LloydBayer

There's a whole legion of fans who not only call Die Hard 1 &2 Christmas movies, they also made those films into a cult classic franchise of its own. Released on Netflix on December 13, early reviews of Carry On have been lukewarm, but also highly suggestive of the Die Hard knock-off it tries to be. Is it though? Calling this film a knock-off would be instantly and unfairly dismissive. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Carry On is a love letter to the Die Hard Christmas movies. Does it get it right? Read on to find out.

It's an effective throwback to the 90s era of - don't think, just watch - films that made action heroes out of Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even Keanu Reeves into household names. If you're thinking about films with a real time plot set in one location like Air Force One (1997), Speed (1994), and of course Die Hard (1988), then Carry On fits snuggly into this category where you don't need to follow a mythology or wonder which multiverse you previously saw a character in. The one location here is LAX airport in Los Angeles and of course, the busiest time of the year being Christmas Eve. With about 60,000 passengers flying home for the holidays, the departure terminal is chock-a-block but must get through pre-flight formalities including profiling and baggage screening. This is where we meet TSA Security Agent Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) with three years of experience with metal detector screening. A background narrative in the film's intro tells us that Kopek failed an attempt to join the LAPD, his girlfriend Nora who also works in airport operations is pregnant with their first child, and his boss isn't too confident that he can handle baggage screening on the busiest day of the year. If that weren't enough on is plate, Kopek finds himself becoming an unwitting pawn in a terrorist plot where he must clear a bag with an extremely lethal explosive device. His options - clear the bag and let 250 people perish on a flight, or raise a red flag but watch Nora get killed in the blink of an eye.

Some might think that Kopek has blood on his hands either way, but for anyone working in airport operations, this is a nightmarish situation to be in. Especially when the terrorist knows every move you make having hacked into the airport CCTV, knows everything about your background and family history, and has a sidekick assassin on call to pull the trigger. Cinematically, this is a classic 'what do you do' catch-22 we first saw in Speed. But as the film rolls past bumps and gaping plot holes, Carry On elevates itself to a noir cat and mouse chase thanks to a very unfunny Jason Bateman as the villain. From laugh out loud comedies to that dark turn in The Gift (currently on Netflix), this is Bateman at his menacing best - cold, calm, calculated, in a straight faced character who is even open to answering all of Kopek's questions. While some might say that Egerton (of Kingsman fame) is either miscast or underrated in this role, the script more than makes up for his character solely with the telephone conversation between Kopek and Bateman's unnamed terrorist mastermind.

Before hiring Liam Neeson for a set of paint-by-numbers action films, Director Jaume Collet-Serra gave us two fantastic thrillers - Orphan and The Shallows. It's been downhill for Collet-Serra since those two films, but Carry On comes along as a return to form with just the right pacing he is known for. Even if that means that the action goes ballistic and flies off the handle just as George Michael's Last Christmas filters in with a Wham! Let's not even talk about characters going through the Computer Tomography X-ray in the dimly lit baggage sorting area. But at just under 120 minutes, this is a film to speed through if you still love the first two films of the Die Hard franchise. If Bruce Willis watches this film and is still able to talk, I'd imagine him saying...Yippee-ki-yay kid. You could be John McClane.

It took nine seconds to decimate the city of Hiroshima with just one first generation atom bomb. That was in 1945. Today, and as of January 2023, there are over 12,500 advanced nuclear warheads around the world. Relating that fact to the review of this film, it doesn't matter whether the atom bomb was invented or the ability to split the nucleus of an atom was discovered. If we could put the knowledge of weaponizing atomic energy into a box, lock it and through away the key, we would still have a huge problem; because the name on that box would read - Pandora.

Greek mythology also tells us that Pandora was betrothed to Prometheus. Ironically, the Prometheus referred to in this review is the Pulitzer winning autobiography of the titular J. Robert Oppenheimer. Based on American Prometheus, Oppenheimer from revered director Christopher Nolan sets about telling us exactly what the book does, and that is to relive the triumph and tragedy of the 'father of the atom bomb'.

True to Nolan's style of presenting an organic puzzle, the narrative is an interview within an interview interconnecting three crucial timelines in Oppenheimer's life. Presented in black and white is the 1959 Senate Confirmation Hearing of the Atomic Energy Commission for Director Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) who was responsible for defaming Oppenheimer as a traitor, communist and spying for the Russians. Due to this accusation, the AEC hearing begins in 1954 revoking Oppenheimer's security clearance. And the planning and resources leading up to the detonation of the first atom bomb - codenamed Trinity - takes place in 1945. During the constant shift in these timelines, we come across a plethora of characters (from A-list actors) orbiting Oppenheimer like charged neutrons, pun intended. The most important are General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) supervising the Trinity program at the New Mexico desert in Los Alamos. Director Lewis Strauss as a direct threat and rival from the get go. And the women in his life, wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) and mistress Jean (Florence Pugh).

