Tag Archives: American Cinema

Movie Review – Geostorm

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TL;DR – Its, well it’s, ok, it’s not great, it’s not awful, it’s just ok.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Geostorm. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –
So there is a satellite system that controls all of the world’s extreme weather, with a flip of a switch you can take out that cyclone barrelling towards the Australian coast, that heat wave over Paris gone, that mark-5 tornado, what mark-5 tornado. It all sounds great, but if you can see the flaw with this plan, well you can see where the film is heading. Overall, it has been a while since I have seen a big scale disaster film, maybe 2012 was the last one, so it was at least interesting to visit this genre. However, just be prepared that this is science-fiction, not science-fact film, I’m pretty sure there are some laws of thermodynamics that get thrown to the wolves to make this movie happen, nor do we have enough material to build a partial Dyson sphere. So overall I found Geostorm to be well fine, it had some things I liked and some others that I didn’t, and mostly they cancelled each other out. So today we will look at both sides of Geostorm, the good, the bad, and the surprisingly Scottish.


So to set the scene, in 2019 global warming sent the plant into a spiral of extreme weather events which killed millions. Looking death in the face, the world on the brink of destruction put aside years of amenity to create the ‘Dutch Boy’, a series of satellites around the world, designed to stop the extreme weather events. The main engineer of the project was Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) a man who is equal parts brilliant as he was obstinate, and after many years of work his brother Max (Jim Sturgess) who is employed by the White House was forced to fire him after a bad Senate hearing. Well three years later, and a couple of weeks before Dutch Boy is meant to be officially handed over to an international oversight team, a village in the heart of Afghanistan is discovered to be completely frozen. The Dutch Boy system had never failed before, and given the potential fallout from the lack of trust, or even a cascade of failures, it was a serious issue. So the Secretary of State Dekkom (Ed Harris) recommended to President Palma (Andy García) that there is only one person for the job, yep fired former main engineer Jake, so up he goes, but the clock is ticking.

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Movie Review – Blade Runner 2049

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TL;DR – Visually stunning, and a wonderful follow up to a true Sci-fi classic.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Blade Runner 2049. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

Besides Star Wars later in the year, I don’t think there has been a film as anticipated in the sci-fi world more than Blade Runner 2049. As I mentioned in my retrospective of Blade Runner (see retrospective) the first time I watched the original was just the other day so I came into 2049 with that whole story being very fresh in my mind. Which turns out was a good thing, because Blade Runner 2049 is not just a sequel in name only. So without getting into spoilers here, you may want to go watch the first film in preparation of seeing it here, not that you should need an excuse to see one of the most transformative science fiction films of the last century. I do have to say from the start that I went see Blade Runner 2049 at a premium showing (Gold Class for those in Australia) which I paid for, and I went during the middle of the day when there is usually fewer people. However, still with all this, I was in a session with a couple that loud talked throughout the film, in the quiet contemplative moments, and even answered an unmuted phone at some point. So while I am professional, I can’t put aside the possibility that this might have impacted my perception of the film. Now overall I really liked Blade Runner 2049 but it is hard to talk about it without hitting spoilers, hell even the cast list is a spoiler at this point. So just for the sake of precautions be prepared for [SPOILERS] ahead if you have not seen the film, which you should.

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Exploring the Past – Blade Runner (1982)

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TL;DR – The legacy of Blade Runner is not overstated, even if parts of the film have not aged well.

Blade Runner. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

I continue my look into the gems of films from the past that I missed the first time round by today looking at the most topical of films Blade Runner. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey (see review), Blade Runner is one of those films that came out before I was born, so I missed it the first time around, and due to its content it didn’t get a lot replay on TV as I was growing up. Now while I haven’t seen the film before today, I have read the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? As well as this, Blade Runner has appeared in so many countdown and best of lists, and multiple parodies and had homages have been made of it over the years. So even though I have never see the film, I have seen so many separate bits that I have probably seen a decent chunk of the film over the years. So with all of this I was a bit apprehensive before sitting down and watching it, would it live up to the huge cultural impact it has had, well could anything really, let’s find out. Now before we go on just a moment of clarification, the version I saw was The Final Cut, which as far as I can tell is the cut that Ridley Scott prefers, so there is likely to be differences between this and the theatrical release.

