Category: Film

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Everything Everywhere All At Once

I went to see Everything Everywhere All At Once at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. Usual observations on the tide soon but this is the forth film review in a row and I’m worried I’ve run out of shit to say! I’m going to have to make up some rambling communication to try and get out of this rut. I wonder if quite a bit of this has to do with the world at the moment. I’m bothered in no particular order by Ukraine, Boris Johnson and our ever more fascist government, Human rights in the USA, the climate being absolutely fucked. It does feel as though we are living through the warning signs of future shit that will one day be taught in history classes around the world. These were all the signs they will teach and the kids will be like “how couldn’t they see it coming”. The problem is some of us can see it coming and I’m not sure what I can do. I currently give money to various lobbying organisations I think deserve it. I’m almost in the mental position of having to try to do the best to survive in the hellscape that is coming, I don’t have the energy to fight.

As I drove along the riverside I looked to see that state of the tide and it looked very low. I could see the dips at the end of the mud bank, I could see a lot of the withies. This film was shown in screen 8 and that’s my favourite because it has the best seats and plenty of space. I think I’ve been to see a film just because it was in that screen! They don’t tend to put kids films in there so my offspring have only been in there once. I wonder if I’ll go and see Top Gun Maverick again at the cinema? I don’t think so. There’s an issue with films feeling a little too long for me and I wonder if that’s a me problem rather than reality. I’m going to try and get some information soon. After the film I tweeted the score I gave it on IMDB, for a discussion or explanation of the scoring system see this communication.

I really liked this film. It was wonderfully original and thought provoking. Absolutely great fun and laugh out loud in certain places. It’s a very good take on the multi-verse theory. It’s funny how some things are absolutely abstract or appear nice because of mathematics and then they go and appear in popular culture. My current fascination is that wormholes might exist. If they do then they might lead to another part of the universe. If they do that then we might be able to travel them. You ask the person in the street what a wormhole is and I’m sure they’ll think they are real and we know for sure what we can do with them, we just have to find one. Back to this film, it had set pieces which were wonderful and the story was great. I loved the introspective feel of the thing. The rocks were my favourite I think. How great was that? Rocks.

This film felt very slightly longer than I wanted and as I mentioned earlier I wonder if that’s a “me” issue rather than film itself. For a good seventy five percent of the film I was going to be hitting this one as eight stars on IMDB but something happened in the last twenty minutes or so and I downgraded to a six as I left the film. I don’t know why. I think it’s a “me” thing but that’s what this rating system is, a “me” thing. The rating system exists for me to rate a film on a consistent scale. The system has lasted nearly ten years so I think it’s worth keeping! I enjoyed this film and it was refreshingly different.

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Top Gun: Maverick

I was always going to see this film, the big question was where and in what sort of cinema. That question was answered by an email from Kent Wing Air Cadets saying they were putting on a private showing of the film and would we like to go. The answer was a very easy “yes” and so we drove a school minibus down to Folkestone to watch the film in the Guildhall. I should normally waffle on about the tide here and even though we were in a port town I can’t tell you as I wasn’t close enough to the sea or local river to notice the state of the tide. I feel as though I have let you down slightly but also I don’t care because of this particular situation. After the film I rated it on IMDB, there’s a system so don’t quibble with me if you disagree.

There’s a lot to say about this film and I’ll probably add more after this is published. But I think it can be summarised thus: “it’s a Top Gun film”. I had a great time watching it and didn’t laugh out loud too many times at inappropriate places. I’m still amazed that before the film started we had a personal message from Tom Cruise to Kent Wing Air Cadets. How amazing is that? I’m super impressed with the people who organised this event and am slightly jealous too.

There are going to be spoilers in the following text. I don’t think I’m going to give much away of the story but I think I’ll be saying things that might spoil those little moments in the film. I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this justice so I’m just going to write the things I remember, they might be in the wrong order but I’ll try to make it match the film. Read on if you wish . . . .

The font to the opening titles was the same as the original. I liked this. I smiled. I was very excited and looking forward to the opening scene – which, let’s face it, is the best part of the original film. So, the opening scene did not disappoint, F18s launching from a carrier and “Danger Zone” playing over the top. It was bloody great. I loved it.

Cut to – Tom Cruise mechanicing with a spanner on his own Mustang. We know he’s good at this stuff because he has to wash his hands and so got dirty while doing stuff to the engine. Note we never see what he is actually doing, it’s just the spanner in some random part of the engine which was a Rolls Royce, of course. Then, Tom has dinner in his living room which is some chairs on some carpet in the middle of the hangar and I was struck by how stupid it was and how jealous I was at the same time.

