zdaughter's Definitive Ranking of All Eight Mission: Impossible Movies

Everyone knows it's hard for me to pass on a request, so zdaughter and I sat down (at Whitney's request) to rank all eight Mission: Impossible movies.  It went like this.

zman: My friend Whitney asked us to do something.

zdaughter: Cool, what does she want?

zman: Whitney is a man.

zdaughter: Oh Whitney, right, he has a bad tattoo doesn't he?

zman: Several of my friends do but yes, he does.  He asked us to rank all eight Mission: Impossibles.

zdaughter: Yes!  I'll get a pencil and paper!

You may recall that she thinks of herself as a Mandalorian but she's also very much Hermione Granger--she's the kid who always raises her hand for every question just to keep the class moving along because she's paying exceedingly close attention and gets bored when things bog down.  She only got one question wrong on a math test so far this year and she's still pissed about it.  This is all her mother.  Outside of class she doesn't take herself too seriously.  She gets this from me.  Here's her spring school photo, for example.

I'm telling you all this to help frame up her approach to the M:I ranking.  She loves cold blooded killers, strong female characters, fast pacing, perfectionism, and a dollop of silliness.  And she's a zperson so she has no time for schmaltz, cheese, or maudlinism.

With that, here are her rankings:

8. Mission: Impossible 2 - Remarkably, an action movie directed by John Woo with Thandie Newton as the leading lady and Dougray Scott as the main villain is a dud.  zdaughter's take: "This is so cheesy.  He has long hair and he's always tossing it around.  The fight scenes are ridiculous, he's always flipping and spinning for no reason.  It's like he's trying to fight like a Jedi but he doesn't have a lightsaber."  I agree with all of this, I'm amazed that the franchise survived this cornball schlock.

7. Mission: Impossible 3 - Remarkably, an action movie directed by J.J. Abrams with Michelle Monaghan as the leading lady and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the main villain is a dud.  I sense a trend.  zdaughter's take: "This one's corny too.  His hair is short but now he's retired?  There's no way Ethan Hunt would retire.  And of course he has to come out of retirement to save his girlfriend.  I wasn't worried when he died, I knew they would bring him back to life.  Tom Cruise isn't going to die."  I agree with all of this too.  Blowing up a Lamborghini added insult to injury.

6. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning - This is the eighth episode, currently in theaters near you.  zdaughter's take: "It's a good movie but it's too long and it's stressful.  It's a long time to be that stressed out.  Gabriel wasn't a great bad guy and it's hard to understand how the Entity works.  But there is lots of action and Grace is cool.  I wish they didn't kill [redacted]."  Grace is a thief, fyi, and zdaughter's favorite character in the franchise.  They could've lopped 45 minutes off this beast and told the exact same story.  At one point Cruise narrowly survives a crazy situation that drags on for half an hour and then he explains all the other stuff they need to do to accomplish the mission and I looked at my watch and exclaimed "Jesus Christ, we've been here for 90 minutes and they have more to do?!"  It's just too long.

5. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation - This is the fifth episode and the first one directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who directed all the subsequent episodes.  I'm surprised she has it this low but her top four are her top four and she isn't budging for anyone.  zdaughter's take: "It's a good movie but it isn't as good as the ones I like better.  I don't like the color filter."  I have to agree on the color issue.  I don't know if we had a streaming problem on Prime but the colors were way over-saturated and muddy.  But it introduces Ilsa Faust, a world-class assassin and zdaughter's second favorite character in the franchise.

4. Mission: Impossible - Fallout - This is the sixth episode and it's also surprisingly low but this is zdaughter's list and I'm not messing with it.  "This one is good.  It has Walker [Henry Cavill] and the White Widow [Vanessa Kirby] and Ethan Hunt is John Lark."  That all makes sense if you've seen the movie.  It's a banger--this would've been in my top two if I wrote the list.

3. Mission: Impossible - This is the one that started it all.  zdaughter's take: "This is the one where he drops down from the ceiling and he can't touch the floor and the rope slips and he stops an inch away from the floor.  And he jumps off a helicopter just as it explodes and it throws him onto a train."  In other words it has iconic scenes that everyone remembers.  It's the OG, the Sean Connery of the franchise.  Number three is where I would place it too.

2. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - This is the fourth episode, where the franchise turns away from the soft dreck of episodes 2 and 3 into hard espionage stories.  Sort of how the James Bond franchise did a complete tonal change when they moved from Pierce Brosnan's "Die Another Day" to Daniel Craig's "Casino Royale."  zdaughter's take: "Ethan Hunt climbs on the outside of a building like a budget Spider-Man, there's a crazy chase scene in a sandstorm, the Kremlin explodes, Hawkeye is in it too."  The Avengers crossover likely boosted this one in her eyes but I agree that it's a ton of fun.  It would've been in the top two on my list.

