Capsule Reviews: While the City Sleeps, Cracking Up, The Kid, Rock of Ages

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956)

Fritz Lang's underseen noir blends the yellowest of journalism with King Lear in a prescient, savage view of media feeding a public frenzy. A news empire is offered to three successors, with the new kingdom to be ruled by the one who can beat the cops to solving the identity of a serial killer infamous only from the organization's own salacious coverage. Lang's framing is more stripped down than some other efforts but no less immaculate: the newsroom of transparent but isolating glass and roaring presses speak to the capacity of journalism to reveal and obscure, and how a giant conglomerate can drown out the truth instead of exposing it. As much as the actual string of murders, the tension operates on simple office politics, in which the promise of a raise and a title change to move up the modern social ladder can bring out the basest, most primitive behavior. The characterization of the sexually confused killer is oh-so-standard, but Lang's ability to make high style out of even the most basic movements and mise-en-scène combines with the otherwise fantastic story for a great anti-journo noir. Grade: A-

Cracking Up (Jerry Lewis, 1983)

When Lewis' name credit flashes on the screen over one of the star's pratfalls with the added text, "Who else?" that may be because no one else would dream of making a slapstick movie in 1983. Hell, only Lewis would have been so bold as to make slapstick back in the '50s and '60s. That defiance informs all of Cracked Up, which nominally dives into a suicidal loser's headspace to give Lewis the chance to appear in various guises without any semblance of plot. Instead, it's just wall-to-wall gags, carefully composed yet anarchic in Tati fashion. Among the highlights: Zane Buzby's appearance as a waitress nasally droning out every item on the menu and its preparatory options until her incessant questions about what kind of dressing or how the steak should be cooked become their own circle of hell. Also great is a vignette on the world's cheapest airline that tops Airplane! for sheer invention, turning the economy class level into a Roman galley and "first class" into what appears to be a half-cleaned Mexican village set, complete with drunks, chickens and filthy hay. There's also the opening credits, a series of pratfalls on Teflon-coated floors and furniture that attempts a one-man version of the club-destroying climax of Playtime; even the titles are carefree, attributing the singing of the all-instrumental title track to Marcel Marceau and dropping the audio track completely when the composer is credited, as if he stopped to take an offscreen bow. Not every joke lands, but I'm not sure they're supposed to: the absurdly awful King Kong hand that reaches in to grab Lewis' psychiatrist (Herb Edelman) might as well be a giant middle finger for how much it dares the audience to hate it. Cracking Up joins a line of comic writer-director-star masterpieces that mourn modernity's effect on slapstick. But if Chaplin commiserated with Keaton in one final showstopper in Limelight and Tati actually got out ahead of modern times and preempted May '68 by giving Hulot and the rest of Playtime away in an act of comic socialism, Lewis is a product of the Reagan era he despises. It's as narcissistic as they come, but so freewheeling and shameless that it is no less an achievement as the other two works. Grade: A

The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921)

Chaplin's first feature looks a bit rough compared to the total control the genius would exert over his later works, yet that same rawness makes its emotional impact one of Chaplin's most visceral thrills. Aided by the kid vaudevillian Jackie Coogan, Chaplin's Tramp establishes world dominance with a blend of Dickensian squalor and wry comedy that showcases Chaplin's deftness with underplayed comedy, bombastic sentimentalist that he may be. The trade of warning and supplicant glances between the cop and Tramp alone are a masterclass in body acting. The climactic race across the rooftops after the abducted kid is, compared to more controlled mise-en-scène of later setpieces, not that technically impressive, but its immediacy and tension makes it one of the director's finest moments. Grade: B+

Rock of Ages (Adam Shankman, 2012)

An experiment designed to test the limits of camp, Rock of Ages scrubs the coke and dried blood off the nose of the '80s and rolls sleeves over its track marks to render a host of hair metal and MOR classics with Glee-esque covers. It's got caricatures galore, from the small-town girl lookin' to find fame in the city (Julianne Hough) to the even-more-ambitious meathead hiding a knack for genius songwriting (Diego Boneta). There's also conniving managers (Paul Giamatti), a political couple looking for a social scapegoat in rock (Bryan Cranston and Catherine Zeta-Jones), and an aged ex-hippie (Alec Baldwin) who, like Spinal Tap, has drifted through rock trends for decades and has no idea that this music, too shall pass. But the only person who makes any kind of impression is Tom Cruise, who, when one also thinks of his minor role in Tropic Thunder, seems to be setting some space aside to just absolutely go for whatever role he gets. His Stacee Jaxx is a watered-down Axl Rose, but Cruise plays his all-consuming egomania and rock-god isolation for all it's worth, even if it's not worth that much.

But for a movie that lets its actors go a bit crazy, the surroundings are frustratingly low-key. Ported over from the necessary limitations of the stage, the Whisky-A-Go-Go-esque venue doesn't really convey the sheer ludicrous scale of 1980s rock: the arenas packed to the rafters with shrieking fans; the too-bright gloss of the music and style, every party song its own sensorily overloaded hangover; and the Dionysian orgy of illicit substances and sex tamely alluded to here. Instead, the audience must suffer through toothless renditions of metal complete with uninspired choreography; ridiculous arrogance (a hip-hop boy band is paraded around as the nadir of commercial prefabricaton, as if so many hair metal acts weren't label slaves); one song that serves as a big, unfunny gay joke; and the insultingly sexist suggestion that the big-dreaming girl really wanted love, not fame. This is a movie where a stripper becomes a star and wears less clothes in the limelight than she did on the pole. I don't even understand who gets songwriting credits in this universe: these characters "write" covers, yet the master tracks for some songs are played as well. Does this mean all the bands being covered here exist in this universe but didn't write the songs sung by the characters? Or is Stacee Jaxx merely the world's most popular cover artist? And who cares? Grade: D

ROCK OF AGES | Stars sing and deliver anthem-ic film soundtrack!

Features Hits of Iconic Rockers Def Leppard, Journey, Bon Jovi, Poison and others. Performed By Rock of Ages Cast Members Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mary J Blige, Alec Baldwin, Tom Cruise, and more

Ivory Music & Video, the exclusive licensee of Sony Music in the Philippines announces the international release of the soundtrack album for the highly anticipated upcoming movie musical Rock of Ages on June 2012. The Rock of Ages: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack boasts 20 rousing anthems that defined a generation—reinvigorated for the film by a stellar cast including Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Malin Akerman, Mary J. Blige, Alec Baldwin and Tom Cruise.

Directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray), New Line Cinema’s Rock of Ages is the film adaptation of the smash hit, five-time Tony® nominated Broadway musical which tells the story of small town girl Sherrie and city boy Drew, who meet on the Sunset Strip while pursuing their Hollywood dreams.

Executive Music Producer Adam Anders (Glee) helps tell the rock ‘n’ roll romance through cast versions of heart-pounding hits of Def Leppard, Poison, Journey, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, Joan Jett, Foreigner, Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Whitesnake, and more.

“Taking classic, beloved rock anthems and seeing them through the unique perspective of the characters in the film was such an exciting prospect for me in directing Rock of Ages,” said filmmaker Adam Shankman. “We had a phenomenal cast who performed these songs in such a powerful way—adding depth and meaningful imagery to the film. I was lucky to have a partner in Adam Anders who, better than anyone working today, understands how to take popular songs and seamlessly repurpose them to tell a story with unparalleled originality and success.”

As the larger-than-life, arena-rocking champ “Stacee Jaxx,” the Rock of Ages Soundtrack features Tom Cruise belting out Bon Jovi’s classic “Wanted Dead or Alive,” Def Leppard’s hit “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” and Guns ‘N Roses anthem “Paradise City.” Cruise also duets with Malin Akerman on Foreigner’s power ballad, “I Want To Know What Love Is,” and shares the mic with Julianne Hough on The Scorpions’ “Rock You Like A Hurricane.”

The album also features an extraordinary medley of Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian,” David Lee Roth’s “Just Like Paradise,” and Poison’s “Nothin’ But A Good Time,” which features Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin. Also echoing through the soundtrack are mash-ups of songs that ruled the airwaves in the `80s, including Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero” / Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock N Roll”; Extreme’s “More Than Words” / Warrant’s “Heaven”; Pat Benatar’s “Shadows Of The Night” / Quarterflash’s “Harden My Heart”; and Starship’s “We Built This City” woven into Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” all performed by the film’s cast.

Opening across the Philippines on Thursday, June 14, “Rock of Ages” is distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

The official soundtrack of Rock of Ages is available in all select music stores nationwide and at the Philippines’ biggest online music store, visit www.mymusicstore.com.ph and register for free.

Below is the complete list of songs in the “Rock of Ages” soundtrack.

1. “Paradise City” - Tom Cruise

2. “Sister Christian” / “Just Like Paradise” / “Nothin’ But A Good Time” - Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin

3. “Juke Box Hero” / “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” - Diego Boneta, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Julianne Hough

4. “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” - Catherine Zeta-Jones

5. “Waiting For A Girl Like You” - Diego Boneta, Julianne Hough

6. “More Than Words” / “Heaven” - Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta

7. “Wanted Dead Or Alive” - Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough

8. “I Want To Know What Love Is” - Tom Cruise, Malin Akerman

9. “I Wanna Rock” - Diego Boneta

10. “Pour Some Sugar On Me” - Tom Cruise

11. “Harden My Heart” - Julianne Hough, Mary J. Blige

12. “Shadows of the Night” / “Harden My Heart” - Mary J. Blige, Julianne Hough

13. “Here I Go Again” - Diego Boneta, Paul Giamatti, Julianne Hough, Mary J. Blige, Tom Cruise, 

14. “Can’t Fight This Feeling” - Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin

15. “Any Way You Want It” - Mary J. Blige, Constantine Maroulis, Julianne Hough

16. “Undercover Love” - Diego Boneta

17. “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” - Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise, Mary J. Blige

18. “Rock You Like A Hurricane” - Julianne Hough, Tom Cruise

19. “We Built This City” / “We’re Not Gonna Take It” - Russell Brand / Catherine Zeta-Jones

20. “Don’t Stop Believin’”- Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Mary J. Blige

JULIANNE HOUGH & DIEGO BONETA ignite “ROCK OF AGES”

At the core of New Line Cinema's epic musical “Rock of Ages” is a boy-meets-girl love story woven into classic, only-in-Hollywood dreams of fame. To play the young lovers Sherrie and Drew, the filmmakers chose two of today's most promising stars, Julianne Hough (“Footloose,” “Burlesque”) and Diego Boneta (TV's “Pretty Little Liars”).

The opening scene of the film follows a beautiful, if somewhat naïve, girl named Sherrie Christian, who has just hopped a bus from her small Midwestern hometown in pursuit of her Hollywood dream to be a singer. When she takes her first steps on the Sunset Strip, she thinks she’s found paradise.

Hough was cast as the wide-eyed Sherrie, who lands at the epicenter of the rock ‘n’ roll scene. “She just wants to make something of herself, even if she’s not going to be the biggest rock star in the world. She wants to be around it, the excitement and the energy of a city like that. It makes her feel alive.”

Prior to casting Hough in “Rock of Ages,” director Adam Shankman had an opportunity to direct her in a music video for her latest album. “Julianne blew my mind,” he says. “She has an extraordinary rapport with the camera; her beauty and talent is right there in a really big way.”

Arriving in town with hopes high, Sherrie immediately experiences a bit of a rude awakening. The disappointment doesn’t last long, though, as she’s rescued by a handsome young man, Drew Boley, who offers her what she needs more than anything in the world: a job.

Boneta won the role of Drew after a nationwide search. “Drew is a barback at The Bourbon Room, a legendary club like the Whiskey, where all the bands play,” says Boneta. “He’s a rock star in his heart, and he’s a good, honest, romantic guy.”

“We saw thousands of people for Drew,” Shankman relates. “Diego’s audition tape came across my casting website, and after I watched it, I just had that feeling. I called [producer] Jennifer Gibgot and said, ‘I think I found the guy. I’m looking at him right now.’”

Gibgot recounts, “We brought Diego in, and the moment he walked through the door, Adam and I just looked at each other and said, ‘That’s Drew.’”

Being hardworking young performers on the rise themselves, it wasn’t difficult for either Hough or Boneta to understand the hopes and dreams of their characters.

“Sherrie and Drew are both in L.A. for the same reasons, they have essentially the same goal in mind, so they click, they really connect,” Boneta attests. “At first, they help each other out at work, but there’s a definite attraction; things between them just grow from there.”

