Up until now, everything we’ve heard about the upcoming Mission: Impossible 6 has been centered around Tom Cruise’s love for risking his life on increasingly dangerous stunts. All the way back in March, we reported that Cruise had spent a year training for “the most impressive and unbelievable” stunt he’s ever done,…
Nothing raises the stakes of an action movie quite like a quality elevator sequence. Put some characters in a confined space that’s hanging twenty floors up by high-tension cables and you’ve got a grade-A set piece. But are these elevator sequences just a bunch of phony movie magic or do they depict plausible…
Earlier this week, we reported that a mustache Henry Cavill grew for his role in the next Mission: Impossible movie was causing headaches for Warner Bros., since the studio needed Cavill for some Justice League reshoots and would have to use CG magic to digitally remove the ‘stache. Unfortunately, Warner Bros. is…
The internet has already made known its love for truly shitty flute covers of familiar songs. There’s a whole subreddit about it. But it turns out that these shrill, ear-punishing recordings can add comedy, drama, and even a bit of pathos to just about anything. TxPixelPusher, a YouTuber from the Oak Cliff borough of…
When you strip the average Tom Cruise movie down to its essence, what you generally end up with is a charming and relatively short guy who just can’t stop running. Whether he’s trying to save people, make it to an important meeting, or prevent some future-crime, he always prefers to get there with a full-on sprint.…
On September 17, 1966, a landmark TV program debuted over on CBS: Bruce Geller’s Mission: Impossible, an action-adventure series centering on a team of highly skilled government agents. The original M:I ran from 1966 to 1973 and spawned a 1988 to 1990 revival, as well as several video games and a blockbuster film…
Things have gotten pretty perilous for the Mission Impossible team lately, with the long-running action franchise threatening to self-destruct after pre-production on Mission Impossible 6 was shut down by contract negotiations with star Tom Cruise. Cruise—who’s been appearing in, producing on, and dangling off of the…
It may be difficult to remember now that big-ticket superhero movies arrive on a near-monthly basis, but back in 1996, it was TV adaptations, not comics-based movies, that were considered the creative scourge of the decade. In ’96, there were about a dozen such adaptations, while the year’s single superhero offering…
The world is currently enjoying a bit of a Brian De Palma moment. Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s new documentary on the 75-year-old Newark-born filmmaker has been getting rave reviews and is stirring up renewed interest in his 29-feature-deep filmography. Some cinema fans, though, have been living in a Brian De…
Films are great learning tools. Where else can viewers get cheat sheets on Chaos Theory, counting cards, or how to make soap? And why limit oneself to just one movie for learning when the possibility exists to pull from 85 different films to teach a ridiculously simple premise? That’s the idea behind the latest…
Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d…
One of the most epic beer runs in television history comes to an end tonight. According to an article in Ad Age, a Dos Equis commercial scheduled to debut during a Lakers-Cavaliers game on TNT will feature the last performance ever by actor Jonathan Goldsmith, 77, as the cultured, smooth-talking, and vaguely…
Suggesting that he really wants to be behind the camera when Tom “Sure, I’ll hang onto the side of an airplane” Cruise eventually dies, Christopher McQuarrie has signed on to write, direct, and produce another Mission: Impossible movie. He previously wore those same hats for Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation, and…
The men and women who work on Hollywood blockbusters may seem distant, unknowable, and perhaps even all-powerful to the average ticket buyer. But the truth is that these people are so desperate to entertain audiences that they will selflessly endure hardship, discomfort, tedium, and even grievous bodily injury for…
Ethan Hunt is a secret agent. He works with a team of high-tech specialists to save the world from terrorists. Often, their work involves dangerous physical feats performed under tight time constraints. That, folks, is about all the backstory you need to know to successfully enjoy Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation—or…
Every year is a good year for action cinema, at least from a financial standpoint: If you count superhero movies, the genre pretty much has the top of the box-office charts on perpetual lockdown. Truly exciting, entertaining, or awe-inspiring action movies are harder to come by, but they’re not impossible to find,…
What do 127 Hours, The Resident, Captivity, Bridget Jones’s Diary, The Nanny Diaries, Little Manhattan, LOL, Ghostbusters, Firehouse Dog, Flight, The Clink Of Ice (Le Bruit Des Glaçons), Fight Club, TRON: Legacy, A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Secretary, 1408, Trouble With The Curve, Rise Of The Planet…
In 11 Questions, The A.V. Club asks interesting people 11 interesting questions—and then asks them to suggest one for our next interviewee.
Every few years, Tom Cruise issues a reminder that he used to be a pretty likable movie star in the form of another Mission: Impossible sequel. Truly, it’s a testament to the power of a good action flick that people are willing to ignore years of Scientology-related freakouts just to see Tom Cruise strap on some…
It was an ordinary day on the set of Mission: Impossible 5. Tom Cruise had just consumed a breakfast of fruits, Greek yogurt, and the distilled growth hormones of Norwegian vikings frozen in ice, and was limbering up for the day’s shoot. Suddenly, his wristwatch started blinking. Unfazed, Cruise punched a few buttons,…
