Tag: cinema

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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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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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The 355

So I went to Cineworld at Rochester to see a film. It was actual daylight when the film started and the weather wasn’t that bland grey that we tend to have all the time, there was sun. It wasn’t a warm day but it was a pleasant day. So, to help with the records I took a picture of the river and mud banks so I can say that the tide was low. There are other pictures I think and I might even, one day, walk further along the bank to take a picture of the mud banks that I look for. I wouldn’t be surprised if a photograph like that already exists on this site, there’s a lot of stuff on this site that I’ve forgotten exists!

Down By The River
Down By The River

In the photograph you can see the mud banks on the opposite side of the river, clearly showing that the tide is low. Also, if you look at the bridge supports you can see the green slime where the river covers and then exposes the concrete. Hence, the tide was low. Looking at the shadows and area of light on the far bank it is clear the sun is directly to the right of the bridge. The shadows are long. Both of these facts indicate winter – low sun – and time of image – early afternoon – due to the direction of the bridge – a little bit below east.

I went to see the film The 355. I didn’t really know anything about it before going except that it was an action film with women in the main roles. After the film I thought for quite a while about how to rate this film, there’s a guide to the ratings in this communication. I settled on scoring this film an eight out of ten.

I think I might watch this film again one day. Mostly I will be watching it to figure out what the fuck the plot was and what was happening. There was a general consensus of which city each section of the film took place. There was some aim for each scene to achieve and I think the film got there. What I didn’t really understand was who owned the MacGuffin at various points through the film. I’d quite like to see a diagram of what the film makers thought was happening at each stage.

There’s also been some criticism of this film because the lead actors are women. Well, those so called critics can go fuck themselves. What a stupid world we live in at the moment where people can’t accept the breakdown of traditional gender roles. All the people who think like that can fuck off and die. Well, I guess they will die eventually and with luck those thoughts will die out at the same time. We should be progressing as a society not constantly striving to go backwards.

My suggestion to make the film a little better would be to say that the MacGuffin is a quantum computer. The little USB box that turns any device into a super cracking computer able to shut down aircraft or power stations is just a silly looking USB device. It’s explained at various times that it’s a collection of algorithms or ransomware etc. That isn’t how any of those things work. An easier, and more correct, explanation would be that it’s a quantum computer. Once those babies are made and work all current security protocols are screwed. Everything we think about internet security won’t work. It would have been a more realistic explanation of what the device is.

I found it curious that the film thinks you have to have an actual auction to cover the fact that you are also running an auction on the dark web. Nope. You can just run an auction on the dark web. You don’t even need the product to be nearby. It certainly doesn’t need to be linked to a physical object in a real auction. The people bidding on your MacGuffin clearly don’t need to be anywhere near the real auction. The two events can be divorced entirely. This part of the plot made zero sense. It was worse than terrible.

Now, here’s a little more of a justification for giving this film an eight out of ten. The last few Bond films I have watched I have spent quite a while trying to figure out “why is he going there”, “what is going on”, and more generally “why?”. Plenty of Bond films are just as terrible as this film is with respect to plot devices, MacGuffins, characters, killing random people, shooting up cities in far away places, having coffee in Paris. I couldn’t really see any difference between this film and a Bond film except that I don’t really like Bond anymore. I think I grew up.

This is communication number 2007 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

  • The first iPhone is released. It wasn’t actually that good in terms of technical specs.
  • Live Earth concerts are held to raise awareness of environmental issues. How’d that work out?
  • Start of the financial crisis 2007-2008. The effects are still being felt.
  • A cyclone in Bangladesh kills 17,000 people.
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The Matrix Resurrections

I remembered going to see the Matrix reissue when it was released and in my head it was about a year ago that I did that. Well, according to my own communication on this site I went to watch it in July 2019. Fucking 2019. Do you remember that? This means I went to see this original film twenty years after its initial release before SARS-Cov-2. Let me just repeat that, BEFORE. I’m not even sure I can remember what it was like in the before-times. Can you remember walking around and doing whatever you want without having to wonder why some cunts aren’t wearing facemasks? Can you remember a time when we didn’t have 150,000 dead in this country from this pandemic. I would ask if you could remember a time before having an incompetent and corrupt government but, they’ve been in power for a long time now and BJ was still as shit then as he is now. All he had to fuck up then was the Brexit agreement and that is going to shit still so we knew how our politicians acted.

Sorry, where are my manners? There are things we need to discuss first. The tide was pretty low as I drove along the riverside road. There are currently road closures in the village and so anywhere over “cinema side” of the local area is actually a bit of a pain to get to. As far as I know the gas people are trying to fix a gas leak somewhere along the main road into the village but someone decided to close the road as the hole is a little big? I’m not sure why it was closed but it is quite an inconvenience to many in the village. After watching the film I rated the film on IMDB and there is a communication from years ago where I discuss how the rating system works.

There are going to be spoilers straight after this tweet:

I didn’t dislike this film. I’m not enough into the canon to worry about what the fuck is going on all the time and how it affects the original storylines. To be honest I liked the original Matrix but the two sequels were shit I think. I know they had loads of money to make the films they wanted to make and they did, but I think when you try to narrow down the storylines to the point of making it make sense you end up with something that doesn’t work. Let’s face it, the Matrix looked gorgeous and has been much imitated since 1999.

I quite liked the first bit of this film where nearly every line was taking the piss out of the fact that they were making a sequel to the original trilogy. I thought this part worked really well. Normally I try and remember key points as I go through the film and sometimes [rarely] I write a note on my phone. I’ve not yet resorted to taking pen and paper but that might be worth it in the future. I also interact with a film by wondering what I will write about it on these pages. I don’t think I did much thinking about that last night. I was more concerned about a lot of things that didn’t seem to make much sense in the film.

In the film they talked about how The Matrix [game] Trinity was inspired by how Tiffany looks as Thomas Andersson sees her everyday in the coffee shop. They also explain how the game was released twenty years ago which means that Tiffany wouldn’t have had kids and possibly wasn’t married so Thomas could have approached her. There were a couple of things like this that didn’t quite make sense but you can do whatever the fuck you want with this film.

A bigger issue for me, and this is extremely similar to my complaint with Spiderman, is that Neo is told that going to get Trinity will cause a war and lead to the destruction of Io, the new human settlement. But fuck it, he’s going to get her anyway because Love. No weighing up of the death of thousands in a war, just a straight up obvious decision to go and get his beau. I did not like this aspect of the film.

I will tell you that this film looked gorgeous. It was really well made along with many themes of accepting who you are. This isn’t a surprise given the background of Lana Wachowski, the joint-writer and director. I’ve read quite a bit on social media where the general consensus is that Lana Wachowski created a gorgeous rebuff to the right wing of politics who had co-opted themes from the original film. Good on her. Fuck those people.

This is communication number 1999 and so here are some things that happened in that year, which is a newish thing I’ve been doing:

  • A fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel kills 39 people, closing the tunnel for nearly three years.
  • Columbine High School massacre.
  • British TV presenter Jill Dando, 37, is shot dead on the doorstep of her home in Fulham, London.
  • Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is released.
  • The sovereignty of Macau is transferred from the Portuguese Republic to the People’s Republic of China after 442 years of Portuguese settlement.

Engineers and software people spend a lot of time and money fixing the millennium bug and because of the hard work the threat of mass computer failure fizzles out. But it was because we fixed it. Not because it wasn’t really a thing.

The Labour government spend a load of money creating the millennium dome. I think it was over a billion pounds. All to get ready for the celebrations of the end of the second millennium and the start of the third but because we have a stupid year numbering system most of the world gets this wrong.

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