Tom Cruise has been storming the Hollywood blockbuster scene as of late, and his latest hit is Paramount Pictures and director Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. McQuarrie has a fantastic eye for action thrillers, making it easy to get lost in high-stakes fight scenes or massive set pieces, and Netflix has a respectable catalogue of similar films that are every bit as good.
The streamer is still one of the leaders in the crowded TV and movie streaming market, with plenty of action movies to satiate viewers’ hunger for thrills. From the British equivalent of the Mission: Impossible franchise in the form of the James Bond movies to original productions like Extraction, Netflix has a few movies that are more than worth watching after you check out Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Adapted from British author Ian Fleming’s series of James Bond novels, the film adaptations have gone through a series of reboots, and Daniel Craig has made a strong impression in the modern era. Directors Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale is a superb start and Cary Joji Fukunaga’s No Time to Die is a satisfying close to this iteration of Bond, but Sam Mendes’ Skyfall arguably stands as Craig’s greatest showing as the spy.
Skyfall sees the elite MI6 agent sent to investigate a chilling series of data leaks by the villainous Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) that target the British intelligence organization. It’s a riveting action-thriller, combining tense fight sequences and the James Bond series’ vintage brand of kooky gadgets and striking set pieces. The movie also has an engrossing emotional core, intertwining the character arcs of Bond, M (Judi Dench), and the chilling villain himself to craft a deeply intimate affair.
Though on a comparatively smaller scale — and certainly more violent — than the Mission: Impossible movies, director Sam Hargrave’s Extraction 2 is another over-the-top action movie worth getting into. It’s the filmmaker’s second feature-length film in the director’s chair following 2020’s Extraction, and it builds upon the original’s strengths and shores up some of its weaker areas.
The film follows Marvel Cinematic Universe star Chris Hemsworth (Thor: Love and Thunder, Avengers: Endgame) as Tyler Rake, a former Australian SAS operator now plying his trade as a black ops mercenary. Rake is hired to rescue the wife and children of a brutal, abusive criminal kingpin and soon finds himself having to protect the family from the crime syndicate itself. With a more interesting story and a doubling down on the thrilling action, Extraction 2 is a welcome sequel. A third movie is already in the works at Netflix, with Hargrave and Hemsworth returning to direct and star, respectively.
Actor Harrison Ford (Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Blade Runner) is another titan of Hollywood whose latest film, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, is currently in theaters. And while not quite as well-known as his other characters, his portrayal of Jack Ryan, especially in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger, is quite solid. Adapted from author Tom Clancy’s novel of the same name, which was a sequel to The Hunt for Red October, director Phillip Noyce’s movie centers around Ford’s CIA agent.
Ryan gets appointed as the acting deputy director of the CIA, only to discover that his colleagues are keeping a dark conspiratorial secret from him. The latter group is taking part in a shadow war against a Colombian drug cartel — with the U.S. President’s apparent consent. Noyce’s Clear and Present Danger revels in its thriller plot tropes and bombastic action, with Ford doing an expectedly great job of spearheading the story.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One is now playing in theaters, with the second part of the story arriving on June 28, 2024.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?