Tag: tornado

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Twisters

Director – Lee Isaac Chung – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 117m

Film ***1/2

Special Effects (the twisters themselves) *****

A young woman attempts to compensate for failed “twister taming” which caused the tragic deaths of three of her friends, by further pursuing tornadoes – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, July 17th

In the very first moments, Kate (Daisy Edgar Jones from Where the Crawdads Sing, Olivia Newman, 2022) stands in a field of tall grass. It’s an image that could almost have come out of director Chung’s previous film, the intensely personal Oscar-winner Minari (2020). Almost, but not quite: apart from one briefly seen-child, this is not a film populated with Korean-Americans. It doesn’t attempt any kind of ethnic statement, but then, why should it? People either come to this because they saw Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996) and want a rerun or, if they’re younger, because they want the same thing that pulled audiences into the first film: mayhem caused by the awe-inspiring, unstoppable force of nature that is a tornado, aka a twister.

The title implies there are more than one, and there are indeed, but then, there were in the first film too.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Twister

Director – Jan de Bont – 1996 – US – Cert. PG – 108m

Film **

Special Effects (the twisters themselves) *****

1996 review for long defunct website London Calling Internet

A twister, as lovers of The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) will know, is a tornado that snatches up objects in its path into the air and then dumps them down again. The one that snatched Dorothy into the air was a cheap special effect in a wonderful film. The current movie, on the other hand, is the other way round: basically, it’s a rotten movie with awe-inspiring special effects. The cast here is not so much the workmanlike group of American actors playing uninspired characters as the incredible series of tornadoes which appear one after another, each seemingly darker and by inference more evil than its predecessor.

This may also be one of those rare movies that requires a big (cinema) screen, with all the resolution that a projected celluloid image can give these tornadoes, to really work its magic.

Approaching Twister with the usual criteria, it fails abysmally. The feeble plot, such as it is, concerns Bill Paxton and ex-wife Helen Hunt coming together, leaving the former’s wife-to-be Jami Gertz out in the cold.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Nezha
Conquers
The Dragon King
(Nezha
Nao Hai,
哪吒闹海)

Directors – Wang Shuchen, Yan Dingxian, Xu Jingda – 1979 – China – Cert. N/C PG – 61m

*****

A boy born out of a lotus flower must defeat the dragon king who enjoys eating live human children – available to rent online in the UK & Ireland as part of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio Retro in the Chinese Cinema Season 2021 from Friday, February 12th to Wednesday, May 12th

The four dragons rise out of the sea to wreak havoc with fire and tornado over China. In his palace, General Li awaits news of his wife’s delivery. Is it a boy or a girl? His servant is unsure: after three years, the General’s wife has birthed… a lotus flower. The petals open to reveal a boy, already walking, of diminutive size. The General’s servants and his wife’s ladies in waiting are immediately entranced and an old sage Taiyi Zhenren flies in on a crane to name the boy Ne Zha and take him under his wing as a student.

After the local people anger the Dragon King Ao Guang in his undersea crystal palace by sending him food offerings when he’d rather eat live human children, the boy happens to saunter down to the beach for a swim just as Ao Guang’s Sea Warrior has arrived to abduct some tasty boys and girls and steals one of Ne Zha’s playmates.… Read the rest