Unchartirus

I've seen other Let's Plays of the videogames, so I had some idea before seeing the movie.

Nathan Drake is a wee baby who joined up with Sully to go on a treasure hunt. The fetus gets involved in several slapstick moments, culminating with the gleam in the milkman's eye sailing around on a boat.

I keep going on about the youngness of the lead because the movie sure as hell bangs the drum enough about it in order to pretend that Marky Mark is old enough to be Sully. But yeah, the treasure hunt nature of the movie reminds me of a lot of other similar movies, but then the video game was also just another take on action/puzzle games. (Hey, Tomb Raider but with... get this right... a while male protagonist!! What a twist!!!)

Which isn't to say it isn't enjoyable, just that to me it didn't really hit any new heights. The characters all proclaim themselves as selfish, so I have no investment in them as characters, so don't really care when they get betrayed as they are quick to do that themselves. And the action set pieces feel like action set pieces that could have been swapped in from and other similar movie. (I keep wanted to say "National Treasure".)

The best thing I will give it is that it doesn't try to overly pad out the movie, and is a decent two hours and done.

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ambu-WAH-nce

Maximum Bayhem!

The basic pitch is "bank robbery goes wrong and the robbers get away in an ambulance"... and that's the longer story too. In fact, you'll be impressed by how far they can stretch a premise of "not being able to stop an ambulance" and making it a lot worse.

Which brings up a question I have to ask, and this has been asked before explicitly in movies, but not here, for example in Saving Private Ryan. While you can't really (emotionally) express this in numbers: how many people have to die in order to save one person?

There's a cop in the back of the ambulance, which is the main reason they just don't ram it off the road. But there are many, many crashes and damn skippy the officers inside those cars are not making it out (there's one moment where a car is sliced in half by a ramp off the back of a truck). Except we don't see any of them, so... does that make it right? Is "unless we see them dead they are fine" logic in play here? Because, and I do acknowledge it's not an easy call, many people do seem to be dead here. Which the movie doesn't address at all. (So I guess "and they all lived happily ever after being cut in two" does hold...)

It wouldn't be an excessive problem, but the damn chase goes on so long that you have time to sit and wonder about these things. Yes, this is a Bay movie, and you can tell he got some drone cameras and decided to use them all over the place, but after a while explosions and swooping cameras just become background noise.

It's fine and basic entertainment, but clearly it wasn't quite enough to stop me from pondering the big questions.

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Leg End of the Sea Devils

You know what have tipped this episode over the top? The Myrka! We need the Myrka dammit!

This is supposed to be a special, and yet it was the same length as any normal episode. And what's more, it was just like any normal episode too. Could easily have been a filler story in any season. I know it was supposed to be the end and the BBC asked for another episode to fill it out, but is that the whole reason this became such a nothing-burger?

It is great to see the Sea Devils back, and a really fantastic creature costume too. Slight movement on the mouth as talking to keep up the alienness of it, and an easy movement as well. Good job whatever department made that!

And as for the other characters... did someone roll the dice and decide "Let's go Chinese theme", and that was as far as they went? Other than Chinese names, this could have been any random collection of people. Did the covid mean this is why there is hardly any cast? We really could have done with actual people with actual impact on the plot.

But speaking of editing, this felt really shoddy. Like they didn't film some scenes, so just cut those bits from the episode, regardless of how it affected the flow of the story. At best, we might get a random shot of something with an audio clip of the Doctor going "Geronimo!' (flashing back some regenerations there, Doc?), but mostly it just felt like someone blinked and we missed it.

Thasmin had some continuation, but... again this is just a filler episode moment.

One big moment left for the Thirteenth Doctor... hope it's more of a bang than this!

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The Massive Talent of Unbearable Weight

Okay... I did enjoy this movie, but... thinking back on it...

Nic Cage is having money troubles, so fine, he'll take a deal to go to a birthday celebration for a chap in Spain. And while they get along well, there are some problems so...

