Every item on this page was hand-picked by a House Beautiful editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.While some design-minded folks prefer the shiny, unmarked quality of newly made furniture and decor, others opt for the charm and history associated with vintage and antique treasures. Buying secondhand and locally is not only more sustainable, but it's a great way to avoid increased fees from recent tariff policies. There's never been a better time to invest in ready-made pieces that have seen decades (or even centuries) of history unfold. That said, discerning the true value of high-end antiques—whether it be a secretary desk whose top requires a bit of elbow grease to open or a Lalique bottle that bears a tiny chip in the base—is no easy feat. After all, if you don't know the ins and outs of this particular niche, you could very well get duped into overspending.To prepare you for your next outing to the antique shop, vintage store, or flea market, we asked experts in the field for their most helpful shopping tips. Here's what they had to say about sourcing decades-old treasures—without regretting your purchase later. Related Stories Buy From a Reputable Sourcetaikrixel//Getty Images"Fakes are really the rare outliers and not the norm in the world of antiques and vintage furniture," according to Anthony Barzilay Freund, editorial director and director of fine art at 1stDibs. He says that it's always best to investigate the reputation of individual dealers or browse a reputable online marketplace that sells only vetted and authenticated items. "When buying any piece of furniture that purports to be old, it's important that you are working with a reputable dealer who has a history of handling the type of material and a track record of participating in vetted fairs or selling on digital platforms such as 1stDibs that monitor inventory," Freund continues. That way, you can trust the info you're given. "You can perform your due diligence by asking the dealer to provide you with any information about the piece's provenance (who made it, where it was made, and who owned it over the years)."As for antique-hunting at thrift stores and flea markets, you may find a few quality pieces here and there. "And the more you look, the better able you'll be to discern quality," says Freund. So, browse often!Related StoryLook for a Maker’s MarkMany antiques from famed designers bear a stamp or signature indicating who made them—but many don't, and not all stamps can be trusted. "A piece that has a stamp may be an indication that it's by a specific designer, but there have been known cases in which some badly intentioned people use someone else's branding stamp to produce fakes," says Benoist F. Drut, owner of New York–based gallery Maison Gerard. The prolific 18th-century French designer George Jacobs, for instance, was famous for his iconic stamps, but even he didn't mark every piece he designed with a signature, so "you can't rely entirely on the stamp to prove authenticity," Drut says. That being said, he adds, "It's usually obvious if it's a real stamp and not a copy." Herman MillerIf there's an artist or design house you like, do some research first to uncover exactly what type of mark, if any, you should be seeking. For example, one of the most popular vintage pieces is the beloved Eames lounge chair. According to the brand, which still produces some of the designer's original designs, "Labels and stamps can be the best and the quickest method of authenticating your Eames design. It may also help you to date and value your piece." Every Eames piece, from the first designs from the early 1940s to the ones produced now, bears a label. The only exception is the fiberglass shell chair, each of which bears a stamp. Both the labels and stamps feature a series of letters and numbers that can help determine the exact age of the piece. Related StoryAsk for Provenance DocumentsThis may seem like the most straightforward step, but it's usually the least reliable for one key reason. "Pieces that are a few hundred years old move from place to place during their lifetime, and rarely do the papers follow them," Drut explains. In most cases, you simply have to decide whether or not you trust what the dealer is telling you to be true about a piece's provenance. Some items, however, do come with papers that can easily be authenticated. These pieces are typically ones that have been in the family's estate for generations. If such papers aren't available, he adds, a piece may also be listed in probate inventories or wills, so be sure to check everywhere.A piece with family provenance further helps validate its authenticity. In certain occasions, a piece may be seen in an early 20th-century black and white photograph or, in rare instances, in a daguerreotype.—Erik GronningRelated StoryDo Your Own ResearchBeeldbewerking//Getty ImagesIf you're considering an older piece, the dealer from whom you're buying it should have a general idea of the year or decade it was produced. With that information, do some digging about how similar pieces of furniture were made and with which types of materials. "Look at books about that time period and, if you can, visit museums," says Drut. "It doesn't take a professional to see all of the subtle details—such as the materials and techniques used—that indicate if it's authentic or not." Along the way, you might uncover some lesser-known designers whose pieces are still genuine works of art, but may be easier to find and more affordable to purchase. (If an Eames chair is out of your price range, for example, you might want to look into a Plycraft seat.)Related StoryPerform a “Run-Down”Before making a big-ticket purchase, ask the dealer what the piece is made of—the response will be another indicator of authenticity. Take chairs as an example."Plenty of chairs and sofas made today are filled with foam," says Drut. "An 18th-century chair, however, will be filled with horsehair, as foam was not invented until much later in the 20th century."You'll also want to observe where small marks or imperfections in the construction may bear the signature of a handcrafted (as opposed to mass-produced) item. "The process of making a piece of furniture using only hand tools leaves behind 'tool marks,'" says Erik Gronning, Sotheby's head of Americana. "Saws leave a mark called a saw kerf while planes leave plane marks, and modern electrical powered saws and planes also leave marks, but theirs are regular and not inconsistent as one sees with hand tools." Related Story Request Pre-Restoration PhotosGiorez//Getty Images"If the piece has been extensively cleaned and/or refinished," Freund advises, "ask to see pre-restoration photographs." Any reputable restorer regularly enlisted by antique dealers is likely to have a few on hand. Here's the thing about restorations: They're not a bad thing, and they're definitely not a reason to question a piece's authenticity or age. For instance, Drut says, if you're considering buying a 19th-century chair whose back leg is attached with glue, "that's because it's 200 years old and, without the glue, the chair may not be usable." Looking at an image of the chair