Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Mission Impossible: Fallout

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Posted by Chris Haller (Member # 9206) on 07-27-2018, 11:38 PM:

CINEMA: Cinemark Tinseltown USA w/IMAX
AUDITORIUM: IMAX
PRESENTATION: Traditional IMAX SR sized theater, converted to 2K Digital Xenon
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: See Below
RATING: Three and a half stars (out of four)

Tom Cruise and company return for the most intense, action packed entry in the now 22 year old Mission Impossible franchise. It's a more focused, but at the same time larger scale follow up to 2015's Rogue Nation.

The action is sprawled out all over Europe and Asia this time around, as Ethan Hunt and his team chase down the remaining followers of Solomon Lane, the baddie from the previous movie, and attempt to stop them from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Same stuff, different day.

The 6th movie brings some of the greatest practical stunts and effects work I've seen in ages, with two scenes in particular, one involving Cruise and franchise newcomer Henry Cavil jumping out of a plane over Paris, and the other involving a helicopter chase pushing me to the edge of my seat to take in what was going on in front of me. Add in a great script, a crazy sequence of car chases, visceral fist fighting, and tense building hopping and you have one hell of a summer blockbuster.

Seeing this movie in Digital IMAX was a bit of a mixed bag. I made the decision to see it in this format due to the framing of select scenes in the full 1.90:1 IMAX aspect ratio. Unfortunately, there are only two scenes/sequences that use this framing, each sourced from an incredibly sharp 8K Panavision DXL camera. The rest is all sourced from a traditional 35mm source in 2.35:1, and it looked ROUGH. It was soft, had rather inconsistent grain, and there were times that it looked no better than watching a compressed upload of the youtube trailer for the film. Oy. At least the sound mix was solid, with powerful low end and decent surround utilization. Especially when compared to the other auditoriums here at Tinseltown.

Maybe skip the IMAX for this one, and see it in your standard, reliable digital presentation.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 07-28-2018, 10:18 PM:

CINEMA: Cinemark Movies 12, Ames, IA
AUDITORIUM: 7, SEAT: C11
PRESENTATION: Cinemark Recline-o-Vision with...whoa I found the seat heater button! And mystery meat digital
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: None [Cool]

RATING: Three stars (out of four)

PREVIOUSLY ON MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - Uh, I don't know. My memory of these movies always self destructs five seconds after writing the Film-Tech review. But this is apparently a continuation of whatever happened in the last one, so maybe re-watch it.

THE PLOT: Some bad guys steal some plutonium. Wackiness ensues.

As Chris noted, this is one hell of an action thriller, thanks entirely to the action. There is some amazing stunt work here. The story is a parts bin assembly of Bond and M:I-style sequences that we've seen before. So while being really unoriginal, it's a ton of fun and really well put together.

Now what I want to see is "Hot Shots! 3" where Charlie Sheen satirizes the hell out of Ethan Hunt.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 08-20-2018, 12:47 AM:

I must say 'Rogue Nation' was hard to beat, and I don't think 'Fallout' quite succeeded, but it fun nonetheless. Dolby Cinema presentation looked very filmic, as it was shot as such, but in terms of sound, the Atmos mix was no where as good as 'Rogue Nation' - sorry I'm comparing this too much, but I went in expecting more than what was ultimately presented with. Word is that the bluray/4K UHD will have the expanding screen as featured in the IMAX presentation.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 08-20-2018, 09:56 AM:

I saw this movie a few weeks ago and my wife and I both thought it was great. Not great from a classic cinema perspective but great from a fun, non-superhero action movie perspective.

Of course you can nitpick the plot and certain situations but the action was fast paced, the plot had some fun twists and most importantly, it didn't feel as long as the running time actually was.

I saw it in "IMAX" digital 2K because that was the most convenient show time. The expanding aspect ratio wasn't really integral to the experience and not nearly as noticeable as the expansion to full real IMAX height on the film version of The Dark Knight.

As a comment on 2K IMAX digital, they seriously need to upgrade all their locations to 4K. The screen was around 60 ft wide and we were sitting in the 3rd to back row. I could clearly see the "screen door" in bright scenes with large areas of similar color. Of course, since the 4K DLP chip isn't 2x the dimensions and the space between pixels isn't much smaller (if smaller at all), I'm not 100% sure that it will solve the problem. At least with somewhat lower magnification it should be better.

Rating 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 08-21-2018, 08:55 PM:

word is that AMC will be upgrading all it's IMAX-digital systems over to the 4K 'laser' / 12-channel sound systems.