REVIEW: Infinite Storm (2022) - Starring Naomi Watts & Billy Howle

Review By Jon Donnis

Infinite Storm is based on the very real story of Pam Bales.

Pam Bales (Naomi Watts) is a search and rescue volunteer, one morning she goes on a hike up Mount Washington, almost without warning a storm sets in. After a few stumbles, and a fall, she gets on her way but then sees footprints in the snow, the footprints are from basic trainers, so she realises that someone unprepared is nearby.

She sees a man in the snow, almost frozen, and dressed completely inappropriately for mountain hiking, she realises he is alive, and quickly gets to work to warm him up, and redress him in better clothes. He isn't very friendly, and doesn't seem to want to volunteer much information about himself, Pam decides to call him John. John is played by Billy Howle.

What follows is a trek to safety down the mountain, and the various obstacles they need to overcome.

This is a strange film, for the first 30 minutes there is very little dialog, and the film moves quite slowly, but when the character of Pam finds John, things pick up.

As we go on, we get some flashbacks that reveal more from Pam's history, and the final scene, is an emotional one, that bookends the film nicely.

The Good

A very emotional ending, and straightforward story mean that you don't need to do much work as a viewer. 

The Bad

The way the story is told, there is perhaps not enough development of the characters, which can perhaps leave the viewer cold, when reacting to certain events in the film.

Overall

A straightforward story, with beautiful scenery, and a strong performance by Naomi Watts. A bit more character development would have been nice.

I score Infinite Storm a fair 7/10

Out now on Apple TV - https://apple.co/3Nb0SOj

Pre-order on DVD at https://amzn.to/3FM0fYQ

REVIEW: The Northman (2022) - Stars Alexander Skarsgård, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy & Nicole Kidman

Review by Jon Donnis

Another day, another review, this time The Northman an epic historical fiction film directed by Robert Eggers and starring Alexander Skarsgård and based on the legend of Amleth.

The basic plot sees Amleth, (Alexander Skarsgård) a Viking prince who sets out on a quest to avenge the murder of his father.

Set in the year AD895, the film starts with King Aurvandill War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), returning from battle to his Kingdom on the Island of Hrafnsey. He reunites with Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) and his young son Prince Amleth.

The King wants to prepare his son to one day become King, so they take part in a spiritual ceremony, which involves a lot of crawling about and howling like wolves. The next day Aurvandill's brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang), and some masked men, ambush and murder the King, and take Queen Gudrún, Prince Amleth escapes, and swears to avenge his fathers death, save his mother, and kill his uncle.

Amleth is found by Vikings who raise him as a berserker. As a man Amleth, after pillaging a village, comes across a psychic/witch in a temple, she predicts that Amleth will soon take revenge on his father's killer. He finds out that Fjölnir was overthrown and is now on a farm in Iceland, so decides to travel there by posing as a slave on a ship.

What follows is lots of grunting, fighting, and classic Viking style action. At its base, this is a story about revenge, and the complexities of growing up, the beliefs you had, and how you react to tragedy.

One big problem I had with the film was the accents, although for the most part they are speaking in English, all the characters have really heavy Scandinavian accents, now usually I moan at a film that is set in ancient times, but people have modern accents, for example a Brummy in Ancient Greece will always take me out of the film, so I do commend this film for making the effort, however, the accents are so strong I struggled in parts to understand. I wished I had subtitles, but then I would rather the actors be speaking in the language that their accents are imitating. 

With that said, I enjoyed the film, lots of action, lots of grunting, fighting, swinging swords, being all manly etc. We don't get enough of that these days. This film doesn't have an ounce of "wokedom" in it, and that is a good thing.

The ending was a bit flat for me, but I suppose that comes down to personal taste.

The Good

The Northman has that epic feel to it, it feels like you are watching a big movie, and although Nicole Kidman seemed a bit out of place in the film, I thought Alexander Skarsgård was excellent. 

The Bad

Those bloody accents, couldn't understand them.

Overall

This film has plenty for everyone, epic fight scenes, manly grunting and big action for the men watching, and glistening half naked bodies for the women watching. Seriously though if you don't take the film too seriously, and just enjoy it for what it is, you wont be disappointed.