Hough agrees. “Drew and Sherrie are the couple that you root for,” she says. “They’re young and learning about life and being in a relationship, and excited for the future. It all seems perfect until they have…a big misunderstanding.”

Opening across the Philippines in June 14, 2012, “Rock of Ages” will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

CATHERINE ZETA-JONES relishes villainous role in “ROCK OF AGES”

She sang her heart out as the murderous Velma Kelly in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical “Chicago” for which she received an Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress.

Now, Catherine Zeta-Jones is back in another film version of a stage musical, New Line Cinema's “Rock of Ages” where she plays the mayor's wife, Patricia Whitmore, who leads a brigade of women bent on ridding the streets of all things rock ‘n’ roll.

Zeta-Jones says she leapt at the chance to sing and dance again after her Oscar-winning turn in “Chicago.” “When [director] Adam Shankman called me, I said yes without even looking at the script. I knew it would be a blast and I had to be a part of it,” she recalls. “And then I read the script and thought, ‘Wow, what a fun character.’”

“Patricia is a strong woman, so we needed an actress with a lot of presence,” notes Shankman. “Casting Catherine was a dream for me that basically came true.”

“Rock of Ages” tells the story of small town girl Sherrie (Julianne Hough) and city boy Drew (Diego Boneta), who meet on the Sunset Strip while pursuing their Hollywood dreams. Their rock ‘n’ roll romance is told through the heart-pounding hits of Def Leppard, Joan Jett, Journey, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, Whitesnake, and more.

The Patricia Whitmore character does not appear in the original Broadway musical. “We created the role of the mayor’s wife in order to revisit the cultural censorship that was going on in that period,” Shankman says.

“I think Patricia is the kind of woman who sees her role as first lady of Los Angeles as being much more important than her husband’s role as mayor, and there’s no question as to who wears the pants in the family,” Zeta-Jones suggests. “She’s an outspoken activist who feels rock ‘n’ roll is satanic music, and she creates a campaign to clean up what she believes is the real filth sullying her city’s streets: rock music.”

Patricia’s wardrobe is a marked difference from the rest of the cast—pastel suits with subdued, carefully coordinated accessories. “She’s a right-wing conservative who obviously has underlying secrets and a few skeletons in the closet,” Zeta-Jones says with a smile. “I thought I could have so much fun with her, and I have. And that’s exactly what each and every one of the other actors is having as well. The whole experience is so much fun.”

Opening across the Philippines in June 14, 2012, “Rock of Ages” will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

ROCK OF AGES | Nothing but a good time and great music!

Hollywood’s famed Sunset Strip, 1987. Rockers wail and heads bang inside the packed and pulsating walls of a rock ‘n’ roll institution, The Bourbon Room. Heart strings are plucked and electric guitar sparks fly to the beat of some of the greatest hits of the `80s…the “Rock of Ages.”

The Broadway hit now goes from stage to screen with Warner Bros.' epic musical “Rock of Ages” under the direction of Adam Shankman (“Hairspray”). Shankman, who grew up in Los Angeles, felt right at home in the setting. “My dad was a music business manager, and his office was on the Strip,” he says. “I knew a lot of artists. I was choreographing music videos in 1987 and it was a world that I really understood and loved, so turning back that clock was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

At the core of the film is a boy-meets-girl love story woven into classic, only-in-Hollywood dreams of fame. Shankman’s sister and producing partner, Jennifer Gibgot, elaborates, “Like so many people in L.A., the young lovers in ‘Rock of Ages’ have come here hoping to make it big and thinking it’s going to be easy. But it turns out to be a lot harder to stay on the path, to keep believing in the thing that led them there in the first place.”

Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta portray the young couple with stars in their eyes at the center of the story. They are joined by an all-star cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Mary J. Blige, Malin Akerman and Catherine Zeta-Jones. And playing the rock god of “Rock of Ages,” Arsenal lead singer Stacee Jaxx, is Tom Cruise.

For Shankman, the journey began when he went to see “Rock of Ages” on the stage. He recalls, “The audience was having the best time I’d ever seen at a show. Everybody knew the lyrics to all the songs and was out of their seats and singing along and having the time of their life. That enthusiasm, that sheer emotion, convinced me to make the movie.”

It wasn’t his only reason for revisiting the era, however. “I thought it would be an interesting challenge to make a movie musical that guys would drag their girlfriends to for a change.”

Shankman’s “Rock of Ages” is based on the Broadway smash, which earned five Tony Award nominations and is still entertaining audiences on the Great White Way as well as in touring productions around the world. The show’s book was written by Chris D’Arienzo, who is also a writer and executive producer on the film.

The story, about pursuing your heart’s desire, is backed by incredible songs and set on the iconic Sunset Strip, a place emblematic of the time, a place where fantasies could become reality, and did. Where a band from nowhere could perform at the Whiskey or The Roxy and wind up with a record deal.

Writer Justin Theroux enjoyed working on the screenplay for the jukebox musical, an opportunity he describes as “a totally different experience. In a weird way, you write backwards from the point of view of the song. The song is always the emotional center for the characters in any given scene, so it’s fun to try to get them to that specific destination. The song does a lot of the emotional heavy lifting for you, but you have to build ramps up and down, to and from, that centerpiece.”

Writer Allan Loeb also took pleasure in fiddling around with the script’s musical moments. “At times there are two songs playing off each other, going back and forth between the different storylines, with a lot of intercutting, to enable the song to serve more than one set of characters,” he details. “So the challenge was to shuffle the story and the verses, while also allowing for the choreography, until everyone explodes into a mash-up of the songs’ choruses. That’s how they did it on stage and how we handled it in the screenplay, and it was great fun to write.”

Says Shankman, “What’s often the most difficult and compelling thing about a musical like ‘Rock of Ages’ is that half of a song is played as performance and the other half as dialogue or inner monologue. I think the writers did a great job of turning a terrific stage show into a real cinematic experience. I’d like to see the movie-going audiences jumping out of their seats just like the theater audience did, and I think this story and these characters and this rockin’ music, performed by our unexpected and unbelievably talented cast, just might get them on their feet.”

Opening across the Philippines in June 14, 2012, “Rock of Ages” will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

“ROCK OF AGES” premieres new music video

New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. have just shared the new “Anyway You Want It” music video from the feature film adaptation of the smash hit Broadway musical “Rock of Ages.” Watch the heart-pounding video.

