The Running Man (2025) Dir: Edgar Wright MINI REVIEW

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Amblin' Along: Rim Of The World Almost Succeeds (Almost!)

I recently rewatched Richard Donner's seminal kids adventure flick, The Goonies (1985) and some dawned on me, no matter how hard film makers try, they never ever seem to capture the same sense of adventure and friendship that made The Goonies stand the test of time. It's pure unadulterated fun, from the opening Fratelli chase across the town and the beaches to the townsfolk watching One Eye'd Willie's ship sail off into the ocean, there's not a single moment in the entire runtime of The Goonies where it faulters. This is down to excellent pacing, a brilliant screenplay by Chris Columbus, real sets, real stakes and most importantly, real characters. If the film was made now, nothing changed at all, the same screenplay, same story, same music etc, I think it would still stand up and one of the best, if not THE best kids film of all time. Other films from the same time period succeed in the sense of wonder and adventure even if they're not as popular, films like The Last Starfighter (1984), The Monster Squad (1986) Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), The Boy Who Could Fly (1986) and Explorers (1985), each of those movies possess something that most modern kids films lack, excitement. 

However, these films, The Goonies included, also have the luxury of having some of the greatest film scores of all time and we all know that a movie isn't a movie unless the music is right. This is because the music makes the movie what it is, If The Goonies didn't have Dave Grusin's wonderful pirate like score, it might not be as fun, if E.T (1982) didn't have John Williams' fairytale music, it probably wouldn't be as exciting. Music makes the film what it is and gives it the nostalgia we all crave when someone tries to emulate those kinds of movies from the 1980s. Take Stranger Things for instance, it's a show that was made in invoke that feeling of nostalgia, to throw back to those 80s adventure movies and sci-fi movies and while it succeeds in great writing and performances, it gets the music wrong. According to Stranger Things, Synth scores are the what the 80s were about, this isn't the case, a synth score can elicit a nostalgia for the 1980s, but the films that it's meant to be giving homage to, never used Synth scores, What they have done is mixed in 80s family adventure and sci-fi with John Carpenter's electronic synth scores for horror and sci-fi aimed at an older, adult generation. Now i'm not having a pop at Stranger Things for going this route, for that show it works completely and sets it apart from other shows in the genre, what i'm merely pointing out is how the show homages the whole "Goonies" aesthetic and 80s adventure movies but doesn't use the kind of music, those movies are known for, big bombastic and wonderous, orchestral scores. No film since the 80s has captured that sense of wonder, not even Super 8 (2011) and that came pretty close but took it's self way too seriously but still managed to get the music spot on with Michael Giacchino's wonderful music. This brings me to RIM OF THE WORLD (2019) written by Zack Stentz, a writer who'd previously co-written both X-Men: First Class (2011) and Marvel's first god of thunder movie Thor (2011) and directed by....sigh....McG, a director known for being, well essentially a hack with a lot trash behind him from Charlies Angels (2000) and Netflix's recent YA sci-fi flick Uglies (2025) to some slightly better movies, but only slightly better, Terminator Salvation (2009) and American football drama, We Are Marshall (2006). 

Rim Of The World wants so desperately to be the Goonies of Gen-Z but misses the point of those 80s family adventure movies. Those films were about fun, adventure and friendship with characters we could relate too, but here, the characters are just stereotypes of modern phone obsessed, nerdy, naught kids. It gets some elements of the friendship that evolves over the course of 3 days but for the most part, the characters are unlikeable with only one coming off as a character that would fit in well with the cast of The Goonies, that character being Alex, a shy, nervous nerdy kid, forced to go to camp for the summer after his father passes away, hoping it would bring him out of shell. He's the best character in the movie and the fact that the entire film is carried by this 13 year old kid, says something about how Zack Stentz fleshed out Alex in the screenplay, it's just a shame he didn't do that with rest of this kids. The worst of all is Dariush, a stereotype of the rich black kid who thinks he's a gangsta or Baller because he has cool, expensive shit. His constant gloating and flexing is massively off putting and its a disservice to Benjamin Flores Jr, the actor behind Dariush, as he does put in a fairly good performance. He comes across like a more foul mouthed version of Keenan Thompson from both Heavyweights (1995) and D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994). Then we have ZhenZhen, played by Miya Cech who from the start gets a barrage of racism thrown at her. Thats also one of the biggest issues with the film, the blatant racism is really obvious and really uncalled for especially considering its cast of kids. She's also stereotyped, the naughty rebellious Chinese girl who disobeys her strict father yada yada yada, it Mulan mate. Finally we get to probably the biggest stereotype of the film in Gabriel, the clearly latino character who's from a broken home and has escaped from juvie...fuck me, what shit is going on with this movie? What makes this even worse is Andrew Bachelor, most well know as Vine legend, King Batch who's career started after he would post 30 second clips to the now defunct precursor to TikTok app, Vine. Now I have nothing against Bach, loved his skits on Vine and have enjoyed his roles in other movies but again, the script has him hurling racist shit at Alex about being white. WTF?... 

