Thursday, May 15, 2025

Trust in the Mission: Impossible series that, when it does cave fully into self-indulgence, it does so with the fatalistic pomp of Wagner's Ring cycle. It's hard to say, in an industry where money decides, whether The Final Reckoning will be the last time we see Tom Cruise's IMF operative Ethan Hunt. But if this is our final farewell, we've at least gone out with demonstrable proof that he is, as Alec Baldwin's character once described in 2015's Rogue Nation, "the living manifestation of destiny".

The Final Reckoning is inherently absurd. It also reaches such highs that it's hard to really be that bothered. It's the sort of lumbering titan that feels perfectly fitting, as reportedly the fourth most expensive film ever made. We kick off with the implication that Hunt, in his continuing efforts to defeat the all-powerful AI known as The Entity (the film was originally conceived as part two to 2023's Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One), is primed and ready to lead what Frank Herbert would call, in his novel Dune, the Butlerian Jihad, the eradication of all thinking machines.

Read the full review here. 

Out this week: 

Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys lead Babak Anvari's sickeningly effective horror Hallow Road (****), while writer-director Amalia Ulman's Argentina-set Magic Farm (****) combines dog POV shots, a hysterical Alex Wolff performance, and subtle insight into the deep narcissism of Americans abroad.

Meanwhile, documentary Deaf President Now! (****), the directorial debut of Nyle DiMarco, provides an in-depth and smartly framed portrait of the mechanics of student protest, centered on the movement to finally elect a Deaf candidate as the head of Gallaudet University,  the only higher education institution specifically established to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students. 

Written by Clarisse Loughrey

For all the ghouls and goblins that might be hiding deep in the woods around Hallow Road, there's nothing near as frightening as passing the point of no return. We live by our certainties – dawn by dawn, plan by plan – only for a momentary choice, the smallest of mistakes, to veer us wildly off course and pull our stomachs into the depths of hell.

It's that feeling that pervades Babak Anvari's sickeningly effective Hallow Road. It combines the dread that washes over a couple (Rosamund Pike's Maddie and Matthew Rhys's Frank), when they're told their daughter has run someone over while driving through the remote countryside, with an unexpected detour into the realm of folk horror.

There's been an argument. Visiting home from university, Alice (the voice of Megan McDonnell), has driven off in Frank's car, leaving her parents to fret and quietly lick their wounds. Suddenly, she's on the phone and in hysterics. There's a girl lying out in the road. She seems dead. An ambulance has been called but Alice hung up on them. Maddie's a paramedic, can't she help? They're her parents, can't they fix this somehow?

Anvari follows Maddie and Frank outside, as the inviting elegance of 16mm slides into the cold, aesthetic chamber of digital, right when the camera travels through the windscreen and into the car where they'll (and we'll) spend the next hour or so. We never see Alice, but we hear her snivels and desperate pleas to mum and dad, all while cinematographer Kit Fraser manipulates this confined space for its greatest narrative potential.

Read the full review here. 

A document of where I've gone and the things I've seen 

Saturday, 10 May
While most everyone else in the country enjoyed the sunshine, I stuffed myself into a cushioned seat inside a very dark room and watched Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning ahead of its Cannes premiere. 

Sunday, 11 May

It was such a pleasure to chat to Icelandic music legend Emilíana Torrini and directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard about their completely original hybrid documentary-art film The Extraordinary Miss Flower for its Brighton Q&A screening. There are sill plenty more opportunities to see the film around the country here. 

Monday, 12 May  

It was an early morning start to catch Hallow Road, yet its midnight chills proved no less effective. 

Emilíana Torrini in 'The Extraordinary Miss Flower'

I'd argue one of the few, truly accurate applications of that dull phrase, "you couldn't make this today", is Robert Wise's diligent 1971 adaptation of The Andromeda Strain, in which a quartet of scientists battle to identify and contain a deadly extraterrestrial micro-organism. Michael Crichton's source novel presented itself to readers as a highly classified government document, complete with technical illustrations, diagrams, and a lengthy (fictional) bibliography. Wise's film is absolutely faithful in this respect.

It's a science-fiction film far less interested in the ethical implications at hand, than it is the mechanics of it all. It cost $6.5 million (major money for 1971) and exceeds a two-hour runtime, yet the majority of its scenes are comprised either of experiments being conducted or those experiments being discussed. It features no big names (Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, and Kate Reid play the scientists). Cinematographer Richard H Kline provides near non-stop split diopter shots (reportedly more than half of the scenes in the film), in which the screen is flattened so that both foreground and background remain in focus at all times.

In fact, almost every aesthetic choice here is made to create distance between us and those accomplished intellectuals on screen. We are not meant to identify with them. We are not them. The Andromeda Strain heroises expertise. We see them move around cavernous, minimalist sets clearly influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). When they investigate the remote hamlet where the micro-organism first hit, Wise chooses to separate the scientists and the afflicted corpses, ghoulish in appearance, with a split screen technique. The characters are not robotic personalities, but they remain calm. Could you imagine any studio today producing anything remotely like this? When even the Jurassic Park series replaced its palaeontologists with military men?

'The Andromeda Strain' is now available on Limited Edition 4K UHD, courtesy of Arrow Video. 

George Lucas & Sofia Coppola at the Fashion Group International night of stars 2000: A salute to icons of design. held in New York City on 10/24/00.

(Photo: Nick Elgar/ ImageDirect)

Jason Goes To Hell and Jason X arrive on Limited Edition 4K UHD on 19 May, courtesy of Arrow Video. I'll be revisting the latter.  

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