Directed by “Hairspray’s” Adam Shankman, “Rock of Ages” tells the story of small town girl Sherrie and city boy Drew, who meet on the Sunset Strip while pursuing their Hollywood dreams. Their rock ‘n’ roll romance is told through the heart-pounding hits of Def Leppard, Joan Jett, Journey, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, Whitesnake, and more.

The movie musical stars Julianne Hough (“Burlesque”), with actor/singer Diego Boneta in his feature film debut, Russell Brand (“Arthur”), Oscar® nominee Paul Giamatti (“Cinderella Man”), Academy Award® winner Catherine Zeta-Jones (“Chicago”), Malin Akerman (“The Proposal”) and R&B queen Mary J. Blige, with Oscar® nominees Alec Baldwin (“The Cooler”) and Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx.

Shankman directs “Rock of Ages” from a screenplay by Justin Theroux and Chris D’Arienzo and Allan Loeb, based on D’Arienzo’s musical of the same name.

Opening across the Philippines in June 14, 2012, “Rock of Ages” will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Tom Cruise broadway musical film adaptation “ROCK OF AGES” rolls to the screen!

Under the direction of Adam Shankman (“Hairspray”), New Line Cinema’s feature film adaptation of the smash hit Broadway musical “Rock of Ages” comes to the big screen.

“Rock of Ages” tells the story of small town girl Sherrie and city boy Drew, who meet on the Sunset Strip while pursuing their Hollywood dreams. Their rock ‘n’ roll romance is told through the heart-pounding hits of Def Leppard, Joan Jett, Journey, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, Whitesnake, and more.

The movie musical stars Julianne Hough (“Burlesque”), with actor/singer Diego Boneta in his feature film debut, Russell Brand, Oscar® nominee Paul Giamatti, Academy Award® winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, Malin Akerman, R&B queen Mary J. Blige and multiple Emmy®-winner Bryan Cranston, with Oscar® nominees Alec Baldwin and Tom Cruise.

Shankman directs “Rock of Ages” from a screenplay by Justin Theroux and Chris D’Arienzo and Allan Loeb, based on D’Arienzo’s musical of the same name. The film is being produced by Matthew Weaver, Scott Prisand, Carl Levin, Tobey Maguire, Garrett Grant and Jennifer Gibgot, with Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener, Michael Disco, Samuel J. Brown, Hillary Butorac Weaver, Janet Billig Rich, Shankman and D’Arienzo serving as executive producers.

Rounding out the “Rock of Ages” creative team are director of photography Bojan Bazelli (“Hairspray”), production designer Jon Hutman (“It’s Complicated”), editor Emma E. Hickox (“A Walk To Remember”), Oscar®-nominated costume designer Rita Ryack (“Hairspray”), Grammy-nominated music supervisor Matt Sullivan (“Dreamgirls,” “Nine”), executive and Emmy Award-winning choreographer Mia Michaels (“So You Think You Can Dance”). The original score is by Adam Anders and Peer Astrom (TV’s “Glee”).

Opening across the Philippines in June 2012, “Rock of Ages” will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

TOM CRUISE's “ROCK OF AGES” trailer bows online!

New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. have just unleashed the latest trailer of director Adam Shankman's feature film adaptation of the smash hit Broadway musical “Rock of Ages.” 

“Rock of Ages” tells the story of small town girl Sherrie and city boy Drew, who meet on the Sunset Strip while pursuing their Hollywood dreams. Their rock ‘n’ roll romance is told through the heart-pounding hits of Def Leppard, Joan Jett, Journey, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, Whitesnake, and more.

The movie musical stars Julianne Hough (“Burlesque”), with actor/singer Diego Boneta in his feature film debut, Russell Brand (“Arthur”), Oscar® nominee Paul Giamatti (“Cinderella Man”), Academy Award® winner Catherine Zeta-Jones (“Chicago”), Malin Akerman (“The Proposal”) and R&B queen Mary J. Blige, with Oscar® nominees Alec Baldwin (“The Cooler”) and Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx.

Shankman directs “Rock of Ages” from a screenplay by Justin Theroux and Chris D’Arienzo and Allan Loeb, based on D’Arienzo’s musical of the same name.

Opening across the Philippines in June 2012, “Rock of Ages” will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Steven Spielberg: War of the Worlds

It's just as well that War of the Worlds was hobbled upon its initial release by the lingering effects of Tom Cruise's infamous couch-jumping whatever. If Americans were going to let a stupid thing like that distract them, who knows how they might have reacted if they realized what all the movie had to say about 9/11 and the still-raging debate over Iraq. Even the conclusion of H.G. Wells' original novel, forecast in the opening credits expanding outward from single-cell organisms to humanity and even the cosmos, reflects the pitfalls of the War on Terror. "Occupations always fail!" declares a mad character late in the film, and one gets the distinct feeling he isn't just talking about invaders from Mars.

But War of the Worlds is, for the most part, not a commentary on the War on Terror so much as snapshot of what inspired it and how the national emotions of panic, grief, rage and bewilderment contributed to it. There's no criticism here; that would come with Spielberg's other 2005 film. No, War of the Worlds' primary aim is still to function as a blockbuster, but in its finely detailed, occasionally surreal construction is an almost therapeutic attempt to recreate an event fresh in the nation's mind, all the better to study it and to (hopefully) make a more informed decision than we did when that day actually happened.

Though Catch Me If You Can served as the non plus ultra of Spielberg's pet themes of absent fathers and confused children, War of the Worlds finds a new angle from which to approach that well-explored subject matter. Cruise may have sent the marketing department up the wall before it was all over, but his was an inspired casting choice. Spielberg presents the actor, then still America's everyman, as not merely a neglectful dad but a willfully repellent one. Cruise's Ray arrives home from work to find that he's late for picking up his kids from his ex-wife (Miranda Otto), and he offers no apology for his misunderstanding of their meeting time. Alone with the teenaged Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and young Rachel (Dakota Fanning), Ray proves to be uninterested in his children and almost willfully unconcerned with their lives and well-being.


In these opening scenes, Cruise is nearly at his most unpleasant, surpassed only by his misogynistic event speaker in Magnolia. In a hopelessly outdated and transparently thin attempt to interact with Robbie, Ray makes his son come out for a game of catch. The contentious lines they exchange slowly increase the force of each throw, until Robbie makes the mistake of mentioning him mom's new husband. Cruise's face doesn't change, but he throws the baseball so hard that one doesn't need to hear the resulting thud of the ball hitting Robbie's mitt or see the boy wince to feel the oomph behind the toss. Ray spares but a modicum more affection for Rachel, snottily reacting to her ordering takeout from a health food place and largely ignoring her.

