The New Classics: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

by Michael Cusumano

Scene: Scaling the Burj Khalifa
In the course of writing this column, I eventually got around to asking myself the inevitable question:  “What is the 21st century scene I’ve watched the most times?” 

I knew with certainty that the answer was the Burj Khalifa scene from Brad Bird’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, even if I couldn’t immediately account for the why. Of course you could simply say ”Why not?” It’s already firmly established in the pantheon of great action scenes. But it’s not like the past two decades have seen a dearth of great action filmmaking. Why not “Ship’s Mast” from Death Proof or the centerpiece car chase from Drive? What exactly is it about Tom Cruise pawing his way up the side of the world’s tallest building? 

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YNMS: Top Gun Maverick

We're way behind on movie trailers. So here's another Yes No Maybe So courtesy of Tony Ruggio...

The interwebz collectively threw shade a year or two ago when Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy, Oblivion) announced the twenty-years-too-late sequel to Top Gun, complete with some premise about sons and legacies and an aging Maverick. Sounded like the same ol’ routine any time a long-dormant brand or franchise suddenly decides to reboot or, in the case of Top Gun, sequelize for the very first time. It’s somethin’ else what a good trailer can do...because all of that is here and more in the first trailer which dropped on Thursday, and yet it’s one of the best teasers this year...

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#TBT: The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

by new contributor Maggy Torres-Rodriguez

 

Today’s special #TBT goes to the magnificently odd Terry Gilliam picture The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 10 years ago this week. Lush with extravagant dreamscape sets, innovations in CGI, and an all-star cast, it still holds its own today.

Minus that one scene with Verne Troyer in blackface that was meant as a joke, but generated more of an uneasy murmuring of “oh no, baby what is u doin?” from the audience. But... problematic decisions in Hollywood are made on the daily, so everyone kind of just ignored that and focused on the fact that it was Heath Ledger’s last film... 

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The New Classics - Collateral

Michael Cusumano here to take us back to the Summer of 2004 for the latest film to join the ranks of The New Classics.

Scene: Jazz Club
While Collateral has both feet down in the realistic, that trademark Michael Mann style is just intoxicating enough to make my mind wander to the mystical. I can't help but view Mann’s thriller as a modern retelling of Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Tom Cruise’s Vincent is the Grim Reaper and Jamie Foxx’s Max is von Sydow’s knight, granted a temporary reprieve because he has piqued Death’s interest...

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Months of Meryl: Lions for Lambs (2007)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.  

#38 — Janine Roth, a liberal network journalist faced with an ethical quandary.

JOHN: When Meryl Streep accepted her Golden Globe for The Devil Wears Prada in January 2007, she divulged a prophecy: “This has been such a fun year to watch movies because of you gals,” she said, citing fellow nominees like Annette Bening, Toni Collette, and Beyoncé. “[It] makes you want to cry with gratitude… until next year.” How could Streep have known that her 2007 would contain some of the most insipid and unwatchable films of her entire career?

In Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs, Streep switches sides from Rendition, her previous War on Terror drama, playing Janine Roth, an investigative journalist given an exclusive scoop by a hawkish, right-wing senator named Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) about a new military tactic being deployed in Afghanistan. Because Lions for Lambs was made under the same misguided inspiration of everything-is-connected political narratives like Babel, Crash, and Rendition, Streep and Cruise’s conversation is just one of three narrative threads...

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