'Mission: Impossible - Fallout'

There’s an important question at the heart of “Mission: Impossible - Fallout”: When, exactly, did Tom Cruise become the American Jackie Chan?

Chan made his reputation in Hong Kong, and later in Hollywood, for doing his own death-defying stunts. Once, he nearly did die, filming “The Armour of God,” when he jumped to a tree branch, which broke and sent him falling 40 feet onto his head.

With the “Mission: Impossible” franchise — this one’s the sixth since the series started in 1996 — Cruise keeps raising the bar for outlandish stunts that are captured in a way that shows he’s the one doing them. Even in an age of computer-generated effects, where anything can be fudged or faked, Cruise’s dedication to keep it real is admirable, if a little bit insane.

But it’s all to the good, if it means white-knuckle entertainment like this latest installment, possibly the best of the lot, and certainly the one that captures the team dynamic and smart pacing of the original TV series.

The mission Cruise’s Ethan Hunt accepts at the start of “Fallout” is a continuation of the one that ended the last movie, “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.” That movie’s baddie, anarchist mastermind Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), is in custody, thanks to Ethan — and being bounced from country to country for interrogation. But his followers, who call themselves The Apostles, are working around the world, and have gotten hold of three spherical canisters of plutonium, with which they aim to carry out Lane’s master plan to build nuclear weapons.

Early on, Ethan gets his hands on the plutonium, but loses it — because he opted to save the life of his IMF teammate, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames). His boss, The Secretary, Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin), wants to give Ethan and his team another chance to retrieve the plutonium. But the CIA director, Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett), will only approve if Ethan takes along her top assassin, August Walker (Henry Cavill), a mustachioed brute with a reputation for killing first and asking questions later.

Ethan, Luther and tech genius Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) are pursuing the never-seen controller of the Apostles, known only as John Lark, first in Paris and later in London. The Paris sequence is dominated by a hellacious vehicle chase through the streets of Paris, which reunites Ethan with Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), the seductive MI-6 agent from “Rogue Nation,” who wants Lane for her own reasons.

Throughout it all, Ethan is plagued by demons. At night he dreams of his ex-wife, Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan), dying because Ethan couldn’t protect her. And Walker is becoming convinced that years of being disavowed by his government has made Ethan snap, and that Ethan is the mysterious John Lark, in league with Lane.

Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who directed “Rogue Nation” and Cruise’s first “Jack Reacher” movie, keeps the movie humming at peak performance. The plot delivers plenty of twists and turns, which come at the viewer at a rapid pace. The movie clocks in at just under 2-1/2 hours, but never feels stretched.

Of course, the fun of a “MIssion: Impossible” movie is the action sequences, and McQuarrie sets up some doozies, Cruise throws himself into the stunt work, trading punches with Cavill, jumping between rooftops, performing his own high-altitude skydiving, and learning to fly a helicopter for a hell-for-leather aerial chase scene. (Cruise broke his ankle during one of the rooftop jumps, and the shot's still in the film.)

The realism of Cruise’s stunt work — that gasp when you realize he’s doing these things himself — is what makes “Mission: Impossible - Fallout” so invigorating. It’s great to see a performer of Cruise’s stature risk life and limb for our enjoyment, and he seems to get a kick out of doing it.

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‘Mission: Impossible - Fallout’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 27 in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense action sequences, violence and brief strong language. Running time: 147 minutes.

'Eighth Grade'

Meet Kayla. She’s smart and funny and nice, but is also insecure about all of the above — thanks to the daily bombardment of peer pressure and social-media expectations. In short, she’s the most realistic 13-year-old you have seen on a movie screen in ages — and writer-director Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” captures her awkward failures and quiet triumphs beautifully.

Played by Elsie Fisher — whose previous claim to fame was voicing Agnes, the youngest foster child of Gru in “Despicable Me” and “Despicable Me 2” — Kayla spends a lot of time in her bedroom, recording confidence-boosting videos on her largely ignored YouTube channel. The videos show a level of self-esteem she doesn’t have. She has few friends at her middle school, where she has been voted “most quiet” in the final week of school.

So Kayla is thrilled that she’s been invited to a pool party by a popular girl, Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), not knowing the invitation was given reluctantly, at the insistence of Kennedy’s mom. At the party, Kayla fights off an anxiety attack long enough to go for a swim, where she meets Kennedy’s nerdy cousin Gabe (Jake Ryan). She also learns that Aiden (Luke Prael), the boy on whom she has had a crush, has recently dumped his girlfriend — because she wouldn’t send him nude photos.

Meanwhile, Kayla takes part in a shadow program with a high-school senior, Olivia (Emily Robinson). She even hangs out with Olivia and her friends at the mall — though the fun is interrupted when Kayla spots her dad (Josh Hamilton) spying on her.

Burnham, a stand-up comedian with his own YouTube following, makes a masterful debut as a filmmaker. He captures the slings and arrows of adolescence, the high drama felt by not-quite-adults who still think everything is a matter of life and death, with an astonishing amount of empathy. He finds great humor in Kayla’s social stumbles, but also makes us feel the discomfort at her just-barely burgeoning sexuality. (Fair warning: The movie’s R rating is for “language and some sexual material,” but it’s all talk.)

Throughout the film, Burnham employs Fisher not only as a performer but as his technical advisor on living as an adolescent girl. There’s a feeling of true collaboration between actor and filmmaker, working together to talk about the complexities of growing up in a fresh, honest and funny way. The result is a movie that will make viewers laugh and wince, and a star-making performance that will win the audience’s heart.

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‘Eighth Grade’

★★★1/2

Opened July 13 in select cities; opens Friday, July 27, in more cities, including at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and the Century 16 (South Salt Lake City). Rated R for language and some sexual material. 93 minutes.

‘Teen Titans Go! To the Movies’

There are two audiences who will be laughing uncontrollably throughout “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies”: The kids who enjoy the antics of “Teen Titans Go!” on Cartoon Network, and the comic-book obsessed adults who will get the movie’s deep-cut satire of DC Comics superhero lore.

For the uninitiated, a fast primer: The Teen Titans are five young DC superhero characters — Batman’s sidekick Robin the Boy Wonder, half-mechanical Cyborg, alien girl Starfire, animal-shapeshifting Beast Boy, and daughter of demons Raven — who have teamed up to fight bad guys. The team had their own serious-minded animated show on Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2006, then was repurposed into a sillier, kid-friendly, Nickelodeon-style animated series, also on Cartoon Network, starting in 2013. Diehard fans still pine for the old show, which is just one of the many things series creators and writers Aaron Horvath (who co-directed with Peter Rida Michail) and Michael Jelenic joke about in this movie.

The biggest, juiciest target is the whole idea of the superhero movie, of which Robin (voiced by Scott Melville) desperately wants to be a part. But only real superheroes get movies, so when Superman (voiced by Nicolas Cage), Wonder Woman (voiced by Halsey) and Green Lantern (voiced by Lil Yachty) tell the Titans they’re more jokesters than heroes, it’s a blow to their ambitions.

Robin is especially determined to convince movie director Jade Wilson (voiced by Kristen Bell) to make a movie about the Teen Titans. Real heroes, they learn, have an archnemesis — and they think they’ve found one in Slade (voiced by Will Arnett), a masked supervillain who steals a rare crystal as part of a world-domination plot. But it’s hard for the Titans to take Slade seriously as a supervillain, because they think he looks an awful lot like Deadpool. (“Look into the camera and say something inappropriate,” Cyborg, voiced by Khary Payton, tells Slade at their first encounter.)

Along the way, Horvath, Michail and Jelenic poke fun at all aspects of superhero movies: The barrage of trailers, the critical drubbing of the “Green Lantern” movie, the repetition of origin stories, the onslaught of special effects, even the celebrity cameos. They also aren’t afraid to name-drop across corporate brands, mocking the Marvel Cinematic Universe as much as DC’s.

