Bird Box and Bird Box Barcelona

The best way to save on monster CGI.

Bird Box

When the world is invaded by hostile creatures, a small band of survivors makes a trek to try find safety. Starring Sandra Bullock, the concept is quite ridiculous because as soon as you look at one of these things (which are never shown) you become intensely suicidal. Clever way to save on budget, but also ridiculous as people somehow manage to navigate without tripping over more than they should. Also, since you can't see them, the monsters aren't super scary because they have no physical abilities whatsoever (other than whispering aggressively if you aren't looking)? An interesting film nonetheless but... feels dopey.

Bird Box Barcelona

This film is almost the same as the last one, except in Spanish but with more of a focus on the crazies who are affected differently when they see the still invisible creatures. Just as ridiculous as the first film but the twist is decent enough to earn it a watch if you liked the concept.

Cagaster of an Insect Cage and The Lost City

Shows about love?

Cagaster of an Insect Cage

In this one season anime, nothing makes sense. That's a great start isn't it? There's a virus that causes people to randomly transform into zombies giant man-eating dragonfly type bugs and we are told in the introduction that these critters are impervious to bullets, blades and tank shells with the only opportune time of slaying a person undergoing the change (so still mostly humanoid) to be in the first 20 minutes, via decapitation.

In the very next scene, we see a lone soldier take down a giant dragonfly with a sword and shotgun, and soon after learn there are entire tank brigades dedicated to fighting the bugs. What? Interesting take on having the protagonist being a potential child rapist too, but its ok because the 14 year old says "yes" at the end of the series. Love always wins! Yay? So um, yeah. Sorry for the spoiler but its not a great story and only OK art and action means I'm going to not recommend this one.

The Lost City (2022)

When a burnt out romance writer (Sandra Bullock) winds up being kidnapped it is up to her slow-witted cover model (Channing Tatum) to mount a rescue attempt. For an action adventure comedy this movie certainly hits all of those themes pretty well, and while the plot is mostly predictable it was still quite entertaining and ultimately much better than I was anticipating as I got invested in multiple characters right away, even the bad guy (there are some duds though)! Turned out to be a decent watch. Good choice wifey. :)

The Proposal

Sandra Bullock plays an abrasive and much disliked boss who blackmails her assistant (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her to get around being deported. Of course this lie doesn't go smoothly when real feelings become involved. Yep, another pic by my wife - I found myself laughing quite a lot during this romantic comedy and found it very entertaining. Since there are no explosions or a high CGI requirement they collected decent actors to fill up the cast.

Good leads for this sort of thing.

Betty White is always entertaining for me (fan of Golden Girls, eep) but is outdone by Oscar Nunez's "Ramone". It also helps that the setting quickly changes from that of a busy city to the picturesque Alaska. Bonus points for having an adorable puppy! There are some odd bits such as the Indian chanting segment and why in the world would Ryan Reynolds undress entirely on a balcony IN ALASKA? Is it not cold there? Well, I guess if I looked like Ryan Reynolds maybe it would be different but I digress. :P

If you dislike rom-coms but are forced to see one, this isn't such a bad choice. For everyone else, I give it three and a half Samoyeds out of five. That's three full grown ones and one puppy by the way, don't go chopping dogs up. Surprisingly, I also wouldn't mind watching this again.

Gravity (Review)

"Nespresso, George?"

Space, the final frontier. It's beautiful. It's quiet. It's also effing boring. This film follows newbie astronaut Sandra Bullock as she and her comrades try to survive deadly space junk, in space.

Honestly we were so annoyed at the low skill level of her character is was at times frustrating, which is not good since the movie really is a character piece more than anything else. Fortunately there's a lot of awesome CGI to look at, because there's not much else going on here.

Apart from the "space junk attack action sequences" there is only one memorable, character building scene for me - and a ton of WTF is she doing / did she do that for scenes, followed by face palming.

If that's enough for you or you really like Sandra Bullock and/or George Clooney then you may still enjoy this rather slow motion picture. Apparently a lot of people did. I'm just not really one of them. I give Gravity 2 out of 5, and that's being generous because of the FX.