Midway

The Pacific War has been popular in America cinema since the day the Japanese air force attacked Pearl Harbor. This ‘sneak attack’ on a date that will ‘live in infamy’ was instantly a sore point for America so the depiction of the Japanese army in 40s films like Wake Island and many others were frequently vile, racist, and lacking in the depth that German characters were depicted with in films like The Mortal Storm. Things have gotten better but for every Letters from Iwo Jima you’d get a few Hacksaw Ridges, but overall the depiction is far better.

Rambo: Last Blood

Politics influence movies and movies influence politics. It has always been a fact. Even the first Rambo was a politically driven film which examined America’s attitude towards Vietnam veterans returning home, abandoned by their government and vilified by certain quarters for being ‘child killers’. Rambo: First Blood came at a time America began to really look at its involvement in Vietnam, films like The Deer Hunter, Platoon and Rambo looked at the American psyche following its loss of innocence as images of war were beamed into every living room with a TV.

Gemini Man

Ang Lee is trying to change the way we view movies. His previous effort Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was, in part, shot at 120FPS. His latest effort, Gemini Man, was entirely shot at 120FPS. The problem with this is only a select few cinemas have the capability to screen films at this framerate. This means only a select few people saw the film as it was intended by the director. Those who did see the film at 120FPS complained that it made the film loo ‘fake’ or ‘soap operary’. Whilst I didn’t watch it at 120FPS I can imagine it looked like watching films/TV on my uncle’s massive HD TV for the first time where it looked like everything was filmed in front of a really bad green screen.

The Irishman

 When you’ve left your own personal stamp on an entire genre, you are entitled to say whatever you damn well please without some Marvel fanboy dismissing your entire filmography because you didn’t like a film they like. Not that I agree entirely with his comments, but the fact Martin Scorsese has cemented his place in movie history by influencing an entire genre, Scorsese’s opinions should be respected.

Doctor Sleep

Stephen King’s distain for Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film is pretty legendary, he much prefers the version that came out in 1997 as it was much closer to the book. He is, however, very much in the minority as Kubrick’s version only gets more and more popular with age. Such is the popularity of the 1980 film, director Mike Flanagan makes a film that’s an adaptation of the king novel and a sequel to the 1980 film. 

Judy

Names like Judy Garland, Drew Barrymore and Linsey Lohan are ones you’ll see on lists about people destroyed by the Hollywood system and the odious people in it. It was terrible in the thirties and it has been terrible throughout the entirety of the 20th century, continuing on into the 21st century. Garland never really escaped the trauma of young stardom and this film attempts to tell the tale of her final years of her life before her untimely death at 47.

Terminator: Dark Fate

The Terminator franchise certainly has its ups and downs. At one end of the scale you have The Terminator and The Terminator: Judgement Day and at the other end of the scale you Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys with Terminator 3 slap bang in the middle. So, the question on everyone (who cared) lips was what fate would befall Terminator: Dark Fate?