Awake not Woke!

Another terrible Jurassic world movie if you can even really call it Jurassic world at this point. Where's the dinosaurs? These are some kind of mutant alien looking things. Outside of a couple of the leads most of the acting is pretty terrible and the VFX are all over the place. Some scenes look very well done then others look half finished or rushed really low quality stuff. The story is just garbage and makes no real sense. The evil rich white man they want you to hate is only 'evil' because he's a capitalist who works for big pharma and is spending millions to develop a new drug. Then there is the Spanish family, the most pointless annoying DEI insert in recent memory. They serve no purpose whatsoever to the plot or anything in the movie. Their acting is abysmal, they are so insufferable stupid and annoying, I was pleading with my TV for them to be eaten, but I knew it would never happen. There are only really 3 white males in the group and the only portrayed as good is the beta, liberal who wants to steal the samples from the Pharma company who literally is paying for the entire trip and services and then release them into the world for opensource medical development in some implausible socialist utopia. Two of the 3 white males don't want to rescue the Spanish family. 3 of the only 4 deaths in the movie are white people. 2 of them are 'bad' white men, one of them is a completely random death of a white female with hardly any screen time anyway and 1 black male who dies nobly saving others. Johansson's character as the lead mercenary wasn't as bad as I expected and thought she is a bit miscast she never went full girlboss or overpowered feminist. Then there is the writing, my god doesn't anyone read these scripts first. Your trapped on an island with creatures everywhere that can kill you and you go crashing around screaming your lungs out every second of the movie. There is no attempt at hiding or stealth and they make every effort to get themselves killed. This brings me to the creatures. They aren't even that threatening. They all move so slowly and just ignore people right in front of them or just stand there for long periods of time looking at them doing nothing. Then they just give up right away and walk away. This is most apparent in the single T-Rex scene that is laughable bad. There is a giant T-Rex somehow laying down hidden in what appears to be 5' of grass and nobody sees it. Then it just ignores or watches the Spanish family that it should of been able to kill many times over in this scene before ever so slowly going after them. It snatches up a blowup raft and chews on it for a solid 20-30 seconds just to drop it without a single hole punched in it. Then loses sight of the family behind some rocks and just gives up and walks away. A similar scene takes place in a huge wide open valley where there is nothing but grass about 5' tall. Then suddenly dozens of massive towering creatures just stand up out of the grass like they were invisible. The Spanish father severely hurts his leg and says he can't walk then swims to shore with no problems and is walking around then 2 minutes later can't walk again without leaning on a stick. They all jump out of the boat into the water with creatures everywhere when the boat is speeding toward land and about to beach itself 10 seconds later. Why would you do that!!?? There's more but you get the idea. If you liked the last one then maybe you will like this as well otherwise stay away.

I am three episodes in. Almost an all male cast with the exception of a potential love interest who does not get much screen time. She looks bi-racial. I'm not an expert on the fictional setting, but a woman brought in from a different continent doesn't seem that out of the real of possibilities given all the invading of other countries that may have occurred. If this were any other show released today, you'd have a female knight who was just as good as the men. None of that here so far. The pacing is a bit slow, but the characters are likable. I'd say it is worth supporting.

The movie itself is just not very good, it's clearly low budget and while the FX look ok there is surprisingly little actual zombie action in the movie. They are never really scary or threatening there just another obstacle to overcome. The acting is ok and though it's supposed to be a comedy horror the comedy just isn't funny and jokes are just dumb. There is some bad filmmaking and writing as well like horrible green screen inside vehicles, Zombies that seem to hide behind trees and appear in a large group out of nowhere. A nurse yells at a soldier for smoking and says it's bad for your health even though this is unrealistic for the 1930's. Smoking wasn't recognized as bad for you until the 50's and widespread recognition in the 60's. There is a lot of weird scenes of character posturing and pointing guns at each other threatening to shoot but nobody ever does anything. At the beginning there is inconsistences with how the Spanish character interact with the Nazis. Sometimes seeming to be frightened of them and then minutes later the same characters are openly defying them or laughing in their faces. As for woke it does check some of those boxes. There is a openly accepted Muslim character which is not accurate for the time and Muslims were virtually nonexistent in Spain at the time, so DEI. Then there is the tiny, scrawny angry, aggressive modern feminist type. Though it is tones down a bit and at least she's not full superhuman overpowered. There is also the 'good' communist who has to remind you literally every couple of sentences that he's fighting the 'bad' fascists. The amount of times he says this is so unnatural and distracting it really seems like a weird attempt at subliminal messaging. I saw reviews on other sites saying there is gay representation in the movie but I didn't see any. I was losing interest and paying less attention by the 1 hour mark so it's possible I missed something. All in all I would pass on this one.

This is another "should have been a mini-series" crammed into 150 minutes.

The story of the 1966 24h-LeMans, and the events leading up to it, is legendary. They did a good job of rendering it down to the most significant points. This movie condensed a lot of information by tweaking the facts. The main points stand. The order for Miles to lift and wait for the teammates for a dramatic end is true. The attempt by Ford to buy Ferrari is mostly true. I would recommend enjoying this movie, and, if interested in the history, read about the true events. You'll see what I mean. Matt Damon played a great Shelby. The character was whitewashed, but that's understandable. The real Shelby was a bit unsavory in his personal life. The best part was, by far, Bales. He nailed it as Ken Miles. He spent some time at Bondurant's school of high performance driving in preparation for the role. Bob Bondurant was still alive and active then(Died in 2021). He was a driver with Shelby's Cobra project. He was good friends with Ken Miles. There are so many stories about racing in this era. I hope this starts a trend. the next one probably should be about Penske or Smokey Yuneck.