BE REEL

Mission: Impossible--The Final Reckoning (2025)  As the second-half of an epic, two-part finale that began with 2023’s Dead Reckoning (which you’ll need to see first to understand this one), Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning picks up with Ethan Hunt’s pursuit of a source code in a secret case that can only be unlocked by a dual set of keys, to bring down a malevolent AI program known as the Entity. And to silence the source’s “cult” followers and prevent a nuclear Holocaust (again). The three-day deadline that ensues involves Ethan and his team tracking down a submarine in the below-freezing Arctic (specifically the Bering Sea in the Northern Pacific) and a vault in South Africa, all while contemplating what is on their hands (past or present) and what isn’t.  One of the reasons each installment of Mission: Impossible  worked as a standalone chapter (mostly) was that subtle references were made to previous missions while focusing primarily on the respective narra...

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on December 27, 2024.  In 2005, writer-producer-director Paul Weitz made a film called In Good Company , a comedy-drama about a sports magazine salesman (played by Dennis Quaid) who is suddenly downsized from his management position and gets a new boss—an ambitious young hotshot (played by Topher Grace)—half his age. Things get complicated when the 51-year-old businessman and family man’s wife is expecting another child, and especially when his 26-year-old supervisor eventually falls for his oldest, college-aged daughter (played by Scarlett Johansson). Talk about a clash of old versus new.  This film was released just before I graduated high school, during a time when I was much younger than I am now, and before I really understood how the world works, how other people think, and how businesses operate. It’s cliche to say, I know, but there were so many other places and things I had yet to experience, for b...

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on December 9, 2024. (For my former Goddard students, who loved the first movie.)   When Moana was first released in 2016, it became an instant classic that broke barriers of cultural representation on screen (specifically for Polynesian audiences), with a compelling coming-of-age story of a teenage princess who becomes a wayfinder. Not to mention a musical earworm for countless children and families. (I know, because the 3-to-4-year-olds I was co-teaching at the time loved it.) Ideas for a follow-up were eventually (and originally) pitched and planned as a streaming series on Disney+.  Picking up years after the events of the first movie, an older Moana (voiced and sung by Auli’i Cravalho) is in search of other voyagers while also helping to lead her own village. She soon receives a call from her ancestors to journey through Oceania against an even bigger threat against the entire world, scary creatures a...

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on December 27, 2024.   As the third entry of a fan favorite series that has proven to be an exceptional screen adaptation of a popular video game franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 reteams the titular speedy and blue hedgehog (voiced by Ben Schwartz) with yellow flying fox Tails (voiced by Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and red, large-fisted echidna Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba). This time, they go up against the unstoppable, rage-fueled hedgehog Shadow (voiced by Keanu Reeves), while also (rather hesitantly) forming an unlikely alliance with the villainous—and now-pudgy—Dr. Ivo Robotnik.  Jim Carrey returns to his most recent iconic role, breaking a personal record for playing the same character in more than two movies. (He had portrayed Ace Ventura and Lloyd Christmas two times each before.) Even more, the ever-popular funnyman is, this time, in a dual role as the elderly, bushy-bearded Gerald Robotnik as well....

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on December 27, 2024.  In an endless parade of live-action remakes of beloved animated Disney classics (many of them easy cash-grabs), now comes a prequel to the 2019 take on The Lion King . But while its predecessor was basically a shot-for-shot remake of its traditionally animated counterpart, this 2024 release offers something more original and engaging, focusing on the backstory of the titular king of the Pride Lands.  Trailers for this film made me wonder how director Barry Jenkins would bring his trademark filmmaking that he established with projects like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk into a digital environment with photo-realistically-rendered animals. Here, the skilled auteur emphasizes family dynamics, especially relationships between (adoptive) brothers; perspectives and definitions of “outsiders”; examples of leadership, both good and bad (“To be a true king, he has to earn it”); a l...

  WRITERS NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on December 30, 2024.  The creators of the live-action Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies return to J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary world of Middle-earth for the first time in ten years. For the spin-off animated feature, The War of the Rohirrim (which follows in the tradition of adaptations from Rankin-Bass and Ralph Baskhi, among others), co-producers Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens enlisted animation director Kenji Kamiyama (Netflix’s Blade Runner: Black Lotus ) to present a new story and fresh take in the style of Japanese animé.  Set nearly 200 years before the events of The Hobbit , Rohirrim provides the backstory of the fortress of Helm’s Deep—the setting of the climatic battle in The Two Towers film, whose imprints are all over this film as well. More specifically, this story focuses on the people and kingdom of Rohan, led by the mighty king Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Br...

(Courtesy  https://images.app.goo.gl/Zp2EepFSBF49pYP8A )  Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation (2015)  By the time the Mission: Impossible film series got to a fifth installment, two things became central. The first is that the franchise became as well-known not so much for Tom Cruise’s star power, but more so for his daring and dangerous stunt work. The 2015 follow-up, Rogue Nation , opens in spectacular, death-defying fashion with Ethan Hunt literally hanging outside an A400M aircraft as it takes off. Without a doubt, this is arguably the craziest stunt that Cruise has ever done in his career. (“One of these days,” Hunt is told, “you are going to take it too far.”)  But it’s not the only sequence that physically tests Ethan and his team this time around, as they track down the head of a merciless organization known as the Syndicate (a regular adversary in the original 1960s TV series) that knows and rivals the secrets of the Impossible Mission Force. (Returning playe...