Smartly, the filmmakers stick to the happily anarchic spirit of the “Teen Titans Go!” TV series, and keep the original voice cast — besides Menville and Payton, there’s Greg Cipes as Beast Boy, Hynden Walch as Starfire and the legendary Tara Strong as Raven. The TV-level animation is augmented with clever segments that use stop-motion felt animation and other styles.

Most importantly, “Teen Titans Go! to the Movies” sticks a pin in the super-inflated pomposity of comic-book movies and the people who get so worked up over them. It’s a reminder that these movies are supposed to be fun — and this one certainly is.

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‘Teen Titans Go! to the Movies’

★★★1/2

Opens nationwide Friday, July 27, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action and rude humor. Running time: 84 minutes, plus a 5-minute short, “The Late Batsby,” from the “DC Super Hero Girls” series.

'Blindspotting'

There’s plenty of lightning in “Blindspotting,” in the dramatically charged story of race and class in an ever-dynamic Oakland, Calif., unfolds — and then there’s the thunder, when the twin talents of actors and writers Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs are unleashed in full verbal fury.

Diggs and Casal play Collin and Miles, best friends since childhood on the mean streets of Oakland, currently working dead-end jobs for a moving company. Collin is on parole, with only three days left to serve, and he’s especially careful not to get himself in any situations that might send him back to prison.

Unfortunately, one of those situations is being around Miles, a hothead who sometimes likes to brandish a gun and pick fights with the upwardly mobile who are gentrifying the neighborhood. “You have to get rid of Miles,” warns Collin’s still caring ex-girlfriend, Val (Janina Gavankar). “He’s either going to put you back in jail or he’s going to get you killed.”

Adding to the conflict in Collin’s mind: One night, as he’s finishing a run in the moving truck, he witnesses a white police officer (Ethan Embry) shoot a fleeing suspect, a black man, in the back, killing him. The incident makes him miss curfew, jeopardizing the end of his probation, and presents him with a dilemma: Stay silent about what he saw, or speak out and risk the wrath of the police.

Director Carlos López Estrada, making a sure-footed feature debut, surfs that fine line Collin and Miles are navigating between the Oakland they knew and the one growing up around them. It’s a place where their old pal Dex (Jon Chaffin) is selling Miles a handgun from his tricked-out car one moment, and the next taking a fare as an Uber driver. López Estrada also veers between heightened realism and stylized fantasy, from the police shooting on the streets to a dream-sequence courtroom hearing where Collin is assailed by his demons.

Casal and Diggs, both as performers and writers, are the guiding lights of “Blindspotting.” Their sharp observations of their hometown, where low-wage strivers and wealthy young professionals bump against each other, are razor-sharp. So are their word skills, which get their fullest exposure in Diggs’ searing final soliloquy, which even leaves his Tony-winning work in “Hamilton” in the dust.

“Blindspotting” is a document of our times, of people uncomfortably close to economic devastation and racial subjugation. It’s as fresh and alive as any big city, a movie you don’t just watch but breathe in.

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‘Blindspotting’

★★★1/2

Opened July 20 in select cities, opens widely on Friday, including the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), on July 27. Rated R for language throughout, some brutal violence, sexual references and drug use. Running time: 95 minutes.

'Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot'

While watching Gus Van Sant’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” I wondered what John Callahan, the iconoclastic cartoonist whose life is depicted in it, would think of the whole thing. I sensed, from Callahan’s irascible personality as encapsulated by Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, that he would have had some problems.

Much of the humor in Callahan’s abrasive cartoons, as the movie shows, was aimed at deflating tired stereotypes. So I wonder if Callahan would be irritated the depiction of Callahan’s struggles with alcoholism and quadriplegia are, for all of Phoenix’s acting skill, turned into tepid and familiar movie tropes.  

But, then again, Van Sant and Callahan, both longtime residents of Portland, Ore., were friends, and Van Sant has had the idea of adapting Callahan’s memoir for decades — with, at one point, Robin Williams in the lead. So what do I know?

