Mission: Impossible (1996)

Am re-watching all the Mission Impossibles in 4K.

This movie never looked so good.

Let's recap

This movie was made

1) B4 Sept 11
2) Tamagotchi was the rage.
3) U2 was the BOMB (Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen did a remixed of the Mission: Impossible theme song)
4) Tom Cruise was 34yo
5) Emilio Estevez was a thing
6) Hong Kong was still generating income for England
7) Pierce Brosnan had just revived James Bond (Goldeneye (1995))
8) The Bourne Identity (2002) was 6 years away.
9) IBM computer Deep Blue becomes the first computer to win a game of chess against a reigning (human) chess champion, Gary Kasparov.
10) Smartphones was not a thing yet

Fun to revisit after watching Mission Impossible 6 to see how far the franchise had grown.

Supposedly, there were complains about the storyline being complicated.

It was never an issue for me and have to add, I enjoyed the movie the first time I watched it (in a cinema) and also this revisit.

What I can vaguely remember additionally to this movie is Tom Cruise had to goto the head of Paramount, to request for the additional 10 Million to film the end bit with the train and the helicopter, and I for one am glad he did that.

The result, and pretty profitable franchise for Paramount.

My Two Sen.

This post has been edited by Mov_freak: Aug 4 2018, 10:40 PM

Even after MI:Fallout is out , Brian De Palma's 1st MI storyline still my favourite ... cloak & dagger movies are supposed to complicated, to keep us guessing who's the mole ... too bad they decided to dumb down the following MI:2 story and focused on action (although I still like John Woo's balletic slow-mo action scenes). Not to say MI:1 isn't devoid of actions ... I remember when watching in cinema, when Ethan Hunt said will steal the list from CIA HQ ... then the theme song follows, leading to the suspenseful dangling scene ...

(Also remembered watching MI:1 on 3rd August 1996, becoz that's the day KL experienced blackout for almost the whole night ... we were almost finished watching the movie at BB President cinema ... reaching the TGV & helicopter scene when puff ... no power. The cinema management admirably issued replacement tickets for all, for any shows other days. Then we all began our own relatively mission impossible, rushing to go back, before darkness fell, dangling by crowded mini-bus door ... it was chaos. )

Believe MI1 is the end of the era of the Hollywood Brats. DePalma only left with one more somewhat decent movie in his career...Snake Eyes. Francis Ford Copolla fall behind everyone's radar. George Lucas have yet to release any of the SW prequels which everyone's knew how it went down. Only Spielberg left standing to be remnant of the collective group of directors.

Honestly all I remembered was Cruise dangling mid-air and Jon Voight playing Judas in a convoluted chess game. At least White Widow from Fallout is a call back to Vanessa Redgrave's character of the first movie. Should another sequel forthcoming, she could be another recurring character or the next big bad. Guess maybe there's another 3 more MI movies in Cruise if he can still sprint like Usain Bolt.

For me the weakest link is the 3rd one although it has one of the best villain to date. John Woo is the pop culture moment that peaked during that time. It's quite cringey to revisit it right now or didn't aged well in my opinion. Ghost Protocol can be very stale once you watched it the second time. Rogue Nation is a technical editing achievement when how to plot action sequences especially the memorable opera segment. Again just my personal opinion and it's perfectly fine to disagree with it.

Yes! Somehow MI:3 is the least memorable, although the late Philip Seymour Hoffman's character is the villain to be feared, more so than other MI or any other movies. Won't hesitate and waste time on monologues when killing the protagonist. Maybe it's weakest coz audience not ready to see the personal family side of Ethan Hunt? Or no real unique action sequence.

Brian De Palma's MI:1 got CIA hacking, and train+helicopter scenes.
John Woo's MI:2 got the car dancing, motorbike chase + flying and beach martial arts, plus did the villain just killed Ethan Hunt?
JJ Abrams' MI:3 got ... err ... bridge bombing, and self-electrocution.
Brad Bird's MI:4 got all the things that audience took for granted will go smoothly, but didn't (which led comedic effects); plus the Burj Khalifa climbing.
Christopher McQuarrie's MI:5 started off with a great stunt, then the opera house sequence, and improved motorbikes chase ... but the underwater scene kinda meh.

