film review: mission impossible: rogue nation

firstly, sign me up for the Mission Impossible cardio workout. a fuckload of running, core strength built up by sudden changes in direction on the cobblestoned streets of overseas locations, bit of squats and knife play... sure, there's someone shooting at you the whole damn time, but that's just to motivate.

abs of steel in 6 to 8 weeks, I hear.

the latest offering from this bajillion-dollar franchise wasn't shy in coming forward with the inevitable opening action sequence (Tom Cruise on the outside of a plane while it's in the air, yo). I like a bit of ridiculous theatrical tension (is the door going to open in time? well is it?) safe in the knowledge that they cannot possibly kill off Ethan Hunt (Cruise's character, for the players at home who have been living under a rock) in the first 10 minutes. just once I'd like to see one of the big names killed off right at the start, in the style of Scream's treatment of Drew Barrymore. I'm not saying we have to kill Ethan Hunt, but we could at least think about it. Way less Tom Cruise that way.

this is the 5th Mission Impossible movie. I missed Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol but I can only assume that the IMF got some ghosts on board to help them solve crimes or whatever because ghosts have mad spy skills. I have actually seen the other 3 because of my weakness for watching things exploding (may have mentioned this in my review of Mad Men - soothes my hungover soul). say what you like about Tom Cruise, he seems to be good at action movies. still, do say what you like about him, for it is fun to be mean about a very rich white male scientologist who is short. this is his main weak point as a person, as far as I can tell. not all the weird scientology shit where he keeps his wives captive and believes things that are actually insane. gloss on by that, let's chat measurements.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is not just about breaking into stuff to steal things or double triple double agents with a side of silk dresses which need to be cut high into the crotch for practical reasons, and it's not just about physical fitness or how long you can hold your breath. It's about the politics of the international spy world (which, as far as I can tell, needs some serious mediation prefaced with some solid icebreaker work). It's about the advancement of technology where you can wear a wetsuit with a thing on it saying how much oxygen you have left in your lungs. I don't think this is a spoiler because I'm not going to tell you how much oxygen or how much time people held their breath for.

As usual I did my woman count. I say woman because there was one woman in the whole fucking movie.

Whatever, Helen. Women aren't very good spies. What about when they have a baby or get their period or something? Nobody wants to deal with that shit. Women are out of control; why, even that one woman they let be in the movie was a rogue one. I still don't know if she was a goodie or a baddie, and we need to know that stuff. Note: female spies get sweet gadgets like a lipstick that is also a USB. So it's pretty fair all round really.

Begrudging points for the kick-arse motorbike stuff that female lead Rebecca Ferguson as fairly quiet but deadly efficient Ilsa Faust pulled off, literally leaving Ethan Hunt in Moroccan dust; for the knife fight where she was paired evenly with a male agent (I keep forgetting they're called agents now - spy is such an outdated term) and more than held her own; and a small happy cheer for the lack of romantic crap driving the plot. But seriously: one actual woman? yikes.

Special mention goes to use of a variety of locations (Morocco! Underwater! London! London again!) as well as a few well-placed jokes and some very convincingly placed BMWs. SO many BMWs. A black one. A white one. A van. Some motorbikes. They were almost like the 6th or 7th character of the story. Probably male ones but.

I'd like to put forward a brief note on Tom Cruise's face, which is that it makes me really very mad when I look at it. A blessing, really, that action movies don't require a lot of close-ups. I'm not violent, generally, but it's a face I'd feel ok about hitting.

With that in mind this movie gets 2.5 stars. Right in the middle. See it if you like, but you could also wait and watch it in about a year and spend the whole time not sure if you've seen it already. I know that's what I'm going to do.

treasure: let's talk nicholas sparks & romance genre movies

this weekend just passed i fed both sides of my personality: the side that likes to get out and about, see people, meet new ones, laugh and eat and drink and dance and inevitably, end up at the pub talking nonsense to total strangers, and the side that likes to get favourite foods from the supermarket, make a tasty lunch and then snuggle right down in bed and watch an entire back catalogue of nicholas sparks and nicholas sparks-esque romance movies.

i have an interesting relationship with popular culture these days because i inevitably take great issue with a lot of it as a feminist, but also love the shit out of a movie where there's love and obstacles to overcome and maybe someone with a secret from their past that surfaces at an inappropriate time. 

*takes deep breath* so i'm going to be honest. on Sunday, i watched 'the last song', 'dear john', 'the vow' and 'imagine me and you'. the breaks i took between movies, while i waited for them to load (i use project free tv for most of my watching these days, as i have neither the patience nor the knowhow to actually download things), i worked on a job application. i worried that i might have gotten a bit too emotional addressing selection criteria, but hey, i think that's an asset, right?

'the last song' i watched because i have had an uncontrollable obsession with miley cyrus lately, and that liam hemsworth character ain't so bad to look at, either. i think miley is a great many things, but i am in a state of interest in her things and stuff, for now, until something changes my mind. for now, i am interested in her talent and her art, and alongside that i have a great interest in watching movies where i know the two stars have actually fallen in love with each other while making the movie. anyone else get into that? i look for hints in the acting, which is silly considering they're playing two people falling in love. but i get something out of it. miley plays the misunderstood teenager with dad issues, or authority figure issues, or trust issues. or all of the above. liam hemsworth is just dreamy and gorgeous, and it was a wise move for him to always be playing volleyball and having fallen in mud that needed to be rinsed off, shirtless, under a garden hose. well played, director.

i wanted to watch 'the lucky one' next, because it has zac ephron in it and i think he's just great. but unfortunately, when you're only using a free site to stream things, recent movies with zac ephron in them are not available for your viewing pleasure. in a happy turn of events, my mum owns a copy of it on DVD and i will be proceeding to hit that DVD collection up later in the week.

so instead of 'the lucky one', i went to 'dear john', where there's a summer romance and letter writing and an autistic father, as well as september 11 and the army calling. that one was tough, and i cried at the bit where they said goodbye one of the times. i like amanda seyfried, but it was really channing tatum i was there for, his lovely square jaw and broad chest showcased in gratuitous beach scenes (he's a surfer, so it's legit).

i got really into the channing tatum factor and so went straight to 'the vow', which is not actually nicholas sparks but really plays out like it should be. partly because rachel mcadams was in perhaps his biggest book to movie hit, 'the notebook' (which i thought about watching but decided to avoid), and partly because there's amnesia and love and a family secret. my favourite and best bit of this whole movie is at the very end, where there is snow falling, people in beanies and the national playing. oh man, i thought to myself at this point, why is that not my life?

i was pretty much an emotional wreck by this point, and also feeling a little bit dirty for being so easily manipulated into enjoying beautiful men and tiny girls who fell into their arms with only the slightest amount of pretended rebellion and resistance. so i decided to end with one of my favourite love story movies of late, 'imagine me and you'.

when i first saw the shorts for this, before i watched it, it was cut to preview like a completely different movie, where the wedding happens at the end rather than the beginning. i wonder, given that (spoiler alert) it isn't a conventional heterosexual love story, whether whoever made the trailer just wasn't confident that anyone would come to watch the thing if there wasn't a hetero happily-ever-after in store. when i watched it the first time, i was pleasantly surprised (the trailer, as a result, made it look like a wishywashy & gutless film) and quite taken with how the story develops, and how much of a victory for love the ending is. i particularly like the part that plays alongside the first of the rolling credits, where we see what everyone's got up to, like it's months later, even though we have literally just finished dealing with finale drama.

i hope this post has either inspired you to watch a love story movie, avoid them completely, or stop feeling guilty about your secret love of channing tatum. we're only human, after all.

#30daychallenge day 24: my favourite movies and what they're all about

i hate picking favourite stuff. one favourite movie, or one favourite book ... or one favourite band, or one favourite person... nah. i have ALL the favourites.

seeing as this is my blog and i blog if/when/what i want to, i'm going to give you the low-down (in a fairly brief capacity so as not to spoil) on not one, not two but three of my favourite love story movies, in no particular order...

• crazy stupid love. i have mentioned this one briefly already, in so much as i have watched it a lot of times and i just don't get sick of it. it's a romantic comedy, but there are several love stories going on at once- different kinds of love. normally i have a bit of an issue with rom-com when i'm single, because it all seems really convenient and i highly doubt my own love story will be so tidy, but this seems to be just messy enough that it actually might work, although obviously in real life nobody actually has those abs except ryan gosling himself, and you know, it's his job to look like that. i like him and emma stone as comedy actors, as well as (of course) steve carell.
  
  
  
  
  the soundtrack is surprisingly good, and everything ends underscored by The Middle East's "Blood", which is lovely and australian, also.
  
  
  
  
• eternal sunshine of a spotless mind. this one is slightly weirder as love stories go, but probably gets to the root of a breakup better than a lot of popular movies, in that it's all a bit embarassing and tragic, and you most certainly do wish, at various points, that you could wipe the other person clean from your mind. it seems like you'd be happier and life would be easier. the story of clementine and joel is, of course, the point of it (plus cool effects throughout, like when the house fills with sand) but i actually have started watching it for poor mary, played by kirsten dunst, who's the receptionist and has her own sad love story. i won't ruin it in case you managed to miss viewing this in all it's cult-film goodness.
  
  the main take-away point here though is that i want kate winslet's hair. the red is my favourite.
  
  
• 500 days of summer. it's like both of the previous two put together. does it say a lot about me that i'm more interested in the breakups of life? this one i love for joseph gordon-levitt and of course for zooey deschanel who has such wonderul clothing in this movie. i love the way this movie jumps around in the sequence of events, but i find the ending to be a little lame. again, i love this one for the soundtrack. and for the choreographed dance sequence - because that's exactly how you feel when you're in love. and also, don't forget joseph gordon-levitt.
  
  

treasure: the great gatsby

I know people have had mixed reactions to this film. I, for one, was really excited to see it. nobody can deny that baz luhrmann is good at movie stuff. and the great gatsby is a classic novel; I even studied it at university.

I am no film critic. I don't have particular insight to offer; I'm not knowledgeable enough to reduce the movie to a quivering puddle, as those artistic critiquey types are wont to do. I'm the crowd, the unthinking masses, one of those there to merely consume the shiny things. and proud.

so, my favourite bits:
carey mullian. she's lovely to look at, and her costumes were amazing. the first dress she wore is spectacular:

her furs, and her headpieces, and her hats were also beautiful- more hats, I say. also, I just discovered she is married to marcus mumford, who I have something of a crush on. get this- he was her childhood penpal, they re-united and were engaged after only 5 months! does this shit only happen to famous people? I guess I don't have a penpal who's eligible. bummer.

the soundtrack. I don't know if it was the pop/20s music melding, but it was just perfect. sort of totally in love with this song by lana del ray:



the story. it ends so sadly and yet, there is just something beautiful about the whole story. maybe I just like love that lasts years and years, and the idea that you can love someone without seeing them or speaking to them, even when they've married and moved on. actually, hmm, that seems a little depressing. especially considering how things ended up for poor jay gatsby. still. love eternal, love from afar, idealistic and fantasy-driven, love unrequited... these are the grandiose types of love that movies have made me believe in, and wonder when they are scheduled to happen to me.

I say to you all, go and see it. hate it if you like. love it if you wanna. at least comment on the hats, for fuck's sake. those hats are awesome.