Hmm... thinking back on the trailer, while you can guess there's more going on than what's in the trailer, I don't want to give any of it away. Not that it's particularly amazing or anything, just that it hasn't been revealed, and I don't need to reveal it here. (Although no doubt other reviewers will.)

But while I did enjoy it, let me say something else about that trailer. The main scene you think of, the big laugh... it can be entirely lifted out of the movie without any real impact. That whole sequence is about getting them to experience something together, but it more comes across as "let's do something wacky for the trailer". There's already enough meta in there that it calls this out itself in many ways, but lampshading doesn't make shading the lamp better.

As for Nic Cage, or rather "Nic Cage", this is as much a character as in any other movie he's in. Yeah, it's weird, but it's only the second movie I've seen this long weekend where a character is referencing their real life selves (Hello Everything, Everywhere, All at Once).

It's all fine, but... eh, it doesn't really stick with you. Good for a laugh, but feel free to wait for this to come to free viewing...

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One with Everything

So there's this new movie out that uses the idea of a multiverse, ripped from the MCU... because people have never heard of The One???

Evelyn is just a mother and a wife and the owner of a laundromat that is in trouble with the IRS, and that's all... except for her husband who pops in from another universe to say that she has to take on a mutli-versal threat, and to do that requires earpods.

Like, it's a big feature that everyone wears these chunky over the ear pieces, that Evelyn is just fine with wearing? And I don't know who's going to get in first for trading in on the name. Raycon is all about the in-ear pieces, so I doubt them, and big ear pieces are more for office work, but I'm sure some company would try to get in on this.

But anyway, Michael Yeoh gets to play a range of things, and is clearly having lots of fun doing so. As is Jamie Lee Curtis. Even Ke Huy Quan is down with it! And James Hong is always up for anything wacky. Clearly everyone is enjoying this, and that easily comes through.

I have no idea how long the production period was, but there was a lot shots needed for just one moment, so I doubt it was easy. But it's worth it with everything on screen.

For some reason, my local didn't carry this, so I had to go twenty minutes to get to a theatre that did. Which meant I got there after the start time, but hey, that's what the ads are for, so that worked fine. If you can find a place that screens this, go for it!

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X is gonna do something?

The concept of this movie is "horror movie porn in 1979" and yeah... that's what it is!

It's possible to do a classy dirty picture... well, that's what the group of filmmakers are wanting to prove as they head out to stay at a farm and shoot a picture. However, (there's always a however,) the old man and his wife get roused up them young peoples flaunting themselves, and they want to feel that.

And this is a love movie. A love movie where people go about killing others, but hey, the things you do for love right?

And that is one big problem with this movie. Is it a message about porn and horror? Porn and love? Love and horror? I'm fairly sure this movie is wanting to make a message about that somewhere in there, but I'm not entirely sure what it is, or even if it is clearly expressed. It really feels bitsy as it goes about its scenes.

But hey, quite a few names here, including our own Martin Henderson. Indeed, it seems this film was shot in New Zealand, although I'm not sure where. Certainly the NZ Film Commission is thanked a lot (as well as Kickstarter backers?), and it looks like there is now a sequel/prequel happening. (That's what happens when you are stuck in quarantine and your lead actress is playing two parts.)

A wee film that I'm sure will be a success, but... it feels more aspirational than complete.

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Bunnies of the Apocalypse!

For the first half of the adventure, this was something I proposed a while ago. There's a realm with Smurf (because Logan) and there's a book that can take you anywhere. However, usually when the players go there, the characters are Smurf size and the book is huge. Thus we should go as human size and get the book. And something happened we didn't expect... also, we did this in half the time of another group (that did this because I suggested it!)

The second half of the adventure is entirely pointless. There's another adventure that some players had done that negated the issues we dealt with, but since we hadn't done that adventure yet, it was still an issue for us. But ultimately, it didn't matter.

The title comes from us wearing Bunny suits (which we needed to do generally in the Smurf zone) and because we caused an Apocalypse... although it didn't really matter. There are better titles out there, but this is the one we went with.

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