Christopher McQuarrie's MI:6 is nice coz not only it balanced the action (more stunts) and spy storyline, but it also tried to tie all the other 5 MI movies together ... Max from MI:1, the downed plane from MI:2, the wife from MI:3, MI:4 (err...can't remember), and the Syndicate from MI:5.

My tinfoil hat theory is JJ Abrams couldn't decide whether he is making an episode of TV or a blockbuster movie. It just didn't hit the wow factor of a summer popcorn movie. Maybe I'm bias against him but just not totally sold he is that top shelf film director that commands the status of he is at right now. Well that just me....lol....
Whereas I have more respect for the company he is running cause it did launched careers of Damon Lindeloff, Matt Reeves, Dan Trachtenberg, etc.....

Suddenly feel like singing "Those Were The Days" by Mary Hopkin...

Watch a bit of it last night, ah... the 90s
where you can smoke on plane, VHS tape flight movie, planning on the big cardboard map with big arrows, the public phone, the Usenet, zero mobile phones, and the cheeky slo-mo action scenes

This post has been edited by greyshadow: Aug 7 2018, 10:58 AM

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

Re-watched this on 4K recently.

Take away from the movie

1) Johnny Woo was a thing in Hollywood
2) Everyone just celebrated the new Millenium (which technically start at the 2001)
3) Tom Cruise, without discussing with Johnny Woo, leaped from one peak to the next, almost causing Johnyy to pass a stone (almost at the beginning of the movie).
4) Thandie Newton was a precursor to Zoe Saldana.
5) Bush vs Gore
6) Can you say flying doves?
7) Everyone was concern about Y2K, b4 this (remember Y2K?).
8) Slow-mo...
9) Handphone started to become a thing
10) Dougray Scott gave out on the Wolverine role, because the shooting of this movie ran long.

Probably the least favorite Mission Impossible to date.

Found the script to be on the weak side (storytelling wise).

Fan of Johnny Woo loved this.

So much so, it made more money compared with the first!!!

Who would have thunk.

Metallica's I Disappear, kicked ass.

Visually, good (seriously, good 4K transfer)!

Sonic-ally, sound.

My Two Sen

P.s. Please note that this would be my last Mission Impossible review here, the rest can be found at What 1080p Movie did You Watch Today ?

This post has been edited by Mov_freak: Aug 7 2018, 01:51 PM

Great trivias on the 2 MI movies pre-2000s

Just to add something ... in the lyrics of Limp Bizkit's theme song for MI:2, "Now I Know Why You Wanna Hate Me", got mentioned
Now all the critics wanna hit it
To shit-can how we did it
Just because they don’t get it

kinda pointing at the critics of MI:1 'complicated' storyline

Well, if you want to go THERE...

VCD which was never "international" and was a format only accepted in Asia and Japan.

DVD was NOT a thing yet

Remember a thingie called, a pager??? (Hutchinson anyone??)

Wow, thank you very much for that bit of trivia

i was only standard 4 and what i did on the sleepless night is just continue sleeping like a boss

i was not a cinema fanatic yet till JP lost world which is slightly worse off than the first one

my first home video movie was jurassic park on VHS and the price is only like RM40 per movie not like bluray today need RM80 at least

after watching some of de palma works including MI1 this still my favorite de palma work ever



that catchphrase is still synonymously remembered 2 this day

maggie Q

that is my best part ever besides the solid villain

sad 2 see she had disappeared already after NIKITA

I think she is the only Asian cast in the franchise today hahahaha

[off topic]
She's in the TV series Designated Survivor ... not the main characters, but significant.
[/off topic]

How about the screamer?

What about it?

Is it considered pre 2000?

Is it good?