before the glue was applied can reassure you that you're getting a strengthened original, not a fake. On the other hand, if you find a centuries-old piece that looks spotless, "How can you explain that? You can't," says Drut." An alleged antique that looks too good to be true probably is." Consider what an update may be concealing: "If something has been fully painted over, that often means that someone has something to hide. Stay away," says Drut. More specifically, Gronning adds that "18th- and early 19th-century pieces in their 'original' surface have a very dark or nearly black appearance that, to the untrained eye, could appear dirty or ratty, but it is this appearance that helps authenticate its age." If this is the case with an antique treasure you're considering, it's important to look at any perceived flaws as marks of character. "Antiques and vintage pieces have a patina and personality that one cannot find in a newly constructed object," Freund says. "Rather than viewing this as damage or wear and tear, antique lovers think signs of age give an object a visual interest, warmth, and uniqueness that really enhances the character of a room." Follow House Beautiful on Instagram and TikTok.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business preview: ‘We created something bigger than we expected’ Adam Starkey Published June 3, 2025 9:00am Stay out of trouble (Nacon) GameCentral goes hands-on with the standalone expansion of RoboCop: Rogue City, which dials up the action and gory splatter of 2023’s surprise hit. For a franchise that has arguably done nothing of worth since the early 90s, the future of RoboCop is looking surprisingly bright. Following Amazon’s acquisition of MGM, a new TV show is currently in the works, with rumbles of a new film as well. Whether this leads to a major rejuvenation for everyone’s favourite cyborg law enforcer remains to be seen, but the original source of any RoboCop redemption arc has to start with 2023’s RoboCop: Rogue City.  Developed by Polish studio Teyon, RoboCop: Rogue City was the kind of unexpected surprise you rarely get from licensed games. It recaptured the original’s wit and 80s aesthetic, but also found a way to deliver the fantasy of playing as the half-human cyborg without streamlining any of the character’s personality. The bloody action was built around his hulking, slow movement, dry one-liners were in abundance, and missions weren’t always reduced to mowing down thugs in corridors – you also handed people parking tickets, settled trivial civilian disputes, and, in one wonderfully mundane side mission, did the rounds in the office for a get well card.  The game became publisher Nacon’s ‘best ever launch’ with 435,000 players within two weeks. Now, a year and a half later, developer Teyon is back with a standalone expansion. Marketing around Unfinished Business has purposefully dodged the term *DLC*, but as explained by the studio’s communications manager, Dawid Biegun, it started out as exactly that.  ‘When we released RoboCop: Rogue City, we were thinking about, this story has many things [we can] do in the future,’ says Biegun. ‘We had many paths we could choose. So we basically started slowly developing some new storyline. The game was planned to be DLC but it grew out of control. It was a really rare situation where we created something bigger than we expected, so it became a standalone expansion from then.’ Unlike Rogue City, this expansion, which we’re told spans around eight hours on average, is centred around one location in the OmniTower. Like most things in the RoboCop realm created by OCP, this promised idyllic housing complex quickly goes south when a band of mercenaries assume control. To restore order, and after a creepy opening where an attack on the Detroit police station leaves several officers frozen solid, RoboCop is assigned to the case.  RoboCop has new moves at his disposal (Nacon) Unfinished Business wastes little time in throwing you into the action, and quickly amps up the chaos. For anyone who has played Rogue City, all the original tenets of the combat are here, albeit with a slight increase in difficulty. You’ll be looking for explosive cans to blast, illuminated panels to ricochet bullets off walls, and all the while trying not to expose yourself to too much gunfire. The combat purposefully doesn’t have the slick speed of Call Of Duty, but it is still aggressively punchy, with headshots resulting in satisfyingly bloody splatters and RoboCop’s famed Auto-9 machine pistol still having the kickback of a pocket pneumatic drill.  From the get-go, Unfinished Business pushes back in a way Rogue City never did. New enemies equipped with riot shields are a real nuisance if you don’t utilise the ricochet panels, while the ability to slow down time is a much bigger crutch to chip down the enemy numbers from a distance. Health pick-ups felt in shorter supply too, even on the normal difficulty, to the point where we barely scraped through several encounters.  While it’s unclear if this applies to the whole game, Unfinished Business feels like a gnarlier experience, when compared to the original. RoboCop has some new context sensitive finishing moves, like throwing enemy heads into concrete walls or vending machines, which is a satisfying addition to the melee arsenal. There’s greater enemy variety too, between fierce minigun heavyweights and flying drones, along with some neat action set pieces. In one standout, we had to operate a walkway bridge to deactivate a giant turret at the end of a room, dashing between cover as it rains down bullets and destroys the surrounding environment. Anyone who has played action games before will recognise all the mechanics at play in this scenario, but it was still well executed and effective. Another had a whiff of Star Wars, as you rush around shooting electrical panels to stop a trash compactor from crushing you via the descending ceiling. The action shift in Unfinished Business is best defined by a later sequence we got to play, where you take control of the franchise’s signature mech, ED-209. If the power fantasy of playing as RoboCop is tested in this expansion, ED-209’s section was pure mental catharsis, where you blast away enemy hordes with miniguns and rockets, and clean up any stragglers with a rigid, robotic stomp. The rush of piloting ED-209, with its cacophony of explosions and bullets, felt like a throwback to vehicle sections in a long lost Xbox 360 game – but in a good way.  While there’s a definite lean towards combat, rather than gift card signing, when compared to Rogue City, it hasn’t entirely abandoned the detective side. According to the developers, if Rogue City had a 60/40 percent split between guns and detective work, Unfinished Business ‘would be like 70/30, or 80/20’ in comparison. More Trending We saw some of this , with one memorable encounter seeing you quizzed by a RoboCop superfan who is unconvinced you’re the actual RoboCop, leading to a series of questions based on the history of the franchise. There is optional side missions too, although the time we had with our preview limited our chance to fully delve into them. The sales and positive reviews for RoboCop: Rogue City emboldened Teyon’s vision and scope for Unfinished Business – and that confidence shines through in what we played. Some might be disappointed by the steer towards action, and we were heading into this preview, but by the end, this felt like a welcome extension with its own unique flavour. This is RoboCop: Rogue City with its pedal to the floor, confined and concentrated into a lean, tightly focused machine.  