Van Sant introduces Callahan at three stages in his life. He’s giving similar confessional speeches in two venues: One, before a cheering audience in a lecture hall; the other, to a handful of friends in an Alcoholics Anonymous support group. The third stage is Callahan as a hard-drinking 20-year-old living in southern California, which is where the story really starts.

Van Sant shows the young Callahan bouncing from party to party, drinking constantly. One night, at the age of 21, he goes on a massive bar-hopping bender with a guy named Dexter (Jack Black), which ends in a car crash that severs Callahan’s spinal cord. He wakes up in a hospital, unable to walk and barely able to move his arms. His only solace is Annu (Rooney Mara), a cheery and beautiful hospital volunteer from Sweden.

Still, he finds ways to keep drinking, until he finally enters an AA meeting. He befriends the charismatic Donnie (Jonah Hill), a rich gay man who becomes Callahan’s sponsor. Donnie welcomes Callahan into his collection of “piglets,” a support group with a wide variety of personalities — played by such familiar faces as rockers Kim Gordon and Beth Ditto, and the German actor Udo Kier.

It’s in Callahan’s interactions with Donnie, who quotes Lao-Tzu and calls his higher power “Chucky,” that Van Sant transcends the regular addiction drama to create something truly intriguing. Where so many movies about addiction show the first AA meeting as the end of the story, this movie depicts the 12 steps as a process rather than an epiphany.

Phoenix gives a solid performance, capturing the rage of Callahan’s alcoholism and self-loathing along with the mechanics of quadriplegic life. But the surprise here is Hill, whose portrayal of Callahan’s recovery guide is soulful, funny and touching.

Van Sant shows a bit of Callahan’s creative process, and some of his best-known cartoons (though he misses my favorite, the sign hanging on the door of a mental ward that reads “Do not disturb any further”). Callahan’s work was politically incorrect before that idea had a name — if he were still alive, one could imagine some Twitter trolls mounting a smear campaign against him — but it was also cathartic, for him and for readers. If only there was more of that in the movie about him.

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‘Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot’

★★1/2

Opened July 13 in select cities; opens July 27 in at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for language throughout, sexual content, some nudity, and alcohol abuse. Running time: 114 minutes.

'Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again'

As bright as the Greek sun that shines over it and as bouncy as the ABBA soundtrack that fills it, “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” is that rare and wonderful thing: A sequel that surpasses its predecessor in every way.

Of course, the first “Mamma Mia!” came with a lot of baggage — namely, the expectations of fans who loved the Broadway jukebox musical, and the hopes that our finest living woman actor, Meryl Streep, would bring it to life. Streep did just that, depicting the free-spirited Donna Sheridan, confronted with the three great lovers of her past, with all the joy and world-wise attitude necessary. Alas, the movie still felt confined to the stage.

Not this time. With theater director Phyllida Lloyd giving up the directing chair to Ol Parker (best known for writing the adaptations of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”), the sequel feels liberated from its stage roots. There are musical numbers on boats, on piers, and in the ramshackle Greek farmhouse that Donna dreams of turning into a luxury hotel.

That farmhouse-turned-hotel is where the story starts, with Donna’s daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) trying to fulfill her late mother’s dream. The Hotel Bella Donna is about to open, thanks to Sophie’s hard work and an assist from her miracle worker of a manager, Señor Cienfuegos (Andy Garcia).

Donna’s old singing partners, Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters) come for the opening. Sam (Pierce Brosnan), one of Sophie’s three fathers and Donna’s husband in her final years, is already living there, while co-fathers Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) and Harry (Colin Firth) will miss the opening. Also missing the opening is Sophie’s husband Sky (Dominic Cooper), in New York and being offered a job that could take him away from Sophie and the hotel. Foremost on everyone’s mind is Donna, whom everyone agrees is there in spirit.

