Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
Having decided to sit through all three movies (so far) of The Purge franchise, I might as well get them out of the way in short order. Last night, after returning home from a night out with the wife, that included a trip to Best Buy to try Sony’s Playstation VR, I settled down to watch the second in the series: The Purge: Anarchy.
I, like a lot of people, dismissed Hardcore Henry from the trailers as probably too gimmicky to be worthwhile, so I didn’t bother going to see it. I also couldn’t stand the title. As well as that, I’m not much of a fan of the producer Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Wanted) – no particular reason for that other than I haven’t enjoyed the movies of his I’ve seen. Months passed, and I had the chance to view a copy the other night. Feeling the need for a pallet cleanser from The Killing Joke travesty, I fired it up.
You know that recent movie with Ryan Reynolds where a character is dying of cancer, but calls a mysterious phone number because it comes with a promise to save his life? Oh no, I don’t mean that Ryan Reynolds movie (Deadpool, just in case you’ve been living under rock in 2016), I’m talking about Self/Less! Here, Ben Kingsley (Ghandi, Iron Man 3) plays Damian Hale, the afflicted character whose cancer is the plot driver, and Reynolds is the focus of the plot from the end of act 1 onward.
Far from it from me to tell a ton of people they’re wrong about Chappie, Neill Blomkamp’s first movie since Elysium, but I liked it. I took a quick look at the Rotten Tomatoes rating, and it currently stands at 32%, which I find somewhat astonishing. While the movie isn’t exactly a thought-provoking meditation on the vast implications of the inevitable developments in AI, and has a plot containing some significant holes (typical of Blomkamp, the writer), I found the movie to be pretty entertaining. Continue reading “Movie Review: CHAPPIE”
Tomorrowland, Brad Bird’s latest live action movie is a real mixed bag, harkening back to Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, a movie I ultimately found disappointing. What doesn’t help here is the inclusion of Damon Lindelof to the writing team. I’m not keen on Lindelof’s work at all. I feel of all the “name” writers in the business, he’s one of the least talented (though Simon Kinberg – Fantastic Four, X-Men: Apocalypse is catching up quickly), moving from one cliché to another as effortlessly as taking the stairs. Continue reading “Movie Review: TOMORROWLAND”
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 