The Jurassic World Effect

In this blog entry for the Herald, I excitedly anticipate five potential ways the Hollywood blockbuster machine will interpret and try to replicate the insane commercial success of Jurassic World.  

Good Now: In Cinemas and Worth Seeing

Feel like going to the movies? Not sure what to see? Here’s a quick guide to five films currently showing in cinemas and worth the effort: Marshland, Love & Mercy, Minions, The Falling and a little sleeper hit called Jurassic World.

A Brief Guide To Being Eaten At The Movies

In this blog for the Herald, I wax lyrical about the peculiar pleasure of seeing humans get eaten alive by monsters or large animals, and detail some of my favourite examples from recent movie history. 

Terminator Genisys (2015)

After being prevented from participating in part four by his pesky sojourn into politics, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back for the fifth Terminator movie, a reboot of sorts that revels in nostalgia for what came before. There’s plenty to be amused by here, but almost nothing of substance or weight.

The Best Movie Scumbags

The right kind of scumbag can really lift a movie. Elevated beyond their traditional roles in actual society, scumbags take on a greater meaning in movies, representing everything the hero is not. Scumbags in movies deserve our respect. Here I honor some of my favorites.

Minions (2015)

The little yellow scene-stealers from the Despicable Me movies take centre stage for this relentlessly charming prequel which chronicles their lives before they came into the employ of loveable supervillain Gru. If you’re onboard with the title characters, you’ll have an absolute ball.

Love & Mercy (2015)

By focusing on two distinct periods in the troubled life of Beach Boy Brian Wilson, this biopic avoids the dramatic intertia that plagues most films about famous musicians. There are two Brian Wilsons in this movie, and their stories are told concurrently.

Inside Out (2015)

The Pixar films have always demonstrated a pronounced reverence for the expanding mind inside every child, and that reverence finds a perfect storytelling outlet in the fifteenth movie released by the studio.

It’s as if they took the sentiment evoked by the ‘Production Babies’ list that appears in the credits of every Pixar film, and spun an entire movie out of it. 

Marshland (2014)

This dark serial killer drama swept the most recent Goya Awards (the Spanish Oscars) and has been generating comparisons to the first season of True Detective. It’s set in Spain in 1980, soon after the restoration of the democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Writer/director George Miller returns to the insanely influential world of Mad Max thirty years after Beyond Thunderdome and schools all the imitators by delivering one of the most ridiculously entertaining blockbusters ever made — a metal-grinding, gut-crunching, petrol-guzzling powerhouse of an action movie that pulsates with tangible, weighty theatrics.