Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning

AIs Wide Shut

Mission Impossible
The Final Reckoning
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
USA 2025
Paramount
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Spoilers for the last movie.

Okay... so right up front I will say that, since I thought the last film in this mostly wonderful franchise was a bit dull and, since there’s been a lot of word of mouth and critical response that the first hour or so of this one is pretty dreary before it picks up, I was going into Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning (which should rightly be called Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 2 but I suspect there’s a very good reason it isn’t, perhaps to do more with the box office returns on the last one rather than any superstitious caveats the main lead has with the number two) with not so high hopes. So right up front I would like to refute all those claims because, frankly, I had at least as much fun with the pre-submarine sequences in this as I did with the rest of the movie. Perhaps more than the rest of it to an extent.

This one sees the return of most of the crew from the previous three films... Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames (alas, my favourite character played by Rebecca Ferguson was killed off in the last installment) along with recent new regulars Hayley Atwell and the increasingly brilliant Pom Klementieff. Plus assorted newcomers.

Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character is in hiding, now possessing both parts of the cruciform key needed to lift the next gadget to help bring down the Artificial Intelligence (AI) known as The Entity, which is gradually taking control of the nuclear arsenals of the world for a big bang day to wipe out humanity. It’s obviously down to Cruise and some new, acquired on the job team members (including an absolutely brilliant call back character who was a very minor character in one sequence of the first film and played by the same actor... who’s has a lot more to do here and is just fantastic) to help him in his quest.

It’s fast and furious and everybody is really good, with some intense scenes between the president (played by the great Angela Bassett) and her staff, who want to start the nuclear war just a little early. Can Cruise and co come through in time? Well, the highly improbable set of split timing sequences which make this a possibility, leading to a thing which has to be timed blindly to within literally a blink of an eye, requires... people performing the usual superhuman style antics which takes a lot of suspension of disbelief, for sure.

Now the two big action set pieces of the last two hours of the movie were, to me, a little dull... a submarine suspense sequence and a bi-plane suspense sequence (I prefer the more punch punch, shooty shooty explosion style set pieces myself) but all in all I’d say this film has a much more even tone than the last one and it is, I’m glad to say, a fair bit better than that one (even with the exclusion of Rebecca Ferguson). The score by franchise newcomers Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey is serviceable but seems to be lighter on the Lalo Schifrin themes than some of them... that being said, since it’s so far not had a proper CD release at time of writing  (just a rubbish digital and scratchy vinyl release) it may be that I don’t ever get to hear it away from the movie, which would be a shame.

All in all, I didn’t find this film at all slow and I’m scratching my head at some of the comments by the critics. A criticism would be that Shea Whigham’s character did not, this time around, need an almost ‘so tacked on it seems fake’ callback to one of the characters in the first movie... that was kind of dumb and unnecessary, I thought. However, having said that, I’d like to throw out a big shout out to Rolf Saxon and Lucy Tulugarjuk, who were both brilliant here. Not to mention Love Lies Bleeding star Katy O’Brian, who doesn’t have much to do here but who certainly has a lot of screen presence.

And that’s me done with Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning other than to say... final reckoning my backside. Cruise and his cast and crew could easily make another one of these if they change their minds and the big bad of the movie could also easily be brought back if that is what the writers intend. Not the best of the Mission Impossible films (that would be this one, here) but nowhere near the worst of them and with some nice shout backs which tie it back to a number of the previous films too. Works well at the cinema and would probably suit a big TV set too, I suspect.

Terminal

End Of The Line

Terminal
Ireland/UK/Hong Kong/Hungary/USA 2018
Directed by Vaughn Stein
Arrow Films Blu Ray Zone B

Well this could have been a lot better... I’m just not sure how because it manages to press a lot of the right buttons while still seeming to be completely dull, somehow.

Terminal is a movie I saw trailered back in 2018 at my local cinema and the trailer looked pretty intriguing so... I waited and I waited and... it just didn’t arrive. Turns out... and I only just recently found this out... it only played for a limited engagement at the Prince Charles cinema in London. I don’t know why since it has lots of the kind of elements modern cinema audiences like to see, not least a star studded cast with such luminaries as Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg and Michael Myers. However, it wasn’t until I spotted it on the bargain bucket racks at Fopp for a fiver that I realised that it had ‘come and gone’, as it were.

So, I’ve remedied that situation now and, frankly, I wish I had seen it at the cinema so I would have known not to buy a copy. The problem I have with conveying just how disappointed with it I was, however, is that it’s one of those movies that has so many great things going for it and it still, somehow, manages to fail at holding the interest throughout. Trying to pin down just why that is, though, is something I can only take a less than educated guess on. Given the obvious talent in front of and behind the camera, it seems very hard to manage to make a film like this fail on some level.

Now, I’ve gone on record saying I don’t like gangster movies and it would be true to say that most of the characters that inhabit this bizarre underworld are not people I could ever sympathise with so... I dunno that could be it, I guess. That does seem too obvious an excuse though, especially since I quite like a lot of the main players performing in the film.

Okay... so let’s start with what you are going to realise as soon as you spin the film up. It’s honestly one of the most gorgeous looking films you are going to see... both in terms of the constantly contrasted, neon coloured lighting which should contradict but perpetuates the solid, film noir atmosphere from the picture. I knew I was going to be in for a good ride visually from very early on, where the director has a third of a shot on the left lit with a green alleyway and everything else black. Then a door opens on the right so that the frame is lit in the opposite third with a totally different colour with another character different to the one who was previously in the left hand third of the frame. So we have a frame split into three colours... if you count the middle, black section as a colour... and the effect is quite beautiful...

And the whole film is like this. It’s a visually rich feast for the eyes and, frankly, this in itself should be more than enough for me. Couple this with some nicely written dialogue involving some sharp and witty conversations performed by actors who really know what they are doing, well... by 20 minutes in my mind should have been well engaged with the content.

Alas, the convoluted story, while not exactly that surprising or unfathomable, doesn’t really hold the interest in its execution and, I have to wonder if this is because of some kind of pacing issue, perhaps with the way the film was edited, as to why I just wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. I mean, it’s an hour and a half movie but, honestly, it feels like three hours.

One of the problems I can put my finger on is the lack of surprise on certain of the many ‘twist reveals’ in the film. For instance, the identity of a Mr. Big villain character is so obvious that, when the person took some prosthetics and make-up off near the end, rather than be surprised I was thinking that, actually, with all the make up effects removed the actor looked less like what the actor usually looks like than when he was in disguise. So no real reveal there, then. Especially when, by the time that character reveal is seen on screen, pretty much all the other candidates viable as the identity of this key role are pretty much dead.

