Tag: Sci-fi

Predator: Badlands (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Cast out from its clan, an alien hunter and an unlikely ally embark on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.

They had to know, didn’t they? The writers, the directors, and the studio. When they made a Predator movie about a rookie Yautja being helped and trained by a woman, they knew it would piss people off. Even though it’s obvious that Yautja don’t come into the world as fully trained badasses, the woman was a robot designed by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and the Predator franchise has always had a slightly matriarchal bent to it anyway. None of that would matter, the internet would see it and go “This film hates men. Woke!” then bitch and complain like the whiny jackasses that they are.

Yet they still made it. I respect that. I’m glad they did, too, as this is a fun movie. Its not quite as violent as it could be, it’s a 12A, and I’m not saying it needs to be an ultra bloody 18 with guts and decapitated heads flying around, but there are moments where it feels neutered slightly, where you can sense it’s deliberately pulling back to make sure it keeps its rating.

Badlands is an incredibly easy movie to like. Part of that is down to Elle Fanning, who plays Thia and Tessa very differently from each other. She’s exceptionally charming as Thea; funny, smart, and able to kill things easily, just what I look for in a woman. Okay, she also has no legs, but I can fix her. Its essential she does a good job, because she’s the most human character we spend time with. Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi (yes, I did copy and paste that) does a good job as Dek; physically imposing when he needs to be, physically vulnerable when faced with a new threat, but he is still playing a character who is obviously not human, so there will be that slight disconnect.

This is as good a time as any to mention the world-building (not in a LEGO way). The film does hold your hand slightly when introducing certain aspects of the planet, but it does in a way that makes sense. Dek is new to the planet, so he doesn’t know the environment (such as the exploding plants, the grass that is like glass, etc), so it’s logical that he’d need Thea to explain it to him.

For all the good it does in building up the world, some of the characters feel underdeveloped. Chief among those is the Kalisk. We’re told it’s a seemingly unkillable apex predator on a planet full of danger. Yet it never really feels like it. It just feels like another creature; there’s nothing particularly awe-inspiring about it.

There’s also an issue with Dek at times. His relationship with Thea reminds me of How I Met Your Mother, where characters would come close to reaching the narrative ending, but the show would get renewed for another series, so the writers had to quickly snap the characters back so they were further away from their goal. There are many instances where Dek learns the same lessons again and again.

There’s a sequence near the end where our ragtag group of misfits take over a base, and it’s brilliant. The tooling up sequence leading up to it? Could be clearer. But the actual sequence itself? Masterful. Expertly shot, creative in terms of deaths, and very funny. Sequences like that are made for the big screen, so see this at the cinema while you can. It ties into the Alien franchise in a way that’s not too heavy on the fanservice. It’s such a smart way to do it, and it shows just how much effort was put in.

War Of The Worlds (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Aliens attack! But this time, we witness it all through computer screens.

To fill you in on my non-film-watching life, I work retail. A few weeks ago, I was putting some clothes up and turned around, where I witnessed someone facing away from the store, pants around his ankles, pissing in the doorway. It was disgusting, vile, and rude. Yet I would rather have that happen once every hour of my working life than ever watch this film again. Trust me, that’s being kind. This is the worst thing I’ve seen all year, and I’ve seen the news.

First off, War Of The Worlds is timeless; its themes and messages are still relevant today. Updating it adds nothing. I should clarify, it’s not “updated” in a “same basic story, but takes place in modern times”, I mean, they completely change the themes. The aliens no longer invade Earth for colonialistic reasons; they invade for food. This could still work and possibly tie into the themes. Have the humans discover that they are to aliens what animals are to us; nothing but food and sustenance. You could even have a scene of a character discovering humans being harvested. WOTW (What-wah) doesn’t do this. Instead, the aliens eat, actually, I’m going to need to pause here to gather my thoughts because it’s so damn stupid. The aliens eat data. Because aliens must know my search history.

The other change is that the aliens are no longer defeated by a common virus, which means that it was only luck that the humans won in the book. Here, they’re defeated by a computer virus; so it’s not luck; it’s intentional defence, which, again, destroys the very point of the source material. It’s so stupid, and it’s not even original; it’s the same as Independence Day, one of the biggest films of all time.