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on October 24, 2024.  The same year that the Looney Tunes were brought back to the big screen, Warner Bros also decided to bring back William Hanna & Joseph Barbera’s ever-popular cat-and-mouse duo in a live-action/animated comedy. The good news is that, unlike the pair’s 1993 feature film debut (which had them speaking and singing), director Tim Story and company take the characters back to their pantomime, slapstick roots. The recent theatrical movie’s fun and eye-popping 2D/3D animation style had me convinced from the first trailer, “That’s it! They got it!” (Every animal character you see on screen is a cartoon. Talk about consistency.)  That being said, the backdrop that Tom & Jerry  is set against leaves little else to be desired. Ditto its lazy writing. The story begins as the duo, unbeknownst to each other, move to New York City for fresh starts. Jerry sneaks into a five-star hotel, whe...

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on November 11, 2024.  It’s almost hard to believe it’s been thirty years this year since director Robert Zemeckis made Forrest Gump , an unconventional character drama that spanned decades, subjects, and generations with a simple man at its center. Now, Zemeckis reunites with that film’s stars, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and some of the same crew (including screenwriter Eric Roth and composer Alan Silvestri) for a daring, experimental concept and story that spans generations, with the camera in one stationary position throughout.  The fact that Here contains multiple storylines—the central one being Hanks and Wright (still as engaging as ever), as a couple who meet as teenagers and grow old together in his family home—and follows a non-linear structure makes it play like an intriguing novel, as if we’re witnessing a collection of home movies—joys and pains included—recorded over several lifetimes, as wel...

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on November 11, 2024.  The latest directorial effort from Clint Eastwood—a stirring courtroom drama and complex character study—may reportedly be the 94-year-old filmmaker/screen icon’s last. It’s kind of a pity that it’s only been getting a limited release in theaters, because it’s a superb achievement. (I attended a screening at the AMC in Edina last week, the only theater in the Twin Cities that’s showing it.) To get right to the point, Juror #2 is one of the year’s most gripping, riveting, and challenging films.  Brilliantly written by Jonathan Abrams, the story follows a man named Justin Kemp, a recovering alcoholic with a wife expecting their first child any day now. When he’s called for jury duty in a case in Georgia, centered around an alleged homicide, what follows are some startling and morally ambiguous revelations as to whether Kemp may or may not have a secret connection to the case.  The...

WRITERS NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on December 6, 2024.  After the phenomenal success of the original Broadway production in 2003 (starring Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth), Universal Pictures bought the rights to adapt Stephen Schwartz’s stage musical Wicked —itself an adaptation of Gregory McGuire’s 1995 revisionist novel of the same name, about the origins of The Wizard of Oz —into a feature film. Fast forward almost two decades and we finally have director Jon M. Chu’s long-awaited first half (or act?) of the origin stories of the two most famous witches of Oz: the cheerful and popular Glinda the Good and the misunderstood outcast Elphaba (who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West), and how they met at school. (Part Two is scheduled for a theatrical release next year.)  I didn’t have high expectations, assuming, based on the trailers, that this would be another CGI-heavy tentpole. I must say, I was quite surprised to learn that just ab...

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on December 6, 2024.  In recent years, several directors with diverse and acclaimed filmographies have shown that, despite their respective ages, they can still deliver dynamic and striking cinematic experiences. These include Martin Scorsese (81 when he made last year’s period western Killers of the Flower Moon ), Francis Ford Coppola (85 for his sci-fi fable Megalopolis ), and Clint Eastwood (94 for the stirring courtroom drama Juror #2 ). And then there’s Ridley Scott, who just celebrated his 87th birthday on November 30th, nearly two weeks after the release of his long-awaited sequel to the 2000 sword-and-sandals epic Gladiator , starring Russell Crowe.  Set nearly 20 years after the legendary and dignified Maximus Decimus Meridius (Crowe) overthrew the corrupt Emperor of Rome and strived for a better future for the nation, Gladiator II  centers on an adult Lucius (Paul Mescal, leading a compelling...

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on October 2, 2024.   Francis Ford Coppola has made what many consider to be some of the greatest films of all-time, including The Godfather  and Apocalypse Now (both staples of the 1970s that are still being viewed, analyzed, and revisited to this day). That being said, most of Coppola’s credits have been adaptations of books, each retaining the respective names of the original authors, from Mario Puzo to Bram Stoker and John Grisham. Megalopolis may be the legendary filmmaker’s most personal film to date—and the first to bear his name in the title. It’s also been getting a polarizing response from critics and audiences since it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.  This is an ambitious project that Coppola—who self-financed the thing, through his company American Zoetrope—had been wanting to make since the 1980s. The story features a 21st Century Roman city in America (aptly named...

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron  (2002)  Having made two hand-drawn features and two CGI comedies by the turn of the century, the next animated project from DreamWorks was their most ambitious and experimental up to that point. Seamlessly combining traditional 2D and digital 3D effects (a marriage that co-producer Jeffrey Katzenberg called “tra-digital”), the most remarkable and radical thing about  Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron  (the story of a wild mustang on a harrowing journey across the Old West in the 1800s) is that its animal characters don’t even speak.  Guided by Matt Damon’s narration, a profound and emotional score by Hans Zimmer, and tear-jerking songs by singer Bryan Adams (the tracks “Here I Am” and “I Will Always Return” make me a blubbering mess every time I hear them), the detailed animation, body language, and facial expressions of the horses in this film are thoroughly impressive. (Audio of real horses were used instead of voice actors.) T...