Similarly, when another main character is revealed to be playing... how can I put this... a dual role, it really is no surprise. There have been at least two very telling moments where this is kind of hinted at earlier in the film and the choices are... either the editing of the chronology of the movie is really bad and some stupid mistakes were made or... there’s more than one of that character, so to speak. So, yeah, no surprises there, either, I’m afraid.

What was surprising, actually, was the motivation behind the actions of this dual role, as revealed in the last twenty minutes or so of the film in a... it has to be said... thoroughly nasty revenge movie kind of denouement. The real reason for the main protagonist(s) actions throughout the film are not that easy to predict, I would have to say although, by this point in the film, it does seem to be a case of too little, too late. At least in terms of finally wringing out any kind of entertainment value from the script. It’s also, possibly, a little hard to watch for the more squeamish audience members, even though the final... shall we say ‘blow’... is actually off camera and implied.

And that’s me done with Terminal, I guess. A beautiful piece of eye candy with some cracking dialogue, smart performances and, in all honesty, not much going for it despite all of these factors. I know this is a short review but I really have nothing much more to say about this one. If you are a viewer who loves the visual aesthetics of cinema then... you probably need to check this out for just the shot design alone. I can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone else though because, somehow, it’s just plain dull and fails to hold the interest. Not one I’d happily sit through again.

Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1

Ai Ai Oh

Mission Impossible -
Dead Reckoning Part 1
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
USA  2023 Paramount Pictures
UK cinema release print

This was okay.

Having said that, I’m really not sure why Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 has had such strong word of mouth... the reviews I’ve been half hearing lifted my expectations to a point where I was possibly going to be a little disappointed with whatever I saw at the cinema last night, perhaps. Okay, so my history with the Mission Impossible film franchise (which you can read in its entirety via reviews accessed from the index link top right... just scroll on down past the book section and into the film section) is such that I thought the first one was so so and that, after that, each successive film kept getting better and better, up to and including the fifth in the sequence, Rogue Nation, which I personally think is the best of these movies to date. The sixth one was okay but I think was nowhere really near it in terms of the art and craft of the former and, I think, that holds for this one too, which seems to be not quite as good as the previous movie in the series also.

Still, it’s quite good and holds the interest all the way through. It’s a nice piece of espionage entertainment and the cast and crew still do a great job with it. This one continues with most of the regulars in place... so we have the core team now pretty much being Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson. There are a few others returning too, in the form of Vanessa Kirby as the arms dealer The White Widow and, for the first time since the first movie, Henry Czerny as Kittridge. 

 We also have a ‘new to the franchise’, joint leading lady in the form of the great Hayley Atwell as professional thief Grace. I loved Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter in the various Marvel movies and TV show and she’s a good fit with Cruise for this film for sure.

Another stand out new character in this one is a female assassin called Paris (named after one of the original TV show characters) played by Pom Klementieff (who plays Mantis in the Marvel movies). She’s got a lot of screen presence in this and is a lethal proposition in any fight... she also has her own kind of shorthand mini arc in this and... well, not saying anything more about her other than she’s a good character.

The plot of the film in terms of the global threat the team has to face in this one does feel like the stakes are upped once again. It’s a newly self aware artificial intelligence (so we’re told) known as The Entity, with a human assistant from out of Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) past in the form of human villain Gabriel (Esai Morales). The Entity is a big problem because it sets everyone (every nation and power) against each other when it needs to and can be in the room listening to you all the time, because it’s in everything digital. Which is why, halfway through the film in a sequence where one of my favourite characters gets killed (nope, I’m not saying which one... there are more than a few deaths in this movie), the crew find out that their tech can’t be trusted to be working with them and, at one point, their espionage toys are taken away from them completely. So yeah, they’re alone and in the cold with everyone after them because, of all the interested parties who have a stake in finding the AI, which involves gaining possession of two halves of a key which will unlock something which nobody seems to quite know about yet... Ethan Hunt and his friends are the only ones who want to destroy it and not try and control it for world domination. So, yeah, it’s the rest of the intelligence bureaus in the world against them, not to mention the AI, which seems to be manipulating them at every turn.

The film has some good practical stunts (always a bonus and I wish Tom Cruise would just slow down a bit before he kills himself... he’s a good actor and doesn’t deserve to die for a movie) and some lengthy action set pieces. I did find a lot of those pieces kinda dull to be honest but, not so dull that it wasn’t entertaining enough in its combined onslaught that I ever got bored, to be sure. Lorne Balfe’s score, again incorporating Lalo Schifrin’s iconic themes, is pretty nicely done but, again, I don’t think it’s the best in the series. Of all the composers who have worked on these films over the years... Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, Lorne Balfe... I think it’s Joe Kraemer’s score for Rogue Nation which is the most satisfying of the bunch. This one is pretty cool though and I’m looking forward to purchasing La La Land’s CD release of this and giving it a spin when funds allow.

Other than that, not much more to say about Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1... it’s a nice enough movie for lovers of the series and, as you’d expect, it kinda leaves things up in the air with all the threats still out there. Although it does have a stop and take a breath resolution of sorts at the end, to wrap things up and get things ready for part two next year. I guess it’s a cinematic rendezvous I’ll definitely have to keep with the caveat that Cruise has said that the conclusion will be his final part in the franchise. So expect more regular character deaths and mayhem would be my guess.

Mission Impossible - Fallout

A Running Cruise

Mission Impossible - Fallout
2018 USA Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
UK cinema release print.

So here we go again. The sixth entry into the big budget, big screen versions of the popular Mission Impossible TV show is with us and, once again, the trailer managed to drag me in using the cunning ruse of a running Cruise doing lots of action stuff against a coolish sounding score. Which always works on me, to be honest.

For a few years now, I have observed that each one of these films released always seems to be even better than the previous movie in the series and this culminated in my favourite of these fizzy, spy action confections from the Mission Impossible team, Rogue Nation. I have to say that, while Mission Impossible Fallout carries on the same story, set a couple of years later, this one doesn’t actually get nearly as good as that previous installment. Although it’s still a pretty cool movie and certainly as good as the third and maybe fourth movies. Nothing to rival that wonderfully spy-hard cool opera house sequence in Rogue Nation though, alas.

