Rampage (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: In an alternate present where gene manipulation has become a prized asset in the development of medicine and biological weapons, a space station housing a number of mutated specimens has crashed into Earth… and had a rather monstrous effect on the animals that got near them. As Energyne corporate leaders Claire (Malin Åkerman) and Brett (Jake Lacy) race to recover the valuable specimens, primatologist Davis (Dwayne Johnson) is brought into the equation after one of the specimens affects George (Jason Liles), an albino gorilla in his care. It’s up to George and medical engineer Dr. Caldwell (Naomie Harris) to get to the bottom of this calamity before the overgrown George and the other affected animals reduce Chicago to rubble.

San Andreas (2015) - Movie Review

Even though there are a lot of easy parallels to be drawn between wrestling and any other form of televised fiction, it’s kind of surprising how badly the transition from wrestler to full-fledged actor goes for most people. Usually, it consists of a lot of straight-to-DVD action fodder that still keeps the actors in their ultraviolent comfort zones, with only a handful making it to cinemas and even less of that sample being successful; not every film can be the Expendables, after all. But even with all that in mind, Dwayne Johnson, Actor Formally Known As The Rock, has experienced an track record that is far beyond his peers, The Tooth Fairy notwithstanding.

Ever since I first saw him act proper in the surprisingly good Get Smart remake, I immediately got why this is: He is one of the few that has successfully managed to translate his on-stage charisma to the big screen, using it to sell whatever dialogue and/or premise he is handed. Hell, as bad as The Tooth Fairy was, Dwayne by no means half-arsed it. So, when he was cast as the lead in the latest addition to the natural disaster genre, usually wrought with enough inaccuracies to make anyone question the film’s reality, it came across as ideal casting to help sell the film. But did it ultimately work out? This is San Andreas… and no, as much as I wish he was, Wu Zi Mu is nowhere to be found in this film.