Showing posts with label San Andreas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Andreas. Show all posts

Friday, June 12, 2015

Syan Vs Movies: Jurassic World

22 years after the release of Jurassic Park, we get the fourth installment in the series, Jurassic World.  Now, I will fully admit that I was never the biggest fan of the original, even as a kid I thought it was too silly and that Tim was annoying.  It had dinosaurs, though, and felt like they were just huge animals. Sure, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was a hungry killer, but he was hunting for food.  The Raptors used their pack to surprise and corner people (Clever girl!) and their intelligence to slowly adapt to their surroundings, like when they learned how to open doors.  Jurassic World chose to forgo any semblance of making a movie about the terrifying power of nature and instead made a monster movie using basic horror themes and then tries to become a kaiju tokusatsu at the end. 

It looks pretty bad, but she gets it SO much worse than you expect.
Like ridiculously over-the-top

We open the movie with a shot of an egg having a claw burst out and a sinister reptilian eye peeking out, showing that this movie’s focus is on horror movie tropes, rather than human character development.  It then shifts to Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zach (Nick Robinson), two brothers who are both as infuriating as Tim was in the original. Gray is precocious motormouth who wildly runs about, while Zach is an angsty teen who just wants to stare at girls and rebel against authority.  A rushed and unresolved plot of their parents’ potential divorce is introduced before they are shipped off to Jurassic World for a vacation with their Aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), who runs the day-to-day business of the theme park and is regimented and firm in following a planned agenda.  Last we meet the two opposite ends of the military training spectrum, Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) who has a need to mention he wants to use dinosaurs in military operations every time he opens his mouth, and Owen (Chris Pratt) our hero who trains velociraptors.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Syan Vs Movies: San Andreas

San Andreas is the most recent disaster movie that Hollywood has churned out. Dwayne Johnson (we don’t still need to call him the Rock, do we?) stars as Ray Gaines, a Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter rescue pilot.  Ray is celebrated as being one of the most outstanding rescue operators with over 200 successful operations. We find out that Ray is in the process of divorcing his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) who has begun a new relationship with a wealthy architect named Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd).  Ray and Emma remain in Los Angeles while their daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario), goes to San Francisco with Daniel.  Blake meets a pair of kind brothers named Ben (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) and Ollie (Art Parkinson) while in Daniel’s San Francisco office.

The effects used for this movie are gorgeous.
Who knew destruction could be beautiful?
Deidara?

While they all go about their lives, a seismologist professor named Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) discovers a trend of magnetic spikes before earthquakes which allows him to predict the occurrences, but not before the Hoover Dam collapses in a huge earthquake. Lawrence then warns that California will be hit by huge earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault.  And so the stage is set for the action of San Andreas.