Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound    Tom Cruise is back at it.  Zero plans for retirement.  Just going to keep doing more and more stunts until he dies.  

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is tasked with the impossible mission of finding his former partner Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who has one half of a key.  He doesn't know what the key unlocks, only that one of his very first nemeses, Gabriel (Esai Morales), wants it on behalf of a rogue AI called The Entity.  He tries to lure the owner of the second half out but is stymied at the airport by the arrival of master thief Grace (Hayley Atwell).  Ethan needs both keys but is hounded at every turn by an invisible enemy that can infect and repurpose anything digital.

This is very much a "Let's scare the old people with technology!" kind of movie.  It is Ethan vs Hal-9000, or a much more violent version of the conclusion of WALL-E.  I don't think it was as good as Fallout for a bunch of reasons but chiefly because **SPOILER** they fucking fridge Ilsa, the best character and most likely successor. **END SPOILER**  

It's starting to feel like this franchise is moving closer to being the American James Bond (derogatory).  

Still, it's fine enough for a popcorn flick.  The stunts are wild, the pace is quick, and if nothing precisely makes any sense when you think about it for more than 10 seconds, it's okay because something new is blowing up.  It's currently streaming on Paramount+.