Mission: Impossible III (2006)

★★★
Mission: Impossible III tries to shake up the formula and try something different. We get the truest MacGuffin of the series, a heist no one sees and a villain whose plan for world conquest is never revealed. What the movie does instead is put together a solid team of I.M.F. agents to carry out the mission and feature an operation in Vatican City that is as elaborate as any similar sequence in the franchise. We also have the added difficulty of Ethan Hunt's relationship with series newcomer Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan), which figures into a frantic chase spurred by Ethan's realization that his nemesis intends to do exactly what he said he would do. Director J.J. Abrams is on deck for his take on Ethan's world. At the time (2006), he was known for his television shows Alias and Lost. I never watched the former, though I have been through the latter several times. I suspect there is a bit more of Alias here given that show's premise, but Abrams' most evident contribution is his preference to get straight to the point, which differs from Brian De Palma's slow burn approach and John Woo's stylistic flair.

Sugar Cane Alley (1983)

★★★½
José (Garry Cadenat) lives a hard life in the sugar cane fields of 1930s Martinique. He is an orphan being raised by his grandmother. His childhood is only a brief respite before he is strong enough to work in the fields for the rest of his life to make a paltry sum that will barely sustain him. His prospects don't appear too bright. We see that in the early scenes. Slavery is officially illegal on these Caribbean islands, but the workers toil away as if they were still chained to an existence imposed on their ancestors. The workers are free, but they are free to do what? They have no resources to move out of the shacks to learn new skills. Slavery is still in the recent past, but maybe someone like José represents the future. He's a smart kid. He is resourceful. He sits and listens to the wise Medouze (Douta Seck) tell stories of Africa. He wants to travel there one day.

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

★★★
Mission: Impossible 2 is a glorious marriage of Hollywood action and John Woo's heroic bloodshed style from Hong Kong. Producers Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner hit the jackpot in recruiting the legendary director, who was hot off the success of Face/Off and looking for his next big challenge. He found it with the second installment in the blockbuster series. Working from a solid script by Robert Towne and a game Tom Cruise who was up for anything, Woo crafted this splendid thriller with secret agents, heists, disguises, deception and some of the most visually arresting action scenes in the director's oeuvre. Lest this appear as a movie focused solely on its style and sacrificing substance, rest assured that that is not the case. The plot is engaging in its own right, and the chemistry between Cruise and costar Thandie Newton is a highlight of the show. There are the quieter moments that remind us of Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible, and then there are amped up shootouts and chases that unmistakably have Woo's fingerprints all over them.

Mission: Impossible (1996)

★★★
The first installment in what would later become an action series of consistently strong output, 1996's Mission: Impossible introduces us to Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and lays the groundwork for a succession of assignments that will take Hunt all over the world to stop supervillains with mind-blowing plans for world domination. Each new entry raises the stakes. The Navy SEALs have a saying: "The only easy day was yesterday." In Hunt's world, the only easy job was the previous one. James Bond had his SPECTRE and the threat of nuclear war, but his next mission could feature a villain with modest goals, like Kananga's drug operation in Live and Let Die. The Bond films of that era could be cranked out every year because of the plentiful source material. The longer wait times between Mission: Impossible films give the writers more time to craft stories that pit Ethan Hunt against ever-increasing threats. It is no small accomplishment that the series writers keep outdoing themselves.

Vanity Fair (2004)

★★
Many lengthy novels suffer during the transition to the big screen because the filmmakers delete excess characters and shorten the plot to facilitate a reasonable running time. Vanity Fair makes a strong case that deletion is sometimes necessary. This is a film with so many characters and personal stories that it becomes overwhelming at 137 minutes, a time that doesn't pass with any noticeable speed. The movie features good acting, the costumes look authentic, and the architecture seems realistic enough, but there doesn't seem to be any drive to its story. It's basically one scene after another of sophisticated British characters and their mundane problems associated with their social status.

Baby's Day Out (1994)

zero stars
Despite his '90s output, John Hughes will forever remain one of my favorite screenwriters. The guy knew how to write great dialogue. He viewed his teenage characters as complex individuals with strengths and weaknesses, dreams and insecurities. What happened? How did he go from Sixteen Candles to this? Baby's Day Out (1994) is his worst movie. Though he wasn't the director, he still wrote it and produced it, which meant he had enough input to take much of the blame for its failures. There is not a single redeemable aspect of the finished product. I didn't buy the premise. The characters are stupid. The soundtrack grates all the way to the bitter end. The special effects are substandard, which might be okay if the movie were any good as a live-action cartoon, but it isn't. The direction is appalling, though I'll give director Patrick Read Johnson a pass because he made Angus the following year. No, this is a John Hughes film, and its existence represents a low point in the revered writer's catalogue. His gifts to Gen X teens and children are still held in high esteem. Baby's Day Out is that lump of coal that accidentally fell into the stocking.

Sound of Freedom (2023)

★★★½
Finished in 2018 and shelved by Disney after its acquisition of Fox, Sound of Freedom finally makes it way to theaters five years later. The movie's journey to the big screen comes to us by way of producer Eduardo Verastegui's tireless efforts to pry the distribution rights from Disney's clutches and raise funds through grassroots efforts to get this story in front of audiences. I’m glad all the hard work paid off. This movie was too important to remain hidden away in a vault somewhere collecting dust. It tells the true story of Tim Ballard, played passionately here by Jim Caviezel, as a former agent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who found the limitations of his employer's jurisdiction insufficient for him to make enough of a difference. Early on, he and a colleague comment on the number of pedophiles they have arrested. It's a high number, but the number of children they have rescued is far too few. Dissatisfied with the bureaucratic obstacles in his path, Ballard eventually struck out on his own and founded an organization that aims to rescue children and raise awareness of the sickening crime of child trafficking.

Hush (2008)

★★½
Hush (2008) is a taut little thriller taking place on a rainy night. It has a small cast and makes use of only a few locations. Like Duel's menacing truck driver, we have a villain here who drives a truck and remains largely unseen. I came across the trailer on a D.V.D. while I was watching another movie, and the concept intrigued me. Along a U.K. motorway, Zakes (William Ash) and girlfriend Beth (Christine Bottomley) tail a white cargo truck, the back door for which opens by accident and reveals a woman locked in a cage. That was enough for me. Movies with simple premises like this depend on imagination and clever plotting to make up for the lack of characters and settings, so seeing a movie like this succeed in achieving its objectives is very satisfying. There are hits and misses, to be sure, but the good ones, like the misunderstood Open Water, are treasures that are worth the trip to uncover.