The Sane Lunatic

After one of the best Hollywood films about giant fricking monsters against giant fricking robots came out in 2013, Pacific Rim finally gets its much-awaited sequel — Pacific Rim: Uprising. The core attraction remains the same with more big, fricking robots and even bigger monsters bashing it out and decimating cityscapes in their wake, but everything else is pretty much new. We follow the story from the point of view of Jake Pentecost (John Boyega from the new Star Wars films) who is the son of the first instalment's badass, Stacker Pentecost (played by Idris Elba). It's a typical kid-under-the-shadow-of-his-dad's-legacy, one who saved the world at that. Ten years after the bridge was closed and the war was won, most of the destroyed coastal cities are still wastelands. Settlements of looters with barter exchange in place of a monetary system in order to acquire resources like food and shelter. Scavenging Jaegers (name of the giant frickin robots) for parts was the ...

Another weekend, another remake. This one is a relatively ill-timed reiteration of an action classic - Death Wish. The iconic role played out by Charles Bronson of being a manly vigilante is now played by the only old-looking badass that isn't bulky: Bruce Willis. It's pretty much the same story brought forward to the current times. Shooting related crimes and deaths are high in Chicago so it's the location for the plot. Bruce Willis plays a well-renowned surgeon by the name of Paul Kersey who has worked hard and lives with his beautiful wife Lucy (Elizabeth Shue) and daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone) in a big home, has nice cars and everything is going well for him. Then one night, a band of thieves are at the Kersey residence and it all goes wrong when the robbers confront Paul's wife and daughter. Lucy agrees to their terms to hand over all the valuables but while she's opening the safe, one of the robbers watching Jordan starts trying to molest her. Jordan...

A new Marvel hero getting his own solo film, even though he was introduced in the insanely epic Captain America: Civil War ( review here ), it's finally time for the Black Panther to dig its claws into the MCU. After all the hype and the incredible teasers from the trailers, it finally came and it delivered in every promise of being an entertainment spectacle. Chadwick Boseman returns as T'Challa, the King of Wakanda, aka Black Panther in a story that carries on from his introduction as the prince, who unveiled his badass vibranium black suit of armour while chasing the Winter Soldier. T'Challa is young but wise, a good man, and after his father was assassinated by Sargeant Barnes, it was his turn to take the throne. Wakanda has a massive reserve of the alien metal known as vibranium, the toughest metal on Earth and is the same stuff that Cap's shield is made out of. The meteor of vibranium had affected the land itself, making it fertile, while offering many mo...

Does anyone remember when they were first taught this word? I assume it was your parents or guardians when they were mad at you for doing something wrong and you were told to say sorry. Easy as that. Just say sorry. Make a mistake, say sorry. Drop something, say sorry. Hurt someone, say sorry. Be careless, say sorry. It's become such a common and often an emptily used word, it can be argued that it has lost some of its depth.  “I’m sorry.’ The two most inadequate words in the English language.” – Beth Revis I'm not saying people should stop expressing an apology. In fact, there are so many cases of ruined relationships where ego came in the way of an apology, where saying a heartfelt sorry can go a long way. But when that is not the case, when the apologies become frequent and repetitive, when no matter how earnest, they become part of the routine, what then? What if sorry was no longer a word and there was no replacement for it? What would we do? What w...

Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in the same film, you are bound to get a memorable and powerful cinematic experience, but life has thrown in Steven Spielberg in as the director, just for good measure. 'The Post' is a well-paced, entertaining and timely docudrama about a pivotal moment in modern US history - the Pentagon Papers. These are intense times in the United States under the presidency of Trump and many parallels are being drawn between now and the period of the Nixon presidency. Hollywood is diving into the stories regarding the same with the docudrama about the FBI informant whose cooperation with the press led to the impeachment of Nixon, Mark Felt. Now it revolves around the incident preceding Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, a Department of Defense academic study about USA's war in Vietnam. The papers in question revealed that the US military was well aware for a long time that they would not win the war, but in order to save face, they kept it going for many mo...

Okay I know I don't particularly like horror movies but they do make for an interesting cinematic experience, provided I can find someone to watch em with. The Insidious series is something I stumbled upon and since the first one, I've been following all the sequels too which made it hard to miss what seems like the last one - The Last Key. The plot puts us once again with Elise the psychic and her side-kicks as a freakishly-strong demon from her childhood resurfaces to claim more souls. It isn't a particularly unique storyline but that's kind of what makes this series a reasonable watch. It doesn't try to be artsy or pretentious, but it does follow the basic elements of a good spook - jump scares, parallel realm walked by spirits and psychics, messed up looking dead people and really ugly demons. The film also incorporates a few moments of levity to give the audience a break from the flashbacks and slow build-ups. There is the standard policy of the ghouls ...

A remake or a modern sequel to a classic movie is a trend that has many franchise fans react in two possible ways - cringe of regret or quivers of excitement. When I heard there was new Jumanji movie coming out, my reaction was the former. I am a huge fan of the original one from 1995, starring the great Robin Williams and when I saw the trailer of this 'sequel' for the first time, I was interested but wary. But I'm happy to say I was happy to be wrong about my hesitations for this film. 'Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle' remembers to keep two core elements of the original and the book that I haven't read, at its core: it's a game that kids/teens will play and will learn life lessons from through adverse and life-threatening adventures. Keeping that in mind, they have evolved Jumanji, or rather the game itself evolves to make itself attractive to the modern meaning of 'a game for kids'. Board game? Pfft. Video game! That's right, it is a vide...