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.

Review - Star Trek Into Darkness

After an auspicious blastoff in 2009, J.J. Abrams keeps the success of his Star Trek reboot burning strong with Star Trek Into Darkness, a slick summer actioner that takes off at warp speed and rarely lets up.

All the cast members from the original are back in fine form (including Abrams' nettlesome blue lens flares): Chris Pine as Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Simon Pegg as Scotty, Karl Urban as 'Bones' McCoy, John Cho as Sulu, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, and Bruce Greenwood as Cpt. Pike. All of them excelled in 2009's origin story, but with their characters now firmly established, the writing team of Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman devote more time to developing the spiky but loving Kirk-Spock dynamic that is very much the heart of the franchise. Personifying the conflicting philosophies between logic and instinct, these two foils make this one of the more thematically compelling popcorn flicks you're likely to see this summer, at least whenever it takes the time to stop and breathe.