Mission: Impossible — Fallout (Paramount, 7.27) is loads of fun — a big mechanical whambammer with all kinds of plot turnarounds and shifting loyalties and eye-rolls into the forehead. It made me feel like I was ten. I honestly gasped four or five times and laughed out loud six or seven…something like that. And one of the laughs involves Wolf Blitzer.

Try and catch it on a big fat IMAX screen, which I did earlier this evening.

I’m being completely complimentary when I call Fallout grade-A, bucks-up dope, and by that I mean the kind of high-octane, expertly performed, adrenalized nonsense that gives the term “jizz-whizz” a good name (and that’s saying something). It’s the kind of crazy-silly wank that makes you feel good about life — the kind that lifts you up and smells like expensive bar soap, high-grade leather and canvas money bags.

The thing that I really loved was how many of the non-action scenes are flecked with an attitude of dry, underplayed comedy. The kind of humor that says “ya gotta get a little fun out of life, right? Are we full of shit or just lucky-ass boys spending loads of dough or…well, you tell us. We’re half-giggling and half-grimming up and obviously having fun with the priciest toyset in the world, wearing masks and buzzing around Paris on motorcycles and flying helicopters in Kashmir and yadda yadda, and well paid all the while.”

Fallout doesn’t quite tip over into hah-hah comedy but the attitude is definitely jaunty if not jovial. If director-writer Chris McQuarrie had gone a little bolder and embraced a tiny bit more of a “fuck it” attitude and turned up the deadpan Three Stooges dial a bit more, this could have been an amazing piece of action comedy, and I mean like something the world has never experienced before. But Fallout holds itself in check and so it’s just a whole lot of high-grade, Daffy Duck-on-ritalin, state-of-the-art excitement with more than a few bone-dry guffaws.

Tom Cruise fills the bill, of course, but he’s looking older. I’m sorry but he is. A wee bit puffy and fuller of face. Some of the humor is about how Ethan Hunt is still the energizer bunny (always!) but now he’s getting winded a bit sooner, and even limps a bit after an especially traumatic bodyslam. I honestly liked Henry Cavill a bit more. He’s a good, disciplined, straight-dealing actor, and he handles the dry under-playing in just the right way. Some of his reaction shots are quite funny. Hollywood Elsewhere says “Cruise is cool but Cavill is better.”

Per Variety, Joel and Ethan Coen‘s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs will screen competitively at the 2018 Venice Film Festival.

I don’t what that precisely means, given that Scruggs is a six-episode Netflix miniseries composed of six separate stories. I’m presuming that the same-titled opening episode, which stars Tim Blake Nelson as the title character, will screen for sure — no telling how many other episodes, if any.

Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born (8.29 thru 9.8) will screen non-competitively on the festival’s second night, or Friday, 8.31. Why not screen in competition? It’s supposed to be Best Picture bait, right?

Also showing will be Brady Corbet‘s Vox Lux, an “American musical drama” as well as a chilly take on the life of a pop star Celeste (Natalie Portman) over a period of several years. (I read the script a year or two ago.) Pic costars Jude Law, Stacy Martin, Raffey Cassidy, Stanford Warshawsky, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Candace M. Smith and Jennifer Ehle.

Julian Schnabel‘s At Eternity’s Gate, a Vincent Van Gogh biopic with Willem Dafoe in the title role, will also screen. Rupert Friend (Theo Van Gogh), Oscar Isaac (Paul Gauguin), Mads Mikkelsen and Mathieu Amalric costar.

This evening, or roughly six hours hence, Hollywood Elsewhere will finally see Mission: Impossible — Fallout (Paramount, 7.27). Which led me this morning to read David Edelstein’s 7.23 Vulture review, and his somewhat dismissive description of Tom Cruise (i.e., Ethan Hunt) as “cocky” and “generally unlovable.” Which is true, I suppose, and yet Cruise remains on a short list of bona fide Hollywood movie stars who deliver heft and consequence.

Who are the real-deal movie stars of the present, Cruise aside? Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Dwayne Johnson (dented), Robert Downey, Jr., Jennifer Lawrence (dented), Will Smith (seriously dented), Tom Hanks (although his last gasp of star-power oxygen happened over 15 years ago, with the release of Sam Mendes‘ Road to Perdition), Samuel L. Jackson and who else?

Liam Neeson, I suppose, to a lesser extent. Adam Sandler is done. Julia Roberts is a “name,” obviously, but she hasn’t been a super-power for a full decade if not longer. Bruce Willis is mostly about the paycheck these days, overly willing to make crap.

Consider a 2.6.18 Observer piece by Brandon Katz, titled “Movie Stars Are Dead and They’re Never Coming Back.”

Key passage: “It isn’t about the names these days — it’s about the property.”

