Wednesday, June 29, 2022
The Targeting Computer Was Never Going to Work
Monday, June 27, 2022
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Why Lightyear Bombed At The Box Office
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Eye in the Sky
A military operation uses a Predator UAV to track a group of highly wanted terrorists to a house in Kenya where a couple of suicide bombings are being prepared. Since the Predator is equipped with a couple of Hellfire missiles, and there is an imminent threat, the logical thing to do is to blow up the house from the air.
However, there is a problem. A little girl from the same neighborhood starts selling loaves of bread baked by her mother just outside the house with the terrorists inside. The conflict of the film is what to do about the little girl? This is a decision that goes up and down the command chain and gets debated hotly as a moral conundrum.
The movie also uses a couple of micro-drones disguised as animals that may not really exist. We don't know for sure what secret technology the military may have.
Is this an anti-war film? Maybe. But it also debates the morality of fighting a war with drones from thousands of miles away where the participants are safe from the consequences.
The tension in this movie is fantastic. It also shows how competing political interests might fight over life and death decisions. Although this is a work of fiction, it is easy to imagine that scenarios like this have played out for real.
Rating: A.
Sunday, June 12, 2022
No Time to Die
Almost all of the movie's technology feels like science fiction. The plot revolves around killer nanobots that can assassinate specific people or groups based on their DNA. We also see a variety of Bond gadgets that don't seem realistic at our current level of technology. As unrealistic as all this technology is, it will likely seem outdated in a couple of decades. For example, I think that the future of biotechnology won't be nanobots, which in science fiction are typically presented as all-powerful capable of doing almost anything, but instead will be actual biotechnology using genetics and microorganisms.
There is a scene early in the film where a Bond car is shown to be bulletproof, despite having normal-looking windows. Real bulletproof glass can be up to 3.5 inches thick. I would not expect thin car windows to withstand a massive barrage of bullets as they do in this scene.
Daniel Craig is great as Bond. Christoph Waltz has a really good but all too brief scene as Blofeld. Lashana Lynch is good as a female 007, but Rami Malek steals the show as the new creepy villain. He will be playing Robert Oppenheimer in a 2023 film.Saturday, June 11, 2022
Why Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi Is a Masterpiece
For some people, one or more of these flaws is a deal killer. They rejected the movie completely. However, for me, these are all minor problems because the rest of the movie is terrific. It has great themes, terrific imagery, plenty of action, and much character drama. The rest of it is what a Star Wars movie should be. I was annoyed like everyone else with parts of it, but I was thoroughly entertained nevertheless.
I think that The Last Jedi is the best of the sequel trilogy. The first film was too much of a repeat of the original Star Wars movie. The third film, episode 9, although somewhat entertaining, is not very logical and for me the most disappointing of all 9 films.