(film review) - The Creator

He came on the scene and a lot of people were wondering, "John David Washington, is he as good as his father? Is he trying to ride the coat-tails of his father? What is he going to bring to the acting table?" You could say, he has big shoes to fill, but with everything I have seen him in, JDW seems to be carving out a filmography for himself where, some may not hit well, but he is really good in the role. This would be his 13th film role. Starting in Malcolm X with his father, then Devil with the Blue Dress and then Book of Eli as a co-producer. Since then, JDW has been in BlackkKlansman, Tenet, Malcolm and Marie, all great films, so JDW is starting to become a household name. The Creator though, this is something different. And if I do say so myself, JDW was great in this. Joshua is an undercover operative in a war between humans and artificial intelligence who is tasked to seek out and locate a new weapon created by Nirmata, a mysterious chief architect of the AI machines and a machine called 'Alpha O' which is believed to have the capabilities of taking out a USS orbital weapon named the North American Orbital Mobile Aerospace Defence (NOMAD). When Joshua discovers Alpha O on a mission, Joshua discovers the simulant to be a little girl and must decide whether he should kill the little girl or follow his heart. Gareth Edwards has not done many films at all, Monsters, Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and now this. While I do recall things being said about Rogue One regarding his involvement with Tony Gilroy, The Creator shows us where we are with Gareth and exactly what he is capable of. The Creator is a few films fused into one, but delivered in such a great way in regards to storytelling and visuals. Yes, the story is not groundbreaking, but it is told in a way where it is upto the audience to decide who is the bad guy? Morality. Ethics. What we do as people, humans on this earth and how we treat each other, view each other and behave when we do not understand or wish to understand. The film is masterfully crafted giving us breathtaking visuals and special effects which simply looked amazing considering the budget. I have watched movies that were a lot more money and the special effects and graphics were nowhere near as clean as this. The character designs were amazing and some of the designs added lent to some comedic moments in a film that is fairly serious in tone as it tackles the subject matter of trained/learned behaviour. The music is great, Hans Zimmer has a catalogue of scores that pair well with his films and this is simply just another one to add to his ever growing catalogue. The acting, superb. John David Washington's performance here is great and whilst you can close your eyes and hear his father, John exudes confidence and charisma that gels well with the actors around him as well as Madeleine Yuna Voyles who plays Alpha O. She is great and helps to carry the emotional moments within the movie throughout. Seeing Ken Watanabe is always great, along with Gemma Chan. Short roles but they did a great job with carrying the story. This film reminds me of 'A Quiet Place' for the sheer fact that, while the events of this film takes places mostly in Los Angeles and New Asia, what are the other stories across the globe? Are there other pockets of factions fighting wars on their turf? Is it simply just the Americans being Americans (in films like this) or is there a British Army, Korean Army, German Army fighting "Rogue A.I" as well? I would love to see a sequel where Alpha O possibly meets another version like her who is the exact opposite built from the same schematics and raised in a way where they continue to perpetuate the war. There are soo much possibilities with this movie and considering the movie was made for a quarter of what movies are made for these days, hoping the studio make their money back, I am hoping they can push forward for another excellent movie. Something a little longer. Something with a bit more tragedy and moral dilemmas. Something that challenges the audience and pushes us to feel emotions about the things we do. Whilst this film did some of these things, they were considerably light and with the rise of AI and all the stories which have already been told, I feel we could have a great franchise here for the ages.

(trailer review) - The Creator

I heard of this film a few months back and I thought the name of the movie was a little weird, but ultimately I brushed it off for when I would eventually see the trailer. You know, I cannot judge the movie by its name alone before seeing the trailer, right? And now the trailer is here and it all makes sense. The vibe I am getting from this movie, The Terminator mixed with Elysium, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Alita Battle Angel, District 9 and a dash of Blade Runner and The Golden Child? I even thought about Akira as well. What I will say as a running thought in my head watching this trailer was, as we continue to make films about Artificial Intelligence, in the real world, we are now using more Artificial Intelligence and seemingly like, we are embracing it for pictures, script writing and all sorts, as well as the robotic police dogs and such, it just made me think, life imitating art, imitating life and it is quite unnerving.

So what I gathered from this trailer, humans create Artificial Intelligence to help them with everyday stuff, A La iRobot and eventually, the AI became self-aware like in Age of Ultron and nuked part of the world like what happens in The Terminator story. But a resistance, also like The Terminator are fighting back for humanity before these robots that look like a cross between Blade Runner, Alita Battle Angel and Ex Machina kill all humans on earth, but "The Creator" as it were, is a small robotic child, A La The Golden Child and Joshua, John David Washington's character chooses to help the robot child rather than killing it/her because of reasons currently unknown. This is sci-fi and may not be a lot of people's cup of tea but I love this type of stuff. Gareth Edwards the director behind Rogue One, although there is a rumour that he may not have completed or solely directed that movie, I enjoyed that as well as Godzilla and its looks fantastic so it will be interesting to see how this pans out. Hopefully, nothing like Chappie or Elysium. Ken Watanabe looks excellent!

