In some ways, Warfare is like the rash of war-on-terror pictures that appeared 20 years ago, such as Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker or Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha, or indeed Brian De Palma’s interesting, underrated film Redacted. But Warfare doesn’t have the anti-war reflex and is almost fierce in its indifference to political or historical context, the resource that should be more readily available two decades on. There is almost no conventional narrative progression: Erik gets rattled and has to cede command to someone else, but it makes no real difference to the dramatic shape, the white-noise blizzard of chaos. Similarly, the two Iraqi scouts become scared when they realise that they are to be the first out of the door for the planned evacuation, but there is no real tribal division between them and the Americans. Periodically the men will radio for a “show of force” to keep the jihadis at bay: a fighter plane whooshing terrifyingly low along the street leaving behind an eardrum-pulverised silence which scours the screen of thought.

And those civilians? They have an odd role to play in those weird photos over the final credits. Some of the real-world soldiers have their faces blanked out, presumably due to ongoing security considerations. But the film also shows a picture of an Iraqi family, evidently the occupants of the house, with their faces blanked out as well. Because … Garland and Mendoza tried to locate these people and ask for their memories too? And were unable to find them? Maybe. But they just remain blank – and irrelevant. The movie is its own show of force in some ways, surely accurate in showing what the soldiers did, moment by moment, though blandly unaware of a point or a meaning beyond the horror.

And now, this weekend, Drop is opening in theaters. Here's a look at some of the reviews:

Andrew Parker, The Gate

As a director, Landon looks like he’s having a blast getting his De Palma on (with a healthy nod to Wes Craven’s underrated/also implausible thriller Red Eye). As a stylistic exercise, Landon delivers his best outing behind the camera yet, which is fascinating for something that takes place in a single location for ninety percent of the film’s running time. The camera moves swiftly around the tightly packed room, zooming in from above, looking from below (the low angle shots of Violet looking up at her waiter are low key hilarious), and flowing through the space with ease. The little touches (like the bougie washroom and the ribcage mimicking corridor into the dining room that feel like entering the belly of a beast) are what matters here. Landon also does everything in his power to make the usually tedious image of people texting back and forth into a halfway compelling visual. It all comes together nicely, and Landon has put more thought into how the film should look than the sum of the plot’s parts.

And honestly, Drop is a case where that is absolutely the right call. Landon has a flair for allowing the viewer to giggle at dark situations, and he’s not afraid to get theatrical or unsubtle about it, like his use of some dramatic mood lighting swings throughout. He also finds ways to balance the dark humour with deeper character touches, with a heart to heart conversation between the stressed out lovebirds where all of the restaurant’s bustle and background noise pleasingly drifts away and the viewer locks into a tender moment that carries a great degree of poignancy for something that’s otherwise a silly movie.

More importantly: Have I made this sound like a bad movie? It’s actually largely a blast, not because Landon is as talented as De Palma, or even Collet-Serra, but because he works real hard to make up the difference. Moreso than the bright, montage-heavy, performance-dependent (and, to be clear, delightful) Happy Death Day pictures, he and cinematographer Marc Spicer go all in on visual tricks, with short but elegant room-surveying tracking shots, canted angles, impressionistic lighting effects to spotlight individual characters, and the occasional flips and spins for extra disorientation. This could have come across as sweaty, but it’s assembled with a glee that can’t be faked; the obvious effort becomes part of the fun.

This puts Drop well in the zone of Collet-Serra’s recent (and structurally similar) Carry-On, no small praise for the neo-Hitchcockian exercise. What keeps the new movie from further ascension to De Palma levels of bliss is its inability to push those attempts at virtuosity into a state of feverish cinematic overdrive, where the show-off fakeness somehow becomes more viscerally real. If this were easy, De Palma might not look like such a genius. As-is, Drop has a few brief moments of near-operatic derangement, a couple of flashbacks that experiment with bad-taste exploitation, and one climactic gag with a semi-twisted kick. Mostly, though, it trades in predictable stuff about Violet overcoming her past traumas as she navigates this brand new one.

