Instead of flying to Florida with his folks, Kevin ends up alone in New York, where he gets a hotel room with his dad's credit card—despite problems from a clerk and meddling bellboy. But when Kevin runs into his old nemeses, the Wet Bandits, he's determined to foil their plans to rob a toy store on Christmas eve.
Ford Brody, a Navy bomb expert, has just reunited with his family in San Francisco when he is forced to go to Japan to help his estranged father, Joe. Soon, both men are swept up in an escalating crisis when an ancient alpha predator arises from the sea to combat malevolent adversaries that threaten the survival of humanity. The creatures leave colossal destruction in their wake, as they make their way toward their final battleground: San Francisco.
This needed to follow the old disaster movie format of having a bunch of key characters we follow through out. It ties itself in unbelievable knots to put Brody where the action is. He’s not even a very sympathetic character and makes a succession of dumb decisions.
In fact, the entire movie is a cavalcade of plot holes and nonsensical decision making.
★★
In a boorish future, the government sponsors a popular, but bloody, cross-country race in which points are scored by mowing down pedestrians. Five teams, each comprised of a male and female, compete using cars equipped with deadly weapons. Frankenstein, the mysterious returning champion, has become America's hero, but this time he has a passenger from the underground resistance.
This offered a lot more than I expected! To quote another reviewer: “a neat satire dealing with government, entertainment, and media.”
This predates a bunch of mainstream, dystopian features that share similar themes, like The Running Man and, much later, The Hunger Games. But the tone is much more Robocop, than either of those. Though this sits apart from all of those as much more of a B-movie “exploitation” flick.
It is quite cheesy and has a significant sprinkling of late 70s nudity. However, I reckon it’s worth a watch if you like this sort of thing.
★★★½
Broadly speaking I’m not anti-change. I’ve been using an iPhone since Android phones became uniformly enormous. The iPhone SE versions are a good size for me. But the new Notifications “Stack” in iOS 16 is appalling. I now have a huge space for widgets I don’t want and have been missing notifications for things.
It’s simple to disable it in Settings->Notifications and choose “List” but why enable the new Stack by default? Urgh.
