Monday 15 June 2015

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.




Thursday 11 June 2015

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.