The notion of “destroyed by a computer virus” isn’t even the stupidest part of how they’re defeated. Essentially, the world is saved by someone ordering something on Amazon Prime. By sheer coincidence, this movie is available on Amazon Prime. Side note, for this to work, we have to believe that the NSA don’t allow thumb drives, but they do allow random drones to enter their airspace. Although it’s not as though anybody can stop him from using a thumb drive anyway, as there seems to be nobody else in his building. A whole building with one person fighting cyber terrorism doesn’t feel safe. I imagine that would make it very easy for people to infiltrate and blackmail that person.

The idea of an alien invasion being witnessed on a computer screen is intriguing and opens up a lot of possibilities. But it doesn’t work. Part of that is because the film is so low-budget can’t show us what it wants to. Although I guess it’s nice to know that “filming yourself instead of the actual interesting thing” is something that even trained NSA agents do. Not as though filming the actual threat could prove useful, just keep filming your face as you run. That’s definitely what trained professionals would do.

When you see stuff like that, it really takes you out of it. As do the terrible effects. The weather effects, in particular, are reminiscent of something from a PS2 game rather than a modern feature. The news reports also feel incredibly fake. It’s hard to clarify exactly why, but none of them feel genuine. It’s not the logos or the people, it’s the general feel of them; they feel very amateur.

The characters? Terrible. The lead character of Will may actually be an idiot, and the way he cyberstalks his daughter is weird. This is actual dialogue:

His son (certified computer genius): “I have information you might want to know”

Ice Cube: “Not now!”

If, in the middle of a serious event that is mysterious, someone says, “I have information you might want to know”, it would be a good idea to actually listen to them to see if it’s helpful, and to make the film at least 30 minutes shorter.

The characters might work if the performances were good. Spoilers, they’re not. Ice Cube just scowls, with less depth than the shallow end of a baby’s swimming pool. It feels like he wasn’t actually told what he was supposed to be reacting to, just told to make generic faces. It’s not just him; Michael O Neil looks bored, giving a truly terrible performance.

You may be morbidly curious about watching this. Don’t. Don’t watch it, watch good movies instead. Watch films you want to see more of. Don’t watch badly made pieces of shit. Don’t watch movies which pretend to be warning against the dangers of government surveillance, but then also praise Amazon and Facebook, if their data handling methods are squeaky clean. This movie is terrible, and it breaks Prime’s positive review streak on this website.

Renner (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Tech genius Renner (hey, that’s the title of the movie) has developed an AI tool to help develop confidence. A tool that’s unwittingly influenced by his domineering mother

I went into this expecting to be impressed. I knew who was in it, and I knew roughly what it was about; that was it. I don’t say this often, but if I had read more about it, I’m not sure I would have bothered. It actually annoyed me that I didn’t like it, because I know what the next two films I have to review are, and I would have liked if I had at least one positive review this week.

It’s not just that this wasn’t for me; at times, I actively disliked it. The lead character’s romance arc reminds me of Y2K, the film, not the year. He invites a neighbour to his house for an introduction. She brings a guy, and he is visibly annoyed to the point of rudeness. He’s then visibly elated when it turns out to be her brother. So, he comes across as a little bit entitled. Sentences like “I feel as if I’m being friend-zoned, this is like a horror movie” back up my viewpoint on that. You can’t be annoyed if a woman you’ve just met is wary of being at your home alone.

The other characters? They follow the same pathway of “the performances being better than the writing”. Violett Beane is incredibly charming and likeable in her performance, but that impact is lessened by the stuff the script makes her character say (You don’t get to say “it feels like my mouth had an orgasm” and then get surprised when someone turns it sexual). Her character feels like wish fulfilment; there’s not much reason for her to be into Renner. Look at it from her POV; she meets a guy who gets visibly angry at her for knowing a male. We don’t really get a reason for her to like him. Yes, you can say that part of that is due to (spoilers) her pretending to be into him so she can steal his shit. But it turns out that she does actually like him, but with no demonstration as to why. You can definitely tell this is written by a guy. The only character of the three who seems genuine is Chad, and that’s because he’s one of the few who calls characters out on their bullshit. In a lot of films, that might come off as annoying. But in something like Renner, it’s actually refreshing.