As for the studio’s next steps, the success of RoboCop has only reaffirmed Teyon’s strengths and identity as a team. Between its three studios across Poland and Japan, with over 140 employees in total, Teyon wants to maintain its grip within the AA space. ‘We feel strong here in such games,’ Biegun said. ‘We wouldn’t want to grow like 200, 300, 400 people, because we’re going to lose our soul this way. We want to stay as we are right now.’ ED-209 needs be wary of stairs (Nacon) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. Arrow MORE: How to get a Nintendo Switch 2 this week in the UK GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

Some designers are lucky to find projects with excellent beginnings. That was Jessica Helgerson's experience when the Oregon and Paris-based designer, who launched a line of flatweave rugs this month, began a recent gut renovation for a family of five in Portland.With views of the Willamette River and the peak of Mount Hood, the early 1900s home was designed by famed Northwest architect Wade Pipes, who spread a style of architecture across the area that emphasized natural materials, known as Arts and Crafts residential architecture.Aaron LeitzHelgerson added the breakfast nook to the original footprint of the house. The artwork (left) by Miró served as the reference for the colors of the ceiling and banquette. Helgerson, who describes her design approach as “responsive,” expanded Pipes’ original design by building a new three-car garage and converting the existing one into a mudroom and laundry room. She also added a breakfast nook to the kitchen. The clients brought their museum-worthy collection of art into the home, including an extensive collection of over 30 pieces by Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. Those works were the inspiration for the design that followed.“I wanted the art to settle in and not fight with the space, but feel held by it," Helgerson said, describing the project as an opportunity to discover how to include the art in a manner that felt intentional but "didn’t dominate the whole thing."Aaron LeitzIn the attic bedroom, Helgerson opened up the ceiling, taking it to its peak, and designed the metal beams for structural support. The beds are antique. To accomplish that goal, Helgerson pulled the primary colors from the bold artworks and carried that scheme throughout the house. Walking through the front door, you're greeted by Benjamin Moore’s Evening Dove, a gray-blue shade that makes a welcoming statement. The blue theme continues into the dining room and bar area with Farrow & Ball’s Stiffkey Blue, a more muted blue, accented by Calder’s Windmill and 2 Suns artworks. In the living room, she planned the room renovation around the placement of Miró's Sur Quatre Murs, a focal point above the fireplace mantle. Soft blue sisal by Holland & Sherry covers the walls and acts as a backdrop to the Calders dotted around the room. The dark stained fir walls in the family room are livened up with a colorful Miró. And, a bifold panel above the mantel strategically hides the television so that the room can function as both a place to unwind and to entertain guests.The kitchen breakfast nook and cabinets mirror the blue and muted red in Miro’s Constellations Pochoir, which hangs "I love the design puzzle and how to solve it in a way that feels nice and authentic," Helgerson said. Take A Look Inside This Portland, Oregon House

In the summer of 2023, I wrote about a shocking scandal at Harvard Business School: Star professor Francesca Gino had been accused of falsifying data in four of her published papers, with whispers there was falsification in others, too. A series of posts on Data Colada, a blog that focuses on research integrity, documented Gino’s apparent brazen data manipulation, which involved clearly changing study data to better support her hypotheses. This was a major accusation against a researcher at the top of her field, but Gino’s denials were unconvincing. She didn’t have a good explanation for what had gone wrong, asserting that maybe a research assistant had done it, even though she was the only author listed across all four of the falsified studies. Harvard put her on unpaid administrative leave and barred her from campus.The cherry on top? Gino’s main academic area of study was honesty in business.As I wrote at the time, my read of the evidence was that Gino had most likely committed fraud. That impression was only reinforced by her subsequent lawsuit against Harvard and the Data Colada authors. Gino complained that she’d been defamed and that Harvard hadn’t followed the right investigation process, but she didn’t offer any convincing explanation of how she’d ended up putting her name to paper after paper with fake data.This week, almost two years after the news first broke, the process has reached its resolution: Gino was stripped of tenure, the first time Harvard has essentially fired a tenured professor in at least 80 years. (Her defamation lawsuit against the bloggers who found the data manipulation was dismissed last year.)What we do right and wrong when it comes to scientific fraudHarvard is in the news right now for its war with the Trump administration, which has sent a series of escalating demands to the university, canceled billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts, and is now blocking the university from enrolling international students, all in an apparent attempt to force the university to conform to MAGA’s ideological demands. Stripping a celebrity professor of tenure might not seem like the best look at a moment when Harvard is in an existential struggle for its right to exist as an independent academic institution. But the Gino situation, which long predates the conflict with Trump, shouldn’t be interpreted solely through the lens of that fight. Scientific fraud is a real problem, one that is chillingly common across academia. But far from putting the university in a bad light, Harvard’s handling of the Gino case has actually been unusually good, even though it still underscores just how much further academia has to go to ensure scientific fraud becomes rare and is reliably caught and punished.There are two parts to fraud response: catching it and punishing it. Academia clearly isn’t very good at the first part. The peer-review process that all meaningful research undergoes tends to start from the default assumption that data in a reviewed paper is real, and instead focuses on whether the paper represents a meaningful advance and is correctly positioned with respect to other research. Almost no reviewer is going back to check to see if what is described in a paper actually happened.Fraud, therefore, is often caught only when other researchers