September 2015 - MDP Film Journal

Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947)

September was focused on trying to squeeze in as many noir and 2000s movies as I can before the end of the month, because October is all set for Hoop-tober! 2.0. I did make it to the theater and caught the new Mission: Impossible. Thoughts McQuarrie's entry in the franchise can be read here.

Best of August 2015
1.  Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947)
2.  Body and Soul (Robert Rossen, 1947)  
3.  Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015)
4.  The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953)
5.  Gone in 60 Seconds (Dominic Sena, 2000)
6.  Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946)
7.  Spartan (David Mamet, 2004)
8.  Kansas City Confidential (Phil Karlson, 1952)
9.  Shooter (Antoine Fuqua, 2007)
10.  Boomerang! (Elia Kazan, 1947)

Favorite Rewatches of August 2015
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson, 1943)
T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947)
The Way of the Gun (Christopher McQuarrie, 2000)

Films watched in August: 24
Rewatches in August: 5
Total tally for 2015: 177

(I'm borrowing this format idea from Curtsies and Hand Grenades.)

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015), Auteurism and Genre Determinism

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015)
If Jack Reacher was Christopher McQuarrie's resumé for getting the next Mission: Impossible gig, I say that he was clearly the perfect hire. While the Colin Trevorrows of the world are busy making cynical, redundant self-parodies of beloved franchises and the J.J. Abrams of the world are making hundred million dollar Rorschach tests, Christopher McQuarrie is legitimately building upon the legacy of someone like Raoul Walsh or John McTiernan with clever action set pieces and off-handed character humor while still delivering the "impossibly stacked-odds" thrills common to the M:I franchise. It is the perfect popcorn movie in that sense, but, like McTiernan, if you're willing to look closer, you may find even more.

It is neat to see several spy thrillers of the mid-2010s deal with the legitimacy and utility of espionage in the 21st century (I'm thinking also of Skyfall), and that is exactly where Rogue Nation begins. Immediately pitting a top secret conspiratorial shadow government against a top secret conspiratorial shadow agency is a clever bit of plotting in itself but as the movie progresses and the who-can-you-trust/who's-playing-whom dynamics are working themselves out in ever more labyrinthine twists and double-crosses, I began to realize that this is the true legacy of espionage. It could be cynical if we didn't have an investment in seeing Hunt succeed. But this sort of identification is what paints the "good guys" of espionage decidedly behind a nationalistic brush. How do we know who the good guys are? They work for us and are there to keep us safe. In an age that ironically has become increasingly dependent on government involvement, it has also come to despise blatant nationalism. When nationalism suffers, the spy movie suffers along with it. Fittingly then, the bad guy to be stopped is the one who is establishing a "rogue nation" outside of the proper order of things and beyond the accountability (such as it is) of any government or agency. 

But it begs the question: what keeps Hunt – a spy no longer recognized by his home government who is conducting a secret mission without the aid or approval of any other agency – from just walking away from it all? Is it determination or determinism?