Karen#1
Well-known member
TONY ORTEGA
Excerpt:
Once again Luke Y. Thompson (AV Club) has given us an exclusive film review you’ll find only here at the Bunker. Our association with Luke goes back more than 20 years, to a now defunct publication, New Times Los Angeles, where he was one of the very few reviewers in the country who actually liked John Travolta’s Battlefield Earth. In other words, Luke calls them the way he sees them. He last provided us with what we still consider the best and most truthful review of Top Gun: Maverick that you’ll find anywhere. (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One opens in US theaters on July 12.)
Both Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One feature key action sequences set on moving trains. Indy’s is drenched in layers of CG and shot in front of obvious bluescreen; Ethan Hunt’s has Tom Cruise and Esai Morales actually running and crouching atop a real train (though the grand finale, with carriages falling off a bridge one by one, is almost certainly studio-shot and computer abetted). M:I’s train sequence is the better one, but not as exponentially better as perhaps one might think. “Realness” may seem super-important to stunt people, but it’s hardly the primary narrative concern – cartoons are as unreal as it gets, yet you’ve probably shed tears over the fates of Pixar characters.
Involvement in the story is what really makes or breaks the action, and Indiana Jones is a reliable old friend who screws up sometimes, and shows his age. Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, meanwhile, becomes a progressively more saintlike and less human character each film, though his frequent bouts with anxiety in this film sure beat the actor’s certainty of perfection in Top Gun: Maverick. He seems pretty good at acting, too, because isn’t Dianetics supposed to cure you of all of the reactive mind panic attacks or whatever in real life?
READ MORE
tonyortega.substack.com
Excerpt:
 |
Once again Luke Y. Thompson (AV Club) has given us an exclusive film review you’ll find only here at the Bunker. Our association with Luke goes back more than 20 years, to a now defunct publication, New Times Los Angeles, where he was one of the very few reviewers in the country who actually liked John Travolta’s Battlefield Earth. In other words, Luke calls them the way he sees them. He last provided us with what we still consider the best and most truthful review of Top Gun: Maverick that you’ll find anywhere. (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One opens in US theaters on July 12.)
Both Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One feature key action sequences set on moving trains. Indy’s is drenched in layers of CG and shot in front of obvious bluescreen; Ethan Hunt’s has Tom Cruise and Esai Morales actually running and crouching atop a real train (though the grand finale, with carriages falling off a bridge one by one, is almost certainly studio-shot and computer abetted). M:I’s train sequence is the better one, but not as exponentially better as perhaps one might think. “Realness” may seem super-important to stunt people, but it’s hardly the primary narrative concern – cartoons are as unreal as it gets, yet you’ve probably shed tears over the fates of Pixar characters.
Involvement in the story is what really makes or breaks the action, and Indiana Jones is a reliable old friend who screws up sometimes, and shows his age. Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, meanwhile, becomes a progressively more saintlike and less human character each film, though his frequent bouts with anxiety in this film sure beat the actor’s certainty of perfection in Top Gun: Maverick. He seems pretty good at acting, too, because isn’t Dianetics supposed to cure you of all of the reactive mind panic attacks or whatever in real life?
READ MORE
Our mission, that we chose to accept: Watching Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt become a cult leader
Once again Luke Y.
tonyortega.substack.com
