Terminator-Dark Fate, Review: Terminal stillness With a title like Dark Fate, they have already let the cat out of the bag. It is bound to end in one or more of its heroes/heroines dying, meeting their dark fate. That being a given, Terminator: Dark Fate provides some impressive action and unending shape-shifts/split bodies to keep you entertained, saving the best for the last. It is a long last, and it lasts really long. Three years after defeating the T-1000 and averting the rise of the ma...

Gemini Man, Review: Clone arranger Ang Lee directed this poor man’s James Bondage? The man who made Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger--Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi? No, this is the Ang Lee who made Hulk, which earned twice its cost. A VFX delight, Gemini Man is about a clone on a mission to kill a man who is a professional killer, and is also the man he was cloned from. The movie disappoints, with a below par screenplay, and few impressive d...

Siraj Syed reviews Incarnate: This Entity is an Omen for the Exorcist In cinema, as in most other industries, if you don’t innovate, you are dead. Innovation is an essential part of the survival kit, and if new genres are proving elusive, makers must, nevertheless, try to reformat the template. So, if you can’t re-incarnate, at least ‘incarnate’. A good example of eschewing supernatural tropes and plying atypical ropes instead is Incarnate. That it stumbles occasionall...

Terminator Genisys, Review: Old or obsolete? Also known as Terminator 5 and released in Real D, 3D and IMAX 3D, Genisys is an elaborately written but largely uni-dimensional tale of the saga that poses the ‘eternal’ question: what if machines tried to take-over the world? By machines, it is meant humanoids, cyborgs, robots and other hybrids with almost unbeatable strength. Either ennui has set in, or the script is too convoluted and complex, or, frankly, the execution is not compe...

Maggie, Review: My daughter, the zombie! First-time writer John Scott 3 and first-time director Henry Hobson’s humane zombie tale Maggie treats the genre differently and has many poignant moments. It is slow, hazy and morbid, though there are several interesting twists to this pandemic tale. Most of the world has been plagued by the Necroambulist virus that turns people into zombies/cannibals. Farmers have burnt down their fields and crops to prevent further contamination. Wade Vogel (...

The Expendables 3: Generation Ex+Gen Next “The challenge was to write literally 16 main characters in a two-hour movie, and how often do you get to write for Zorro, the Terminator, Rocky, Indiana Jones and Mad Max?”—Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, co-writers, The Expendables 3. The Expendables are a group of righteous, patriotic mercenaries, used by the CIA in operations where the US government does not want to be officially involved. They are led by Barney Ross...