The eighth and purportedly last installment in the stunt-forward espionage film series, Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (B-) is a very late bloomer, with both extended exposition and also a soggy undersea sequence overstaying their welcome before the movie’s final hour finally delivers the goods with intersecting sequences of suspense and Tom Cruise in an amazing fight climbing between two mid-air biplanes. For Cruise, this film delivers all the tropes: maverick hero who is the only one with the right answers to save the world, extended risky business in underwear (this time on a submarine) and so much running through cities that a few good men would hardly be able to keep up the pace. The story is over-engineered, but the stakes are high. The ensemble doesn’t get much room to shine, except Angela Bassett who’s in the zone as a resolute American president. And alas few new gadgets are introduced to add to the novelty factor in a series often known for surprising disguises and inventions. The movie really rises to the occasion in the final act with Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell adding aplomb to the climactic countdown; but by then many may have lost patience with it. Like the seven films before it in the series, it’s a film of impeccable crafts, mighty set pieces and globetrotting adventure. As a franchise it has eclipsed its TV origins to become its own sensation, and still producer Cruise is giving it his all to justify viewers choosing the big screen experience. There are some clever grace notes connecting the new film to prior outings, although this direct sequel to Dead Reckoning can certainly be watched standalone and will not be all that much more confusing. The villain being AI in these final two outings is prescient but also a little underwhelming. Fortunately what starts out as a snooze sticks the landing with Cruise’s control. 

When presented visionary new work by a filmmaker with such creative feats of derring-do as Bong Joon ho, you grant grace to aspects of the movie more successful than others. But the director’s latest science fiction black comedy Mickey 17 (C) swings and misses in equal measures and ends up in the “mildly unrecommended” category. In a dehumanizing future, our hero Mickey is an “expendable,” a kind of human lab rat dispatched for dangerous intergalactic tasks; and if any of those fool’s errands turn out fatal, voila, we print out a new Mickey clone with a brand new body but memories intact. Robert Pattinson plays all the Mickeys and gives special manic attention to two of them. He’s a lot of fun with his Everyman accents and aw-shucks mannerisms. Naomie Ackie plays a fellow voyager, security agent and love interest and is a delight making the most of her role opposite the protagonist. Steven Yeun gets a bit less to do as a pilot and childhood friend. Then there’s Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette, who seem to be acting in a whole other universe as a devious political couple who appear to be channeling a mash-up of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and The Trumps. Their sinister sequences are grating and misbegotten more than enlightening or funny. So after a promising opening salvo, the movie actually becomes a bit tedious and ultimately lands in a moribund final act on an ice planet filled with rather uninspired wiggle worm inhabitants. So we are left with an enthusiastic series of central performances by one talented actor and a clever foil and not much interesting going on around them. The lavish production design and effects are all vintage Bong Joon ho (food never looks very good in his steampunk future) but the commentary about capitalism and worker’s rights are mostly muddled and rarely come into farcical focus. Often bombastic and bloated, the film’s themes start gnashing and clashing into a dystopian doom scroll. It all looks like one of the director’s films, but something is off.