Mission Impossible 2 (John Woo, 2000), Rosetta (the Dardennes, 1999)

Midget Impossible

Movie begins with Cruise climbing an impossibly sheer cliff. He slips; he recovers; he hangs ten several thousand feet off the ground. This being a John Woo film, credibility is not a very big issue, but “cool” is--as it turns out, the entire elaborate rock-climbing sequence was staged just so Cruise can rendezvous with a pair of telecommunicating Ray-Bans, shot at him via rocket launcher from a hovering helicopter. The shades instruct Cruise on what he is to do for the next two hours…which, come to think of it, pretty much sums up how Cruise has handled his acting career to date.

Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024)

Cat and friends

Forget The Wild Robot or Inside Out 2; the animated film of the year has to be Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis' Flow, an eighty-five minute feature notable for what it doesn't have as for what it does. No anthropomorphic animals-- these creatures don't quip or sass back, only express what sounds can be expected of them in the natural world; no strong narrative, mainly the random events that can occur to cat in its attempts to survive a flooded world; and no gag-a-minute pacing, the standard-issue sop Pixar or Disney throws its kiddie audiences to keep their presumably ADHD buttocks glued to their seats.