Tom then rides his motorcycle along the taxiway on a major secret flight test location because they always let people just ride motorbikes on taxiways and he then pulls in a parks next to some super-good-looking plane straight into a conversation. Notice how, as a pilot, he never wears a crash helmet? In my experience pilots are some of the most safety conscious people I know. Anyway, actors don’t look good in helmets. Now let’s have some conversations about project in trouble and Ed Harris being amazing at some general or other. The plane taking off over the shitty little guardhouse is funny and stupid as fuck. Tom has to fly this new plane at Mach 10 or the programme is finished. So, Tom flies this plane at Mach 10. But then he can’t help being an immature prick so he pushes it a little faster and he breaks the whole thing and parachutes to safety. I think I genuinely would have loved it if they killed his character here and the rest of the film was about Rooster. Note – the Mach 10 plane could probably have carried out the secret mission perfectly well.

Next we have to put the team together. Cue “that one bar” where everyone goes in their full on uniform and drinks and talks shit to each other. Oh, it just so happens that this bar has been bought and is now run by some woman who Maverick used to fuck. The bar owner is also not too worried about the bottom line and owns a pretty neat yacht. I’m not sure what universe the economy is based in. There was some stuff happening with the Team.

My absolute favourite moment was the classroom scene. My god. I laughed. Military classrooms are the crappiest rooms thought about as an after thought and generally devoid of all decoration. The idea that a classroom would be placed in a hangar isn’t laughable. But. The idea that it would be a hangar on an operational flight line with the doors open and jet noise everywhere made me smile. Then, there was the flag. Or rather, THE FLAG. It was fucking massive. Just hanging there in the hangar. Being all stars and stripes. It was absolutely a laugh out loud moment. It was hilarious. Americans eh?

The hard deck of five thousand feet is always so close to the ground in the flying shots and I wonder if that’s because this is filmed in a mountainous region and the five thousand feet is AMSL? It always bothered me about the fist film and it annoyed me a little about this one. Also, if you fly an F18 between two other F18s they don’t really get “blown apart” from each other as they do in the film but then we need on screen action rather than reality here and I understand the choices made. I enjoyed the death spiral move that happened and I quite liked the flying scenes all the time. I mean, they are flying scenes.

I’m pretty sure some shit or other happens during the training and we get lots of machismo. There’s some love action with the bar owner who also happens to have a Porsche so this must be the only bar in San Diego and also just outside Fightertown and also next to the beach. Val Kilmer appears somewhere along the way and he was great. So nice to see him. I love the idea that Maverick is protected by this man. I’d say that’s quite realistic. The armed forces often come down to who you know rather than the rules sometimes, it’s just like life everywhere else.

I was amazed that the USA had valleys that exactly matched the ones in the Bad Place. We were told the F18s would have to fly down a twisty valley and follow an exact route. Fair enough. We were also told the computer would have the map but then, when training, they were flying down or up actual valleys. What an amazing coincidence. I didn’t mind, it looks much better to have aircraft flying near the ground or with clouds to give the impression of speed. I let them have this one. But I chuckled a little.

The target. The target. The target was the exhaust port on the Death star. I’ve nothing else to say.

The bomb run was great. Who cares that it was mostly bullshit? I loved it. The dogfighting was impressive. The SU-50s were amazing. The moves were cool. I liked the reconciliation scene between Maverick and Rooster and I also thoroughly loved the F14. The Tomcat clearly makes this Iran the Navy were attacking as they are the only country that still flies those gorgeous craft. But Russia are the only people with Felons. Oh well, who cares. I loved the F14. Bloody gorgeous. It was all amazing.

I really enjoyed this film. It was great. It was terrible but it was great. Just like the original. I’m not waiting for someone to make an “aircraft only” cut of the both films and put them together. Who cares about all the talk parts of the film. It is and always has been about the aircraft and cool things like that. I honestly don’t care about the story. The whole character arc of Maverick, if we can call it that, is an excuse to see the aircraft doing their shit.

Obviously, one B-2 Spirit and the movie would be over in two minutes.

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Firestarter

After writing my review of the Dr Strange film I went to the cinema to see Firestarter. Why did I go see this film? It was the only film on that I felt like seeing, there wasn’t a massive amount of choice. But it would do. As I drove towards the cinema I had two opportunities to observe the state of the tide. The first happened when I drove over the Peter’s Village bridge. This view gave me the impression the tide was high but for a more finer grading on that I have to wait until I get to the cinema. The tide was indeed high but not covering all the mud bank so I would say around ninety percent height. I didn’t know whether the tide was rising or falling, the evidence for this would have to wait until I came out the cinema and could confirm by the changes.

