Skyfire

Jason Isaacs is getting warmer.

(2019) Action (Screen Media) Jason Isaacs, Liang Shi, Hannah Quinlivan, Ryan Wu, Leslie Ma, Shaun Dou, Lingchen Ji, Xuegi Wang, Bee Rogers, Alice Rietveld, An Bai, Tongjiang Hou, Yiqing Li, Lawrence de Stefano, Yugi Chen, Jianmin Cui, Gigi Velicitat, Makena Taylor. Directed by Simon West

 

It must suck to be a volcanologist in the movies. Nobody ever believes you that the volcano is about to erupt, it’s all just “ooh” and “aah” at the beautiful smoking cone, but then comes the blast, the screaming, and the dying.

The daughter of two volcanologist’s, Meng Li as a child (Rogers) was on Tianhuo island when the volcano erupted. When her father (Shi) was unable to save her mother (Rietveld) from the pyroclastic cloud that broiled her alive, the two became estranged. Now an adult, Meng (Quinlivan) works on the same island as a scientific advisor to Jack Harris (Isaacs), who has built a theme park resort around the volcano. With a high-tech monorail and a luxurious elevator that descends into the caldera, it’s certain to be the in spot for wealthy type A sorts the world over. To keep the guests safe, Meng has installed a fancy new high tech imaging system to monitor the volcano. She’s concerned over some of the initial readings Even more concerned is her dad, who takes one look at the data and hightails it out to the island to get his stubborn, angry daughter to flee the island before (heavy pause here) it’s too late!!!

Does anyone reading this not believe it’s already too late? If so, you need to watch more movies, my friend. The mountain blows it’s top in a spectacular shower of CGI lava and CGI pumice raining down from the crater. Because the director is long-time action veteran Simon West, we get some well-staged set pieces, like a daring transfer of passengers from one speeding monorail car to another.Because the film is Chinese, we also get some incomprehensible holes in logic and lapses in science. For example, a pair of young lovers (Dou and An) go for a swim in a beautiful tropical grotto as the mountain erupts. Suddenly, their idyllic swim – during which he proposes to her – is interrupted by lava flowing into the pool. They frantically swim for their lives, foregoing the need to breathe. Of course, they shouldn’t have needed to swim at all – the lava flowing into the pool should have parbroiled them. Don’t believe me? Drop a handful of red-hot coals into a small saucepan of room temperature water and see what happens. And that’s not even molten rock.

The movie suffers from severely underwritten characters, so it is hard to end up caring about which ones survive and which ones meet a horrific end. Still, most disaster movies aren’t exactly character studies, to be fair. However, one would like the special effects to be spectacular, and at times, they are. But they are dreadfully uneven; some of the green screen stuff looks like it was rushed and not given a whole lot of effort. The underwater sequence is cheesy enough to make Esther Williams blush.

Basically, what we have here is Jurassic World meets Dante’s Peak – which oddly enough, is a pretty accurate description of the first half of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – and if you ask me, that’s not necessarily a bad combination to have. The movie has enough entertainment value that most audiences are likely to forgive the bad science, bland characters and disaster film cliché-loaded plot. Some will look at this and snicker at the Chinese attempts to make a comparable big-budget disaster film. They certainly aren’t producing elite-level films in that regard, but if you look at their dramas and some of their genre films, they aren’t that far off. Give the Chinese film industry another decade or two and they are going to make movies that will put Hollywood to shame. And that’s not a bad thing either.

REASONS TO SEE: Reasonably entertaining.
REASONS TO AVOID: The special effects are uneven.
FAMILY VALUES: There are perilous situations, some involving children.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The filmmakers used more than 20 tons of artificial volcanic ash for the picture.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, DirecTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/13/2021: Rotten Tomatoes: 53% positive reviews; Metacritic: 47/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Volcano
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Grizzly II: Revenge

Kangaroo: A Love/Hate Story

“I’m a kangaroo; how do you do?”

