It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to the next picture show, a movie the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Scott Tobias here with Keith Phipps, Genevieve Kosky, and Tasha Robinson.

Here on the next picture show, we believe that no film exists in a vacuum and that all culture is more interesting in context.

So every week, we get together to talk over a classic film and consider how it relates to a current movie.

This week, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to allow me to get away with the laziest, most obvious introduction possible for a mission and possible pairing.

Bum, bum, bum, da da da da da da da-da-do. Okay,um-tah-da-d-da-da-do do. Okay, well, that's enough of that. So here's the situation.

Some vague international syndicate of disgruntled spies and near-de-wells have gotten their hands on a cache of weapons-grade plutonium.

The good news, we know where the plutonium is. The bad news, you're going to have to repel off the face of Mount Everest to get it.

And by you, I mean 56-year-old movie star Tom Cruise, who's been training for months with local Sherpas to acclimate himself to the thin air, punishing cold, and treacherous landscape.

Good luck to him. This podcast gimmick will self-destruct in five seconds.

So, Tasha, what are we talking about this week?

Mission, colon, Impossible, Endash, Fallout is the sixth entry in the franchise inspired by

the popular spy series from the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the 22 years since the original

Mission Impossible, the series has

cycled through five different directors, shifts in production teams, and a complete

overhaul of its supporting cast, say for Ving Rhames, whose Luther Stickle has stickled around

from the beginning. The one constant is producer-star Tom Cruise, who's used the franchise to keep

his star ascendant, even as his age and his personal

life, have made that mission a challenge, if not beyond the realm of the possible. And what's more,

...