I score The Northman a gruntingly fantastic 8.5/10

At cinemas now

REVIEW: The Lost City (2022) Stars Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum and Daniel Radcliffe

Review by Jon Donnis

Sandra Bullock plays Loretta Sage a middle-aged romance novelist, she writes books about a fictional hero called Dash McMahon, he is portrayed on the book covers by model Alan Caprison played by Channing Tatum.

Loretta's publicist Beth Hatten played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph, insists that Loretta needs to go on a book tour with Alan to help promote the newest book release.

The book launch starts badly and gets worse, Alan loses his wonderous long blonde wig, and falls off the stage, after the event Loretta is kidnapped by billionaire Abigail Fairfax played by Daniel Radcliffe. He has figured out that Loretta has based her books on a real historical event, and includes research she did with her late husband who was an archaeologist, and that she has been able to decrypt an ancient language, with this knowledge he hopes to find the location of a Lost City, and specifically the "Crown of Fire", Loretta is being forced to help him.

Fairfax puts her to sleep with chloroform and takes her to the island. Alan witnesses the kidnapping, and due to his secret love for Loretta decides to hire a former Navy SEAL and CIA operative, Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt) to help him rescue her. Alan is no more than a model, so doesn't help much, and Trainer manages to save Loretta pretty much on his own, but gets shot in doing so. 

What follows is a fun film that has Loretta and Alan being chased by Fairfax's henchmen, and then hoping to find the Lost City themselves.

The film has some decent action scenes, some acceptable CGI, and some funny lines thrown in there. HOWEVER, I just think that Channing Tatum was the wrong person to be cast in the film. 

Sandra Bullock who still looks great, is at least 15 years older than Tatum in real life, and perhaps needed a male lead who was more mature looking, although Tatum is in his early 40s, he kind of looks like early 20s, and he can be quite wooden as an actor.

I hate to say this, but we all know who should have been in this role, a man who has appeared in endless Jungle based movies, yes Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The problem with that is just last year he starred in Jungle Cruise and Red Notice which has similarities to this film, but were both superior films.

I will say however, there is a fun scene with leaches which is very much for the ladies watching. 

Daniel Radcliffe is great as the whiney billionaire and Brad Pitt, although in a relatively small role, played his part well.

The Good

A fun film, all the set pieces are done well, and is definitely worth watching.

The Bad

Not at all original, and Channing Tatum was just bad casting for this.

Overall

It's great to see Sandra Bullock back on the big screen, she seemed to disappear for a few years after Bird Box, so nice to have her back in films.

I enjoyed The Lost City, and it is worth seeing despite a few of the issues I mentioned.

I score The Lost City a fair 7/10

Out now in a cinema near you! And you can pre-order the home release at https://amzn.to/3w7dmRv

REVIEW: 2000 Mules - A documentary film by Dinesh D’Souza

Review by Jon Donnis

I am a skeptic, I am a critical thinker, I am a journalist with 2 decades of experience investigating fraud. When the 2020 election happened my skeptical senses went off, something was clearly wrong here.

Like Trump or hate Trump, he increased his vote numbers by 10 million, no second term President ever gets more votes the second time round, Obama for example when first elected in 2008 got 69,498,516, a historic election, the first black President, in 2012 he got 65,915,795. He got less votes, and still won the second term.

So straight away Trump getting 10 million more votes and not winning seemed fishy.

Then you consider that he was packing out 50,000 seat arenas, and Biden barely campaigned at all.
Trump won the so called bellweather States, States that historically give a good prediction of who will win the election. Then there was the 3am "dumps" and we all know what happened next.

With all that I was pretty skeptical that the election was fair, but with Covid, and the mass mail out ballots, I accepted that people who probably didn't usually vote, suddenly had a ballot mailed to them, and thought what the hell. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars in areas that are left leaning, to get people to vote, so in the end despite it clearly being a "bit dodgy" I accepted the result of the election, despite all the red flags, and the sheer lunacy of accepting that Joe Biden got 12 million more votes than Obama did, when the Obama Presidency was so historic.

Fast forward a few years and still the questions linger, Trump still insists that the election was stolen, and then seemingly out of nowhere, well at least out of nowhere from my point of view, Dinesh D’Souza announces a documentary that he claims will expose the election fraud.

