Netflix And Chill: War Machine (2026)

When I saw War Machine pop up on the main page of Netflix I admit to being slightly confused. I remembered it being something I'd seen advertised some time ago, with Brad Pitt in a main role, but I didn't know why it was getting a renewed push now. Maybe it was to do with Alan Ritchson also having a main role, and his star being on the rise was reason enough to ensure some extra interest in something that has passed many people by when it was first released. Or maybe, as it turned out, this was just a new Netflix movie with the same name as a previous Netflix movie. You can still hunt around on Netflix to find War Machine (2017), which I still want to get around to one day, but it's a lot easier just now to find this War Machine (2026), a sci-fi action movie with Ritchson in the lead role.

The premise may sound very familiar to most of you. A group of soldiers on a mission (albeit a training mission) end up being noticed by a deadly alien. That's all there is to it, and that's all it needs. These people are looking to complete their training to become U.S. Army Rangers. Most of them will struggle as they reach their limits, but Ritchson's character already went beyond that point a few years ago, when he was in Kandahar with his seriously-wounded brother (Jai Courtney). Once they realise that their training mission has turned into something very real, and very deadly, the squad must work together to try to survive, and hopefully warn others of a potential invasion.

This is predictable and cheesy entertainment, but it's also a good bit of fun. In fact, I'd argue that it's the best thing Patrick Hughes has done since his excellent film from 2010, Red Hill. It's certainly good enough for me to try not holding his past few films against him any longer. Hughes also worked on the screenplay with writer James Beaufort, delivering something that unabashedly works through a number of military movie tropes while adding an impressively deadly antagonist into the mix. It helps that the cast is based around Ritchson as the central lynchpin, a man who looks as if he could do everything that the movie requires of him, no matter how difficult or far-fetched.

Certainly more suited to this kind of material than his ill-judged attempt at comedy, Ritchson keeps a straight face while delivering a performance that ticks off everything you might write down on some kind of stoic war hero bingo card. He's good enough to root for nonetheless, and any scenes with him trying to outwit the enemy are easy highlights. Stephan James, Blake Richardson, and Alex King are the other main squad members to get decent screentime, although James spends a lot of the film incapacitated, and all of them do well enough, Courtney makes a strong enough impression in his few scenes, and stereotypical military leaders are portrayed by Esai Morales and Dennis Quaid, just as happy as everyone else to accommodate every cliché you might expect from this sort of thing.

The special effects and sound work are impressive, the action is generally shot well (although one sequence with a vehicle being chased gets a bit too frenetic and hard to watch), and there are some surprisingly gory wounds and deaths filling up the screen. This is not for the faint-hearted, certainly not when it introduces the main threat anyway, and those after something that seems to epitomise a "no guts, no glory" attitude should be easily placated by this.

It's not great, especially when you consider how derivative and stuffed full of tropes it is, but it is a solid viewing choice that at least feels, and looks, better than many other movie choices that often feel like content instead of proper movies. 

6/10

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Dangerous Animals (2025)

Even if I hadn't seen the trailer for this, something that sold me on it immediately, and even if I didn't know it was the third feature directed by Sean Byrne, I would have eventually made time for Dangerous Animals based on the fact that it's a shark-centric film written by a man with the surname Lepard. Hey, everyone knows how easily amused I am by now. That tickled me.

A bearded and scruffy-looking Jai Courtney plays Bruce Tucker, a man happy to take tourists out on his boat to give them a chance to encounter some sharks. Unfortunately for the tourists, their idea of a shark experience is very different from Tucker's idea. He's a very dangerous man, and he likes nothing better than making very particular home movies. He has Heather (Ella Newton) held captive on his boat, and she's soon joined by Zephyr (Hassie Harrison). Apparently the kind of loner who nobody will notice has disappeared, Zephyr may well be grateful for the fact that she just spent a night connecting with the now-smitten Moses (Josh Heuston). Moses suspects something is wrong when he sees Zephyr's van (which was also her mobile home) being towed.  

This might be the first full feature written by Nick Lepard, but he doesn't make too many amateur errors. Helped by a fantastic, but small, cast, and a career-best turn from Courtney, Lepard manages to add just enough to his screenplay to offer a variety of different possible third act scenarios without making it feel bloated or much more implausible. Oh, don't get me wrong, it certainly gets unbelievable on a few occasions, but those moments happen once you've already settled in and grown comfortable with the genre staples being used.

Byrne handles the material well, managing to keep things nicely balanced between the grim and the bloody and the somewhat fun. The actual shark appearances also impress, with a variety of tricks and deliberate filming choices being used to keep the menacing predators feeling like a very real threat. While things may end in quite a predictable way, the pleasure comes from the inventive ways that both Byrne and Lepard keep viewers on their toes until it is time for the very last scenes.

