Reviews

Written 36 hours after seeing the movie. Firstly, the criticisms: some of the actors feel like they're not really giving it their all. In the early stages of the movie, Isabella Sermon and, shockingly, Sam Neill are particularly underwhelming. Secondly, the ill-conceived notion of a romantic relationship between Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler is a complete disaster. There is no sexual chemistry between the characters and trying to fabricate it is probably the cause of Neill's awkward and stilted performance. Finally, and this is a strange complaint; there are too many dinosaurs in this movie. Almost every action sequence has a different creature feature and they start to blur. I'd start by cutting the pyroraptor, the dimetrodons and the therazinosaurus and see how that looks. The baby ceratopsian puppets are rubbery and unconvincing.

The plus points: this movie is a lot of fun and the Maltese scenes in particular are excellent. Every single character has a well planned conclusion to his or her arc, especially Henry Wu's redemption. There are multiple small references to previous movies and they're all really entertaining. I'm sure I'll pick up on a few more when I see it again.

This movie exists for one purpose, and one purpose only: to establish the character of Morbius in Sony's MCU-adjacent Spiderverse. It does this successfully although, apart from a throwaway reference to San Francisco (Venom) early on, most of the heavy lifting is done after the end credits roll in a couple of slightly odd scenes featuring Michael Keaton's Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming. The movie itself is a by-the-book origin story which was entertaining in parts but will not live long in the memory.

Settlers is a slow-paced sci-fi drama set entirely within the confines of a desolate Martian homestead. We are introduced to the locale through the eyes of a young girl called Remy, performed in a star turn by Brooklynn Prince, who lives there with her parents. There is no time wasted on world building, scene setting or extrapolation; bits and pieces of back story are scattered throughout the movies. It is left to the viewer to fill in the blanks. I noticed a few of the other reviews complaining about this; maybe give this movie a miss if you need to be spoonfed. Likewise the pacing; it isn't so much slow as unrushed, with sporadic bursts of drama, action and violence.

Remy, it transpires, was born on Mars. She knows Earth only as the brightest light in the night sky and through her parents' tales. She also knows nothing of Mars beyond the atmospheric dome surrounding her homestead, and the viewers share in her ignorance. We learn what she learns, and it's precious little. The biggest mystery is her fate at the end.

Ismael Cruz Cordova is solid as the antagonist Jerry, who is the hero of his own story, and Sofia Boutella is superb as Remy's mother Ilsa.

The Matrix Resurrections fell into precisely the same trap as Star Wars: The Force Awakens - it introduced a bunch of new & relatively interesting characters, but in order to balance the new with the familiar it rehashed the plot of the original trilogy, cobbling a bunch of iconic scenes together into a messy & unimaginative soup. With added Jyn Erso character for an extra Rogue One parallel. Fortunately, the villain is far better realised here than Kylo Ren ever was. In fact, the fifth star is solely down to Neil Patrick Harris' performance as the Analyst; he was easily the best thing about this movie.