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - This is the seventh episode and a bit of a surprise for the top spot.  But it makes sense when you hear zdaughter's take: "It has Agent Carter [Grace is played by Hayley Atwell, who played Agent Carter which I encourage you to watch on Disney+, zdaughter highly endorses it too] but it's weird to see her not in the 1940s.  It also has Ilsa and Paris [Paris is a female killing machine].  The best part is when Agent Carter tries to drive the Fiat but can only go in circles and Paris is just sitting there like what the hell.  It's the funniest of all of them."  This is all true, this is the episode that takes itself the least seriously, that occasionally puts tongue in cheek and humanizes the characters.  For example, there's a scene where Tom Cruise kills a bunch of people (this happens often) and Hayley Atwell (who met him a few hours ago) is comically shocked speechless and Cruise has to convince her that it's all ok.  In another scene, Atwell and Cruise are handcuffed together and hilarity ensues.  Cruise later ends up staggering around Rome, handcuffed to a steering wheel.  It's the only movie where Ethan Hunt gets goofed on and it has three badass female characters who help save the world, so that's why it's zdaughter's #1.

Go Buy Charles's Stuff!

My friend and former colleague moonlights as a professional actor. A few years ago he told me about an improvisational dramatic film he was working on. It's now available on iTunes, Amazon and at live screenings. Here's the trailer.



I suggest you support independent film and rent (or even buy!) Somewhere In The Middle this weekend.

zTravelogue: Media Reviews

I recently spent over 40 hours traveling to and from Japan. During this time I consumed a bunch of food and even more media--three movies and three books. I will attempt to channel Dave and provide pithy insightful reviews of each.

The Revenant

You've probably already seen this. I had not because I have two little kids who absolutely abuse babysitters so I've seen one movie in the theater in the past 5+ years, and by the time we put them to bed zwoman is too tired to watch more than an hour of TV so we only watch TV shows.

Anyway, it won three Oscars (actor, director, cinematography) so I had huge expectations. The movie was good but not great. To me it's just a standard revenge story, Grizzly Adams crossed with Gladiator or Kill Bill or Unforgiven. Like Gladiator it starts with an intense battle scene. And like all three, the protagonist and someone he loves go through a brutal experience that kill s the loved one(s). The protagonist is left for dead only to survive and come back and kill the people who wronged him and the person he loves in a remarkably violent climax.

To be fair, "brutal experience" doesn't do justice to what happens to Leonoardo DiCaprio.

The Revenant Bear Scene from Alamin Abadin on Vimeo.

Additional brutality befalls Leo--he seeks vengeance on a human, not the bear's cubs.

This was a fine way to pass 156 minutes, I'm just surprised that this was one of the best movies of 2015. I'm also surprised that DiCaprio finally won an Oscar for this performance--the role required very little range. All he had to do was act like he was fucked up by a bear, then act angry and fuck up a human. Did you see The Departed or Gangs of New York or even What's Eating Gilbert Grape? This seems like a lesser performance. But good for him on finally getting on Oscar.

Rating: 4 out of 5 airsickness bags.

Everybody Wants Some!!

This was positioned as a spiritual successor to Dazed and Confused, which I first saw in the DoG Street Theater and then saw at least 69 more times on VHS in FOG:TB Derek's room. Which is to say Dazed and Confused is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's perfect in so many thematic ways: paddles, whaleshit, "fry like bacon you little freshman piggies!" And then there's stuff like this with little gems sparkling up at you every time you watch:



Like Dazed and Confused, Everybody Wants Some takes place in Texas and involves students on summer break. Other similarities include a baseball montage and a protagonist who is a freshman guy who meets a girl and rapidly woos her during and after a party. And both were directed by Richard Linklater. Unlike Dazed and Confused, the students are college kids and they are enjoying the last 2 or 3 days of their summer vacation before classes start. And unlike Dazed and Confused, some of the camaraderie between the characters feels forced, the cinematography isn't as interesting, and I ultimately didn't care what happened to the characters.

But like the Revenant, it was a fine way to spend 117 minutes hurtling across the Pacific Ocean. I don't plan on watching it again and again though.

Rating: 3 out of 5 airsickness bags.

In the Heart of the Sea

Speaking of hurtling across, the Pacific OceanI previously opined that "In the heart of the sea is a great book, Moby Dick inspirations notwithstanding, but I don't see how it translates into a 90 minute movie." Director Ron Howard likely read my comment and took it to heart, drawing the film out for 122 minutes instead of 90. Unfortunately the book still didn't translate into a good movie.

