Tag: William H. Macy

The Running Man
(2025)

Director – Edgar Wright – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 133m

***1/2

In an America controlled by a TV network producing violent game shows, a poor man signs on for its biggest show The Running Man whose contestants never come back – Stephen King adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, November 12th

His baby daughter is sick, and medical treatment is expensive. His wife is working as many shifts as she can at a hostess club (we never see it – it’s described in dialogue) in an attempt to bring in some money. But it’s not enough. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) needs to find more money to pay the bills and keep his family alive. While he is good at what he does, he has a tendency to speak up when things aren’t as they should be, and this gets him into trouble. As in, he has been blacklisted by previous employers of whom he’s fallen foul. So, he turns to the Free-Vee TV network that controls and runs everything, providing a subsidised TV to every home and non-stop, reality TV and game show programming.

The network’s chief reality TV series is The Americanos, featuring the day to day lives of its well-off women in black and loosely modelled on Keeping Up with the Kardashians (TV series, 2007-2021).… Read the rest

Tags 29 days, 30 days, 48 hours, Arnold Schwarzenegger, baby, banknotes, blacklisted, car driver, Colman Domingo, contestant, contract, cross-country, Daniel Ezra, death, drone camera, dyke, Edgar Wright, Emilia Jones, fake ID, Free-Vee, game show, Glen Powell, hamster wheel, hostess club, hunt, hunter, hunting humans, Josh Brolin, Katy O’Brian, kill, lay low, Lee Pace, leftist radical, live audience, Martin Herlihy, medical costs, medical treatment, Michael Cera, podcast, postbox, poverty, pursuit, reality TV, selection programme, sickness, Stephen King, street child, survival, tenement, the poor, The Running Man, The Running Man (2025), theatre, TV network, US, VHS cassettes, video updates, violence, William H. Macy

Features Live Action Movies

Kingdom of the
Planet of the Apes

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 May 2024
No Comments on Kingdom of the
Planet of the Apes
Sticky post

Director – Wes Ball – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 145m

*****

The fourth entry in the current franchise reboot takes place several generations after the previous three films when apes live in scattered communities and humans have lost the power of speech – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, May 9th

Noa (Owen Teague) has deep-seated feelings of failure. His father is the head of the Eagle Clan, a tribe of chimps who live in symbiosis with trained eagles, and Noa thinks nothing of scaling the highest local rock face to steal his own eagle egg for later bird rearing. He goes on such quests with his two loyal friends, the male Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and the female Soona (Lydia Peckham). He also values the wisdom of Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan with considerable knowledge of the generations-old teachings of Ceasar.

Noa spots a human girl (Freya Allan) sneaking around the village and environs. A short while later, all hell breaks loose as a cavalry of masked apes attack and burn the village. Noa resolves to leave the safety of the local valley and venture into the land beyond on horseback, accompanied by Raka. They soon realise the non-speaking girl is following on foot, and no sooner have they coax her into joining their quest than they run into first a herd of humans at a small forest pool, then the mounted masked gorillas from whom they must rescue the silent girl.… Read the rest

Tags Amanda Silver, apes, attack, battleship, books, bridge, cavalry, Ceasar, chimp, Christianity, circular window-frame, cliff faces, complex, composer, cross-country, crucifix, desert, despot, eagle, eagle eggs, environment, experiments, failure, fast moving water, fiefdom, forest, franchise, Freya Allan, genetics, gorilla, herd, horseback, human, jazz, Jerry Goldsmith, journey, Kevin Durand, labyrinth, landscape, library, Lydia Peckham, mask, militarism, MoCap, monkey, motion capture, oppression, orangutan, Owen Teague, pendant, Peter Macon, piano, Planet of the Apes, pool, quest, reboot franchise, religion, religious, Rick Jaffa, rock face, Roman Empire, scarecrow, scientist, ships’ graveyard, soundtrack, speak, stronghold, tall trees, technology, towers, Travis Jeffery, trees, underground, US, village, virus, warmonger, watering hole, weaponry, Wes Ball, Western, Weta FX, William H. Macy, woodland

Features Live Action Movies

Jurassic Park ///

Director – Joe Johnston – 2001 – US – PG – 92m

****1/2

Joe Johnston directs Jurassic Park ///, the third instalment of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park franchise – out in UK cinemas from Friday, July 20th 2001

This redresses two minor omissions in Steven Spielberg’s first Jurassic Park (1993): JP///’s dinosaurs include some that interact with water (Michael Crichton’s original book contained a T.Rex swimming after its human prey, but the film didn’t) and some that fly (pteranodons). A rival giant dinosaur (here, a spinosaurus) at last fights the star predator (the T.Rex), a device used by dinosaur movies from The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt; effects: Willis O’Brien, 1925) and King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Shoedsack, effects: Willis O’Brien, 1933) through Disney’s Fantasia (Rite Of Spring segment, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, 1940) to One Million Years BC (Don Chaffey; effects: Ray Harryhausen, 1966).

Gone is all the chaos theory talk and cuddly Sir Richard Attenborough. The proceedings have now been pared down to people trapped on a deserted isle – with no obvious means of escape – and dinosaurs. Guess what – this time those dastardly corporate folks at InGen have populated a third island (Isla Sorna) with dinosaurs then abandoned it.… Read the rest