MISSION STATEMENT

 

MOVIE
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
Director Christopher McQuarrie
Review Ray Chan

You don’t really need to have seen the last 30 years’ worth of Mission Impossible movies featuring Tom Cruise to comprehend this current offering: the eighth, and purportedly, last of the series.
    And, indeed, it’s almost as impossible as the flick’s name to believe that the toothy thespian made his first appearance for  the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) ─ a special-agent unit loyal to no-one but weirdly always at the beck and call of the USA ─ back in 1996. My daughter, now the mother of four kids, was born not long before then, and she’s practically grown up with each instalment.
    Annoyingly for many of us dad-bodied denizens, Tom has not let age weary him. He looks great for 62, understandably a bit fuller in the face, but still retaining an Adonis-esque appearance.
    As Ethan Hunt, the beleaguered spy’s modus operandi seems to be shooting, sprinting and skydiving in attempts to rescue the world, often in adventures with espionage plots so byzantine and convoluted that  they’re really not worth wasting time pondering over.
    What makes viewers come back to these spectacles is the desire to watch this actor’s adrenaline-junkie pursuit of action-cinema realism, in which he shuns stand-ins and prefers performing the acrobatics and athletics himself.
    At a time when CGI-laden adaptations and mega-blockbusters have dulled even the most extraordinary superhuman feats on screen, Tom's fanatic insistence on performing the most extravagant stunts adds just that bit more spice the films, daring audiences to look away as real blood, flesh and bones are risked for their entertainment. 
    And so, don’t expect any surprises from Final Reckoning. The complex storyline is as inscrutable  as they come, involving a malevolent and pseudo-sentient AI program, while pulling in elements from previous chapters in what seems to be an effort to neatly tie up any loose threads hanging around.
    But as mentioned before, none of it matters. All you need to know is that Hunt and his crew work to overcome insurmountable odds (more than once) to grab an object, fire an object, cut the wires to an object, or shove an object into another object at exactly the right moment.
    It's visual storytelling, and it's the same song the franchise has been singing since our hero was rock climbing or fighting on tops of trains which fell over edges in the first film. You don't have to understand it to get it. 
    The showstoppers are impressive: one involves Hunt navigating freezing waters to infiltrate a sunken Russian submarine (in a sequence that really takes far too long), and the other a well-publicised duel in which the agent gets thrown around like a ragdoll on a biplane.
    And if you want a reason for watching this movie, then that’s the clincher. If this is indeed Tom's swansong, it's the last chance to be enthralled by his antics on the big screen.
    It’s not too much a spoiler to say that Hunt survives the ordeals. So is Final Reckoning truly final? Who can say?
    Hunt has been almost hilariously  described by his peers as "the living manifestation of destiny", but not even his Optimus Prime platitudes about fate and determination can eradicate villainy, which is bound to rear its head again.
    Who will the President call next time? Perhaps it’s something to contemplate while having a roast dinner.

#missionimpossible #finalreckoning #paramountpicturesAus

COULROPHOBIC CORNY-COPIA

 

MOVIE
Clown in a Cornfield
Director Eli Craig
Review Ray Chan

About 20 minutes into this movie, viewers can be forgiven for twitching in their seats … not out of fright, but perhaps of boredom at the usual tropes and gruesome gore expected of typical slasher spectacles.
    During this introductory period, the plot’s pretty basic. 17-year-old Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas) and her single father (Aaron Abrams) have moved into rural Kettle Springs, Missouri, where Quinn befriends a group of teens her age and finds that her fun-loving cohort appear to be generally frowned upon by the older generation in the town, who prefer the quieter life of yore.
    Then a killing spree by someone wearing a clown costume drenches the community in a sea of blood. It turns out that the jester is a facsimile of Frendo, a mascot of the local corn syrup factory which burned down years ago, an incident which many of the elderly folks believe was caused by the young ‘uns.
    Ho-hum, you might think. But then, in the hands of director Eli Craig, all of this is intentional and referential to the history of slashers, down to the point where Quinn quips that the massacres remind her of something out of an 80’s splatter show. 
    Craig is best known for co-writing and directing Tucker and Dale vs Evil. In the years since that film’s release, no other self-parodying scare production has even come close to snatching the crown off of its trucker-hatted head. Its genius is rooted in simultaneously inhabiting and satirising the genre, without sacrificing either the jokes or the terrors lurking round the corner. 
    And so, in a blink of an eye, this movie picks up, revealing not just some clever and inventive scenes, witty dialogue and plenty of red herrings as to the identity of the villain, but also some incredibly solid kills, like the gnarly chainsaw slaughter in the middle of the cornfield, a barbell incident that sees a severed head dispatched into a bin, and a brutal pitchfork sequence that results in two deaths.
    Kevin Durand is the unexpected delight of the cast, and looks so much like Elon Musk that he must be a shoo-in for the lead if a doco-pic of the businessman were ever made.
    In this picture, as Arthur Hill, Durand initially comes off as a stereotypical father who is part of a lucrative family that founded the town. But he evolves into something else entirely that is wholly crucial to the circus-themed massacre.
    Metaphorically, the theme of Clown .. is of a feud between the older and younger contemporaries. The divide is amplified by incidents such Quinn not being able to drive an old-fashioned stickshift car, her disgust at the absence of a strong wi-fi signal, or her school friends being stumped by a rotary phone, unable to call for help. The high school students are sneered at, looked down on for simply having a good time, and judged for things they didn’t ever do or think about doing. The sheriff seems to make his own laws, and teachers dish out detention for no reason.
    Craig and co-writer Carter Blanchard treat the movie with moments of coulrophobic greatness. Frendo is a brutal psychopath whose weird devotion to the harlequin art form (like his big shoes that squeak when he walks during the tensest moments of stalking his prey) makes the audience snigger through the slaughter.
    One particular confrontation in the cornfield is particularly well-choreographed: Quinn and two girl friends are hiding in panic from a chainsaw-wielding Frendo, when one of them inadvertently gasps in fear. Her pal alongside clasps her hand over her mouth to silence her, only for the would-be-saviour herself to also start to yell out in fright. Quinn completes the sequence by covering this girl’s mouth, but then gets her own face grasped by the white glove of Frendo.  
    One can’t help but notice that the film is overflowing with palpable teenage energy. But the constant barrage of “adults just don’t understand us” and the nonstop desire to drink themselves stupid at every opportunity becomes predictable and tiresome.
    Still, the movie is refreshingly different to straight-out fright flicks because of the whimsiness and wit strewn in among the clownish carnage. The playful campy tone only adds to the entertainment, deftly balancing the comedy and horror elements. This is not The Terrifier, and Frendo is no Art.
    There are a couple of plot twists along the way to wrap things up nicely. One involves the unmasking of Frendo, the other a neat development between two of Quinn’s friends that can be picked up earlier in the story if one were astute enough.

#clowninacornfield #studiocanal