Within a three-month period in 1995, THE NET and then HACKERS came out: the Barbenheimer of 1990s computer-themed thrillers. THE NET has none of the joie de vivre of HACKERS and no amount of extreme close-ups on character’s mouths or computer GUIs can save it. Multiple characters in this film order a Gibson, a gin martini with a pickled onion instead of an olive, and yet their shared love for this unusual cocktail is not a plot point, presumably it’s just a cocktail that the screenwriters like. The best bit was when Senator Martin (Diane Baker) from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS showed up and I could do Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill impressions.

If it’s possible for one scene to radically elevate an entire movie, it’s the scene where Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) gives his victory speech and the sound drops away apart from a solitary scream and the quiet aftermath of nuclear devastation. This scene sets off a quietly horrifying third act where it becomes clear how much Oppenheimer strives—and has been striving throughout the film—to never see what he’s done. The most gripping moments of the film are those few instants when this man who sees so much is brought close to actually seeing and understanding what he did.

Some great set pieces especially the underwater heist and the opera scene but overall a step backwards in terms of direction, script, and cinematography. Sean Harris and his weak chin make for a good villain and the ‘anti-IMF’ concept is strong: this should have been the foundation for a two-parter not DEAD RECKONING’s nebulous rogue AI.

A film about discovering Scotland’s power to slow you down and let you see the world around you. It feels strange to use the word ‘efficient’ to describe the greatest movie ever made on the multivalent concept of ‘value’ but it’s striking how efficient Bill Forsyth’s scripting and staging are. There’s not a wasted scene or shot in the whole movie: each one contributes a character beat, a plot point, or a thematic development. LOCAL HERO does a wonderful job of making the community of Ferness into a collective character à la the islanders in WHISKY GALORE! while also ensuring that they’re all clearly defined individual characters in their own right.

How does an intelligent, socially conscious woman approach writing a Barbie movie in the year 2023? Greta Gerwig approaches it in a way not unlike Charlie Kaufman adapting Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief: by deconstructing what it means to write a Barbie movie in our current sociopolitical moment and acknowledging the multivalent, complicated, and contradictory nature of Barbie’s image throughout the 20th Century and into the present. It’s a post-ironic, postmodern exploration of feminism and patriarchal capitalism wrapped in the pink and glitters of camp maximalist extravagance that, in a comparison I never expected, works like TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME in transforming a blonde white woman from an object to a subject.

Now we’re talking. GHOST PROTOCOL has the perfect blend of tense heist scene espionage alongside exciting practical action stunts. Most importantly, Brad Bird realises a sense of fun that has been sorely missing from these films involving rubber masks and floating magnet suits. The action scenes are coherent in space and time, look great, and actually build a sense of tension.

Mission: Impossible is proving to be a great franchise for charting trends of Hollywood filmmaking over the last 30 years. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 is a perfectly preserved relic of high-octane early-2000s excess replete with nu metal, John Woo’s distracting slow-mo action scene cinematography, a particular brand of ‘edgy’ (but not yet ironised) casual misogyny, and a sense of pre-9/11 American triumphalism that is unafraid to imply that the USA has a horrifyingly comprehensive global surveillance program. There’s also a charged sense of (heteronormative) sexuality (partly expressed through an ill-fated attempt at a ‘sexy’ Tom Cruise) that, while not altogether successful in this film, is notable as basically absent from today’s blockbusters. Fans of heavy-handed symbolism should look out for the many doves.

Continuing to view these films as barometers of Western cultural trends in entertainment, it’s now 2006 and so we have 24-style “enhanced interrogation” torture scenes, a man-of-the-moment director, a soft, shaky, and somewhat oversaturated digital camera aesthetic, an Abrams Mystery Box™, and that annoying thing that a lot of TV shows did in the mid-00s where the opening starts in medias res then we go back to ‘one week earlier’ or whatever.

A fascinating time capsule of a movie that, viewed alongside the latest film in the series, speaks volumes about how this franchise has adapted to filmmaking trends over almost 30 years. Jon Voight’s character lights up a cigarette on a plane; Usenet groups are a key plot point; everything about Danny Elfman’s score: all incredibly and indelibly ‘90s. Brian De Palma crafts a much more interesting film than DEAD RECKONING PART ONE and Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt way more interestingly, really tapping into a trickster quality of the character in a way that has been reduced in his most recent po-faced portrayal of the same character thirty years later.

Venice is a ghost town in this movie. Presumably due to Covid restrictions during filming, the city is heartbreakingly empty. Piazza San Marco and Campo della Salute bustle with tourists, even at night, and yet here they have only one or two people milling about as a backdrop for the main characters. It’s emblematic of the film which sees a dozen beautiful people fight amongst themselves in beautiful locations that feel devoid of civilians or actual threat.