CULTURE
WISH YOU WERE HERE Women+Film Festival returns to the Sie FilmCenter BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
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ome topics never go out of fashion. We really wish they would, but we never seem to be that lucky. On June 1, the Women+Film Festival will host a community conversation: The Makings of a Moral Panic (10 a.m.), exploring how certain populations suddenly find themselves the target of ridicule and legislative obliteration. Joining the panel will be Garfield County Public Library District Executive Director James LaRue, journalist Owen Swallow, writer and community activist Dylah Ray and film producer Janique Robillard. Robillard’s documentary, The Librarians, which exposes the political maneuvering behind the seemingly grassroots proliferation of book bans at schools and public libraries, will screen later that day at 4:30 p.m. Moral panics, we have them. Thankfully, Women+Film is here to talk you through it. Back for a 16th year, the annual spring festival takes over the
FILM Sie FilmCenter in Denver for three days (May 30 to June 1) of movies and conversation. The Librarians, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, plays closing night, while the documentary Sally, about astronaut Sally Ride, screens opening night at 7 p.m. In between are more docs, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore (7 p.m. May 31), international narratives, My Favourite Cake (4:30 p.m. May 31), even a restoration of a little-seen Tilda Swinton movie from 1996: Female Perversion (12 p.m. May 31). But the big draw of this year’s fest is the recipient of the Barbara Bridges Inspiration Award, Julia Stiles, and a screening of her feature-length directorial debut, Wish You Were Here (12 p.m. May 30). Most probably know Stiles for her time in front of the camera in 10 Things I Hate About You, Save the Last Dance and the Bourne movies. With Wish You Were Here, Stiles takes her career in a new direction — a transition that’s bound to be the focus of the prescreening conversation, which will take place at the UMB Bank Amphitheater Denver Botanic Gardens.
ON SCREEN: 16th Annual Women+Film Festival. May 30 through June 1. Multiple venues. Schedule, information and tickets at denverfilm. org/women-plus-film-festival.
Isabelle Fuhrman and Mena Massoud star in the romantic drama Wish You Were Here directed by Julia Stiles. The movie and director will be honored at this year’s Women+Film Festival. Courtesy: Lionsgate.
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MAY 22, 2025
RUNNING JESUS ‘Final Reckoning’ closes 30 years of impossible missions BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Courtesy: Paramount Pictures
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or the past 30 years, Ethan Hunt has had a choice. “Your mission, if you choose to accept.” And he accepts; he always does. But what if Hunt never had a choice to start with? I guess the choice: “Yes or the world dies” limits options. But what if all those disparate missions weren’t a series of repetitive double crosses , disavowals and world-saving heroics but the convergence of every victory and villain in a Mission: Impossible movie since the first installment in 1996? That would be something, wouldn’t it? That’s why director Christopher McQuarrie and producer Tom Cruise (who also acts) spend the first act of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning convincing the audience of this ridiculous contrivance with flashbacks to the previous seven M:I flicks. And when that doesn’t work, they shrug, thoss in some action and paper over the holes with the Bible. Don’t believe me? Here’s the premise: an all-knowing AI system, the Entity — whose center is nowhere and circumference is everywhere — floods the world with misinformation, decides humanity is expendable, and plots nuclear Armageddon. But only after it gains access to a bunker — an ark, if you will — in the jungles of South Africa. Here, all of history is recorded and stored. If there’s a backup, that means this ark has two of everything. To stop the Entity, Hunt (Cruise), Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Paris (Pom
Klementieff) globetrot with a special crucifix-shaped key in search of the Entity’s source. Hot on their heels is Gabriel (Esai Morales), the Entity’s former spokesman, who has since fallen from grace. That places Hunt in the savior position — par for the M:I movie course. But in Reckoning, it’s a little much. Ditto for the crosscutting McQuarrie and editor Eddie Hamilton employ to connect conversations across time and space. It’s exposition, no matter how you slice it. But then Hunt goes on a scuba mission to the bottom of the Bering Sea, steals aboard a biplane in South Africa, and Reckoning achieves the cinematic exhilaration you hope for in a Tom Cruise movie. I guess Hunt trying to save the world from a biblical apocalypse seems like a logical conclusion after he’s saved it from politicians, rogue states and opportunists. But trying to retcon this movie to the others does Reckoning no favors. Then that plane does a 360-degree barrel roll with Cruise hanging on for dear life, and my quibbles fly out the window. I know there are wires securing Cruise to the plane, but I can’t see them. All I see is a man tossed around while a plane hurtles through the sky. All I can say is, “Wow.”
ON SCREEN: Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning opens in theaters everywhere May 22. BOULDER WEEKLY