Tag: technology

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Features Live Action Movies

Terminator 2
Judgement Day

Director – James Cameron – 1991 – US – Cert. 15 – 127m

*****

A second Terminator is sent from the future to kill the future leader of the war against the machines – plays as part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK October-November 2024

In the 1984 original, a Terminator robot (Arnold Schwarznegger) is sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother-to-be of the leader of the war in the future against the machines, who are exterminating humanity.

This sequel sees a more advanced T-1000 robot (Robert Patrick) sent back in time to kill Sarah’s now-ten-year-old son John (Ed Furlong). Another Terminator (Schwarzengger) is also running around in the present (i.e. 1991).

Sarah’s recurring nightmare pictures the coming apocalypse when the machines unleash nuclear missiles on humanity. That aside, this is basically an essay on mothers and sons – and fathers and sons – wrapped up in the best chase movie you’ve ever seen.

What makes the film work is the mother and son element. Sarah is a believer in Terminators, the coming war against the machines, and humanity’s fightback in a world where such beliefs are dismissed as delusions.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Terminator 2
Judgement Day
3D

Director – James Cameron – 1991 (3D version 2017) – US – Cert. 15 – 127m

*****

A second Terminator is sent from the future to kill the future leader of the war against the machines – remastered 3D version of James Cameron’s classic is out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, August 29th 2017

Painstakingly remastered in 3D, this plays as well in its current rerelease as it did back in 1991. In the 1984 original, a Terminator robot (Arnold Schwarznegger) is sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother-to-be of the leader of the war in the future against the machines, who are exterminating humanity.

This sequel sees a more advanced T-1000 robot (Robert Patrick) sent back in time to kill Sarah’s now-ten-year-old son John (Ed Furlong). Another Terminator (Schwarzengger) is also running around in the present (i.e. 1991).

Sarah’s recurring nightmare pictures the coming apocalypse when the machines unleash nuclear missiles on humanity. That aside, this is basically an essay on mothers and sons – and fathers and sons – wrapped up in the best chase movie you’ve ever seen.

Unlike the 3D conversion of the same director’s Titanic (1997) which proved 3D to be a greatly improved, astonishing revelation, the improvements afforded T2 by 3D are comparatively minor (though they’re peerlessly executed).… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Cyborg
A Documentary

Director – Carey Born – 2023 – Germany, Spain, UK – Cert. 12a – 87m

***1/2

Cyborg artist Neil Harbisson, unable to see in colour, has had an antenna implanted in his head to hear colours instead – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 20th

This opens with a title sequence of weird, psychedelic images of what appears to be moving coloured liquids forming strange, never to be repeated natural patterns. If that implies a striking visual sensibility, that’s deceptive, since this documentary follows a fairly straightforward structure of following people around with cameras and talking to them as it introduces us to cyber artist Neil Harbisson and his artist partner Moon Ribas.

Neil stands out from other people because he has an antenna protruding from the back of his head to dangle in front of his forehead. He was born with the unusual condition of achromatism, which means that he sees not in colour but in monochrome. (Less severe, more common forms of colour blindness include the inability to differentiate between green and red.) This came to light in his childhood when the family got a new colour TV, and he and his sister would watch cartoons. At this point, the film throws in a clip of the children’s sci-fi cartoon series Robotrix (John Gibbs, Terry Lennon, 1985).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Conversation

Director – Francis Ford Coppola – 1974 – US – Cert. 12a – 113m

*****

A surveillance expert records a conversation between two people, then worries about turning the recording over to his corporate client as contracted – 50th anniversary 4K Restoration is out on UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on Monday, July 15th

There’s nothing else quite like The Conversation in cinema.

Union Square, San Francisco. People milling around. Among them, a couple (Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams) having a conversation. Also in the square, a man in a plastic mac (Gene Hackman). And another man (Michael Higgins) following them around, holding a bag. And, at two separate windows above the square, two long range microphones.

The first man, Harry, enters a nearby van, inside which is his recording assistant Stan (John Cazale). He’s shortly followed by the other man, Paul, who believes the couple spotted him trailing them.

Harry pays a nighttime visit to his girlfriend Amy (Teri Garr). She wants him to spill his secrets. He claims he has none. He leaves, with her telling him not to bother to come back.

He goes to work in his office, situated at one end of the floor in an otherwise deserted warehouse.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Eternal You

Directors – Hans Block, Moritz Reisewieke – 2024 – US – Cert. – 87m

*****

People deal with bereavement with the help of interactive versions of their deceased, loved ones recreated by AI – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 28th

In a rare visual shot in this mostly verbally based documentary, an aerial shot of a graveyard, with light creating lots of little blocks of shadow as it falls on the ranks of gravestones, resembles a slice of internal computer electronics. It’s a pertinent pictorial moment that stands out from almost everything else here.

