Mission: Impossible -- Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018)

Henry Cavill, Tom Cruise, and Rebecca Ferguson in Mission: Impossible -- Fallout

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley, Frederick Schmidt, Alec Baldwin, Liang Yang, Kristoffer Joner, Wolf Blitzer. Screenplay: Christopher McQuarrie. Cinematography: Rob Hardy. Production design: Peter Wenham. Film editing: Eddie Hamilton. Music: Lorne Balfe.

There seems to be a critical consensus that the Mission: Impossible films have gotten better, and that the sixth film in the series, Mission: Impossible -- Fallout, may be the best of the lot. It's the usual improbable if not impossible story of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his doughty crew trying to prevent catastrophe, but it proceeds at a breathless pace. It also features a villain played by an actor who's possibly more attractive than Cruise: Henry Cavill. Is it a sign of Cruise's maturity that he's willing to let himself be upstaged by a younger and handsomer actor? Well, maybe not. Cruise still gets the lion's share of the more spectacular stunts. A seventh film in the series, once again directed by Christopher McQuarrie, is in the works, although filming recently stopped because of the coronavirus pandemic.