Dean (6925 KP) rated Surrogates (2009) in Movies
Aug 9, 2019 (Updated Aug 9, 2019)
Mike Wilder (20 KP) rated Real Steel (2011) in Movies
May 30, 2018
OK rant over.
This is a good film, not a great film but very good. Hugh Jackman is good in this but to be fair he is good in most things. He gets to show off a bigger range of his acting skills than he has in the X-Men films. He plays Charlie Kenton, a former boxer now heavily in debt due to pushing his fighting robots too hard and expecting more than they can give, like fighting a 300lb bull! This also stars Evangeline Lilly in I believe her first role since the series Lost ended. She is also very good in this. However, the star of the film is Dakota Goya as Max Kenton. He shines as the child thrown together with the father he doesn't know. He enters the world of robot fighting with his father and manages to rescue a robot from a scrap pile. He then convinces his father to enter the robot in the fights. You really get to experience the wonder of the Robots through him. The other star is the robot he rescues, Atom. Although not sentient, the director manages to bring him to life with good camera angles and subtle sounds. You really start to feel for the robot and you manage to forget the fights aren't real. The other very clever part of the film is the setting. It is set in the near future, but the only really futuristic thing is the robots. There are no fancy cars or clothes and this enables you to connect with the film easier.
The climax of the film (at the end!), is a big showdown with the undefeated champion. Instead of just two robots bashing each other, you get Atom, the underdog, controlled by Max, and helped by his father. You see and feel each blow the robot takes and through the acting skills of Dakota Goya, you forget it's a machine and you can't help but cheer him on.
This could have been an average film, but the fine performances by the cast and the skill of the director in bringing Atom to life with just the use of camera shots and clever subtle sounds turns this film in to a joy to watch as you take the journey with father, son and giant robot.
Chappie (2015)
Movie Watch
In the near future, crime is patrolled by a mechanized police force. When one police droid, Chappie,...
scifi sciencefiction action robots futuristicworld
WALL-E (2008)
Movie Watch
In the distant future on a deserted and garbage-covered Earth, a waste-collecting robot named WALL-E...
Adult Swim
YouTube Channel
Get your Adult Swim fix whenever and wherever you want at adultswim.com, or by downloading the Adult...
Lee (2222 KP) rated Next Gen (2018) in Movies
Oct 15, 2018 (Updated Oct 15, 2018)
At the big launch of the next generation of Q-Bots, Mai breaks free from her excited mum and, following a run in with some security robots, finds herself in a hidden lab. There, Dr Rice, who is the technical brains behind the Q-Bots, has been developing a robot of his own: Project 7723 (voiced by John Krasinski). As the curious Mai goes to investigate the robot, security bots catch up with her once more and she has to leave quickly, leaving behind her backpack. Project 7723 picks up the backpack and sets about returning it to its rightful owner at all costs. As 7723 travels along the highway, following the car that is transporting Mai home, we begin to discover just how technologically advanced 7723 is - packing some serious weaponry, which it uses to effectively take out the police robots that are in pursuit. Nothing stands in its way.
The backpack is eventually returned, but Mai is initially disinterested in the robot. That is, until it takes out the annoying robot toothbrush with a laser! The pair form a friendship, and Mai hides 7723 away in her garage at night. Unfortunately though, 7723 sustained damage to his core memory during the earlier chase and each night has to decide which of the memories he made with Mai that day he can delete in order to prevent his storage from reaching critical capacity. As they have fun together and become good friends, this gets harder to do each day, and you just know that eventually this isn't going to end well.
I really enjoyed Next Gen. It's very reminiscent of movies like Big Hero 6 and The Iron Giant and John Krasinski brings 7723 to life brilliantly. The animation is of such a high standard, beautifully detailed, and there are some fantastic action sequences, along with plenty of good humour throughout. And, as suspected, it does manage to pack a real emotional punch at times too. I sat and watched this with my daughter and it really is just a great family movie.
KerrChung (46 KP) rated Robocop (1987) in Movies
Jun 13, 2018
A cop loses his humanity and is brought back to life, he is resurrected as a cyborg super cop who once again regains his humanity and has to learn how to navigate being robot and deal with his past human memories. ED-209 has all the fire power and is just a cool design for a robot/urban tank. The costume and the suit for RoboCop was beautifully designed. Themes include media influence, gentrification, corruption, authoritarianism, greed, privatization, capitalism, identity, dystopia, and human nature. It is a movie well deserved of it's R rating. In one scene RoboCop prevents a rape when he shoots the rapist in the dick. VIOLENT and amazingly poetic.
Sara Cox (1845 KP) rated The Perfect Wife in Books
Aug 1, 2019
This book had me from the go! After two pages I could tell it was going to be a "Black Mirror" sort of thing. And I'm going to be honest, Black Mirror freaked me out. This book however was amazing! So many twists and turns. A real psychological ride! The character development of robot Abbie was brilliant. I loved going through her thoughts with her. The aspects of this novel are well researched, coding and autism. I cannot fault it. The ending took my breath away, three times in fact. Just as I was getting over the first "no way!" moment I was hit with another and then another. This is definitely going on my to read pile to read again!
Intelligent Autonomous Systems 10: IAS-10
Wolfram Burgard, R. Dillmann, C. Plagemann and N. Vahrenkamp
Book
This volume contains the proceedings of the tenth International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous...