Review - Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation

In an age when cinephiles continue to bemoan the glut (and the fiscal success) of unoriginal populist entertainment, I feel it's important to remember not all unoriginal populist entertainment is created equal. There's that which is dumb, lazy or poorly made, and there's that which is so well executed it truly entertains despite its familiarity. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, the fifth in the series of Tom Cruise vehicles which had plateaued at 'mediocre' until Brad Bird's 2011 entry Ghost Protocol, falls comfortably into the latter designation.

Thankfully, you don't need to have followed the previous globe-trotting exploits of super spy Ethan Hunt (Cruise, barely aged since his first M:I outing in 1996) and his Impossible Mission Force, IMF, to enjoy Rogue Nation. You don't even need to follow this one all that closely. In a franchise whose primary draw is its star and his daring-do, story details erase themselves from one's memory as readily as the famously self-destructing messages that send Ethan on his next mission, should he choose to accept it. Which he does, of course.

My Award Nominations: Best Cinematography

This was a great year for this category. Many DPs exhibited rich and varied work that was not only visually dazzling, but saturated with thematic subtext. Whittling it down to ten was tough enough, but then choosing five after that was even more painful (Bradford Young, I'm so sorry!).

Here are my Best Cinematography nominees for 2014, each accompanied as usual with a frame that stood out to me as especially memorable:

Quick Review - Inherent Vice

I honestly didn't feel that inspired to write about this one, but since Paul Thomas Anderson is one of America's foremost auteur voices, I figured he at least deserved a separate post for his latest film Inherent Vice, rather than lump it in with the capsule reviews.

Suffice it to say that I land firmly on the thumbs-down side of this divisive L.A. noir as seen through a pair of aviator shades and a haze of pot smoke. It comes off more as an empty stylistic exercise than a trippy work of art to me.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as 'Doc', a perpetually baked hippie P.I. investigating the disappearance of a housing mogul and his ex-girlfriend. That's about as much of the plot as I can summarize, because after that things become impossible to follow.

Review - Nightcrawler

Just a quick take on this one, before the deluge of prestige biopics and foregone Oscar nominees start creeping their ways into theatres. Speaking of creeping, Jake Gyllenhaal does his fair share of it in this slick thriller, in which he plays a ghastly parody of the self-made man.

Louis Bloom is a tenacious young go-getter who accurately pitches himself to prospective employers as a fast learner who's willing to do whatever it takes to get a job done and done well. Yet even the most positive corporate attitude isn't worth the paper it's printed on if nobody's hiring.

Ever the entrepreneur, Lou tries his hand at the nocturnal profession of nightcrawling, an ethically borderline job that has him tracking down violent crime stories and shooting video for the highest bidding news network. If Lou is one thing, he's driven.