So the plot is the most basic plot known to man. Aliens invade and the kids have to get a key to a lab to be able to launch an attack on the alien invaders from space. Along the way they develop friendships, romances and grow as people, well Zhenzhen and Alex do, Stentz doesn't really know what to do with Dariush and Gabriel. I mean it ain't Stand By Me....  it's incredibly by the numbers. The film was made on a budget of between $15 and $19 million dollars, exceptionally low for a film that includes an alien invasion as a major plot device, so some things can be forgiven, however, considering this is a Netflix movie from only six years ago, a time when Netflix was on top and considering they just dropped $320 million on The Electric State, a film that has absolutely tanked, they could have spared a bit of extra cash to make sure the VFX were at least decent. Ive seen better CGI made on Blender. The CGI in this is unforgivable. Netflix released another Alien Invasion movie the same year called Extinction (2018), made for a budget of $20 million, from director Ben Young who had only one other feature film to his resume, he knew how to handle his budget and instead of opting for low res, under-rendered CGI, he went with costumes to a much better effect. Now considering McG has a somewhat extensive background in feature film making, you'd think he'd handle the budget better because there is no way in hell that $19million on the screen. The are no A-List stars in the movie, its clearly shot on the Universal backlot street and there are no real creatures, no real stakes to the film. So where did the budget go? 

Now I want to go back to what I was talking about at the start, about the music... Rim Of The World has a score by prolific composer Bear McCreery, fresh off his work on The Walking Dead and other high budget TV productions. The in-demand composer knocks it out of the park with a score that harkens back to the music of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner and Alan Silvestri. His score is absolutely brilliant and does invoke the feelings of watching The Goonies or The Last Starfighter. It brings so much to a film that really doesn't deserve a score as wonderful as McCreery's. Its a crying shame that it feels like, at a lot of points during the film, that its a score in search of the right movie. When the right movie gets the right soundtrack it can literally elevate a movie, it can make that film feel like something special, but here, in the case of Rim Of The World, the music feels like its the only one in the team actually trying to make something special. 

Rim Of The World almost succeeds in replicating the adventure of The Goonies, but is let down by a lazy script full of inappropriate, sexual innuendos from 13 years olds, dialogue that shoe horns in movie references and ambition that far exceeds its budget. Had this movie been made with the goal of entertaining a family instead of horny 12 year old social media users who live only through 30 second comedy clips and sexual innuendos, and focused more on the innocence of early teens and childhood instead of the kids needing to prove they're men or women, and just leaned in more to the adventure and fun, Rim Of The World could have been a winner, instead, its just another in a long line of failed attempts to replicate the wonder and adventure the movies gave us in the 1980s....

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COMFY COMEDY AND THE ENDURING LEGACY OF F.R.I.E.N.D.S

 

You know when you feel down or you’re sick and you just want to watch something comforting and easy, something you don’t really need to pay too much attention too but something that’s fun and cheers you up? Films or tv shows that turn that frown upside down? What are your go to entertainment avenues to cheer you the fuck up?

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GREASE 2: WORK OF ART OR WORK OF ARSE

 

Let me preface this post by saying this...

I am a huge fan of Grease 2, this is going to be quite a biased post as I fucking love Grease 2. My point for this post is to praise and shit on the movie. I am not a fan of the original film, I don't hate it or dislike, I just much prefer the sequel. 

Grease 2 is a bad movie but, like most films that gain a cult following, we need to watch Grease 2 with a more open mind and really evaluate the film on its pros and cons. It has a lot going for it and it has a lot going against it. This is merely a chance for me to talk about a movie musical that has been a constant in my life since I first saw it at a very young age on a CIC VHS tape back in either the late 80s or very very early 90s. I love it but at the same time, I completely understand why some people have a dislike for it. So this is going to be broken up into sections. This post is somewhat a review but not in the classic sense of what a review should be. 

