Friday Flicks: Is Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol the Best Tom Cruise Film in Years?

Grab some popcorn! NewsFeed's Glen Levy brings you the movies you should check out (or avoid) this weekend.

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Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

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Tagline: No Plan. No Backup. No Choice.

Among Pixar’s magnificent body of work, we’ve always felt that The Incredibles was the underrated masterpiece produced by the studio. But now director Brad Bird (who sounds more like a Pixar title than a real name) gets his big chance to direct a live-action movie and has gone in at the deep end, helming the fourth film in the Tom Cruise vehicle that is Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. No pressure, Brad.

As for the story, we couldn’t put it better than the way the Guardian described it. “The plot barely matters: Ethan must outwit foreigners from other films – The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo‘s Michael Nyqvist, Slumdog Millionaire‘s Anil Kapoor – in a way that allows for maximum attractive globetrotting as well as optimum global box office.” And there’s not too much in the sneering from the rest of the review, as it concludes that “This is a good value, bang for your buck, old-fashioned blockbuster that makes up in action what it lacks in soul.”

Other reviews thus far have been equally kind. “A film that delivers two hours plus of thrilling blockbuster entertainment with a goofy grin on its face,” is the argument from Total Film. And The Hollywood Reporter riffs on NewsFeed’s favorite Pixar flick: “It may not be The Incredibles, but there is some fairly incredible stuff to be found in Mission: Impossible —Ghost Protocol.” For anyone who had the misfortune to sit through MI:3, Bird might have just given flight to the continuation of the franchise.

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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

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The story goes that Warner Bros. was so impressed with Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes reboot in 2009 — it grossed more money than all of Ritchie’s previous movies put together in the U.S. and made a staggering $524 million worldwide — that they pulled him off his next project to strike while the iron was hot and get this sequel made as quickly as possible. (Disclosure: Warner Bros., as with TIME, is part of TIME Warner.)

And just as important as getting Ritchie back on board for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was signing up Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, whose light banter as Holmes and Dr. Watson was surprisingly deft (plus there was fun to be had with all the homoerotic hints).

This time around, a spate of anarchist bombings have ripped through Europe (an eerily prescient plot point), with Holmes coming across a letter that leads him to a mysterious gypsy girl (Noomi Rapace) and Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris). And never mind the alleged love between our two main players, the love-in from the critics is still wildly on the sequel’s side. “Even more than its predecessor, the sequel plays on its high-wire contradiction: a big, dumb action movie about mind-boggling cleverness,” writes Empire, and that’s meant to be a compliment.

A Game of Shadows assures us that escapism is good, that mischief must be celebrated,” concludes the Guardian. “Holmes and Watson are happy and their escapades play out with such grace and brio that the fun is infectious.” Only The Hollywood Reporter (at time of writing) has taken against the film and even that’s not a whole-hearted thumbs down: “After quite a few tedious detours and distractions, when the film finally gets down to the business of a climax … it becomes not half-bad.” Will there be a third installment? At this point, it’s surely elementary, my dear Watson.

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Carnage

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Tagline: A New Comedy Of No Manners

It’s hard to believe that, at a brisk 79 minutes, Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s award-winning God of Carnage is any longer than the play that wowed Broadway. None of the original cast from the four-hander (Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden and James Gandolfini) have made it into the movie, replaced by the equally bankable Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly.

After the two sets of parents’ boys have a playground fight, the adults of the “victim” invite the parents of the “bully” over to work out the issues at stake. Before too long, a discussion of childrearing escalates into verbal warfare, with all four parents revealing their true colors.

Polanski seems to be going through something of a purple patch, and Carnage is getting the same kind of raves as The Ghost Writer. “A pitch-black farce of the charmless bourgeoisie that is indulgent, actorly and so unbearably tense I found myself gulping for air and praying for release,” wrote the Guardian (with a sense of drama that Reza herself might have been proud to write). “Snappy, nasty, deftly acted and perhaps the fastest paced film ever directed by a 78-year-old,” said the Hollywood Reporter, while the Daily Telegraph called it “giddily enjoyable.” You get the impression that the East and West coasts will lap it up, but will middle America care?

MORE: TIME’s review of Carnage

NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: Both the blockbusters seem to have been well received so it’s hard to call between them. See whichever one takes your fancy, with Carnage as a quick appetizer beforehand if you’re feeling particularly ambitious.

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