After watching this film I rated it on IMDB. This was an odd experience as the metascore from critics was a lot lower that I had thought it would be. I opened the IMDB app on my phone and entered my score. It would appear I’ve moved the average up a little!

I quite enjoyed this film. I thought it made a pleasant change from the religious horror type film that I’ve seen recently. There was enough backstory within this movie to make it interesting. I enjoyed the overall plot. I think it worked quite well in telling a story, the characters worked well. I’ve a couple of gripes; who gets over the death of his wife in zero seconds? Should there have been more mind-reading? Why did the lead male have to crick his neck? Do people really bleed from the eyes?

The tide on the way out of the cinema was higher than when I went it. So two hours earlier the tide was ninety percent and rising.

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

I saw this film about a week ago and I’ve only just got around to writing the review! I think I’ve been prompted into doing this because I’m off to see another film shortly. I went to see this film at the Ashford cinema because I saw the film on the 4DX screen there. It’s the nearest cinema of this type to me. 4DX means the seats move, there are sprays of water, snow falling, bubbles and wind. The film is in 3D as well to add to the effects. I had seen two other films in this way quite a while ago. I clearly rated this film on IMDB and there’s a communication which details how the rating system works.

I would normally write about the state of the tide in this aspect of the communication but there was no tidal water to see in Ashford so I shan’t be commenting.

Did I like this film? Not really. I watched it to get to the end but I wouldn’t want to see it again. This would normally make this a four out of ten but I quite enjoyed the effects of the 4DX. I think the best effect was when Strange got stabbed through his abdomen and something prodded me in the back and then was removed when the stabby item was removed from Strange. That was pretty cool. The rest of the film was pretty much shit.

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The Northman

I took a small car journey to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester – not in Rochester – to see the film The Northman. As I arrive on the esplanade I check the state of the river to see how high the water is. This gives me an indication of the level of tide in this area of our watery world. The tide was low. I think it’s about time I started plotting the relative positions of the Sun and Moon to Earth in these communications to lend more of a visual representation of what a high or low tide means for this section of our Solar System. I will have a search for some software that gives me what I need, or, I could just figure it out somehow.

After the film, I pondered for quite a while before settling on a score to rate this movie on IMBD. There is a whole communication covering the rating system and it is here. I then tweeted the result.

As you can see from my score I didn’t really like this film. I keep thinking about it and what I didn’t like. I’ve even read some reviews of the film online to try and understand what it was that made this considered a good film. I have also been questioning my own taste in films and what do I expect from them. What does a film have to have for me to think it is good and has that changed over the (many) years of my life?

I didn’t like this film. I didn’t enjoy the story and I didn’t like all the mystical bullshit that was put into the story [that’s probably more my problem than anyone else]. I can admire the colour schemes and general cinematography but that’s only worth being excellent when the story is also excellent and I hated the story. I might have to include spoilers ahead because I’m not sure I can review the film and put over my objections without mentioning particular aspects of the story. So be warned.

There are spoilers ahead in this paragraph. Apart from the weird mother son part which I just shrugged at I was most annoyed by the fact that the whole story was for nothing. The Northman’s journey and needing vengeance was partly to make amends for his father’s killing but also the taking of his mother. Who, as it just so happens, had planned the whole thing. When our anti-hero discovers this I don’t think he questions his role in life and on this planet. He almost does the right thing which is to head off into the sunset with his pregnant lover but he doesn’t he goes back to make sure we get an excellently cinematic final fight off. There was always going to be one ending.

I know the film is based on folklore and most of that stuff is fucked up but I just don’t think it worked. The film felt like a 300 for this age. Vikings done stylistically. I hated the story.

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The Lost City

I drove the short distance – too far to walk but possibly cycleable – to the cinema in Rochester, although really it’s in Strood. As are the rules since sometime in the past I check the state of the tide and this time I was quite excited as the last time I was here the tide was quite low and now it’s was actually pretty high and I had the chance to take a contrasting photograph.

Medway At Rochester Low Tide
Medway At Rochester Low Tide
High Tide In Strood
High Tide In Strood

When looking at the two images I can let you know that I cropped the low tide one a little to remove the vast areas of mud. But you can see the difference especially when you look at the footpath on the right of both images. They were taken from reasonably close to each other and I’m quite proud of that, I didn’t even look at the old image yesterday.

After I’ve watched a film I consider a set of questions to decide on the IMDB rating I’m going to give it. There’s a communication from ages ago that explains the rules. It’s nearly ten years of these rules and I think I’ll have to celebrate that somehow. Once I’ve rated the film I then generally tweet the result:

So, you know what? I enjoyed this film. I laughed [not always at the same things as everyone else] and I thought it was a fun silly lost treasure movie. I think it was loads better than Uncharted although one of my sons does not agree with that assessment. I had fun watching this and it was right mix of silly and action that worked. This film is essentially a modern version of Romancing the Stone which, I think, was a pivotal movie from my youth. I have watched Romancing the Stone recently and it does not hold up to the ravages of time. Anyway, back to The Lost City. How does Sandra Bullock do it? She’s 57 or so and yet she looks ageless. She plays this perfectly and is great at her job – I guess you expect an actor to be good at their job so not that surprising maybe.

The lead male character was played by Channing Tatum and I’m not fussed for him either way. During the opening scene I thought he was just an older Brendan Fraser and that would have made this whole movie amazing but it was Tatum, I just didn’t recognise him. Brad Pitt’s character was my favourite and I think I actually jumped at his final scene! I enjoyed this film, it was silly and fun and worth a watch.

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Morbius

So, yesterday I took the short trip to Cineworld at Rochester to see the Sony Marvel film Morbius. I had booked to see something about a lost city but have decided to see that film over the weekend. I might try and find somewhere with a 4DX cinema to watch a film as it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those. Luckily for me Ashford Cineworld has been upgraded to a 4DX. Unluckily for me Ashford is at the other end of Operation Brock – the massive queue of lorries on the M20 trying to cross the channel. I start these communications by saying what state the tide was in as I approached the cinema and I can tell you it was low. All the mud bank was showing, the barge was in its own little pool and the water was very low. See this picture.

Medway At Rochester Low Tide
Medway At Rochester Low Tide

After I watch a film at the cinema I then rate it on IMDB and there’s a whole system about how that works. See this communication about how I decide what score to give a film. Then, when I am active on Twitter, because I have times when I remove the app from my phone – it’s not a healthy place to be -, I tweet the result to my millions of followers so they can see what I thought.

So, what did I think of this film? It was boring and unimpressive. I wonder if we’ve reached peak superhero? I know that I generally don’t like superhero films and this one was one of the worst I have seen. It was all pretty standard and just “meh”. There are a couple of things I made a mental note while watching to try and remember to write about and so here we go: Morbius’ pin is the “last six digits of pi” reversed and I wasn’t sure whether to burst out laughing or not at this. Was this deliberate or a pure accident? Pi, when expanded in decimal number system, is an irrational number and so there isn’t a last digit of pi. Was this a clever joke or a stupid mistake? I’m not sure. Morbius requires human blood but there’s no explanation why it has to be human. The bats don’t drink the blood of other bats. Why would he need to drink human blood? This didn’t make sense. Also, at the end of the film his girlfriend – who appears at first just to be a co-worker but then they kiss on the roof tops and that was definitely NOT mentioned before that point – turns into a vampire thing because Morbius bit her. What? How did that happen? Why did that happen? This movie is a load of crap. Oh, and at the end in the final big fight the two chaps seemed to fall a good few thousand feet off a building which wasn’t really that high. I’ve no idea how this happened. Oh, Morbius gets a lab from come counterfeiters but then doesn’t really use that place for anything except building a centrifuge which he could have ordered from Amazon a lot easier.

I did watch Joker recently on Netflix after Smith recommended it. I was told there isn’t really any superhero stuff in it. This was a good film. Joker is more a social commentary than DC film and there are plenty of lessons within. Don’t waste your time with Morbius. Watch Joker instead.

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Uncharted

So I went to see Uncharted at the third attempt! The first time I was due to go I had a migraine and so cancelled the tickets. The second time I thought I had double booked myself and so also cancelled those tickets and finally I went to see it yesterday. I suspect it seems like I was desperate to see this film but really it was the only thing on at the cinema that I even kind of wanted to see. The tide was quite high and coupled with the lovely sunshine the whole scene was particularly lovely, I was slightly annoyed I hadn’t left with more time to walk along the riverside and take some pictures but I was completing licence tests in Gran Turismo 7 and at the moment some things take priority.

After watching the film I rated it on IMDB and there’s a whole other communication somewhere on this site telling you how the rating system works. I then tweet the result at some point depending on whether I have the Twitter app on my phone or not. I am currently in a period of not-having the app on my phone so the tweeting has to wait for me to get to my PC and remember to do it.

Now what follows is traditionally where I write about the film and why I gave it the score I did. So I guess I should do that. I didn’t hate this film. I don’t know the game at all so I wasn’t that bothered by it following the storyline of that. There was a point where I was bored of the film and honestly just wanted it to end. I think I decided I didn’t hate the film by the end of it. There’s only so much treasure hunting you can do, especially when it isn’t interesting.

