TimeOut Abu Dhabi – July 26, 2018

Film & TV

Film & TV

54 July 25 – August 7 2018 timeoutdubai.com

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First Reformed



(18TC) Dir: Paul Schrader

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Cedric the

Entertainer, Amanda Seyfried

Released: Aug 2

At his best, director Paul Schrader

is untouchable when it comes to

capturing men (and it is almost

always men) pinned between the

ruinous modern world. He did

this, iconically, with his original

screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s

Taxi Driver and as a director

himself in 2002’s Auto Focus,

which centres on an unsettling

descent into career dislocation.

Schrader is back on familiar

ground with First Reformed, the

meditative story of an upstate

New York man (a subtle Ethan

Hawke) racked by guilt at his

own shortcomings and soon to

embrace desperate measures.

In fact, the movie plays so much

like old-school Schrader, you might

confuse it for the work of a dutiful

grad student.

Once again, we get a tortured

Travis Bickle-esque voiceover

(Hawke’s Ernst Toller keeps a

journal from which he reads

passages such as “I know

there is no hope”); here, too,

is a troubled woman (Amanda

Seyfried) who needs saving, and

Toller’s own tortured memories of

his deceased soldier son.

The olmmaker’s return to a

somber Bressonian mode will

work like catnip on his superfans,

especially after Schrader’s

exploitative 2013 Lindsay Lohan

disaster The Canyons.

Joshua Rothkopf

THE BOTTOM LINE Schrader is

back on familiar ground.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

(18TC) Director:

Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Rebecca

Ferguson, Henry Cavill

Released: July 26

We’re starting to question if

these missions are actually

impossible, seeing as Ethan Hunt

(Tom Cruise) has survived ove

previously and is now moving on

to this, his sixth. Regardless, it’s

always a good to see the Mission

Impossible franchise return, and

Fallout seems like it will continue

the trend of action-packed thrills

we’ve come to enjoy.

This time around, Hunt’s team

onds itself racing against the

clock after a mission goes wrong.

We know, it sounds like every

other entry in the franchise so far,

but each one always puts a nice

twist on the tried and tested story

to keep us on our toes. Films four

and ove have slowly built up the

fantastic team of spies around

Hunt, which seems to be the

tentative link that connects all

three of the latest movies.

But one of the great

advantages the Mission

Impossible series has over other

blockbuster franchises (we’re

looking at you, Marvel), is that you

can watch any one of the movies

without having to remember what

happened in the last.

As always, you can expect to

see a lot of death-defying stunts,

people pying through windows, for

example, and, of course, Cruise

dangling in the air at a very, very

unsafe height. One stunning

scene was shot in Abu Dhabi at

320kph and 6,000m high.

The usual culprits are back

alongside Cruise, including

Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and

Sean Harris. This time they’re up

against a moustachioed Henry

Cavill (you might know him better

as Superman).

Apparently Cruise broke his

foot during olming but continued

on with the scene. Tom we

take our hats off to you, that’s

commitment. Darragh Murphy

THE BOTTOM LINE The franchise

continues to deliver the goods.

PREVIEW

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