I liked it. This is a well-made popcorn horror movie. It is not interested in big ideas. It's about tension. Alien was a movie about skilled labour in a claustrophobic jump scare-filled small space with a monster. Aliens brings in corporatism, adds a larger space and more monsters. Prometheus is about the elite, their ideas and what it means to not be one of them in David's case. Set between Alien and Aliens, Alien Romulus is about the working poor and their life that is already horrific.

Rain and her friends are unskilled labourers with a flicker of hope but no future. Stretching humanity across the galaxy is a dirty job. Rain et al. are part of the underclass stuck digging in the dark as others float through the stars. With the deck stacked against them, and their only currency being the energy of their youth, when opportunity floats into orbit they go for it.

In a cast of dead young people walking, David Jonsson's Andy the synthetic stands out. Jonsson is vulnerable, empathetic, pragmatic and cold all in one scene. It's an impressive acting performance and he becomes another memorable Android in the Alien franchise. The rest of the cast do serviceable work. Cailee Spaeny sells Rain's original sin well in an early scene.

This movie relies on physical effects and practical ship models. It's all gorgeous to look at. Things have a sense of size and heft. Landing bay doors are huge. The monitors are Cathode Ray Tubes. The fonts used on screen are from the 70s. Internal communication screens have a VHS playback look and everything people interact with is a button or a handle. No swiping here as this is a gear porn and dripping slime movie. Things seem to be used and dangerous.

The main danger, of course, is the Alien. It all goes to hell exactly like it has gone to hell in every previous movie. There's a countdown to ratchet up the tension, face huggers come in waves and the endoparasite Xenomorph stalks the cast. There's a third act development you knew was coming but may not have seen developing like this. I found that development jarring but it worked fine as it was already set up.

Go into this expecting call backs to decades of Alien movies and nothing else. You'll enjoy it too.

It isn't that this movie is terrible, it's that it gets boring. The Borderlands series is darkly irreverent. It's gory in a visceral "ewwwhhh" and laugh way. It's funny in a "well this will hurt" way. The movie has none of that. It's Borderlands with the life rung out of it.

Yes it has the colourful character design, eater eggs and the 1080p CGI makes Pandora look like the dusty trash pile it is. But just as the CGI falls apart if you look at it in 4K the characters and nods to games are shallow too.

At a svelte 100 minute running time the shoe leather scenes here are tight. Characters set out to do something and do it fast. The tedium of that in-between part of the journey is minimal. I enjoy tight running times but there are so many characters and so many potential plot points that none of them get to shine.

The plot is stuffed with threads that are resolved but not satisfactorily. This may have started out as a complicated script during shooting only to be pared back later. However, the audience can only enjoy what makes it to the screen.

Claptrap (Jack Black) and Tiny Tina (Arianna Greenblatt) do good work here. They get memorable scenes. Cate Blanchette and Kevin Hart are good action stars but though Blanchette is the lead at no time did her character arc matter to me. Hart even less and Jamie Lee Curtis's character not at all.

This is a movie that needed more time but only it it had a much better script. The fact it had a poor script meant the short running time was a blessing. But even in a movie with as tight a running time as this I still checked my watch about an hour in.

If you want to see this, watch it at home. And watch it in HD and not 4K, you'll find the discount CGI less offensive on your good TV.

Better than the ill thought out slop Marvel has been releasing but not close to the heights of the finest entries. There is no story to spoil and the villain is underwhelming. The only spoilers you need to beware of are cameos and pop culture jokes. This is a fan service movie on steroids for long-time fans. It builds on Deadpool 2's finale and then tucks itself into the Disney+ era of Marvel.

No one loves Ryan Reynolds as much as he does but he's okay with that and it works here. The Deadpool franchise is about extreme violence, winks to the camera, meta-narrative dialogue, X-Men references and Wade Wilson growing as a person. The first movie did it best, with Wade trying to figure things out. Now he has figured it out he realises it sucks. He's in a mid-life rut.

What's the cure for a mid-life rut? Five pop culture references a minute, a lot of blood, bullets and discarded parts of the 20th Century Fox Marvel timeline. Hugh Jackman represents the most impressive part of Fox Marvel movies and has grown into Wolverine the longer he's been at it. Footage of the fresh-faced mutant in the original X-Men movie makes you wonder how he pulled it off in the first place. The Jackman of today has the on-screen presence his younger self did not.

The weakest part of the movie is Emma Corrin's bland villain of the week. She's very Disney+. Highlighting, once again, Marvel's difficulty in making a villain more than a story obstacle. Like a locked door. You shouldn't think too much about them because you won't see them again after the credits roll.