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Movie Review – It (It: Chapter 1) (2017)

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TL;DR – No No NO No NO Nope Oh Hell NO

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

It. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –
So originally I wasn’t going to go see It, as the week it premiered I was up to my neck with essays to grade, as well as this, I’ve never really been a fan of horror films in general. However, last week a good friend of mine wanted to go see It, so what the hell, what’s the worst that could happen … Now to make a couple of things clear before we start, I haven’t seen the original miniseries, nor read the book, so I can’t tell you how good of an adaptation this is, though given we are talking about Tim Curry and Stephen King I am going to assume there is a very high barrier this film needed to meet, which not all Stephen King adaptations this year have met, yes I’m looking at you The Dark Tower (see review). As well as this, as I said I am not a fan of the horror film genre in general, so that has probably affected how I looked at It.

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Movie Review – Battle of the Sexes

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TL;DR – When it actually gets to the Battle it is a thrilling film, you just have to get through a lot of setup beforehand, a lot of setup, too much setup.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Battle of the Sexes. Image Credit: Fox Searchlight.

Review –

This is a really odd film, some aspects of it work amazingly, yet other parts fall flat, so it is both fascinating, yet also hard to recommend. Whatever the case, it was interesting to read up on this real-life event, this is because I was not born when it happened, and until this film came out I didn’t even know it existed. So today we are going to look at what did work and what didn’t of this both frustrating and yet also fascinating film.

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Movie Review – American Assassin

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TL;DR – Bland the movie

Score – 1.5 out of 5 stars

American Assassin. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

Review –

Well, I don’t know what I was expecting with American Assassin, maybe some excitement, maybe some competent action sequences, maybe an interesting character study, maybe even an interesting look at America’s involvement in global terrorism. Of all the things I was expecting, the last thing was a bland paint by numbers snooze fest, well not paint by numbers because that implies that there was some colour in there somewhere. So yer, let’s dive into our review of American Assassin a dull film if ever I saw one.

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Movie Review – mother!

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TL;DR – I have rarely left a movie being this angry, a pure waste of everyone’s time, if I was not reviewing this film I would have walked out before it ended.

Score – 1.5 out of 5 stars

mother! Image Credit: Paramount.

Review –

Well look, I know mother! has been getting some great reviews, but just to prepare you if you didn’t see the score above,  this is not going to be one of them. I know there is a trend for people to give bad reviews to popular films as clickbait, this is not one of those cases, I deeply disliked this film, and if you want to know why feel free to keep reading.

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Movie Review – The Hitman’s Bodyguard

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TL;DR – A good case study on why it is so important to get your casting right

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

P.S. – There is an end credit thingy

The Hitman's Bodyguard. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

Review –

Making a film is a very difficult process, at every point, there are decisions that you need to make, some of which can make or break your film, and you might not even know what the outcome is until the film is released. Should you rewrite your dark realistic film to be a comedy week’s out from shooting, it’s a big risk, but it is one that I think made The Hitman’s Bodyguard a better film, or at least a film that suited its cast much better. Though before we go on, while I kind of liked it, you need to know it is a type of film that I’m pretty sure the f@#$ counter is in triple digits, and you probably know just from that if this is a movie for you.

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Movie Review – American Made

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TL;DR – This is a movie banking on the pull of its lead star, and in some respects it works, but also it leaves you wondering what was the point of it all.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

American Made. Image Credit: Universal.

Review –

Ah the Cold War, once a time that we tried to ignore, that time when blowhards with nuclear weapons almost brought us all to ruin because of politics or ideology. We like to forget about it, but a lot of the problems of the world today can be traced right back to it, but still many don’t have a good understanding of the world that was. American Made is looking to change that, maybe, sort of, by shedding the light on some of the dirty dealings the Americans embroiled themselves in Central America, told through the story of Barry Seal (Tom Cruise).

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Movie Review – The Dark Tower

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TL;DR – This is a bare bones movie which really feels that too much was lost in the adaptation

Score – 2.5 out of 5 stars

The Dark Tower. Image Credit: Sony.

Review –

Oh boy, where to begin here, wow, ok this is going to be a tough one to review. I think part of the problem was that July was such a strong month for movies we had Okja (review), Spider-Man (review), Baby Driver (review), Dunkirk (review) and Planet of the Apes (review). It was such a strong outing that maybe it overhyped me for the rest of the year because since the start of August we’ve had Wolf Warriors 2 (review), Valerian (review), and Logan Lucky (review), all films with immense potential that all failed in their execution, and well this week we have another one to add to that list. Now before we start, I do want to mention I have not read the source material myself so I can’t give a complete comparison to what Stephen King wrote. However, even without reading the book you can infer a few things, which is what we will be doing today. So let’s dive in and look at the world of The Dark Tower.

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