Grade: A minus

Mission: Impossible—Fallout: Run! Jump! Amaze! Defy Death and Sense!

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Cruise returns in "Mission: Impossible—Fallout"

In a movie as relentlessly loud as Mission: Impossible—Fallout—a boisterous extravaganza full of screeching tires, whirring rotors, and crackling gunfire—one of the most gripping scenes takes place in virtual silence; the only sound is supplied by Lorne Balfe’s score, which suddenly drops its pounding percussion in favor of weeping strings. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, duh), eternal superagent and mayhem magnet, is spearheading a raid to extract a prisoner from an armored police convoy. It’s a brisk and bloody sequence, full of bullets whizzing through the air and bodies crashing to the ground.

It’s also a feint; turns out, Ethan was just listening to someone else’s plans for the raid and envisioning it in his mind. But he conceives of a smarter and less lethal way of executing the snatch-and-grab, at which point the film rolls the sequence again, resulting in yet another bravura set piece that begins as a similarly efficient incursion but then transforms into a sprawling vehicular chase. You may think of the initial fakeout as a cheat, but I prefer to view it as a distillation of this glorious franchise’s maximalist ethos. The raison d’être of the Mission: Impossible movies is a bit like the first rule of government spending: Why make one amazing action sequence when you can make two for twice the price? Read More

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Leave No Trace: Out of the Woods, But Not Fitting In

Jeremy BeckReviews
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in "Leave No Trace"

Every night before they go to sleep, the 13-year-old girl and her father, nestled snugly in a cramped tent, say goodnight to each other without using words. Instead, they make a sort of clicking sound, bringing their tongues against the back of their front teeth, the type of noise one might use to summon a horse: “tchic-tchik.” In other contexts, it might sound silly; here, it’s an expression of sincere, absolute love.

To my recollection, nobody actually says “I love you” in Leave No Trace—the gentle, empathetic, quietly devastating new movie from Debra Granik—but the concept of devotion is nevertheless sewn into the film’s very fabric. It’s present in the relationship between the father, Will (Ben Foster, against type), and the girl, Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, revelatory), who open the picture residing comfortably and illegally in the verdant woods outside Portland. It’s found in the respect that the two demonstrate for nature, with all its wonders and terrors. (The title derives from a popular conservationist ethos.) And it’s apparent in the warm regard that Granik displays for her characters, whom she treats with curiosity, tenderness, and honesty. Read More

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Incredibles 2: Still Super, After All These Years

Jeremy BeckReviews
The Parr family is back in "Incredibles 2"

Taking stock of a dramatic change in circumstances, a young boy early in Incredibles 2 poses a seemingly simple question: “Are things… bad?” Well, son, it depends on whom you ask. Like the best of Pixar’s movies, Incredibles 2 situates itself squarely on the boundary between the fantastical and the real, wielding an arsenal of artistic tools—bravura technique, sharp wit, limitless imagination—to supply meaningful commentary and poignant themes about everyday life. These days, characterizing everyday life as bad could be construed as a pitiful understatement. But while Incredibles 2 does not entirely ignore our current political environment—one enterprising character adopts the slogan, “Make Superheroes Legal Again”—its allegorical concerns are more universal, expanding on the original film’s thoughtful exploration of marriage and parenthood. And because it perpetuates the franchise’s familial odyssey with even greater verve and intelligence, things in this sequel are far from bad. In fact, things are very, very good.

Again written and directed by America’s animation laureate, Brad Bird, Incredibles 2 picks up immediately after its predecessor left off, with the Parr family—a clan of clandestine superheroes led by Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T. Nelson) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), more commonly known as Bob and Helen—attempting to halt the exploits of a silly baddie calling himself the Underminer. It’s a bit surprising that Bird refused to allow any fictional time to pass between the two installments (the first Incredibles, of course, was released 14 years ago), but it spares him the bother of exposition, allowing him to instead dive straight into some brawny superhero mayhem. The movie’s opening set piece is a rambunctious joyride through the city’s streets and sewers, with Bob frantically attempting to subdue the Underminer and inadvertently causing massive amounts of property damage in the process. Read More

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A Quiet Place: Staying Alive, with Mouths Shut and Eyes Open

Jeremy BeckReviews
John Krasinski and Noah Jupe in "A Quiet Place"

We begin with a stark title card: “Day 89.” A family prowls through a deserted pharmacy, the mother scanning labels on vials while the kids amble through the aisles and pluck goodies from the shelves. It’s a familiar scene to fans of apocalyptic fiction, the dusty sills and sparse surroundings recalling similarly ominous openings from movies like 28 Days Later and I Am Legend. The key difference here is that the characters, plainly well-versed in this foreboding new normal, take special care not to make any noise whatsoever. Yet before long, a mistake is made, a sound is blared, and in the blink of an eye and the rustle of some leaves, a life is taken.

And with this brief and riveting and ghastly cold open, A Quiet Place announces itself as an expertly conceived and executed horror film, perhaps the best of its kind since It Follows. Combining a knockout premise—stop, hey, what’s that sound?—with white-knuckle set pieces and a bracing degree of economy, the movie both elevates your pulse and digs under your skin. It’s scary, sure, but not so scary that it prevents you from admiring it as a polished, fiendishly inventive piece of pulp art. Read More

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The Post: Stop the Presses, or Else

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in Steven Spielberg's "The Post"

Describe The Post in terms of its plot, and you risk making it sound like a bore. Here is a based-in-fact film about a band of huffy journalists who squabble with a cadre of wussy pencil-pushers about whether to publish a newspaper article; these are not typically the raw materials of exciting drama. Yet because we currently live in a society where the government openly wages war on the press, The Post is one of the most important political movies of our time. And because it has been directed by Steven Spielberg, it is also one of our most enjoyable.

In recognizing the former, one should be careful not to ignore the latter. The unnerving topicality of The Post threatens to overshadow just how effortlessly it works as a piece of cinema, how sharply crafted and exquisitely performed it is. Employing his characteristic care and vigor, Spielberg has almost imperceptibly transformed the film’s bustling narrative—a thicket of murky backroom meetings, lavish dinner parties, and complex legal proceedings—into a rousing and supremely entertaining production. Contemporary circumstances may have rendered The Post regrettably relevant, but this movie would be a delight to watch regardless of who’s sitting in the Oval Office. Read More

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