The flat looking cinematography, a side effect of digital filming, means you can watch this at home. But if you're looking for a reason to visit the cinema this is as compelling a reason as you'll get this summer.

The good news is dumb big budget disaster movies are back. The bad news is the same as the good news. Twisters has a lot in common with the 1996 original. The plot is nonsense, the characters are paper thin and you'll never think about the movie again after seeing it.

Unlike the Jan de Bont movie with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton the leads here have no chemistry. Something I put on Daisy-Edgar Jones as Glen Powell had chemistry with several co-leads in past films. He has good chemistry with Maura Tirney in this movie. And she's onscreen for five minutes and plays Daisy's mother. The romance in this movie is undercooked and there isn't even a hint of comedy. After hours in the cinema I still did not understand why these two stay together at the conclusion.

As a big disaster movie this is well done on the big screen. The tornadoes are chaotic, large and have good effects. The tornado chasing is high energy, with the more professional types engaging in juvenile races with those wacky live streaming storm chasers. One side is doing it for nefarious profit, the other for the love of it and that sweet YouTube ad money.

The storm chasers are walking clichés. Some get sucked into a vortex and are never seen again but they don't matter so meh. That sums up the movie. Meh. If you want a better romantic comedy with decent stunt work that came out this year you should watch The Fall Guy instead.

The bar has been set that low this summer.

A stunt show movie as flimsy as an empty bucket of popcorn but it has a summer romantic comedy charm. It's very early 2000s in its Hollywood commentary. That kills the momentum after the first hour as it is not presented well enough to hold interest.

For what the producers were looking to do it needed action, humor and adventure. It has plenty of action, with bone-crunching stunt work. Gosling and Blunt deliver humour with skill, but there's a large sucking void on screen where adventure should be. The lack of adventure comes from a weak script. With several different elements crammed into the second half of the movie it feels like it was the product of several rounds of studio notes and reshoots. If there was an adventure here it was overwritten in later drafts and edited out in post production.

Ryan Gosling's Colt Seavers is likeable. Woman may find him gentle and dreamy but he's not so much of a drip that other guys wouldn't enjoy hanging out with him. Emily Blunt is more upbeat than I've seen her and there's some chemistry between the two of them. However, the relationship doesn't develop throughout the movie.

Gosling could be a movie star. He hasn't landed the roles that will make him a movie star but he's a guy the old Hollywood studio system would have supported. This could have been a better movie if it had a stronger story. There could be a great movie about stunt performers in Hollywood but this isn't it. Unless you want that trip to the cinema wait until this hits video on demand or streaming.

The spaghetti western turns post-apocalyptic in this high-budget production of a gritty tale. We have cringe-worthy but endearing optimists. Antiheroes whose cruelty disfigures them more on the inside than radiation has on the outside. Striving zealots of gleaming order and anarchic savages who'll wipe themselves on the drapes. And that's just the first two episodes.

The show's burnt out 2150s are mirrored by an alternate 1950s. Bing Crosby croons as one of our protagonists walks across endless scorched dust. Johnny Cash sets the pace for a bone-crunching fight. Violence here can be comical, but it's always bloody.

It's a great looking show with money on the screen. Long shots make the world before and after atomic armageddon seem huge. Characters are framed to highlight their interesting faces. Be they natural or prosthetic. The HDR also looks good as it's colour graded in a way that enhances shots and doesn't overwhelm them.

Its story telling is conventional enough to appeal to a wide audience. This was a concern I had when I saw who the show runners were. In the past Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have been cerebral storytellers. Not as smart as their West World audience as shown when viewer theories nailed plot twists. But this isn't that. This show lacks jigsaw puzzle plotting.

There's no point in turning what happened to the world into the driving mystery of the story. The constraints of the Fallout IP mean anyone who plays a Fallout game will know a lot. Instead we get a call to adventure that sends a capable extrovert into the horrors of a nuclear wasteland. If you know nothing about Fallout you will learn it as she does.

I have several episodes left to finish but I like this show. It has an unusual vibe and a great cast.

This is the dumbest movie in a franchise that includes the brainless Godzilla: King of The Monsters. Kaiju fights are awesome. Everybody knows this. Even if you don't know it you do. But this movie is so dumbly dense it's a Saturday morning cartoon playing in the heart of a neutron star.

When we meet Kong, we see how clever he is. The Hollow Earth is a lurid and dangerous Playstation 2 CGI environment. The prime ape has mastered tactics and tools. Local wildlife doesn't know what's hitting them. He's Kratos from Sony's God Of War, no family no home and a big axe but for the first hour there are no stakes. It takes more than 60 minutes before the driving force of the story appears.