SECTION 1: DIRECTION & CINEMATOGRAPHY

To be perfectly honest, I think, and again, this is just a personal observation/opinion, I think Grease 2 is one of the best photographed and directed musicals of the 1980s. Now before people start saying shit about how there aren't that many 80s musicals, this is true, there aren't that many, there's a few, FAME being probably the most famous 80s musical. There's also Xanadu and The Apple, both from 1980, Labyrinth (1986) and Little Shop Of Horrors (1986), but while both of these latter films are exceptional films, they both have an odd, almost washed out, grimy look to them, Grease 2 is bright and colourful, the L.A of Grease 2 looks amazing, the the colours of the costumes pop on screen, especially in the incredible opening number "Back To School" and the "Rock-A-Hula Luau" number just before the closing song. While she might not be the best filmmaker, Patricia Birch knows how to choreograph a thrilling dance sequence. 

There are some issues, mostly with the continuity and some of the period detail. I can understand that while the film was made in the 1981 but set in 1961, the late 70s early 80s flavour would have crept in, it's inevitable in a film with a smaller budget of $13.8million dollars. However, Grease, made only 4 years prior had a budget of just $4mil and the period continuity in that films is on point. The best example of Grease 2 pissing it up the wall is Michelle Pfieffer's wardrobe. While the other pink ladies, Sharon, Paulette and Rhonda all have a definite 60s look, Pfieffer's Stephanie, looks like she came to set in her own clothes, Jump suits, bowling shirts and Leather jacket kind of throws you off. Almost everyone else has that 60s period look on lock, it's just Stephanie's wardrobe never actually seems to fit the rest of the film. There is one scene however, where Michael wardrobe doesn't fit the period and that's during his "Charade" Ballard, in a green Jumper and Jeans. Now I know I was born in 1983 and wasn't around during the 1960s so I shouldn't be having a rant about fashion styles of that period, but having seen a lot of late 50s and early 60s movies, I've never seen anyone wear the costumes that Steph and Michael wear. Look at Cliff Richard's cracking 1963 musical, Summer Holiday, there's nothing in that film that looks anywhere near the same as the costumes of Grease 2, infact I'd say Summer Holiday has a closer style to the first Grease. But then, Summer Holiday was made only 18 years after the end of WW2 and it's British so it's hard to compare them really. 

SECTION 2: THE MUSIC

Holy mother of god the music in Grease 2 is incredible. Kicking the whole shebang off with a 7 minutes wonder in the form of Back To School, which introduces us to all the main characters like Stephanie, Johnny Nogarelli, Paulette, Shooter McGavin, Louis Dimucci, Rhonda, Sharon, Davey and some of the teachers, most of who like Coach Calhoun, Miss McGee and Blanche return from the first film along with some newer teachers, the "sexy" Miss Mason played by Connie Stevens and Mr. Stuart played by 50s and 60s B-movie actor Tab Hunter, who looking at his filmography on IMDB kind of reminds me of Tarantino's Rick Dalton character. Grease 2 is another instance where there's only about 5 years in age between students and teachers. Randomly making his return is Eddie Deezen as Eugene, now a disgraced celebrity and former voice actor of Mandark on Dexter's Lab. I swear he graduated with Danny and Sandy. Another one making her return to Rydell High is Frenchie, careful though, one blink and you'll miss her as Didi Conn was written out of the film mid production as they started filming Grease 2 with only half a script. 

We follow up Back to school with Score Tonight, a rip roaring party anthem about bowling or getting some nookie. Either way its a stonker of a tune and again it's choreographed spectacularly. To be perfectly honest, every single song is a stand out on this soundtrack with maybe Charades being the only song that doesn't really work. Who's That Guy gives us a Broadway style number, Do It For Our Country is a two hander between Dimucci and Sharon about banging each other in a fallout shelter, Reproduction is about, you guessed it, fucking. Cool Rider is the biggest hit of the film, showing Pfieffer's pipes off and absolutely nailing the feel the movie is going for and has this late 60s Suzie Quatro tone to it. Turn Back The Hands Of Time is the cheesy song of the film, kind of this movie's Beauty School drop out. There are few other such as Prowlin', Girl For All Seasons and Rock-A-Hula Luau but the afore mentioned songs are the main ones, the big numbers if you will.  The film ends on the wonderful We'll Be Together, all the pink ladies and T-birds are together, Michael gets the girl and the iconic T-bird jacket and everyone's a happy bunny.... 

The songs were written by and arranged by Louis St. Louis who cut his teeth on the original Grease. 

