Speaking of movies...

Have you seen M:I:III, yet? George and I got a rare opportunity to get out of the "office" and hit the theaters this weekend. When we started our blog, we didn't want to spend all of our bandwidth talking about Curio, so I thought I'd take a few minutes to review Tom's latest action extravagansa.

For my money, M:I:III is the best of the series. It grabs your attention from the very beginning and holds it through the entire 2 hour running time. There are so many "impossible missions" in this installment that they eventually have to gloss over the details of some of them just to keep things focused.

Ethan Hunt isn't always on the job this time around. We actually get a glimpse of his personal life, where he's given up the life of the field agent and is now only training new agents. Attempting to establish a normal life for himself, he's fallen in love and is engaged to a beautiful young doctor named Julia, played by Michelle Monaghan.

But, the action begins when he's called on to rescue his star pupil, played by Keri Russell, who has been captured by the loathsome Owen Davian, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Hoffman excels as a truly terrifying villan. A man who's only emotion appears to be contempt. Cruise continues to impress as an action star capable of reaching emotional depths. Laurence Fishburn has one of the best monologues in the movie and delivers it with precision. In fact, all of the performances were excellent.

Like the previous movies, the story is simply a device for delivering one action sequence after another, but even still, it holds up suprisingly well. It's complicated, but if you think about the individual motivations of each character, it all makes sense, with one exception. But I won't divulge any details here, because I don't want to spoil anything for you.

M:I:III is an excellent way to start off the summer season of exciting popcorn movies. It's about escapism and adrenaline, and it delivers on both counts! If you get a chance, take a break and go see it.