DVD: Divine Viewing Diversions
Here are three entertaining and rewarding films that were released theatrically during this year’s summer movie season. Each should hold up even if you’re seeing it for the second – or perhaps even the third – time.
“MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT” (PG-13)
With four of the five installments thus far in the triumph column and this sixth entry opening well, you’d have to describe this franchise’s mission as anything but impossible.
And “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” otherwise known as “Mission: Impossible 6,” does nothing to besmirch the reputation of this explosive big-screen attraction based on a memorable small-screen series.
Come to think of it, “M:I – F” might be the best entry yet, an intense and exhilarating action-oriented espionage thriller that gives 2011’s spectacular “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” a run for its money.
Tom Cruise, also serving as a producer, returns as Ethan Hunt, the lead agent of the elite Impossible Missions Force, sort of a CIA within the CIA.
When “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” villain Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) exacts revenge, Hunt’s past catches up with him.
And with ever-dangerous plutonium falling into the wrong hands, a third of the world’s population is in mortal danger.
Like its predecessors, the sixth installment is a spirited mix of high-octane action, nosebleed-inducing high stakes and higher places, and remarkably convincing set pieces of intriguing outlandishness, breathless globe-trotting, and hold-your-breath suspense.
Along the way, we’re treated to a set of stunts that are nothing short of astounding. Dare I say “worth the price of admission”?
Affirmative.
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (“Jack Reacher,” “The Way of the Gun”), who performed the same duties on “Ghost Protocol” and won an Oscar for his screenplay for “The Usual Suspects,” becomes the only helmer to return to the director’s chair for more than one of the “Mission: Impossible” outings.
And the combination of creativity and intensity that is on constant display is positively dizzying.
Although “Fallout” isn’t exactly devoid of CGI work, it’s decidedly and refreshingly old-school, delivering its numerous spills and thrills the old-fashioned way, including age-defying contributions by Cruise, who famously broke an ankle for his efforts, leading to a temporary production shutdown.
What the admirable McQuarrie doesn’t do is let his cerebral action film turn into a one-dimensional shoot-’em-up, although there is no shortage of shooting (not by a, um, long shot).
And he structures his 2½-hour feature so that the running time seems a lot less, especially when we’re bathing in the sublime preposterousness.
On the debit side, what he might have attended to more energetically was to have found a way to make the narrative at least a shade less convoluted and thus more accessible.
Still, we’ll take it. Gratefully.
Cruise remains a dependable leading man, and he is well-supported by an ensemble that includes returnees Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan and Rebecca Ferguson, and they’re joined on this go-round by Angela Bassett and Henry Cavill.
We choose to accept “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” as a riveting adrenaline rush of a thriller that lives up to the high standards set throughout the run of this cracker-jack franchise.
“ANT-MAN AND THE WASP” (PG-13)
It won’t make you feel antsy or waspish.
That’s because the smiles and chuckles that the endearing “Ant-Man and the Wasp” delivers get the job done.
So put down that can of Raid.
The tongue-in-cheek, light-and-breezy sequel to 2015’s “Ant-Man,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp” revisits ex-convict and ex-cat burglar (in Robin Hood mode) Scott Lang, played once again by Paul Rudd.
He was recruited in the original by scientist Hank Pym, played by Michael Douglas, to wear a suit that allows the inadvertent superhero to shrink, gain super strength, and then re-enlarge whenever he needs or wants to.
And he is coming to the end of his two-year house-arrest sentence.
So, yes, this is an adaptation of – wait for it – a Marvel comic, with Ant-Man in a more playfully broad comedic vein than most of the Marvel-ous superheroes.
It joins the “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Deadpool” franchises in bringing welcome levity to the Marvel comic book-inspired universe.
Peyton Reed (“Bring It On,” “Down With Love,” “The Break-Up,” “Yes Man”), who directed the enjoyable original, returns in the director’s chair and once again concentrates on wit and charm rather than special-effects pyrotechnics, approaching but not quite matching the fun of the original.
Not that the Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Superhero effects are infrequent or subpar – they’re still in evidence and skillfully executed. But they’re there in the service of the story, the characters, and the relationships, especially the three – count ’em, three – father-daughter storylines.
Rudd is a fine everyman, an ordinary guy with extraordinary superpowers, struggling to balance Lang’s size-shifting persona with his responsibilities as a dad, when he’s confronted by Pym, played again by Douglas, and his daughter Hope, played again by Evangeline Lilly, who have a new mission for him that explains the film’s title and brings his wife/her mother, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, presumably gone, back into the picture.
With Rudd, who also co-wrote the screenplay along with Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, director Reed adroitly juggles shifting perspective, slapstick bits, familial bonds, action set pieces, and an emotional reunion.
But what’s probably the most appealing aspect of the film is how unpretentious and low-key it is compared to its brethren. Grandiose, it is not. Just the opposite, in fact, as it resists the temptation to indulge in blockbuster excessiveness.
Not only is the protagonist small but so are the stakes, relatively speaking. And that’s refreshing, a respite from all the generic explosiveness.
So seek out the funny, friendly, family-focused “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” No big deal. Make it a little deal. But one nicely dealt.
“BLACKKKLANSMAN” (R)
Director Spike Lee opens his latest joint, “BlacKkKlansman,” with a blistering racist tirade by cameoing Alec Baldwin, as well as memorable, iconic clips from “Gone with the Wind” and “Birth of a Nation.”
More than two hours later, he closes with nightmarish contemporary news footage from Charlottesville.
The power of those images and the extent to which they resonate are so much stronger than the narrative that connects them, they seem almost a rebuke of the central true story.
But if the latest exploration of racial themes by the prolific and accomplished Lee (“Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X,” “Jungle Fever,” “4 Little Girls,” “Get on the Bus,” “Inside Man”) isn’t among his very best and most impactful films, it’s nonetheless an urgent, provocative, audacious outing.
A fine John David Washington (real-life son of frequent Lee-ding man Denzel) stars in this biographical crime dramedy as Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer from Colorado in the 1970s.
The first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs police department, rookie cop Stallworth, who feels stuck in the records department, is intent on volunteering for and carrying out an insanely dangerous mission: an undercover investigation that results in the infiltrating and exposing of the local Ku Klux Klan at a time when the extremist hate group, led by “Grand Wizard” David Duke (Topher Grace), is sanitizing its violent rhetoric in the hopes of appealing to the mainstream.
And not only does he do so; with the help of a more seasoned Jewish colleague, played by Adam Driver, he becomes the improbable head of the local chapter.
The screenplay by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Lee, based on the autobiographical book by Stallworth, “Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime,” in its exploration of racial hatred and humanity’s ugly instincts, frequently shifts tones as it mixes darkly funny humor with gut-wrenching melodrama.
Consequently, the characters aren’t always fully fleshed out and the narrative moves in fits and starts.
That said, “BlacKkKlansman” is an often angry and sometimes messy but ultimately enjoyable and vital movie that still packs quite a wallop.
As for parallels between the racial relations of the ’70s and those of today, they mount up and bounce off the walls like ping-pong balls set in motion in a wind tunnel.
And on this score, Lee doesn’t have to – and doesn’t – oversell them. The numerous telling observations do not register as if they are low-hanging fruit. Just the opposite. And that’s because, no matter how serious the film gets, and no matter how many winking references there are to the disheartening horror beneath the seeming lightheartedness, the film never stops also being a satirical romp.
“BlacKkKlansman” is a wildly ambitious, somewhat uneven but inspiringly impassioned docudrama in which Spike asks for and deserves a little Lee-way.
