Justin Chang

Cruise shows no sign of slowing down as he takes on the role of secret agent Ethan Hunt once again. Critic Justin Chang says the new Mission: Impossible is full of "exhilarating, large-scale action."

The city of Oakland, Calif., is experiencing something of a renaissance moment in the movies. You could trace it back to 2013, when the Oakland-born director Ryan Coogler made Fruitvale Station, his ripped-from-the-headlines drama about the fatal police shooting of Oscar Grant III. The Oakland renaissance continues this summer with Blindspotting and Sorry to Bother You, two inventive, genre-busting independent features, each one about a young black man on a strange and harrowing quest for survival.

The war on drugs has gone from bad to worse in this follow-up to the 2015 film. Justin Chang says that though its "bigger and brasher" than the original, the story in this sequel doesn't fully engage.