The Endless Boy of Summer (spoiler: it’s Tom Cruise again!)
My first-ever Mission: Impossible watch-through, plus Threads, Kardashians, and pop-emo girl music
NEWS: “Twitter Killer,” the Kardashians, and Men Acting Up. | WATCHING: Missions Impossibles. | LISTENING: Not Taylor Swift, Definitely Olivia Rodrigo.
The latest installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise hits theaters this Tuesday, and by all accounts, we are looking at the second consecutive Summer of Cruise! I’ve been preparing my heart and mind by watching all the Mission: Impossible movies FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.
Long-time readers will know: I spent my high school years watching Masterpiece Theatre, reading Dostoevsky, fangirling over Elijah Wood's big blue Frodo eyes, and listening to Enya’s classic 2000 album A Day Without Rain. What I was NOT doing was watching the Mission: Impossible movies. [Sorry, Dad!]
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and I’ve been spending my thirties catching up on the action films I was too sophisticated to watch at the wise old age of 15. I’ve watched four of them so far, and I’m reviewing them here! But first…
My question for the week: What missed franchise from your youth did you discover and fall in love with in adulthood? I know a lot of people who discovered Harry Potter as adults. Ben watched the five-hour Pride & Prejudice for the first time last week, and now he’s a Darcy Man through and through!
Do you have any? Drop a comment and let us know!
Now, on to this week’s topics!
In the News: Grown Folks Acting Like CHILDREN
🤳 The Musk & Zuck Wars. Meta released Threads this week, Instagram’s Twitter clone that Mark Zuckerberg insists is nothing at all like Twitter! [It is EXACTLY like Twitter, except more boring and more desperate, in my humble opinion.] Elon Musk, the unwilling owner of Twitter, is threatening legal action. In other news, Musk and Zuck have also challenged each other to an *actual* cage match, proving that all the money in the world can’t buy you dignity!
🎤 Andrea Bocelli has entered the Kardashian chat! Something so unserious and silly has occurred that it broke through my Anti-Kardashian Force Field. [I had to get my friend Melanie to explain it to me.]
Kourtney and Kim got into the exact same fight I often see between my 4, 6, and 9-year-old niece and nephews, the sibling classic: Who Copied Who. Kourt says Kim stole Dolce & Gabbana from her, but Kim says Kourt stole “my wedding country” [otherwise known as “Italy”] and “my wedding performer” [otherwise known as human person Andrea Bocelli]. I don’t care about any of this drama, but I DO care about:
Kim joining all Midwestern aunts by calling Andrea Bocelli her “favorite male singer of all time”!? Bellissima!
Andrea Bocelli himself saying he’s flattered that they both love his voice, and he’ll sing for them anytime! A class act!
Them fighting over the awful D&G brand as if they’re two women fighting over a dirtbag dude who already cheated on all their friends. What are we doing here??
Again: All the money in the world can’t buy you dignity!
🤦🏻♀️ I was also very disappointed by MEN this week. Á la Keke Palmer’s baby daddy publicly shaming her for having fun at an Usher concert, and Jonah Hill allegedly being controlling over his ex’s fashion choices. I mean, it’s fine to privately and respectfully discuss your insecurities with your partner, but shaming them just because their clothing choices make you feel bad about yourself?? That’s some Mini Cult Leader behavior, boys! Okay, I’m done!
Les Missions Impossibles: A Watch-Through
So, as mentioned, this week I’ve been on a Mission: Impossible Marathon, powering through the first six in preparation for the seventh: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1. [An absurd title!]
Let’s just say Ethan Hunt lives in my head rent-free forever now. Rarely have I had so much fun with a single movie franchise! It’s basically zero skips only one skip! Certainly can’t be said of the Avengers, sorry!
Here’s my quick and thoroughly unthorough roundup so far.
Mission: Impossible (the original) - 5/10
Off to a roaring start: We did not watch this one. Oops!
Back in Pandemic 2020, our first attempt at an M:I Marathon was foiled when I fell asleep in the very first one. Oopsie Whoopsie! Very sorry to the M:I Purists! From what I can recall, it was entertaining but honestly quite slow and boring. This time around, we watched a YouTube recap and called it a day.
Mission: Impossible 2 - 8/10!
It is WILD how much movies changed from the 1996 Mission Impossible to the 2000 Mission Impossible 2, though some of that might be a bigger budget. The original feels like it belongs in the 1970s, and the second is like, “Welcome to Britney Spears’ 2000s!”
Is this a “good” movie? I don’t know! Is it a perfect piece of blockbuster entertainment? Yes!!
We’ve got Tom Cruise in his K-Pop mullet era! We’ve got a 28-year-old Thandiwe Newton setting an early aughts beauty standard that Marissa Cooper could only dream of!
Sure, she was the lone female in the entire movie, and her sole purpose was to be a sexual object, romantic interest, or bait. Not great! But I loved it anyways!! A fun time was had by all, even the kidnapped lady!*
*[Actually, while Thandiwe said she did have a great time in the movie, she also said Tom Cruise was such a stressed-out perfectionist some scenes were a “nightmare.” Tom Cruise, as we know: Not a good hang!]
