Tag: projectile

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Features Live Action Movies

October Sky

Director – Joe Johnston – 1999 – US – Cert. PG – 97m

****1/2

Coming-of-age drama based on the teenage years of Homer Hickam who went on to become a NASA rocket scientist – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 26th 1999

1957 was the year Sputnik became the Earth’s first man‑made satellite. This first of two December releases set in small town America against the backdrop of that event (the second is next week’s The Iron Giant, Brad Bird, 1999) is a coming-of-age drama based on the real life teenage years of Homer Hickam who went on to become a NASA rocket scientist. Homer (Jake Gyllenhaal) is initially inspired by the sight of the Sputnik flying over his hometown through 1957’s October skies, a tiny moving dot amidst the stars.

Hickham starts experimenting with home-made rockets – blowing up his mother’s picket fence, sending potentially lethal projectiles hurtling through the air towards the local pithead and, ultimately, becoming something of a local celebrity. Aided by his two best mates and the school nerd, a stereotype likely to infuriate anyone who wears spectacles, he receives support from admiring teacher Miss Riley (Laura Dern) but not his own mine superintendent father John (Chris Cooper) who regards him as an idealistic fool wasting his time.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

How to Train Your Dragon
(2025)

Director – Dean DeBlois – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 125m

****

Instead of fighting dragons like other viking teenagers, Hiccup shoots a dragon out of the sky then secretly trains it as his steed– live action remake of animated classic is out in UK cinemas from Monday, June 9th

Following in the footsteps of Disney, who are slowly but surely turning their back catalogue of animated features into live action movies, Dreamworks have taken the plunge and turned the first of their three animated How To Train Your Dragon movies into live action. Director DeBlois previously directed the three animated outings, and clearly cares a great deal about the franchise because he has made a live action equivalent of the first film with the same plot, dragons that look near identical, and locations that feel like those in the original.

If you’re an admirer of the first film, which I am, as you’re watching this new one, you feel like you’ve seen it all before. Except, this is in live action. It’s enjoyable enough, and avoids the obvious trap of trying to redesign its classic animated characters for live action (the trap that Disney’s Snow White remake (Marc Webb, 2025) walked straight into with its hyperrealist dwarfs).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Revenge

Director – Coralie Fargeat – 2017 – US – Cert. 18 – 108m

****

It’s a man’s world. Or is it? A predictable male fantasy switches gear to bloody thrill ride when a woman turns the tables on a group of men perpetrating violence against her – available on VoD from Monday, September 10th following UK cinema release on Friday, May 11th 2018

Flown in by private helicopter pilot, Frenchman Richard (Kevin Janssens) takes Jen (Matilda Lutz) to his luxury home in the middle of the desert for a day or so. He is clearly rolling in money, she appears to be in love with him, but perhaps she’s play-acting: something of the gold-digger in her, maybe. She wears skimpy clothing, emphasising sexual aspects of her body. She comes on strong to him. Passion ensures. All of which is a lot less fun to watch than it sounds: the male is little more than a caricature of the sort often found in the less carefully made end of French action and gangster movie production while the girl displays every patriarchal cliché in the book in the way she moves, dresses, acts and interacts.

Director Fargeat has a very different agenda, however.… Read the rest