Paul Degarabedian, senior media analyst for ComScore: “The idea of star power used to be in global audience recognition, a major star in a movie might ensure global success here and in the international marketplace. But with the advent of big-concept movies, franchise ensembles like Fast and Furious and Marvel and big-budget blockbusters, the concept and marketing is now what gets people excited. Merely having a movie star is no longer a guarantee of box office success. Now, big stars need a concept in concert with that star power to create excitement.”

Trump loyalists either don’t care about pernicious Russian influence over Donald Trump or are even half okay with it. That’s because Russia, a repressive, authoritarian, anti-liberal white-guy regime, appears to be in league with Trump’s “make America white again” agenda. Rich white authoritarians of the world unite, or something along those lines.

“Trump may have grudgingly admitted that Russia did the [2016 campaign meddling] deed, but nobody should be surprised if he starts shedding doubt on it all over again. Maybe, just maybe, he can’t admit that Moscow tried to put him in the Oval Office because he’s under strict instructions not to.” — from Blake Hounshell‘s 7.20 Politico piece, “Why I’m No Longer a Russiagate Skeptic.”

Tronc, Inc., owner of the money-losing New York Daily News, announced today that half of the tabloid’s editorial staff is being axed. Out the door are editor-in-chief Jim Rich, managing editor Kristen Lee and 40-something others. “We are fundamentally restructuring the Daily News,” a Tronc email announced. “We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and re-focusing much of our talent on breaking news — especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility.”

In other words, the Daily News, which I wrote weekly Hollywood articles for in ’94 and ’95, will be hiring younger, cheaper staffers to save dough. The 99-year-old publication has been losing $30 million annually, for God’s sake. The News will continue to publish for an unspecified time period (perhaps another two or three years or longer…who knows?), but the storied editorial character and muscle fibre will be somewhat downgraded if not absent, and the overall future is sure to be less and less kind to any enterprise that uses printing presses and dead-tree pulp to deliver content.

I’m very, very sorry. I’ve loved and worshipped the Daily News my whole life. My son worked as an intern for Daily News columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy back in ’05. My heart warms every time I disembark at JFK Airport and see those blessed Manhattan dailies stacked inside a Hudson News store. But the end of the print era has been coming for a long, long time.

Gussie: “If you ain’t eatin’ Wham, you ain’t eatin’ ham.” James Blandings (realizing his life has just been saved): “Muriel! Give Gussie a ten-dollar raise!” — from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (’48).

The robust and magnetic Louise Beavers, a popular supporting actress throughout the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, almost always played servants. I know, I know, but those were the kinds of of Hollywood roles that were open to actresses of color in the old days, and Beavers (along with Lillian Randolph, Hattie McDaniel and a few others) picked that limited fruit from the tree and ran with it.

That was the semi-unfortunate part. The fortunate or beneficial aspect was that Beavers was very, very good at projecting spunk, charisma, kind-heartedness. By today’s rulebook it’s safer to under-praise films that featured non-white domestic help characters (i.e., if you’re too admiring the comintern might conclude that you approve of the old order), but as Jean Anouilh wrote in Becket, “Honor lies in the man, my prince, not in the towel.” Beavers (whose last four films were Tammy and the Bachelor, The Goddess, All the Fine Young Cannibals and The Facts of Life) was a pulsing talent and apparently a great soul.

I was riveted by Costa-Gavras‘ Missing when I first saw it in January 1982. I reciprocated with as much positive ink as I could generate as the editor of The Film Journal and an occasional freelance contributor to Us. Beloved Manhattan publicist Renee Furst, who was handling NYC press for Universal, got me an interview with the renowned Greek-French director. I was also friendly at the time with costar Keith Szarabajka. (We had worked together at the Spring Street Bar & Grill two or three years earlier.) I wound up watching it three or four times that year, and have caught it on video…oh, a couple of times since. But never in high-def. That chasing-the-white-horse moment is burned in my brain.

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Now that Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington‘s Equalizer 2 has earned a solid CinemaScore A and landed in first place with an estimated $35.8 million (which slightly tops the $34.1 million opening for the original Equalizer four years ago), the Hollywood Elsewhere community is free to assess the cinematic value. How right or wrong was I in calling EQ2 “much, much better than Fuqua’s 2014 original…this time I actually felt satisfied and marginally impressed…this time I said to myself, ‘I like this guy a little more, and I like that Fuqua has actually made a better-than-half-decent programmer for a change.'”

I just want to say that Ryan Reynolds’ decision to talk about Deadpool’s pansexuality during yesterday’s Comic-Con panel is exactly the kind of inclusive, open-hearted approach to the superhero realm that we all need. I can’t honestly say that I’m waiting with bated breath for the first Deadpool-does-it-with-a-cute-guy scene, but Reynolds has possibly opened the door to all kinds of same-sex couplings within the Marvel and D.C. realm. Remember how Joel Schumacher fiddled with notions of a gay-friendly Batman 21 years ago in Batman and Robin? That didn’t lead anywhere, but now we’re talking about all kinds of possibilities. Which other Marvel superhero characters will open themselves to pansexual expressions? Will the D.C. fraternity follow suit? The sky’s the limit now, and the general superhero fraternity owes Reynolds a debt of gratitude.