“Is there some reason you wouldn’t believe me?,” a woman asks her boyfriend. “You died,” comes the sceptical reply. Joshua, from Ontario, Canada, had to endure the trauma of watching the life support machines that were keeping her alive being switched off. After she died, about two weeks short of high school graduation which she was expected to pass, he got the school to graduate her. He later explains this by written chat to her interactive AI.

Psychiatrist Sherry Turkle talks about the problems people face coping with grief in the modern world, where they often live on their own following the death of a partner and don’t have an extended network of family around them like they would have done in former times.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Kingdom of the
Planet of the Apes

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

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Fantastic Machine
(original title:
And the King Said,
What a Fantastic Machine)

Directors – Axel Danielson, Maximilien Van Aertryck – 2023 – Norway, Sweden, Denmark – Cert. 15 – 88m

****

An idiosyncratic history of moving image technology and its increasingly pervasive role in human society, from camera obscura to smartphones and social media – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 19th

To understand what this movie is about, which I’m not sure I did going in, you have to understand its title. The fantastic machine in question is, in part, the camera. That might lead you to anticipate a history of photography, but that’s not quite what this is about. You’d be forgiven for believing that, though, for the first few minutes when we see a contemporary, on the street, walk-in exhibit of the camera obscura or pinhole camera, a natural optical phenomenon whereby light passes through a simple pinhole onto a surface or screen beyond to recreate an inverted image of where the light came from. As a visitor marvels of the resultant, real time moving image of people outside the exhibit walking around, “it’s upside down”. As a human guide to the exhibition explains, that’s how the human eye works. Our brains correct the upside down image so that appears the right way up.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Restore Point
(Bod Obnovy)

Director – Robert Hloz – 2023 – Czech Republic – Cert. 15 – 113m

*****

A detective investigates the murder of a couple, one of who helped create the technology for restoring people to life after they die – thought-provoking SF thriller is out UK on digital on Monday, April 1st

In essence this is a crime movie about corporate conspiracy and murder, but with a difference putting it into the real of science fiction – although given the speed at which current technological advances are taking place, it’s the sort of thing one can imagine being reality in a matter of years. It’s set in the not too distant future of Central Europe 2041, where technology has been developed to back up people to restore them to life should they die. This has been guaranteed by the State for anyone dying a violent, unnatural death following an increase in violent crime. This in turn is the result of growing social and economic inequality (an element not explored beyond an introductory intertitle on the screen).

This allows for fascinating plot variants to the crime genre. If someone is shot dead, they can be brought back to life within 48 hours – provided they have a backup and only so far as that backup is up-to-date.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Disconnect Me

Director – Alex Lykos – 2023 – Australia – Cert. 12 – 87m

***1/2

A man attempts to live for 30 days without the use of his smartphone, tablet or computer – out on digital from Monday, April 1st

This documentary opens with an advisory to keep your phone handy during the screening, as you may be required to use it at some point. In the UK, it’s only available on digital platforms… but even so, that advisory marks it out as different from most films.

Lykos, who narrates his documentary, is old enough to have grown up without a smartphone or other digital devices, but kids today handle smartphones from a younger and younger age. What would happen, wonders Alex, if I disconnected myself for an entire month? His and his wife’s home contains their two smartphones, two tablets, and a TV. Learning that Alex wakes and checks his smartphone three or four times a night, Alex’s doctor wires him for a sleep test.

Like many of us, Alex finds himself spending an hour on social media and wondering, what just happened? He and others admit to feelings of envy when others post about good things in their lives. A near-tearful divorcee talks about it being hard seeing people having a good time with partner or family.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Chicken Run:
Dawn of the Nugget

Director – Sam Fell – Co-Director – Jeff Newitt – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 101m

****

Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Having escaped the farm for an island paradise, the chickens must break into and wreck a food processing factory masquerading as a holiday camp to lure unwitting chickens to their doom – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th and on Netflix from Friday, December 15th

More than two decades after the original Chicken Run (Nick Park, Peter Lord, 2000), its poultry return. They can hardly escape from the farm again, having established themselves on a secluded island in a lake well away from human beings. So the original’s co-screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick, a veteran of The Rescuers Down Under (1990), James And The Giant Peach (1996), The Little Vampire (2000), Charlotte’s Web (2006), makes use of a number of very clever tricks to have the chickens break in to a facility that endangers chicken lives rather than break out of one.

He effectively redeploys the escapees from the original, but it being over two decades since its production, he races through what would be just over a decade in chicken years if their lifespans were comparable to humans and has the hero Rocky (voice: Zachary Levi) and the heroine Ginger (voice: Thandiwe Newton) get together and produce a family in the form of a daughter, Molly (voice: Bella Ramsey) , who in the opening minutes’ montage grows into a teenager.… Read the rest