Reviews of the Bosch

Mission: Impossible -The Final Reckoning  is a movie about the excruciating but not impossible goal of defeating A.I. -in a large-scale sense but in the film industry particularly. The Mission: Impossible  movies have been for at least about a decade now metaphors for the filmmaking process and the movie industry itself; and in the spectre of at long last ending this series, Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie consciously chose to go out by devoting their two-part finale to addressing and taking down the biggest threat to movies of the modern era. A proud and hopeful statement in defiance of a dangerous technology that would butcher art and stunt creativity. Cruise, who has always valued authenticity and human spontaneity in making cinema and has become one of its most outspoken champions as a result, is very aware of what A.I. would take from the experience of both making and watching movies. The point was made abundantly in Mission: Impossible -Dead Reckoning , but...

Either by happenstance or serendipity, Dead Reckoning  is the most topical a Mission: Impossible movie has been since maybe 2006 -when it went all in Iraq-era fear of global terrorism. But this film taps into something even more potent, even more relevant not just to the year but the very time of year it has released. Right as the controversy erupting around the use of A.I. is at its peak, and Hollywood’s actors have joined their writers on the picket lines in part because of an institutional refusal to regulate such technology , a big action-spy movie of the summer comes out that is very concerned with the threat posed by artificial intelligence. Granted, it’s not a particularly authentic portrait of A.I. -much more in the vein of your standard sci-fi movie’s image of the technology’s threat, but it is still analogous. And potently so in a movie so often a testament to artistry and traditional notions of spectacle. Tom Cruise has made it his impossible mission of late to vanguard...

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it… I wonder, have you ever chosen not to?” It’s a good question, posed to Ethan Hunt by Solomon Lane in interrogation. It’s part of a line of reasonings meant to get Hunt and his team to question the authorities they perform their missions for, but it hits Hunt and the audience in a different context, a personal one. Has Ethan Hunt ever declined a mission? Choice is an important part of the prompt, but Hunt doesn’t seem to treat it like it is. The mission is his mandate, he can’t make the choice to turn it down -who would he be otherwise? Mission: Impossible -Fallout , the latest installment in the series, is generally considered the best from what I’ve seen from the fans and critics who’ve followed it. Certainly on the level of its’ action, I would say it delivers more thrillingly than any of its’ predecessors -and with the highest quantity of daredevil Tom Cruise stunts. It’s plot isn’t so compelling -in some regards the stakes are a mash u...

Christopher McQuarrie is a writer first. He made his name in the industry on his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Usual Suspects and became a reliable script doctor over the next several years. In 2008 he wrote a movie I quite liked by a filmmaker I will not speak of called Valkyrie , which starred Tom Cruise. And some spark must have been lit between the two because McQuarrie subsequently made his mainstream Hollywood directing debut with Jack Reacher , and thereafter followed Cruise in some capacity or another on most of his movies, usually as a writer, though in the case of the fifth Mission: Impossible  movie, director as well. One could see this as Cruise simply playing favourites with a friend, but McQuarrie makes for a surprisingly good fit. Rogue Nation  in some ways is a perfect Mission: Impossible  amalgam that translates the core of the series’ appeal. It plays in the classic spy movie conspiracy stuff that the first film did well, while maintaining the acti...

Inevitably it was going to come to nukes. This whole franchise is based off a Cold War-era TV series about spies, nuclear weapons had to factor in eventually. And it also just happens to fit the aesthetic interests of the new director brought on to helm Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol , Brad Bird -an avid fan of Cold War subjects and iconography, as exemplified in his two most popular movies The Iron Giant  and The Incredibles . The fourth Mission: Impossible  film was his live-action movie debut, after back-to-back Pixar classics, and if you pay attention you can certainly find the clues to his animation background in several of his choices here. Although maybe the most beneficial, which feels to directly owe something to The Incredibles  in particular, is the expansion of the cast around Tom Cruise as major players in the action. This is the first Mission: Impossible  movie to genuinely be about a spy team, with Ethan Hunt at the centre, rather than simply a To...

Mission: Impossible III was developed with David Fincher attached to direct, which would have been the second time he’s helmed the third part in an established franchise. The precedent of Alien 3 perhaps makes it fortuitous he chose to leave, and eventually it was Tom Cruise who picked his successor. Apparently he got really into the show Alias  and handpicked its’ creator J.J. Abrams to direct and re-write the film. In so doing, he set the stage for one of the most dominant figures, for better or worse, in the Hollywood industry for the coming decade and a half. But Cruise’s pick was bold at the time: Abrams had never directed a movie, least of all a big action blockbuster, though he did have plenty of well-received work on television to speak for him from Felicity , Alias , and Lost -the latter the most popular show on TV at the time. He brought over with him Alias  writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to hammer out a script, and the result is something about as pertinent ...

John Woo is a VERY different director than Brian De Palma. In fact you might call him a polar opposite in style. Before he retreated from Hollywood in the mid-2000s he was known for being extremely what the kids today would call “extra”. Every shot of his was so polished, every colour so vivid, every stylistic flourish so big -his action scenes designed with an eye for what looks cool above all else; his camera almost never stops, his use of slow-motion matched in excess only by his sped-up transitions and particular insistence on the aesthetic necessity of doves in his action climaxes. Mission: Impossible 2 is maybe the pinnacle of John Woo’s artistic singularity, at least as far as his Hollywood career goes, and for that reason it might have the distinction of being simultaneously the most memorable and most forgettable movie of this series. Mission: Impossible 2  has several visuals and stylized characteristics that will never leave you, whether you’ve seen the movie or not (I c...

While I try to watch as many movies as I can while they’re coming out I have to admit there are some I just avoid out of disinterest or a hassle. Action and horror movies most notably unless there’s a major conversation around them I’ll typically overlook. I’m sure I’m not losing much by not seeing   Prey for the Devil  or  Smile . But it has led to me skipping any installment of what major action franchises there still are -most notably  Fast and Furious  and  Mission: Impossible , two of the last remaining bankable movie franchises not tied to a  superhero or  Star Wars  property.  Both have been going on for a long time and I think just the prospect of having to play catch-up for a series I wouldn’t be terribly invested in anyway discouraged me from seeing them when they came along. But that had been my same attitude to Marvel …until  Guardians of the Galaxy . And it’s not like Marvel movies had a reputation for being bad or that...