Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning review – world-saving Tom Cruise signs off with wildly entertaining adventure

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Cruise does things his way in this eighth and last Mission: Impossible, as his maverick agent Ethan Hunt takes on the ultimate in AI evil Here it is: the eighth and final film (for now) in the spectacular Mission: Impossible action-thriller franchise, which manifests itself like the last segment jettisoned from some impossibly futurist Apollo spacecraft, which then carries on ionospherically upwards in a fireball as Tom Cruise ascends to a state beyond stardom, beyond IP. And with this film’s anti-AI and internet-sceptic message, and the gobsmacking final aerial set piece, Cruise is repeating his demand for the echt big-screen experience. He is of course doing his own superhuman stunts – for the same reason, as he himself once memorably put it, that Gene Kelly did all his own dancing. Final Reckoning is a new and ultimate challenge (actually the second half of the challenge from the previous film) which takes Cruise’s buff and resourceful IMF leader Ethan Hunt on one last maverick, ...
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‘A kitten on heat with a racy physique’: the mystery of the bloodcurdling cat screech used in hundred of movies

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From Babe to Pet Sematary to Toy Story, the same furious yowl crops up in film after film. So who was the cat and who made the recording? We solve the enigma of the ‘Wilhelm Miaow’

There is a movie star you’ve never heard of, but whom you’ve almost certainly heard. She’s in Toy Story and Babe, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Home Alone 3. You can catch her in Les Misérables. And if you’re a fan of being frightened, she’s also in End of Days and Pet Sematary. Once you’re familiar with her work, you start to hear her everywhere. Picture the scene: a frustrated character flings something, possibly a boot, off-camera. Perhaps we hear a bin lid clattering to the ground, and then it comes: the sound of a shocked cat screeching ferociously.

You may have heard of the Wilhelm Scream. In the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River, a character named Private Wilhelm loudly yelled “Argh!” after being shot in the thigh with an arrow. This yell subsequently became an overused sound effect, appearing in Star Wars and Indiana Jones among many, many other films. Hollywood is full of similar stock noises – spooky birds, ominous thunderclaps and generic telephone rings. The one I’m talking about could perhaps be christened the “Wilhelm Miaow”.

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