By presenting Ray as such an unlikable figure at the start, Spielberg emphasizes that what is about to happen can affect anyone, and also that it can profoundly change people. The director forecasts the oncoming horror in ways that should be obvious to everyone: news reports bring updates of strange storms in other countries that trigger EMP blackouts, rendering whole areas without electronics. But that is the rest of the world, and no television that shows these reports stays on for very long before someone changes the channel or turns off the set. And when one of those storms forms over New York, Ray observes that the wind is blowing toward the storm clouds with a tone of mild curiosity. Even when lightning rains down on the area (without accompanying thunder), he and others continue to mill about to see what is going on. Naïve and sheltered, the Americans congregate around an opened crack in the ground, totally unperturbed until the ground begins to quake and splinter, and finally cave into a giant hole.

The next hour and 45 minutes display Spielberg at his visceral best, twisting the formal prowess he normally uses for elegant, graceful depictions of wonder and optimism into a device for conveying sheer and utter terror. From the giant hole in the ground emerges an enormous tripod, a war machine that barely has time to stretch out fully before it begins slaughtering people and destroying buildings. Ray only just manages to get away, running back to his house to grab the kids and steal a van that's been repaired after the EMP blast. As Rachel shrieks "Is it the terrorists?!" New York is reduced to embers behind them.

The connections between the alien invasion and 9/11 and the War on Terror range from the literal to the abstract. The machines, buried for however many millennia, obviously reflect underground sleeper cells, dormant until a surprise attack. Their heat rays turn people into ashes, which blanket Ray as beams cut through those around him. The image of Ray literally covered with the dead recalls horrible images of people covered in the dust and debris cloud of the falling towers, while downed airplanes and crumbling buildings only hammer home the horrid sights of that awful day.

In broader terms, the aliens elicit basic, deeply felt emotional responses. Every time a tripod happens upon Ray's location, the frame almost literally shudders with fear, while the sense of not knowing what's happening or where one might go for safety pervades every frame. There is also the anger, the instant thirst for reprisal that overrides any strategy, even sense. Robbie begins to wear a look of perpetual fury on his face, itching to strike back at the invaders despite the hopelessness of the situation. As with terrorists, the aliens are impervious to the best of our military technology: the aliens have even better technology that renders them invulnerable to attack, while the terrorists' organization makes might an irrelevant factor in the equation. Robbie represents so many people in the wake of 9/11, so ready for payback that they never stopped to consider what kind of conflict they'd be getting into, or what might happen to them when they did.

Spielberg frames all of this with surprising formalism, flecked with even more surprising traces of surrealism. After spawning an entire generation of clumsy knock-offs with the gritty, close-up handheld cameras of Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg offers a check to his legion of copycats by capturing visuals no less wrenching and instantly felt despite their careful, classical composition. Occasionally recalling the love of old genre fare that informed the Indiana Jones series, Spielberg employs some shots that have an almost storybook quality to them, as if he'd brought an illustrated copy of the book to life. One scene that particularly sticks to me takes place at a ferry as throngs of people push toward the overloaded boat, only for telltale warning signs to precede the emergence of a tripod behind everyone. As the machine lets out one of its booming horns, the camera cuts to frame it looming over the Hudson as mist swirls over the bright lights around the pier. It's a gorgeous shot, and one that freezes my heart every single time I see it.

As for the surrealism, Spielberg tops even the grim oddities of Empire of the Sun. That film included a memorable scene of Jim wandering around his ransacked neighborhood in Shanghai, abandoned luggage cast aside and clothes strewn across the ground as if their wearers had been raptured out of them. Spielberg resuses that offbeat, troubling image on a larger scale here, as tripods snatch up prey and send clothes falling gently to the ground like giant snowflakes after using up the people inside them. The director even perverts his personal use of close-ups in a shot where Rachel heads out of her brother and father's eyesight to use the bathroom by a river, only to see bodies drifting downstream. As sunlight bounces off the clear water, Spielberg pushes in on Fanning's face as the golden light flickers over her stunned features. The flicker almost gives the shot a feeling of an old silent film, and Fanning's overwhelmed shock a tinge of Expressionist horror.

There's also a shot late in the film after Ray discovers that the aliens are spreading a red weed everywhere that they fertilize with liquified humans. As he stumbles out from a hiding place, Ray walks in front of a broken wooden fence looking out into a (literally) blood-soaked horizon. It's a shot that might have come out of Johnny Guitar, a beautifully grotesque, madly stylized Western panorama as striking as it is disturbing.

Another disquieting element of War of the Worlds is the frank manner in which it suggests, like any good monster movie, that the other survivors can be as bad as the creatures. When Ray reaches the Hudson ferry, he and the kids are forcibly taken from the van by a crowd of people who want it even though there's nowhere to run. And when the tripod rises up over the ferry, the soldiers on-board instantly call for the ferry to take off, callously stranding hundreds to be massacred to make a futile attempt at getaway. But the true personification of the insanity of those left behind comes in Tim Robbins' delightfully named Harlan Ogilvy, a man who would be perfectly at home in a George A. Romero zombie film. Driven out of his mind by his family's death, Harlan shares Robbie's absurd dream of taking the fight to the aliens; armed with a shotgun, he is only infinitesimally less hopeless than the unarmed boy. As Harlan slips deeper into madness, Ray slowly realizes that he will need to deal with the man to keep Rachel safe. When the situation comes to a head, Spielberg treats us to one of his darkest shots, again staying in close-up on Rachel's face, a blindfold over her eyes and her fingers jammed in her ears as she sings a lullaby to herself, as Ray murders Harlan in the next room. Were it not for a certain scene in Munich which I will later discuss, this would be the single bleakest, most unsentimental shot in Spielberg's entire canon.

These gut-wrenching moments, combined with the technical perfection of practically every moment (Spielberg's decision to use as much live-effects as possible, as with Jurassic Park, makes the CGI that much more lastingly great) would cement War of the Worlds as one of Spielberg's greatest achievements, if not one hiccup. Yep, you guessed it, it's the ending. Spielberg retains the gist of Wells' ending for better and worse: it's fitting that he should still attribute the downfall of the invasion to bacteria against which the aliens have no immunity. It was a brilliant touch in the original novel and one that fits seamlessly here as a lesson about a technologically superior force inserting itself into an unfamiliar environment where the elements can defeat even the strongest foe.

But the other part of Wells' ending, the unlikely reunion with characters presumed dead, is harder to defend. Robbie's awkward return is simply senseless, and it robs the film of its somber implications regarding his headlong rush into death. When he leaves Ray and Rachel, he doesn't do so on the best of terms: there are things left unsaid, and the expectation of his death in the sudden conflagration spoke to all the lives cut short by that patriotic swell of enlistment and the unquestioning deployment into the Middle East. For Robbie to just show up, totally fine, at the end and allow a proper reconciliation between father and son is one of Spielberg's most glaring moments of dishonesty, denying the painful reality for a tacked-on bit of cheer that ironically seemed to piss off everyone. But with Spielberg's next release, even this tiny shred of optimism would be ruthlessly purged from all discussion of our current climate of war.

Steven Spielberg: Minority Report

Filmed from March to July 2001, Minority Report was not influenced by the September 11 attacks later that year, yet retrospectively it seems the first of Steven Spielberg's attempts to grapple with the aftermath of the tragedy. A neo-noir in which crime is committed and prosecuted in the mind, Minority Report proves disturbingly prescient in its vision of a world in which murder is punished preemptively. Though based on an even older Philip K. Dick story, the film feels like the meeting point of the Patriot Act and the impetus for the Iraq invasion, albeit the focus lies not on wars and national defense but mere law enforcement. As the PSAs encouraging support for a national PreCrime system argue to the people, "That which keeps us safe also keeps us free."

Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) believes that motto with all his heart. Having lost his son years ago to an unknown kidnapper/murderer, John looks at PreCrime as a way to prevent such pain from afflicting anyone else. Using a trio of genetically engineered psychics to predict when murders will occur and who the perpetrators and victims will be, Anderton and the rest of Washington D.C.'s unit have reduced the murder rate in one of America's most violent cities to zero. The resultant utopia resembles that of Demolition Man: exceedingly bright and almost eerily calm. Only where Demolition Man presented its peace as the product of nanny-state liberalism, Minority Report shows how instant detention has cleared the streets.

Perhaps that's why the brightness of Spielberg's future D.C. is so garish and uninviting. Using the bleach-bypass method he employed for Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg casts his world in a quasi-chiaroscuro, not fully employing black-and-white but suggesting the obliteration of a moral gray area in this new societal order. Anyone predicted to kill by the "PreCogs" is guilty and arrested before the act is committed. There are no extenuating circumstances, no appeals, only a quick journey to a massive prison that resembles a high-tech Guantanamo. Some of the police offers working in PreCrime have never even covered a homicide. They simply trust in the system, which clearly marks people as either innocent or guilty.

But naturally, there isn't much drama in a world where evil has already been figured out and dealt with, and soon Anderton's faith in the new way of things is directly challenged. First comes the intrusion of the bureaucracy, in this case Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell), a representative of the attorney general. Before PreCrime can go national, the federal government wants to make sure there are no flaws. The fact that Witwer is even investigating the system cracks the illusion of the system's infallibility, and his intervention sets in motion events that lead Anderton to a potential flaw, at which point his world turns upside down.

Predicted to kill a man he's never even heard of, Anderton must flee and try to clear his name, and Spielberg stages a number of impressive chases as the chief ducks his co-workers. He leaps across maglev cars racing at hundreds of miles per hour in every direction, hitches unwitting jetpack rides off the officers come to arrest him and dukes with Witwer in a car manufacturing factory before driving away in the car that is constructed robotically around him. Spielberg's direction is at his most fluid and dynamic, the welcome return of his more coherent, formal style communicating as much energy as Saving Private Ryan with out all that camera jostling tedium. A sequence in which tiny, retina-scanning automatons move through an apartment looking for Anderton is filmed, De Palma-style, with a top-down camera gliding over the partitions of rooms, peeking in on the domestic bliss and drama of the tenants as the mechanized creatures scurry around looking for their mark. As a showcase for Spielberg's talent with action filmmaking and pacing, Minority Report is his best pure rush since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Yet it also displays some of the director's deepest conceptual probings. Like so many of Spielberg's films, Minority Report details a loss of innocence, only here this loss is visited on an adult instead of a child, and more than once. Anderton's world is shattered once when his son disappears, but he also loses the new, cocooned world he creates around himself when his name comes up as a future killer and he is put on a path to undermine the PreCrime program. Spielberg finds complexities in the man by staging him as both perpetrator and victim, someone who deliberately sets out to uncover the truth and is then wracked by those revelations.

The titular minority report refers to an aberration among the hive-mind visions of the three PreCogs, a "disagreement" on how a future might play out. Anderton goes so far as to abduct the most powerful of the PreCogs, Agatha (Samantha Morton), to try to find his own minority report, to be told that he really doesn't have to kill the unknown man he's been predicted to murder. However, if he did have a minority report, he himself would disprove the fallibility of PreCrime and the necessity to dismantle it. And yet, as the "inventor" of PreCrime (Lois Smith) tells him, the best way he could destroy the system would be to kill the man, thus proving its inability to fully protect people. No matter what Anderton does, everything will change, and he'll be destroyed by it.

Naturally, Spielberg uses this foundation to toy with the notion of fate. Agatha, once sprung from her holding chamber to accompany Anderton, can predict even small occurrences that happen without fail. Yet it is also she who tries to urge Anderton not to carry out his predicted destiny, arguing that his knowledge of his future gives him the power to change it. But it is precisely that knowledge that ultimately leads him to the doorstep of a man he does not know, at which point he discovers something that makes him capable of the murder Agatha and her siblings foresaw. This constant mixing of paradoxes, ironies and quandaries is visualized in the film's key shot, perhaps the single most striking shot of Spielberg's oeuvre, that magnificent two shot of Anderton and Agatha holding each other, their heads seemingly growing out of each other's. As Agatha shares a hive mind with her siblings, so does she swap thoughts with Anderton for a moment: having stolen Agatha to try to clear his name, Anderton now feels that he must go through with the predicted action, while Agatha the psychic tries to convince him to change his fate.