The story of Sophie’s preparations, and her pining for Sky (which cues up a nicely edited duet between Seyfried and Cooper of “One of Us”), is intercut with the story of how Donna got to Greece. Lily James (“Cinderella”) plays the young Donna to sun-kissed perfection, with an unbridled joy and the chutzpah to take on Streep’s role and make it her own.

Starting with Donna’s Oxford valedictory speech (singing “When I Kissed the Teacher,” a deep cut in the ABBA canon), the movie shows us how Donna met the three important men in her life within a month of each other. In Paris, she has a one-night fling with Harry (Hugh Skinner), a virginal banker’s son. In Greece, she catches a ride from Bill (Josh Dylan) on the sailboat he’s about to race. Also in Greece, she meets Sam (Jeremy Irvine), an architect taking a break from his pre-ordained life. Also popping up are Rosie (Alexa Davies) and Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn), ready to commiserate with Donna through song.

The soundtrack repurposes six chestnuts from the first movie — young Harry wooing Donna in a Paris restaurant to “Waterloo” is one of the film’s highlights — and digs deeper into the ABBA playlist for 11 more numbers. It’s a sin that the first “Mamma Mia!” skipped over “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” which is worked here into a touching break-up scene.

The showstopper comes when Cher, playing Donna’s pop-diva mother, literally helicopters into the story. When she lends her throaty voice to one of the ABBA classics, “Fernando,” the only thing better than her performance is the way the song is set up in the script (written by Parker, who shares story credit with “Four Weddings and a Funeral” writer Richard Curtis and Catherine Johnson, who wrote the book for the stage version of the original “Mamma Mia!”).

Parker gives everyone in the sprawling ensemble — even Streep — a moment to shine, and makes a few discoveries along the way. The best new faces are Davies, so charming as the lovelorn Rosie, and Wynn, who does a note-perfect Baranski impersonation. (Fun fact: Wynn’s grandfather was the character actor Keenan Wynn, and her great-grandfather was the comic legend Ed Wynn.)

“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” is one of those films that looks like it was as fun to make as it is to watch. It’s a glitter-bomb of happiness and music, delivered to a world that could use a lot of both.

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‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again”

★★★ 1/2 (out of four)

Opens nationwide on Friday, July 20, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some suggestive material. Running time: 114 minutes.

'Three Identical Strangers'

Sometimes a documentary filmmaker gets hold of a story so perfect — rich details, fascinating characters, and more twists than a thriller — that the smartest decision is to not get in the way.

British director Tim Wardle has such a story in “Three Identical Strangers,” which — like the story of its title trio —begins as a fun human-interest story but then unravels into something sinister, tragic and engrossing.

Wardle tells the story the way the participants lived it, starting with the moment in 1980 when Bobby Shafran, newly arrived at college, is surprised when people call him “Eddy.” Shafran, in the studio speaking directly to the camera, tells of this weird incident in 1980, when he learned that another student entering the same college looked and behaved just like him. Shafran, who was adopted as a kid, soon realized that this other student, Eddy Galland, was also adopted — and that they were long-lost twins, both adopted by the same prestigious Jewish agency, Louise Wise Services.

When one of the New York newspapers does a story about Bobby and Eddy, something else amazing happens: David Kellman, who looks just like Bobby and Eddy, speaks up. David, too, was adopted as a baby, also from Louise Wise Services. Soon the long-list twins are long-lost triplets. (Bobby and David are interviewed, Eddy is not, for reasons that ultimately reveal themselves.)

The national media machine, always searching for an interesting story, goes into overdrive. Soon the triplets are on TV all the time, and Wardle amasses a bouncy montage with such well-known ‘80s icons as Jane Pauley and Phil Donahue. 

It’s mentioned that the three grew up in different surroundings: One to working-class parents, one in the middle class, and the third in a wealthy household. Often the phrase “nature vs. nurture” is invoked, usually by mentioning the three men’s similarities — like the way they talk, or that they smoke the same brand of cigarettes — as proof that “nature” is more dominant.

