22 Things I Learned From Spectre

1. It’s acceptable to recklessly endanger civilians so long as they’re Mexican.

2. Long takes are a cheap way of making your film seem technically accomplished.

3. Rooftops are like Super Mario levels.

4. Spy laptops come with instant DNA scanners.

5. The villainous and endlessly resourced Spectre organisation only have the one branded ring, and they share it around.

6. The word ‘cuckoo’ is not scary.

7. Dave Bautista paints his fingernails.

8. Daniel Craig is a big fan of Roger Moore.

9. James Bond carries a tux everywhere, but not necessarily a gun.

10. You don’t need wings to pilot a plane.

11. There’s no point introducing magic nano-blood if you then don’t do anything with it.

12. Sam Mendes never conceived of a visual motif he couldn’t run into the ground.

13. Everyone massively overdresses for dinner.

14. There’s always a soft landing.

15. Unless you’re a villain.

16. In 2006 interrogations were being recorded on VHS tapes.

17. Truly evil people don’t wear socks.

18. One bullet is all it takes to blow up an entire building.

19. Hack writing deploys bland references as though they had inbuilt emotional and dramatic weight, and weren’t the cheap gimmicks they actually are. (See also: Star Trek Into Darkness)

20. It’s acceptable for a black female field agent to hang out with the white men during the mission planning stages, but she has to wait in the car while the important stuff happens.

21. Spending $300m and being two-and-a-half hours long doesn’t make you big.

22. Quoting past franchise outings in illogical ways and giving a character a Proustian name doesn't make you clever.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Alternate Take

Some more wittering on from me about Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, plus the rest of the franchise: http://bit.ly/1LN1qVQ

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Review

The opening of this fifth Mission: Impossible film gives us Tom Cruise taking a running leap onto the wing of an enormous cargo plane and holding on for dear life as it climbs into the sky. It is tremendous fun, but it does not really serve as a model for what follows… [full review at over at alternatetakes.co.uk]   

22 Things I Learned from Ant-Man

1. Tanks can go from zero to sixty in two-point-five seconds.

2. Criminals enjoy waffles.

3. There are ants everywhere.

4. Helicopters can crash in major urban centres without consequence.

5. The button for the laser grid is always switched off at the last possible millisecond.

6. Paul Rudd’s head is just slightly too big for his body.

7. Michael Pena never met a relief he couldn’t comic.

8. It makes so much sense for a man who has built a shrinking suit to also be able to speak to ants that this correlation is not even worth discussing. (Also, why not bees? Or bears? Or other people?)

9. Seeing a villain outright murder someone is not enough to prove their villainous credentials. They must also kill a lamb.

10. Ex-cons have no rights whatsoever.

11. I fancy a Baskin Robins Mango Fruit Blast. I wonder why?

12. Bobby Cannavale and Judy Greer make an absurd couple. They are also both making careers out of being wasted by Hollywood.

13. You can get up to pretty much anything in your back garden without arousing suspicion.

14. Marvel are still casting Janet van Dyne.

15. There is only one police precinct in San Francisco.

16. For heist films to work the location of the heist has to be clearly laid out, and should ideally have at least a couple of interesting architectural details.

17. The subatomic realm looks like a late-90s music video.

18. Romantic relationships happen offscreen.

19. The idea of a cultured Mexican is inherently absurd.

20. You don’t need cities crashing to the ground for an exciting action finale.

21. Bathos is all well and good, but it can get pretty tiresome.

22. Somewhere, Edgar Wright is shrugging.

Which of These 22 Decisions From the Makers of Terminator: Genisys Was the Worst Decision?

1. The spelling of the title.

2. Thinking it is endearing/appropriate to turn everything into a punchline.

3. Letting Arnold Schwarzenegger continue phoning it in.

4. Hiring Jason Clarke but giving him no direction.

5. Hiring Jai Courtney.

6. Wasting Matt Smith.

7. Wasting Byung-hun Lee.

8. Sampling the song ‘Bad Boys’ over a mugshot montage.

9. Thinking that helicopters can do that.

10. Thinking that school buses can do that.

11. Featuring an affectless I-can-load-bullets-faster-than-you pissing contest scene.

12. Endowing the villain with inconsistent powers and motives.

13. Making Terminators essentially unthreatening in any guise.

14. Filming everything like an NBC TV show.

15. Attempting a lame critique of contemporary techno-culture.

16. Having the characters bicker like children. Constantly.

17. Aping a Marvel film (also, see above).

18. Aping a Resident Evil film.

19. Ruining all interesting twists with horrendous marketing.

20. Resembling bad fan fiction.

21.Treating the iconic star of the franchise like a 1970s sitcom character.