This is heady stuff, exceeded only by A.I.'s uncompromising views on humanity itself. But apart from the director's more current interest in moral complexity, Minority Report also features a unique take on the classic Spielberg theme of neglectful parents. Here, he flips the dynamic, so that instead of focusing on the wronged child, we see the parent coping with his failure, whether perceived or real. Anderton blames himself for Sean's kidnapping, and he can hardly live with himself for it. Loyal to the legal system and outwardly so strong, Anderton retreats into a drug haze when in private, watching old home movies as he dopes himself to blot out the pain for a few minutes. The aforementioned retired PreCrime pioneer likewise comes across as the regretful parent, viewing herself as having failed children who were born different and then experimented upon without care. Though not as direct an examination of Spielberg's dearest preoccupation as Catch Me if You Can, Minority Report nevertheless represents one of the director's last great looks into one of his foundational hangups, this time from a different angle that exposes new moods and interpretations.

Like Spielberg's other 2002 film, Minority Report represents a meeting of the director's two best sides, the populist audience-charmer and the serious-minded artiste. Some criticize the ending, and I agree there are a few issues. Any time you see Max von Sydow in a film, you can pretty much bet he's guilty of whatever the crime is, which dampens the suspense somewhat. As to the charge that its "solution" to the PreCrime system is too absolute, I never could gel with that reading. I've always believed that it's better to let a guilty man go free than to cage an innocent one, and by revealing the flaws in the system, Anderton and others have no choice but to scrap its progress. True, Spielberg doesn't even try to address the larger framework of justice, but that's a subject for another film. Perhaps, continuing off his Kubrick high, the director incorporated the lesson that the late, great director imparted with his altered finale of A Clockwork Orange, that dismantling a bad cure for horrible actions is as important as finding a working method of treatment for crime. Minority Report doesn't set out to find a bold new solution to law and order but to discard a flawed one. And in the face of subsequent foreign and domestic policy in this country, the film's message has since come to resemble a warning.

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011)

The trait that links all four Mission: Impossible movies, each helmed by a different director of wildly differing stylistic sensibilities, is a certain amount of incomprehensibility. De Palma's original, which has aged better than any of its successors, is a smorgasbord of that filmmaker's love of audience manipulation, leftist politics, and metacinematic pranksterism. John Woo's sequel is, if anything, even crazier, replacing the peevish joke structure of De Palma's satire with pure, free-form abandon. J.J. Abrams' installment significantly pared down the twists and turns of the franchise's plots, making for the most conventionally satisfying of the series, yet the one that leaves me the coldest.

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, the first live-action venture by animation superstar Brad Bird, is at once the most gargantuan, ridiculous of the movies and the most cogent entry, occasionally explained to the point of tedium. It makes for an uneven effort, one that comes alive every time Bird stages another setpiece and grinding to a halt when the holdover influence of Abrams' pedestrian hit weighs down every bit of dialogue. Happily, Bird, perhaps self-conscious about the expectations upon him, absolutely loads his movie with fantastically over-the-top sequences that make for perhaps the most popcorn-worthy of this franchise.

Opening with a delightfully bizarre sequence involving LOST's Josh Holloway, Ghost Protocol moves swiftly into a prison break in Russia that bails out our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise). Though a bit stiffly presented at first, this setpiece encapsulates the best of the series: it's crazy to the point of comedy (both for its physical properties and the input of a surveilling Simon Pegg as Benji) yet suitably impressive in its staging. Once out, Ethan and his rescuers—Benji and Jane Carter (Paula Patton)—receive a mission to infiltrate the Kremlin, but in true Mission: Impossible fashion, everything soon goes haywire.

Ghost Protocol reveals itself to be a nuclear thriller, a decidedly old-fashioned plot with decidedly old-fashioned villains. Perhaps the dilapidated subject matter explains the recurring imagery of malfunctioning technology. Old gear shorts and fizzles, while even new gadgets fail when needed most. The conceit suggests Bird's awareness that this franchise is outdated. This is not a new realization; De Palma structured the first of these movies as an investigation of what a Cold War spy series would mean in the absence of the USSR. And now that Bond himself has undergone a makeover to cut the waffle, Bird's too-clever-by-half trick doesn't have much bite, and he comes to rely on it to the point that it becomes a crutch. Nevertheless, the director's playfulness toward the genre is a refreshing bit of self-awareness, albeit an unsurprising one from the man who gave us a superhero movie as sly as The Incredibles.

With this gleeful energy, Bird comes the closest to the spirit of De Palma's film, and he even carries over a few other traits of the first of the franchise's entries. De Palma assembled one of the strangest casts for an ostensible mainstream cash-in on a TV show, with actors of multiple nationalities and ethnicities breaking up the all-American, all-white tone of so much blockbuster cinema. Likewise, Bird stacks his cast with an oddball assortment of actors, putting a visibly aged but still-virile Cruise with the youthful but out-of-shape Pegg (at 41, he still looks as if he has baby fat), Patton, Midnight in Paris' Lea Seydoux, Slumdog Millionaire's Anil Kapoor (magnificently OTT, as ever), Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Millennium films, and more. Considering that Hollywood's casting hasn't gotten much more diverse since De Palma's poked fun at it, Bird's lineup is one of the film's most entertaining aspects.

But the real reason to come to these things is the ludicrous setpieces, and Bird doesn't disappoint. The sequence where Hunt must scale some floors 1000 feet in the air in the Burj Dubai in minutes as everything goes wildly awry. I don't know what it is about this franchise and its vertiginous centerpieces, but this bit blows away the previous stunts. Seen on an IMAX screen, the camera's looks to the ground below create a queasy sense of fear, while the framing of Hunt's climb made me wonder "How did they DO that?" incessantly. Yet even better—to these eyes, anyway—was the sequence shortly thereafter, where Ethan chases his target through a swirling sandstorm that reduces visibility to mere inches and howls over the soundtrack to equally block out the audio. The chase is one of the most thrilling in recent memory, a rust-colored maelstrom that borders on the surreal for its many reversals, lost leads and resumed pursuits, and a frame that is always changing yet strangely static, given the constant blur caused by the sand. There are other delights, from a whacky Kremlin break-in to an even odder party crashing in India, but nothing matches that wild chase through obliterated Dubai streets.