Mission: Impossible III - 10/10
They heard us say, “Please add in more ladies and let them do things other than get kidnapped by their ex-boyfriends,” and they said, “Yes, chef!”
There are several (2?) women in this, and only one is the romantic interest. The other is Maggie Q wearing hot dresses, leather jackets, and kicking ass! We love to see it!
Also, remember Jonathan Rhys Meyers? He was my #1 crush for like two months after August Rush came out!
Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain is, of course, *chef’s kiss.* The scene of Tom Cruise running a mile in 90 seconds, *believable!*
It is also in this movie that we learn that Ethan’s secret organization “IMF” stands for the “Impossible Mission Force.” Hahahah NERD ALERT! That is just SOOOO unserious and so perfect. 10/10!
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol 9/10
Because calling this “Mission: Impossible 4” would just be too easy, we now start the era of subtitles! I really appreciate the reckless disorderliness of the M:I movie titles. Regular numbers? Roman numerals? Sub-titles? Anything goes!
This one is widely regarded as better than the first three, but I disagree. It’s a great movie, but it loses a little bit of the Mission: Impossible weirdness, in my opinion? They talk about but never actually use the Polyjuice-Potion face-change masks that are literally the signature of the franchise. This movie feels a little embarrassed by its predecessors, intentionally eschewing the kookier bits. But like, isn’t that the whole point? It’s supposed to be a little campy? A little corny? This could almost be a Bourne or James Bond or any other action movie. It’s a little less FUN.
I’ll be curious to see if the masks come back in 5 and 6!
All that said, it’s still absurdly over-the-top, as it should be. I mean, who among us hasn’t had the image of Tom Cruise rappelling down the Burj Khalifa branded permanently into our collective consciousness? That’s a Rule of CULTURE.
On the Women’s Liberation Front: We get 2.5 women in this one, and they have one conversation together that’s not about a man, and only one of them is an emotionally compromised weak link! Apart from being a little sexist and maybe racist against Indian men (right??), this was a solid installment that understood the assignment: Be completely absurd with a straight face.
Also: There’s nothing I love more than a spy heist set at a formal gala.
Up Next Week: Missions Impossibles 5-7!!
Listening - The Emo Gals Again
You may have noticed a social media shock wave this week among white women of a certain age. Ms. Taylor Swift dropped another of her re-recorded albums, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).
[Need a quick refresh on why she’s re-recording all her old albums? I made one.]
Speak Now was originally released in October 2010, my senior year of college, and y’all, the power that that album had on white women aged 15-25! We were in our Pinterest era, after all! We thought writing Jack Kerouac quotes on our forearms was the pinnacle of self-expression! I can still remember the butternut squash soup I was eating when I first heard “Dear John.” And they say white people don’t have culture!!
Anyhoo, if the Swifties hear this, I will be unceremoniously canceled, but: I don’t love the re-records.1 You know when you park next to an identical car to your car, but you can still tell the other car is not your car? Yeah, that.
A brand new emo-girl song also came out recently: “Vampire” by Olivia Rodrigo! Welcome back into our souls, Olivia! “Vampire” is a BANGER, and one fan theory says it’s a takedown of her spiritual mother Taylor Swift. YIKES! Let’s just forget about that and let the ladies live.
The full album, Guts, is due to come out in September.
That’s all for this week folks! Next week, more summer movie madness awaits. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Mission: Impossible, the Kardashians, Instagram’s Threads, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, or what you’ve been watching and listening to lately!
One of the new songs dropped with the re-release, “When Emma Falls in Love,” is supposedly about Emma Stone. Fun! But sadly, it is a very boring song! It sounds just like Taylor’s song, “Dorothea,” which also isn’t even that good! Bummer!
Been saving this one to read like a sweet lil treat for myself. I have such a complicated relationship with Tom Cruise (in that he has no idea I exist but I am fighting cognitive dissonance every time I watch one of his movies). Mission: Impossible is hands-down my favorite movie franchise.
I watched half an episode of the X Files when I was a kid and was so terrified I didn’t watch any more until my early 20s. Once I started watching it, I fell in love with Scully/Gillian and never looked back. Beyond that, there are a lot of gay shows that I didn’t let myself / didn’t feel I was allowed to watching growing up that became favs later on in life. The L Word is the classic example.
“disappointed by MEN” is an evergreen take.
I’m too little too late here but I feel that the first M:I was one of the essential backstory ones to watch for the new one!! and RATING IT? I’m affronted.
“That is just SOOOO unserious and so perfect. 10/10!” pretty much sums up my feelings on the franchise!
your Dear John taste memory is killiiiiiing me lmaoooo
I can’t wait for the new Olivia album!!!!
I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen MI 2 or 3 🤔 but I loved the first one as a trend setter for its time and a jolly good romp!! AND I’ve loved all the new ones!!!