Netflix: Improbable
I took myself to a movie last night, which I left work for ten minutes early: The Last Suit at The Egyptian. It wasn't great. It wasn't terrible, either, as so often happens with mediocre movies, but this was a movie that felt like it really should have been better.
The showtime was 4:45, and it took me 25 minutes to ride there, which means I got there at 4:45 on the dot. "Perfect timing!" said the woman at the ticket counter. I got home by around 6:30.
I waited a while to write the review. Shobhit was in the middle of preparing salad for dinner, and I helped a bit to finish up. We got the next two Mission: Impossible movies in the mail yesterday, so when we sat to eat dinner, we set about watching Mission: Impossible III -- easily the best of the first three of them. (I still think the next one, Ghost Protocol, is the best of all of them.) It's got a great helicopter chase sequence through a mass of wind turbines. It's also got a far more coherent plot than either of the previous films, and just an overall better sophistication of filmmaking. That one was directed by J.J. Abrams. It came out in 2006, six years after the second film, and was the first to feature Simon Pegg -- as it happens, only two years after his breakout movie Shawn of the Dead. Also, there was something kind of bittersweet about seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman as the ruthless villain in that film, clearly having a good time with the role. I've always thought his was a tragic loss.
Ghost Protocol was the first of these movies I ever actually went to see in a theatre; at the times of their release, the first three (1996, 2000 and 2006) all looked too stupid to me to bother. I guess curiosity just got the best of me and I rented them all some years ago, and I remember not being especially impressed. The weirdest thing now is that I could swear I got them from Netflix, but I just checked my entire rental and streaming viewing history on my account, and can find no record of ever getting them. What the hell? I also tried to Google mentions of it on my LiveJournal and have turned up nothing but mentions of seeing more recent installments in the theatre. That sort of search is almost always incomplete, but still -- this is very annoying. I know I saw the first three movies at home at some point, probably while Shobhit was living in New York or L.A., but I can find no record of it.
Whatever! I've watched them all again now. And we'll probably watch Ghost Protocol tonight, which I'm looking forward to because that's my favorite.
Shobhit sort of half-heartedly resisted watching them because Tom Cruise is a Scientologist (and, arguably, the single biggest factor in that crazycakes religion's success), but these are very much the kind of movies he enjoys, so it didn't take much for him to give in to them. And now that we're burning through the entire series, he'll probably even come with me to see the new one when it opens later this month.
It does fascinate me that this franchise is still going strong after 22 years. This upcoming new one is the sixth in the series, so the average break between sequels is much wider than in most franchises:
1996: Mission: Impossible (Tom Cruise age: 34)
2000: Mission: Impossible II (age 38)
2006: Mission: Impossible III (age 44)
2011: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (49)
2015: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (53)
2018: Mission: Impossible - Fallout (56)
The actor may be a legitimate nutcase, but he's an undeniably bankable actor, even as he inches closer to 60. And in another strangely unusual turn of events, the later movies in this franchise are actually better. It's usually the other way around. It doesn't hurt having Simon Pegg added to the usual cast -- he's been in all of the most recent four (counting the current one).
Anyway, once the movie was over, I then went to the bedroom to write my review. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough to say about the movie, but I still cracked 600 words, which is always my ideal minimum for reviews. By the time I was done, it was time to start getting ready for bed. Shobhit even got into bed the same time I did. When he comes to bed can really vary these days, and it doesn't always have any apparent correlation to his work schedule.
I got some texts from both Dad and Beth this morning, because I had texted them a few days ago about having Beth and Gina join us for the bike ride Dad and I talked about doing on Saturday August 4, the day before the annual family get-together. I had long ago gotten the sense that very advanced planning would potentially work well with Gina and Beth, and that appears to have been the case: Beth texted us that she was putting it in her calendar. Yay!
So that got me looking at photos of bike rides I've taken with Dad, and I realized: I don't have a dedicated collection of photo sets that all either include or are dedicated to bike rides just with Dad. We've been doing them long enough now that I think it warrants tracking! So, I did that this morning. What do you know! Dad and I have been doing a bike ride at least annually -- sometimes twice in a year -- for nine years now! Somehow I didn't even realize it has already been that long. I bet Dad would be interested in seeing that list.
[posted 12:35 pm]