(2017) Documentary (Abramorama) Terri Irwin, Diane Smith, Greg Keightly, Philip Wollen, Peter Singer, Tim Flannery, Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, Rex Devantier, Terrence Dawson, Dror Ben-Ami, Chris “Brolga” Barnes, Barry O’Sullivan, John Kelly, Stephen Tully, Peter Chen, Daniel Ramp, Paul Borrud, Jennifer Fearing, Lee Rhiannon, Mark Pearson, Lyn Gynther, Lauren Ornelas. Directed by Kate McIntyre Clere and Michael McIntyre

 

The kangaroo is somewhat emblematic of Australia. It appears on the tail fin of their national airline; many Aussie companies also use the animal as a logo.. Sports teams are named after the beast and one would think that the national symbol of Australia would be as beloved there as the bald eagle is here.

That is not the case by any stretch of the imagination. While there are those who love the kangaroo, the farmers, sheepherders and ranchers of Australia look at ‘roos as little more than vermin, pests who decimate the pasture land that they need for their cattle and sheep to graze on. That segment of Australia claims – and government agencies back them up – that the kangaroo population has exploded and they now outnumber humans on the continent. The problem is so bad that an entire industry has sprung up around the controlled extermination of kangaroos, despite the strange fact that the animals enjoy a protected status in Australia. That protection is very much in name only.

The dark underbelly of the issue is that kangaroos are being slaughtered in a perfectly legal fashion at a terrifying rate which animal activists have labeled the biggest slaughter of a single animal species going on in the world today. Thousands of kangaroos are being hunted by gun-toting kangaroo hunters and killed every night. Property owner Diane Smith and her partner Greg Keightly have taken to documenting the incursion of these hunters onto their property to engage in the extermination of kangaroos which live in the wild there. On occasion the two have nearly been shot themselves.

Their videos have shown unimaginable brutality. Although the government exceptions require that the kangaroos be dispatched humanely, the hunters often miss the clean head shots leaving the kangaroos to die in agony, sometimes lingering for weeks. Joeys (the baby kangaroos) are ripped from the pouches of their dad mothers and rather than having a bullet wasted on them are swung into the fender of the jeeps, sometimes several times in order to bash their brains in. It’s a disgusting spectacle.

The husband and wife documentarian team interview several politicians and ranchers who rationally explain that the controlled extermination of the kangaroos is a necessity to keep the cattle and sheep industry thriving and that without this herd culling the country would be facing an ecological disaster. However, it is clear that their sympathies lie with the activists like Smith and Keightly who are actively fighting for the kangaroos.

The cinematography is beautiful – Australia is a beautiful country and the kangaroos are very cute creatures. The slaughter footage, much of it taken at night, is graphic and disturbing – small children are likely to be upset by it. On a technical note, the graphics that the filmmakers use to augment their film often flash on the screen too quickly to read completely. Another two or three seconds per graphic would have been greatly appreciated.

There are also lots and lots and lots of talking head interviews and while the movie presents a great deal of information, those who are annoyed by those sorts of interviews are likely to be annoyed by this film. The movie is a bit on the long side as it attacks every aspect of the kangaroo industry, from the use of leather on soccer cleats (David Beckham has famously gone over to shoes that don’t use kangaroo skin) to even the safety of the meat taken from the kangaroo carcasses; animal activist and politician Mark Pearson asserts that the meat is butchered in unsanitary conditions out in the bush and is transported long distances without proper refrigeration. He claims that kangaroo meat is potentially loaded with e.coli, salmonella and other harmful bacteria although no statistics are given on whether this has been detected or not.

In many ways the slaughter of kangaroos is a modern range war taking place as we speak. It is disturbing that the overpopulation of the animals can’t really be properly documented and government estimates are based on a highly suspect mathematical formula that seems arbitrary and greatly favors those advocating for the extermination of kangaroos. The movie does make some effort to present both sides of the conflict although it is clear that they are firmly on Team Kangaroo. The documentary is certainly flawed but it sheds light on a subject that I and I’m sure many non-Australians didn’t even realize was a thing that in and of itself makes this worth checking out.

REASONS TO GO: This is a searing indictment of the kangaroo industry. The animals are beautiful and a joy to watch and the beauty of Australia is without peer.
REASONS TO STAY: There are way too many talking heads. The graphics go by a little too quickly.
FAMILY VALUES: There are scenes of animal cruelty, violence done to defenseless creatures, adult themes and some brief profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Although this is an Australian-made film, it is actually opening in Oz nearly two months after it opens here which is unusual in that generally most films open in their own country of origin first.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/19/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 89% positive reviews. Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Cove
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Murder on the Orient Express (2017)