Jonathan Lack

2 weeks ago | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

“I swear your life will always matter more to me than my own.”“You don’t even know me.”“What difference does that make?”Ethan Hunt is a fan of magic tricks. We learned this way back in the first Mission: Impossible in 1996, in a delightfully goofy scene where a baby-faced Tom Cruise confuses and outwits Jean Reno’s turncoat spy character by playing sleight-of-hand with a data disc like he’s a street magician.

2 weeks ago | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

“Fate whispers to the warrior.”“A storm is coming.”“And the warrior whispers back?”“I am the storm.”After Ethan Hunt engages in this prophetic code-phrase exchange, he is handed his latest mission orders inside a copy of Homer’s Odyssey. It’s a statement of narrative and thematic intent that would come across as absurdly pretentious were it not followed by two-and-a-half hours of the most ambitious and virtuosic action filmmaking ever achieved.

2 weeks ago | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

Welcome to Season 5 of Japanimation Station, our Grand Tour through the wide and wonderful world of anime! You can subscribe on all platforms at JapanimationStation.Com.

2 weeks ago | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

“Mission…accomplished!”Brad Bird was born to direct a Mission: Impossiblemovie. That fact becomes readily apparent five minutes into Ghost Protocol, as soon as one realizes that Bird has, indeed, committed to scoring a violent prison break sequence to the sounds of Dean Martin. No other director could infuse such brutal fight choreography with such a passionate sense of fun.

2 weeks ago | jonathanlack.com | Jonathan Lack

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.”If one goes by the metric that the quality of a Mission: Impossible movie is directly proportional to how much Tom Cruise furiously runs in it, then Mission: Impossible III is quite possibly the best of the best. There is some top-tier, Grade-A, premium uncut Tom-Cruise-running-like-a-maniac action in this one, particularly at the climax. And it is, as always, extremely fun to watch.