actively try to replicate a result or take a close look at the data. Science watchdogs who find these fraud cases tell me that we need a strong expectation that data be made public — which makes it much harder to fake — as well as a scientific culture that embraces replications. (Given the premiums journals put on novelty in research and the supreme importance of publishing for academic careers, there’s been little motivation for scientists to pursue replication.). It is these watchdogs, not anyone at Harvard or in the peer-review process, who caught the discrepancies that ultimately sunk Gino.Crime and no punishmentEven when fraud is caught, academia too often fails to properly punish it. When third-party investigators bring a concern to the attention of a university, it’s been unusual for the responsible party to actually face consequences. One of Gino’s co-authors on one of the retracted papers was Dan Ariely, a star professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He, too, has been credibly accused of falsifying data: For example, he published one study that he claimed took place at UCLA with the assistance of researcher Aimee Drolet Rossi. But UCLA says the study didn’t happen there, and Rossi says she did not participate in it. In a past case, he claimed on a podcast to have gotten data from the insurance company Delta Dental, which the company says it did not collect. In another case, an investigation by Duke reportedly found that data from a paper he co-authored with Gino had been falsified, but that there was no evidence Ariely had used fake data knowingly.Frankly, I don’t buy this. Maybe an unlucky professor might once end up using data that was faked without their knowledge. But if it happens again, I’m not willing to credit bad luck, and at some point, a professor who keeps “accidentally” using falsified or nonexistent data should be out of a job even if we can’t prove it was no accident. But Ariely, who has maintained his innocence, is still at Duke. Or take Olivier Voinnet, a plant biologist who had multiple papers conclusively demonstrated to contain image manipulation. He was found guilty of misconduct and suspended for two years. It’s hard to imagine a higher scientific sin than faking and manipulating data. If you can’t lose your job for that, the message to young scientists is inevitably that fraud isn’t really that serious. What it means to take fraud seriouslyGino’s loss of tenure, which is one of a few recent cases where misconduct has had major career consequences, might be a sign that the tides are changing. In 2023, around when the Gino scandal broke, Stanford’s then-president Marc Tessier-Lavigne stepped down after 12 papers he authored were found to contain manipulated data. A few weeks ago, MIT announced a data falsification scandal with a terse announcement that the university no longer had confidence in a widely distributed paper “by a former second-year PhD student.” It’s reasonable to assume the student was expelled from the program.I hope that these high-profile cases are a sign we are moving in the right direction on scientific fraud because its persistence is enormously damaging to science. Other researchers waste time and energy following false lines of research substantiated by fake data; in medicine, falsification can outright kill people. But even more than that, research fraud damages the reputation of science at exactly the moment when it is most under attack.We should tighten standards to make fraud much harder to commit in the first place, and when it is identified, the consequences should be immediate and serious. Let’s hope Harvard sets a trend.A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. 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Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably noticed that AI's being crammed everywhere. From Taco Bell drivethrus to eye glasses to schools, the AI boom is forcing the tech anywhere it can fit.That means it'll also be in your toilet soon, at least if one tech startup has its way.Based out of — where else — Austin, Throne is a bold new startup leveraging AI to revolutionize the way we interact with our toilet. The new company just raised $4 million in venture capitalist funds, courting some angel investors like famed bicycle doper Lance Armstrong, according to TechCrunch.By now you might have some questions: why do I need AI in my toilet? Four million dollars? Lance Armstrong!?Relax. You'll give yourself an ulcer. Luckily, Throne can help.At its core, Throne is a toilet-mounted camera that pairs with your phone to analyze your ones and twos. "It’s time to stop flushing away valuable data," as Throne's website greets.Throne proports to help health-conscious users monitor all kinds of important metrics from your waste, such as your "personalized Urinary Flow Score," which it tracks by listening "to the rhythm of your stream... [and turning] those sounds into easy-to-read trends."Other metrics include users' "Digestive Pattern," which it categorizes by "hard, healthy, loose, and liquid," as well as a urine "Hydration Score," which it tracks in real-time, "empowering you to stay hydrated, one insight at a time."And apartment dwellers who share a bathroom, don't worry — Throne's for you too. "Just set up individual profiles in our app," the startup's website advises, "and thanks to Bluetooth, Throne knows exactly who's who." What a relief!That goes both ways. Say your awful house guest decides to leave you a floater. Unless they've set up a personal profile and connected to your toilet via Bluetooth, Throne's state-of-the-art AI is trained to ignore it.Users can currently pre-order Throne for just $399, plus a $5.99 recurring monthly fee.One can imagine many ways tech like this could come in handy. If it works as its website advertises — and that's a big if, given the growing landfill of failed AI devices — it could certainly help folks with issues like Crohn's disease or liver problems.TC, for example, tells the story of Throne's founders lurking outside Armstrong's bathroom as he "used" a prototype. Armstrong, the former Tour de France winner, has since been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Some cancers can be detected through changes in urinary habits, the American Cancer Society notes, which probably explains why Armstrong felt compelled to cut Throne a check.Still, as Throne's uncanny ad-copy intones, the startup also represents a perfidious trend in healthcare, where buzzy tech gadgets snatch millions of dollars from wealthy investors while deep structural problems go unaddressed.Throne has the added quality of feeding into a frenzied wellness culture, where similar tracking gadgets help feed an unhealthy obsession with monitoring every possible thing our bodies do.We'll let Lance take this one.More on Startups: A Billion Dollar AI Startup Just Collapsed SpectacularlyShare This Article

