A Robot With a Heart. Spoilers [easyazon_link identifier=”B00ZRES1NC” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Chappie[/easyazon_link] is set in the distance future of 2016, where autonomous humanoid robots have replaced flesh and blood law enforcement. Our hero is severely injured while doing his job and becomes part of an experiment. Oh wait, that’s Robocop. Chappie lifts a lot of it’s plot from Robocop and lifts a lot of it’s emotional elements from District 9. We have a poor innocent robot who we are told is a new born. What makes these scenes hard to watch is how evil and heartless everyone he meets is. From his…
Category: movie review
Nightcrawler
Psycho with a video camera. [easyazon_link identifier=”B00Q3DMJZW” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Nightcrawler[/easyazon_link] is the story a psychopath who takes up the life of a freelance videographer. He is extremely polite and has a very high opinion of himself and his skills. However, he has virtually no feelings, no empathy, no interest in other people, except for how they can help him get ahead. Jake Gyllenhaal does a good job of playing our clearly insane hero. Bill Paxton has a small role as a rival freelancer. The rest of the cast does a good job, but they are not people whose faces rang a…
Chef
[easyazon_link identifier=”B00KQTHKQC” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Chef[/easyazon_link] is the story of a man who was once a great cook, but he’s now fallen into a rut. His Boss runs a successful restaurant that has used the same Menu for ten years. Our hero, Carl, wants to try something new and different. He wants to go all [easyazon_link identifier=”0811873471″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Top Chef[/easyazon_link] on a food blogger, but the Boss insists that he stick with the tried and true. Even when the restaurant is filled with people from a Twitter war, the Boss still thinks they are there because they want the same old boring…
Mission Impossible:Rogue Nation
Tom Cruise hangs off the side of a military cargo plane during the opening scene. It is a pretty cool bit of business, but it has nothing to do with the rest of [easyazon_link identifier=”B012XYP82U” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Mission Impossible:Rogue Nation[/easyazon_link]. That makes it the perfect clip for a Trailer. It looks cool and spoils nothing. Are you listening everyone else who makes movie Trailers???? I like Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg. I like J.J. Abrams. I like things blowing up and motorcycles. And then there’s a hot British chick. The story is pretty standard issue. Tom and Company have problems and…
Frank
He never takes the mask off. [easyazon_link identifier=”B00NBNY7P2″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Frank[/easyazon_link] is the story of man who wants to be a Social Media Rockstar and a Music Rockstar. One night he watches as a music group’s keyboard man tries to kill himself. He says, hey, I play keyboard. And just like that he joins the band. He notices that something is a bit off. The band’s lead singer, Frank, wears a large papier-mache mask at all times. Our hero thinks he is going to play a gig for the weekend, but soon discovers that he is to work on an album.…
Mr Holmes
The case is afoot. In 1947 we find a 93 year old Sherlock Holmes living in Sussex caring for his bees. He’s just back from Japan and he has a few squabbles with his housekeeper. He also spends a bit of time with her son, caring for his bees and trying to recall the details of his last cast some thirty years in the past. As [easyazon_link identifier=”B014PIQYIO” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Mr Holmes[/easyazon_link] opens, easily the most shocking element comes during the opening credits, this is a Miramax film. I would have been no more surprised to see the RKO Radio Pictures…
Minions
If you’ve seen the Trailers for Minions, you’ve pretty much seen all the good bits of the film. Yes, I know, it’s a kids film about a bunch of small yellow creatures that live to serve evil, so what did I expect? I remember being completely surprised and delighted by Dispicable Me, so maybe that was what I was expecting here. I may have had my hopes a little high. Minions is the compressed history of life on earth, starting with a very Spore-like bunch of life forms fighting in the primordial ooze. Spore is a very cool game based…
Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys
I recently caught [easyazon_link identifier=”B000ICXQF6″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]12 Monkey[/easyazon_link]s on Showtime and watched it for the first time in many years. In 1995 Terry Gillian made one of his better trademark weird and brilliant films. 12 Monkeys tells the story of a man forced to volunteer for a dangerous mission into the past. The future is a post pandemic wasteland where wild animals run loose and the survivors have to live underground. Terry Gilliam is a master of using Practical Effects, this means his post apocalyptic world is made with things from the real world and not from a computer. The…
Terminator Genisys
More Terminator on Terminator Action Spoilers and Such I love [easyazon_link identifier=”B00153ZC8Q” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]The Terminator[/easyazon_link]. It’s a damn near perfect film that did a pretty good job of tying up its loose ends. But not so good a job that it didn’t end up with a few too many sequels. So it’s a bittersweet experience to watch the clumsily re-shot scenes from The Terminator and hear familiar dialogue spoken in odd voices. The redo of [easyazon_link identifier=”B0037NVM2C” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Judgement Day[/easyazon_link] as the opening credits roll was a pale imitation of Linda Hamilton’s raspy, hate filled voice from T2. But then, this isn’t that…
Inside Out
The last Pixar film I watched was [easyazon_link identifier=”B00A6PD9I4″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Brave[/easyazon_link], a Pixar film with a Disney plot shoved down its throat. Brave could have been so much better. I didn’t bother watching [easyazon_link identifier=”B005SAP45I” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Cars 2[/easyazon_link] or [easyazon_link identifier=”B00G9U7R2O” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Monster’s University[/easyazon_link]. For the most part, Pixar films have been consistently good, but I have feared more Disney interference. It doesn’t look like Disney did too much damage to Inside Out. I watched [easyazon_link identifier=”B00YCY46VO” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Inside Out[/easyazon_link] in 3D, a gimmick that I guess is not going to go away any time soon. The 3D effects were…