Category: Film
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‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ Trailer: This Looks Familiar…
As Hollywood prepares for another year dominated by sequels, we’ve finally gotten a trailer for one of their big hopefuls, Jurassic World: Rebirth. Even though the movie isn’t out until July, and this is the first trailer we’ve had, it’s a pretty full one, revealing most of the plot, characters…
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The Need for New Ideas in Hollywood
The figures for the domestic (US) box office in 2024 were down just 3% on 2023, which doesn’t sound too bad, all things considered. It’s a total of over $8 billion all told, which sounds like a good number, until you start to look a bit deeper, and see what…
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‘The Sea Beast’: A Disappointingly Good Movie
While browsing Netflix, I came across The Sea Beast. I’d heard about this movie before, and was looking for something animated to watch and the preview looked good, so decided to give it a go, and was surprised and disappointed by it. The film is a kind of historical fantasy,…
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‘The Bounty’ (1984) Review
Of all the stories that could be told of the Royal Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries, one seems to have captured the popular imagination more than any other; the tale of Captain William Bligh and the infamous mutiny on HMS Bounty that saw him put off in a…
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Nostalgia and Self-Reference in Movies
Watching any recent sequel to a legacy franchise can feel like you’re playing nostalgia bongo, with the amount of references and callbacks to previous moments from the franchise’s history. Think the mini Stay Puft marshmallow men in Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Frozen Empire, or the reuse of famous quotes in Alien:…
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‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’: A Sad Ending to the Sequel Trilogy
When I think of The Rise of Skywalker, I can’t really be as hard on this movie as I might. Yes, it’s bad, but it came off the back of something even worse, The Last Jedi. It had to try and fix that movie’s problems and bring the whole sequel…
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‘Jurassic Park 3’ is an Older Kind of Sequel
Hollywood loves a sequel and so do fans, so it’s no surprise that when a movie does well enough at the box office, it inevitably leads to the studio making a follow up, keeping fans engaged without having to go through the trouble of starting a completely new franchise and…
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‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, A Point of No Return
I’ve talked about The Force Awakens, so it’s time to continue with my retrospective on the Star Wars sequels and move onto the next movie, The Last Jedi. After seeing TFA, I was unsure what to think of the story being told here, but thought that its follow up might…
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‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’: An Underwhelming Start to the Sequels
There’s been a lot of stuff said about the Star Wars sequel trilogy, so I thought I’d add my own thoughts here. I know I’m late to the party and a lot of what I’ll say has been covered before, but I wasn’t in the Star Wars fandom back in…
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‘Godzilla Minus One’ Movie Review
When everyone praises a movie or show overwhelmingly, I’m always wary about it. Will it actually live up to the hype, or is it just a fad that people will forget about soon enough? With Godzilla Minus One, the reality is that it’s every bit as good as it’s been…
Films and Fiction 