This article contains some Mission: Impossible – The Final reckoning spoilers. In the most recent and supposedly final Mission: Impossible film, Ethan Hunt receives his briefing on a VHS cassette tape. That is a marvelous wink to the era in whichMission: Impossible, but these films have remained consistently at the zenith of quality blockbuster cinema. And through it all remains Tom Cruise, running, gunning, and smoldering with his various, luxuriant haircuts. Indeed, the first M:I picture was also Cruise’s first as a producer, made under the banner of Cruise/Wagner productions. Perhaps for that reason, he has stayed committed to what was once viewed as simply a “television adaptation.” It might have begun as TV IP, but in Cruise’s hands it has become a cinematic magnum opus that sequel after sequel, and decade after decade, has blossomed into one of the most inventive and satisfying spectacles ever produced in the Hollywood system. The final decade of the series’ run in particular has been groundbreaking. After five movies with five very different directors, aesthetics, and sensibilities, Christopher McQuarrie stuck around—alongside stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood. Together with Cruise, they turned the series into an old-fashioned, in-camera spectacle that harkens back to the earliest days of cinema. In the process, Cruise has added another chapter to his career, that of an onscreen daredevil like Harold Lloyd or Douglas Fairbanks. It’s been an amazing run, and honestly it’s a bit arbitrary to quantify it with any sort of ranking. But if we were going to do such a thing, here is how it should go… 8. Mission: Impossible II (2000) It’s hardly controversial to put John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II dead last. From its overabundance of slow-mo action—complete with Woo’s signature flying doves—to its use of Limp Bizkit, and even that nonsensical plot about manmade viruses that still doesn’t feel timely on the other side of 2020, MI:-2 is a relic of late ‘90s Hollywood excess. On the one hand, it’s kind of marvelous that Cruise let Woo completely tear down and rebuild a successful franchise-starter in the Hong Kong filmmaker’s own image. On the other, it’s perhaps telling of where Cruise’s ego was at that time since Woo used this opportunity to transform the original all-American Ethan Hunt into a god of celluloid marble. And make no mistake, there is something godlike to how Woo’s camera fetishizes Cruise’s sunglasses and new, luxuriant mane of jet black hair during Hunt’s big introduction where he is seen free-climbing across a rock face without rope. It would come to work as metaphor for the rest of the movie where, despite ostensibly being the leader of a team, Ethan is mostly going it alone as he does ridiculous things like have a medieval duel against his evil doppelgänger (Dougray Scott), only both men now ride motorcycles instead of horses. The onscreen team, meanwhile, stares slack-jawed as Ethan finds his inner-Arnold Schwarzenegger and massacres entire scores of faceless mercenaries in multiple shootouts. While gunplay has always been an element of modern spy thrillers, the Mission: Impossible movies work best when the characters use their wits (and the stunt team’s ingenuity) to escape elaborate, tricky situations. So there’s something banal about the way M:I-2 resembles any other late ‘90s and early ‘00s actioner that might’ve starred Nicolas Cage or Bruce Willis. Technically the plot, which involves Ethan’s reluctance to send new flame Nyah Hall (Thandiwe Newton) into the lion’s den as an informant, has classical pedigree. The movie remakes Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) in all but name. However, the movie is so in love with its movie star deity that even the supposedly central romance is cast in ambivalent shadow. 7. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) Yes, we admit to also being surprised that what is allegedly intended to be the last Mission: Impossible movie is finishing near the very bottom of this list. Which is not to say that The Final Reckoning is a bad movie. It’s just a messy one—and disappointing too. Perhaps the expectations were too high for a film with “final” in the title. Also its reportedly eye-popping $400 million only fueled the hype. But whereas the three previous Mission films directed by Christopher McQuarrie, including Dead Reckoning, had a light playfulness about them, The Final Reckoning gets lost in its own self-importance and grandiosity. Once again we have a Mission flick determined to deify Ethan Hunt with McQuarrie’s “gambler” from the last couple movies taking on the imagery of the messiah. Now the AI fate of the world lies in his literal hands. This approach leads to many long expository sequences where characters blather endlessly about the motivations of an abstract artificial intelligence. Meanwhile far too little time is spent on the sweet spot for this series: Cruise’s chemistry with co-stars when he isn’t hanging from some death-defying height. In fact, Ethan goes it pretty much alone in this one, staring down generals, submarine captains, and American presidents—fools all to think for one instance Ethan isn’t the guy sent to redeem them for their sins. The action sequences are still jaw-dropping when they finally come, and it is always good to see co-stars Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, and an all too briefly used Ving Rhames again, but this feels less like a finale than a breaking point. If Mission does come back, it will have to be as something wildly different (and presumably less expensive). 6. Mission: Impossible III (2006) Before he transformed Star Trek and Star Wars into remarkably similar franchises, writer-director J.J. Abrams made his big screen debut by doing much the same to the Mission: Impossible franchise. With his emphasis on extreme close-ups, heavy expository dialogue dumps, and intentionally vague motivations for his villains that seem to always have something to do with the War on Terror, Abrams remade the M:I franchise in the image of his TV shows, particularly Alias. This included turning Woo’s Übermensch from the last movie into the kind of suburban everyman who scores well with the Nielsen ratings and who has a sweet girl-next-door fiancée (Michelle Monaghan). Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Your mileage may vary with this approach, but personally we found M:I-3 to be too much of a piece with mid-2000s television and lacking in a certain degree of movie magic. With that said, the movie has two fantastic aces up its sleeve. The first and most significant is a deliciously boorish performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the franchise’s scariest villain. Abrams’ signature monologues have never been more chilling as when Hoffman cuts through Cruise’s matinee heroics like a knife and unsettles the protagonist and the audience with an unblinking declaration of ill-intent. Perhaps more impressively, during one of the franchise’s famed “mask” sequences where Ethan disguises himself as Hoffman’s baddie, the character actor subtly and convincingly mimics Cruise’s leading man charisma. That, plus introducing fan favorite Simon Pegg as Benji to the series (if in little more than a cameo), makes the movie worth a watch if not a regular revisit. According to more than a few critics in 2023, the then-newest installment in the series was also the best