Landon can flip this into a strength; just as the Happy Death Day movies are disarmingly sweet amidst jokes about gruesome slapstick demises, this movie obviously feels warmly toward Violet and he treats a few side characters here, like a too-much server (Jeffrey Self) on his first-ever shift, with similar affection. Drop is ultimately a nice movie about an abuse survivor being terrorized by seemingly omniscient forces, loaded with moments that don’t really hold up to scrutiny and well-sold by Fahy’s performance. To work so well in the moment is its own perfectly ephemeral achievement.

#DroptheMovie is a hard driving nail-biter, that keeps you hanging on the edge. Christopher Landon channels his inner De Palma, in a fresh take on the classic whodunnit. While it takes its time getting there, the climax is worth the wait. Thrill seekers will rejoice.

Early this morning, Kenney tweeted:

In the mood for an old-school Brian De Palma thriller?

Written between CARLITO'S WAY & MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE.

Brian De Palma’s wildest vision: AMBROSE CHAPEL

Coming in May from Sticking Place books.

From my intro to Brian De Palma's unproduced 1994 screenplay AMBROSE CHAPEL: "The set pieces are pure De Palma...A sequence involving a misused TV remote...escalates into a revenge fantasia that feels like Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45 restaged by Jacques Tati"

Coming in May from SPB.

The announcement included a quote from De Niro upon hearing the news: "I have such close feelings for Festival de Cannes… Especially now when there’s so much in the world pulling us apart, Cannes brings us together — storytellers, filmmakers, fans, and friends. It’s like coming home."

Also included was a brief bio - here are the first five paragraphs:

There are faces that stand in for the 7th Art, and lines of dialogue that leave an indelible mark on cinephilia. With his interiorized style, which surfaces in a gentle smile or a harsh gaze, Robert De Niro has become a cinematic legend.

His screen debut sealed the fate of a historic generation of directors in New York City, who would become the next generation of Hollywood filmmakers. From the very first films of a just-graduated Brian De Palma, Robert De Niro lent his features to anti-hero characters. The Wedding Party, Greetings and Hi, Mom! give form to Brian De Palma’s style as much as to Robert De Niro’s acting, in which violence springs from a charismatic calm. From his bohemian youth as the son of painters in New York, he drew on a streetwise attitude which, with its codes of conduct and ethics, would spice up his early performances and later blossom in front of Martin Scorsese’s camera. This legendary cinematic friendship began in 1973 with Mean Streets, in which they depict their Little Italy neighborhood.

Throughout his career, De Niro has lent his natural authority to characters from the Italian-American Mafia, from petty thug to major mafioso, making them his signature characters, beginning the following year. Then, he took on one of the most significant roles in his career and in the world of cinema: the young Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II, and succeeded in the challenge of interpreting the early years of Marlon Brando’s character without imitating him. His performance earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

The years that followed confirmed Robert De Niro’s talent, with a string of films and successes. In 1976, he presented two masterpieces of the 7th Art in the Official Selection at the Festival de Cannes: Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, which won the Palme d’or. His perfectionistic acting had a lot to do with this award, between preparation (he obtained a New York cab driver’s license) and improvisation (the mirror scene is beyond description).

His commitment to his roles became legendary as his collaboration with Martin Scorsese continued: he learned to play the saxophone for New York, New York, took up boxing and gained 30 kilos for Raging Bull, which was his own idea and which won him the Oscar for Best Actor. To exorcise his conflicted relationship with fame, he brought the screenplay for The King of Comedy to his fellow lead, and went as far as to interview his own fans when he was to play this character obsessed with a talk show host. The film opened the Festival de Cannes in 1983. The following year in Cannes, Robert De Niro presented Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone’s last film, before returning to the Croisette with Roland Joffé’s The Mission. A rare occurrence for an actor, only 10 years after Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro played the lead role in a second Palme d’or.

PREVIOUSLY:
New Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning teaser calls back to De Palma's film

“It definitely began with a conversation about what kind of movie we both wanted to make. Because it’s not just about what I want to do as a director, but also what you want to do as an actor,” Sloan said, gesturing to Mastroianni. “What kind of role are you not gonna get cast in unless we make that movie?”

“It started with Ryan sharing with me all of the films that really excited him, and revisiting those films.” Mastroianni added, explaining that they were primarily inspired by classic thrillers like “Blow-Up,” “Blow-Out,” “The Conversation,” “The Third Man,” “Vertigo,” and “Chinatown.”

