Brad Bird

News, Reviews & Features

Discussion: Impossible - Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

Movie Feature | Ali Gray, Matt Looker, Becky Suter, Ed Williamson | 1st August 2018

Look at all those colons! Our Mission: Impossible discussion has kicked into a higher gear, by which I mean we're scaling the lofty heights of Ghost Protocol, its incredible set-pieces, its rubbish villain and one very special false arm. Join us please, otherwise all this editing was pointless!

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Incredibles 2

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 9th July 2018

With more than a decade between Toy Stories or Finding Fish Characters, Pixar’s recent run of belated sequels is clearly part of a canny business plan rather than a sign of creative exhaustion, because these franchise returns do the job of appealing to both the original fans and a whole new generation of toy-demanders. If this has always been the strategy though, Incredibles 2 takes home the trophy for longest audience payoff of all time. Because, with the original film invoking everyone’s childhood fantasies of wanting to be superpowered, this sequel - delivered 14 years later - teaches those of us that have become parents in the meantime that our wish has been fulfilled: we now are heroes.

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Tomorrowland: A World Beyond

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 21st May 2015

The sole conceit of selling a movie like Tomorrowland is convincing you it's a place you need to visit – a world unlike our own where magical things happen and anything is possible. You cannot accuse of Brad Bird and screenwriter Damon Lindelof of underselling this vision of the future: the first hour of Tomorrowland is all tease and build-up and you're just as desperate to get to the promised land as the characters are. Unfortunately, Tomorrowland is a movie that cannot possibly hope to deliver on that promise; it's a movie chock-full of crackpot invention but is overcrowded with ideas that are ultimately underdeveloped. Tomorrowland is sold expertly as the land of milk and honey – it's such a shame it turns a little sour when you finally get there.

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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Movie Review | Ali | 12th December 2011

How many straight-up action movies have you seen this year? Remove all the superhero movies, alien invasions and Jason Statham films (which, as we all know, don't play by conventional rules), and there have been precious few pulse-pounders that were rooted in reality. Being grounded is not something typically associated with Tom Cruise – indeed, in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol he comes closer than ever to his Space God, courtesy of the Burj Khalifa – but the return of Ethan Hunt and his IMF team should be welcomed in a year where far-out fantasy and outlandish action has so far reigned.

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Dun dun DUN-DUN, dun dun DUN-DUN, diddle-derrrrr, diddle-derrrrr...

Movie Trailer | Ali | 29th June 2011

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to use exactly that phrase without looking like a dick when writing about the Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol trailer. Your dignity will self-destruct in 5, 4...

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Ratatouille

Movie Review | Ali | 19th October 2007

Even the greatest performers slip up sometimes. Babe Ruth would quite often swing and miss. Pele, on occasion, would struggle to hit a barn door. Tiger Woods has been known to make a spaz of himself. And so, to bring this laboured metaphor to its conclusion, we come to Pixar - the big hitters of the animation industry. Their bat...

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The Incredibles

Movie Review | | 22nd March 2005

With Toy Story, Pixar completely revolutionised animated cinema, if not cinema itself. Talk was that pretty soon, actors wouldn't be needed at all, and that fully computer-generated pictures could spell the death of all but the most velvet-tongued thespians. After all, why waste time and effort getting Paul Walker to emote whe...

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