Received an email today about service that is relaunching with a greater focus on “inclusivity” (in a DEI sense). The email was addressed “Dear Sir/Madam”. There’s such a long way to go.
Author Archives: Phil
There’s a new Microsoft Copilot ad, with everyone asking a colleague for things and she just uses Copilot… the unspoken implication is that, if she can use Copilot, so can they… so what do they need her for?
Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, covert operations expert Zora Bennett is contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure genetic material from the world's three most massive dinosaurs. When Zora's operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized, they all find themselves stranded on an island where they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that's been hidden from the world for decades.
As they inevitably leave the island, you realise you’ve seen this film so many times before. Why not try something different? Why not have them work out how they’re going to survive with no prospect of rescue? Like, The Martian with dinosaurs?
My kids enjoyed it well enough but half the screening was notably bored. There are some tense scenes that work well and plenty of people getting chomped, so I wasn’t disappointed there.
But there is literally nothing I haven’t seen before. I’ve not read it for a while, but I think the T-Rex/raft chase is in the original novel. The lack of invention is honestly baffling.
The contrivance that brings children into the story means there are far too many characters. Despite the screen time invested, even the back stories of the main characters are paper-thin. You could sum up the remaining characters in a single sentence.
Finally, and this is my own personally nerdy beef, why do they go so woefully under-armed again? One guy, has one gun which is so ill-suited to the supposed purpose it is ludicrous. Where’s the .50cal armour-piercing long rifles? If you don’t want to kill it, why not light or sound? No-one has ever even chucked a flashbang at these things. Dinsoaurs have been living in the world, they must know how to kill or at least dissuade them by now!
P.S. yes, I have seen the Netflix animations
★★½
Just had to write to my MP (Alex Mayer) to clarify that I don’t support the murder of women and children. You know, by anyone? Just for the avoidance of doubt.
I don’t approve of AI image generation, but my colleague just made this off the back of a comment I made…
Too good not to share. Though I think a ghost might be force-feeding Wes…
Death is just as omnipresent as ever, and is unleashed after one man’s premonition saves a group of coworkers from a terrifying suspension bridge collapse. But this group of unsuspecting souls was never supposed to survive, and, in a terrifying race against time, the ill-fated group frantically tries to discover a way to escape Death’s sinister agenda.
You know when you ask someone to scratch your back, and they start off pretty close but then go wildly off target, before finally getting exactly the right spot? You get that deep sense of relief and satisfaction? That’s my best comparison for Final Destination 1-5.
★★★★
When rancher and single mother of two Maggie Gilkeson sees her teenage daughter, Lily, kidnapped by Apache rebels, she reluctantly accepts the help of her estranged father, Samuel, in tracking down the kidnappers. Along the way, the two must learn to reconcile the past and work together if they are going to have any hope of getting Lily back before she is taken over the border and forced to become a prostitute.
Never really threatens to get good but you just keep hoping and then it works out exactly like you’d expected and the credits roll. What annoys me the most is that I’m never getting that time back.
★★
Author and amateur astronomer John Putnam and schoolteacher Ellen Fields witness an enormous meteorite come down near a small town in Arizona. Putnam becomes a local object of scorn when, after examining the object up close, he announces that it is a spacecraft, and that it is inhabited...
John Constantine has literally been to Hell and back. When he teams up with a policewoman to solve the mysterious suicide of her twin sister, their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists beneath the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles.
First saw this at a cinema in the Philippines with very little foreknowledge (and therefore no expectations) and thought it was great. And I still think it’s great.
You have three characters (played by Stormare, the bloke from Bush and Swinton) that have only minutes of screen time but are so well realised that they’re some of the most memorable.
And, I’m no film student, but I really like how it’s shot. I know “music video background” blahblahblah. I like the framing and like the close-ups, which I guess is very comic book but, like, that’s exactly right, right?
Excellent comic book movie – even if they did almost entirely change the lead character.
★★★★