Saturday, July 26, 2025

Tom Cruise Movies

Top Gun (1986)

Rain Man (1988)

****Mission Impossible  (1996). Everything goes wrong as the team is mostly killed.

****Mission Impossible II (2000) A virus has been manufactured to make profits through sell of the vaccine.

****Mission Impossible III (2006). Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the villain

****Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011). Jeremy Renner costars 

****Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015). The syndicate A British Intelligence organization has gone rogue.  They are in the same business as the IMF

****Mission Impossible: ****Fallout (2018). A nuclear bomb is involved

***^Edge of Tomorrow (2014) A futuristic action film with Emily Blunt

***^ Oblivion (2013) A post apocalyptic world 

***^Jack Reacher (2012)

Friday, July 25, 2025

Movie Review: ***^Oblivion (2013)

 Tom Cruise stars in this futuristic view of earth after a war with aliens.  Cruise actually portrays several different characters, all named Jack, each cloned form the same base person.  He and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) man an outpost on earth.  The humans apparently won the war, but the aliens, scavengers, are also eft on earth.  

Things turn upside down when Jack is captured by the scavengers, who are not aliens but humans who have been left on a post apocalyptic earth.  They are lead by Beech (Morgan Freeman).  Turns out they are the remnant of the inhabitants of earth.  Jack has been having dreams of a woman, Julia (Olga Kurylenko) his wife from a past life, and turns out that her ship crashes into earth and Jack is able to rescue her. 

Most of earth is off limits, considered a radiation zone.  Beech tells them that if they really want to know what is happening they will find answers in the radiation zone.  This movie has a very serious twist.  I was surprised.  Nothing is as it seems.

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Movie Review: ****Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

 Tom Cruise and the gang are back for another adventure as they try to discover a rogue spy network called the Syndicate which is working to thin the population and destabilize governments.  An ex British agent is in charge of this terror network.  The regular crew is all back for this movie with the addition of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).  Faust is with British intelligence.  But British intelligence has a secret.  They funded the Syndicate until one of their agents went rogue, Lane (Sean Harris).  Lane is a worthy opponent; and there are many tense situations.  It seems they are always pulling things out at the last second.  

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Movie Review: ****Mission: Impossible III (2006)

 Mission Impossible 3 has the most terrible villain, Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who is truly evil and is determined to go after Hunt's (Tom Cruise) family as revenge for his capturing him.  He is able to make good on this as there is an ally inside the IMF.  In this movie Ethan Hunt marries Julia (Michelle Monaghan) and struggles with how much she needs to know.  She is a medical doctor.  Rounding out Hunt's team are Luther (Ving Rhames), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) as tech control and Zhen (Maggie Q).  This Mission Impossible episode is personal as Davian comes after Hunt.  Hoffman does a very evil bad guy and as such takes over the show.  He inserts explosive devices in people's brains which he can explode.  Hunt gets one in his brain, and when activated only has minimal time to die; and hopefully come back to life.  

Movie Review: ****Mission Impossible II (2000)

 Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt and Ving Rhames as Luther are back for more action.  Add a villain in the person of Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) and a woman on the inside, Nyah Hall (Thandiwe Newton).  The premise is the bad guys have stolen the plans for a virus and hope to release it on the world and then make money from the sell of the vaccination.  The virus gives you 20 hours after infection before it manifests and becomes almost fatal.  Of course the pretty lady is infected, Hunt has to get the antidote from the lab that made it and hopes to become wealthy.  Ambrose forces the company to sell him shares.  Only Hunt stands between he and billions.  Cool chase in Australia which results in a motorcycle duel.

Great fun

Saturday, May 31, 2025

Movie Review: ****Mission: Impossible (1996)

 This is the first in a series of movies starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt.  In this first Mission:Impossible the team is compromised and everything goes terribly in the first scene as it appears the entire team is killed.  Jim (Jon Voight) is the director of the team.  Turns out the operation was a ruse and it was in fact an operation to chase out a mole, and Ethan is accused of being the mole.  He must solve this one on his own.  He is able to recruit Luther (Ving Rhames) and Krieger (Jean Reno).  Also one of the team, Claire (Emmanuelle Béart) who was presumed killed but was not, shows up.  There are now trust issues.  The mole is also still in place.  There are many tense and exciting moments in this movie.  And in the end the high-speed train tunnel from England to France comes into play.  Vanessa Redgrave plays Max, the woman who buys secret spy information.  

Mission:Impossible movies do not have a great moral or theme but they do entertain.  

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Tom Selleck Movie Review: ***^ Runaway (1984)

 This is a very good movie about what can happen if technology goes awry; and worse if a villain is manipulating the technology.  Tom Selleck stars as Ramsay, a technology police officer, capturing runaway robots.  Cynthia Rhodes as Thompson, his partner.  The villain, Luther is portrayed by Gene Simmons of KISS.  Kristie Alley has a smaller part as Jackie, Luther's girl friend.  The technology is very scary: bullets that are programmed to your heat signature and will follow you around corners, spider like robots that squirt acid on you and tiny chips which can make any robot a killer.  And Luther is truly an evil demon.  He seems to take pride in what he has created, and the plot of the movie is he is trying to get microfilm with plans for further bad technology.  He has killed the creators of the microchips and plans and is looking for a big haul.  He even involves Ramsay's son in his evil.