Harrison is a decent plucky heroine, and very easy to cheer on as she keeps trying to hold her nerve in the face of ever-increasing peril. Newton may not be playing someone as courageous, but she is just as good in her role. Courtney is the star of the show though, giving a performance that puts him right alongside some of the most infamous cinematic serial killers. At least one moment might be a bit too obvious in homaging one of the best-known scenes of someone revelling in their macabre hobby, but I was happy to let that slide. I also have to praise Heuston, who starts the film seeming very disposable, deliberately so, and then becomes someone else that you want to see somehow make it through to the end credits, despite the odds being stacked against him. It’s good writing, but it’s also sold by a winning performance from Heuston.

It’s hard to think of Byrne ever giving us another film as good as his feature debut, The Loved Ones (still a firm favourite of mine). This doesn’t manage it. But there are times when it comes bloody close.

8/10

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Prime Time: Jolt (2021)

I saw the trailer for Jolt and I was immediately interested. But I was also wary. It looked like another riff on John Wick, but this time starting Kate Beckinsale in the main role. That seemed good enough to me. It turned out that it wasn’t.

With a voiceover explaining things to us, we meet a young girl named Lindy. Lindy has a condition that means she absolutely loses control of her temper when she sees anyone doing wrong. Young Lindy grows up to be Kate Beckinsale, a woman still trying to figure out how to live with her condition. The latest solution is a vest that delivers electric shocks to her system when she presses a button. It makes life harder. It certainly makes it a lot tougher to date people, and she may not make it through her first date with Justin (Jai Courtney). Justin is special though, so they end up managing more than one date. Then tragedy strikes, which means Lindy needs to embrace her rage and exact some revenge. A couple of cops (played by Bobby Cannavale and Laverne Cox) want to stop her from creating a large bodycount, and her therapist (Dr. Munchkin, played by Stanley Tucci) doesn’t want any small amount of progress completely undone.

Jolt has a decent helping of humour alongside every moment of violence. The main character has been let down by people at every turn, which adds to the inability to cure her condition, and that leads to moments that have her happily ignoring her therapy while she punches and kicks people who thoroughly deserve it.

Directed competently enough by Tanya Wexler, I guess, the problems with Jolt lie mainly with the script, from first-timer Scott Wascha. Wascha keeps the tone consistent throughout, ensuring that there’s always a sense of fun throughout, but a) the main concept is flawed, and b) the pacing is just a bit off, even if it clocks in at roundabout the ninety minute mark, which is a pleasant surprise nowadays. Having Lindy control herself with the use of the electric vest, except in the moments when she doesn’t want to stay calm, isn’t the way to set the ball rolling. What should have happened was something that would forcibly propel the character violently throughout a plot that could then have Beckinsale battling baddies while trying harder not to hurt innocent bystanders. Imagine if, for example, Lindsay had an early fight with someone that led to her being thrown against a fuseboard, electrocuted, and having the vest then malfunctioning while fused to her muscles/skin. Way more fun could be had there, and that is the first idea I came up with while watching the film play out.

Beckinsale is a solid lead, and she can do the physical stuff well, and the other big plus here is Tucci. Cannavale and Cox both do fine, although the former feels like he’s been used as a strong supporting player so often recently that his roles all seem to blend into one another (even if he is sometimes a villain and sometimes a nice guy). David Bradley is good fun in his few onscreen moments, and Courtney benefits from the fact that he’s not in the movie all that long. He’s not my favourite actor, by far, but does okay here.

Best when it is allowing the main character to revel in delivering painful justice to people who deserve it, Jolt is an easy way to kill an hour and a half. The fights are okay, the thin storyline moves well enough from one set-piece to the next, and the third act is as predictable as any slick action thriller you have ever seen. I’d watch a sequel to this, but I would also hope that lessons are learned and the sequel makes significant improvements on the foundations laid down here.

6/10

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Terminator Genisys (2015)

I DID say the hiatus may be temporary. While there definitely won't be a review here every day, my recent EIFF 2015 attendance spurred me back into some enjoyable writing.

Terminator Genisys didn't seem to have much going for it. There's that title for starters. A horrible mess that seems like nothing more than an attempt to blend in with the cool kids. And it was coming along after Terminator Salvation. I like Terminator Salvation. I am, however, aware that my positive view of the film (and my equal enjoyment of Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines) puts me firmly in a minority. And then we had that spoiler-filled trailer, which actually puts it on a par with Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the "potentially great twists ruined by the need to market to a wider audience" stakes.