It’s amusing that scammers would be able to figure out where a load of buried treasure would be when academics who have studied these things for years have no idea. At least Indiana Jones was a university dude. I honestly have so many questions about how the movie makers think the world works, but I suspect they would just wave me off with “plot” or something. For instance, GPS underground? Two whole ships in a cave with a tiny entrance? Helicopters carrying said ships? No noise in a C17 with the cargo doors open?

On a larger matter I found it funny that the heroes were both white dudes. The bad people was one Spanish old guy, a Scotsman, and two women, the only women who just happened to be not-white. I’m not entirely sure what this says about the world and what we subconsciously think about it. Except, we most definitely know the world is a racist place.

So, this is communication 2022 and the list of things that happened in that year I guess must come to an end. It is March and we aren’t that far through the year but it’s already really fucking shit. There are some good things, I went to LA with my friends, but mostly it’s all shit. I want to replace the “things that happened in that year” but I’m not sure what with at the moment. I will ponder and let you know.

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Dog

I went to the cinema to watch the film “Dog”. Let’s get something quite straight here, “Dog” is a shit title for a film. Even when the protagonist calls the dog “dog” all the time. The weather hasn’t been great and so a trip to a warm building to be entertained seemed a good idea. The river Medway was almost as high as I’ve seen it as the tide was high and there was a low pressure over this area of the world, causing tides to be a little higher. After I watched the film I really struggled to work out what score to give the film on IMDB. I had to think about the scoring system explained here and then I ended up giving a 6.

I’m not entirely sure this film deserves a “six” out of ten but I didn’t actively want to leave the cinema so I think it gets that score by default. I’m still not sure I enjoyed this movie or whether it’s any good. OK, well, it’s not a good film but is it terrible? This was billed as a buddy movie and the fixing of two broken animals. I found the first few scenes quite full of toxic masculinity while the man walked around the Rangers Headquarters which I assume are somewhere in the north west of the USA. I don’t know and I’m not that fussed. It was interesting as people were in all stages of militarisation while also getting ready to be deployed somewhere. I found it quite funny, it’s not how bases work.

Our lead character has brain problems and suffers migraines and fits. He’s desperate to get back to working for a “security company” so that he can earn money because there isn’t a social security net in the USA and they treat their veterans like shit. In my time of dealing with the military it is clear that people in the military love it and also absolutely hate the fuck out of it. Then, when they leave, they miss it and aren’t really supported or looked after. I find it frightening that the state can ask these people to do its bidding for them but then not give a shit afterwards. Very tory I guess.

This film was not as funny as expected, the trailer made it look better. So it wasn’t a comedy. It tried to be a social commentary with the hip Portlanders being funny and people living off grid on a cannabis farm, but it failed at that really. We should have seen our soldier struggling with life and he seemed quite switched on to me. If you want a better movie covering all of these issues then you need to see First Blood. It’s a far better film. Nothing in this film really surprised me or bothered me. It could have been so much better. Oh well.

This is communication number 2013 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

  • Chelyabinsk meteor.
  • Benedict XVI resigns, fuck the pope.
  • An industrial building collapses in Bangladesh and kills 1134 people.
  • Super Typhoon Yolanda kills 6241 in Philippines and Vietnam.
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Moonfall

Going to the cinema within twenty four hours of a bender weekend in LA might not have been the best of ideas! But I went anyway. I’d like to convince myself that I watched a lot of this movie but, to be honest, you didn’t really have to, so there were definitely parts that I skipped through some voluntary eye shutting.

On the way to the cinema I took note of the tide and it was actually quite high. No mud bank to be seen. The water was a little choppy from the high winds being experienced. Driving over the Medway motorway bridge required more concentration as the car got blown around a little. I think there are storm warnings out for a few days this week. After the film I rated it on the IMDB website and there is a whole communication covering the grading system written here. I then tweeted the result from my PC as I’ve removed Twitter from my phone for mental health reasons [good ones].

I knew this film would be terrible but I didn’t really to be as bad as it was. It really struggled with the whole “I know something that everyone else thinks is stupid” thing. Most of the film was irritating. It looked great but that doesn’t really help when the story, plot and script are all pretty shit. At least I knew what I was getting myself into.

I did spend most of the movie wondering who the actress who looked like Halle Berry was and it turned out to be Halle Berry.

This is communication number 2010 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

  • The final CRT television is manufactured.
  • A magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile.
  • Deepwater Horizon explosion.
  • Germany makes final reparation payment for WW1.
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