic.

With that said, newcomers to the series not already familiar with the universe’s rules are not welcome to Abrams’s comeback celebration. They won’t grasp the breadth and meaning of Spock’s (Zachary Quinto) very verbose dialogue. They won’t know that Chekov (Anton Yelchin) is intended to be somewhat of a comic relief and not just the worst casting choice in history. Continue reading “Star Trek (2009)”