Debug (2014) – Another vaguely Alien-like sci-fi flick. This one has a team of youngish hacker convicts whose sentence is to jump around space fixing space ships; their last one this tour is a big derelict which used to be a prison transport ship; unfortunately, the A.I. running the ship is just happy to have more inmates to kill. Also, the A.I. is Jason Momoa with a white stripe in his hair.
I suppose the futuristic computer stuff needs to be incomprehensible — I mean, just look at contemporary computer stuff — but the fact that the audience never really understands what’s going on with the hackers vs. the A.I. keeps us at arm’s length. It’s interesting to see Momoa in an almost completely physically inactive role, though.
The Isle (2018) – Three 19th-century survivors of a shipwreck wash up on the shore of a remote Scottish island, where the few locals are taciturn and disturbed, and the haunted past stays present.
It’s a beautifully shot feature, lingering over the foggy forests and cliffs, but it loses its way often enough that the narrative impetus keeps getting lost — I wondered multiple times, “Wait — it’s still going?”
Do the compelling visuals balance out the fragmented narrative? Personal choice, dude.
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) – Take all the Britishisms of the James Bond films, crank them up to fifteen, and insert them in the meta-plot of the Men in Black movies, and presto! Entertainment!
Here’s where I felt the movie made a misstep (spoilerish stuff ahead): When Eggsy shoots the dog. I honestly expected that his refusal to shoot the dog would have been passing the test: That despite wanting to be a Kingsman so badly, he was not willing to commit an act so cruel and objectively wrong just because he was “following orders.” Because while the Kingsmen are about sacrificing one’s self and devoting one’s life to something bigger than they are, they can’t forget why what they’re fighting for is worth fighting for. At the very least, there should have been a scene in which the candidate who did shoot her dog (with blanks) intimated to Eggsy afterward that he made the right choice.
(Also: “Eggsy”? In keeping with the general “Knights of the Round Table” naming scheme, he’s “Excalibur,” of course.)
Abandoned movies:
A Werewolf in England (2020) – Kudos to trying to make a Hammer-ish horror flick, but the production was too impoverished; a reconstructed-for-tourists “historical” hotel isn’t a good substitute for the real thing, an the script thought it was a lot more clever than it was.