Despite the fact that you may have already had plenty spoiled for you, I'll try to surmise the plot without giving anything major away. Jai Courtney plays Kyle Reese this time, and he's sent back (as we all know) in time by John Connor (Jason Clarke). But instead of finding a frightened and vulnerable Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) he finds a woman all-too-prepared for the battle that will affect the future of the planet. This is mainly due to the fact that she's had her own terminator (Schwarzenegger) serving as a protector for many years. She even calls him Pops. With everything so different, our leads hope to prove that the future is not set in stone, and that judgment day can be averted.

Let's cut to the chase here. Nostalgia. That's what proves to be the best thing about this movie, and also proves to be the worst. This is a film, arguably more than any other franchise instalment I can think of in recent years, that is reliant on the nostalgia of fans to carry viewers through a number of weak scenes. Newcomers are brought up to speed quickly enough, and will enjoy seeing everything unfold, but it is the older fans who will get the most from this. Scenes are either replicated from the first two movies or they are inverted in ways that writers Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier clearly think are clever. They're not. Every Terminator movie has had paradox problems (indeed, it's almost that way with every time travel movie, period), but this would seem to be the first movie in the series to take the paradox and just heap more and more complications on top of everything until viewers realise that this is one knot destined to never be undone. There's no satisfying explanation for that first major plot twist, which would surely already be known to everyone if the script wasn't cheating, and then we have Kyle Reese and his "impossible memories", people careening into the lives of others without any more notable ripples of cause and effect, and also a surprising lack of any sense of real threat while everyone moves from set-piece to set-piece.

Arnie makes it all worthwhile. Some will view him as Conan, some will always think of him fighting against the Predator, but he'll always BE The Terminator to me. Showing him as an older model here is the best idea that the film has (and the explanation doesn't entirely suck). Occasionally pitting him against the younger version of himself provides the best moments in the film, simply because the CGI doesn't feel overused or overly familiar in those moments. Jason Clarke is a decent John Connor, but that is the best I can say about the leads. Emilia Clarke isn't necessarily bad, she's just not believable as a tough woman who has been primed for her role as warrior and potential saviour of the planet. And how the hell Jai Courtney keeps getting work is a mystery that even Scooby Doo and co. couldn't get to the bottom of. I charitably mentioned to others that he wasn't as bad as usual here, but then I remembered that he was supposed to be portraying Kyle Reese. No. No, no, no, no. He doesn't work, which is pretty much how you could sum up his performance in every movie he's starred in. J. K. Simmons does well with a character who doesn't need to be in the film at all, and Lee Byung-Hun deserves more than the small amount of screentime that he's given.

Director Alan Taylor feels as if he's playing things very safe, allowing himself to be led by the script, and the movies that have come along beforehand, instead of putting any kind of personal stamp on the material. It's a savvy move, I guess. This instalment will inevitably make money so why take risks? Yet it's hard to stop thinking about just how much better things could have been if everyone involved had attempted to move slightly off the beaten path. How much more enjoyable could the action scenes have been if they didn't feel so familiar to scenes from the first two films, especially when they suffer in comparison? The FX work here varies in quality, and nothing delivers that impact that most of us felt when we first saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day (which was almost twenty five years ago now - a quarter of a century). And don't even get me started on just how lame the entire finale is. The writer in me wanted to think of a better word than "lame", the realist in me knew that it was the most appropriate adjective.

Although I've already seen a wide range of opinions on this movie already, from the outright hating of it to the pleasantly surprised, I have to say that I think most people will at least enjoy parts of it. Despite the many complaints I have about different aspects of the movie, I was entertained for most of the runtime, and a few of the action beats were very enjoyable. It's just a shame that this is the blandest and safest Terminator movie yet. AND it has Jai Courtney in it.

6/10

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Divergent (2014)

Based on a novel by Veronica Roth (the first in a trilogy), Divergent is another movie aimed squarely at the Young Adult market. It focuses on a young woman who ends up being trained for combat in a system that rewards those not up to the task with a type of banishment, or sometimes even possible death. It's also about a society ruled by people who may not always have the best interests of the public at heart. Despite these similarities, and one or two others, this ISN'T The Hunger Games. Even if it hopes to grab a piece of that pie. It's actually a bit better than The Hunger Games, in my opinion.

Shailene Woodley plays Tris, a young girl living in a society that is determined to avoid another major war. To ensure this, everyone is sorted in to one of five factions. There's a test to be taken just before you choose the faction, but you're still supposed to be able to choose a different faction if you wish. It just makes you stand out a bit if you don't follow on the path set down by your parents. The five factions are Abnegation (selfless), Erudite (intelligent), Amity (peaceful), Candor (honest), and Dauntless (brave). When Tris takes her test she is advised to pretend that she had to leave early after taking sick. It turns out that she's divergent, able to think more independently than most and not be so easily controlled. Divergents are viewed as dangerous. And Tris makes her situation worse when she goes to the choosing ceremony the next day and decides to give the Dauntless faction a go. She doesn't realise just how tough the training will be, and falling too low on the scoreboard is not an option when the consequence is being sent away to live outwith any of the factions.

