Flash Frames

Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning I’m not gonna lie, this review is tough to put into words. Mission: Impossible is personally one of my favorite franchises ever, handily the most consistent one since the first film’s release in 1996. I personally haven’t seen the original show, but I did end up buying the whole series right after I watched this movie, so I’m hoping to watch the series, or at least start it, soon. I could also easily say that Fallout , the sixth entry, is one of the best action movies ever made. I know it’s not a rare opinion to have Fallout as the best entry (shoutout Rogue Nation ), but any franchise would be lucky to have a movie with such a striking banger:flop ratio. In my opinion, only one M:I movie is bad, and it’s the second one. Every other one is a banger, some of them for completely different reasons. As much as I love the last entry in the franchise, 2023’s Dead Reckoning , I did think “how could they possibly one-up this after the ...

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Wicked Alright, here we are. We’re basically at the finish line, but I’ve now seen every single nominee for Best Picture at the Oscars this year (I’m ranking all 10 of them tomorrow before the ceremony starts). The last of them, as you can see, is Wicked . The beloved musical took a very long time to hit the silver screen, with an official announcement of a movie coming all the way back in 2012. Admittedly, I wanted to watch this much sooner, but I was in the middle of my final semester in college. Them’s the breaks, but I got it at home and was able to get through the just-under three hour runtime at my own leisure. At this point, I’d usually go into what Wicked is, but come on, I don’t think I really have to. It’s Wicked . That being said, I should mention that this is the first part of a two-parter, with the second act, titled For Good, set to release this Thanksgiving. I mention that because I think this was a game-changing decision that really b...

Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in The Brutalist Author’s Note: An article was recently published about The Brutalist and how it utilizes generative AI for certain elements in this film. I’ve linked the original article here , but I don’t mention it in the review because a majority of the below was written before this article went viral. Man, this one has a lot of hype around it. One of the year’s big awards frontrunners, co-writer/director Brady Corbet has The Brutalist up to bat, which releases wide in the U.S. and the U.K. on January 24, which has seemingly come out of nowhere. Corbet has come out of nowhere in the awards scene, really shocked that he came back bounding from Vox Lux , an ambitious, campy movie in its own right. A24, who’s distributing the film, pulled a little marketing stunt with the Golden Globes, waiting to see if The Brutalist would pick up any awards. Not only did it, but it ended up winning three of the biggest awards of the night: Best Picture – Drama, directo...

I have to be clear about something here: I don’t think Mad Max is my cup of tea. Leading up to the latest installment, I decided to not only re-watch Mad Max: Fury Road but also watch the Mel Gibson-starring trilogy of movies for the first time. Outside of The Road Warrior , which I thought was good fun, the original and Beyond Thunderdome were just plain bad in my eyes. I also understand that Fury Road feels completely different when compared to the original three movies, but I just adore the overall energy of Fury Road that the entries before it, understandably, lack. That’s not to say that I wasn’t excited for Furiosa , an origin story/prequel to Fury Road . However, in both good ways and bad ways, it wasn’t what I was expecting. As the world fell and Australia became The Wasteland, a young girl is snatched from the Green Place and falls into the hands of a Biker Horde led by Dementus, a warlord. He goes to war with The Immortan Joe, another warlord of The Wasteland. While the ...