The Predator

This glorious afternoon I opted to stay in a darkened room and watch a film. The room was screen 7 at Rochester Cineworld cinema. You see, when you have a subscription you need to make sure you go enough to make that worth while. I could have stayed at home and learnt the songs for the next Disaster Area gig but I chose not to.

I failed to notice the state of the tide on the way to the cinema and it is quite unlike me to do that. Ever since I started mentioning it I have been a little obsessed although it is a quick and easy way to connect with nature, the sun and the moon. The tide was low when I left the film.

I rated this film on IMDB using the system explained within the words of the communication called IMDB Ratings.

This film was quite terrible. I only stayed until the end to see what would happen. I’m a big fan of the original movie Predator. It had Arnie and an alien and a misfit group of hard-core homo erotic troopers who all died one by one until Arnie had beat up the alien enough it decided to nuke itself out of existence.

This film had a misfit bunch of soldiers who were all bad men and heading to prison [I think, I’m not sure why they were all in the same bus]. There was a chap with Tourettes so that rude things could be said and blamed on Tourette’s syndrome when really he just said the toxic-masculine bullshit that the script writers really wanted to say. I’m pretty sure he had some stuff to say about “eating pussy”. It’s a shame because the actor playing the Tourette’s chap is really good and could probably pull that character off in a serious film.

There was a kid with ASD or high functioning autism. He seemed to cope pretty well when all the guns started going off. There was a brilliant throwaway line that autism is the next evolutionary level to let the movie goers know that this kids was the future.

There was a female scientist, a kind of Tia Carrere clone, who apparently:

“wrote the book on evolutionary biology”

I always thought that was Charles Darwin. When we first meet this actress she looks EXACTLY like a make-up advert with her head turned 1/4 on and hair flawlessly flowing down her shoulders. It was pissing ridiculous.

I looks as though the script writers just had gaps in the script with the words “insert science sounding shit here”. On that train of thought apparently a helicopter can “track another helicopter’s frequency”. Jesus.

It was disclosed that the Predator had been before in 1987 and another year. Predator 2 was in 1990. I’m not sure what year they said because they then claimed that it was coming to earth with an increasing frequency which is a pretty spectacular claim to make given just three datum points. Also, the predator was being chased to Earth and crash landed so I’m not sure that “intention” could be claimed.

This movie was enough for conspiracy dicks. It had secret aliens, a massive under dam base where thousands of people work on alien artifacts and secret government organisations run by a young man who seems to have extrapolated way too much from the limited data available. Also, this movie had

GUNS

Now, I know the original was full of guns and macho bullshit but it was an Arnie film. What the fuck did you expect? In this film it shows the American obsession that violence can cure anything. The gun can kill all things and rectify the problems facing the country. Got an alien dog running at you which doesn’t go down with a couple of bullets? Just shoot more bullets at it. This movie does not celebrate genius or alternative thinking. It celebrates a culture fantasising completely over small arms, and sometimes bigger weapons.

Arnie used his ingenuity to harm the Predator enough. This movie uses guns.

So, the primary female character explains at one point that the Predator left her alone when she was completely naked in the decontamination room. Does this come back to be used? Does this have any explanation later in the film. No! Because, fuck you. Don’t expect us to tie together all the plot points or even let this film make sense.

Save you money. Find Predator with Arnie on a streaming site and watch that. It’s awesome.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Earlier today I went to the Cineworld cinema in Rochester to see the film Ant-Man and the Wasp. I’m not really into superhero movies, they bore me and are too outrageous. I was curious to see what I would think of this one. There are some administrative duties I must attend to first though. The tide was pretty full when I got to the cinema, maybe just before high tide. On the way out the river was definitely flowing towards the see and the tide had turned. I rated this movie on the IMDB website and there’s a guide to those ratings within this communication which was written over four years ago!

Well, as you can see I rated this film well. I would watch it again. It had just the right amount of character and humour to make everyone likeable, even the Ghost. I don’t have any real problems with any of it. I recognise there must be many plot holes and don’t get me started on being able to shrink smaller than the molecules of which you are made but I liked it all.

The were even TARDIGRADES ffs. Those little beasts are mean motherfuckers! I really did enjoy this film. Well worth a watch.

My main criticism would be that the Ghost character could have been more developed. I would like to see a film with just her in it. The Ghost was played by Hannah John-Kamen who also stars as Dutch in Killjoys. As a superhero, whether good or bad, the Ghost had a wonderful costume and interesting back story.

If you do see this film, make sure you stay around to see that little bit after the first set of credits. It tied in very nicely with another film. Very interesting.

The Festival

Went to the cinema at Rochester last night to see The Festival. I arrived a little before time because I wanted to complete some more steps towards my daily total. Earlier in the day I had needed to buy some work shoes and I visited that Mecca of shopping: Bluewater. Before buying the shoes and doing a classic man-shop: walk to the shop, try a single pair of shoes, buy them, walk back to the car; I walked around the shopping centre thrice.

