When single mom Callie and her two kids Trevor and Phoebe arrive in a small Oklahoma town, they begin to discover their connection to the original Ghostbusters and the secret legacy their grandfather left behind.
I liked a lot about it but it all felt very “safe”. Did not, however, ruin my childhood.
★★★
An American sniper and his spotter engage in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with an Iraqi sniper.
There are many great war films and this isn’t one of them. This movie has nothing to say about, well, anything. Unless… unless it’s US grunts are actually pretty dumb and “the baddies” are much smarter than other movies might lead you to believe…
The most notable moment in the whole film was when he opened the Skittles, and they were all smooshed into one sticky pancake. I fully expected him to roll some out onto his hand like a TV ad.
It was OK, though. I’ve docked half a star for the awful ending, which neither delivers a satisfying conclusion nor is very well executed.
★★½
Husband and wife Gabe and Adelaide Wilson take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends. But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.
This review may contain spoilers.
It takes some skill to telegraph a twist in the first ten minutes and still deliver revelations 2 minutes before the credits and, in fact 30 minutes after the credits, when you’re trying to write your review…
★★★★ (contains spoilers)
In the town of Blithe Hollow, Norman Babcock can speak to the dead, but no one other than his eccentric new friend believes his ability is real. One day, Norman's eccentric uncle tells him of a ritual he must perform to protect the town from a curse cast by a witch centuries ago.
Started off well enough but it seemed more interested in putting the boot into hypocritical US values, then telling a good story.
Also, isn’t this basically the same plot as Netflix’ Fear Street trilogy?
★★★
The Bafta winner speaks about his new show and why young people are getting interested in folklore.
I like to think of it as a backlash against commercial and globalisation. It’s a popular refrain from the right that we’ve lost our British identity. I’m not sure which identity that is, though, and people that say it also seem to struggle to define it. Presumably an ideal from some point in the 19th century, when “red tape” and “wokeness” didn’t stop people making money. I can understand why reaching back before the “Age of Discovery” for some shared identity would appeal to people.
I feel similarly with paganism and the import of Christianity. When you consider the population of the UK was already 75% immigrants circa 400-800 CE/AD and you consider that Stonehenge was completed circa 1600 BCE/BC, it’s tricky to track down your cultural heritage.
The only sane response to the trolley problem is to do nothing. If you can be (philosophically) responsible for deaths by inaction, then we’re all guilty of that anyway.
Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet.
When we watched the trailer for this I did a little inward groan when I saw that Woody H was the antagonist. “Here we go, Tallahassee Mk 2…” but he was actually pretty good. The character also had a shade of complexity too, which is almost novel for a villain these days.
Still holds that deeply unsettling mirror up, though. Even in the apocalypse, we can’t get it together as a species.
★★★★
eBay sent me an email detailing things I could improve in the listing. Said the descrption was no good… their AI wrote it.
I’m a pretty big fan of Jurassic Park movies. At least as far as “man meets dinosaur” movies go.
But, as someone who actually read the original novel, something has bothered me from day one. The matter of small arms. No, not on the T-Rex. I mean the distinct lack of big guns. Let me get this off my chest…
In the first movie, the game warden Muldoon, rocks about with a shotgun. Just a shotgun. We later see this is loaded with shot rather then slugs when Grant shoots at the raptors in the control room. This might be adequate for anything up to a really big dog at short range. Problem is, for most of the smaller, dangerous dinos, short range is way too late. The larger dinos… might as well be throwing rocks.
In the first book, Muldoon at least insists on a rocket launcher, which proves to be highly effective (Muldoon survives). We also learn that Hammond has, naturally, effectively banned weapons on the island. At least the book features the right tools for the job. Sadly, this is never picked up in the movies.
Fast forward to Jurassic World and the “Asset Containment Unit” is running around with mostly non-lethal weapons you wouldn’t even try on a polar bear. Again, one has a shotgun. They do have a minigun, which would probably be highly effective with clear line of sight and a fortified position, but instead they put it on a helicopter and fly over a jungle with thick canopy. Derp.
Even the various groups of poachers and mercenaries show up with an assortment of assault rifles and shotguns. Except for two guys. Roland, the big game hunter in The Lost World. He’s got an elephant gun. Big tick. The other is a guy you’d barely remember from Jurassic Park 3, who has a Barrett .50 caliber rifle.
This seems much more like it to me, although I am no firearms expert. While it doesn’t do JP3 guy much good (he is wandering around the jungle with it), .50 caliber weapons are surely the way to go. A lot of watchtowers with rifle-armed guards, a few discretely hidden fixed heavy machine gun emplacements and a few of the same mounted on vehicles. I feel like that meets the minimum for worst case scenario. Hell, if I had the choice, there’d be armoured vehicles and I’d have the Costa Rican airforce on speed dial.
However, I get that the core theme of the franchise is human-kind’s hubris and not having the proper equipment is a big part of that. It still bugs me, though, in a “why didn’t the eagles just fly them there” kind of a way, you know?
“I’m only doing this on the precondition that I can lie, and no-one will call me out,” is definitely the way to run a democracy.
