Action

Mission Impossible 8 (Paramount+, 2025)

This has mild spoilers to the plot, such as it was.

OK, yes, the actual subtitle is The Final Reckoning, words which the villain mentions TWICE in the movie in some foreboding villain-speak . I read an interesting article with director Christopher McQuarrie where he states that he doesn’t care if you can follow all the points of the plot in an MI movie! He just wants you to get the gist. Well, there was just enough recap to get us to the action scenes.

Because, let’s face it, these movies are about what ridiculous thing Tom Cruise does next. It’s not enough that he is credited as one of the stunt fliers on the movie but he has to become the craziest wing-walker EVER, earning a Guinness world-record for flaming parachute jumps.

He has raised practical stunts to such a level that I was actually a little disappointed at the end of the ‘escape from the submarine’ as they conveniently skipped over how the former pickpocket (love Hayley Atwell though) successfully mushed a dog team by herself and found and retrieved Ethan Hunt from under all that ice when he literally stripped himself of all of his gear. But, hey, I kept snacking and watching.

The AI bogeyman villain never made much sense but it did provide several scenes where everyone could look tense and do things exactly right that they had no clue about so that humans could defeat the AI.

At least there were several scenes with Tom Cruise running, which has to be a drinking game out there. If it’s not, it should be–a great way for college kids to get drunk very fast and stay that way.

It will be interesting to see what Tom Cruise does next.

Stranger Things Final Season (Netflix, 2025)

Note: This will have spoilers for the final season

Since the five seasons took nine years to unfold, it’s really something that this season incorporates flashbacks, or at least flashes, of the first seasons. You can really see how the cast has literally grown up together.

By the nature of the three-part release schedule we had to have two big cliffhangers before the finale, but it was a nice compromise between an-episode-a-week and we’ll-force-you-to-binge-so you-aren’t-spoiled.

Was this season perfect? Not by a mile, but it did resolve most of the things hanging over Hawkins. Rather than a D&D fantasy the story ends up being more of an SF Horror movie like The Thing.

We learn that Vecna/Henry didn’t initially choose the evil path, but he did embrace it. His death gave Joyce her moment in the finale.

We are given an ending that didn’t kill any main characters. It’s sad that Elle/Jane doesn’t get to stay with her friends and father but I choose to believe that was the extent of her self-sacrifice.

It was nice to see the next generation taking over the basement at the end; I appreciated having a dénouement that wasn’t rushed with the little glimpses of how the kids would continue to grow. I wouldn’t have minded a little more with the older teens. I thought the restaurant scene with Hopper and Joyce was going to be the long awaited date with Robin and Vickie and that was the only part that semi-disappointed me.

I will be curious to see what the Duffer Brothers come up with next for Netflix!

Starship Troopers 25th Anniversary Edition [4K] (2022)

I’ve owned almost every edition of Starship Troopers that’s been released since 1997. I just got the 25th Anniversary Steelbook case edition as I only recently bought a 4K television.

Apparently the scan to 4K was done from the original print in 2017 for the 20th Anniversary and this new anniversary edition has a latest kind of Dolby soundtrack. All I know is: it looks absolutely gorgeous. The sound was good enough that it unfortunately bothered the dog and I had to keep lowering it.

I admit I have not rewatched this film in many years. It’s a ‘third-rail’ for fans of Robert A. Heinlein and it deviates from Heinlein’s plot and world-building in several significant ways. I think that it’s a very good “B-movie” as long as you forget about Heinlein’s source material while watching. The CGI/special effects are better than I remembered.

There’s always much talk about director Paul Verhoeven’s intent with the film, but there are really two views within the film. The first is the close telling of the characters. Watching this is the closest you get to Heinlein’s source, even though there are many deviations. The second view is the one that I think many people misread. The FedNet broadcasts/Menu choices are a filtered/propaganda view that reads like a fascist society trying to control its population. Sadly, by not having the Powered Armor of the MI, Verhoeven doomed the movie to overwhelmingly be about a bunch of amazingly stupid military tactics that don’t make any sense and I think that weights the propaganda side more than it should.

It’s OK to enjoy this amazing-looking edition. Just go and read Heinlein’s book, too.