In order to make the movie feel like a typical Hollywood story, Howard created beef between the captain (Pollard) and his first mate (Chase) right from the start. In the movie, Pollard got the captain job that Chase thought he deserved, the two men didn't know each other, Pollard didn't know how to sail and was a prick, and thus Chase resented/hated Pollard. But in the book they had previously sailed together and seemed to get along until they were months at sea and couldn't find any whales.

Chase is played by Chris Hemsworth who seems way too big to effectively move around on a rocking whaleship. Hemsworth affects an accent that is completely unrecognizable. I have no idea what he was going for but he ultimately sounds like a deaf truck driver from Long Island trying to impersonate Crocodile Dundee. All of this is to say that Hemsworth does not help the film.

Howard also cuts out a lot of the text on the art of whaling as well as a lot of the story. For example, there's no mention of eating tortoises, setting islands on fire, or visiting the Galapagos Islands. Howard somehow managed to take an incredibly compelling true story and make it feel like contrite Hollywood fiction. Not a good job by Opie Cunningham. At least it's better than this effort:



I don't regret watching this movie but I can't really encourage you to watch it either.

Rating: 2 out of 5 airsickness bags

Cod

This is an old book that I've been meaning to read for years but never got around to it until I was stuck at the Raleigh-Durham airport and saw it in the used bookstore. I started it then and finished it on my trip to Japan.

Mark Kurlansky likes to write about food and fishing, and cod is about both and more--Kurlansky writes at length about cod biology; baked cod; broiled cod; roasted cod; cod chowder; cod croquettes; cod stomp and go; cod bacalaitos; cod feroce; cod bouillabaisse; all the different varieties of salt cod; cod behavior; cod habitats; cod population growth and decline; cod fishing methods from antiquity through today; Cape Cod; New Englander's affection for cod; Englishmen's love of eating cod beyond all other flaky white fish; the Basque's penchant for catching cod; Iceland's economic dependence on cod; Spaniard's love of salt cod; how to clean cod; myriad ways to prepare cod roe; myriad ways to prepare cod tongue; myriad ways to prepare cod cheeks; how Clarence Birdseye invented frozen cod; how industrial cod fishing changed the world's economy; and all manner of other cod-related stuff.



I told you I would channel my inner Dave! All this fishy goodness is packed into about 230 pages, so it's a quick and pleasant read. That said, fans of natural history and oddball facts will enjoy this more than your average normal person. It's a book for Dave.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 airsickness bags (unless you're Dave, then 4.5 out of 5)

When We Were Orphans

Kazuo Ishiguro wrote Remains of the Day, which I read and greatly enjoyed in Prof. Heacox's Contemporary Literature class. His later novel When We Were Orphans is not as good. In theory it's a detective novel--the main character is a detective who spends 3/4 of his life looking for his parents. Throughout the story he claims to solve all sorts of crimes, but the story never provides even a shred of detail regarding the crimes or how he solves them. He just talks about the fact that he solves crimes, ad nauseum, while pining away for some woman whom he says looks like a bird of prey. It's weird.

Set in Shanghai in the 1930's, during the Sino-Japanese War, an overly protracted portion of the book involves the main character slogging his way through bombed out rubble while bombs and bullets fly around him. So preposterous is this scene, and his motivation for the slog, that I began to believe the whole thing was a child's dream (the book starts in the main character's childhood). It isn't a dream. It's just weird.

And the conclusion is weird. I don't want to say that it was a let-down, but it kind of made me wonder why Ishiguro bothered to write the story in the first place. Immediately upon finishing the book, I quoted Ryan Lochte and said "Whatever."

But it kept me entertained for five straight hours and some of the writing is damn good. You could do worse. But if you're into stories set in Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese War, watch Empire of the Sun.

Rating: 3 out of 5 airsickness bags

In a Dark, Dark Wood

I was desperate for something to read and grabbed this at the tiny Hudson News next to my gate at SFO. I hadn't heard of it, and my other options were some tripe I'd heard of or some tripe I'd already read. This book is tripe too.

It's a mystery novel with no plot twist, no surprise, no ... mystery. The cover quotes Reese Witherspoon's assertion to "Prepare to be scared ... really scared!" but nothing scary happened. Just a bunch of British people in a house in a dark wood. A dark, dark wood, one might say.

It gave me something to do between San Francisco and Newark, but that's about it.

Rating: 2 out of 5 airsickness bags

Gheorghe Goes to the Movies

Joy is a powerful thing, and one of our favorite themes. A great many of the posts found in this festival of filler can be boiled down to our search for things that make us happy. It's within this context that I offer my wholehearted recommendation for the new Emmett Malloy film, Big Easy Express.

The movie chronicles an eight-day, six-city tour from Oakland, CA to New Orleans, LA undertaken by folk-pop-country bands Mumford & Sons, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. The twist: the bands and their considerable road crews and entourages traveled the entire journey by rail on a vintage train.