Medway Views
Medway Views

You can see that the view is just lovely and the light was nice last night. Plenty of sunshine to round out a cooler day that we’ve had all summer. The tide was also quite low with the mudflats showing to the edge of the river. I rated this film on IMDB and there’s a communication explaining the rating system.

This film was OK. There were some wonderfully grossed out moments that made me chuckle out loud. The basic plot is that an incredibly selfish chap gets dumped by his girlfriend and goes to a music festival as part of his recovery I guess. Over the course of the festival he learns just what a selfish prick he is and tries to make amends for that.

The set-up of him slowly learning all the things he did while he was high on MDMA was quite funny. This film is your usual “teen” gross humour and situational comedy taking the worst of human behaviour and placing all that in a single person or weekend. It’s relate-able to everyone I think because we’ve all grown up. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to a festival, many of the set pieces in this film can be found in our collective pasts. I guess that makes it quite clever.

I’ve been to five festivals over the past six or so years and I would say that I have had a wonderful time at all of them. Even the muddy one. I mean, yes, I broke down in tears after my car got stuck in the mud and I was worried about it, and the walkways were ten centimetres deep with mud, but overall I had a good time.

This film encapsulates a sense of growing up and mini-experiences that we’ve all had. Well done.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

Yesterday I drove to end up on a vector almost directly north from where I had started to end up parked near the Medway river to watch a film. It was a choice of this, The Spy Who Dumped Me, or The Festival [not that fussed] or The Equalizer 2 [even less fussed], also, Mila Kunis is in The Spy . . . . Yesterday I utterly failed to observe the state of the tide sorry about that. As is custom I rated the film on IMDB and there’s a communication explaining the rating system.

Look, this film is not great. It’s not that clever and I still am not sure who was a good person or not or on the side of whatever side was meant to be good. I’m not entirely sure the film made sense, I don’t know why the object was left where it was etc.

But, let’s ignore all that. This was a reasonably amusing film with some almost laugh-out-loud moments. It also has Mila Kunis. I don’t think there needs to be anymore explanation.

The Meg

This afternoon I traveled to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester to see The Meg. The tide was high and the Medway looked nice and pretty as I drove by various parts of it. I rated this film on IMDB and you should read about the scoring system in this communication. Here’s my tweet showing my score:

Well, what can I say about a film that is almost an exact remake of Jaws? It’s not exactly Jaws but it’s pretty close. Firstly, before I give spoilers about the film, I want to make a point about one of the adverts. It was for Facebook and it was trying to say that Facebook is sorry for the way they have allowed selling of data and fake news type things. They are trying to rebuild the trust in the company. Look, I don’t want to seem stupid, but Facebook makes its money from advertising and selling your data. If they full stopped your data being used then the company would have to find another income stream. Anyway, they say that they want Facebook to get back to doing what it was originally for. Keeping in touch with families and friends.

Except that’s not what Facebook was originally about. I mean it is for most users but Facebook started as an online way to rate the attractiveness of students at a university. Just saying.

So, the film? It was a pretty good fun film. There were, of course, many moments where I thought it was absolutely bollocks but those were easily ignored because the story was kinda OK.

So, the idea there is a thermal layer below which more species lurk is pretty fine, placing it so far down isn’t though. Ships and submersibles can’t get there. Also, there’s a massive issue with the nuclear submarine at the beginning being so far down, they can’t get there. Along with the idea that they were attacked above the thermal layer by a Megalodon which couldn’t get above the layer or the sub was below the layer but no-one at that point knew about the layer. That occurs in the first few minutes. But, let’s ignore that shall we?

When they track the Meg attacking boats they decide to go and investigate in their own boat. But they had a HELICOPTER on the research platform. Strange choice really.

Their ship can travel faster than a Meg through the water, this seems pretty poor. I love the fact that they had twenty minutes to get to a shallow area to trap the Meg and in those twenty minutes they managed to rig up many extra gadgets to try and kill the shark.

How come when they got to the shallow area it was really deep for the underwater shots?

How come you can see really far in water? Pretty sure you can’t.

Anyway, I still enjoyed it. Those you expect to die, do. Those you want to live, do. They all seem pretty happy at the end of the film even though there has been massive death and destruction. I guess we ignore all the pain.

Right at the end of the film they projected the French word for the end:

Fin

I laughed. I didn’t notice anyone else laughing. Oh well.

Incredibles 2

Yesterday I sauntered over to the cinema. It is a large quiet room with air conditioning. It is a good place to visit during this heat. If only I could bunk off work to get there also! There are two films I’d be interested in, Skyscraper [which will be terrible] and Ocean’s 8 [which would be fun]. I noticed that many of the boats were up on mud flats and that means that the tide was quite low. When I went for a run 9 hours later the tide was still quite low so I must’ve missed high tide.

I rated this film on IMDB after watching it and I’m not sure about my rating this time. You should read this communication for an explanation of the grading system.