(film review) - Godzilla

So, when I think of Godzilla, I think of two things; the first Godzilla film I saw which came out in 1998 directed by Roland Emmerich starring Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno; the second being Rush Hour. There is a scene where Chris Tucker mentions Godzilla to Jackie Chan. An honourable thought is, Hip-Hop group Gods'illa. The name says it all. Anyway, let's progress as I digress.

A bit of a surprising film as I didn't expect a reboot. However, if I gave it some real thought, it would have came up at some point as Hollywood seem to be running out of ideas.

So, this film is somewhat a reboot of the Godzilla film franchise and plays out as Godzilla being a terrifying force of nature. A myth of sorts.
Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) a U.S Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Officer and his nurse of a wife, Elle Brody (Elizabeth Olsen) find themselves caught in the middle of a grand monster fight when Ford's father makes a discovery of the reported seismic activities which have been occurring of recent. Trying to gather info from their previous home to prove his findings, a monster wakes up and makes its way out of it's resting place underneath his home, on a mission somewhere destroying the facility and everything else around it leaving nothing but rubble in it's wake. As this monster now threatens to annihilate humanity and it seems like the humans are powerless against it, only one other monster can save the day, Godzilla.

This is a decent film to watch. If anything and going from memory, this film is better than the film which came out in 1998. Godzilla looks like Godzilla. Rather than the Tyrannosaurus looking Godzilla we had back then. Also, the special effects are great and the film comes across as very grounded as it is set in present day. The intro to the film is very clever and makes getting into the film smooth as well as the world we are now being taken to as it eases us in. However, other than the few bits of action we see and the special effects, this film is fairly poor. Well, not poor, but when you see the trailer, you expect much more. It is fairly hard to explain as it is fairly hard to understand, how they barely made this film work. The story was marginally decent with excellent acting coming from Joe Brody (Bryan Cranstan) and Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) but other than that, everyone else's acting was weak in comparison. Not enough time was given to like or feel for the characters. Even the scenes between Ford and his father Joe were a little lacking. It's like the entire film could have been a lot better if they just pushed for a little more. A little more to the internal story between the human characters. A little more with the fighting scenes. A little more of Godzilla and a little more of basically...well, EVERYTHING. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good film to watch and chomp on some popcorn to and the ending scenes with Godzilla are beyond excellent, but I just generally feel that the film was posting it in and the director, Gareth Edwards was simply wetting the audiences appetite. If that last scenes with Godzilla didn't pan out the way it did, then the film would have been purely garbage fused with garbage.

Beautiful Visuals and Godzilla looks like and IS a BEAST!!! But other than only showing us a little action here and there and not really giving us a full Godzilla treatment and/or experience until the very end of the film, this film mails it in. I guess, this is the outcome when you add storyline to human characters who needn't be in a monster movie about monsters fighting monsters. A perfect example of where a monster film about monsters fighting monsters and where it worked would be, Pacific Rim.

(film review) - Inception

This is a film you may need to see twice, but if you generally understand the concept, then you'll pay attention through the whole film and still ask yourself the inevitable question at the end.

That question is, "so, was it real or was it a dream?"

A lot of people have their pwn interpretation of the film and some would say that it was real and wasn't a dream. Some people would say it was a dream. Me on the other hand, I'm just going to remain quiet until I can see it again.

This film is nothing from short, nothing from linear, nothing from simple and nothing from half-arsed! When I say Christopher Nolan makes a film, what I mean by that is, from screen direction to music, everything just seems epic.

Just to give you an idea of the film. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) designed a machine that enables himself and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), to perform corporate espionage by entering the subconscious minds of their targets, using two-level "dream within a dream" strategies to "extract" valuable information. As "extractors" they carry a "totem" which has a special and personalized behaviour which is only known to the owner. This object is used to determine if they are within another person's dream.

The problem is, you may not know if your are in a dream or not. Behaviour patterns change within people or the "reality so, if you feel you are in a dream, you'd take out your totem and use it to determine reality. Dom wants to extract information from Cillian Murphy but needs a new Architect because an architect with personal issues will never be able to get the tasks done. This problem arises after Dom teaches a young gifted and smart architect how to think outside the box and manipulate their dreams but then realise that a certain woman keeps appearing in every inception. This is Dom's Angry wife. So as well as Dom trying to fight his own personal demon's and reach his main goal, he has to uncover the truth and also gain his goal the best way he can without too much trouble. Obviously, there is much more complications that arise when you are in someone's dream who realises they are dreaming. Moreover, when you are not in control of the dream and other people are.

This is a definate MUST WATCH! Even buy it on video if you have too.