One Guy Rambling

Without warning they arrived, looking just like a Pink Floyd album cover. Settling near many cities across the globe, these large ‘space bananas’ hovered gently. Motionless. Benign yet ominous, like Kanye West at an awards show.

As the world watched on in fascination and terror, government agencies act decisively, forming a team of specialists to analyse and investigate. To decide upon the true intent of these newcomers.

(As an aside, imagine how long it would take Trump to come to a decision here. Now tell me your first thought wasn’t he would blow them up…)

Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a language specialist. Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) is a mathematician. Finding kinship in confusion, they ultimately gain entry to the eggs under watchful eye of Colonal Weber (Forest Whitaker) and attempt to interact and understand.

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The further this went the deeper my brow furrowed. Sure I was engrossed at what I felt must soon unfurl, but simultaneously nervous that the revelations already made public might actually be the extent of it all.

Arrival is well made but thin, and all too reminiscent of similarly perplexing and divisive sci-fi films such as Interstellar and Contact. Director Denis Villeneuve already has amassed an ambitious but flawed collection of movies this decade, with the powerful Prisoners and Sicario balanced out by a misstep with Enemy. Arrival sits somewhere in the middle. If it were made by a rookie we’d be discussing the promise of new talent, instead because of what has come before we hope that this isn’t an M Night Shyamalan like sign of an absence of new ideas.

I have faith in Villeneuve, but hope his Blade Runner reboot validates that faith.

Final Rating – 7 / 10. It’s good, but annoyingly not nearly as good as the director, cast and premise might indicate.

It likes the dark. It needs the shadows. It is the dark. It is the shadows.

It took dad from the family several years ago. Now mum (Maria Bello) is left a hollowed shell, reliant on daily medication and barely capable of caring for her young son. Older daughter Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) has gone a different path, avoiding most interaction and keeping her (unbelievably understanding) occasional ‘boyfriend of convenience’ at arm’s length.

With dad gone, mum muttering to herself (?) behind closed doors, and big sis awol, young Martin has every reason to be deathly afraid of the dark, and, as it seems to be targeting him specifically, powerless to evade its shadowy grasp.

Cue eighty minutes of power failures, failing flashlights and dodgy lightbulbs. But like your dignity after a drunken night, once the light arrives, ‘it’ vanishes.

At least Lights Out proffers more than the ‘random ghost’ thing, though it tries in vain to build a plausible backstory for the menace here. An early sequence sets a tone and despite the need for LOUD NOISES! and an over-reliance on BOO SCARES! for the most part this is effective teen-friendly scare-fare.

Final Rating – 7 / 10. A little ‘light’ (tee-hee) for a horror film, but decent enough.

As always with big business, it begins with cuts; cost cuts, staff cuts and short cuts. Ok for BP profit margins, bad for the safety and operate of deep sea drilling rig Deepwater Horizon.

And it’s not for a second the ignorance or inattentiveness of crew chief, the beloved Mr Jimmy (Kurt Russell) or hardworking and outspoken team member Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg),both of whom announce the imminent peril at volume across the vessel. No, the fault here – as the film takes great pains to illustrate – falls with the management who would seek to extract every last cent of profit from the overworked facility and its crew, 128 of them in all.

In this case the role of ‘management’ is to be played by John Malkovich.

When the flames, explosions and destruction arrive – and we all know it will – it is depicted in lurid and vivid colour. This might test your blu-Ray and speaker set up more than your intellect, but surely there is always room for some ‘BOOM!’

With director Peter Berg seemingly being groomed to step into the late great Tony Scott’s shoes – namely ‘making potential mediocrity more interesting’, Deepwater Horizon represents perfect weekend fare. Competent, occasionally compelling, and ultimately forgettable, it will make a couple hours pass in a pleasant way.

Final Rating – 7 / 10. Deepwater Horizon doesn’t get nearly as deep as the 3.5 miles the rig’s drill plumbs, but superficial can sometimes be adequate.