So, what about this film? It was good, but not good enough for a score of 8. I’m not sure what I thought. It left me very slightly cold. Perhaps that is more to do with my current mood and feeling with our politicians and global leaders who are arseholes. This film was a good Pixar movie. It had your classic baddie, although I’m not really sure what she was trying to achieve. I think I need to go and read some reviews by proper journalists so I can focus my thoughts.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Last night I went to see the latest Jurassic Park film. I travelled to the Cineworld Cinema in Rochester. The tide was low, I could see the whole mud back. The place looked quite picturesque in the dimming sun. As is my custom I rated this film on the IMDB site and you should read the rating system within this communcation.

Do you know what? I just tried to settle down and watch this film and enjoy it. Yes, it was terrible. The plot was shocking. The script was poor and everyone can outrun a volcano. They did get Jeff Goldbloom in for a couple of shots in the studio but they left the action to the younger actors. I just tried to enojy it as an action film and not be too picky.

There must be some form a rule that indicates that sequels are really bad, except for the Godfather and I haven’t seen those movies. This is film number 5 is the series and it was as you would expect for the fifth film in a series when there is only one plot.

Was it film four when they designed a new type of dinosaur? It wasn’t long before the capitialist pigs would take that dinosaur and then try to create an army with them. There was a lot wrong with this film. But I suspended an awful lot of disbelief and managed my best to enjoy the experience.

I remember seeing the first film in Harlow and it was an utter rush. Spielberg did an amazing job creating a world where dinosaurs exist. The original film made me so excited and scared I loved it. Unfortunately for kids these days they get to follow it up with tripe.

Oh, why were there kids under the age of 10 in the cinema when it’s a film that finished at 21:45?

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Today I went to see Solo. A film from the Star Wars universe but nothing really to do with the Empire and the Star Wars films. It was set before Han meets Luke is Mos Eisley. I went to the Plaza cinema in Workington and it was a very pleasant experience. The cinema was a good multiplex with decent prices. I liked it. I now need to include some form of information about the tide and I am afraid I have no visual information about it. I can inform you of what it was like at a similar time the day before:

This was the view over the River Esk slightly further down south. Just north of the Eskmeal Ranges used by the MOD to test rockets and shit out to sea.

As is customary I rated the film on IMDB and you should know by now to see this communication with information about the rating system.

So, there we go! A resounding 8/10. That’s pretty good for me. I went to see the film without any real expectation and I just wanted to be entertained. I struggled at the beginning because it seemed to be Oliver Twist for the first fifteen minutes but things settled and I enjoyed the remainder of the space romp.

I’m not going to go into detail. I enjoyed the film and I liked the action sequences. Could it have been better? Yes, loads. But it was good enough. I think what makes it survive a roasting here is that it didn’t have anything to say about the Darth Vader issue. It’s not a prequel and it doesn’t mess with the original films. I enjoyed it.

Avengers: Infinity War

After hearing from plenty of people that Infinity War was really good I thought I should go and see it. Even when I have said “I don’t like superhero movies anymore” they still seemed insistent that this film was worth it. So I went to Rochester to see Infinity War. The tide was waning but still quite high at 19:00 last night.

Rochester
Rochester

Once I came out of the film I rated it on IMDB, as is my custom. I had to think a while because I was thinking about what single number could offer my sum total of thoughts and sometimes that’s a hard thing to do. There’s a communication somewhere about what these numbers mean.

There are two versions of this review. The first, tldr, is below:

Whatever.

 

The second is more subtle but will make a mild attempt to expand on my thoughts in the tldr version:

The first ten minutes had me confused that I was watching the wrong movie. It started with a fight off world straight away and I was a little lost. After that the pattern was

  1. Have a scene with a few quips.
  2. Have a big fight.
  3. Repeat.

Thanos seems to have a rather Malthusian view of the universe and I have to say I agree with him. I would go further than halving the population though because EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. He sets out with a good plan.

The glove is just a glove.

About three of the male characters had beards and I COULDN’T tell them apart. I think that one is on me, I really struggle with faces sometimes.

Is one of the stones the All Spark from the Transformers movies? Have I spelt that correctly?

I don’t think nano-tech works the way the film shows it happening.

Were the dog things from Resident Evil??

Bashing people into buildings is really important.

Also, this film shows us that hitting people is important and fighting is the solution to everything.

I could have quite happily left this movie as I didn’t care about anything in it.

Rampage

Went to the cinema this evening to see Rampage. Now, I hadn’t seen any of the trailers – I don’t tend to watch them. All I had was the film poster. Before the film I went for a walk along the wharf, not a Worf that would be weird, and noted that the tide was neither in nor out. There was a low level bubbling sound from the mud banks slowly draining their contained water, it was a relaxing sound.

Tidal Medway
Tidal Medway

As is usual I rated this film on IMDB. You should see this guide to the system within this communication.

It was a terrible film and got worse as it went on. I didn’t even notice one of the main plot points although the camera shot at that exact spot struck me as strange but I didn’t work out why they had done that. I had to ask my neighbour at the end of the film how the antidote got into George.

Chicago didn’t look a whole lot different at the end of the film. Still a trashy place.

The tide was in when I left. The water level was higher than two hours previously.