Terminator Salvation

A reasonable furthering of the franchise. Every plot twist was predictable far in advance, and the writers didn't have the strength to keep the references to and quotes of the original Terminator script to only one tasteful instance, but the story overall worked and paced well between action, suspense and reflection. Sam Worthington's accent was variable as always, Christian Bale's personality was his stock gravelly hard-man, but Anton Yelchin's Kyle Reese and Moon Bloodgood's (what a name) original character Blair found a niche of realism and purpose. The line-less child character of Star might as well have been an inanimate object - I'm sure the young actor did a good job but her presence was purely a tool of the script.

The Wolverine

Stretching it a bit.

The barely-present romantic subplot was completely pointless and transparently tacked-on, the samurai/Yakuza/'disrespect' Japanese setting felt uncomfortably stereotypical, and the secondary villain had no backstory whatsoever. Jackman is once again the perfect Wolverine (the opening sequence in the bar was done well), physically (holy Christ) and tonally, but the film feels like a tedious attempt to wring a higher movie count out of the character. About the only useful transformation as a result is showing Logan's turmoil over Jean's fate - something that could have been accomplished in a flashback or vignette as part of the next X-Men story.

Planet of the Apes

A classic allegory of religious indoctrination against truth and discovery, with added prosthetics. Could have been a Star Trek episode.

The storytelling and the make-up still stand up fairly well (could have been cut down into an episode of TNG, not just TOS...), but some of the pacing is a bit drawn out and unnatural, and the delivery of the line that's more famous than the film itself is out of focus.

Jekyll

James Nesbitt takes the lead in this dark, twisting, slightly predictable Moffat romp with visions of Sherlock, which eventually loses momentum and ends up taking itself a bit too seriously.

Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor

Another Christmas offering, this time heralding the end of the Eleventh Doctor. Honestly though, it's getting a bit tiring.

On the motion of Bullock in an orbit: Gravity

IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL.

As an astrophysicist, I never quite know how to approach the science in movies. For works like Contact (thankfully written by an esteemed scientist), there's a clear and story-serving divide between the real world and the entertaining fiction inspired by sciency ideas. You can see where the fictions have developed from, and accept them as plausible extensions of reality. I appreciate that scientific accuracy is often rightfully discarded in search of a good story - I'm not puritanical. But movies like Gravity still make me a little fidgety in the science department.

Extra Content: Translation Central

Since this blog rarely gets any use for its original purpose (writing about TV and occasionally movies and related media), I've decided to populate it with more general musings - mostly things that I write as comments elsewhere that I feel are worthy of collection. Beginning with a Tumblr meander on an important object in the history of language and understanding - the Rosetta Stone.