george.schmidt

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING (2025) *** 1/2 Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Greg Tarzan Davis, Shea Whigham, Angela Bassett, Henry Czerny, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman, Chris Parnell, Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk.

Cruise returns in full form as Ethan Hunt (in his final assignment?) picking up from DEAD RECKONING in hot pursuit of baddie Morales who is hellbent on world destruction with the villainous AI 'the Entity' with the clock ticking and unsurmountable odds facing physical extremes of derring dos and keeping his team intact. Ably supported by a fine ensemble but let's face it this is Cruise's vehicle bar none and each set piece only gets more dangerously daredevil (the finale on a bi-plane is hackle-inducing jaw-dropping HTF did they DO that?!!? Extravaganza in inducing heart-palpating anxiety. Filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie - who co-scripted with Erik Jendresen - pulls out all the stops with fantastic globe-trotting production skills thru out aiming high and hitting every mark along the way. A must see(k) in IMAX.

One of the series'best and one of the year's best films.

FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES (2025) **1/2 Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Rya Kihlstedt, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Alex Zahara, April Telek, Tinpo Lee, Tony Todd, Brec Gassinger, Gabrielle Rose, Max Lloyd-Jones. The death comes with a vengeance horror franchise continues with a new wrinkle - an entire family is marked for death when a college student (Santa Juana)'s nightmares of events past with her estranged grandmother (Rose) unspools a journey of self-preservation in keeping their fates at arm's length with the trademark Rube Goldbergian grisly demises eked out with gory glee. While filmmakers Zach Lipovsky & Adam B. Stein keep things lively with a tight screenplay by Guy Busick, Lori Evans Taylor & Jon Watts, something seems amiss in making everything gel properly as past chapters have done effortlessly so. It also doesn't help when its lead suffers from George Lopez face (permanent look of surprise), so yeah. However it's a fitting coda to see Todd reprise his iconic role of Bloodworth, the wisdom spouting coroner.

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2025) **1/2 Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Vincent Muller, Kevin Durand, Will Sasso, Cassandra Potenza, Verity Marks, Ayo Solanke, Alexandre Martin Deakin. Fairly decent slasher horror flick with Douglas as a recent resident of small-town whose legacy of a corn syrup factory is given a black eye when its icon Frendo The Clown goes on a murderous rampage the night of a local holiday. Checks off all the marks of the subgenera with its gleefully of the moment bloodshed and mayhem and a few well sprinkled moments of humor (teens flummoxed with a rotary phone is one for the archives). Echoes of SCREAM and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER but not the true terror of say TERRIFIER. Horror fans will have a field day. (Dir: Eli Craig)