Pop Culture Happy Hour: Mission: Impossible — Fallout, and What’s Making Us Happy

Sure, he’s a weird guy. But Tom Cruise is the greatest onscreen runner since that horse that Eadweard Muybridge photographed in 1872 to prove that all four hooves of a galloping stallion leave the ground.

Here’s our Pop Culture Happy Hour on the triumph that is Mission: Impossible — Fallout.  Any Cruiselike zealotry in my voice is purely intentional. To watch a two-star action movie with Linda Holmes is a five-star experience. To watch a five-star action movie with her is an M:I-6 star experience.

 

 

Choose to Accept It: Mission: Impossible — Fallout, reviewed.

Mission: Impossible — Fallout is the smart spy spectacle SPECTRE shoulda been, and Tom Cruise is the best movie runner since that horse Eadweard Muybridge photographed in 1872. A little too much Cruiseplaining, but whaddayagonnado? Reader, I married it.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Skyscraper and What’s Making Us Happy (which is, for me, Blindspotting)

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I had a lovely time dissecting the laughably derivative, greenscreeny pleasures of Skyscraper with Pop Culture Happy Hour hosts Linda Holmes and Stephen Thompson and fellow friend-of-the-show Margaret H. Willison. This movie wants to be Die Hard, and it isn’t even as good as Johnson’s own Central Intelligence or Rampage.  It’s maybe on par with San Andreas.

“‘Man’ Ain’t Spelled G-U-N, Son!” The Equalizer 2, reviewed.

If you can stomach the fridging, The Equalizer 2 has a lot to like. Denzel trying to get Ashton Sanders from Moonlight to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, for one thing. Here’s my NPR review.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Ant-Man and The Wasp

I saw a review headline earlier today proclaiming Ant-Man and The Wasp “the perfect summer movie.” I could easily name 20 perfect movies released during the summer going back to Jaws, released the summer before I was, but the phrase “a perfect summer” movie almost invariably refers to movies that aren’t very good.

Ant-Man and The Wasp isn’t Not Good. It is, as my pal and editor and occasional (today!) Pop Culture Happy Hour panel-mate Glen Weldon observed in his review, fine.