Spy Kids: Armageddon (2023) - Movie Review

Even before I recognised Robert Rodriguez’s name as a filmmaker, the Spy Kids series was the shit when I was a kid. The first one in particularly was largely responsible for me going through a major spy phase, getting a bunch of toy gadgets and playing mock action spy in the playground… alone… because goddamn, if you think reading my words as an adult makes me look awkward, kid-me was even worse. And the films themselves have held pretty damn well… okay, two of them have held up really well, with 3-D: Game Over having aged especially poorly thanks to the visuals and ugly-ass red-blue 3D, and All The Time In The World being just a categorical disaster that Rodriguez himself was basically strong-armed into doing thanks to Harvey Weinstein (a statement which itself has aged even worse than Game Over).

But even those films still held onto the unshakeable earnestness that RR approaches every production with. The way he wrapped up so many wrong-headed ideas in All The Time In The World with a genuine message about putting family first and doing right by your kids (made stronger by how he often makes films with his kids)… I mean, the film overall still sucks, but there’s no denying that he meant that shit.

Kimi (2022) - Movie Review

 

Of all the filmmakers who tried to persist when COVID made its initial devastating impact on the film industry, Steven Soderbergh always felt like the one who was the most primed and ready for it. In 2011, he and Scott Z. Burns basically predicted COVID itself with Contagion, and in 2019, he and Tarell Alvin McCraney gave one hell of an analogy for how much streaming and decentralisation would need to fill in the gap once lockdowns started happening in High Flying Bird. Between his place as a vanguard of independent cinema, and his championing for availability of both product and production, given his use of consumer-grade smartphones to film High Flying Bird and Unsane, he is a cinematic voice that seemed destined to thrive in this environment.

Upgrade (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: After a mugging leaves mechanic Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) a quadraplegic and kills his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo), he struggles with adjusting to life without being able to fend for himself. However, when tech whiz Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson) offers him a chance to walk again through an experimental microchip called STEM (Simon Maiden), Grey has the chance to both reclaim his life and take revenge against the muggers that nearly took it from him.

iBoy (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: After a visit to a friend goes horribly wrong, meek high school kid Tom (Bill Milner) ends up with chunks of his smartphone lodged in his head. As he recovers from the shooting that resulted in said embedding of phone parts, he discovers that he now has the ability to control electronics with his mind. While his best friend Lucy (Maisie Williams) deals with her own after-effects of that same night, Tom, known in Internet circles as iBoy, sets out to find the people responsible and stop the vicious cycle of crime occurring in his neighbourhood.

 

Killer App (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Young programmer Jessie (Ashley Rickards) is chosen to be part of a team workshop at TITAN, a tech company run by her estranged father Springer (Jonny Rees). However, after her colleague Mateo (Will Carlson) takes credit for her work, she designs what she describes as an “anti-social network” called KillList, an app that allows users to tag friends and enemies. As tensions rise in the TITAN offices, people listed as "enemies" start turning up dead. It’s up to Jessie to find what is going on before someone decides to make her their new enemy.

The Circle (2017) - Movie Review

Technology is an amazing thing. With a single click and a few keyboard taps, you can communicate with people on the other side of the world. Decades ago, we made jokes about how everyone thought virtual reality was the big new thing; now, I can just walk into my local game shop and pick up a headset for myself. Medicine, computing and just human invention in general have taken massive leaps and bounds and it’s only getting bigger with time.

 

However, technology is also a very scary and potentially lethal thing. With enough know-how, that same person on the other side of the world can bring a SWAT team to your house just because you did better than them in Team Deathmatch. Decades ago, we made jokes about how the government is trying to monitor every little action we do; now, thanks to social media, we’re all pretty much giving up our every movement for public consumption willingly. Medical advancements continue to be challenged, destroying a person’s life is as simple as having the right computer program, and human ingenuity continues to reflect how flawed humans still are. With all this in mind, how does today’s techno-thriller do at discussing such issues?