one. I respectfully disagree. The first half of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise’s Dead Reckoning In terms of old school spectacle and breakneck pacing, Dead Reckoning is easily the most entertaining action movie of summer 2023’s offerings. However, when compared to the best entries in the M:I franchise, Dead Reckoning leaves something be desired. While McQuarrie’s counterintuitive instinct to script the scenes after designing the set pieces, and essentially make it up as they went along, paid off in dividends in Fallout, the narrative of Dead Reckoning’s first half is shaggy and muddled. The second act is especially disjointed when the film arrives in Venice, and the actors seem as uncertain as the script is over what exactly the film’s nefarious A.I. villain, codename: “The Entity,” wants. That this is the portion of the film which also thanklessly kills off fan favorite Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) does the movie no favors. Elsewhere in the film, Hayley Atwell proves a fantastic addition in her own right as Grace—essentially a civilian and audience surrogate who gets wrapped up in the M:I series’ craziness long enough to stare at Cruise in incredulity—but the inference that she is here to simply interchangeably replace Ilsa gives the film a sour subtext. Still, Atwell’s Grace is great, Cruise’s Ethan is as mad as ever with his stunts, and even as the rest of the ensemble feels underutilized, seeing the team back together makes this a good time—while the unexpected return of Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge is downright great. 4. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) There are many fans who will tell you that the Mission: Impossible franchise as we know it really started with this Brad Bird entry at the beginning of the 2010s, and it’s easy to see why. As the first installment made with a newly chastened Cruise—who Paramount Pictures had just spent years trying to fire from the series—it’s also the installment where the movie star remade his persona as a modern day Douglas Fairbanks. Here he becomes the guy you could count on to commit the most absurdly dangerous and ridiculous stunts for our entertainment. What a mensch. And in terms of set pieces, nothing in the series may top this movie’s second act where Cruise is asked to become a real-life Spider-Man and wall-crawl—as well as swing and skip—along the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It’s a genuine showstopper that looms over the rest of the movie. Not that there isn’t a lot to enjoy elsewhere as Bird brings a slightly more sci-fi and cartoonish cheek to the proceedings with amusing gadgets like those aforementioned “blue means glue” Spidey gloves. Even more amusingly, the damn things never seem to work properly. This is also the first Mission: Impossible movie where the whole team feels vital to the success of the adventure, including a now proper sidekick in the returning Pegg and some solid support from Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner. For a certain breed of fan that makes this the best, but we would argue the team dynamics were fleshed out a little better down the road, and in movies that have more than one stunning set piece to their name. 3. Mission: Impossible (1996) The last four entries of the series have been so good that it’s become common for folks to overlook the movie that started it all, Brian De Palma’s endlessly stylish Mission: Impossible. That’s a shame since there’s something admirably blasphemous to this day about a movie that would take an ancient pop culture property and throw the fundamentals out the window. In this case, that meant turning the original show’s hero, Jim Phelps (played by Jon Voight here), into the villain while completely rewriting the rulebook about what the concept of “Mission: Impossible” is. It’s the bold kind of creative move studios would never dare make now, but that’s what opened up the space to transform a novelty of ‘60s spymania TV into a ‘90s action classic, complete with heavy emphasis on techno espionage babble and post-Cold War politics. The movie can at times appear dated given the emphasis on floppy disks and AOL email accounts, but it’s also got a brisk energy that never goes out of style thanks to De Palma’s ability to frame a knotty script by David Koepp and Robert Towne (the latter of whom penned Chinatown) into a breathlessly paced thriller filled with paranoia, double crosses, femme fatales, and horrifying dream sequences. In other words, it’s a De Palma special! The filmmaker and Cruise also craft a series of set pieces that would become the series’ defining trademark. The finale with a fistfight atop a speeding train beneath the English Channel is great, but the quiet as a church mouse midpoint where Cruise’s hero dangles over the pressure-sensitive floor of a CIA vault—and with a drop of sweat dripping just out of reach!—is the stuff of popcorn myth. It’s how M:I also became as much a great heist series as shoot ‘em up. Plus, this movie gave us Ving Rhames’ stealth MVP hacker, Luther Stickell. 2. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) In retrospect there is something faintly low-key about Rogue Nation, as ludicrous as that might be to say about a movie that begins with its star literally clinging for dear life to the outside of a plane at take off. Yet given how grand newcomer director Christopher McQuarrie would take things in the following three Mission films, his more restrained first iteration seems charmingly small scale in comparison. Even so, it remains an action marvel in its own right, as well as the most balanced and well-structured adventure in the series. It’s the one where the project of making Ethan Hunt a tangible character began. Rightly assessing Ethan to be a “gambler” based on his inconsistent yet continuously deranged earlier appearances, McQuarrie spins a web where Hunt’s dicey lifestyle comes back to haunt him when facing a villain who turns those showboat instincts in on themselves, and which pairs Ethan for the first time against the best supporting character in the series, Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust. There’s a reason Ferguson’s MI6 double (triple, quadruple?) agent was the first leading lady in the series to become a recurring character. She gives a star-making turn as a woman who is in every way Ethan’s equal while keeping him and the audience on their toes. She, alongside a returning Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, solidify the definitive Mission team, all while McQuarrie crafts elegant set pieces with classical flair, including a night at the opera that homages and one-ups Alfred Hitchcock’s influential sequence from The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), as well as a Casablanca chase between Ethan and Ilsa that’s the best motorcycle sequence in the series (if only they stopped by Rick’s). Also McQuarrie’s script ultimately figures out who Ethan Hunt truly is by letting all those around him realize he’s a madman. And Alec Baldwin’s Alan Hunley gets this gem of a line to sums the series up in total: “Hunt is uniquely trained and highly motivated, a specialist without equal, immune to any countermeasures. There is no secret he cannot extract, no security he cannot breach, no person he cannot become. He has most likely anticipated this very conversation and is waiting to strike in whatever direction we move. Sir, Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny—and he has made you his mission.” 