Tag: Tom Cruise

Screening Room: ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’

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(Paramount Pictures)

The newest (and maybe last?) Tom Cruise outing as Ethan Hunt is out next week.

My review of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is at Eyes Wide Open:

Over the course of Final Reckoning, Hunt hurls himself into seemingly certain death so many times it’s hard not to wonder whether he even wants to survive. His eagerness to save the world is presented as a crusade with nearly religious overtones: the film’s main McGuffin is a cruciform key, Hunt is described as “the best of men in the worst of times” as well as “the chosen one,” and at one point nearly dies before being resurrected…

Here’s the trailer:

Now Playing: ‘Chef’

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Jon Favreau and John Leguizamo in 'Chef' (Open Road Media)
Jon Favreau and John Leguizamo in ‘Chef’ (Open Road Media)

Chef-posterAfter making a mint with the first two Iron Man movies, Jon Favreau went smaller. In Chef, he plays a chef who loses his job and redeems himself by driving around with his son and best buddy serving up cubanos and beignets. Not a bad life.

Chef is playing around the country now and should be hanging around for a few more weeks before the summer season really gets started. My review is at Film Racket:

Chef is one of those jobs that many people dream of but not that many would actually want to do. A few hours on the prep line in August would burn away most foodie fantasies quite nicely. Carl Casper, the chef played by Jon Favreau in his post-Iron Man palate cleanser, however, doesn’t have many of those grotty concerns mucking up his pretty perfect life. Surrounded by gorgeous women, delectable food, rowdy friends, and a keen-eyed little moppet of a son just dying for his attention, his only real problems are those notes of discontent twanging in his head….

You can see the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

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Emily Blunt, Tom Cruise in 'Edge of Tomorrow' (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Emily Blunt, Tom Cruise in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ (Warner Bros. Pictures)

In Tom Cruise’s latest man-vs-world thriller, he plays a futuristic soldier who dies and dies again in the line of service. Emily Blunt is there to … well, it gets confusing.

Edge of Tomorrow opens wide on Friday. My review is at Film Journal International:

The spirits of World War II thrum mightily through Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow, visually in everything from the sight of aerial troopships soaring over the Dover cliffs to the rakish tilt of Tom Cruise’s officer’s cap. It self-consciously evokes the grand, terrifying spectacle and unifying purpose of the Normandy invasion. This even though the enemy forces occupying most of Europe are not Nazis but multi-tentacled, wolverine-nasty aliens called Mimics who are about this close to cleaning humanity’s clock. It’s up to an initially cowardly Cruise and a fearsomely muscled Emily Blunt to take them out, which they can accomplish by Cruise reliving the same gruesome day of battle until he figures out how to achieve victory…

You can see the trailer here:

New on DVD: ‘Oblivion’

On By chrisbarsantiIn DVD - Film2 Comments

Tom Cruise contemplates 'Oblivion'.
Tom Cruise contemplates ‘Oblivion’.

oblivion-dvdJust one of this year’s post-apocalyptic mega-budget sci-fi projects, Oblivion is a somewhat ambitious piece of work that doesn’t ultimately know what to do with itself. In part, that could result from the ever-amped presence of Tom Cruise, who doesn’t ever seem able to tamp down the Maverick long enough to register any true doubt in his own abilities to save the world. Again.

Oblivion hits Blu-ray and DVD today. My review is at Short Ends & Leader; here’s part:

Oblivion starts as some blissed-out spread in a post-apocalyptic edition ofArchitecture Digest before moving into Big Revelation science fiction. Tom Cruise plays Jack, a happy-go-lucky tech who’s one of two humans left on the Earth’s surface in the year 2077. Jack and his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, lithe and ghostly) live in a gorgeously sleek pod of a place elevated hundreds of feet off the blasted landscape. It’s like one of those moderne postwar glass bungalows in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, only it floats above the clouds and is packed with all manner of gadgetry that would make an Apple fetishist’s heart beat dangerously fast…

Here’s the trailer:

 

New in Theaters: ‘Byzantium’

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Saorise Ronan deals with bloody eternity in 'Byzantium'
Saorise Ronan deals with bloody eternity in ‘Byzantium’

BYZANTIUM-PosterIt’s been a while since Neil Jordan tried his hand at the vampire game. With his newest, Byzantium, he is working on a smaller and more intimate scale than in Interview with the Vampire (Saorise Ronan and Gemma Arterton inside of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise). It’s gloomy and capital “R” Romantic; Keats, not Meyer), which could explain the limited distribution.

Byzantium opened in limited release Friday. My full review is at Film Racket; here’s part:

Just when werewolf armies, zombie hordes, and Stephenie Meyer’s affectless prose seemed to have done in the poor old vampire film, along comes this gloomy, glossy little oddity about the deathless from Neil Jordan. Like in his elegant take on Interview with the Vampire, Jordan’s vampires are a study in dichotomy; either happy to bury themselves in the bloody necessities of their survival or morally indecisive. In the meantime, they have eternity to deal with, and not a whole lot of money or options for living it…

You can watch the trailer here: