Knee-jerk review: "28 Years Later"

1. Don't let the creepy marketing strategy fool you - this is actually a traditional sort of coming-of-age domestic drama that just happens to take place in a crazy post-apocalyptic setting.
2. That doesn't mean, however, that there's any shortage of scary, suspenseful sequences of "how will our heroes survive this?"
3. We'd somehow forgotten Ralph Fiennes is in the movie.  What a treat to be surprised by his entrance.
4. There are plenty of good movies out there, but not a lot of truly great filmmakers.  Danny Boyle movies aren't always great (see: Yesterday and the last 20 minutes of Sunshine), but there's no denying they are always artistic and exceptionally well-made.
5. Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Days Later are top-notch, of course, but we always thought Trainspotting was way overrated.
6. Of course they'd eventually run out of arrows.
7. They're not zombies, you see.  They're infected with the rage virus.
8. How does he still have a supply of tranquilizers?  It's, like, 28 years later.
9. We don't want to spoil anything, but there's a rather shocking moment that Changes Everything about the infected.
10. There's always something tragic about that moment when you realize your parents are actually just flawed people who don't always make wise decisions.
11. Bonus points for the "Jimmy" call back at the very end.
12. Only in an English movie would the hero be called Spike.
13. The Swedish soldier delivers a welcome dose of humor in an otherwise very serious, dour movie of Important Themes.
14. The doctor may not be as crazy and dangerous as the villagers think he is... but he still seems to be little bit nuts.  In a benevolent cuckoo sort of way.
15. Much better than you might imagine.

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Knee-jerk review: "Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning"

1. We were getting worried because the first half-hour or so is exceedingly tedious with long info-dump exposition and table-setting. Eventually, though, it kicks into gear and becomes a proper summer action thriller.
2. We regret to inform you that Tom Cruise is genuinely starting to show his age.  He's in his early 60s now.
3. We love Hayley Atwell, but the pointless death of Rebecca Ferguson's spy character in the last movie remains a huge unforced error.  Did she insult the filmmakers somehow?
4. More and more, it's hard to dazzle us with an action sequence.  Hasn't everything been done already?  Turns out the answer is "no."  This movie has two knockout set pieces - the submarine dive and the biplane fight, neither of which has any dialogue.  Simply incredible.
5. A vast improvement over the disappointing and confusing Dead Reckoning, Part 1, but still not in league with the very best of the series (Ghost Protocol 2011, Rogue Nation 2015, Fallout, 2018).  Those three are action near-masterpieces.
6. In the real world, Cruise's character would have died four times over in this movie.  He makes a ridiculous "hail mary" decision, rolling the dice, and then just hopes for the best.  No one is that lucky.
7. The world needs more smart submarine thrillers.  Can we please have a sequel set entirely on the Ohio?
8. We almost laughed out loud when someone mentioned that a purely theoretical super-advanced piece of next-generation computer hardware was finally built by... Ving Rhames' character Luther.
9. Ditto the moment where Simon Pegg's character Benji explains in detail to computer novice Hayley Atwell's character Grace how to hack into a hyper-secure government facility.  How can Benji possibly know anything about that system?  These movies are crazy and often succeed in creating their own reality where anything can be hacked by Luther and Benji.  This was not one of those moments.
10. Nice Fail Safe call back.  If you know, you know.
11. Angela Bassett can be an acquired taste.  She's gives off that same steely, angry edge in every role.  But that's exactly what is required here.
12. After the disappointing (relatively; it still earned $570 million) last movie, you can see that the filmmakers tossed out all of that mumbo-jumbo philosophical AI nonsense and went back to basics: in The Final Reckoning, Cruise and his misfit team have to find and mate together two pieces of hardware to save the world.  Simple is better.
13. Clever and completely organic return of a character from the very first movie all the way back in 1996.
14. There's no way Paramount lets this golden goose die.  Cruise can totally return as a sage mentor figure and let some other young star do the action work.
15. Go see it.

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