Perhaps it was the uniqueness of the trip, or the bands' shared musical lineage. Maybe the romance of the circumstance or the near-universal dedication to musicianship. Or it could have been the rabid, passionate fans that showed up at each railstop concert venue. Whatever the manifold reasons, the camaraderie and almost awestruck glee of the participants dominated the film, as tangible and present as the massive thunderhead that serves as a visual backdrop to the Zeros' set in Marfa, Texas.


Big Easy Express Official Trailer from S2BN Films on Vimeo.

As you might imagine, music dominates the movie, with vivid and energetic live performances by each band and intimate trainboard jam sessions between and amongst the bands. Among my favorite moments is a scene where Zeros' violinist Nora Kirkpatrick sits in on a jam with Old Crow and learns the latter's song in a matter of moments, playing along as if she'd known it for years.

Concert video has been done to death, but the directors' use of multiple angles, speeds, and film styles bring something new to 'Express'. Old Crow do a killer version of 'Wagon Wheel', a song Bob Dylan started and they finished. The Mumfords' live version of their hit, 'The Cave' features the Stephen F. Austin High School Marching band in one of the movie's most affecting and moving scenes. And the finale, which features all three bands in an impossible spirited version of Woody Guthrie's 'This Train is Bound for Glory', is an all-timer. Hard not to leave the theater without a big ol' smile on your face.

I took my 10 year-old daughter to the show, which screened as part of the annual SilverDocs festival in Silver Spring, MD. To my slight surprise, she was by far the youngest person in the audience, which made me feel both like the coolest dad in the room, and the dumbest. But aside from the uncensored version of the Mumfords' 'Little Lion Man', everything about this movie is something I want my kids to see and feel - the joy of doing something you love with people you dig is what we should all get to experience.

Lemons and Lemonade: a G:TB Movie Review

FoG:TB Shlara's been promoting the heck out of 50/50, the newly-released Seth Rogen/Joseph Gordon-Levitt film, so we figured we'd let her tell our readers why.  We think you'll enjoy the hell out of this.

Shit happens.

Last year, my shit was cancer.

I never use the words “victim” or “survivor” when talking about my situation—it just doesn’t feel right to me. I had cancer, and now I don’t. No need to share the gory details. Even when I was in the middle of it, I didn’t want to have cancer consume my life, but it certainly was the dominant theme of my life and it absolutely affected how people interacted with me.

It’s been hard for me to explain or describe the whole ordeal beyond “it’s surreal.”  Then I saw a screening of '50/50'.

Bingo.

Now, I don’t have to explain it because Will Reiser (the screenwriter whose own life inspires the story) so honestly and beautifully articulates it in this movie.

My experience isn’t exactly like Adam’s (the 20-something guy with cancer) but the mood and feelings and tone in the movie accurately capture how I felt and how I think my family and friends felt—it was enchanting, and raw and so real. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt is brilliant as Adam.

Even if you or your BFF have never had cancer, you’ll see some of yourself in one of the main characters. Because, at this point in life, we’ve all had to deal with some serious shit. Some of us were thrown for a loop at a very young age like Adam. And we’ve all had to find a way to cope—slogging through the melancholy haze and trying to maintain a sense of normalcy.

Like Adam, I worked to keep my life as regular as possible—I created a “no melodrama” zone for family, friends and coworkers in my presence. For the most part, everyone was compliant—there was an occasional alcohol-induced crying jag or random awkward comments like “I know someone who had that and they died.”

Many of us in the G:TB universe tend to use humor and sarcasm as a coping mechanism when faced with adversity, like Adam and his buddy Kyle (Seth Rogen). Or we channel our emotions into “safe” places like passion for sports teams.

My treatment coincided with football season last year. (Go Steelers!) One of my doctors is an obnoxious Ravens fan. So, each week NFL trash talk became a regular part my appointment—the other doctors and nurses would chime in too, and my mom, who is the biggest Steelers homer, would just taunt him mercilessly. (The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.) In one of those “live life to its fullest” flashes, my mom & I decided to go to Dallas for the Super Bowl. It was an awesome trip, despite the Steelers loss, and I was more excited to share the stories and photos with my doctor’s office than anyone else—because they lived through the whole season with me.   What I didn’t realize then, but I know now, it wasn’t about the season, it was about the journey.

The people who know me outside of G:TB comments can verify that I’m a private person—I rarely put myself out there and I definitely don’t like to call attention to myself. That had to change once I got my diagnosis—everybody was all up in my business...and I had to let them in…which, at times, was scarier than the cancer itself. But it is, by far, the best kind of lemonade you can squeeze out that pile of lemons.

And, I’m a better person for it.

So, do yourself a favor and go see '50/50'. You will not be disappointed.