It has some fun parts, and lots of decent characters, but it’s way too long.
★★★
Author Archives: Phil
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.
Although the overall tone of this movie is that of a tragedy, and does emphasise that a lot of people died for no good reason, it still takes a little too much pleasure in the violence.
I also feel it does a disservice to Shughart and Gordon. The crew of Super 64 all survived the crash, not just Durant. Knowing they were defending four men, not just one, three of whom were helpless, casts their efforts in a different light.
★★★★
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
It’s a great film but, honestly, I don’t much like these stories. People have these weirdly romantic notions about the Mafia. Never seemed to occur to anyone, they wrote their own history…
A young girl discovers a secret map to the dreamworld of Slumberland, and with the help of an eccentric outlaw, she traverses dreams and flees nightmares, with the hope that she will be able to see her late father again.
Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit enjoying his quiet life, is swept into an epic quest by Gandalf the Grey and thirteen dwarves who seek to reclaim their mountain home from Smaug, the dragon.
Ten years later it’s easier to look past the technical misjudgments and plot contrivances. Armitage and Freeman are both great.
★★★
An old complaint
I know it’s an old complaint but, wow, starting Windows after a decent break is a disaster.
I’ve got Windows Updates, Windows Store updates, Office updates and Sophos EndPoint all trying to do everything all at once.
How are at least the Microsoft systems not talking to each other?
Heaven’s knows I’m in no rush for Sticky Notes to be updated!
That was from the comments…
After a young man's premonition of a deadly race-car crash helps saves the lives of his peers, Death sets out to collect those who evaded their end.
Having said of the last installment “where could you go wrong?”
Well, here most of the foreshadowing is replaced with premonitions and that doesn’t work as well.
Still, there are some wildly inventive fatalities and the finale does actually take it up a notch.
★★★