Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol had me at the opening credits.  I’d forgotten that Brad Bird directed this film, and seeing his name flash on the screen assured me that I was in for a good time.

You see, Brad Bird directed The Incredibles and Ratatouille.  The Incredibles is the greatest superhero movie ever made, and Ratatouille moved me to stand and applaud when its credits rolled, something I’ve done exactly once.  This guy knows what he’s doing and it shows in this, his first live-action feature.

The Mission: Impossible movies imagine what James Bond would be like if he weren’t a sociopath.  Tom Cruise, as secret agent Ethan Hunt, can actually make and sustain friendships, lead people, and present himself as more than a collection of top-shelf stuff he read about in men’s lifestyle magazines.  This gives us an “in” to his character that the 007 movies simply can’t deliver.  This matters, because it overcomes the fact that this spy thriller is just another entry in the “stop a madman out to destroy the world / corner the market on X / extort ONE MILLION DOLLARS from the UN” genre.  We like Ethan in a way that we simply can’t like Bond.  We like his team, which includes recently omnipresent Doctor Who alumnus Simon Pegg.  We like his boss.  By God, we like the Impossible Missions Force, whose self-destructing messaging systems sometimes need a little whack to, y’know, actually self-destruct.  So we’re on board when things get rough.

And rough they get, giving Bird a reason to deliver breathtaking action set-pieces.  I’ve flown over Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower a zillion times, but it took this film to bring home its awesome height.  I’ve been in sandstorms, but the sandstorm here felt more dangerous and more awesome than any I’ve actually experienced.  As a film buff, I’ve seen more stunt fights in industrial settings than I can remember; but I’ve never seen a stunt fight like the one this delivers in its climax.

A friend of mine recently said that Brad Bird should get a Bond film.  I say that Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol is as good as spy action-thrillers get, and better than any Bond film I can readily recall.  Brad Bird hasn’t just raised the bar.  He’s built a better bar, taller and stronger and cooler and just plain more fun than the bars that have gone before.

I can’t praise Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol enough.  Brad Bird knows what he’s doing.

PS  … except for that last scene, which looked like it was filmed on different stock and tied everything up far too neatly.  Hey, people who follow this kind of thing: was this a reshoot thing?  I just don’t understand how you do two hours of excellence, only to go mundane at the wrap.  Thoughts?

Ratatouille

Production company strips are boring. What do I care if Amalgamated Media, Inc. produced the movie I'm about to see? Why should I watch its, and its fellow companies', animations when we could all just be getting on with the movie? What are they trying to do, build customer loyalty? "Boy, I sure do like those MGM movies. They're way better than Paramount's."

On second thought, there is one production company that has managed to build customer loyalty, and I don't mind sitting through its logo. When the Pixar animation flickers on the screen, I settle in, secure in the knowledge that I'm about to be entertained by people who care about the product they're putting onscreen. I may not be dazzled, but I can count on being well entertained, and I respect that.

RATATOUILLE, Pixar's latest, dazzles. Perhaps more importantly, it does so with an original story, excellent performances, and the kind of first-class animation we've come to expect from the folks with the desktop lamps. Here's the setup: Remy just wants to cook. He has extraordinary senses of smell and taste, he intuitively understands food, and he studies the works of Gusteau, the famous Parisian chef who declares that "Anyone can cook!" There's a problem, of course: Remy is too far down the social ladder to land a job at a restaurant, much less a slot in culinary school. In fact, he's a rat: he can't even get in the kitchen.

I like the idea of using a rat instead of a mouse. In the popular imagination, rats are evil while mice are cute. We in the audience shudder when we see a (flock? herd?) bunch of rats skittering across a floor, and the movie accepts that and works with it, artfully reproducing the biomechanics of rat movement (ok, there's some anthropomorphization, but that's to be expected). By accepting Remy's rat-ness, it challenges us to do what those in the film must learn to do: get over it and get on with the realization that this rat has a lot to offer. "Those in the film" includes Remy's rat family, which includes the disapproving father who doesn't understand why his son can't just eat garbage like everyone else; Linguini, the hapless janitor who stumbles into an alliance with the little chef; and, perhaps most dauntingly, the Paris gastronomical world. Further, I like the idea of setting an animated film in the world of food. Perhaps its because I recently saw and loved MOSTLY MARTHA; perhaps it's because I recently had relatives in for a visit, relatives who dragged my wife all over town looking for just the right lemon grater for our kitchen; perhaps it's because I've had a few meals in my life that have brought tears to my eyes (Aside: those meals were at Cantina Vecchia il Baroni and La Botta). Whatever the reasons, this is new territory for family pictures, it isn't intuitively obvious that kids would dig it, and I applaud Pixar's courage in going there.

Patton Oswalt, who did not impress me in THE COMEDIANS OF COMEDY, does fine work here as Remy, as do the rest of the cast of people whose names I recognize, but whose voices I did not. Particularly surprising was Peter O'Toole as cadaverous food critic Anton Ego: during this film, I though, "Wow. Jeremy Irons is doing great work here." O'Toole nails that Ironsesque menace and takes it to an entirely different level and, when his character develops, that development feels both organic and earned.

As for the animation, well, it's Pixar. You get about what you'd expect, which is remarkable excellence and attention to detail.

I saw RATAOUILLE in a theater filled with young children and their families. The film captivated the entire audience, who applauded the gorgeous final shot. That's saying a lot about a movie about rats in the kitchen, and it's yet another feather in the cap of Pixar and director Brad Bird. RATATOUILLE is destined to find a place in the heart - and on the shelf - of many, many people, and I'm one of them.

What a delight.

The Incredibles

THE INCREDIBLES is a perfect movie. It has humor, it has pathos, it has action. It has a wonderfully creative design, a fully realized world, and terrific music that builds on a solid script.

You know how some movies are billed as "fun for the whole family"? THE INCREDIBLES really is. The movie offers several characters that provide an "in" to the story, it builds and sustains tension in interesting and creative ways, and it manages the perfect balance between providing enough danger to keep things interesting, while never scaring the kids into believing that the heroes are in really big trouble.

It had been a few years since last I saw this movie, and I wondered if it would hold up. It did. THE INCREDIBLES is a genuine classic.