If you can be more specific.

The Camp on Blood Island (1958)

A 1958 British World War II film, directed by Val Guest for Hammer Film Productions and starring André Morell, Carl Möhner, Edward Underdown and Walter Fitzgerald.

The film is set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Japanese-occupied British Malaya and deals with the brutal, sadistic treatment of Allied prisoners by their captors. On its release, the film was promoted with the tag line "Jap War Crimes Exposed!", alongside a quote from Lord Russell of Liverpool, "We may forgive, but we must never forget", and an image of a Japanese soldier wielding a samurai sword.

From its powerful opening sequence of a man being forced to dig his own grave before being shot dead, an intertitle follows, stating "this is not just a story - it is based on brutal truth", The Camp on Blood Island is noted for a depiction of human cruelty and brutality which was unusually graphic for a film of its time. It received some contemporary allegations of going beyond the bounds of the acceptable and necessary into gratuitous sensationalism.

The film was allegedly based on a true story which Hammer executive Anthony Nelson Keys heard from a friend who had been a prisoner of the Japanese. Keys in turn told the story to colleague Michael Carreras who commissioned John Manchip White to write a script. Finance was provided as part of a co-production deal with Columbia Pictures and shooting began at Bray Studios on 14 July 1957.

The film was very successful at the box office, being one of the most popular British movies of the year, despite sometimes hostile reviews.[

The novelisation of the script sold over two million copies and has been described as "arguably the most successful piece of merchandise ever licensed by Hammer."

(excerpt from Wikipedia)

The Camp on Blood Island (1958)

Many of you, would know that war movies are not my cup of tea.

Alot have been said about

Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Dunkirk (2018)

You will notice the above list are all based on WWII, seen by many as the last "good" war (as in the good sides and bad sides are clearly defined). On that note who am I to state what "good" is?

This is the FIRST time I watched this movie. And the only reason I did it is because it is a Hammer Production.

Apparently, this movie had been banned on English TV for a very long time.

Those familiar with Shaw Brothers movie will NOT be shocked by this movie.

A lot of brutality is depicted here.

Interestingly this movie is based in Malaya (before it became Malaysia).

And the Japanese brutality depicted.... is actually very similar to the stories you hear from the older generation in Malaysia, that lived through WWII/Japanese occupation.

I may be wrong, and have to add, this is the first WWII/Japanese occupation English movie production, that told the brutality of the Japanese/Taiwanese army did during their occupation years, from the prospective of the English!!...

English critics were supposedly not kind to the movie when it was released.

Surprisingly, the English audience flocked to see it, making it the most profitable English movie, for the year.

The critics main concern were that the movie was exploitative rather than an honest telling of what actually happened.

Watch it, and judge for yourself.

My Two Sen

P.S. one of the leads here is actually also on The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) (which is why to date Melaka does not have a train station, the track were taken away to help build that damn thing....)

This post has been edited by Mov_freak: Nov 28 2018, 01:38 PM

The Quick & the Dead (1995)

Was hungry for some good old western after playing Red Dead Redemption 2, saw this on Netflix, watch it donkey years ago on LD, watch it because of Sharon Stone but was disappointed due to very minimal nude scenes, just a few nipple flash

Directed by Sam Raimi, starring megastars of today: Gene Hackman, Sharon Stone, young Russel Crowe, and even younger Leonado DiCaprio
I think it was trying to ride on the success of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, which IMO is a masterpiece western.

Movie has lots of Sam Raimi's signature zoom in shot, which you'll only sees in B movies nowadays.
Few interesting but shallow characters, story wise nothing to shout about, ended with a few big booms typical of movies from those days, and with some of Raimi's signature comical death.

IMO, good western movies nowadays are hard to find, the recent Magnificent 7 reboot is meh, and I won't consider Quentin Tarantino's Hateful 8 as a real western, exception is his Django Unchained, which is real nice.

This post has been edited by greyshadow: Nov 28 2018, 11:31 AM