SECTION 3: IT'S CLEARLY MICHAEL FOR FUCKS SAKE

Yup, It clearly Michael, yet nobody seems to realise, he even told Demucci he was going to buy a motorcycle. Surely one of either the pink Ladies or T-Birds would have looked at the "cool Rider" and gone "hey, you're Michael", but no, not a single fucking person realises its him. It's left up to Blanche at the end, where Michael removes his goggles, yep his entire disguise at the end is a pair of goggles, its' Blanche who reveals "It's Michael" to the shock of everyone. ITS FUCKING MICHAEL!!!

I suppose Michael has the same luck as Clark kent when it comes to disguises. Did nobody think it was odd that Michael was nowhere to be seen whenever the cool rider showed up? wasn't he supposed to play piano for the twin cheerleaders, who I always thought were Asian, turns out I was wrong and are in fact the sisters of Peggy Bundy. 

Another issue I had is that Michael has only been riding a motorcycle for like 3 weeks yet he can jump a police car with no ramp, survive a deadly cliff jump and then clear a fucking pool, I mean C'mon, the dude is 1960s Dominic Toretto by the end of the film. To be honest, Maxwell Caulfield is the biggest problem with the film, his performance as Michael is unsympathetic, he's winey, wooden and kinda creepy. At least he leaned into the creepy side intentionally as the iconic Rex Manning in Empire Records but here it's a bit eww. Another problem is his voice, he can't really sing, it's grating at pretty much every point in which he needs to bleet out a song. 

SECTION 4: WHY GREASE 2 SLAPS BUT ALSO SHITS THE BED

Like i said in my inaugural paragraph. I fucking love Grease 2, its possibly my favourite musical followed by Singing In The Rain and Dirty Dancing (yeah its not a traditional musical but it does have the best soundtrack ever put together) but it does have some serious problems. Caulfield is miscast, Frenchy's disappearing act, the period continuity and it's massively unbelievable, however, the film looks amazing, has great performances by everyone except Caulfield and the songs slap like a mother fucker. Its funny, its light and its short. Travolta and Olivia Newton-John (R.I.P) had amazing chemistry as Danny and Sandy but there is almost zero chemistry between Pfieffer and Caulfield who, from what I read, didn't get on during the filming which clearly translated to screen, in fact, Stef has more chemistry film Johnny. I love Grease 2, its good, it bad and its everything I would want in a Grease sequel.   

Grease 2 is one those so bad its good type of movies that people love to shit on, and while it does have some serious flaws its still and always will be 115 minutes of pure escapist fun, 80s nostalgia and Michelle Pfeiffer doing a shakey hand dance. Love it or loath it, there's no denying Grease 2 slaps...

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NOAH: A POST-APOCALYPTIC SCI-FI FANTASY AS TOLD IN THE BIBLE?

I never saw Noah when it was first released in 2014. To be honest, I'm not a religious person so I had no interest in watching a film based on the story of Noah's Ark. It's a tale that was forced up on us as kids in TV shows, rhymes and in religious education classes even though the actual story in only four paragraphs long (I did some research), so the thought of watching a 2hr+ bible movie starring Russell Crowe was not something I had any inclination to watch. Cut to 9 years later and old Petey boy is laid up in bed with flu, to ill to get up and look through the vast movie collection to find a film to watch and bored of watching Friends or Bob's Burgers' episodes, I headed to Netflix instead. Didn't have to leave my bed either. 

What usually takes upwards of 15hrs to select a film, with me usually deciding on either Billy Madison or Beverly Hills Cop, I wanted something to slap on in the background as I drift in and out of sleep. I was sure that Noah was going to be one of those talkie bible films, with a bit of action dotted throughout its run time, so I pressed the "fuck it" button on the remote and sat back, or laid back as was the case and my mind instantly said "close your eyes Pete, just a little, nothing to see here" and normally old brain-boy is right but I defied my sub-conscious and kept me peepers open. From the offset I should have known this wasn't going to be a run of the mill ram-religious-bollocks-down-your-throat movie as it's co-written and directed by non-other than Darren Aronofsky, director of Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler and most recently the oscar winning The Whale, but it's not his first foray into religious film making as he made the brutal but extremely clever Jennifer Lawrence film, Mother. 