Although it runs for over two hours (it's about 140 minutes, approximately), Divergent doesn't feel overlong or bloated. There are plenty of action beats that help to move things along, and the inevitable potential romance is evenly spread out throughout the second half of the film, making it less likely to induce vomiting. The screenplay by Vanessa Taylor and Evan Daugherty does a great job of getting, and keeping, viewers up to speed without grinding proceedings to a complete halt, although there are times when it's a very close call.

Director Neil Burger makes all of the right choices for the material. It's generally light, although one or two moments do venture into impressively dark territory, the soundtrack has some tracks that teenage girls should enjoy, the action is solid, although it doesn't get in the way of the character moments, and there are so many odds stacked against Tris that every small victory has the potential to make viewers smile/breathe a sigh of relief.

There's also the cast. Woodley isn't a particularly strong lead, but she's acceptable enough in the role. Theo James, as Four (a Dauntless man who takes a shine to Tris), is suitably strong and handsome, and Jai Courtney plays a bit of a git, which works perfectly considering how much I dislike him anyway. Miles Teller and Zoe Kravitz are the two other Dauntless recruits who stand out from the pack, for different reasons, and then there are supporting roles for Ashley Judd and Kate Winslet, with the latter somehow managing to be brilliant every time she's onscreen despite often appearing to deliver more exposition.

I hoped to get through Divergent without hating it, or myself, too much. It turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise. So much so that I'm now looking forward to the sequel.

7/10

http://www.amazon.com/Divergent-Blu-Ray-digital-download-certificate/dp/B00GQQ77IU/ref=sr_1_6_twi_2_twi_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1420319217&sr=8-6&keywords=divergent

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I, Frankenstein (2014)

If there's one thing that can often be relied upon to upset horror fans it's the misappropriation of the Frankenstein name. As each and every one of them will hasten to tell you, Frankenstein was the creator. The creature was called . . . . . . . . well, he was called by a variety of names, but none of them were/should have been Frankenstein. Call me pedantic, but I guarantee that many will agree with me.

I, Frankenstein starts off by upsetting horror fans with this central point. The title is more understandable by the time the credits roll, but there are one too many occasions between the beginning and end that have people referring to the central character as Frankenstein when they really shouldn't.

The film then continues to upset horror fans by being pretty horrible from the start - a potted version of the classic tale retold in one or two minutes - and then continuing to be horrible right up until the very end. Think of Underworld, a movie with which this shares a LOT of similarities (including shared cast members in similar roles), and then remove the style, the better cast members, and the decent action sequences. I don't even need to rehash the plot here, as it's so close to Underworld that you can figure it out for yourself. I'm serious.

Although it's Stuart Beattie in the director's chair, a lot of the blame for this mess can be laid at the feet of Kevin Grevioux, who also gives himself a small role onscreen. Grevioux, funnily enough, came up with the original story idea for, yep, Underworld, and has developed a number of stories since that have seemingly sprung from the same well. The overriding thought that ran through my head as I watched a creature caught amidst a battle between good and evil was that the well has all dried up.

I don't want to spend much time on the cast because they don't make any decent impression. Not a one. It's as if they realised that they would be overshadowed by lame action and overdone CGI anyway, so decided not to bother. I guess, however, that I have to namecheck the main players. Aaron Eckhart is the creature - AKA Adam - and is stuck with one of the worst interpretations to ever be excreted on to film. I like Eckhart, but he needs to bury this film with better choices as soon as possible. Yvonne Strahovski is a female scientist, and does okay with what she's given (translation = she spouts science stuff while looking very purty). Bill Nighy is almost exactly the same as he was in Underworld, Miranda Otto tries to overcome the weak dialogue that she's given, and Jai Courtney can quit acting any time he wants without worrying about me being upset by it. Please. Seriously, Jai Courtney, please. I can already envision a sports bar that would be perfectly suited to your ownership.

There are one or two good moments, mainly in the first half of the movie when the lead character finds a way to release a lot of anger, but they don't help to make this a less painful viewing experience. Like Frankenstein's creature in his darkest moments, it's awful and soulless.

3/10

http://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-3D-Blu-ray-Aaron-Eckhardt/dp/B00IKM5N1G/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1409085946&sr=1-2&keywords=i+frankenstein