22. Progressing beyond the first production meeting.

22 Unanswered questions from Season One of Daredevil

1. Does Matt Murdock dye his hair? And if so, why?

2. Did the chemicals make him a superhero, or the fact that he was taught by an old King Fu master?

3. Why does Elden Henson play Foggy as though he’s at an initial table read?

4. Is Vincent D’Onofrio a better actor when he’s nowhere near the screen?

5. How did Stick find Murdock, and why?

6. Why is all the banter so cringe-worthy?

7. When Murdock knocks a guy out and he falls into the Hudson, does that count as murder?

8. Why did that Russian mobster, previously so cautious and respectful, burst in on Fisk’s private dinner like an idiot?

9. Is the graphic violence making a point about the brutality of vigilantism and criminality, or is it just there because the show is on Netflix?

10. What is Black Sky, and why should I care?

11. How do any of the heroes pay their rent?

12. Why does Rosario Dawson only have half a haircut?

13. Has there ever been a protagonist journalist who hasn’t been chewed out for pursuing a story by their business-minded editor? And didn’t I see this exact same plot in the first season of Boss?

14. Surely there are easier ways to solve your problem than poisoning a whole swathe of New York aristocrats?

15. Why do Fisk and Vanessa have no chemistry whatsoever?

16. Why was that gun loaded, and what was it doing on that table in the first place?

17. Just how many abandoned factories, buildings and alleys are there in Hell’s Kitchen?

18. Are all superhero properties contractually obliged to feature a scene (or several) in which a henchman is quietly incapacitated after he walks into the shadows?

19. No really, why hasn’t Foggy been killed off yet?

20. Why does all that Catholic hand-wringing over the problem of righteous murder go in the last episode?

21. Is it really possible to tail a car along rooftops for several dozen blocks?

22. Will I bother with Season Two?

22 Things I Learned from Jurassic World

1. Genetic engineering is a noble pursuit.

2. All nannies are British.

3. All teenagers make sexually charged eye contact with one another.

4. Brilliant geneticists dress like Steve Jobs.

5. Being in the Navy prepares you for being a dinosaur-whisperer.

6. Chris Pratt smells.

7. Women with high-powered jobs are no good at dating, child-rearing, or their high-powered jobs.

8. Island-owning billionaires will do and say whatever the plot requires of them at any particular moment.

9. Jurassic World patrons don’t mind their phones getting splashed.

10. Jurassic World patrons are very protective of their margaritas.

11 Jurassic World patrons are happy to wait patiently on the docks while all manner of devastating craziness goes on around them.

12. …No wait – genetic engineering is diabolical and misguided.

13. At the end of the jungle there’s always a waterfall.

14. Children are brilliant car mechanics, and cars abandoned for years will run fine with a little TLC.

15. The US military thinks sending raptors to hunt terrorists is a good idea.

16. Pterodactyls unexpectedly freed from captivity will use their newfound independence to violently peck at helicopter pilots and tourists.

17. Don’t send a heavily armed containment team to do Chris Pratt’s job.

18. …Ok, so some genetic engineering for grossly commercialised purposes is groovy, but it’s crossing the line to go full Frankensplice, or to get the military involved. But if it's being benignly used to sell T-shirts and giant cokes to teenagers, then go for it.

19. 'How fast have you clocked the T-Rex?'

'You know how fast a grown woman can run in three-inch heels? Just a little shy of that.'

20. Even velociraptors can pull a Han Solo.

21. Three deus ex machinas is three deus ex machinas too many.

22. Four Jurassic Park movies is three Jurassic Park movies too many.

22 Things I Learned from San Andreas

1. There’s always a lower ledge.

2. It’s okay for black guys to make racial jokes.

3. If Dwayne Johnson says your shoe is untied, you better damn well believe your shoe is untied.

4. Ex-wives always trade up in these kinds of movies (see also 2012, War of the Worlds).

5. CalTech is brought to you by Apple and Pepsi.

6. Dwayne Johnson is brought to you by Dodge.

7. This movie is (oddly) brought to you by the San Francisco tourist board.

8. Kylie Minogue makes a stellar stone-cold bitch (shame her situational awareness is hopeless).

9. Televisions will still work after multiple earthquakes measuring well above 9 the Richter scale.

10. Ditto cell phone towers, but only for a short time.

11. Long takes are meaningless in an era of bluescreened digital imagery.

12. $100m blockbusters still can’t photoshop family photos for toffee.

13. When a real man fancies a new set of clothes he precision-crashes his helicopter in the menswear department.

14. Standardised shipping containers have a sense of poetic justice.

15. Skyscrapers are no substitute for a nuclear family.

16. The relentless spectacle of arbitrary mass death is in no way traumatic.

17. When the world trembles, get up against something sturdy.

18. When The Rock trembles, reach for the fast forward button.

19. 100,000 tonne freighters can sneak up on you.

20. Fifty foot chasms in the world can sneak up on you.

21. Happy endings can never sneak up on you.

22. This movie being a whole shaking mess of good fun sure snuck up on me.