1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) If one were to rank these movies simply by virtue of set pieces and stunts, pound for pound it’s impossible to top Mission: Impossible – Fallout (forgive the pun). A virtuoso showcase in action movie bliss, there are too many giddy mic drop moments to list, but among our favorites are: Tom Cruise doing a real HALO jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet and which was captured by camera operator Craig O’Brien, who had an IMAX camera strapped to his head; the extended fight sequence between Cruise, Henry Cavill, and Liam Yang in a bathroom where the music completely drops out so we can hear every punch, kick, and that surreal moment where Cavill needs to reload his biceps like they’re shotguns; and did you see Cruise’s ankle bend the wrong way in that building to building jump?! For action junkies, there was no better adrenaline kick out of Hollywood in the 2010s than this flick, and that is in large part a credit to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie. As the first filmmaker to helm more than one M:I movie, McQuarrie had the seemingly counterintuitive innovation to meticulously hammer out all of the above action sequences as well as others—such as a motorcycle chase across the cobblestones of Paris and a helicopter climax where Cruise is really flying his chopper at low altitudes—with stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood and Cruise, and then retroactively pen a surprisingly tight and satisfying screenplay that continues to deconstruct the Ethan Hunt archetype into a man of flesh and blood. McQuarrie also reunites all the best supporting players in the series—Rhames, Pegg, and his own additions of Rebecca Ferguson as the ambiguous Ilsa Faust and Sean Harris as the dastardly Solomon Lane—into a yarn that is as zippy and sharp as you might expect from the screenwriter of The Usual Suspects, but which lets each action sequence unfurl with all the pageantry of an old school Gene Kelly musical number. Many will call this the best Mission: Impossible movie, and we won’t quibble the point.

All products featured on Architectural Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.“I don’t like fame. I don’t like the sense of belonging to the public,” Elizabeth Taylor admits in Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, the 2024 documentary featuring unearthed recordings of the Hollywood legend by journalist Richard Meryman. “The person my family know[s] is real. But the other Elizabeth Taylor, the famous one, really has no depth or meaning to me. It’s a commodity and it makes money. One is flesh and blood, and one is cellophane.” Taylor, who skyrocketed to fame as a child actor and was among the first film stars to receive a $1 million payday for a role, spent much of her life in the spotlight. It’s not surprising, then, that the late icon considered her public image to be completely divorced from her private persona.The Lost Tapes grants viewers a glimpse into that life through Taylor’s candid reflections on it all—the romances, the tragedies, the opulence, and the scandals. Though her superstar status meant that even her rare private moments sometimes got the on-camera treatment, the below selection reveals an intimate look at the “real” Elizabeth Taylor’s time at home, outside the limelight.Photo: George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images1/211942In 1939, Taylor, her older brother Howard, and her parents—stage actress Sara Sothern and art dealer Francis Lenn Taylor—moved from London to Los Angeles. After a couple of years living in LA’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the family moved into a Spanish-style Beverly Hills home. Here, Howard and Elizabeth are seen in the backyard with their pets during the year in which the 10-year-old began her acting career.Photo: Earl Theisen/Getty Images2/211947This 1947 shot shows Taylor and her mother prepping hamburgers and hot dogs in the kitchen of their family home. Biographer Alexander Walker wrote that the 1929-built abode sported “pink stucco walls and red roof tiles, a huge round-arched window facing the road and a dusty front ‘yard’ with an olive tree in it.” It would remain the young starlet’s home until her first marriage.Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images3/211949Featuring decorative tiles and terra-cotta floors, the dwelling had all the classic Spanish-style details that remain beloved throughout Los Angeles today. The Hollywood legend is pictured here at age 17, drying off her dog, Amy (named after Taylor’s character in the film Little Women, which hit theaters in March of that year).Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images4/211949The future Oscar winner is seen here with her mother reading sheet music at their piano. At the time, Taylor was engaged to William Pawley Jr., the son of a US ambassador. “I want our hearts to belong to each other throughout eternity,” the teenage actor wrote in a letter to Pawley. It wasn’t in the cards, however; the engagement ended just a few months later.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images5/211950Photographed in her childhood home, the movie star twirls in a velvet dress before an ornately framed painting. Walking in her father’s footsteps, Taylor continued to collect art throughout her life. The very same painting can be seen in photos of Taylor’s final residence, six decades after this snapshot was taken.Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images6/211950Eager for independence from her sheltered upbringing, Taylor married hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr. in May 1950 at the age of 18. However, Hilton was “abusive, physically and mentally,” the actor wrote in her 1988 book Elizabeth Takes Off. “The honeymoon and the relationship were both over by the time we returned. I couldn’t bear to reveal that my marriage was a failure, and I kept quiet for months. Around Christmas, I could stand it no longer and moved out of our house.” The residence in question, pictured here, was a Pacific Palisades rental where the pair stayed after a stint at the Bel Air Hotel.Photo: Ed Jackson/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images7/211951The young couple officially divorced in January 1951 and Taylor moved into New York’s Plaza Hotel, which was owned by Hilton’s father at the time. The exes met on October 15, 1951, in her suite to wrap up some loose ends—including a property settlement, per the New York Daily News, which published the above snapshot. The star speaks fondly of her time at the iconic hotel in The Lost Tapes, describing it as “the first kind of free, independent time I’d ever had in my life.”Photo: Ed Jackson/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images8/211951The couple discusses the divorce settlement and meets with the press in Taylor’s Plaza suite here. “I was a divorcée, and I was 19. Roddy [McDowall] was there with me, and Monty [Clift]. Just having fun with my chums, doing all kinds of crazy things,” Taylor said of her time living at the famed hotel. “If I wanted to go ice skating at nine at night, we would. Or we’d just have hot dogs all day long. Completely irresponsible sort of behavior. I didn’t have to keep proper hours. I didn’t have to do anything properly. And I had a ball.”Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images9/211952In 1952, Taylor married English actor Michael Wilding and moved into his London apartment, where they are pictured here playing piano. The starlet looked to Wilding, who was two decades her senior, as a source of stability and comfort following her volatile first marriage, she explains in The Lost Tapes.Photo: WATFORD/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images10/211953Taylor and Wilding bought a house in Beverly Hills in 1953, the same year that the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof star gave birth to her first child, Michael Jr. Pictured in September of that year, the 21-year-old actor reclines on her sofa with the infant. “We will have the outside painted yellow, with white shutters, the living room will be in gray with periwinkle blue—my favorite color, ” Taylor allegedly said upon buying the home.Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images11/211953Baby Michael’s sweetly decorated nursery had a butter yellow, baby blue, and pink color scheme. Taylor described the storybook Beverly Hills dwelling in her 1965 tome, An Informal Memoir. “One whole wall was built of bark with fern and orchids growing up the bark,” she wrote. “You really couldn’t distinguish between the outside and inside. And all the colors I loved—off-white, white, natural woods, stone, beigy marble. The pool was so beautiful. There were palm trees and rock formations—it looked like a natural pool, with trees growing out of it. It was the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.”Photo: CBS via Getty Images12/211957Taylor and Wilding split after nearly five years of marriage. One month after the divorce was finalized, the Cleopatra star married film producer Mike Todd in February 1957. The two are pictured here in their penthouse apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Taylor and Todd kept estates on both coasts; in addition to their NYC abode, they maintained a 1920s Spanish-style primary residence near Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills. The roughly 4,000-square-foot home didn’t offer the high-profile pair much privacy—its front steps began right at the curb, winding around a turret, and up to an arched wood front door.Photo: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images13/211957A few months after they married, Todd and Taylor welcomed CBS’s cameras into their NYC home at 715 Park Avenue for a 1957 Person to Person segment, which showed the newlyweds’ duplex filled with art; a Monet painting in a gilded frame hangs behind them in this photo. Taylor gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Liza, before Todd’s tragic 1958 death in a plane crash.Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images14/211966After a five-year marriage to singer and actor Eddie Fisher that generated tons of scandalous tabloid fodder, Taylor married her Cleopatra costar, Richard Burton, in 1964. The couple, whose relationship essentially birthed modern paparazzi culture, is pictured here at their Gstaad, Switzerland, property. Dubbed Chalet Ariel, Taylor and Fisher purchased the estate early in their marriage. The Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? star retained ownership of the dwelling for the rest of her life.Photo: James Andanson/Sygma via Getty Images15/211967The couple—again pictured at their Swiss vacation home, with a trio of petite pooches in tow—were known for their passionate yet turbulent marriage. “We enjoy fighting,” Taylor reportedly said. “Having an out-and-out, outrageous, ridiculous fight is one of the greatest exercises in marital togetherness.” It’s fitting that the relationship was filled with drama, seeing as it began with some: The couple started their affair while Taylor was still married to Fisher and Burton was married to Welsh actress Sybil Christopher.Photo: David Cairns/Getty Images16/211967The frequent costars also spent a great deal of time on their yacht, Kalizma. They reportedly bought the luxury vessel for $192,000 (roughly $1.8 million adjusted for inflation) in 1967 and invested another $200,000 in refurbishing it to their liking. It was onboard the Kalizma that the Welsh actor gifted Taylor the famous 69.42-carat Cartier diamond now known as the Taylor-Burton diamond.Photo: David Cairns/Express/Getty Images17/211967The couple looks out from the deck of the Kalizma in this snapshot. They reportedly outfitted the vessel with Chippendale mirrors, Louis XIV chairs, and English tapestries. Taylor’s suite—from the bedroom to the bathroom—was done up in a hot pink color scheme. Grace Kelly, Orson Welles, and Ringo Starr were among the A-list guests that Taylor and Burton entertained on the yacht.Photo: Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images18/211977After divorcing Burton (twice—once in 1974 and again in 1976 after a brief second marriage), Taylor married American politician John Warner in December 1976. They are pictured here in the kitchen of their roughly 7,000-square-foot fieldstone-walled manor in Marshall, Virginia. Taylor reportedly kept horses on the sprawling property, which was known as Atoka Farm.Photo: Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images19/211977Warner and Taylor roam the grounds of the 400-acre plot in this photo. The actor helped her husband with his 1978 senate campaign, though his busy government schedule put a strain on the marriage, and they divorced in 1982. “She was my ‘partner’ in laying the foundation for 30 years of public service in the US Senate,” Warner said later. “We were always friends—to the end.”Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images20/211987Taylor’s primary residence from 1981 until her 2011 death was at 700 Nimes Road in Bel Air. This 1987 photo shows the Hollywood icon smiling on her sofa in the ranch-style home, which was formerly owned by Nancy Sinatra. Taylor worked with AD100 Hall of Fame designer Waldo Fernandez to decorate the dwelling, which was posthumously featured in the July 2011 issue of Architectural Digest. A trophy room, plush pastel carpets, and abundant flower gardens were among the estate’s highlights.Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images21/211987Taylor sits in a welcoming living room at her Nimes Road dwelling in this shot. “Of course when she had to appear at an important event, she would put on the most beautiful dress and the most amazing jewelry and become Elizabeth Taylor, the star,” famed fashion designer Valentino once said. “But at home she liked a cozy life, friends, good food.”The Hollywood legend died in 2011 at age 79.