MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE FALLOUT

stunned at how well he has educated her. Will’s mental condition is studied, and father and daughter are allotted residence in a commune operated by a lumberman who takes Will on his staff to cut Christmas trees. Tom is puzzled, then intrigued by meeting a boy her own age for the first time, and she finds the idea of having a roof over her head intriguing. But renegade Will has difficulty dealing with being confined indoors. It’s our privilege to weigh Will’s uncomfortable reaction to humanity (which we see here at its best; absolutely no one is less than kind to this family) and Tom’s fawn-like openness and curiosity around others. And it’s our duty to consider what should happen when Tom and Will see their paths diverge. This is a family love story of surprising power and depth. — Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN

PG-13, 114 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. Welcome back to the magical island of Kalokairi, a sun-strewn rocky outcropping in the azure Aegean Sea, a land where white people can only express themselves with the music of Sweden’s most enduring musical group, ABBA. The sequel/prequel hybrid “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” arrives a decade after the bonkers filmed adaptation of the stage musical “Mamma Mia!” Vehicles for ABBA’s songs, the films perfectly reflect the music: guileless, emotionally raw and unabashedly cheesy, wrapped in miles and miles of colorful synthetic fabric. This many lovelorn ABBA songs requires quite a story into which to shoehorn the tunes, and “Mamma Mia!” tripled down on love lost and found with three spurned lovers, Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), Sam (Pierce Brosnan) and Harry (Colin Firth), returning to Kalokairi for the wedding of Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who hoped to find her father. Now, she’s accepted all three men as adopted dads, and she’s reopening the hotel after her mother’s death (yep, there’s almost no Meryl Streep here). While she gives tours to visitors around the property, she reminisces about her mother’s journey to the island, right out of Oxford. We get the part of the story previously only detailed in a journal, of young hippie Donna (Lily James) and her three wayward lovers. James has proven a winsome presence in “Cinderella,” “Baby Driver” and “Darkest Hour,” but “Here We Go Again” is a breakout superstar moment for her as the free-spirited, earthy and open-hearted Donna. She’s an inspired singer and dancer, and every time the film cuts away from her story is a bit of a disappointment — even though it’s always entertaining to see what new ways the filmmakers have dreamed up to humiliate Skarsgård and Firth. But young Donna’s story is so much more emotionally engrossing, and the casting of Donna’s friends, the Dynamos (Jessica Keenan Wynn and Alexa Davies) is spot on, as well as her lovers Harry, Bill and Sam (Hugh Skinner, Josh Dylan and Jeremy Irvine). — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

— PG-13, 147 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. Is it even summer without a “Mission: Impossible” movie? Hardly. Thankfully, another installment of the Tom Cruise-starring action franchise, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” drops this weekend, as sturdy and reliable as ever. Under the swift and efficient supervision of writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, this is the kind of action filmmaking that proves to be an effective antidote for superhero fatigue, with a sense of realism baked into every shot. There’s no messy digital CGI here as our heroes try to stop explosions from happening with their fists and bodies. But there comes a point where we must ask: What does it all mean? Of all the “Mission: Impossible” installments, “Fallout” may be the sparest and most efficient — not counting the truly wild and gasp-worthy stunts. It’s taut and unadorned; there’s very little flash or distraction in the form of eye-popping costumes or exotic locations or gadgetry. There is no cinematic sleight of hand performed as a digression. It’s pure action wrapped around a twisty tale of terrorism, covert ops and the one man who stands between the world and nuclear destruction, Ethan Hunt (Cruise). The films have become less about espionage and intrigue, and more about Cruise and his death-defying acts of cinematic physicality, so McQuarrie strips away everything that might stand between Cruise and his stunt. He shoots in long shots with minimal cuts, and he keeps Cruise in and out of close-up to prove to the audience that it’s him. That’s Cruise, glancing over his shoulder on a motorcycle before he T-bones a car in Paris traffic. That’s Cruise, dashing across a rooftop and taking a flying leap, scrabbling to cling to the edge of a London office building. And yes, that’s most definitely Cruise, wrestling himself onto the undercarriage of a helicopter over the snowy Kashmir mountains in a sequence that will leave audiences laughing, gasping and cheering in disbelief. The film’s theme is choice, drawing from the wellknown instruction: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” That choice has never been drawn out before, but the question is posed as Hunt and his team secure Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a former British intelligence agent-turned-terrorist. Has Ethan ever not chosen a mission? For whom is he choosing to act? But the question is always “how?” rather than “why?” “Fallout” quickly drops the existential crisis for the fun and thrills of action, twists and identity swaps, for the added