“We were like ‘What is the through line here?’” Sloan said. “And we found out there’s a structure that many of these films follow called the Spiral Structure, where there’s a character that’s traveling through but every time they hit this spiral, it’s something from their past that they can’t escape.”

That structure gave them the narrative core of “Gazer,” with Mastroianni’s Frankie constantly running into lapses in memory caused by her dyschronometria that make it harder to solve the larger mystery she has become immersed in. And much like their fictional protagonist, Sloan and Mastroianni found themselves working with incomplete information throughout the production process. The self-financed film was sporadically shot between April 2021 and April 2023, with the duo opting to jump into principal photography before they had an entire script written.

“We started writing basically as soon as the lockdown happened. And that went a full year, and then in November I just said to Ariella ‘We’re gonna get into production in April 2021.’ And she was just like ‘Uhh… okay,’” Sloan said. “We weren’t even done with the script yet. We went in with an unfinished script. We knew we had the beginning and the end, so we said we’ll do two weekends in April and we’ll do the beginning and the end of the movie, because we know what we want.”

Before showing off a piece of footage, Cruise asked the room to take a moment and remember his dear friend and Top Gun 2 Ice Man — Val Kilmer, who died two days ago.

The Paramount/Skydance actioner directed by Christopher McQuarrie is billed as the epic finale to a saga that first began nearly two decades ago. It features Cruise as Ethan Hunt following the events of 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning which ended on a cliffhanger with the world threatened by a rogue and sentient AI known as The Entity. It grossed over $570M worldwide.

Cruise spent time on stage extoling The Ususal Suspects Oscar scribe winner McQuarrie who came in to doctor on Brad Bird’s installment of Mission: Impossible. “I didn’t tell them that he was there to write the script.” McQuarrie was quick on his feet and fleshed out the blue/red glove scene in Ghost Protocol. “He’s the hero of that film and put Skydance on the map,” said Cruise.

“Because of Christopher McQuarrie we were able to deliver Top Gun: Maverick and two Mission: Impossibles during shutdowns from the pandemic and two strikes,” he praised, “You’re a modern day Thalberg and asset to every studio that you serve.”

“Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce you to Christopher McQuarrie…” said Cruise before the helmer took the stage to receive the Director of the Year Award from CinemaCon.

At a time when no one would hire McQuarrie, he met with Cruise, and “Tom saw the potential for the director who is standing here holding this award.”

“Tom, I’m here because of your vision and trust and to place you in others’ harm way,” McQuarrie half-quipped. He extolled the star for pushing and supporting “beyond anything I was capable of doing.”

Cruise also gave a shout-out while he was on stage to Brad Pitt and Joe Kosinski’s F1 (during Interview with the Vampire, Cruise said he and Pitt would “go drive go-karts” after shooting).

Cruise teed up this trailer like it’s the end — he thanked his former M:I producer Paula Wagner, former Paramount Pictures boss Sherry Lansing who taught him everything about the biz and all the Mission filmmakers including Brian De Palma, Brad Bird, J.J. Abrams and John Woo.

How jaw-dropping is this trailer? Where do we start? How about Henry Czerny’s sinister Kittridge: “If we want to bring the world back to the brink, we have to deal with him,” he says of Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. “Everything you were, everything you’re doing has come to this.” Remember the AI from Dead Reckoning, where it looks like Hunt plugs into it with a big gasmask-like thing on. Cruise’s stunts include crawling around a flying biplane, jumping off an aircraft carrier into the ocean (“you gave him an aircraft carrier?” remarks one official to Kittridge in the trailer). There’s also nuclear missiles launching.

As for the new “Mission: Impossible” preview, which has still not dropped at publication, “The Final Reckoning” is still keeping details close to the vest, less than eight weeks from its global release. The movie seems to tie in moments from all the previous “Mission” movies and the consequences of those actions for our hero, Ethan Hunt. At one point, Hunt holds a knife he used in a pivotal scene in the first Brian De Palma-directed “Mission” movie. Quick shots did show Hunt jumping off an aircraft carrier into the ocean and a massive explosion in either the Arctic or Antarctica. The only real familiar faces in the preview outside of Cruise were Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Hannah Waddingham (for a split second), Shea Whigham, and Nick Offerman.