There’s some really interesting stuff done with colours. It is sometimes flat, garish, and ugly, but there are moments where it works, particularly after the monopoly conversation, where they move through colours. It’s incredibly minimalist, and when the visuals work, they really work. They look sparse, like the character is emotionally hollow. When they don’t work, they look cheap and like a student film.

I said earlier that this was clearly written by a man. That was wrong. It was written by four guys, one less than it takes to build a burger chain. This obviously wasn’t how it was done, but if you told me each writer took a scene and they never consulted with each other, I’d believe you. There are some inconsistencies between scenes that are harder to swallow than a burger van burger the next day. In particular, there’s a genre switch which doesn’t really work because it doesn’t feel right for the characters. It’s jarring, but not in a shocking Sinners way, but in a “yeah that didn’t work AT ALL” way. It doesn’t help that the key scene for this moment is shot in such a way that it appears to be a dream/fantasy sequence. It has a “looks like a dream but is reality” a few times, but the genre switch moment is the most egregious. It’s not to do with the way it’s shot, it’s entirely down to the way it’s edited.

Essentially, the problem with Renner (besides the title, which is difficult to Google) is that it has no idea what it wants to be. One of the best bits of scriptwriting I’ve ever been told was “do more with less”. Essentially, cut out unnecessary twists, plot points, and themes. It may suck as you may love them, but it improves the narrative if you cut out the fluff and focus on the essentials. I know that goes against my usual preference for ambitious failures over safe successes. But the ambitious failures I like are when I see something new. Nothing in Renner is new or original; it’s just unfocused, and the multiple attempted plotpoints all stumble over each other. If it cut out the bullshit, streamlined the narrative, DEFINITELY changed the ending, then you’d have something impressive. As it is? I can’t even be bothered to watch the trailer again, let alone go near the movie.

I do like that the film ended with a “made by humans” note. Very cute.

Underwater (2020)

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The opening for this had me very excited. Mainly because they set up the story through the opening credits. They told you there’s a deep drilling operation going on, and that there are rumours of strange sightings nearby. It also points out the normal hazards so that you know that even without the “strange sighting” they are still in danger. It’s a fantastic use of the opening credits and is a great example of effectively maximising time to tell a story.

The music is good too, it’s like a synth Jaws. Creepy and claustrophobic, it will haunt your mind while you listen to it. It gets better once the film starts because you have this intense creepy music, and then….silence, nothing, playing over a shot of empty rooms. It’s really creepy and meant I was fully on board for this film and ready for greatness.

Then it started, and I was disappointed. For a film that did so much in the opening credits, the film itself took forever to do nothing. It’s trying to be a mix of a disaster movie and Alien, and it fails to do either. They’re two genres which are really hard to pull off, because Alien is a very specific subgenre of sci-fi/horror. It’s one which is dependent on the use of silence and tension to effectively affect you. Whereas a disaster movie is built on noise and spectacle. So for this film to work it would need to be a loud impressive spectacle movie with great use of silence. You can see why that be difficult to do properly, and this doesn’t. Also, just a personal choice, I didn’t like the amount of shakey-cam in it. I found it nauseating. I was watching it on a small screen so I imagine it would have been even worse in cinema. It wasn’t during intense action scenes, just standard walking scenes would have it, and it just put me off.

I mean, the performances are good, Kristen Stewart is shaking off her cinematic demons with aplomb, Vincent Cassel is also good in it, it’s a shame that TJ Miller just seems to play himself though, especially considering that who he is is someone who would phone in a fake bomb threat.

Oh, also this is a Cthulhu film, this is discovered near the end and doesn’t effect the film at all. It could just be a random beast and it would have made no difference. Having it be tied to that mythology is a waste and makes it look like they were trying too hard. Also, they kill it with an explosion, Cthulhu don’t go down like that.

So yeah, stay for the opening credits, then leave.