The plot set up is that, with the captured Solomon Lane (played once again by Sean Harris) in the hands of various governments, the remnants of his terrorist group The Syndicate, calling themselves The Disciples, are being held together by a mystery man known only as John Lark. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt whose mission, should he choose to accept it, is to get back a load of stolen plutonium from The Disciples and, presumably, find out who John Lark is and shut The Disciples down before they blow various countries up etc and destabilise the world as we know it.

So, yeah, business as usual and Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Alec Baldwin from previous films in the franchise are there to help him do it. Unfortunately, Jeremy Renner doesn’t return here as he was busy shooting the sequel to next year’s follow up to Avengers - Infinity War (reviewed here) but instead we have a new character played by the current Man Of Steel himself, Henry Cavill. Of course, Cavill is no stranger to the spy game as he played an interesting variant of Napoleon Solo in the recent The Man From U.N.C.L.E movie (reviewed here) and, sure enough, he does a pretty good job here as the ‘blunt hammer’ of a character he is initially introduced as. Also back in the mix, we have the very welcome return of Rebecca Ferguson as the double agent Ilsa Faust from the last movie and an interesting turn from actress Vanessa Kirby playing a character called White Widow. There’s also another, very special returning character... but I’ll get to her in a minute.

So the film is full of the usual action sequences and I was absolutely horrified as to how much of the stunts Cruise gets to do here. Sure, we all know the story of how he injured his ankle jumping between two buildings and, yes, you can totally see that shot in the final cut and feel the pain of the star as he does things to his ankle that  he’s not supposed to. What really worried me, though, is that he’s also flying helicopters quite dangerously by himself, riding motorbikes against traffic and even performing a free fall rescue operation and halo jump (for which he trained for about a year) and, wow, I’m so amazed this guy is a) able to get insured on set/location in any country other than Hong Kong and b) hasn’t accidentally killed himself making one of these things yet. This guy is certainly dedicated to his craft, though, so despite heavy qualms about his personal beliefs off of the set, you have to give this guy a lot of respect for these kinds of shenanigans. Not to mention he’s also a pretty great actor with a very likeable on-screen presence (and I know from a first hand story on a bus ride from one of his old costumers that he’s a pretty nice guy to be around on set with too).

The film is a blast if you like stunts and action sequences as they are all done with the usual slick, professionalism that this kind of high profile Hollywood blockbuster usually achieves but my biggest problem is that... okay, it’s good but there are absolutely no real surprises in it. There’s a so called twist in this and there are also a fair few scenes set up to fool the opposition and, for effect, the audience at the same time but, honestly, if you’ve seen just a few of these films then you’ll see all this stuff coming a mile off... not to mention the ‘not so well hidden’ true identity of John Lark. That one’s kinda obvious. So the lack of ‘I never saw that coming’ really does bring the film down a level, I think.

That being said, it’s still a blast and it also sees the return of Michelle Monaghan in a quite respectfully highlighted role in the last big section of the film, reprising her character from the third and fourth films and finally tying up that ‘big loose thread’ from the third one which people like me have been so worried about since that installment. Things seem definitely finished up with that character and Ethan Hunt in this one but they don’t do this in the obvious way and it’s not what you’re thinking... perhaps the only half surprise in the movie is the restraint by the writer/director not to do the obvious thing with her character... which is kinda nice.

And of course we have the all important score by a composer I quite like this time around, Lorne Balfe. Now, as much as I would have preferred the director retained the services of composer Joe Kraemer, as his score for Rogue Nation was possibly the best of the big screen franchise scores, Lorne Balfe does an excellent job here, as I knew he would. I really have to listen to the CD when it comes out (with extra music not on the stupid electronic release I’m told... Woohoo!) to get a more accurate impression from the score as it gets covered up by various explosive actiony noises here but from what I can hear of it, it’s not too shabby. He didn’t, from what I could make out, use Lalo Schifrin’s classic title melody as much as some of his predecessors (although The Syndicate theme also seems to be back here too) but when he does use elements of it he makes them count and I am looking forward to hearing this one away from the movie (I thought his score for the reboot of The Sweeney was superb).

And that’s about all I have to say about this one. If you are a fan of these films then you will already know what to expect and you’ll probably have a good time with this one. If you are more casual in your Mission Impossible viewing habits, however, then I would say you would be doing yourself an injustice if you didn’t watch Rogue Nation before watching Mission Impossible Fallout, to be fair, so you can get a sense of the recent history of the series. Definitely one to watch, though, when you’ve seen the others... should you choose to accept that mission.

Mission Impossible at NUTS4R2
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on one of the titles below to take you to my review.

Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 2
Mission Impossible 3
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation 
Mission Impossible: Fallout

Ready Player One

Refer Madness

Ready Player One
2018 USA Directed by Steven Spielberg
UK cinema release print.

Ready Player One is the second new Spielberg film I’ve seen at cinemas this year... the first being The Post released back in January in the UK (you can read my review here). I’ve always quite liked Spielberg’s cinema with the odd few exceptions and this one is... well it’s neither bad nor great. It’s also got a lot of information crowding out almost every frame so I’m not sure if one viewing is enough to process it all. That being said, I’m not sure I’d care to sit through it all for a second viewing so I’m currently locked in kind of a Mexican stand off with this film.

It’s based on the best selling and highly recommended novel of the same title (that title being a general call to arms for those of us who remember it on all those arcade games of the late 1970s and 1980s) by Ernest Cline, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Well, I say highly recommended... one of my friends recommended I read this a few years ago and I just never got the ‘to be read’ pile low enough to add it. So I’m not exactly ‘in the know’ about how faithful an adaptation it is... all I knew before going in was that it heavily references lots of pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s (and a few other eras too, as it turned out). However, as it happens, my friend Teresa, who was the one who recommended it to me, also saw this the same night I did and she messaged me the next morning saying that it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the book. So... there you go. Maybe I will get around to reading it at some point.

The film stars Tye Sheridan as main protagonist Wade Watts, the brilliant Olivia Cooke (so good in The Limehouse Golem, which I reviewed here) and the wonderful Mark Rylance as Halliday, the inventor of the virtual reality world The Oasis, where most of the film takes place. It also stars Simon Pegg as Halliday’s former partner and Rogue One’s bad guy Ben Mendelsohn as the main antagonist here.

The plot is fairly simplistic...

