Is it a reboot? Is it a sequel? Is it an investigation into the mind of the anti-hero, asking the question “can bad people still do good things?”? Who cares: I saw a man get ripped in half by a giant man-shark, in full-frame with slow-mo, and laughed like a hyena while it happened.
The sequel to the 2018 Deep Blue Sea 2 that few remember, which itself was a sequel to the 1999 Deep Blue Sea that many remember as being about genetically engineered killer sharks, is out on disc, and it’s time for everyone to quietly scoff at the silliness of the idea just like they have for the last 20 years. Inevitably people will chortle “It’s never going to be as good as Jaws”, because apparently 1975 was when “scary things in the water” films hit their absolute zenith, never to return. And, yes, if you want to compare it to one of the most perfectly crafted thriller movies ever put on the big screen, then it won’t stand up to it. But that’s because this is a slasher film, a totally different beast (as it were), and it’s playing, and winning, by a very different set of rules.
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Yeah, I got bribed/sponsored into watching this one as well. However this time it wasn’t my choice of film, and my “delightful” readers decided I needed to watch Cats: the CarCrash dejour of the end of the year. Whilst others had the glory of watching it on opening night or ripped off their tits on an assortment of drugs, I got to do it on a damp Monday with one coffee to keep me going. I have to say that waiting for that coffee was the highlight of my trip.
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Ever since James Cameron asked the eternal question, “can I get away with ripping off an episode of The Outer Limits?”, time travel movies have followed a fairly set rote; man comes back from apocalypse, finds Partner/Scientist/Chosen One/Tits McGuffin, fights things through a combination of True Guts and Slow-Motion, and saves the day/saves the future/sets up a time-paradox you can drive a lorry through. So, after picking up and reading the back of the 2002 Takashi Yamazaki directed Returner, I was expecting more of the same but with a bit of gun-fu.
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In the latest shopping trip to the cheaper end of DVD sales, I noticed that there were several copies of the 2004 film, ‘Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation’ in every shop I went into. This normally means that either a new box set has just been released or that it’s not a very good film. Given the pedigree of its predecessor, Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 exemplary satire “Starship Troopers”, I took a punt on it being the former. This proved to be wrong. Very, very wrong.
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Anthologies are, by their very nature, a mixed bag, but Love, Death & Robots often feels like it’s an utterly random hodgepodge of stories and tones thrown together with no cohesive themes. To give you an idea, the first half opens with a solid 18-rated, by-the-numbers gore, and pseudo-sexy cyberpunk then skips to a charming little comedy about three robots taking a tour through the post-apocalypse, follows up with the way too long and far too exploitative Naked Woman Running In Terror sequence. It’s then on to a charming story of space farmers defending a homestead with mechs, tries to be serious with an 80s inspired Vampires vs Cats, hits another high note with a highly evocative social comedy about hyper-intelligent Yogurt and tails off with the double act of The Opening Of Aliens: Let’s Have Sex In Space, and Steampunk: Mystic Asia With Rich Europeans Being Terrible.
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Trash or Treasure 