So I decided to sit down and watch the film, so I could make up my own mind, I already had read the so called Fact Checks from the left wing media, fact checks based purely from the trailer and not the actual film, claiming that it was misleading and so on. I wanted to at least make sure I had my skeptical hat on when watching the film.

What follows was 90 minutes of my jaw dropping to the floor.

Every time I had in my mind the classic skeptical response of "yes but this is could explain it", they explained in detail how it worked. 

They explain through the collection of 10 trillion cell phone pings, geotracking, security video footage, everything you can imagine, we are talking the kind of technical data that the DOJ and FBI uses to prosecute criminals, not to mention technology that the Army uses to take out terrorists, they "expose an elaborate network of paid professional operatives called mules delivering fraudulent and illegal votes to mail-in dropboxes in the five key states where the election was decided."

This is the biggest scandal of my lifetime, a literal stolen Presidential Election, it doesn't get bigger than that.

We are not talking about facebook memes sponsored by Iran or Russia, we are not talking about dodgy advertisements on billboards, we are talking about 100% proof of people paid to deliver thousands of illegal ballots. After watching this film, whether you are left or right wing, whether you were for Trump or for Biden, whether you already believed the election was stolen, or thought it was the most secure electionin history, after watching this, you will have no doubt left in your mind whatsoever that fraud on a level never seen before happened. People need to be arrested. And this should never be allowed to happen again.

If anthing this film is a lesson in which any country should pay close attention, if you want a free and fair election, you need to pay close attention and put safeguards in place.

I score 2000 Mules a perfect 10/10, that is how important this film is as a historical documentary.

Stream now at https://dinesh.locals.com/post/2083099/2000-mules

Pre-Order DVD from https://shop.salemnow.com/product/2000-mules/

You can also pre-order a hardcover book at https://amzn.to/39qig2V and Kindle version at https://amzn.to/3LERDp5

REVIEW: Alien Sniperess (2022) - Starring Olivia Okoro, Sean Laguna and Douglas Savage

Review by Jon Donnis

Since my last few reviews were all big Hollywood type films with huge budgets, I thought I should get back to what I know and love, that being low budget Independent films. And the latest in that genre is Alien Sniperess.

Who even knew that there was a feminine version of the word Sniper, in Sniperess. Totally unnecessary, but alas that is what we have, so lets not complain too much.

In a totally original, and never seen before plot point, the film starts with a meteor shower, and of course there are some kind of alien creatures within the rocks, that in turn infect humans, turning them into alien hosts. A bit Zombie like, but they can fire guns.

Olivia Okoro is the lead in the film, she plays Elite Army sniper Chioma, she has just found out that her boyfriend was in a car accident, as she seems him in his hospital bed, he proposes, gives her the ring and then dies. His last request of her is to take his brother Aaron (Sean Laguna) to his grandparents. Chioma's friends Kelly (Alaina Laethem) and Liz (Camille Kerber) agree to accompany her on the journey.

With the meteors and the aliens inside having now affected people all over the country, it becomes apparent that these infected people are getting violent and trying to kill people, how do you know when someone is infected? They put in orange contact lenses. How generous of the aliens to do this so we know who they are!

Throw in FBI Agent Marks (Mark Speno), Conspiracy Theorist Dr. Clark (Sean Dillingham doing his best Alex Jones impression) and you have the "Officials" investigating and trying to find a way to destroy the aliens.

What follows is perhaps a paint by numbers film, nothing that original, but delivered in a surprisingly good manner, way better than its budget should allow it.

The film jumps into the action pretty quickly, sometimes these films will pad the first half with nonsensical dialog, but this film goes for it from pretty early on, which was a pleasant surprise.

Olivia Okoro is excellent as the lead, she comes across as very credible, and I thought was the standout performance. 

The Good

A strong performance by Olivia Okoro stands out, and Alien Sniperess as a film is way better than it should be.

The Bad

Slightly tired formula, a plot done many times before.

Overall

For a low budget independent film, I was pleasantly surprised. The film has its moments, some decent action scenes, and a nice build-up of tension.

I score Alien Sniperess a fairly strong 7/10

Out now on Digital and available at https://amzn.to/3sp0C6o