Netflix’ military-sci-fi-action-thriller mashes Bourne with the Terminator, a dash of District 13 and I, Robot‘s moral maze. The battle of wits between naive Damson Idris’ drone pilot versus Antony Mackie’s charismatic super-cyborg gets pushed aside by the toys, the action and the explosions.
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Action
Mike Leigh’s gentle biopic of pioneering dentist Arthur Lemming meanders thoughtfully through… Just kidding. Everyone’s favourite Aussie Thunder God steps into John Wick territory in a Netflix’ kidnap-and rescue actioner with a body count to match.
Continue ReadingNetflix’ latest mashes up The A-Team meets Highlander in Charlize Theron‘s latest kick-ass chick, immortal, action heroine vehicle. With a bit of obligatory John Wick beat-em up, shoot ’em up. And some proper actors. Maybe Chewetel Ejiorfor and Matthias Schoenarts took a wrong turn out of the rehearsal rooms of a Lyn Ramsay drama? All this is adapted from a graphic novel.
Continue ReadingWhat can Christopher Nolan possibly do to top this impossibly twisty, timey-wimey, too-clever-by-half, labyrinthine, high-concept, sci-fi-espionage-heist-action thriller? A movie so dense, one of the characters has to give us instructions at the start: ‘don’t think it, feel it.’ I’m feeling they should have called it Inversion. But that’s not a palindrome.
Continue ReadingThe final instalment of the X-Men reboot is an unruly tangle of belonging, family and identity with plenty of CGI mayhem and big action set-pieces. Stuck with the mis-casting of Fassbender and MacAvoy, it relies on Sophie ‘Mahogony’ Turner stepping up as the empathetic core and she’s just not that kind of actress. Blown away by Jessica Chastain’s icy villain and Jennifer Lawrence’s too-short stint as Mystique, Turner is the weak nail in the wall from which the whole thing hangs. Continue Reading
The top box office movie of 1968, this Boy’s Own Adventure, behind-enemy-lines, WWII jaunt has Richard Burton slumming it alongside Clint Eastwood in an original script by novelist Alistair Maclean. Continue Reading
Kong meets Apocalypse Now in a 70’s re-boot with all the logic of a Japanese ’60’s kaiju movie. Go to Vietnam; leave Vietnam; go to island; meet Kong, fight giant cave lizards, do not leave island, do not go to New York, do not kill the ape. At least Kong is a ‘real’ ape with proper fur – cast of Cats take note. Continue Reading
Don’t be deceived by the trailer that looks like Aquatic Aliens, Underwater is actually a sensitive documentary about the conservation of coral reefs in the pacific…
Of course it isn’t. At the bottom of the Mariannas Trench, a drilling rig suffers a catastrophic failure, leaving Kristen Stewart and a handful of survivors to escape the rig, the deep ocean, and an undiscovered race of ancient hungry nasties. Continue Reading
While I’m all in favour of equal opportunities, I’m not convinced that an R-rated, sweary, violent bid to outdo the testosterone-fulled action genre is quite the feminist triumph Birds of Prey was hoping for. For all that Margot Robbie turns in a scene-stealing performance as Harley Quinn, the whole movie plays like a teenage boys’ fantasy of a sweary, bloody and rather pointless graphic novel, built around a very small pair of hot pants.
Having missed the previous two instalments of this third Spiderman reboot in two decades, checked in on Far From Home to discover it’s National Lampoon’s European Vacation overloaded with smash-bash-and-crash, CGI-tastic, urban destruction and another terrible villain. However sparky and charming are it’s young leads, Jake Ghyllenhaal is more Mystery Men than Mysterio, in a paper thin plot that grumpy Nick Fury should have seen through in two minutes.