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Showing posts from February, 2023

Tiny Flash Gordon

The problem with Marvel trying to widen the scope after the universe effecting events of Thanos and his technicolour dream glove is that the more you explore "different" realms the more obvious it becomes that everything is basically the same. The multiverse of "madness" turned out to be the universe of "quite similar but the traffic lights are upside down" and here the unknowable quantum realm, where physics and time don't exist in any way we understand, is just another alien world. To be fair, the alien world is a pretty cool one. There are funky creatures and weird characters, giving things a 50's B movie or Flash Gordon vibe, complete with appropriate wacky visuals. Sadly all this stuff is rushed, not really giving the chance to take in the view or enjoy fun moments, including a cameo everyone would surely love to have seen more of. You get the feeling an earlier phase of the MCU would have leaned into the "Lost in Space" of it all a

No Plane No Gain

 In many ways Plane is the most generic action movie you could imagine. A former military man who is now a civilian pilot (played, of course, by Gerard Butler) crashes on a rebel malitia held island and must rescue his passangers from the local warlord. Some aspects are a somewhat different to the norm however, making the film a little different, if not necessarily better, than the premise suggests. Firstly, the focus really is on the plane and the ability of  Captain Broddie Torrance (classic name for a Butler character) to fly it. This gives the proceedings a disaster movie feel for larges stretches. The titular plane is very much of the plot driving (or flying) variety, able to withstand hails of bullets while being the only airliner not capable of shrugging off a lightning strike.  Butler's Captain Torrence is a little different than you might be expecting also. He isn't an ass kicking kill machine but rather just a very good pilot with a "no man left behind" atti