What to watch: Mission: Impossible Fallout the most impressive modern action blockbuster since Mad Max: Fury Road
Your home-streaming mission, should you choose to accept it, isn’t a difficult one. Mission: Impossible — Fallout is not only the best in the Tom Cruise franchise, it’s also the most ferociously realised action picture since Mad Max: Fury Road.
Leigh Paatsch
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Your home-streaming mission, should you choose to accept it, isn’t a difficult one.
Mission: Impossible — Fallout is not only the best in the Tom Cruise franchise, it’s also the most ferociously realised action picture to storm the big screen since Mad Max: Fury Road.
But if action blockbuster doesn’t take your fancy, there’s a skilful Whitney Houston doco, a great Glenn Close drama and an on-the-spot chronicle of a journalistic scandal to keep you interested.
Amy Poehler’s Wine Country has dropped on Netflix, or perhaps gently captivating drama Summer 1993 is more your speed.
Whatever you choose to watch, scroll on for some of the best on offer.
THE ONE WITH A CRUISE IN CONTROL
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — FALLOUT (M)
****
FOXTEL NOW, AMAZON
Your home-streaming mission, should you choose to accept it, should not be a matter of choice at all. For this is not only the best film to carry the M:I badge in the 23-year history of the Tom Cruise-led franchise. It is also the most ferociously realised action picture to storm the big screen since Mad Max: Fury Road.
If you have heard early word of the clear and present greatness of Fallout, be assured this hyperkinetic espionage adventure doesn’t just live up to the hype. It blasts right past it.
Every shred of that high praise has been earned the right way and the hard way: with big ideas, brashly executed with little margin for error.
56-year-old Cruise impressively flings himself into the fray once again as daredevil IMF agent Ethan Hunt, pole-vaulting all over the atlas to stop some bad dudes from getting their grubby paws on some dirty nukes.
The stunning design of the action set pieces — and the thrilling stunt work powering them — are gifts that keep on giving throughout. Co-stars Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg.
THE ONE WITH NO BLOKES AND A FEW JOKES
WINE COUNTRY (M)
***
NETFLIX
Amy Poehler (TV’s Parks and Recreation) directs and stars in a cheery chick flick about a group of fiftysomething friends doing the weekend-away-with-the-girls thing.
While it is a pleasant enough affair as a mainstream comedy — and the cast is front-loaded with many of Poehler’s best buddies from her time on the influential Saturday Night Live — the vibe is more laid-back and loose than laugh-out-loud funny.
The big occasion bringing a diverse collection of women together is the fiftieth birthday of Rebecca (Rachel Dratch), who is cool with the reunion side of things, but not so keen on the candles-and-cake aspect of the trip.
Once all have convened at the plush Napa Valley spread of rich retiree Tammy (Tina Fey), the wine bottles are uncorked, the music is turned up loud, and the banter begins.
Many of the performers seen here are close friends in real life, and their natural repartee carries the movie quickly past many a flat spot.
A nice effort, even if it doesn’t make the most of the talent assembled.
Co-stars Maya Rudolph (Bridesmaids).
THE ONE TRULY SINGING A SAD SONG
WHITNEY (M)
****
FOXTEL, STAN
This second recent documentary to chart the irresistible rise and irreversible demise of American singing legend Whitney Houston is the better of the two.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald skillfully reminds us there was more going on with Houston than just an extensive vocal range, or precision pitching.
There was passion. There was soul. There was belief. There was beauty.
However, whenever Houston stepped away from the microphone, an ugly reality was soon there to surround and consume her.
Macdonald’s film expertly isolates the disconnect between the joy Houston found only in music, and the betrayals, denials, addictions and abuses that ultimately ended her life at just the age of 48.
THE ONE THAT GETS CLOSE, THEN GETS CLOSER
THE WIFE (M)
***1/2
FOXTEL NOW
This steadily involving drama puts a damning red line through that saying “behind every great man is a woman”.
Glenn Close plays Joan, the devoted long-term spouse of Joseph (Jonathan Pryce), a renowned novelist about to win the Nobel prize for Literature.
Could her husband’s crowning achievement also trigger that necessary moment of truth Joan has always backed away from?
While always a classy production in its own right, Close’s performance (which landed her an Oscar nomination earlier this year) lifts The Wife up a level here.
Keep your eyes trained on those moments where her performance pivots ever so slightly to offer glimpses of the woman Joan might have been. Or is that she might still be?
THE ONE THAT’S A DOCO WORTH A PEEP
VOYEUR (MA15+)
****
NETFLIX
An on-the-spot chronicle of a journalistic scandal that unfolded in a most bizarre fashion in 2017.
It all started with a controversial story in the New Yorker magazine penned by legendary writer Gay Talese.
The subject of the article was a 79-year-old man named Gerald Foos, the former owner of a motel in Denver, Colorado named The Manor House.
During his time as manager, Foos spied on his guests from cavities he cleared inside the roof so he could observe and document all sexual activity on the premises.
Talese visited Foos on several occasions in the 1980s and joined him in his seedy secret life (which may have included witnessing a murder).
However, on the eve of Talese expanding the article into a book, several sizeable holes begin appearing in Foos’ story, and the world’s media come after the pair with full force.
THE ONE WITH HEAT, HURT AND HEART
SUMMER 1993
***1/2
FOXTEL, STAN
The season mentioned here is of great significance to first-time Spanish filmmaker Carla Simon, as it marks a painfully telling period in her childhood.
What Simon experienced at age 6 — losing her mother to AIDS, then being bundled off to live with relatives in the Catalonian countryside — is poignantly and vividly relived in a gently captivating drama.
A naturally beautiful and uninhibited work, more a filmed photo album of precious memories than a story with a beginning, middle or end.
THE ONE THAT TURNS THE PAGE ON OLD AGE
BOOK CLUB (PG)
**1/2
AMAZON
The lead characters here are four females of a certain age who find their love lives transformed for better and for worse after reading all the Fifty Shades of Grey books.
All you need to know is Diane Keaton is the widowed-and-about-to-date one, Candice Bergen is the divorced-and-about-to-date one, Mary Steenburgen is the married-but-unfulfilled-one and Jane Fonda is the sexy-and-still-sleeping-around one.
Audiences of a certain age contemplating another winter of nothing much to see at the cinema will welcome this saucy-senior rom-com with open arms.
It is not that good a movie, but it could not come at a better time for those who really need it.
READ MORE:
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NEW POKEMON MOVIE A SURPRISE PACKAGE
PETERLOO A FORENSIC, FORGETTABLE SNOOZE
For all things movies, follow Leigh on Twitter: @leighpaatsch
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