Shafran, Galland and Kellman open a steakhouse, called Triplets, and are the toast of New York. But as their story unfolds, Wardle slowly reveals information that suggests the details of the trio’s separation and adoption were no mere coincidence.

The movie is sharply researched, and the mix of archival footage and current interviews captures the excitement of the triplets’ ‘80s reunion and the terrible cost they have paid for their separated existence. There is much sadness in this story, but also a wellspring of rage at medical and legal hurdles keeping the principals from knowing the whole truth.

Wardle’s careful parsing out of information makes for delicious tension, as he teases out details like a master raconteur. When this movie debuts on CNN this fall, every commercial break will be torture —so see it in a theater, where this incredible story can envelop a viewer without interruption.

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★★★ 1/2 (out of four)

‘Three Identical Strangers’

Opened in select cities on June 29; opens in Salt Lake City on Friday, July 20, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas. Rated PG-13 for some mature thematic material. 96 minutes.

'Skyscraper'

The action thriller “Skyscraper” — the latest respository of Dwayne Johnson’s unique brand of smoldering charm — follows the “‘Die Hard’ in a [blank]” formula so closely, it could be called “‘Die Hard’ in a ‘Die Hard’ movie.”

Johnson’s character, Will Sawyer, is a security analyst pitching his services to a Hong Kong billionaire, Zhao Long Ji (played by Chin Han), who has just built the world’s tallest building, the 220-story ultra-luxury high-rise The Pearl. Zhao has even let Sawyer bring his wife, Sarah (Neve Campbell), and their twin children, Georgia (McKenna Roberts) and Henry (Noah Cottrell), to stay in one of the residences.

Of course, saying “Dwayne Johnson plays a security analyst” is like saying “Elvis Presley plays a race-car driver” — it doesn’t really matter what his job is, because he’s Dwayne Johnson and his job is to kick butt and save the day. And, like most heroes in action movies, whatever job they have now is usually prefaced with a long resumé of special ops training or something. 

Here, Sawyer was a Marine, then an FBI agent specializing in hostage situations. A prologue shows Sawyer’s last hostage crisis gone wrong, leading to a bomb that left him with a prosthetic left leg. It’s also how Sawyer met Sarah, a Navy surgeon who saved his life — and it’s a nice modern flip on the cliche that she also has a military resumé, having served three tours in Afghanistan.

Nobody puts a skyscraper in their movie without also putting in a team of international terrorists bent on destroying said skyscraper, for reasons that are unimportant other than to move the plot along. This team, led by Danish actor Roland Møller, strikes the building, trapping Zhao and his team — including a stuffy insurance executive (Noah Taylor) — in the penthouse, Sarah and the kids on the 98th floor, and Will on the outside, being framed for the attack. So, naturally, Sawyer must dodge Hong Kong police, get back into the building and save everyone.

Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber, who worked with Johnson and Kevin Hart making the action comedy “Central Intelligence,” doesn’t really have the hang of this action thing. (He’s better known for comedies, having directed “Dodgeball” and “We’re the Millers.”) He front-loads the exposition, with all the building info that we’ll need to remember later, then strings together the action set pieces for Johnson to run through like an “American Ninja Warrior” obstacle course.

Amid the computer-generated effects to create the ridiculously elaborate title character, “Skyscraper” has one charmingly clever visual: The high-tech playroom Zhao has built into the sphere atop The Pearl, with screens on every surface, including the 100-plus obelisk-like screens that pop up from the floors. Those kiosks turn the room into a hall of mirrors that resurface in the movie’s finale — and seems designed for the sole purpose of making snooty critics reference a similar scene in Orson Welles’ 1947 noir thriller “The Lady from Shanghai.” 

People who like Dwayne Johnson could care less about such things, but it’s nice that Thurber indulged his movie love and included it in an otherwise forgettable bit of formula like “Skyscraper.”

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★★1/2 (out of four)

‘Skyscraper’

Opens Friday, July 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of gun violence and action, and for brief strong language. Running time: 102 minutes.