In the relatively near future, people are plugged in most of the time to their computer simulated VR world The Oasis, where anything can happen. I’m not sure how the economy of this world works... I suspect it’s all much better explained in the novel... but Wade lives in the equivalent of a slum and he, like many others, are looking for three keys hidden by the creator of the games after his death. This ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory-like’ incentive to inherit and control The Oasis is a world wide obsession but the puzzles to finding the keys are not so easy to work out unless you really get inside the mind of the creator. Wade and his virtual friends are among those looking but the stakes are high as the underhanded IOI corporation has hundreds of people on their payroll  looking for the same clues in order to inherit The Oasis and monetised it, turning it into an advertisers delight. They will stop at nothing to get the prize and... that’s the plot in a nutshell.

And along the way you’ll meet and not have nearly have enough time to spot all of the gazillions of cultural references scattered around the film in small or sometimes very large cameos. You’ll see Batman, the Back To The Future Delorean, the 1960s TV Batmobile, King Kong, The Iron Giant and so much more. Including a starring sequence from... Mechagodzilla... and this was my favourite surprise of the film even though it wasn’t a man in a suit but a much more flexibly moving CGI equivalent.

There are many nice touches but I’m a little bit puzzled as to why Alan Silvestri’s score is being touted as totally original and non-referential musically when, frankly, there are a number of famous musical moments which refer back to stuff as much as the movie does visually. For example, a nice idea of a ‘Zemeckis cube’ which reverses time for a period has a moment from Silvestri’s own Back To The Future scores and at one point during the sequence where The Iron Giant fights Mechagodzilla, we hear Akira Ifikube’s famous Godzilla march woven into the score. I’m actually not the biggest fan of Silvestri to be honest (although I did love his score for The Mummy Returns) but it’s nicely done and, though referential, it’s not nearly as overcooked as it might have been and it holds its own with the images and gives them the required lift.

In all honesty, this movie does play out pretty much, in terms of the plot goals too, like you’re watching a fast speed, live action version of The Lego Movie (reviewed here) but it has a little less charm, perhaps. There are quite a few dull moments in terms of the action choreography too but there are also some great sequences worth going to see it for.

The first run through of ‘the race’ near the start of the movie, for instance, deserves all the enthusiastic film reviewer roller coaster analogies it might get because it really does feel powerful and big (and just about followable, in terms of the way it’s edited). Another favourite sequence is where the characters have to go into the Overlook hotel from Stanley Kubrick’s famous adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. This was really well done and, in terms of the music, does have some of Wendy Carlos’ score from the movie (frustratingly still unreleased commercially on CD... although a ‘promotional’ boot does exist). This sequence is nice and also was one of the best for making me think I did, indeed, spot a key Spielbergian signature when I saw The Post earlier in the year...

To explain, I realised that sometimes, instead of following the main protagonist, the camera will suddenly split away and start following one of the other characters instead for a sequence before returning to the rest of the plot. Kind of like a little detour but one which helps highlight the next story thread/motive for the main characters to pick up on later and this is exactly what happens in The Shining sequence here (and in a few other places too, I might hasten to add). We take a bit of a ride with one of the other characters as they’re subjected to some of the famous set pieces of Kubrick’s masterpiece and, frankly, it left me wondering how Spielberg could get away with showing all this stuff from The Shining here in a film which has a 12A rating when I’m pretty sure it’s these same sequences that would have earned Kubrick’s film an X certificate back in the day. Hmmm... not sure what’s happening here.

All in all, Ready Player One is not a bad movie and it does have some lovely moments. It’s also a bit lumbering and, frankly, could have done with being trimmed by a good half an hour or more, I reckon. However, it’s quite possibly something which might grow on me a little more at a later date so I’m not ruling out a revisit at some point in the next few years. It’s certainly nowhere near to being one of Spielberg’s best films, as far as I’m concerned but it’s still a heck of a lot better than stuff like ET and AI, that’s for sure. I suspect I’m a little too old for a lot of the references but it will be a nice nostalgia rush for people in their late 30s is my guess. Give it a go if there’s nothing else going on, is my advice.

Star Trek Beyond

Peachy Elba

Star Trek Beyond
2016 USA Directed by Justin Lin
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very slight spoilers beyond...

Well the thirteenth cinematic Star Trek movie is finally here and... I still don’t quite understand why the heck it’s called Star Trek Beyond but... oh well... abstract title for a bit of a fuzzy movie. Star Trek Beyond is probably my least favourite of the mini trilogy within a franchise (to date) which began with the 2009 Star Trek (reviewed by me here in one of my earliest NUTS4R2 reviews) and continued with Star Trek Into Darkness (reviewed here). That being said, it’s nowhere near being a bad movie, certainly in terms of the Trek franchise as a whole... it’s much better than Star Trek Nemesis (reviewed by me here) for instance.

Okay... the story isn’t all that great on this one, to be honest. However, you can tell that British comedy guru Simon Pegg, who plays ‘Scottie’ in the new films, has been let loose on the script for this one because the dialogue is pretty sharp. It’s also a movie which is big in action but still lives up, somewhat thinly perhaps, to the basic science fiction storytelling which made the original 1960s series which these current movies are based on so great.

The actors are all fine here with a much bigger role for both Simon Pegg’s Scotty and Anton Yelchin’s take on Pavel Chekov. I’m sure the majority of my readers will know of the tragic accident which claimed the life of Yelchin about a month ago, a big blow to the acting community, I believe. I remember how good he was in the Jim Jarmusch movie Only Lovers Left Alive (reviewed by me here) and, just recently, Green Room (reviewed by me here). So it’s actually very sad to see him go. Something which I’m sure won’t get easier for audiences as each of the other four films he still has coming out this year are released.

Ironically, Yelchin’s part is somewhat beefed up in this movie and, although Chekov is still very much assigned to a functional role in this, Yelchin gets his chance to shine as he’s with Chris Pine’s incarnation of James T. Kirk for large chunks of the movie, as the two pair up to try and find their lost crew. I think the dead give away that the writers have been getting more interested in Chekov as the franchise continues is the inclusion of a nice line towards the end which certainly echoes the original character, as played by Walter Koenig in the TV show. “Did you know that Scotch was actually invented by a little old lady in Leningrad?” asks Yelchin, which made me smile and realise they were possibly looking to get much more invested in the character as the franchise continues.

Star Trek Beyond is not just a memorial movie for Yelchin, however, who gets a credit at the end of the movie which simply states... For Anton. Pryor to this on his own memorium credit, and throughout the movie, we are continually reminded of another famous Star Trek actor who passed away recently... Leonard Nimoy, who played the original Mr. Spock and continued to do so in the previous two movies. Nimoy is the one constant that bridges the original franchise and this so called reboot (or sequels as most people know them) as his original character went back in time and bore witness to the creation of this redirected timeline that started off this version of the adventures. With two identical Spocks at different ages living in this timeline, the writers have now chosen to kill off the Nimoy version of the character too... or Spock Prime, as he is now known. It’s a touching moment when the current Spock, played so well by Zachary Quinto but with a slightly diminished role in this adventure, is left his older self’s few artefacts which, presumably, he managed to somehow bring back in time within him. Amongst these is a photograph of Nimoy and the rest of his fellow cast from the original movies, grouped in a publicity shot that I’m guessing was one used for Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country (reviewed by me here). It’s one of a few touching moments and, probably, one of the very last times we’ll see Nimoy’s face in a Star Trek movie.

All the other actors are great too, of course, with Judge Dredd himself, Karl Urban, playing a great version of Doctor McCoy, Zoe Saldana as a much more active Lieutenant Uhura than Nichelle Nichols ever really got the chance to be and John Cho continuing his good work as Sulu. Also joining the cast are Sofia Boutella as new ally Jaylah and the always watchable Idris Elba as the main villain of the piece, Krall.

So solid acting, great dialogue and special effects which are up to the scratch, as usual. However, there’s perhaps way too much action in this one or, at least, way too much motion. I’ve not seen any other movies by director Justin Lin but in this one the camera seems to be swooping all over the place for most of the time. It rarely comes to a stand still, even in the quieter, more low key scenes, and while this technique serves some scenes well, like the first proper ‘swoop through’ of the ‘snowglobe space station’ Yorktown and also in some of the action scenes... the camerawork does get kinda dizzying and disorienting at some points, it has to be said.

Another thing which had me questioning if I had my 3D glasses on correctly was the lighting in some of the scenes... so much so that I had to take them off at one point to prove to myself that, yes, the scenes really were lit that badly. There are certain sequences in the movie, especially in... without giving too much away... Jaylah’s house, that are not exactly dark but... well, just downright dull and which are hard to register on the eyes. Like the interiors in some scenes are all shot through a fine fog which doesn’t quite want to engage you in a way that might help you appreciate the sets. Fair enough, I guess. I’m assuming the director was going for some kind of neutral effect to give other scenes contrast around these, maybe, but it really didn’t do much for me.

The other thing which didn’t quite work for me was most of the last act... the action sequences seem somewhat less than entertaining although, even with all the swooping and whirling camera movement, I was actually able to keep up with the choreography of the kinetic set pieces in this one. So there’s that, I guess.

At the end of the day... Star Trek Beyond is an okay addition to the franchise. Some of the dialogue such as Scotty’s reference to a giant, green hand, which is obviously a humorous reference to the original Star Trek TV episode Who Mourns For Adonis?, had me chuckling a fair bit and you can’t help but buy into the characters when they have lines like this. Alas, it doesn’t make up for a finale which, for me, brought to mind some of the worst Star Trek movie finales such as Star Trek Insurrection (which was an okay film with a terrible last act and which I reviewed here) and the aforementioned Star Trek Nemesis. Truth be told, by the end of the movie, I was getting pretty bored and I think it could have done with either some pruning at the end or, possibly better, a much more interesting couple of set pieces rather than the usual... countdown to stopping the villain realising his plan with just a few seconds to spare kind of scenario. It was already a tired way of doing things back at the dawn of the century... it’s really yawn inducing now. Or, at least, it is the way it’s presented here.

All in all, though, it’s sure to please Star Trek fans who, I’ve no doubt, will turn out for it in force... although I noticed the 3D screening I went to wasn’t even half full on its opening night... which I can’t quite figure out since it easily took number one spot at the box office. So, yeah, not a bad one and I’ll definitely be rewatching on Blu Ray at some point... possibly when it’s been out for a while and goes onto the sale racks. Star Trek Beyond doesn’t really take you anywhere near where the franchise hasn’t boldly gone before but, at least, it doesn’t do that in a competent manner and there are some really witty one liners along the way. Maybe give it a go if there’s nothing else on at the cinema this week.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation

Mission In Action

Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation
2015 USA
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
UK cinema release print.

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to review this fine movie without using the phrases, “pulse pounding”, “high octane” or “rollercoaster ride” because they’re such clichés, even though these specific phrases are more than true descriptions of a film which delivers on all those counts.

Mission accepted.

So here we are again. Regular readers of this blog will possibly remember that it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I first saw the movie incarnations of the Mission Impossible films. I reviewed them all, right here on this blog, and if it wasn’t for my dad finally talking me around to watching them with him (he loves them) then I wouldn’t be reviewing this one now. As it is, I would have been missing out on something pretty damn special in terms of this being a Hollywood blockbuster which more than exceeds any of my expectations of it and also, to boot, my first Mission Impossible movie seen at the cinema.

Now, it’s really not a film that I was expecting to be that good, in all honesty but, now I’ve looked the movie up on the IMDB, it comes as no real surprise to me because the director of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Christopher McQuarrie, also directed one of my favourite films to star Tom Cruise in recent years, Jack Reacher (reviewed here) and was partially responsible for the screenplay of another, Edge Of Tomorrow (reviewed here). To say he does a good job on this one, seriously, is a big understatement. It’s rare I like big budget summer movies quite this much but this one is so well put together and it’s written in such a way that, right from the second sequence in the movie, you really want Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hawke character, and the rest of the Mission Impossible team for that matter, to sort out the bad guys by whatever means necessary.

The movie starts off with a very big scene which is the main set piece used in the promotional trailer and in some of the movie posters. If, like me, you thought the film was going to gradually lead up to the sequence where we see Tom Cruise hanging from the side of a plane, think again... this sequence is just the pre-credits tease, just whetting the appetite for the real main course. Fortunately, the movie doesn’t just go from action piece to action piece without much attention to the plot... although there are a few “chain sequences” of pulse pou-... errr.... I mean, of fast paced action which will have your heartbeat racing in an enthusiastic celebration of aggressive rhythm, there is also a lot of cool espionage type storyline, well fleshed out characters, loads of old faces in the form of Ethan’s associated played by Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames, plus a  couple of new characters played by Alec Baldwin, as the film’s chief ‘good antagonist’, the villanous Sean Harris and a new female double, triple or possibly even quadruple agent named Ilsa, played stylishly by the amazing Rebecca Ferguson, who seems to be playing the role as if Ingrid Bergman was engaging in athletic fisticuffs before being handed a bunch of firearms to play with. Absolutely amazing.

The film, after the pre-credits sequence and a brilliant opening title design appropriate to the franchise, then gets absolutely brilliant with the traditional “your mission if you choose to accept it” scene... and this is where the movie took me totally by surprise which, regular readers of this column will know, is not an easy thing. It also sets up the leading villain, Sean Harris’ character Soloman Lane as the guy to hate and in this movie, he plays the head of a loosely built organisation know only as The Syndicate, who were apparently a major recurring enemy in the original Mission Impossible TV series.

After the initial set up which sees the Impossible Mission team disbanded and Ethan a fugitive from his own people, it’s up for him and his friends to outwit both Lane and the CIA to try and stop the syndicate, which involves numerous encounters with the beautiful and deadly Ilsa, a typical infiltration caper, a not so subtle or surprising scene where one of the gang gets to wear a mask (why do they put those in still... it’s always so obvious who is posing as who way before the reveal) and tons of action but, it has to be said, well choreographed, beautifully edited and not inappropriate action to the plot... I’m glad to say.

And there are some beautiful moments in the movie, to be sure. A sequence in an opera house where Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg are trying to figure out what’s going on before becoming embroiled in a movie moment not totally unlike the one in either of Hitchcock’s versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much is truly entertaining and nicely handled with some fantastic cinematography taking full advantage of the multiple vertical shapes in the interiors of the locations which are used to isolate and highlight characters within smaller compartments, chopped up from the full width of the frame. It’s really nicely put together and, since it’s such a fast moving and suspenseful sequence, something you really have to take your hat off to... if you happen to be wearing one. There’s a similar nice use of verticals used near the end of the film in a two hander sequence between Ilsa and a villanous henchman known as The Bone Doctor which, in all honesty, reminded me of scene in the cathedral/church in the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia With Love (reviewed here) and, happily, it’s no less satisfying.

There’s also a wonderfully long segment of film where we get the typical Mission Impossible infiltration caper... one which will, if you’re anything like me, have you holding your breath as much as the characters involved in this particular sequence, followed by a high oct-... err... petrol injected car chase and then, furthermore, followed by a spectacular motorcycle chase... all one after the other and punctuated by comical highlights and dialogue revelations in just the right mix that it all works and leaves you breathless when the sequence is done.

Added to this, we have the first Mission Impossible score by composer Joe Kraemer, who also scored the same director’s Jack Reacher. What can I say? Much as I loved all the scores for the franchise by Hollywood giants Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and Michael Giacchino... Kramer’s score, for me, is by far the greatest of the Mission Impossible soundtracks so far and I’m really looking forward to that CD turning up in the post in a few weeks time. He really nails how to both use and then integrate Lalo Schifrin’s famous original TV theme for the show without using it as just a crutch for his own, truly awesome solutions to the scoring on this movie. Now, I have to say, when the film reached Morroco, the composer used a big melody which sounded extremely similar, to these old ears, to a sub theme used in Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Mummy. Now maybe it’s a musical cliché based on a specific quirk of the locale in which this part of the movie is set... I only mention the similarity, nothing more. However, Kramer really knows how to work it into the music and he uses it in a few moments in the movie, most astonishingly in a sequence where the big sweeping melody is suddenly used as the base line to support a different musical solution a little later in the story.... which really blew me away, I can tell you. Can’t wait to listen to it away from the context of its functional use.

And that’s about it, I think. The cast are all absolutely great with Simon Pegg’s character really getting a much more prominent role here and with the always excellent Jeremy Renner seeming, perhaps, a little underused but certainly doing some great supporting work here. Rhames is grand, Ferguson is sublime, Harris and Baldwin are both really on the money and... well I’ve always liked Cruise as an actor. Not necessarily the roles he sometimes chooses but he always does a great job in whatever film he’s in and, as with many other roles, he makes you believe he’s capable of what his character is supposed to be able to do here. Added into this we have some really nice writing, great comic moments and some action sequences that make this a real rolllerco-... err... the movie equivalent of one of those big rides on tracks you see at theme parks... so that’s all good. If you’re a fan of the franchise then you will surely love this latest installment and, if not, it’s a great jumping on point to start off from, although knowing who the regular good guy characters are in this will take away a little of the intrigue of the earlier films if you watch them out of order. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is real good time at the movies, though, and I really would be happy for them to do another one at some point soon. This review will self destruct in five seconds.



Mission Impossible at NUTS4R2
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on one of the titles below to take you to my review.

Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 2
Mission Impossible 3
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation 
Mission Impossible: Fallout

Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Ghosting The Machine

Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol 
2011 USA/United Arab Emirate/ Czech Republic
Directed by Brad Bird
Paramount DVD Region 2

Warning: Spoiler protocol enabled.

Well this is interesting. I’ve only ever seen one other Brad Bird movie (which also happened to have an excellent Michael Giachinno score) and that was The Incredibles. Turns out, the fourth in the Mission Impossible franchise is actually his first stab at directing a “live action” movie and I have to say that I found this one to be the most entertaining in the series so far. Maybe it’s because espionage movies like these and others like the Bond movies are all just big live action cartoons anyway that makes Bird a natural for this kind of assignment. Or maybe I’m being a little less charitable than I could be and should just swallow the fact that Bird can obviously direct live action fine and does the animated stuff because that’s what he’s more interested in. Either way, this one is certainly the best of a sometimes lukewarm bunch of movies so I’m glad this guy stepped up to the bat.

Starting off with a jailbreak sequence as two agents, including Simon Pegg in a much less annoying incarnation of the character he played in the previous movie, get Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character out of a prison... but with him obstructing their plans just a little because he won’t go without bringing someone  else out with him... the opening titles jump start from Cruise telling Paula Patton’s Agent Carter to “light the fuse”. After a rousing titles sequence wherein we see key scenes from this film picked out and excerpted as part of the design, we go into standard Mission Impossible territory with a caper to get inside the Kremlin but, the team is piggy-backed by someone else after the same thing as they are and Ethan and his team are basically framed for blowing up the aforementioned building.

So the team is disavowed and gone ‘rogue’ (yet again... they’re always going off to do their own thing, it seems to me) and it’s up to Cruise, Pegg, Patton and their new bestest buddy, the always excellent Jeremy Renner, to stop the bad guys from nuking the world.

This film has a lot going for it. Simon Pegg loses his fake American accent (for some unexplained reason) and provides some excellent comic relief while still being a very credible part of the team. Renner and Patton are very good support and Renner even takes over from Cruise and does the ‘iconic’ dangling into space moment in this entry... seriously though, do we really need these sequences? And Michael Nyqvist, the original Mikael Blomkvist in the Swedish adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (reviewed here), The Girl Who Played With Fire (reviewed here) and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (reviewed here) makes for a credible and pleasantly non-theatrical bad guy, for a change. This is all good stuff.

As is the nice gadgetry and little quirky things that Bird and co have put in for this little outing. The movable video corridor that Cruise and Pegg use to infiltrate part of the Kremlin, for example, is absolutely brilliant, funny and recalls the days when Wiley Coyote would order a new gadget from the Acme Company to help him try and catch Road Runner. Given Bird’s track record with animated storytelling, I’m wondering if he had some major input into that part of the writing.

Also cool was Cruise’s return to a public telephone to give his mission briefing a little helping thump to self destruct and a scene where the mask making equipment goes completely wrong and the team has to improvise. It’s all pretty good stuff.

More importantly, for the first time in a Mission Impossible film that I can see... you don’t know what’s going to happen way in advance of it happening. It doesn’t rely on a “oh, it was you all along” series of twists, which are usually easy to figure out because the studios get nervous about the audience and telegraph them too quickly, and instead we are left with a storyline where everything is up front and laid out with no surprises.

Having said that, however, there were two little things I did see coming a long way off... they were Ving Rhames and Michelle Monaghan and, I’m afraid, I was kinda expecting them to show up at some point. Rhames due solely to his past association with the film series in that he is now, along with Cruise, the only person to have appeared in all four films in the franchise to date.

With Monaghan’s character, Ethan Hunt’s wife, she is referred to all the way through the film as either having left him or having died. The fact that the writers didn’t just come up with a way to leave behind such an important narrative point very early on in the picture in a very clear manner practically writes up in mile high letters that she will be appearing at some point in the movie... I just don’t know where they’ll go with this character if they make a fifth one. Would be silly to leave her behind I think... especially since Monaghan is such a good actress and star personality.

Giacchino’s score is good too... and not just because this one is especially rich in reorchestrations of Schifrin’s original theme (which it is, the most Schifrin heavy score of all four movies I think). Proving himself one of the most versatile composers working in Hollywoodland right now, while still being humble enough to amalgamate or mimic other composers works for the good of whatever franchise he’s working on, I think Michael Giachinno will be around for a very long time and be the composer of choice for a lot of future film-makers who haven’t even started out yet. Only time will tell if he’s the Jerry Goldsmith of his time, but he’s certainly up there with the likes of Alexandre Desplat and Brian Tyler as far as I’m concerned. We shall see what we shall see... and hear what we will hear, I guess.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is a really cool entry in the franchise for fans of the previous films and probably a good enough jumping on point if you’re not. Definitely will be on my “one to watch again in ten years” list. Worth a look.



Mission Impossible at NUTS4R2
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on one of the titles below to take you to my review.

Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 2
Mission Impossible 3
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation 
Mission Impossible: Fallout

The World’s End

Kind Hearts And Cornettos

The Worlds End
2013 UK
Directed by Edgar Wright
Playing at cinemas now.

So here we have what has been loosely termed by it’s creators, depending on your source, as either the “blood and ice cream” trilogy or, making more sense after having seen the third one, “the Cornetto trilogy”... in much the same way that Sergio Leone’s first three totally unrelated spaghetti westerns were dubbed “the Dollars trilogy” when they promoted those films in the US, perhaps.

Now I seem to have a track record with products written by the director Edgar Wright and actor Simon Pegg in that, I usually “quite like” them the first time around but, when seeing them for the second time, I usually get more into it and embrace the thing wholeheartedly. This was the case of, in the order I watched them in, Shaun Of The Dead, Spaced (the TV show which ran for two series’ and pre-dated Shaun Of The Dead) and Hot Fuzz. I have to say that, given this puzzling relationship with their past work, I was a little trepidatious about seeing this one for the first time... although, of course, I knew I’d probably love it the second time around.

Well, I have to say, that pattern has finally been broken by their new movie, The Worlds End. While I’m sure I’ll still love it the second time around, I am happy to say that I was also was quite fond of it the first time around too, and had a thoroughly good time with it at the cinema last night... although I didn’t bring it flowers or take it to dinner before it manifested itself before my eyes in my local flea pit, to be sure.

The Worlds End tells the story of a larger than life character, Gary King, played by Simon Pegg, who gets his old school buddies together for a reunion 20 years or so later, to have another crack at “the golden mile”... the epic crawl of 12 pubs culminating in the final one, The World’s End... a task at which they’d failed at miserably “back in the day”. Unfortunately, Gary’s comrades in arms, played by Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan and Paddy Considine respectively... with the added touch of glam and sprinkle from Rosamund Pike as the film’s leading lady... are not exactly big supporters of Gary anymore. But, as you know they will, they go with Gary to start their epic journey and, as it turns out, instead find themselves in jeopardy fighting most of the town who have been replaced with alien simulucra.

What can I say? Wright and Pegg basically take the classic plot of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, add in a classic British obsession (pubbing) and riff on the collision of these two ingredients throughout the whole movie while not forgetting that all important element that makes you feel and root for all the characters... a touch of heart.

And not only that... they don’t really drop the ball throughout the whole thing and they do it all very smartly.

It maybe takes a little while to get going on the set up but only because the characters are slightly more complex than usual for these writers and you want to understand how they’ll come to work together (which is why I suspect my second viewing will be even more enjoyable), but all the way through the wittiness of the dialogue is crisp and even (if not always especially deep*) and although my main comedy enjoyment usually comes, almost exclusively, from either The Marx Brothers or Woody Allen, I have to say that when you get Wright and Pegg together, they continue that kind of cool cleverness with syntax and terminology that lights my fire when it comes to this kind of word play.

There are also some good fights in it.

No joke, there’s some great set-piece, full-on, blue-blooded alien gore, pub brawls in this which will knock your socks off. And with blue being the colour of the blood on the menu, they manage to do it all behind the censor’s backs, as it were, who must have been too conditioned to looking for signs of crimson to notice the huge amounts of violence contained within a 15 rated movie... but that’s okay by me. Although I was disappointed that Wright and Pegg didn’t put a paraphrase of one of their famous Shaun Of The Dead recurring jokes in it... I was just waiting for the line... “You’ve got blue on you” but, unless I missed it somewhere, it didn’t happen. And like their last collaboration, Hot Fuzz, it’s even got an unexpected, for me at least, Bond villain... and I mean, Bond/villain. You’ll see what I mean.

My one real complaint though is, after finishing the film off with an almost perfect ending with Nick Frost’s character telling the tale of what happened next (which also includes this film’s nod to Cornetto), they elected to put one final scene in with one of the main characters which, while it was okay as a set up for something else, could have left a much stronger ending without it. But that might not have been commercially the best ending, especially in other countries, so I can understand why they did this.

So that’s all I got to say then, I think. Other than the sound design and choice of music is incredible (and relevant to the on screen shenanigans in a rather integral manner at one point near the end) and it was also nice to see modern art getting some legs on it, which I’m not going to spoil for you here, you’ll just have to live with my mundane attempt at being cryptic and go and see the thing for yourself. All in all, a good night at the movies and certainly a lot more fun, I suspect, than attempting to get through “the golden mile” in real life. Go drink your celluloid fill.

* I hate the word deep, but it was the only way I could make my lame pun work and still convey my exact meaning... so cut me some slack, okay?

On The Paul

Paul US 2011

Directed by Greg Mottola

Playing at selected good and marginally

tolerable cinemas across the UK now!

Warning! The article doesn’t this time include any really aPauling spoilers in it... but I had to go ahead with a spoiler warning anyway so I didn’t waste that aPauling pun!

It’s strange. I might have said this before but when I go and see a movie directed by Edgar Wright and which has Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in it then I tend to have a bizarre delayed reaction to said movie. Usually my first viewing ends up a little “meh” and then I feel sufficiently haunted by the odd memorable scene or two to go back to the cinema again and then it all hits me properly the second time around and I find myself having a really good time with it. That’s exactly what happened to me with both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz... it didn’t happen with Spaced (I liked that straight off although I was a post-Shaun watcher) but then again... that was a TV show, not a movie.

So anyway... when Scott Pilgrim VS The World came out I thought this curse of the delayed whammy and necessity to double dip into my cinema entrance budget would be broken and future generations of my family line would be able to go and see movies by “The Wrightster” free from the threat of the insidious “meh but interesting” response and it’s debilitating effects on the family coffers. However, as I probably mentioned in this review “right here”, I had exactly the same kind of delayed response to a Wright movie without the presence of “The Peggster” and “The Frostier” in it and so, by this point, I was pretty sure that it was a reaction to Edgar Wright as opposed to the two starry stars who populated his first two features.

But then I went to see Paul. Which I was quite looking forward to because I like Pegg and Frost together, think they have great onscreen chemistry and I really needed a laugh as I was, and have been, feeling pretty downhearted of late (please leave sympathy or possible promises of money in the comments section below this article).

And that was two weeks ago. And I’ve only got around to writing up this review now.

“Why have you only got around to writing up this review now?”, I hear you ask inside my head in something resembling faint interest but which doesn’t try too hard to disguise the element of mock enthusiasm in your tone.

Well I’m glad you ask. Basically because I had exactly the same delayed effect to Paul, a film which stars these two actors but, in this instance, was not directed by Edgar Wright. And so I’m kinda wondering what’s going on now. The film is loaded, absolutely choc full o’ science-fiction and fantasy references and so, of course, I’ve now had to come to the conclusion that films by these kinds of people are so jam packed with eclectic, postmodern allusions that my poor mind needs to take it all in on the first sitting before it can begin to relax and take in the bigger “surface details” of these kinds of films on their own merit. That’s my latest theory anyway.

So I wanted to give Paul a fair crack is what happened and so I went back to see it again but, this time, instead of going by myself and sitting somewhere out of the way where I could hide in my little, black leather raincoat, I took a girl with me who I knew would laugh (and jump) at anything she saw on screen and that way, if I didn’t have a good time with it, I could always use her to gauge what my reactions should possibly have been during certain scenes (and maybe ask her to explain some of the more “young peoples” references should I have not gotten them).

So there I was, armed with my double scoop of Cherry Garcia/Cookie Dough Mix ice cream in one hand and a young, enthusiastic (okay, possibly giggly) girl in the other (metaphorically). True the girl in question is married and, true, ‘tis not to me, but I still trust her enough as a gauge for “what normal people like” and by that point the ice cream had frozen my few remaining brain cells anyway.

As it turned out... I needn’t have worried. On my second viewing, free from the strain of trying to spot as many sci-fi references as possible, I found that Paul was not the mere amalgam of overwrought set pieces I’d first perceived it as and that it’s actually a movie with a guiding and warm heart and it actually hangs together quite well on it’s own and ends up being a movie much more than the sum of it’s parts.

There’s a lot of good things going on in Paul... there’s some nice comic acting and some more than competent comic timing in the movie (not least from the film’s titular CGI alien character voiced by Seth Rogen) and a nice little twist from one of the characters that some people may not actually see coming... all wrapped up with a romantic subplot which may feel a little tagged on but sentimental old fools like myself are a sucker for that kind of stuff. There’s also a nice sense of set up/follow up throughout which I hadn’t noticed the first time around and which helps give the movie a sense of cohesion and self-containedness (despite the numerous references). For example, the scene where Paul resurrects a bird from death and the subsequent fate of that bird (which had my friend in hysterics in the chair next to me) is used to establish certain traits of the main character so it can be used to set up a scene towards the end of the movie.

I think, if I’d have stayed with my first impression of this movie I would have basically reported that it’s an entertaining enough, geeky movie made by geeks for geeks. As it happens, it is, but my friend who I took with me, Orange Monkey, also got a lot out of it and I know most of the gazillion or so Star Trek references would have meant nothing to her. It’s a testament to the writing and directing on this picture that the movie manages to successfully straddle a thin line between geekery incoherence and warm-hearted fun without straying too far into either territory to begin alienating any of the possible audiences that this film may find. A nimble trick and one which a few modern filmakers might do well to learn from.

And for those people who regularly read my blog reviews (and thanks for that, it means a lot to me), yes I will be getting this one on DVD when it gets a release... so that’s a big thumbs up right there then. For people who don’t regularly read my blog... go check out Paul. It’s a nice little movie with a fair few inventive homages to science-fiction classics and it has its heart very much in the right place.

Oh... and, yeah, I almost forgot... it’s kinda funny too. Especially when you see how Simon Pegg dances!