There is a poor attempt to generate a mystery for the cardboard cut out humans to solve. The mystery doesn't matter and neither do the humans. I forgot about the mystery until one of the characters looks, points and all but says "Hey, that's the mystery!" Dan Steven's Hawaiian shirt wearing titan vet is fun. He should return whenever Monarch does. Everyone else is forgettable. Apart from Godzilla and some of the other titans.

Godzilla has moved to Europe and taken to napping in the Coliseum. Showing the monster's enduring popularity the nuclear powered lizard still gets top billing even though he's more of a guest star. The movie delivers the battles Kaiju fans want though I had a problem with a lack of scale in some of the fights. Seeing the monsters destroy things that you recognize above ground gives you an idea of how large they are. When they fight in the Hollow Earth, which they do a lot, I lost that sense of scale.

There will be another one of these and when there is the film makers should be more careful with the foreground scenery. Two giant creatures smashing each other as people flee for their lives is engaging. Two creatures you can't tell are giants smashing each other? Well that's just a punch up.

Road House is stupid and enjoyable. I'd watch a sequel. When we first see a ripped Jake Gyllenhaal his character comes across as one of life's losers. Why this man, Elwood Dalton, with his warrior's physique is so unmoored from existence is the mystery in the early part of the film.

He is not doing well though in body and attitude he appears solid. His life is squalid, his choices are careless, and we see he's in the grip of suicidal ideation. Warriors without a purpose don't do well, but there is more to this than that. Transplanting himself to the sun blasted Glass Keys, Dalton, guitar strumming theme music and all, slips into the role of the bouncer for the Road House of the title.

The plot here doesn't matter but it is serviceable if a bit choppy due to running time. The humour made me laugh. The setting and cinematography were beautiful. Gyllenhaal is both charismatic and dangerous when required.

Conor McGregor's Knox is a gleeful force of chaos. Knox is here to have a good time, like the best hammer characters in movies do. When Dalton and Knox fight it's like high speed heavy machinery smashing the hell out of each other. But with quips.

I liked this movie and want to see these characters again.

This is a streaming movie. It didn't start out as a streaming movie but that's what made it to the screen. While I enjoyed its prequel, Afterlife, this doesn't build on its strengths.

If there is a third movie, I fear the performance of this movie may not justify that expense, the cast needs to return to the teenage team of Phoebe, Trevor, Podcast, and Lucky. During the earlier movie, teens were in over their heads and solved problems using grit and Zoomer technology. Frozen Empire lacks most of that and is a movie where too many characters balance on a narrow plot.

Everyone gets less screen time, even Mckenna Grace. She makes doe eyes at spectral girlcrush and complains about unfairness, and that's it for her story. Dan Akryod and Ernie Hudson get more than a cameo. I like them both but why? We saw a generational handover in the previous movie and it was enjoyable. The original cast hang around taking scenes away from the current cast. Those missing scenes stunt the younger characters' development on the screen.

It was the producers' ambition to make an extended episode of The Real Ghostbusters, a popular cartoon from the late 80s. I remember finding those cartoons flimsy and unsatisfying at the time. Watching this movie made me feel the same way, so the producers succeeded in their goal. Alas.

Is this an exciting movie to see on a cinema screen? Yes. Is the movie and the actors' performances overhyped? Also yes. Dune Part 2 is exactly what you need from the second half of a story but it feels less...grand.

The universe building was in the first movie and besides a glance at Kaitian, home of the Emperor, and a brief visit to the monochrome seat of Harkonnen power, Gedi Prime, this movie focuses on life in the desert. That's how it is in the novel too, but the novel gives you access to the characters' rich inner monologues. The first movie substituted spectacle for that and I became aware of the absence of spectacle and inner monologues when it became all about hours of sand.

At an earlier age taking liberties with source material would annoy me but now I see these things for what they are. Adaptations built on prior adaptations. Judgement doesn't involve the material modified or omitted, it's if what's presented on the screen is good. Here it is. This is a worthwhile adaptation regardless of the low nitpicking buzz vibrating away in some parts of the internet. While some have chosen to see wokeism in action at the minor story changes I can see where the changes appeal to an audience who likes their romance reality TV style. Not middle ages political marriage of convenience style.

Chalamet is fine. Zendaya is getting praise for the petulant scowling that some call emoting. It's not, but she's a strong actor when not scowling. Particularly when she wants to stand in the way of destiny because that's the right thing to do. But the biggest winner here is Austin Butler as the sociopathic sensualist Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. He has more range than playing Elvis would lead you to suspect.

This was a satisfying ending to the first novel. I look forward to the third and final movie covering the second book. Together Paul and Chani still have a way to go.