June 9, 2025 Due to a family vacation, it looks like I won’t be able to see/review a new movie this coming weekend. So here are two movies from the past few weeks that I at least mildly recommend… It’s hard to believe that we went over a decade without a new “Final Destination” movie. Fans love this series and its “slasher-movie-without-a-slasher” gimmick. The “killer” here is the concept of Death itself, which takes the form of unlikely, elaborate, horrific accidents. /// Huh, another franchise that took over a decade off, at least with its movies. Jackie Chan is back as Mr. Han, the new head trainer of this series following the passing of Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi. Han wants to train his great-nephew Li Fong (Ben Wang) in the martial arts, but the boy’s mother (Ming-Na Wen) forbids it due to a family tragedy.

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June 3, 2025 The eighth “Mission: Impossible” movie, “The Final Reckoning,” sees Tom Cruise’s secret agent Ethan Hunt strive to save the world yet again. But this movie has “Final” in its title, so maybe Hunt won’t succeed this time. Maybe the world will be destroyed by the evil A.I. program known as The Entity. Or even worse, maybe Hunt will meet his end and the world will be denied any more of Cruise’s smoldering star power, at least in this franchise. At any rate, Hunt has to defeat not only the all-powerful computer program, but also old human enemy Gabriel (Esai Morales), who is somehow working “for” The Entity. The odds of surviving are really long – and at 170 minutes, so is the movie’s runtime – but Hunt is up to the challenge of saving the world and Cruise is clearly up to the challenge of keeping the audience entertained for that long. I can’t say he succeeds in the latter mission, but he chooses to accept it. 

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