Noah is, to put it lightly, full of shit. But, somehow its's biblically accurate, dunno if that says something about the writings in the bible but while watching an interview with Aronofsky post film, he explained the reason behind some of the artistic licence he took with the film. We all know the story, Noah was tasked by god to create an ark and to take two of each animal onboard as god was so cheesed off with mankind fuckin' up his Minecraft world, he planned to flood it to fuckery, wiping out all of life on earth except for the animals and Noah and his unfathomably good looking family. What Aronofsky does in quite clever. Remember, the year is 2023 now. It's two thousand and twenty three years since the resurrection of Christ but the the world is 65 billion years old. We know there were people around prior to Jesus obviously, and the story of Noah takes place a long long time before Jesus did his water to wine magic. Aronofsky said the film takes place in pre-history. A world where Jeans and leather hiking boots, backpacks, Conan The Barbarian armour an flaming fantasy swords existed. A world where fallen angels were forced to take the form of giant rock monsters who battled Ray Winstone amid the battlefield of a scorched earth. Maybe, the people before recorded history were as advanced as we are now, only because God was so pissed he started a new game but started from scratch instead of New Game+ where he could have had a bonus weapon, costume or the triangle boobied Lara Croft minimal pixel skin from Tomb Raider 1, but nooooooo, he had to start a new game, no extra powers, no special God skin, he started with only Russell Crowe a bunch of snakes, goats and a duck. 

As I previously stated, I am not a religious person, I don't believe in god or the words of the bible, however, I do love me some post-apocalyptic Sci-fi fantasy, if that tale happens to be based around a four paragraph tale in the worlds most famous book then so be it, lots of films have based their plots on parts of the bible without resorting to preaching or becoming too fanatical. Watching Noah, sure there's the book of genesis, with Adam and Eve, the snake, the apple, Cain and Able, Methuselah, not Methuselah Doom from Conan but the biblical Methuselah, played by Anthony Hopkins here not James Earl Jones, there's the origin of the "Watchers", the so-called fallen angels who became the Rock monsters, based on the Nephilim from the Old Testament, basically mythical giants who could shapeshift into demons and had technologically advanced weapons. It's all very Scientology, if you ask me. The before Jesus times are far more interesting than the new testament and reminds me of old Norse mythology. But I'm not here to bash someone's faith or belief in the words of the bible, this a review for an entertaining "biblical" action sci-fi fantasy movie. 

The film, while undeniably beautifully shot, does have to visual flaws. Some of the CGI is a bit ropey, especially the epic deluge sequence and some of the animals are a bit crap to be honest, however, the rest of the film is stunning. Russell Crowe gives a great performance as usual, first as a man with a mission from god but becoming more fanatical as the plot progresses and finding his way once again towards the end. Jennifer Connolly is very good as Mrs. Noah if underused a tad and to be fair, Emma Watson actually gives a pretty decent performance because lets face it, she's a terrible actress, not just in the Harry Potter movies but in Beauty and The Beast and the Bling Ring. Logan Lehrman comes off best as the adult version of Noah's son Ham, the middle child who finds himself torn between following his father on his mission from God or joining Ray Whinstone's gang of wasteland warrior/marauders. 

I guess that if you go into Noah with expectation that you'll be see a religious epic in mould of Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments, you will undoubtedly be disappointed but if you go into Noah with an open mind and no expectations of seeing a religious epic, what you'll find is a deep, if somewhat anachronistic version of the 4 paragraphs from the book of genesis, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy movie, disguised as a religious epic. Watch it for the spectacle not the so-called religious themes, you might just have a blast. 

It's pretty good...

Cheers

Pete 

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A QUICK UPDATE ON THE "APOCALYPSE WILL BE TELEVISED" PROJECT

 Ay-up chaps and chapettes, it's the grumpy fucker who rants about movies here. I know back in February I posted an intro to my long deep deep into post-apocalypse media and just wanted to let you know that it is coming, It's been a lot of hard work and research and with my real work being a bit full on the last few months, I've not had the time to delve back into it, however, there is a fair bit written covering the early years from the first novels and films through the BBC and British film industry's additions to the genre. I think it currently sits at about 16 pages. So it is coming. In the meantime, I have a few other posts on the way, one about Grease 2 and the other about 2014 biblical epic Noah. So stayed tuned as the project is coming along, just slower than I originally envisioned. 

Cheers

Pete   

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THE APOCALYPSE WILL BE TELEVISED: INTRO

One aspect of genre cinema which has always captured my curiosity and imagination, is that of the Post-Apocalypse sub-genre. The idea of the end of the world as we know it, not so much the complete total destruction and blowing up of the earth, more the idea of the isolation, loneliness and desperation that comes in aftermath and the people who survive such cataclysmic and apocalyptic events.

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