Tag: Tom Cruise

Movie Review: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT – well rounded and focused, this is the best installment in the 22 year old franchise (wait, what?!)

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

Yeah, 22 years old.  That is an astounding fact for a number of reasons.  When you look at franchises, the biggest one of all is probably Star Wars, but the Marvel cinematic Universe is right up there too.  The Star Trek movie franchise has been around since 1979, and in western cinema at least, there are few others (trilogies don’t count).  James Bond has been going since the 60s, but is showing its age.  Mission Impossible may only have reached 6 movies, but it has endured for 22 years, and after the global commercial and critical success of Fallout, you’d put money on at least one more.  As much as I enjoyed Mission Impossible 3, I have to agree with some critics that this is the best one yet.

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Movie Review: AMERICAN MADE – this highly glossed over version of the Barry Seal story is Tom Cruise’s best film – and performance – in years.

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I’m not ashamed to admit, I’m a fan of Tom Cruise movies.  Not a fan of Tom Cruise the person, I should add, having never met him, but I have enjoyed his screen presence for about thirty years now.  I think he’s a pretty decent actor too, when he tries – something he hasn’t done a lot of in a long time.  Having watched his last offering The Mummy fall on the critics’ sword, and mostly fail to capture the imaginations of the paying public, his career badly needed a shot in the arm.  It so happens that American Made, his second cinematic release of 2017, does exactly that.

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Movie Review: THE MUMMY – a horrendous script could jeopardize Universal’s “Dark Universe” franchise before it even gets going.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

Like me, you were probably wondering WHY?! When you heard Universal was going to make The Mummy, with Tom Cruise, even.  I remember hearing the news two years ago, and I didn’t believe it at first.  Other than the original Karloff classic, and Christopher Lee playing the title role in the 60s, the most memorable version is the Stephen Sommers trilogy headed by Brendan Fraser – and when I say memorable, I don’t mean in a good way.  I didn’t like these lame PG-13 CGI fests whatsoever.  The first one is the best of the series, and the others are not worth talking about, but I really objected to the content.  To take a recognized, classic horror property and beef it up into a plot-driven, faintly Indiana Jonesesque action movie was an awful idea.  This latest version is no better.

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Movie Review: JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK – lazy, overplotted, and underwritten sequel puts the franchise in a coma.

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jackreacher

It happens to everyone – we get old and our appeal fades.  We see the power we once had exercised by a new generation, and our movies start grossing less and less at the box office.  It’s inevitable … but sometimes the natural decline is pushed harder down the slope by our own choices.  Case in point, Tom Cruise’s newest movie Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.

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