Several other important characters weave in and out of his life as a professor of theoretical physics, to heading the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, to his downfall as an all-American hero. During all this time, we are witnessing the slow build-up and moral anguish of a man who used his intellect and charismatic leadership to create something the world has never known before, and then realise that his creation is nothing but the key to end all life as we know it. This epiphany, if we can call it that, comes to Oppenheimer in flashes of vivid and horrific images. But even before that, Oppenheimer's most tortured vision is the materialisation of a Sanskrit verse from the ancient scripture of the Bhagavad Gita - "I am now become Death, the destroyer of worlds". With sunken eye sockets and haunting blue eyes looking at a distant but devastating future, Cillian Murphy as the titular Oppenheimer is an instant front-runner come awards season. Not because he ate one almond a day to transform his physical appearance, or because of his brilliant personification of a psychologically tortured character, or because of the cold and unaffected relationship with the women in his life, but because of that short yet powerful scene when those words are spoken.

From its very first scene of rain drops creating ripple effects on the puddle of water it falls on, to the very last scene depicting annihilation of all life on Earth, Oppenheimer is an indicator that Nolan defies convention and mediocrity. Despite being overlong at 180 minutes, and seemingly unevenly paced, Oppenheimer is Nolan stepping away from his penchant for action and sci-fi adventure films while getting back to his roots. If you're thinking Memento, you are in for a cerebral experience. Known for making us think, and even question what we see, this is Nolan channelling his magnum opus in not just telling the world what we have deliberately forgotten, but telling it a way we will never forget. With continuous bombardment of facts and figures, theoretical science and application, and historic names behind the nuclear arms development program, it's a marathon of a film to get through, but never dull. The moment every viewer is waiting for comes two hours into the film and turns out to be Nolan's crowning sequence. We first see it, then we hear it. Then, at the very end of the film and during a hair-raising conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein, we feel it in all its wrath. We feel a sunken weight like watching a Greek tragedy unfold - and that is Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus and gifting it to mankind.

If Charles Darwin was still around, he would have called this film an abomination of his theories behind the struggle for existence, or widely known as Survival of the Fittest. Going by that theory, only the deadliest of predators can survive by evolving and moving up the food chain. So what becomes of their prey? A trophy collection for the hunter.

We saw this 35 years ago, when an alien predator single-handedly dismembered heavily armed soldiers led by a commando played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Human heads and spinal columns became keepsake mementos for this otherworldly hunter. But every sequel that followed Predator in 1987 became a mashup trying to capitalise on the original. Every follow-up project, including crossover collaboration with Alien Xenomorphs turned it into a forgotten franchise. Until now.

Set 300 years before the events on the first film, Prey not only works as a prequel, but also shakes the ground on which Darwin based his theory of evolution. That change is a strong female character in the lead. Played by Amber Midthunder, Naru is a Comanche woman skilled as a tracker and plant based healer. Much to the dismay of her tribal elders, Naru dreams of becoming a great hunter like her brother. Her moment of reckoning arrives with the arrival of a deadly alien predator, thus setting in motion the hunter versus hunted dynamic, and for the first time in the franchise, the prey tracking the predator.

As a follow up to sci-fi thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane, it helps that director Dan Trachtenberg has done franchise work before. Even with its B-movie budget and streaming media release, Prey looks and feels very much a cinematic achievement that must be experienced on the big screen. Sprawling cinematography of the Northern Plains, a haunting musical score reminiscent of The Last of the Mohicans, and an indigenous American actress in the lead role, gives Prey an authentic retrograde akin to a western of yesteryears. The action sequences and visual effects are just enough, and the cool shots this time is a brutally inventive limitation to the predator's cloaking mechanism, or invisibility.

While gender equality isn't exactly on the nose, it's plain to see that the screenwriters have ditched the testosterone fuelled alpha male approach of the first film, and instead builds on the secret weapon of a woman. Nara can be compared to Ripley in Alien 2.0, but the difference here is Prey is set in the year 1719. It wouldn't even matter if the film is set 1000 years ago, because that secret weapon is one that every woman is born with from the beginning of time. Male chauvinists won't know what hit them. And neither will the predator.