At the height of his career, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in a sci-fi action movie called The Running Man, which was based on a story by Richard Bachman, who turned out to be Stephen King. It was a pale imitation of the original story, and so King decided to withhold his name from the material. Now,…
Tag: Adventure
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t
Back in 2013, a starry-stacked heist movie involving magicians appeared without much fanfare, even though it included big names like Michael Caine. Then the completely forgettable sequel came out, with Daniel Radcliffe as the villain, and no one even remembers it being released. So it’s astounding to see that a third film has escaped and…
Predator: Badlands
The Predator franchise has been diminishing ever since the alien decided to take on Arnold Schwarzenegger back in 1987. That is, until writer and director Dan Trachtenberg came on board with his 2022 film, Prey. Earlier this year, he gave us the animated Predator: Killer of Killers, and now he takes the story to a…
Tron: Ares
Back in 1982, Tron took cinema to a whole new dimension. The first film to use computer-generated effects was a marvel to behold, as we were taken from the real world into the land of video games, where light cycles raced around a grid, even though the computer they used had only 2 MB of…
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Of all the Marvel creations, the Fantastic Four have had the rockiest time with film versions. There were the two from the early 2000s, and the disastrous 2015 version (and let’s not forget Roger Corman’s unreleased and very cheap version. Now, Marvel Studios has the rights back and has given us their first adventure in…
Superman
When Richard Donner brought Superman to the screens back in 1978, it not only changed the face of superhero movies but it set such a high bar that nothing would ever touch it or even get close to touching it, especially when you have Christopher Reeve as the lead, an actor who not only looked…
Jurassic World: Rebirth
Think back to 1992, when Jurassic Park first hit the screens and how awe-inspiring it was. Dinosaurs that were not stop motion but seemed real, interacting with humans and Steven Spielberg using all the muster he had from Jaws to produce an exciting, nail-biting adventure. The next two had their moments, but it was a…
Elio
When you look at the plot synopsis for Elio, you would find it hard to believe that this is an original story: a lonely boy looking for friendship finds it in an alien. Immediately, your thoughts go to E.T. Yet this is a Pixar movie, and even though the animation may be inspired by several…
How To Train Your Dragon
I have grown so tired of the trend of reworking animated features into live-action films. Disney seems to have built their studios around it recently, to the point that I have struggled to even venture to see Lilo & Stitch. When I first became aware of DreamWorks entering the same world as the House of…
Karate Kid: Legends
Since the 80s, there has been one franchise that won’t lie down: The Karate Kid. We’ve had four original movies (including the dire The Next Karate Kid, which could have been the death knell of the series); the 2010 reboot, and, more recently, Cobra Kai (not forgetting the animated TV series). Now we have Karate…
Ballerina
The John Wick films have been a surprising success of the 21st century. Ultra-violent action movies that have improved with each episode, culminating in the fourth entry, which features a spectacular fight sequence in Montmartre, Paris, that has taken the action flick to a whole new level. It’s a world that could be expanded, and…
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
I wonder if Tom Cruise wakes up in the morning with a thought of doing something dangerous, then goes and tells his production team to put it in a movie, because, once again, the 8th and, possibly, final episode in the hugely successful Mission: Impossible series, The Final Reckoning, has the Cruise doing things that…
Stu Loves Film 