If you’re a regular follower you know all about the iCloud sign-in blockage problem on my new iPhone 8 Plus, which I bought two and half weeks ago after my previous phone was stolen. (Here’s my latest report, filed on 7.17.) Five or six days ago I wrote a famous, well-connected hotshot director to see if he knows any powerful higher-ups in the Apple corporation. If so I was hoping he might ask this person to focus on my situation for five minutes and order some senior Apple iCloud technician to fix things once and for all, and no crapping around.

Mr. Hotshot doesn’t know Tim Cook or anyone in that realm, but he did turn me on to a smart guy named Michael Newman, who runs a company called Omegapoint-it.com. I called Newman right away. I’m not out of the woods yet, but Newman has been a godsend — a steady and responsible fellow in every imaginable way, and a shrewd and proactive analyst and problem-solver extraordinaire.

Mike and a colleague visited my West Hollywood abode yesterday morning to try and use an old iMac (which I purchased in 2009) to try and sidestep or outsmart an Apple passcode problem that has prevented me from accessing my iCloud info. This approach didn’t quite work as hoped, but Mike is still working the angles.

At his advice the stolen iPhone 6s Plus has been blacklisted (i.e., deactivated) through AT&T, and now it’s a matter of informing Apple iCloud technicians that this stolen phone is no longer a working device, much less a valid or trusted one.

Once this new reality is recognized by the Apple Empire, the Apple security passcode lockout problem (basically caused by Apple’s six-digit, second-step security code being continually if nonsensically sent to the thief who stole the iPhone on 7.5) will most likely disappear. Or so Mike believes. Who am I to doubt his optimism? He said yesterday that he thinks the problem will be eradicated before the end of the coming business week. Maybe.

I shouldn’t count my chickens before they’re hatched, but I certainly owe Mike and especially Mr. Hotshot a huge debt of gratitude. If this director hadn’t responded to my email and discussed the ins and outs and recommended Mike’s assistance, I would be in the same deep hole I’ve been stuck in for the last two and a half weeks. In my book Mr. Hotshot has racked up good karma points that will last him for at least the next couple of decades.

The career of M. Night Shyamalan has gone through two phases. First was the unnerving, heir-to-Hitchcock, nine-year run that began with 1999’s The Sixth Sense and ended with ’08’s The Happening, and which also included Unbreakable (’00), Signs (’02 — arguably his best), The Village (’04) and Lady in the Water (’06).

Then came a less exacting, somewhat more desperate phase in which he started pandering to genre-friendly popcorn audiences rather than make films with his own unique stamp. Like everyone else I had issues with M. Night’s phase #1 films, but at least they seemed to come from a place inside his own creative soul, which is more than you can say for his phase #2 output.

Shyamalan has cranked out five phase #2 films over the last eight years, including his upcoming Glass (Universal, 1.18.19). The Last Airbender (’10) was a critical disaster; ditto After Earth (’13) with Will Smith and his son Jaden. I didn’t even pay attention to The Visit (’15), a found-footage thing. Nor did I catch Split (’16), a sequel to Unbreakable in which James McAvoy played a psychotic superhuman beast named Kevin Wendell Crumb.

Now comes Glass, another Unbreakable flick (third in a trilogy) with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson reprising their David Dunn and Mr. Glass roles, and joined by the persistent McAvoy plus Anya-Taylor Joy (victim) and Sarah Paulson (psychiatrist).

I know it’s hard to stand alone and make films with your own specific flavor and worldview, and that everyone has to adjust to changing tastes and currents and, you know, get along with moronic studio execs. But I yearn for the days when “directed by M. Night Shyamalan” meant “directed by an eerie auteur who for better or worse makes his own kind of movie, and who brings a certain signature and personality to the table.”

We’re living in a slow-motion Roland Emmerich movie about nature’s wrath. At least 11 wildfires are raging inside the Arctic Circle as the hot, dry summer turns an abnormally wide area of Europe into a tinderbox. Vietnamese farmers are migrating out of the Mekong Delta due to rising sea levels caused by climate change. Things are tough all over, and even the climate-change deniers understand deep down that extreme weather (which opens the door to economic hardship and occasional devastation) is becoming the norm.

I believe that the primal selfishness that has always fueled wealthy conservatives (us before them, occupy the high ground, defend our enclaves from angry multicultural hordes) is getting worse and worse. Righties might challenge or dismiss climate-change science in public, but deep down they’re acting as if a worldwide apocalypse is right around the corner. They seem to believe that social constraints are weakening and that a sense of chaotic desperation will gradually worsen among the have-not classes, and that the safest approach right now is to stockpile as much wealth as possible, enforce governmental regulations that weaken the middle and lower classes, reduce compassion and decency, build higher walls and hire more security consultants.