"MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT".........THE ARTIST VERSUS HIS ART........

Mission Impossible - Fallout (2018)    Maybe it's just us........but we always spent more time wrestling with the 'art and artist separation' dilemma  over Tom Cruise more than Woody Allen......

               Allen survived with the Hollywood community for years on the attitude of:......"yeh, he's a creepy sleaze for marrying his adopted daughter, but his movies are so brilliant..."

             .........until he was finally undone by any number of things, the #MeToo movement, the molestation accusations from one of his other daughters.......and the sad fact that the little movies with their stellar casts rolling off the Woody Assembly Line every year just weren't very good any more........in fact, some of them plain sucked.

                   And then there's Tom Cruise......the fabulously successful action movie star who serves as the public face of Scientology,  a vast, sinister corporate-like cult that masquerades in plain sight as a religion........and whose principal goal is too drain innocent souls of both their free will and their money.

                   This hasn't stopped anyone from enjoying his wham-bam adventure movies........especially the "Mission Impossible" series, in which Cruise and his various directors raise the action bar higher with each new entry.

                    Dare we admit it.......the "M.I." fan club includes us.  And there's the rub.....as much as we love the movies, we loathe and despise Cruise's embrace of Scientology.........which we consider a far more evil organization than any of the nefarious  movie villains who make Cruise's missions so impossible.......

                  Many eons ago, when BQ enjoyed some golden summers writing children's musical plays, we collaborated with a brilliant young woman composer.......a sweet soul and gifted beyond all measure.   With her talent and optimism, a dazzling future lay before her........until she fell under the spell of Scientology.   This vile cult literally swallowed her whole.......she disappeared forever into the foul maw of those creeps.......they kept us from contacting her and we never saw or heard from her again.

                   And her story has been replicated countless times by others......some of whom were able to escape........including both of Tom Cruise's wives.

                   So you see our problem with Tom Cruise.........far more vexing for us than the Woody Allen situation.........(we jumped off the Woody train years and years ago, so the newly-woke rejection of him seemed like stale news to us.......)

                   If we do the art/artist separation thing.......then, no question, "Mission Impossible- Fallout" is a 4 star (****), top-notch, top-of-the-line thrill machine.......and no one can deny Cruise's total dedication to taking his audience on a gasp-inducing rollercoaster ride, brimming with  brutal fights, dizzying vehicle chases and stunts that make you whisper...."no way did he do that..."

                    Yes, he did. And famously broke his ankle in the process.

                    We now feel we've been more than fair........with a even-handed fair rating for the movie.
We respect the amount of punishing hard work Cruise puts into these films.........but  we also hope and pray he's never able to seduce another innocent woman into the heinous and destructive cabal he aligns himself with.........

                      In our dream version of the next "Mission Impossible", Cruise's Ethan Hunt is given the task of bringing down Scientology.........if he does that, unlike the Secretary Of State and the CIA, we promise to never disavow knowledge of his actions.......