Where the film loses me is in the need to back up all these wonderfully quirky, nonsensical pieces into some kind of coherent whole. The opening bits of Holloway and the prison break are great for how immediate and unexplained they are, and the drawn-out truth behind both takes away from their spontaneity and silliness. Both De Palma and Woo made even their explanations confusing as hell (though I'm not sure Woo did so intentionally), but Bird clarifies in a way that advertises his skill for making coherent narratives, a valuable talent but one misapplied here. Bird also picks up the baton from Abrams re: the simplistic use of romance and shattered love as a motivation. The threat hanging over Ethan's wife moved the third film, and Carter's rage over her lover's death prompts many of her actions, reducing her character to borderline sexist motivation as a woman incapable of behaving like a professional, elite spy after suffering an emotional gut-punch. Likewise, Jeremy Renner's character teases out a mystery that loses all of its force when he spills the beans, and even when his own interpretation of events is later reversed, Renner's whole subplot fails to add anything and saddles the excellent actor with too much arbitrary baggage. This is Screenwriting 101, and it adds all-too-easy foundations for a franchise that, again, works best when it is convoluted beyond all get-out.

Nevertheless, Ghost Protocol is a hell of a good show for an animation director looking to break into live action, demonstrating that the recent trend of live-action filmmakers moving into animation is not a one-way bridge. Bird's familiarity with boundless framing gives his action pieces an exuberance that makes their absurdities infectiously engaging. I understand that the complaint that everything makes too much sense is an odd one, and one I wouldn't apply anywhere else, but I did still feel nagged by certain pieces of exposition that felt all too common after the extraordinary creativity Bird brought to the project. But that imagination overpowers even the tiniest of quibbles, and Ghost Protocol is easily the finest of the series since De Palma tried to kill the franchise before it started with the first.

Brian De Palma: Mission: Impossible

Though not nearly as deconstructive as De Palma's '80s pastiche and travesty, Mission: Impossible feels like a classical, identifiably "'90s," art-for-art's-sake blockbuster, a bit of formal excess that uses the implausibility of the original TV series as an excuse to make no sense whatsoever. Unburdened from the need for logic, the film unfolds as an incessant series of double-crosses, grandiose setpieces and classical techniques. That coherent aesthetic propels the film long after its narrative becomes a mire of betrayal and intrigue.

Sent to intercept a diplomat selling U.S. secrets, the Impossible Missions Force team led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), stakes out an embassy with precision planning. But just as everything seems to be going perfectly, tiny cracks begin to form, and in short order sabotage leaves the entire team dead save for Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), who looks mighty suspicious when superiors inform him that they are hunting a mole in the organization. Betrayed by the true traitor and now suspected of treason by his bosses, Ethan has no choice but to flee and clear his name. These betrayals, real and imagined, are but the first in a film where the dead return and mirrored shots always reveal different perspectives.

As a work of pure style, Mission: Impossible is a tidy piece of nonsensical formalism. Its shots always work in the moment, such as the POV Steadicam movements through the embassy as characters speak to "Ethan," shots broken up by yet more POV voyeurism of the other agents scoping the floor and exterior. But when those shots are repeated in Ethan's reflections on what went wrong, the attention shifts to the background to reveal watchers of the watchmen. Later, the suspense of a falling knife works on two levels, as its own breathtaking moment of slow-motion tension and as a visual reminder of the blade that felled one of the members of Ethan's team.

Voyeuristic and identity imagery abounds: everyone is always monitoring the action on miniature surveillance cameras that the agents tote, and targets often speak to friends without realizing that it is really Ethan in a perfect face mask. Angles cant in moments of stress, and the multiple meanings of nearly every frame give De Palma's shots a depth of field that transcends the deliberately gnarled narrative.

No stranger to making films that serve as perpetual-motion aesthetic devices, De Palma nevertheless never got to do it with this much Hollywood backing, and watching Tom Cruise scrunch his face and dramatically demand answers for his crumbling life is even more entertaining when one considers that, 20 years earlier, the director would most likely have shoved William Finley out there to give a more unacceptably stiff performance. A solid cast of international heavy-hitters and domestic stars makes so little sense on paper one gets the suspsicion that De Palma grabbed all the actors he liked while peopel were still willing to work with him. I mean, in what other throwaway blockbuster will Tom Cruise rub elbows with a cast as eclectic Vanessa Redgrave, Emmanuelle Béart, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emilio Estevez, Jean Reno and Ving Rhames?

He also uses the sizable budget for some gloriously huge and ludicrous setpieces. When the IMF head (played by Henry Czerny with drawling menace, every word shaped into a missile before being fired) first confronts Ethan in a restaurant, Hunt escapes by using a gadget to blow up an aquarium, an explosion that sends one man flying across the room in clear defiance of gravity and enough water to submerge the Lower Ninth Ward. The climax occurs on-top of a TGV train speeding into blur as Ethan faces down a helicopter with not so much as a spitball, and wins.

But nothing beats he film's centerpiece, the much-parodied and copied break in of CIA headquarters in which Ethan must be lowered from the ceiling while making no noise, keeping the room temperature within acceptable range and not letting so much as a drop of sweat touch the sensored floor. It is a genuinely inspired scene, the black clothes Ethan wears as the stereotypical form of shadow war camouflage rendered almost comically useless in the brilliant white of the computer vault. Adding to the suspense is the good ol' split diopter to show Krieger (Reno) being distracted from keeping Ethan suspended by the presence of a rat crawling toward him in the ventilation duct. Judiciously timed close-ups, cutaways to the poisoned vault worker that obscure spatial and temporal relation to Ethan's hacking only for the repeated sidetracks to clarify the dimensions and a taut grip on editing make the setpiece truly thrilling even after years of overplay.

While it is not a major work in De Palma's filmography, Mission: Impossible nevertheless has aged much better than its successors, films that cater to the modernized, more chaotic action styles. For all its twists and turns, the film manages to deliver a clear message against the spy genre: De Palma and his writers, David Koepp and Chinatown scribe Robert Towne, present the villain's defection as the product of pride and refusal to give up power, of being angry that the nation might lead a more peaceful path in the wake of the Cold War and not need these trained assassins and agents anymore. The traitor actually says the president is running the country "without my permission," an arrogant broadside that suggests the power such agencies used to wield over government and the reluctance of those agencies to cede authority back to lawful bodies. That the actor who utters these lines is one of Hollywood's most prominent conservatives is but another facet of De Palma's sly politics even in this odd but entertaining franchise starter.

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise