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darrengee
Reviews
Busanhaeng (2016)
Being picky...
The writers had a reasonable idea, but unfortunately have no idea how an actual 21st century modern railway works!
Things that I didn't know;
Trains are like buses and can be routed on a whim without the need for Signalling or Signalers/dispatchers to control movements.
Under a zombie attack railways will still function at 100%, including signalling, the electrical supply to the trains, signals and turnouts.
Mobile phone networks will still work and not get overwhelmed, and handset batteries last for hours without charge
On the modern railway, the car lights go out in tunnels to give protagonists a chance
Zombies can be stopped by unlockable sliding doors between cars.
Some elder Korean women only look about 35 years old women with wigs on
When a track is blocked, you can just take any from any yard or track and go where you want regardless of what the signalling dictates.
You can easily run and jump onto a runaway loco that's traveling in excess of 20MPH whilst carrying a child and if you're pregnant
Never trust the middle aged business executive, he'll just sacrifice everyone else to survive simply to get infected later
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
OK but lacking something
On the Earth a down trodden Cinderella type is trying to earn enough money from her cleaning job to buy a telescope in honour of her father who named her Jupiter. She's persuaded to go to sell her eggs to a fertility clinic, which is where things start on the path to adventure. She's targetted by aliens and rescued by a handsome dogman, who is actually a bounty hunter working for one of the members of a powerful Galactic family.
Earth and a multitude of other worlds are actually owned by a Borgia-like royal family. Their purpose is to seed planets with human beings ripe for harvesting to produce an anti aging elixir using the DNA of said humans. The matriarchal head of this family gets murdered and three siblings are left to squabble over this huge corporation profiting from the DNA harvest.
Jupiter is fought over as she's discovered to be Genetically identical to the late matriarch, and so she can claim her place as the Queen. The rival siblings all want her as she can decides who inherits the family business.
The film crams all this in, but although it's two hours it feels like it's rushing this. Disciphering all this from the virtually whispered dialogue amongst the confusing and overly fast paced action sequences meant watching it twice. Planetary seeding isn't a new idea, and having alien races controlling the Earth is old news for the Area 51, UFO believers. So having this as the plot didn't offend me, I thought it was a good idea and rather original as opposed to the usual Independence Day invasion stories.
There's a couple of things I didn't get, namely how all the DNA was tracked, was all the DNA from clones? It was intimated that this was reincarnation by the female sibling after the rejuvenating skinny dip. Plus it was also said that the human DNA was spliced with some of the native species after the dinosaurs were culled, if so how could Jupiter be the perfect genetic clone of the Queen as the humans on Earth have only existed for 100,000 years. This DNA isn't pure by default. Secondly if this family is all so powerful and ruling, who runs the military and why does it exist?
The SFX were good, the Gothic inspired space settings were reminiscent of playing Warhammer 40,000 or watching the 80s classic Flash Gordon!
Characters were rather shallow and stereotypical. With the dishonoured soldier who doesn't fit in, the trustworthy old friend who turns traitor but for a good cause, saving his daughter, and then comes good, the incestful sibling craving power etc etc.
An OK movie which really needed to be a little longer to take more time to explain things properly. It could've been a little more intellectual and visceral but ended up just being a lot of set action pieces linked by a Terminatorish plot secondary to the action, with Mila Kunis like Sarah Connor just along for the ride.
Robot Overlords (2014)
Much better stuff for kids on TV
Aimed at the CBBC teen market, this reminds me of some kind of Terminator Salvation meets Tripods. (Ask someone 40 plus!)
The plot doesn't seem overly logical to me... The war with the robot overlords has damaged things so much that the homes and infrastructure of the remaining humans are relatively untouched with everything functional. Street lights blaze away, no one looks gaunt or starving with their nice clean clothes etc.
These superkids can disable advanced robot technology very simply, whilst the adults under curfew can still have a good old Victorian style knees up including bare knuckle fighting! Maybe the booze is provided free by the robots so they can study drunken humans? Anyway why travel vast distances across the Milky Way to put us in an unnatural situation for them to scrutinise us? All the Transformers had to do was watch TV and hack the net!
The robot overlords are obviously not that good at Overlording as they need a pantomime human villain to do the more mundane stuff, like kidnapping and using the mind probe machine and other admin duties.
I'm not really sure how he fitted into the plot as the whole premise seemed so ludicrous and un-apocalyptic that I got bored at the point where Gillian Anderson escaped from the castle and stole the horse!
I understand this was low budget but then so were the original episodes of Dr Who. The cybermen made for much better, and scarier adversaries. None of the characters had any depth and the acting lacklustre.
I think the average teen would struggle to get anything out of this film, let alone anyone over the age of 18.
Virtuosity (1995)
mediocre mish mash
Take Blade Runner for the the "who am I?" philosophy part of the movie", add some Terminator 2 for the "let's chase and shoot a self healing shape shifting pretend person" bit,a smattering of Robocop for the vision of the future, with the self identity element too and a tiny bit of Total Recall for the "is this real?" part.
Mix them all up with a low budget plus a, forgettable female lead, cute kid in danger a deliciously OTT Russell Crowe and the seemingly clichéd good cop wronged and trying to seek vengeance and closure (that must be the Lethal Weapon element) and you end up with this movie.
It tries to be all of the above but lacks focus and is ultimately a dull chase movie with the hard done by cop chasing a super villain, who constantly slips through his fingers.